Month: October 2013

Halloween is here..

~ Inky ~ 2 Comments
Jack-o-lantern
Jack-o-lantern (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the Stephen King manual – there are 3 types of terror:

The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.

The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one:

Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…

Source: Stephen King

Inky’s Take :  I think there is a fourth – The Angry Seven year old Kid. The one that looks at you with disdain when you drop a handful of taffy in his bag, a frown creasing his lips with a ‘really?’ sniff ‘that’s all you got?’  The self same one who conjours the TP Fairy late at night surrounded by his bubble gum pops, Hershey candy bars, and Snickers.

Ultimately the one that stands on the corner to watch your gaped mouth expression as you take in the rolls upon rolls of toilet paper blanketing every tall item on your lawn, including the 100 year old oak.  Laughing gleefully as you answer the ringing cell to find the homeowners association screaming at you though the phone.  Yup that one, he really gives me nightmares….. (shivers)

Have a really good All Hallow’s Eve, with lots of candy – the good kind, plenty of goosebumps and absolutely no visits from the toilet paper fairy!

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Please Do Not Touch!

~ Inky

Chris Lane

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.

Source: Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Photo: Chris Lane, Elevator Switch

Inky’s Take: Ahhh, just so you know, it’s not a large switch it’s a rather nondescript faded blue button.  It’s not in a cave somewhere, it’s in the middle of Hoboken Terminal, Hoboken, NJ.  Anddd… the sign doesn’t say ‘End-of-the-World-Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’ it says ‘Down’.  Just thought you might like to know, you know, just in case you’re ever in the vicinity and get the urge…

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Halloween Countdown Day 3

~ Inky

cityragflyMonsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren’t…

Source: Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Photo: City Rag

Inky’s Thoughts: The above photo is of a vintage Halloween costume.  Impressive, rather frightening, and goosebumpingly creepy.  I found the photo at City Rag among their vintage photo collection of past Halloween costumes.  I can honestly say that many of the photos have a nightmarish quality, evoking uncomfortable squirming, and furtive glances to the darkness beyond the open window, and behind me in the room.  The only illumination the weak light of the monitor.

It wouldn’t be so bad, if the cat didn’t stare unflinchingly out the window, ears straight and taunt in the quiet.  I’m listening but all I hear is the steady drip of drizzling rain, the low howl of the neighbor’s dog across the meadow, and the deep breaths of the cat.  Hmmm lights, I need lights…

I’ll be right back…

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..great banter

~ Inky
The most famous of the Last of the Summer Wine...
The most famous of the Last of the Summer Wine trios: From left to right: Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg, Brian Wilde as “Foggy” Dewhurst and Bill Owen as “Compo” Simmonite. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Inky’s Thoughts: I love Last of the Summer Wine.  A group of aging friends pulling off immature pranks while rousting up the neighborhood is pure entertainment to me.  But what is really, really good about this British sitcom is the banter…

Foggy: Look, we’ve got to help Sid to regain the prestige he’s lost in Ivy’s eyes. We’ve got to build him up, image-wise. See, at the moment, she’s inclined to see him as…well, as something of a big dick.

Clegg: Why is that do you think?

Foggy: Well, in my opinion, it’s due almost entirely to the fact that…he is something of a big dick.

Clegg: Which leaves us with a problem.

Foggy: True, yes.

Clegg: Well as long as we’re not changing him entirely. The nicest people I know have always been something of a big dick.

Foggy: No not at all, not at all, No. All we have to do is alter Ivy’s opinion of him a bit, that’s all.

Clegg: Well that’s all right then. As long as you’re not asking me to contribute towards reducing society’s most precious commodity. There are far too many, boring, serious beggars about. We need all the big daft dicks we can get.

Foggy: Don’t worry there still will be a few about.

Compo: I wonder who sells frilly garters?

Foggy: See what I mean?

Source: Last of the Summer Wine – Vintage 1982

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Halloween Countdown – Day 5

~ Inky

zombie-apocalypseHalloween is rapidly approaching and I’m one of those people that is OCD when it comes to being prepared.  Here’s my list:

Decorations – Check,

Costume – Check,

Badly carved pumpkins with candles – Check,

 

Weird scream-filled-scary noises CD – Check,

Candy, the good kind, Snickers, Milky Ways, Heath Bars – Check,

Supply Stockpile:

  • Walther P99, with a nearly inexhaustible stock of silver bullets – Check
  • Leather bag filled with sharpened stakes – Check
  • Bathtub & Washing machine filled with Holy Water – Check
  • Zombie Apocalypse kit – Check.

That oughta do it, never can be too prepared, know what I mean?

Illustration: solarseven

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Rain in Fingerbee’s Glen

~ Inky

rainThere are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won’t remember and that she can’t even let herself think about because that’s when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

Source: Neil Gaiman

Photo: George Hodan

It rained three solid weeks, filling the little town with the soggy sound of car tires on wet pavement, the unrelenting drip of water from dying leaves and the kind of chilled damp that seeps between cracks of locked doors, and shuttered windows in flagrant mockery of fireplace flames.   Weather like this happened in Washington state not the sunny beaches of the east coast.  Even so, the weather wasn’t responsible for the gloom within the Victorian home at the end of the cul-de-sac.

No, it was the certain knowledge that the oldest son was going to kill his mother when he learned his nine year old daughter stepped within the ring of toadstools behind the house, and vanished.

Source: Inky Fingerbee’s Glen, (fairytale for my grandchildren)

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Glenlivet Muse

~ Inky ~ 3 Comments

cat

Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.

Source: Lilith St Crow, Strange Angels Series

Photo: Darren Hanlon

Inky’s Take: Writers block has me. I liken it to the Himalaya of hangovers; ripe with the vomit, and stale morning afters, complete with bleary eyes, and hair mussed by repeated furrows of fingers.

So, here I sit. Glenlivet laced coffee in hand as I work out the plot snarls with the cat.

Yes, ‘the cat’.  Why?

(points to a bowl of cream), she has her own Glenlivet..

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Music and the Genome

~ Inky

georgehodanmusicianA painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

Source: Leopold Stokowski

Photo: George Hodan, isn’t this a great picture?!

Inky’s Take:  Music.  One of my sincerest loves.  The one gene I did not inherit from my Irish ancestors, making me the only one within my immediate  family who failed to capture that prolific scamp from the ancestral tree.  When it comes to Inky and painting silence; I relate it to a passage from Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

‘Hugh consoled me, saying, “Don’t let it get to you. There are plenty of things you’re good at.”   When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he’ll need some time to think.’

…and that, my dear friends, would be a bullseye!

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October Arribas

~ Inky

Francisco Farias Jr monster

‘It’s poor judgment’, said Grandpa ‘to call anything by a name. We don’t know what a hobgoblin or a vampire or a troll is. Could be lots of things. You can’t heave them into categories with labels and say they’ll act one way or another. That’d be silly. They’re people. People who do things. Yes, that’s the way to put it. People who *do* things.

Source: Ray Bradbury, The October Country

Photo:  Francisco Farias Jr.

Inky’s Take:  Halloween! I love the shivers from a good scream, the heavy ink of a moonless night, and scary stories…  utterly orgasmic!  Horror movies? Those I usually watch, all the lights on, peeking around a pillow screaming, ‘don’t go into that room’ or ‘why aren’t you running? Run! Now!’ but of course they never do.

Me?  Speedy Gonzales would be left –  In. The. Dust!   Arriba, Arriba… Andalay, Andalay.. you don’t have to tell me twice!

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Nerkle, word?

~ Inky

dictionary So, what’s a Nerkle?

The Urban Dictionary & The Unword Dictionary describes a nerkle as –  (n) someone who keeps his Christmas lights up all year and doesn’t throw away their tree!   A combination of the words, nerd and sparkle.

But, there is…

The Nerkle Business Modelling Solution located somewhere down under..  Australia for those geographically challenged, like me.

Nerdbeach – which owns a Nerkle, a Nerd and of all things a Seersucker who specialize in beachcombing the future, aka tech and gaming!  Tell me you didn’t see that coming?

An artist named Nerkle on deviantart – her real name is Bethany, but who’s telling?

A Nerkle Group in the UK that does photo restoration, has a science teacher and can answer simple curiosity questions.  I’m curious as to who else is in the group?  Answer?  Anyone?

There’s a Nerkle family history at Ancestory.com, who knew?

There’s even a Nerkle on Youtube with one video of an ‘angry Welsh lady’ …. 

…and on the list goes.

So see Nerkle is a word, and here you thought there was nothing new under the sun. 

Now, if you will excuse me I think I’ll go unplug my Christmas lights… *ahem*…

Photo: Petr Kratochvil

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