Spike Vicious

Alone - part 3

2011-11-15T18:16:00.001-05:00

By the time Mason got outside to see what had set off his parent's car alarm he became full aware that it wasn't just his car going off but every car that had an alarm in the street was blaring. He dashed out onto the road to look up and down the street and as he did became aware of another noise. A screaming. An almost constant scream that seemed to echo all around him. Maybe his ears had just gotten so used to hearing nothing but the wind blow for three months that he wasn't used to all this. He shook his head a bit to wake up and try to focus. As he zeroed in on the scream it sounded less like the frightened shrieks he thought it was. This scream was just someone trying to get someone's attention, or at least that's how it sounded. He continued out onto the road and glanced both directions and sure enough, about a half mile up the road, there was the frantic figure of a man running the other way.
Mason's jaw dropped slightly as he watched the man, yelling at the top of his voice and smashing down on every car he passed with a large chunk of wood.
It didn't sound like he was saying any words, just making as much noise as possible.
Mason tried to reciprocate and yelled out "HEY!" as loud as he could but it was no use.
The poor bastard was making so much noise trying to attract attention to himself that he wasn't able to hear anything other than his own screaming and the wave of car alarms that followed him.
Still Mason tried to call out until his voice was hoarse and the lonely screamer was long gone.
Mason let out a tear, then angrily pounded his fist against the now-silent car.
"Fuck!"
Why couldn't the stupid fuck just shut up long enough to hear him?
Why didn't he realize he didn't need to make that much noise to be noticed in this abysmally silent and baron shell of an Earth?
"Fuck it all!"
He pounded on the car some more.
He didn't even know why he was so angry.

Mason didn't even like people that much, at least not anyone that he wasn't close to but three months alone, totally alone, makes you want nothing more than to have just someone. Anyone. Someone to talk to for God's sakes.

It all seemed so stupid, really, but the simple act of conversation seemed to keep people sane. Mason had realized this somewhat accidentally as he started to talk out loud everywhere he went.
It started out just saying what he was thinking because, who cares, right? No-one's around. No-one's going to care if your jabbering away to yourself. So he found himself idly saying what he was doing.
"Going to the store"
"Turning on the T.V." (The T.V. was playing nothing but static but Mason still enjoyed 'tuning in' daily)
"Stealing a gun from the store to blow windows out of people's bathrooms."
But before too long he was having conversations, some pleasant, some heated, some boring, all with himself.
"I wish I'd lose my mind like that fucking Tom Hanks movie and just befriend a Basketball.", he found himself wishing one day.
He hadn't even seen the movie but the idea of being able to befriend anything seemed like it would be a worthwhile effort at this point.

But now, he sighed. Slumped down next to his car clutching his bleeding fist he stared off into the distance that the stranger had vanished.
"Stupid bastard.", he grumbled
But as he did he realized that if the stranger like him had been on his own three months then maybe this screaming charge he was doing started out as his way to try and get someone's attention but had just become his daily routine. Maybe this is just what he did now.
Mason stood on his porch and stared into the dark.
Stranger runs through the streets pounding on cars and screaming for all eternity.
Just the routine he had chosen now that he assumed he was utterly alone.
"Poor bastard's probably been running every day for three months. Probably made it all the way from fucking Toronto."
On this thought, Mason doubted the stranger would run back his way. He was pretty sure this guy was just running for the rest of his days.
"Still... I might as well put something out, just in case."

Mason got to work, the first task he'd found the energy to set himself to in at least a month besides eating and drinking himself into a stupor.
Within an hour or so he had set up his dining room table on the road, fully set with plates and cutlery and fancily folded napkins in the shape of little boats that he used to do at his waiting job and a bottle of wine he had stolen from the local grocery store plopped in the middle.
"Why am I doing this? What's all this for?"
"It looks inviting."
"It looks fucking weird..."
"Doesn't matter. Weird. Fucked. Strange. If anyone is around they're going to take interest."
"I think the paint was enough..."
Sprawled out in 10 feet high letters in paint he found in the neighbor's shed Mason had painted the, not as inviting, but simple words.
"I HEARD YOU."
"They're going to think you're a fucking lunatic."
"I am a fucking lunatic and have every right to be"

Alone - part 2

2011-11-06T19:27:00.002-05:00

Mason shivered as he stood on his front porch. Staring out into the darkness of night.
Not particularly looking for anything at this point. It had been three full months since Mason had seen or heard any other living thing.
Without warning or explanation the world had just left Mason here on this Earth alone.
One normal evening he had gone to sleep and everything was there and the next morning everyone was gone without a trace.
Yet he continued to stare into the dark without emotion, without hope. He hadn't even cried about it in about two weeks. He used to be sure that the tears would come flooding in as he remebered everything that was and slowly crumbled knowing that he had know way of knowing why he was alone let alone whether anyone would ever come back.
This faithful night, however, Mason heard a noise.
A shuffle.
He blinked repeatedly, shaking himself out of a waking dream and turned to look over at the neighbours house where the shuffle had come from.
There was nothing for what seemed like the longest time and then another shuffle.
Or maybe a scuff?
It was definitely the scuff of a boot. Mason instinctively wanted to scream out but some other primal sway inside him told him that somehow something was wrong, that this was not a good idea.
And yet another scuff, this one much quicker to come than the last.
And another.
And a crash of a potted plant hitting the ground and smashing. Mason could see the smashed pot but not the thing that knocked it down. He eased forward on one foot cautiously to try and get a better look when around the corner came the figure of a man in what looked like a torn up suit.
Mason let out a meek, "Hey?" into the night and in the silence the man heard him and turned.
It was Leonard, Mason's neighbour but there was something strange about him, he looked pale and his eyes were deep and dark so much that they even seemed to be shaded in the black of night.
Mason's primal urges again warned him of the danger and this time he obeyed but as he turned to run the opposite direction there was another shuffle of feet only this time the figure making the noise was much closer.
It was a woman Mason didn't recognise but she was standing on the opposite end of Mason's front porch and was lightly illuminated by the candle Mason had beside him on the desk.
Most of her lower jaw was visible and her skin was covered with several deep scratches and what looked like bite marks. She was lumbering towards Mason with clear malicious intent. Mason acted quickly and ran back inside the house. He grabbed whatever furtiture he could to barricade the doors and armed himself with a baseball bat as he ran back to the door he came in he realized it sounded like there were more than just the two ghastly figures outside.
In what seemed like seconds Mason could see figures outside just about every window he glanced out, and many more scratching at the door and pawing against every wall in the house.
In a frightened panic he ran upstairs and threw down his sister's bed, followed by tables, chairs and mattresses to make as much of a barricade as he could in case the door didn't hold these monsters.
He sat down shaking with fear and adernalyn, trying to breath but not being able to get his mind away from the sudden mob of groaning, clawing undead all around him when suddenly there was a horendous beeping sound, over and over, like a siren or... a car horn... or...
an alarm clock.
Mason nearly fell out of bed as he fumbled for his alarm clock which had clearly interupted a very intense dream.
An intense dream about the end of the world.
An intense dream about being surrounded by the undead.
A dream, at least, where he wasn't alone.
All at once Mason felt both relief from being free of a nightmare but sorrow that this empty Earth was more terrible than it.
Plagues of zombies would at least be something to run from. Something to see and hear.
All he could hear now was that alarm.
Why had he set his alarm, anyway? He must have done it in his sleep. He continued to slam around his bedside table to try and smack down onto the snooze button at least but to no avail.
Then he hit the snooze, and again, and again until he pounded down so hard the clock fell off the table and smashed and yet the beeping continued.
And it wasn't his alarm
He sat up sharply and rubbed his eyes and got up to the window.
It was a car alarm, and it had been set off somehow.
This was no dream.
And Mason knew now, that he wasn't alone.

Crawl

2011-10-29T03:30:00.002-05:00

And crawling on the planet's face
Some insects called "The Human Race"
Lost in time
Lost in space
And in meaning...

Alone

2011-10-09T01:21:00.002-05:00

Hopelessly

As Mason stumbled through the rain sodden streets of Amityville gulping down his last few drops of whiskey he squinted into the distance. Car headlights? He laughed out loud.

"Not today!", he yelled.

He stopped almost dead, listening to the echo of his screaming down the streets and his voice became a whisper.

"Not to-fucking-day...".

He lobbed his almost empty bottle halfheartedly into the road and watched it smash through the window of a parked car across the street. The alarm went of and took over Mason's scuffled footsteps and occasional screams as the only noise in the now-silent town of Amityville. He let out a sigh of relief at the alarm and fell back to lean on a shop window ledge to listen to the car's alarm until it's battery died. He never quite made it as the liquor he had been drinking since the sun rose the previous morning caught up on him quickly and he fell back and all but passed out.

Half awake and squinting at the stars far above his head he felt more alone than any human being had ever felt.

He had felt the fear of being abandoned before. By friends, lovers, family. Feelings both real and imagined when, just as anyone else does growing up, he felt that the entire world had turned it's back on him and left him to fend for himself with no support. Time when he had literally just been away from his closest and been at too great a distance to speak to a familiar voice. That feeling of cold dread he knows all too well when a loved one died and he couldn't imagine anyone ever filling the vast void they had left in his world.

There are all feelings that Mason, and many others like him, are sadly all too familiar with in this life but today was very different.

For just 48 hours previously, almost to the minute, Mason had awoken as normal in his family's Amityville home to find that everyone, it seemed, had completely vanished from the Earth, leaving behind only their possessions but leaving no trace of themselves behind.

No family in his home.

No people in the relatively busy central street of Amityville.

No television or radio broadcasts from anywhere, local or national.

And absolutely no sign or clue as to what happened to everyone. Everyone in the entire world.

Bloodline - Chapter 7 - "Darkness"

2011-04-02T19:10:00.002-05:00

“Wake up, Seth.”

There is a crash.

A sort of thumping noise like hard boots on solid wooden floors. Coming closer. Or further. At this distance it’s hard to tell. But what distance? All at once it sounds like the thumping is right by me but I can’t tell.

And where am I? All around me there is darkness. Nothing but darkness. Something inside me tells me this is normal. That this is what my world is. I realize from that seemingly deep gut area that the world is this darkness. But it is normal to me, for I cannot see. I struggle and strain to open my eyes but it’s no good, it feels as though I am putting forth a tremendous effort to do such a remedial task and yet, I am falling just short. If only I could find the energy to open my eyes, but I cannot.

I am weak. So weak. And much like my attempts at sight my attempts at remembering anything about me, or why I’m here, or why I’m weak, is tragically just out of reach.

All at once I hear the thumping again. This time it’s clearer, more rhythmic than before and it’s very close but I still can’t work out what it is. I try to reach out but find that too is an effort that is beyond my capabilities. I lay here, for I assume I am in a prone position but cannot tell, knowing yet nothing of my condition or who indeed I am.

I cannot feel, I cannot see, I cannot hear. All I can do, it seems, is think and as far as I can recall it seems that is something which has only recently happened. As if I was in a great slumber.

Or dead.

I was dead.

Or still am.

Something doesn’t fit but the thumping noise is getting louder and louder like it is almost upon me.
Then suddenly it stops and there is a great sense of pain and anguish for a moment coming from somewhere above me it feels like, but that too is short lived, then comes a feeling so familiar. Something good yet horrid. Something… I can… taste.

There is a moistness on my lips, a warm rich wetness that seems to set my soul ablaze for a moment at it’s all too distant memory. Slowly it awakens my other docile senses and I begin to hear. Voices.

Two voices.

Illegible.

It’s as though I haven’t heard anyone speak in centuries.

As my memory returns I realize it has been. The taste on my lips is blood. Sweet blood, the giver of life and almost as if my sense had to realize all this to awaken, I can see again. At first everything is a blur but I quickly begin to see shapes form into figures.
I try to look at my hands but what I see are two skeletal remains of hands.
I have been dead for centuries.
More blood comes flowing from whatever source and I can begin to see what’s around me. Two people stand over me, watching. One is holding a fresh dead body and has a knife in it’s throat. Evidently this is the source of the blood as I begin to see and feel the world around me more clearly I realize these two are like me: Vampires. We feast on blood and live forever.
But who am I? Evidently I was dead. Slain and left in this… cave. But these two have managed to perform some sort of ritual to bring me back, albeit merely to this semi-skeletal state. Why?
As I ask memories come inching back into the back of my mind.
Memories of times spent ruling lands. Living in a sizable castle. Many vampires even answering to my call. I was a prince.

Even more so.

Somehow I know that when I was at full strength and alive (as alive as vampires are) that I was the prince.
I was the Vampire.
All answered to me and that is why these two have gone to such efforts, centuries after my death, to restore me.
The knowledge brings power and I finally find the strength to stand, shakily, on my worn legs. Looking down at my body and arms is disgusting but I can see even in this short time, pieces of flesh beginning to form between my empty ribs and tiny pieces of muscle beginning to make their way across my arm.
I feel my strength restoring and I take the lifeless body from my savior and drink the rest of the blood.
It feels like the strength of a thousand men is beginning to burn back inside me.
I am restored.

‘Welcome back, Sire Seth.”. my savior says, as he and his companion take one knee in prayer.

Bloodline - Chapter 6 - "Ladislav"

2011-01-21T06:04:00.000-05:00

Ladislav

Ladislav’s library is exactly what one might expect from an ancient vampiric history-keeper. Ornate, huge, domineering. Huge ceilings, thousands upon thousands of books, decor that would make the Pope blush but of course, no windows. From the outside, rather comically considering the mega-Cathedral look of the interior, the place looks like nothing more than an old shabby warehouse.
Funny.

And so here we are in this magnificent place finally having found the right reference book to tell us about The Cross of Caine.

On the ride over Opie explained it all to me:
Put basically The Cross Of Caine is supposedly capable of entrapping the souls (And therefore the power and strength) of a vampire or vampires and releasing them given the right ritualistic circumstances. The legend goes that Seth, that legendary uber-vamp, gathered some of the most powerful vampires together when the Spanish Inquisition got too uppity and sealed their spirits in the Cross to be released at a time when vampires were more conspicuous again. The legend is a little fuzzy about how exactly the power would be released again, legends are funny that way, but from the bits and pieces we’re looking at in this over-glorified fairy tale book it looks like the souls of those concealed in the cross will be transferred to the recently deceased. A fresh dead body maybe? Or a newly sired vampire? Who knows. Not important really, we’re just here to retrieve the damn thing, if it even exists and lug it back to Scotland where we’ll find it a nice little spot on the mantel between the Sword of Agnarth (Supposed to give the bearer the strength of ten men, in reality - just an unwieldy piece of rusting trash) and the Chalice of Ill Fate (One sip of blood kept in the chalice was meant to kill your future nemesis - to be fair we can’t really prove that didn’t work, I suppose).

All that’s important to me is where the damn thing is and even that doesn’t matter that much. I’m more here for the journey, for the sake of doing something.

As I’ve mentioned before - I don’t believe in all this Ancient Vampiric Power horse-shit.
Please.
Every civilization, vampires being no exception, look at their grandiose past as if the present is a mere pile of excrement that’s been left over from a glorious world long gone. More idiotic than that - they all try and convince you that not only has this glorious world gone by but it will happen again! Fancy that! We all just happen to be born in the piss filled “in between glory” times when everything sucks and everyone just wishes we were someplace else… Well, put that way it does have a certain narcissistic appeal to it but that doesn’t make it any more believable. The Ancient Vampiric Power, Seth, Caine and the silly cross that’s meant to ‘restore’ us is all just Heaven, Hell, God, Satan shit. The same old crap. Lies built on lies built on lies to try and make us believe in something a little more important than ourselves, to keep us going nuts or something? I don’t know.

Well anyway, there I go into another little thought tangent while Opie is trying to tell me something about Romania.

“What?”

“Romania,”, Opie repeats “The book seems to imply that the Cross was in Romania when Seth sealed the souls in it but it was moved.”

“Moved where?”

“Not sure…”, he says while scanning through the pages of a much smaller book he must have acquired while I was daydreaming. “Paris. It looks like. At some point the Inquisition seemed to move a lot of stuff to a fortified location in Paris but… yes. I remember.”

He closes the book, he’s obviously relying on that internal photographic fucking memory of his.

“If memory serves me a large number of items were removed from Paris by The Toridi Clan.”

The Toridi were a group of vampires from London who emphasized the elegance and majesty of vampirism. They rarely spoke and dressed as though it was the 17th century.

“So the Cross is probably in London?”, I ask

“Most likely, but I doubt the Toridi know they have it or we’d have heard something”

So, another plane ride towards home will actually take us closer to our goal. What a tremendous waste of time this little trip to Eastern Europe was…

Somehow though, I feel like there is something here. Someone watching us. Someone that’s been following us since we got here…

But it must just be the creep factor of the old dusty looking building.

“Right, off to London!”, I pipe up

Hex - Chapter 1 - "Out"

2010-12-01T00:20:00.001-05:00

Out

Everyone had hoped that at this point we’d be traveling as fast as light. Or faster.
That’s what I gather from reading books.
They expected that things would just go on forever in the way they always had.
For sure, they didn’t expect to be in a situation where abandoning the planet was a very strong possibility.
Back on Earth, back in the past, they didn’t think that a small portion of their population would have to be hurtled as fast as we could send them (Roughly a quarter of the speed of light - not slow by anyone’s standards but at this rate you’d be surprised how long it takes you to get anywhere in the galaxy) towards the nearest habitable planet. But here we are, all the same.
Of course, I’m gathering all this information from books I read a long time ago and from the scrambled bits of info our computer is willing to divulge. I’ve never been to Earth nor has anyone else on board this ship. Many people on board have a fairly justified doubt as to whether or not the Earth even exists or not and for that matter if our destination planet - Espar XIV - exists either.
Who can blame them? For all I know they’re right. Maybe this thing that we’re told is a spaceship of some kind is all there really is and the things we’re told are burning balls of gas surrounded by spinning rocks they call planets are nothing more than distant sparks.
Or maybe other spaceships.
Or maybe nothing.
Or maybe what we think is happening is just a poor translation from the computer’s logs.
Maybe we’re all hurtling into the middle of a gigantic star to be burned alive.
Maybe.
Well, in spite of my doubts at times I believe in the Earth. I see no reason why the books and the computer would lie or what benefit someone would have to create such elaborate hoaxes.

So, as far as I can gather, we are heading towards Espar XIV which, it is said, is the nearest habitable planet to the Earth. A relatively short 106 light years away. A journey which could end up taking us the best part of 500 years going at top speed.

Sometimes it’s amazing to me that the people who left Earth on this ship knew they weren’t going to see the end of it’s glorious journey. Sometimes it’s amazing even that no-one now and for a few generations to come, is going to see either the start or the end. Sometimes though, it makes perfect sense. The Earth must have been pretty far fucked up for people to be willing to, in a sense, sacrifice themselves for the sake of the remote chance that a colony can be established on some distant planet.

Crazy. Crazy is what people get when desperation, need and anxiety all fumble at each other and fight for dominance.

As far as I can tell we’re about three quarters of the way through our epic journey but it’s hard to tell.

It seems that up until quite recently things were going okay though. The spaceship is designed to be a moving city with all the conveniences and productions and foods and everything that they apparently have on cities on Earth. A spaceship capable of sustaining a population of about 10,000 people with room for it to grow to as much as 30,000, if needed. Complete with full medical wing, schooling system, security services and of course ample storage room for the many machines and gadgets designed to help terraform our new planet, once we reach there. Everything was going well, we think, right up until the point that a rogue disease sprang up from who knows where. The disease was a sophisticated virus that attacked fully formed beings only and quickly wiped out all of the adult population. The logs say that the oldest crew member at this point was 16 and the number of personnel had dropped to around 3000. A disaster by anyone’s standards. The computer did it’s best to quarantine the survivors and eradicate the virus before they became adults and presumably fell victim to the virus too and it looked like it succeeded but in just a single generation the virus re-emerged and wiped out half of the remaining crew leaving a 12 year old girl as the eldest crew member and a meager population of 500 or so below her. The computer once again made attempts to eradicate the virus and this time, it seems, it succeeded (Though, that’s what it thought last time). So here we are, a little down the road from there, many of the survivors of the second plague are still among us, in their late twenties to thirties by now - though the life expectancy at this point is somewhere around 29. Whether this is something to do with the virus or purely down to our limited ability to utilize the fairly sophisticated equipments and remedies in the Medical Deck isn’t too clear but certainly no traces of any virus remain. Not a one, which is the way it ought to be. How could a virus strike a ship that was heavily disinfected and screened that hadn’t had contact with any living being not on it’s crew in nearly 300 years? Hard to tell. Impossibly without the computer running at full capacity.

Regardless, here we are. A ship of humans all self-educated. Many of us have gathered a lot of information from the computer’s databases on what the ship is and what we’re doing etc. but many more chose a life of ignorance and of decent. Still others faction away in their own ways. All groups dominating their own little areas of the ship and rarely if ever, interacting with anyone from a different group.

I am thankfully part of one of the more enlightened groups, at least I like to think we are.

At the moment I’m standing around in my usual location in the control deck. I’m always here or occasionally in the observation suite - I really don’t see the need to be anywhere else in the ship. In fact, I literally can’t recall the last time I was anywhere else. My mind is so wrapped up in the workings of this ship and our eventual goal… well, I guess there are just more important things to do than wandering the ship. These two rooms are the only two rooms where the computer mainframe can be accessed and it’s always useful to have that available to you.

In the control deck with me just now are Adam and Samantha both similar to me in many respects in that they crave knowledge and are constantly trying to figure out what went wrong with the ships computer and crew so many years ago. You see, the computer is supposed to have some degree of Artificial Intelligence and it clearly did at some point - making decisions on behalf of the crew and interacting and teaching them any new developments. Pretty vital when most of this mission is a dive into the unknown where a logical analyzing mind would be extraordinarily useful however as long as anyone can remember, and probably long before, the computer has been essentially primitive. A wealth of knowledge that is only accessibly manually. Still extremely useful, which is why I never stray far from it’s vaults of information, but undoubtedly less useful than a fully functioning AI computer like we’re supposed to have would be.

Evidently at some point it must have shut off it’s AI capabilities, possibly in a fit of madness or shame for what happened to the crew. We know it did this to itself because the Orb that is present in all AI machines is still in tact and destroying or removing that would be the only way that any outside influence could switch off the AI function. My own view is that the computer felt so ashamed that it was unable to really protect the crew that it decided it was no longer viable and out of sadness turned itself off. For some reason I think about the computer a lot and feel an overwhelming sadness when I think about it’s life ending. Very sad. When I talk about the computer’s mind needing restored it seems to make Adam and Samantha feel uncomfortable, though. Much as they are fairly set in trying to work out what went wrong with the computer and indeed the ship, the thought of the computer’s AI at times disturbs them and other times simply bores them. Well, it’s just as well I give a crap, I suppose, because I seem to be the only one truly capable of digging information out of these ancient circuits and it must be due to my overall dedication to the life of the computer.

“How far along are we, Hex?”, Adam is speaking to me

“We’re around 75 light years from Earth I suppose. Another 36 light years and change before we reach Espar XIV.”, I estimate.

Adam is a fairly tall blonde individual and in spite of being only 19 has a full beard and long whisps of hair down past his shoulders. It may be purely from laziness but it gives him an air of wisdom far beyond his age. He is, at the moment, flicking through some computer paper that he has evidently printed off somewhere else in the ship. He has, of course, asked me how far we are in our journey many time but sometimes he asks me simple things like that over and over again as if to check that I’m still paying attention.

“75 Light years. So the ships been traveling in space for what… 300 years or more?”, he asks

“Yes, roughly. I’m not 100% sure on the time frame but judging by the stars around us and what I can gather about astronomy… or what I can remember…”, I start to fade in my thoughts

“I seem to remember you mentioning messages from Earth you dug up from the first or second generation. Do you remember that?”, it seems like he’s asking very matter of factly but I can tell he’s getting at something.

“Yes. Trivial messages though. Status reports back and forth, that kind of thing.”

“And why do you suppose they stopped coming?”

“I suppose,”, I start to ponder “I suppose that after we got a decent distance from the Earth the messages would take longer and longer to reach us - since they would travel at light speed. Eventually the reports would be so faded and altogether irrelevant by the time they reached us that they probably stopped. Any messages for loved ones would also cease of course, since by the time generation one died out no-one from the ship would have any real connection to people on Earth.”

“Right. So, the Earth wouldn’t really have any reason to contact us anymore?”

“Correct. I think the reports state that when we’re within a hundred years of landing the computer will send a signal back to Earth so it reaches it a little be3fore we land. Beyond that there should be no reason for contact.”

“Right, right…”, he sighs and looks down at his print outs

“Why? Is something wrong.”, I ask

“No. I don’t think so. It’s just that we received a message earlier today. I haven’t had a chance to decipher it at all yet but it looks like it’s from Earth. Of course, it could be anything. Probably nothing, false alarm, you know.”, he seems to say this as if he hopes it’s nothing

“But where did it come in? I’ve been here in the control deck all day. This is where all messages are supposed to route through?”, for some reason this fact gives me a distinct feeling of anger towards whoever sent the message to the wrong place

“It was sent deliberately to the Officers’ sleeping quarters for some reason, Hex. Like I say, it’s probably just some freak signal but if it is from Earth they obviously wanted someone to see it right away.”

“Right away?”, I laugh slightly “If that signal came from Earth it would have to have been sent about 70 years ago”

“Yes, I suppose so”, he laughs a little too “Well, like I say - probably nothing”

He wanders out studying the print outs intently leaving Samantha and I in the room. Samantha is sitting on the floor reading through some fiction novels she’s gathered.
Strange, I think, as Adam leaves. He’s studying those print outs very closely for someone who really thinks they’re nothing. A thought comes to mind, and I’m not sure why, but if the signal is from Earth and was sent 70 years ago as I calculated then that means it was sent probably only 20 years or so before the first virus hit. Is there a connection? It seems unlikely but I suppose once Adam translates the print outs we’ll find out if it’s anything we absolutely have to know or not.

For now I’ll just continue sit and enjoy the company, albeit quiet and withdrawn, that Samantha provides as she idly flips through her novel. Samantha never seems to look at me, even when she’s talking to me, she just speaks out into the room as if it didn’t matter where I was standing. It’s a funny way to be but it’s obvious to me that she’s just sop wrapped up in her books most of the time that she doesn’t even want to shift her gaze away for a moment - fearing she may lose her space.

Of course, she looks up for Adam.

I wonder, but can’t bring myself to ask, if she and Adam are an item. I hope so. They’d make a lovely couple.

I find myself lost in thought and before I know it Samantha’s gone and it’s night time. I must have fallen asleep again.

Bloodline - Chapter 5 - "Suicide Is Painless"

2010-07-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

Suicide Is Painless

“My name is James Brahms and these are the last words I’ll ever speak.”

I click the tape recorder off as I finish my sentence. A slight smile sneaks it’s way onto my expression.

Curious. Am I happy? Should I not go through with this? No. I never was one to be able to really get a handle on my emotions. What I’m feeling right now is simple contentment. Contentment that this - all this, everything - will soon be over and not only will I be able to rest in peace but I won’t need to feel anything ever again.

No more hurt.
No more terror.
No more rejection.
No more confusion.
No more pain.
No more voices…

The near constant voices. Nothing sinister, at least not yet. Just a raspy voice telling me ominous sounding but vague things like the word “Soon” over and over or my name. Certainly not driving me insane and not, as my therapist suggests, an ‘inner child’ longing to be heard but nonetheless troubling and lately the voice has gotten to be more and more frequent. What will it become in a year? Two years? A decade? Will I be convinced Gods has chosen me as his personal avenger on Earth? Or will I believe the CIA have my teeth embedded with radios? Who can tell. All I know with a decent degree of certainty is: Voices in your head = You’re taking the car pool lane to bat shit crazy.

Looking up at the noose I’ve made myself, hanging from my garage ceiling, the smile that found it’s way into my life quickly vanishes. Regret? No. Simple realization that this is it. The end of time for James Brahms.

“My name is James Brahms and soon I’ll be at rest.”

Second thoughts? Of course. The very fact that I haven’t completely lost my mind is in part why I’d rather go now, while I have all - or at least most of - my faculties. I’ve never looked forward to life out there in society, working away and feeling shittier and shittier with every waking hour. Slowly wasting away into nothing, and for what?

“It’s not so bad”, the adults would plead

“You get used to it.”, my teachers would contest

No. You don’t. You cave. Some people are built to ‘get used to it’, others…
Well, I’ve seen what becomes of people like me ten or twenty years down the line. The lunatics mumbling to themselves on street corners or even simply the countless hundreds of people you see wandering through life every day all sharing that same blank “I should have been someone” glaze in their eyes. Once the hope that one day you’ll be someone turns into the realization that you’ll never really be anyone you get that same glazed over ‘zombie’ look and pretty much, by that point, you’re just waiting to die anyway.

“My name is James Brahms and I don’t want to wait.”

The doors are boarded up. Good enough so that whatever unlucky soul comes around first won’t be able to open the doors. They’ll call the authorities and some random police officer who doesn’t know me will be the one to discover me hanging. It would just be my luck that today would be the day that my parents come visiting.

Thoughts like that are enough to put you off killing yourself. I know because I’ve been there, all set to go when the image of someone I care about showing up and finding me strewn across the bed with an empty bottle of pain killers or worse with half my brain shotgun-blasted across the bathroom tile pops into my head and I can’t do it. The human brain is wired to survive so at that moment when you’re about to die, even if it’s something you’re trying to do, the electric signals in your head will do anything to get you out of the situation. The trick to suicide is to go about it as methodically as possible. Set yourself a goal and do everything you can to achieve it.

“My name is James Brahms and my death has been the biggest success story of my life.”

I switch on my mp3 player and skip to a Franz Schubert quartet I’ve had in mind for a while. It’s relaxing, but just a little bit jumpy. Purely for my own benefit, you understand. I’ve heard of people wanting a certain song to be playing as their body is discovered but that isn’t what this is about. The mp3 player isn’t on repeat.

I wonder what song will be playing when the police discover me hanging there?

No. Stop. Thoughts like those are distractions. Even now my brain is trying to keep me alive with thoughts of who is going to find me and what it’s going to look like.

“My name is James Brahms and it’s time to get this over with.”

I climb carefully up onto the stool under the noose. I wouldn’t want to slip and break a leg now. God, that would be awful. I slip my head through the hole in the noose and listen, for the last time, to Franz Schubert’s quartet.

A tear rolls down my cheek. Perfectly natural reaction.

“My name is James Brahms and the voices in my head will be stopping soon.”

“Soon…”, comes that voice I’ve been hearing.

Soon what? Soon nothing. Now certainly isn’t the time to dwell on what the deep meaning behind a voice inside my head might be. The beauty of today is, for the first time ever there really is absolutely 100% no reason whatsoever to dwell on it.

Soon nothing at all will matter ever again.

I feel the stool below my feet ready to be kicked and as Schubert’s quartet picks up pace I feel a wave of contentment wash over me like nothing I can recall. I smile again and want to stay in this moment forever. For a brief moment I contemplate just spending the rest of my days standing here on this stool with the noose around my neck in complete bliss. The true knowledge that nothing at all is going to matter ever again.

But I know that won’t happen.

I know I have to kick the stool away.

And I do.

The painful jolt around my neck and sudden weight of my entire existence dragging my body down is brief. Much to my disdain my hands grasp up at the rope trying instinctively to free my neck from it’s clutches. Luckily for me, they’re efforts are futile.

My name is James Brahms and I am no more.

Bloodline - Chapter 4 - "Lost Luggage Is No Nightmare"

2010-03-27T13:12:00.004-05:00

Lost Luggage Is No Nightmare

Lost luggage isn't a problem for only humans. Not these days.

Some vampires, like my friend Opie who is currently getting more and more flustered at a girl behind the Customer Service desk here at Prague Airport who can't seem to locate his luggage, are becoming increasingly likely to fall victim to this and other problems which, up until very recently, were exclusively human problems on this planet.

Opie will tell me at times that I'm living in dark ages where vampires are a superior race to humans and that we need to live amongst them to fit in but I say quite the opposite. I don't feel superior to these people busying themselves around me but I do feel different. We are not these people. We are a different creature.

I didn't pack luggage because I don't need anything beyond what I have on my person, so I don't have any to lose. It's not that I don't have possessions. I have a home I live in with items of interest and things I like, but I don't need any of them. If I have to up and leave tomorrow, or if I have to stay in Prague, or if a random arsonist sets all my stuff on fire while I'm gone - it's no big deal. It's just stuff! the real important stuff is me, my body, my self. And I have the glorious advantage that I am wherever I go. Every step I take I bring me with me.

Of course, all these suits walking around. The mother's scrambling to make sure their children haven't dropped their Game Boy. The people desperately making sure they packed every last little thing they "need" before getting on the plane, they could all say the same, if they wanted. Humans don't need any of that crap either but they are unfortunately born human and as humans are brought up in human society which now, more than ever before (at least as far as I can recall), is designed to make you grow up as a consumer and a possessor of things, rather than an individual whose contributions to society and whose benefits from society are within themselves.

All you need is the air that you breathe. And I don't even need that.

Sadly Opie has failed so far in realizing that Vampires need these things even less. They're not even our things! What could be in that luggage that Opie needs so desperately? Looking over at him, brushing back his hair and adjusting his glasses furiously, I think that it's possible he enjoys the frustration. Is there some basic instinct people have to just get tense and angry all the time? It would certainly explain a few little absurdities about the world.

Well, I'm sure Opie will grow out of it. He has the time.

"She can't tell me where it is!", Opie says exasperated as he strides over to me. "Can you believe that?"

"Yes."

He doesn't seem to really have the time right now to understand my nonchalance about the situation.

"Well, I guess we should just move on. They have my number if it shows up.", he sighs

"I'm sure you'll survive.", a phrase that always seems so sarcastic that I think people forget to think of it entirely literally. "Where are we going?"

"There's a friend, Ladislav, who lives in the center of the city. He keeps a lot of old records about the region."

"A librarian?"

"Kind of. There's a lot of history in this place. Back when we used to be run by Princes and 'High Councils', a lot of the most powerful ones lived in Eastern Europe."

Princes were basically the leaders of any given city or region back in 'the day'. The way legends talk of them make it seem like they were rulers of the land, both vampire and human. I imagine Princes themselves were real, it doesn't ever seem too unbelievable to think that a vampire might decide to crown himself and put himself in charge, but I doubt they were as open about their status as blood-suckers as the legends seem. Again, we Vampires aren't immune to attack and making everyone aware of your presence wouldn't be the smartest move. These same stories that revolve around the times when vampires basically ruled most of Europe also talk of Werewolves (Who they refer to as Lycans) and Magi. I don't know why we give credence to such stories when it's pretty obvious that there aren't any Wolf Men or witches gallivanting around. Vampires are pretty much alone as far as 'Mythical' creatures go.

Like most things mystical or legendary, however they are based on some facts. It's just a matter of digging through the 'facts' that someone wrote down, either from eye witness reports or their own deluded imagination, to work out what was really going on. Which is why I don't see trips to meet people like this Ladislav guy as a complete waste of time.

Hell, it might be interesting finding out a little something about the Mythology of this place and it's supposed mystical past including this "Cross Of Caine" we're supposed to be looking for.

I keep meaning to ask Opie what the deal with that is anyway.

"Opie...", I finally ask him while we're taxiing to the middle of Prague.

Bloodline - Chapter 3 - "This World That Man Made"

2010-02-17T05:42:00.003-05:00

This World That Man Made

Sitting by the window on our plane to The Czech Republic, I can't help but wonder why I still love seeing this view so much. There are few things I enjoy in this life quite as much as the view of the moon and the speckled light of the landscape below as we soar. Perhaps it's because this is all something that was invented in my lifetime. Generally speaking it's all relatively new.

Sure, I've been flying in one way or another since the advent of commercial flights but only now is it so easy to just get on one and go. As a vampire it was always difficult to make sure your flight wasn't arriving or departing in the daytime. Or God forbid, flying right up into daylight mid-flight. But these humans. They've spent the best part of the 20th century making things so convenient and accessible for them that they never really thought about how they might benefit they're only predator.

They never even considered us.

Man's greatest achievement was convincing himself that we don't exist.

It seems absurd, really. The more we made ourselves known. The more of us that slipped up and gave ourselves away to humans. The more of us that broke that unwritten (Though it is written in the Book Of Nod) law that a Vampire should never under any circumstances reveal themselves to a mortal. The more we plain fucked up, the less humans actually believed in us.

They write novels, movies, television shows. They make costumes for hallowe'en, all emulating our kind. They spend so much time convincing themselves that we Vampires are nothing more than shadows in the back of their own imaginations and it looks like last century they finally achieved it. Even I remember a time when a genuine belief, if somewhat vague, in Vampires was real. The look of actual terror but also of realization on people's faces back in the early 1900's when I would emerge from the shadows to take their lives was enough to tell me that somewhere they still believed. These days people convince themselves, right up until I feel their very last heart beat on my tongue, that I must be some fucked up "goth" or a drug addict of some kind. Seldom do I hear them whisper "Nosferatu!" in a low, terrified whisper, and although I do miss those days it's hard to complain when the absence of that fear makes it so much easier to hunt. Humans seem to not even think about the danger they pose to each other when they walk alone at night, never mind the dangers that might lurk for them of a different kind.

By making ourselves, and the stories about ourselves, more and more fantastic we've managed to hide ourselves completely from the humans till they decided that we couldn't possibly be real.

By becoming so unbelievable, we can keep away from people. Disassociate from them and let them go about their self centered, greedy ways, while we just sit and wait to see what becomes of these self destructive creatures.

I can't help but wonder to myself if that's what God is doing too.

I look down at the ground and see the seemingly endless stream of lights below. Streetlights. House lights. Some in clusters around larger towns and cities, some standing virtually on their own. Car lights, moving along from place to place. It seems there are so many people alive in the world today that they simply can't all do their business during the daytime anymore. There's always someone going somewhere.

A cluster of lights below looks like a little village. Must be about 200 people living there, by the looks of it. There are so many of these little villages though - it seems no-one is ever very far from anyone else. All packed like sardines, even when their out in the country. The countryside used to be where humans were safest from us but now even out here there is enough of a clutter that I could easily feed on one or two of them in this little village and have ample place to hide before having to move on.

If only they knew.

Would they have developed the world differently if they knew the danger?
Would they have spread themselves out and made sure not to allow hiding places to exist all around them?
If humans really knew about us, would their world be different?
I don't think so. From what I gather this world that they've created does little to serve them either. Overcrowding, polluting and strangling the Earth of all it's resources. None of it affects my kind though, of course. Only makes it easier.

Still, it's hard for me to look out this window at a landscape I've seen hundreds of times before both from the air and on the ground, and not feel a little sadness inside at the changes. These days all you can see on the ground are lights, the occasional mountain maybe or anything that's brightly lit enough to be visible like a car park. The light down there makes it impossible to see the trees, the actual landscape that used to be so visible when the world was almost entirely illuminated only by moonlight. I remember being at this height, on probably one of the first flights across Europe ever, and being able to see animals moving around down below even in the dead of night. Now all I can see are a lone car's headlights drifting slowly from one cluster to the next.
Choking the world as he goes.
And here we fly, nothing but a lone flickering light in the sky to the driver below.
Choking the world as we go.
And here I can see the illuminated city of Prague as we approach, a few smoke plumes piling into the sky from it's outskirts and a strange flickering of lights coming from it's center as a bundles of cars go about their city business.
Choking the world as they go.

It seems these days, that anything new the humans do just extends their lifespan, increases their population and continues to suck the air out of the planet and replace it with a fine layer of smog.

But that's okay, I don't need to breathe.

Bloodline - Chapter 2 - "Opie and I"

2010-02-07T14:03:00.003-05:00

Opie and I

How I met Opie was he was in Boston searching for a group calling themselves "The Original Bloods". The year was 1995.

At first glance he didn't seem like much. 5'7'' or so with short curly hair, an off-white sweater and glasses he had to keep poking up the bridge of his nose and adjusting. I could tell right off that he must be a very young Vampire, judging by his more modern attire and haircut. Until recently specific hair cuts never were too important in judging what era a vampire was sired in but these days, human trends and fast changing fashion make it often possible to tell when a vampire is under 50 years old and also possible to tell what decade they were sired in by simple means like the way they wear their clothes or the way their hair is cut, sitting atop their head - unchangeable like a permanent icon of the life before their Siring. One of many curious by-products of the modern world for our kind. From the looks of him i guessed he had been sired in the 70's making him, at the time only in his mid-twenties (Vampires count their age from the date they were sired not the day they were born as a human.). A mere child! Probably barely out of his Siring Moons which typically last between 10 and 20 years. His sire, whoever he might be, must be about my age. I remember wondering for a moment if this young vampire who seemed oblivious to be wandering my streets, in my city had taken part in the ritual slaying of his own sire but it seemed so impossible. Opie looked to be so innocent and altogether more intelligent than the type to partake in such ancient barbarity.

I recall the moment I finally confronted him. I had been following him for three nights, trying to work out why he was in Boston and more importantly, when he was leaving but Opie had no idea i was watching him, until the moment I emerged before him as he turned onto a dark abandoned street on the outskirts of the city. It was obvious from his reaction to my appearance that he was somewhat surprised that there was another vampire here, never mind one that had been stalking him since his arrival.

"Funny," I spoke before he had a chance to. "Most Kindred just pass through here within a night or two. And those that don't make their intentions pretty clear to me almost immediately."

Though it may seem somewhat egotistical, I can be a daunting figure. Keeping to the shadows, wearing long dark coats - all the age-old tricks to making for a more mysterious presence. Nonetheless tricks that work, as is always apparent when I appear before a trembling victim, or in this case a young Kindred who I need to intimidate to get answers from.

Opie just stared nervously. I could tell he was considering running, but perhaps knew it would be futile.

"You're not here to hunt. I've only seen you feed once since you got here. And you don't seem to be nesting. You're too young to be thinking of Siring anyway, I would imagine. So what is it? Why are you searching the streets of Boston so adamantly every night yet only feeding when you absolutely must. What are you looking for?"

By this time I was right next to him and could feel his breathing - a compulsive nervous reaction many vampires don't lose from their human lives since we don't need to breathe except to be able to speak but a good indicator that my new acquaintance was feeling the pressure. Good.

"I... I might be looking for you.", he said.

"Me? I sincerely doubt you or anyone else is looking for me. Who do you think I am?"

"I'm to believe that there are a group called The Original Bloods living in Boston, are you not one of them?"

I couldn't help but laugh a little.

"The Original Bloods? No. Sorry, I'm not amongst them"

"But you know of them? Can you direct me to them?"

"Sure but I'm pretty sure you're going to be disappointed. What is it you expect to find?"

I could tell he wasn't even sure himself what he expected.

"I'm told that they are a group of Vampires who claim to be direct descendants from the original generation. Vampires..."

"Ok, stop there. The first thing you've got wrong is they aren't Vampires."

"Then what are they?"

"Humans. Nothing but a bunch of humans who watched The Lost Boys a few too many times and got carried away."

I remember hearing about these clowns a few years ago. For a little while I was concerned that some rogue gang might be about to come to town, guns a-blazing, blowing my cover and making me have to jump towns (again) to evade detection but it became quite apparent when I found the group and saw they were nothing more than a small gathering of human fanatics who were meeting once a week to brood about their own worthless existences while cutting lines up their arms, wearing dark make-up and playing games where they'd role-play that they were elves and wizards. To the outside world they would project the image that they were really vampires, feeding off each other and haunting the night streets of Boston and I found it vaguely amusing that their little game had managed to attract the attention of some far-off real Vampires.

How I got to know Opie is we went together so I could show him the Original Bloods.

It turned out that he wasn't, as I expected, some rigid stuck-in-the-mud who was going to be shattered by the discovery that the group was nothing but a bunch of goth wannabes. Truth be told, i was a little disappointed when he rather quickly began to find the whole thing funny. But only a little. Hearing him talk about how he was sent over as a missionary from The Church had reminded me of so many other 'Nod-Squadders' that had come through before him, all of whom I had quickly shooed or scared away - primarily to keep Boston for myself (Two vampires, even in a city as vast as Boston, are far more likely to be found before too long) but also because it was a lot of fun chasing Kindred out of town, either shattering their delusions or scaring them so much that they'd never ever want to return. But there was definitely something about Opie that was different. Sure, he believed in all that nonsense but he had already been on five missions since his Siring Moons were over and as far as I could tell most religious types only ever went on two or three in their entire lives. It was obvious that Opie had a sense of adventure, one that he unfortunately found he could fulfill only via a Church but one that nonetheless existed.

How I begun to stick around Opie was that his lust for adventure reminded me of some of the Vampires of my own time.

It had been decades since I had met a Vampire who didn't want to be secluded. Who didn't want to be living at the top of some abandoned cathedral, or deep in a sewer system, only emerging at night to feast on the towns-folk like an invisible boogieman. Who wasn't content with being alone. Most 20th Century vampires seemed to have acquired a boredom. A contentment. A sheer willingness to stay-put that really bugged me. Opie showed all the character of a Kindred who wanted to discover and who wanted to find out all there was to know. Sure, he misplaced it in a religious context but I could see through that into the part of Opie that would be seeking out all the wisdom of the world whether or not he believed in Seth and Caine. He might tell you the opposite about me, that he could perhaps see through my non-belief. But that's where we are now. If not agreeing with each other, at least accepting after a decade or so of debate that we can agree to disagree. In fact we can even enjoy it at times.

How I got to be standing in this Church in the highlands of Scotland with Opie is somewhat of a mystery to me.

I guess I joined the Church with Opie because I knew it might be the only way I could be amongst Vampires.

Maybe I realized that instead of chasing away every Vampire that passed through Boston in order to survive, I should instead seek out some way to live with others in a pack, like we used to before the comfort and freedom that the human Metropolises and large cities created.

It could have just been easier to join a Church who were willing to tell me where to go and why, rather than work it out for myself.

While it did annoy me, being read passages from the book of Nod and having to at least seem vaguely interested in the Church, I did enjoy the travel.

While the purpose of these trips was seeking out some religious artifact or other, or finding other Churches or cults that were long forgotten, my main purpose was to spend time with Opie and the other members of the Church on their 'off-times' and to enjoy the time spent looking aimlessly for things which 99% of the time turned out to not exist at all.

99%!

A literal figure. Almost every single thing we sought to discover or bring home turned out to be a rumor, a hoax or just a plain old-fashioned legend from the Vampire Mythos. And the few that were real were more than a little underwhelming.

The Vampire we had been told was a thousand years old named Tryvo, turned out to be real but he was a gibbering psychotic wreck. We couldn't figure out if he was speaking a language that existed never mind how old he was or even exactly who he was.

"The Great Chalice Of The True Blood"turned up okay, but it was in five pieces and we'll never know if it would completely restore a weakened vampire in it's original form but it definitely didn't work with super-glue.

So how I got to be waiting in line at Glasgow International for a flight to the Czech Republic with Opie to search for "The Cross Of Caine" is pretty much because I know we're not going to find anything.

But I've always wanted to see Prague.

Bloodline - Chapter 1 - "The Church Of Nod"

2010-01-30T22:36:00.013-05:00

The Church Of Nod

Another bloody church service.
Once a month at midnight, the same old shit. We all gather together to hear some self-righteous preacher ramble on and on about the glory days. About the good times, long gone by.

"Seth was among the most powerful of all Vampires, whose very presence was told to shake the world of anyone blessed enough to be amongst his kin."

Yawn.

"When the Vampires were at their peak, they had nothing to fear from humans. Nowhere was needed for them to hide, for mankind knew not of our weaknesses. Knew not of our fears."

Double-fuck Yawn.

Every single month, without fail it's exactly the same speech, reworded in the right places to keep the drones interested. The Church Of Nod, as they've come to be called. Last century they were "The Sires Of Nod", before that "The Church Of Seth", then "The Kindred of Seth" but not before a brief period of just being called "The Kindred" - God love the 19th century for trying to keep things simple. "The Army of Caine" was allegedly a more archaic form. Lord only knows the countless other factions, splits and name changes that have come across over the centuries. Even from country to country you'll find what amounts to exactly the same Cult under a completely different name. However any of the various different names I've known have basically amounted to exactly the same thing:

Basically we're told, rigorously and constantly, that after Cain was expelled from Eden (Yes, we're talking human mythology here too) he was also expelled from mankind and, long story short, became the first vampire. He founded the city of Nod and set about trying to corrupt the human race. The story goes that he was able to turn humans into his slaves but they were essentially nothing but mindless zombies, until he turned a farmer by the name of Seth who became just as powerful, if not more-so than Cain himself. Eventually Seth's son, Enod slew Cain using a silver sword he had crafted to kill his own father with. Seth kills Enod. Seth goes on to sire all living vampires. Blah blah blah. It's basically the same as the stuff we were brainwashed with as humans except now it has a vampiric edge to keep us hooked! Sons of Gods dying for the good of 'vampire-kind', fathers killing sons and sons killing Gods. It's the same old shit but with a blood-thirsty sprinkling! It's all supposedly written in what they call "The Book Of Nod", but I don't give that any more credence than I do any other religious doctrine.

What pisses me off more than attending this facade is that it's so bloody depressing. I mean, at least human religion has heaven, Easter Baskets and shaking hands with a wizard in the sky when you finally croak to look forward to. The Church Of Nod is all about looking back. Claiming how great we were. What sort of focus is that?

Not to mention illogical. Are vampires the only creatures on Earth who are greater, more powerful, more efficient the more ancient they are? Whatever happened to Evolution? Even if you believe in a God or Gods it seems like some kind of sick joke that, if our sires are to be believed, that every new generation of vampires is to be born weaker and weaker than the last.

Needless to say, I could go on. I'm here standing next to my much more faithful (it wouldn't take much) long-time friend Opie with whom I've shared many a believer vs non-believer debate. He's probably the main reason I'm here but not the only one. I know it seems strange that I should be standing here listening to this preacher month after month if I don't believe a word of it, certainly it isn't some Vampiric rite that must be fulfilled in fact, I'd say most of our kind these days don't hold a light to any of this nonsense but frankly the one thing they have right here is that every now and then Vampires should meet each other. By nature, we're a very, very isolated breed. I don't just mean we don't like to hang out at wine parties hob-nobbing amongst like-minded individuals or hanging out in bars socializing with everyone we can. No. I mean the very nature of our being means that nine out of ten vampires won't see another vampire in their life-time after their 'Siring Moons', basically the 'training period' we all go through with whichever vampire 'turned' us, are over.

Indeed, around about me just now stand just sixteen of us including the preacher, which by human standards even in my time - never mind the gloriously overpopulated world of today - was hardly enough to be called company but to any vampire on Earth this is a rather crowded church service.

While I've been thinking to myself once again about the true pointlessness of the religious aspect of this meeting I know Opie at least is genuinely standing there with at least a relatively firm belief in what's being said.

"If we're just creatures of blood and tissue like any other, then why can we live forever, unlike anything else on the planet?", he'd argue

Truth is, and I've at least gotten him to acknowledge this, I'm not sure if we do live forever. I personally don't know any Vampire over the age of two hundred. I myself, am a "mere" one hundred and fifteen years old but am considered to be almost senior in Vampire terms. Though I've never known a Vampire to keel over from old age, and rarely have I seen a disease that affects us never mind kills us, the truth is there's only so long you can go on before being mauled by a passing train, falling from a tall enough cliff or, oops!, stepping outside at noon because your clock stopped in the middle of the night. The further truth is, it isn't nearly as hard to kill a vampire as either human-fiction or Vampire-religion would have us all believe. Sure, we can take a beating, a few bullets and blows to the head or the occasional stabbing but I've seen as many of my fellows killed off just by sheer force as I have by 'traditional' methods like prolonged exposure to sunlight or silver weaponry. Worse still is the archaic 'ritual' that a lot of sired vampires go through by killing the Vampire who sired them on their one hundredth year. I say 'ritual' because mostly I just think it's performed because the young Kindred (the name of the new, younger, Vampire - also a term Vampires use to refer to one another. Similar to humans calling each other 'comrade' or 'brother') gets so sick and tired of the Sire (The elder vampire who gave new life to a new Vampire - a term of respect) that they just use this all-but-abandoned practice as an excuse to off him. From a religious perspective, the Kindred who slays his Sire is blessing them both to "become 'one' with Cain and aiding the rise of Nod by strengthening his everlasting power". Amen.

"But we're supernatural compared to humans. We have powers beyond scientific reason!", he's argue some more

Not true. And a common misconception, left over in the Vampire Mythos from a time in which we couldn't possibly understand how our bodies work. The limited scientific works of our kind (We're not as into sitting around poking at animals, and mixing up random chemicals we find as humans seem to be) have revealed to us that our bodies go through a dramatic but scientific change when we're sired. We develop a body that processes blood extremely quickly, can't develop it's own and as such is sensitive to sunlight. We're stronger, mainly because our muscles are re-developed to strengthen with increased blood flow with a little push, we can force ourselves to be quite powerful, especially if we've just fed.

"We have clear unscientific weaknesses though, unique to our kind! Surely there isn't a science for them?", he'd press on.

"Mysteries" like our apparent allergy to silver are intriguing but I figure it's a simple genetic flaw... passed down from Sire to Kindred over the many centuries. Many would point out "our" aversion to crucifixes as proof of a supernatural being within us but the fact that I'm standing in a church with a gigantic Jesus Christ leering down at me from his very own personal crucifix, left-over from long ago when humans used this place, is proof enough that any Vampire who is averted and even repelled by the site of a cross (And it happens, I've seen it in plenty of our kind - even some in this room who would convince themselves that the only reason they don't recoil in fear in this room is the overwhelming strength of Cain and Nod. Whatever.) is doing so purely out of psychological instinct.

It's not all anger and arguments between Opie and I though. Much as I enjoy the occasional religious debate, I far more frequently just enjoy company. Opie and I, like relative few of our kind, enjoy spending nights in the human cities. After this ceremony is over, our plan is... or rather 'was'... to head to Edinburgh, one of our favorite cities, for the month.

I say "was", though because as I contemplate this, the preacher has wrapped up his little Fairy Tale speech and is walking over to us with his ever pompus, "have I got the little task for you!" look in his eyes and is probably going to send us on one of his little religious 'missions' that he knows Opie enjoys so very much...

"Ah, Opie! Jerome! Have I got the..."

Double-fuck.

THE GREAT BLOG TURN AROUND!

2010-01-26T06:07:00.003-05:00

So, if you've been reading this blog frequently, off and on, or ever at all for that matter you might be used to seeing movie reviews here however I've decided I'm through with reviewing movies (for now) I'm pretty sure I've dried up my need or want to come up with witty things to say about them to be honest... if you've never been here before then great - nothing's changed and it doesn't matter.
Basically, I like to write stories and always have. In one form or another, whether I was doodling cartoons as a kid, writing shorts in English Class or coming up with various 'script ideas'. So I'm going to attempt to rekindle that flame by writing stories here in the posts. I don't know if I'll write one continuous story at first or chapters here and there of various ones... who knows? To be honest I have no clue what my plan is.

So, before this post (from 2007 - 2009) there are a bunch of blog posts of movie reviews (See the archives, to the right)

After this post there will be a few pieces of short story for all to enjoy!

Come back soon.

Movie Quote of the Year

2010-01-04T23:45:00.002-05:00

"You can't piss on hospitality!"

Happy New Year to all. Hopefully some slightly more frequent reviews will come with the coming year!

Thankskilling

2009-12-06T14:03:00.006-05:00

Cast: Lance Predmore, Lindsey Anderson, Ryan Francis, Aaron Carlson, Natasha Cordova, Chuck "The Dead Body Guy (Whatever that means?)" Lamb, General Bastard, Wanda Lust (This movie isn't a porno but I can't speak for other movies Ms. Lust has been in... it's possible she just got born with an unfortunately provocative name! And an unfortunately ironic tendency to show up in films with her tits out for no apparent reason... hmm...), Terry Reagan, Jessica Rees, Pat Love.

I know I usually list only a couple of people in the film but, well, I just felt this movie needed special attention.

Synopsis: Normally I write my own synopsis of the movies I review but since this movie is a particular gem I've decided to post the synopsis the film-makers have on their website...

"An evil turkey is unleashed…and he’s one “fowl” mouthed bastard! Five college kids heading home for Thanksgiving break cross paths with the turkey, who’s possessed by an ancient Indian curse. In this hilariously gory spoof, the teens must stop the maniac bird before he kills them all!"

That's right. A killer turkey... I posted their synopsis so that you didn't think I was making this up as some sort of cruel prank.

Review: The fact that this movie's very first shot is a close up of someone's tit and is immediately followed by a rather unconvincing hand-puppet turkey cackling while waving a hand axe around at the tit's owner gives you some idea about how seriously the viewer should take this film which is just as well because if I had begun thinking the film-makers were going to try and somehow make a killer turkey into any amount of a serious film I'd have been bitterly bitterly dissapointed. Instead the audience knows from the getgo that this is not in any way a film to be taken seriously and the film makers are aware of it so it's okay to laugh at the film and not feel bad!

Huzzah!

It wouldn't have stopped me laughing at it... I've seen some God-awful movies (See: anything by Bill Zebub) and laughed hysterically at how mind-numbingly terrible they are - hell, half the time it's better than watching a well-made, perfectly scripted snore-fest really but there's always a little less guilt when you know the people making the film wouldn't be crying on the inside to know you were enjoying the hilarity of their movie more than the horror (Unless I totally missed the point and have turned the film makers suicidal by my scathing words. In which case, I'd like to apologize... but won't).

Basically it's a fun little horror film. While making a mockery of the wise-cracking ridiculous bad guys we often see in slasher flicks, it manages to be a half-way decent slasher itself. Although the plot is as thin as the budget must have been, the film has been made with full knowledge that when you try and make an entirely serious horror film with a budget of $2 you end up churning out some utter unwatchable shit (Or a Lucio Fulci film, at best) so far better to make a cheesey script with a bunch of awkward comedy (A turkey actually "stuffs" a girl from behind... if you know what I mean? ... yeah, I mean it fucks her... it's a really awakard moment and I'd like to point out once more that this really really isn't a porno film. Honest!)!

Really a film about a killer turkey couldn't have been made better... if it had been more serious it would have made me vomit and if it had been less serious... well, that wouldn't have been possible. They really bottomed out on the seriousness! That's a good thing though, remember that when you decide to make a film about a killer Easter Bunny or some shit...

In Short: I'd put a cunning little Thanksgiving themed pun about being "stuffed full of gore" or "leaves you wanting seconds... or thirds!" or "so good you have to unbuckle your belt and go into a food coma with an Uncle you haven't spoken to all year"(?) but they'd all be redundant since the movie itself stole all the good ones, leaving we humble reviewers out in the dark, frankly. Fuck it.

Biggest Positive: The jokes about JonBenet Ramsay. Who knew there could be an appropriate medium for such terribly inappropriate jokes?

Biggest Negative: Well, let's face it, the hand puppet is about as convincing as a plastic dinosaur at the bottom of a cereal box.

Trivia: This movie is based, word for word, on a scroll found at the site of the very first thanksgiving. How they knew about JonBenet Ramsay back then is anyone's guess...

ThanksKilling Movie website

Troll 2

2009-11-15T14:52:00.004-05:00

Cast: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy

Synopsis: A family decides to high-tail it to the country in a bizarrely 'ahead of it's time' kind of plot (I hear people actually do this these days thanks to Craigslist) where the city dwelling family Waits swap homes for a period of time with a bunch of brainless country livin' hicks living in the suspiciously named town of Nilbog! Unfortunately for them the entire population is run by Goblins who try to make humans eat their delicious looking booger-covered green plastic food so that they can become half-human half-plant beings which are obviously Goblins favorite foods!

Really makes you wonder about how creatures like the Goblin evolved to like the taste of such a very specific and extremely non-existant food source, doesn't it? I mean when did they first dicover that was their food of choice? When the Goblin queen just decided on a whim to bake up a batch of "turn them into plant" muffins just to see what might happen if they devoured the bloody bark-like flesh of the Plant People? Perhaps they happened upon a man who had covered himself in bark and leaves, consumed him and discovered it was good but not perfect and so set about concucting a weird complex way to somehow merge the seemingly unmergable and create the ultimate snack! Bizarrely enough, it seems that not only is it their favorite food but they've also sort of gotten sick of eating anything that isn't a man-plant hybrid. Well, it's no wonder you don't see many Goblins around anymore, is it?

In case you're wondering how this bizarre plot becomes revealed to our young rapscallion hero (Because obviosuly the Goblins wouldn't take time ot explain all this to them, that would kind of put them off eating the already disgusting looking dishes they prepare) it's quite simple. You see, the young man's grandfather passed away recently and his ghost is using his time walking the realms of non-existance, haunting the young Waits boy by telling him crazy Goblin stories, hiding from his parents so that they think the boy's nuts, helping him set fires and largely being a bit of an incomprehensible dickhead. Makes perfect sense to me!

One man's reaction to this film.

Review: I've been putting off this review because it's fucking Troll 2! It's one of the most renowned bad films of all time and I really don't think I can add any humor, wit or charm to it at all above what the internet (and this documentary) already has.

Instead, I'm going to go continue to hide under a pillow in my closet until a more sensible film comes around and I can sufficiently gather my thoughts enough to form opinions.

thank you.

I will say this though, the story between the boy and his Grandfather (especially the scene where Grandad hands him a molotov cocktail) could have been the plot of an awesome sinister version of Drop Dead Fred!

"You can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!"

In Short: Too much Goblins, not enough dead Grandads.

Biggest Positive: The acting by the father in the Waits family, or perhaps just the script. It's like he's just opening his mouth and letting whatever words he can best remember come spilling out!

Biggest Negative: In spite of the name of the film, and it's predescessor (The aptly named "Troll") this film is about Goblins, not trolls. Not even a single Troll shows up. I guess it doesn't make much difference really, since arguably they weren't Trolls or Goblins, just midgets in potatoe sacks.

Trivia: No. No trivia. You go home now.

Troll

2009-11-07T20:14:00.003-05:00

Cast: Noah Hathaway, Jenny Beck, Phil Fondacaro

Synopsis: The Potter family move into an apartment building only to find a Troll from the basement is rebuilding his ancient troll army by consuming the tenants with his magic ring and turning them into weird tree people.

Meanwhile the thousand year old witch living upstairs turns out to be an ex-princess troll-hunter. Good thing too!

Review: Well! What a movie! It had it all. Bad acting, poor effects, bad acting, shitty directing, bad acting and a main character named Harry Potter (Quite evidently the entire Harry Potter franchise owes the makers of Troll a good few billion dollars worth of copyright money! Pay up J.K!)!

The thing is this movie has a sequel (the appropriately named "Troll 2" which is currently on my T.V. since we got the double feature through NetFlix which will get it's own shitty review after this one) which is allegedly the worst movie ever made so it's definitely something to look forward to but while watching Troll with it's absolutely appalling... everything, you have to think to yourself... will I survive Troll 2? I mean, this movie had nothing going for it at all. Nothing!

Well I can only imagine that where Troll was just bad... just plain awful and maybe what Troll 2 has going for it is being so incredibly bad that it's funny (a la Manos: The Hands Of Fate!).
Let's hope so...

In Short: This film sucked. Avoid at all costs. I'll let you know if Troll 2 is worth the effort once I've seen it.

Biggest Positive: Harry Potter's dad dancing around like he was having an epileptic fit to awful 80's pop-rock.

Biggest Negative: From what I've seen of Troll 2 so far, the biggest negative in the first Troll is the fact that the main character didn't have an imaginary dead Grandpa friend to talk to like the kid in the sequel seems to.

Trivia: This movie was made purely so that there could be a sequel made for strange ironic humorists to follow like a bizarre cult 20 years after it was made.

Troll's Wikipedia page

Rambo (2008)

2009-10-11T16:19:00.005-05:00

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz

Synopsis: We find a somewhat retired looking Rambo hunting for king cobras in the wild plains of Thailand and selling them to some creepy underground snake-fighting pen (as you do) when suddenly and without warning a gimpy bald guy asks him to lead him and his group of bible bashers into the midst of a war-torn Burma. Being the hot blooded, war seeking, wild action hero he is he dives right in like so many blood thirsty lunatics before him! No, not really. He tells the dude to fuck off but when his slightly prettier blonde girlfriend says "paaaweeeeeeeaaaaaaaase?" how can he refuse?
Explosions and many many exploding blood-red bodies ensue!

Review: The perfect movie!

I kid you not. Rambo, as we all know, is an 80's action icon so there's two ways that a sequel this far away from the awesomely violent (non pg-13) blood curdling, foul mouthed action films of that era could go.

It could turn itself into a mock-up of itself and play to the inherent humor that lies underneath any super-macho action flick and end up with a bunch of stupid mumbling teens muttering that "Well it was fun but it wasn't as good as Hot Shots!". It would be hilarious and make millions! (And swiftly be forgotten about within a month of it's release)

Or Sly Stallone could say "Live to make an R-rated bloody, fucking serious motherfucker of a sequel, or die (Hard with a vengeance) for nothing!".And that he did!

Let's list the awesome things about this film

The film was filled with blood flying from every area of anyone's body that it could possibly splatter out from.
The "plot" and vague hint at any idea of a romance for John Rambo was short-lived and only served (rightfully so) as brief moments in between the carnage with which to catch your breath.
There were fucking gun fights. Not just gun fights, fucking gun fights. Never have I felt so invigorated when someone was blown into pieces than during some of the battles (Which were more like one sided massacres really)during this film!
Sometimes, after about a thousand people had been blown up, sliced, stabbed, shot or smashed they would play sad music to give you the sads thus making the movie deep - before getting right back to explosions and gun fights
It was only 90 minutes long! Definitely something lacking in the modern action flick is the film-makers ability to not jerk it off into a 2 - 2 1/2 hour fucking epic. Action films should be 90 minutes long and no longer! Any longer and it's a piece of trash trying to pass itself off as decent entertainment.

In Short: The only reason to not give this 5 smileys out of 5 is because there was dialogue in the film which frankly, brought me down.

Biggest Positive: The shakespearian quality the film has in that we, the audience, the observers are aware of the inevitability and the fate by which all the characters in the film will fall even before they, the characters, themselves could be aware of such.
(i.e. you know whenever Rambo shows up some fucks are about to get their shit fucked up, son!)

Biggest Negative: Too much romance, not enough human killing.

Trivia: Before this film was filmed there, Burma was a neutral peace-loving country but the film's explosions and gun fights sparked off a civil war that has raged the country for the past 60 years. For this reason Sylvester Stallone was unjustly sought out and captured by the United Nations for crimes against humanity. A crime which he is only partly responsible for. He promptly escaped his maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, he survives as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find him, maybe you can hire Sylvester Stallone.

The Official Rambo Movie Website

House By The Cemetery

2009-09-22T05:31:00.003-05:00

Cast: Catriona McColl, Paolo Malco, Giovanni Frezza, Ania Pieroni's amazing caterpillar eyebrows.

Synopsis: A New York couple move into a house in New England which is, as one might guess, not next to a cemetery at all... what? Well a cemetery at least plays a role in the film but I fail to see why this film wasn't called "House With A Cemetery Within Walking Distance". Whatever. Killings ensue blah blah.

Review: While it's true that the acting is pretty awful, the unnecessary close ups of people's eyes are pointless at worst and shaky at best and the child in the film is so obnoxious that you're wishing death upon him as soon as you see his smug little albino-looking chops enter the screen, if you're looking for a film with the longest, most drawn out, gory, bat killing sequence in cinema history then look no further than The House By The Cemetery!

In Short: This movie was directed by Lucio Fulci which means it's both great and awful at the same time. The plot is wafer thin but the gore is fairly abundant.

Biggest Positive: The gore, quite clearly was the most redeeming feature of this film...

Biggest Negative: Everything that wasn't gory.

Trivia: This film was shot in less than two minutes and in five different languages.

A Review of House By The Cemetery by someone who possibly gives a flying fuck about actually reviewing things properly

Repo! The Genetic Opera

2009-09-01T05:49:00.004-05:00

Cast: Alex Vega, Anthony Stewart Head, Paris Hilton, Paul Sorvino

Synopsis: In a dark future where organ transplants have become both a necessity and a fashion accessory, a corrupt government legalizes the repossession of organs by those people who can't make their payments to the ever twisted GeneCo. the proclaimed 'Savior of Humanity'. The grizzly fate of harvesting people's organs is left to one man - The Repo Man. Who has his own unforgiving tale to tell... and for some bizarre reason everyone in the future sings all the time about every single thing ever.

Review: WTF?

Biggest Positive: As far as original ideas for films go they don't come much better than this, both the plot and the concept are fairly original at least in cinema these days...

Biggest Negative: After not too long it does get a little bit grating hearing people sing about everything. I mean, everything. The weather. Breakfast. (I know, I know, it's an opera what did I expect? I'm just saying - maybe I'm not an opera-guy)

Trivia: This film was nominated for five hundred Oscars including 'Best Operatic Piece Starring Paris Hilton Based In A Neon-Dark Future'

Repo! The Genetic Opera's website

Plan 9 From Outer Space (RiffTrax Special Event)

2009-08-21T06:39:00.007-05:00

Cast: Some dudes from RiffTrax and 3 Different Bela Lugosi's.

Synopsis: RiffTrax is a format in which you pay money to watch an incredibly bad movie while three guys talk over it making snarky comments. Plan 9 From Outer Space is basically the worst movie ever and the commentary is therefore about 57.6% more snarky than usual. Why do grown well-thinking people spend money to watch something awful while some weird people ruin the movie, you ask? Well, I guess you have to be there...

Review: Can I really review this? I mean, do I review the film itself or do I review the RiffTrax guys commentary on it? Do I review the surprise appearance by Mr. Jonathan Coulton? Or do I review the amazingly awful (in a good way) 'sponsor' videos from Something Awful? Or do I just ask a bunch of questions about who I should review and not actually really say a damn thing about it?

Yeah, that sounds good.

In Short: RiffTrax are awesome and, while I wish they were still using little robot puppets to make their commentary, they are still it seems equally as amusing as MST3K. We recently purchased their RiffTrax DVD release for Night Of The Living Dead, so you can look forward to a review of that as griping and informative as this one.

Biggest Positive: All things of the evening combined (The audience, the movie, the slightly confusing yet mildly intriguing 'O' faces Jonathan Coulton makes when he reaches high notes), I basically felt like I was right in the middle of "Giant Nerd-Fest 2009".

Biggest Negative: All things of the evening combined (The audience, the movie, the way that a nose flute has never been so masterfully used during a screening of an Ed Wood movie - at least this year), I basically felt like I was right in the middle of "Giant Nerd-Fest 2009".

Trivia: Bela Lugosi is still alive and living in the back of your fridge behind that potatoe salad you just won't throw away.

www.rifftrax.com/

The Tripper

2009-08-03T05:25:00.003-05:00

Cast: Lukas Haas, Jaime King, Paul Reubens, Jason Mewes

Synopsis: A bunch of hippies gather in a forest in California for an annual "free love" music festival but little do they know an old enemy of the hippy lifestyle is hunting them down, one by one...

Review: I'm glad this movie had the balls to paint an accurate picture of Ronald Reagan as an axe wielding, hippy slaughtering, mass murdering maniac!

I have a new found respect for David Arquette (who directed this) because I had no idea that he had any opinions until I watched this movie.

In Short: Just say maybe!

Biggest Positive: The definition of 'The Trickle Down Effect' as "When one big asshole goes crazy and the whole world goes to shit"

Biggest Negative: The music over the end credits got a little bit preachy. The rest of the film was just amusing.

Trivia: Ronald Reagan, politically speaking, was a bit of a tool - in spite of what you might hear elsewhere.

The Tripper's MySpace Page

Requiem For A Dream

2009-07-28T05:26:00.004-05:00

Cast: Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly

Synopsis: Drugs. Something about drugs.

Review: Having seen this film I realize that what I love most of all about Jared Leto is the fact that any film I've ever seen him in at some point ends up with him being fucked over severely, beaten to hell or viciously slaughtered with a hand axe.

In Short: That review wasn't short enough for you?

"I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the heroin that you have stolen."

Biggest Positive: I think I already went over the whole "Jared Leto gets fucked" thing.

Biggest Negative: I have seen more of Jennifer Connelly than I ever needed to see...

Trivia: This film was a 5 minute short film until they pulled an arty-director out to fill the film with weird close-ups of eyeballs and bizarre imagery that doesn't make sense.

Requiem For A Dream's Website - (it really is it's site, even though initially it might look like spam)

The Crow

2009-07-28T05:02:00.004-05:00

Cast: Brandon Lee, Rochelle Davis, Ernie Hudson

Synopsis: A hipster goth-like musician and his girlfriend are killed in a brutal needless murder but luckily for goths everywhere a magical crow decided that it would be cool to bring back the lanky hippy from the dead to seek revenge on his killers (apparently every other horrific murder in history doesn't matter to the magical crow and only people who look cool in white make up and a trench coat can be brought back from the dead.). Madness ensues.

Review: For years random people have been astounded when I tell them I haven't ever seen The Crow. Their heads fall back on themselves, their eyes bug out and some have even melted into a pool of their own self-loathing right in front of me. The reason, I always assumed, is because I used to have long vaguely curly hair, wear a big ol' leather trench coat and could be found occasionally wearing dark make up and leaping from building to building seeking my revenge on criminal underworlds so it seemed like a surprise when I hadn't seen the movie on which it might have seemed I based my entire existence... or so I thought! Until at work, where I wear a uniform and am not allowed to wear make up or kill people, a co-worker who hasn't seen me out of work expressed the exact same exasperation that I "of all people" had not seen The Crow. Thinking there must be something to this I decided (Was given a copy of The Crow by said co-worker and told if I didn't watch it he'd hunt me down and kill me) to finally get around to watching The Crow.

Having now seen it I realize now that when people said that I "had to see The Crow" what they actually meant was "You look like an obnoxious prick who likes shitty vaguely dark over-hyped movies that are only popular because someone died during filming".

Bummer.

In Short: Between this and Reservoir Dogs I realize that when everybody in the world says you need to see a movie it actually means "This movie sucks but everyone likes it because it's edgy without being close enough to the edge to be interesting!"

Biggest Positive: Heath Ledger clearly took some notes from this film, threw out all the shit and amplified the few decent parts a billion times to play the Joker. Then he died too, so it goes to show you should never ever do anything to associate yourself with this film, ever.

Biggest Negative: The hype behind this film is it's hugest flaw. I hope my review paints a picture of a truly awful film so that if you haven't seen the film and you finally do you'll maybe finish saying "Well, it wasn't that bad..."

Trivia: In an inronic twist of fate, exactly one year after his death Brandon Lee was still dead.

The Crow's Loft - fan page

No Country For Old Men

2009-07-13T05:00:00.003-05:00

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Berdem

Synopsis: Josh Brolin find a stash of money amongst a bunch of dead Mexican drug lords, meanwhile Javier Bardem is killing people with an air powered cattle-killy thing, meanwhile Tommy Lee Jones is mumbling incoherently about nothing in particular, meanwhile Kelly MacDonald is talking about something I can't quite listen to because I'm too busy thinking "You're Scottish. Where has your accent been in the last 2 films I've seen you in?", meanwhile I just discovered that the guy that played the Deputy Sherrif (Garret Dillahunt) was Krug in "The Last House On The Left" who incidentally, in that film not this one, looked a bit like Josh Brolin, who in the meantime is sort of meandering about his business trying to hide with the money while meanwhile, Javier Bardem kills more people. Somehow all these people's plots are all about the same thing in the same movie...

Review: Why is it that every Coen brothers film I've seen has a plot that if you were to tell it to someone (e.g. "There's Mexican drug lords and Josh Brolin steals their money after they all die in a mass shoot-out but Javier Bardem plays this guy who needs that money and will stop at nothing to kill everyone in his path to get to it! Then a hired assassin shows up to kill either Josh, Javier or both! And the cops are hot on Javier's trail the whole way but can't quite get him as he gets closer and closer to catching Josh Brolin!") they'd think the film would be full of car chases, epic gun battles and multiple budget-busting explosions (There is one in this film but it's hardly Bay-esque!) but in reality the Coen brothers tend to make the film just about a bunch of slightly eccentric ugly people saying weird shit?

In Short: Too much romance, not enough human killing

Biggest Positive: "Would you hold still, please, sir..."

Biggest Negative: Not enough on screen violence. Is that wrong?

No Country For Old Men website

Trivia: 50 people died of boredom in early screenings of this film so the Coen brothers has to trim a half-hour long sequence of Josh Brolin watching an entire episode of Jeoporday in real-time and complete silence.