Although my online petition for more nudity on the part of Scarlett Johansson was unsuccessful, I remain undeterred Please sign the Angry Renter petition. I know it probably won't do any good, but I think it's the right thing to do. Also, please sign the "Stop Uwe Boll from Making Movies" petition, as that is definitely the right thing to do.

Throw Out Christ and Bring Back Thor
This Internet meme may be old and busted, but I still got a kick out of this

House of Cards It appears that about the only things that can be verified in the book Bringing Down the House is that there is a game called blackjack, and it is occasionally played in Las Vegas. Other than that, who knows? As someone who enjoyed the book and recommended it to others, I am extremely disappointed.

Mike Gravel - The Gift That Keeps on Giving

A Trend of Which I Do Not Approve




As Auric Goldfinger once said “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.” I’m not going to panic yet, but this is just downright disturbing. I know we’ve all looked at the spiky armbands worn by Slayer guitarist Kerry King and thought, “Boy, it would be super keen if could have those.” But to repurpose fast food containers as metal apparel is incredibly tacky and will come back to haunt us in the future

As a devoted black metal fan, I believe that one day black metal will win its war against Christianity and then, as Darkthrone put it, “the next thousand years are ours”. So, I figure I will spend my days sitting atop a throne made of human skulls while scantily-clad barbarian women lounge at my feet, gazing at me adoringly and occasionally complimenting me on my awesome music collection. “You have the first pressing of the Vlad Tepes/Torgeist split CD? Truly you are a God among men!” they’ll say.

Of course, I’ll be reading the wall Street Journal, and while perusing Zbignew Bresinski’s thoughts on the Chechnya situation, I will of course demand something to drink (Zbig always makes me thirsy for some reason).

”Maidens,” I will say, “bring me the blood of a young virgin! My thirst must be slaked!”

Now, of course, you and I know that the proper receptacle for human blood is some sort of goblet or chalice, or in a pinch, a mug made from the skull of a jackal. But because some people decided that introducing fast food to heavy metal was a good idea, it throws everything into chaos. My maidens will not know to bring me a goblet. They’ll ask me whether I want it in something gauche, like a Big Gulp or Supersized cup. When I demand human blood, I don’t want to waste time deciding whether I want it delivered in a Like it, Love It or Gotta Have It-sized bowl, and then also decide if I want to upgrade to the waffle bowl option. This simply will not do. Hopefully, this is just a scary coincidence and not a frightening trend that will delay the triumph of the black metal hordes for yet another year.

Lists
I submitted these to McSweeney's for their lists section, and they rejected them. I'll keep trying to submit to them, but I figured since they didn't want these, I might as well just post them here instead o letting them sit on my hard drive.

Unfortunate Names for Strippers

Tungsten

Emulsion

Rock Tumbler

Cancer

Anaphylactic Shock

Rutherford B. Hayes


Lesser Known Choose Your Own Adventure books


You are Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker by R.A. Montgomery

By Amtrak to Camden, New Jersey by R.A. Montgomery

Secret Treasure of the Cracker Jack by R.A. Montgomery

Trapped in a Loveless Marriage by R.A. Montgomery

Aunt Flow’s Monthly Curse by R.A. Montgomery

Audited! by R.A. Montgomery

You are the Owner of a Lonely Heart by Trevor Rabin, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, and Trevor Horn

Some guy has sex with a picnic table Maybe he thought it was Nicole Ritchie.

New Retard-o-Tron video out I was talking with my personal shopper Denise the other day,and I said to her,"Denise, go find me a video mixtape full of crazy movie clips, bizarre shenanigans, and all around hijinks."
"Will you let me out of this cage, and allow me to wear something other than a halter top and fur loincloth?" she asked.
"Of course not, you ridiculous woman," I replied, "We have standards to maintain around here."
so, she got on the Internet and found me the Retard-o-Ton mixtapes. There are many fine video mixtapes out there, but these are some of the best I've seen. Please download them, enjoy them, and show them to others.

Mike Gravel joins the Libertarian party. On the up side, he does make the druid and the guy who turned himself blue drinking colloidal silver seem slightly less kooky by comparison. Gravel has a few good ideas, but he's not particularly Libertarian. Then again, the Libertarian party is so desperate for attention they'll pretty much accept anyone as a member. I could send them an e-mail telling them my guinea pigs have become libertarians, and they'd put our a press release declaring it a new dawn for freedom in America. If the Captain and Tenille announced they were libertarians, the Captain and Tenille would be the Libertarians' Presidential and Vice Presidenital candidates for 2008. I guess it could have been worse; at least we didn't get stuck with Cynthia McKinney.

Why we're screwed
I was reading an article in the New York Times yesterday about the explosion of the Japanese housing bubble in the early 90s and how they're still reeling from the effects of it bursting. The fact that Japan is still a functioning country should give us some hope, but it doesn't really. For one thing, the Japanese have a high rate of personal savings, and Americans tend to have no savings at all. Also, Japanese has several distinct advantages over us. For example:

Rockin' heavy metal bands like Sabbat. Sabbat plays unholy black metal exclusively and will have nothing to do with ill-advised inflationary monetary policies.


Hot cosplay girls,all of whom support Ron Paul for president


Hot girls who play in rockin' metal bands. Gallhammer obviously stands opposed to entire fractional-reserve banking system and supports a true, unholy commodity-backed currency.


Also, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi seems like he'd be pretty cool to hang out with.

Sure, in Japan there are people who are so upside down on the mortgages they won't be able to sell their houses for 20 years, but at least they get to leer at hot teenage girls dressed like Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop and then afterwards they can go to a Metalucifer show. In America, not only are we pursing a disastrous attempt to dump the losses of the housing bubble on the American taxpayer, we've got several crippling marks against us. For instance

Nickleback, who obviously don't care the frightening amount of adjustable-rate subprime mortgage resets in the coming years, as seen in this handy chart from Credit Suisse.



Not so hot cosplayers, who think Alan Greenspan's decision the keep the Federal Reserve funds rate at 1 percent was an "awesome idea".


The entire state of New Jersey, a festering boil on the face of this great nation that we as a people have lacked the courage to lance. You just know that about 90 percent of the bank failures the FDIC is gearing up for is going to take place in this rathole.


And we have this guy.


We are doomed, my friends. Doomed.

Slumburbia I think some of the author's assertions are questionable (people want to move to the cities because of Friends?) but it's hard to look at the suburbs in places like Ohio and not think that he has a point. I do think unless gas prices come down significantly over the next few years it's not going to be much fun living far away from major metropolitan areas. Then again, we I was about 14 I thought Robert Silverberg's novel The World Inside, in which the population of earth lives in giant skyscrapers and has orgies all day long, was an entirely plausible look at the future. Of course, with age comes wisdom,and now I realize that the suburbs are going to hell and we're all going to live in shipping containers instead. Although I'm still not giving up on the skyscrapers.

Philadelphia free wireless program on the rocks I never really understood the rationale behind this initiative. It's not exactly difficult or particularly expensive to get DSL. Also, if money's an issue, I've heard about these ancient devices known as "modems" which can also get you on the Internet. Do we really have nothing better to worry about in Philadelphia than the fact that poor people aren't able to watch YouTube videos?

I Must Own This
Move over, Darren's Dance Grooves, you just got served.

Doing More With Less The author regards being unemployed as awesome, and having been on unemployment several years ago, I can assure you that it's not particularly awesome. However, this article is still pretty funny.

The Onion Gets it Right Again I think my wife and I have had this exact same conversation.

Saving Throw Against this Article was Unsuccessful. Take 1d20 of Damage It's a little hard to believe, but there was a time when Dunegons and Dragons was considered a dire threat to the youth of America. Now entire families play games like World of Warcraft, Harry Potter is at the top of the bestseller list, and Jack Chick is the only person who worries that this sort of thing will cause children to kill their parents.

Pining for the Fjords Buy a house at a foreclosure, get a free corpse.

Way Down in the Hole I'm not sure I understand exactly what's going on in the bond market these days, but this explanation using characters from The Wire makes me slightly less confused. However, I think Prop Joe and Avon Barksdale are probably more ethical than some of the people involved in the bond market.

Stuff White People Like I don't know what's funnier, the site, or the clueless commenter who don't understand it's supposed to be funny.

Subprime Explained Stick figures explain the current subprime mortgage "crisis" in a handy Powerpoint presentation. Funny and depressing at the same time.

An Addendum
I probably came across as a little angry in that last post, but I'm not. However, this sort of thing has perturbed me ever since I got into an argument when I was 10 with a kid down the street from me over the existence of the Easter Bunny. He was the same age as me, and I couldn't understand why he didn't comprehend the fact that the Easter Bunny didn't exist. I didn't realize it at the time, but the kid was slightly mentally retarded and that's probably why he wasn't getting it. I still stand by my argument.

I Probably Overthink Things a Bit
I heard a commercial on the radio today which struck me as being absolutely bizarre. It was a Duracel ad in which the announced assured listeners that Duracel batteries were in fact Santa Claus's batteries of choice. Why would a company spend money to make unprovable claims about fictional characters? Would a series of billboards reading "One Ring to Rule them All/One Ring to Bind Them/One Ring to Bring Them All/And in the Darkness Bind Them/Burma Shave" make any sense? Well, it might be cool, but would it make you buy the product?

And when the hell are people going to get over this whole Santa Claus thing anyway? Last year a woman in England was fired from her teaching position for telling a class full of 10-year-old children that Santa Claus didn't exist. It doesn'tmake any sense that we make no attempt to hide Christmas shopping from children, yet we expect them to believe that their toys are somehow built for them by elves at the North Pole and then delivered to them by a flying fat man. I admit the story might have seemed a bit more plausible when children received things like candy and oranges and toys that were handcrafted from wood. But are we to believe that Santa Claus makes Xboxes and Bratz dolls in his workshop? Not likely, especially when those toys all have "Made in China" stamped on the back.

Honestly, I think the Santa Claus legend needs a reboot. People complained at first when Ron Moore revamped Battlestar Galactica, but now everyone loves it, and all those people who were insisting that they weren't going to watch any show where Starbuck was a woman look like a bunch of chumps. So why not give Santa Claus to someone like Grant Morrison or Alan Moore and have them make the whole thing a little more logically consistent. I know I'd sleep better.

Harlan Ellison is angry


Of course, Harlan Ellison is always angry about everything, but in this case I think his anger is justifiable.

To wear the flesh, to tear the flesh...


God, the 80s were weird.

Hellhammer book in the works A Hellhammer coffee table book is such an awesome idea. It's a pity they don't make coffee tables our of human bones so you'd have someplace cool to display it.

I thought a quarry would have been involved somehow

What will happen when you meet the Doctor?
Name
DOB
Favourite Color
You live	In a bit of London that looks like Cardiff
Your companions are	Your life partner
The Doctor arrived because	He was chasing Daleks
You first met the Doctor when	He blew up your home
The end result was	The love of your life was horribly mutilated, but at least you're together
This QuickKwiz by clanwilliam - Taken 26 Times.

New! Get Free Horoscopes from Kwiz.Biz

Rob Zombie's Upcoming Projects I don't really care about the White Zombie box set, but that El Superbeasto cartoon should be fun. However, I think it is extremely ill-advised to remake C.H.U.D.. There's no point in tampering with perfection.

Mike Gravel no longer the weirdest thing on the Internet


If you can't trust a giant rapping groundhog for advice on careers, who can you trust?

Hollywood Writers Going on Strike I can understand why the writers are going on strike, but they really ought to keep some of their members under wraps. The average American isn't going to read this article and say "What's this? The writers of Liar, Liar and Deuce Bigelow:Eurpoean Gigelo aren't getting lots of money? What an outrage!"

Move over Warwick Davis
There's a new leprechaun in the hood -


Thanks to Rob for sending me the video.

Who will survive and what will be left of them?
I still haven’t fully recovered from the Exhumed Films 24 Horror-Thon, but I will say its one of the best times I’ve ever spent at the movies. It was tough at times sitting thorough 14 movies, but I’m glad I did it. I had a great time. Here are the movies they showed -

Halloween – Watching Halloween now is a bit like reading Mickey Spillane novels or watching the original Star Trek episodes. Halloween has been so influential and has been the subject of so many tributes, rip-offs and parodies that if you watching it for the first time you may not see the appeal. Although Halloween was not the first slasher film, its popularity helped kick start the slasher craze that dominated horror films for most of the 80s.

The story is fairly straightforward – psychotic lunatic Michael Myers escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown, where he starts hacking teenagers to death. Often imitated, never duplicated, this movie still packs a punch today. I only wish John Carpenter were still making movies this good.

Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster – Godzilla fights a creatire that looks like a giant porcupine, then he teams up with a creature who looks like a giant poodle to fight a robot version of himself built by aliens who come from, and I quote “the third planet of the black hole”. I first saw this movie at my grandparents’ house when I was five, and I think I liked it a little better then, but I will say that as silly as this movie was, it was a hundred times better than the American Godzilla movie with Matthew Broderick.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – A made-for-TV from the 70s in which a couple inherits a mansion and find out that some evil demons live in the fireplace. The demons look a little silly, and the hairstyles look even sillier, but for a made-for-TV movie this is surprisingly good. Not as good as the Kolchakmovies, but still, much better than you would think.

Hellraiser – When watching this movie, it’s easy to se why Stephen King declared Clive Barker to be “the future of horror”. When everyone was doing slasher films or rip-offs of Stephen King novels, along came Clive with his tale of Chinese puzzle boxes and men with nails in their heads. Barker was a distinctive voice in horror literature (still is, for that matter), and this movie was head and shoulders above a lot of the dreck that came out in the 80s. This was also Barker’s directorial debut, and to this day I think he’s the only one who can make a decent movie out of one his stories. I love this film when I first saw it, and I love it still. I can’t believe Hollywood is remaking this.

Phantasm – This movie is beloved by horror fans around the world for no particular reason I can determine. Sure, Angus Scrimm is pretty creepy looking and I think the flying silver balls that shoot knife blades into people’s skulls are cool, but ultimately, I think the movie just isn’t that good.

The movie is about a young boy who discovers that the local undertaker is not burying the bodies at his mortuary but is instead turning them into undead midget slaves that he then transports to another into another dimension so they can perform manual labor. Also he keeps some of the zombie midgets in our own dimension so they can dress up like Jawas and run errands for him. I don’t know how the undertaker managed to convince someone to give him a small business loan to set up that kid of operation, but kudos to him for showing people that The Secret really does work. The boy, his brother, and their slightly creepy ice-cream-truck driving friend decide to take him down.

Pieces – This is just like Texas Chainsaw Massacre except it takes place on a college campus and it sucks. I remember being really disappointed with this movie the first time I saw, but watching it again I was able to concentrate on how hilarious it was. And it really is laughably bad. By the time the credits rolled my sides hurt from laughing so much. It’s an awful horror movie, but at the same time it’s comedy gold. Highly recommended.

An American Werewolf in London – John Landis’s classic flick about an American college student who visits England, is bitten by a wolf, and at the sight of the full moon undergoes a horrifying transformation into a copy of Blues Brothers 2000. I saw this movie when I was 14 and I didn’t like it. Having seen it again, I can say that I liked it lot better. In fact, I can’t remember what my reason was for hating this movie, but I will say that 14-year-old me was very wrong.

Blacula – He’s just like Dracula, except he’s black. This is a “classic” blaxpoloitation movie whose charm is completely lost on me. The guy playing Blacula wasn’t too bad, but I thought this movie was kind of lame.

Burial Ground – An Italian zombie movie which I love not because it’s particularly good, but because it features a 30-year-old midget playing a 12-year-old boy. He’s the creepiest thing about this movie, especially during the scene where he’s feeling up his mom and complaining about not being breastfed anymore. This is a pretty lame zombie movie, but that kid makes it all worthwhile.

Teenage Mother – I thought the medical roadshow film died out in the 50s, but here’s one from 1966. A Swedish teacher shows up in a small American town to teach sex-ed at the local school. Meanwhile, a young girl tells her boyfriend she’s pregnant in hopes that he’ll marry her, but when he doesn’t immediately propose, she runs away from home. Then she ends up a truck stop and decides to go to a drive in instead. I was pretty sleep deprived at this point, so I was a little confused as to what the hell was going on. The movie wraps up with some incredibly graphic footage of an actual live birth (which is why the people at Exhumed Films claimed this was a horror movie). A lot of people were grossed out, but I still say Burial Ground was more nauseating.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein – From what I understand this started off as a biker movie, although at some point during production, the makers decided to bring in Dracula and Frankenstein. So most of this movie is about a young woman tried to find her sister and being harassed by bikers, and occasionally there’s scenes of Dracula and one of Frankenstein’s descendants doing evil experiments in the lab. These two disparate plot lines are pulled together very badly in the end with some footage that was shot several months after the original filming wrapped.

This has got to be the worst monster movie I’ve ever seen. Seriously, just a shoddy production all around. Everyone involved should be shot, or if they’re already dead, their corpses should be dug up and mutilated.

Demons – Movie theater patrons turn into monsters and kill people. Now imagine 90 minutes of that and that’s Demons for you. Dario Argento produced and co-wrote to movie and Lamberto Bava directed, so it’s worse than Dario’s best work, but better than most of the stuff Lamberto’s done. I actually prefer The Church, the movie that was going to be Demons 3, because of the beautiful direction by Michele Soavi and because it started the lengthy love affair I’ve had with Asia Argento, but this wasn’t too bad. And coming after Dracula vs. Frankenstein, it was a cinematic masterpiece.

Alligator – I don’t know if there are any other giant alligator movies out there, but if there are, this is undoubtedly the best one ever made. John Sayles, better known for his serious, sensitive drams, wrote the screenplay, and I honestly like this better In fact, I think most of his movies would be considerably improved if they incorporated a giant alligator.

The Gates of Hell – This movie was released on DVD a few years ago as City of the Living Dead, but I like The Gates of Hell better as there are so few people in the movie that it’s really more like an unincorporated township of the dead. This film directed by Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci, and like most of his horror films it is both extremely bloody and makes no sense whatsoever.

A Catholic priest commits suicide in a graveyard, which opens up the gates of hell in a small New England town. It’s up to a reporter and a psychic from New Yorker to go to the town and close the gates or else the dead will rise from the graves and kill everyone. I wasn’t really clear on what exactly they were going to do to close the gates of hell, but that’s OK. The movie seemed like it was being made up on the sport anyway.

This is supposedly a zombie movie, but the zombies sort of appear and disappear, so they actually zombie ghosts. People like this movie for the gore, and the scenes with the maggots, the drill through the head, and the girl vomiting up her internal organs will always be classics. However, I think the movie pales in comparison to The Beyond, which I think is by far the best movie Fulci ever did.

In between the movies, they were airing classic movie trailers. I’ve always thought that movie trailers were more fun when each horror movie advertised itself as the scariest one ever made, so it was a lot of fun to watch these. There were so many good ones it’s hard to pick a favorite, but I really enjoyed the ones for Pscyho, The Birds, and David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within (tagline: If this movie doesn’t make you scream and squirm, you may need to see a psychiatrist). Also, there was a great trailer advertising a double bill consisting of Rosemary’s Baby and The Odd Couple.

This is the first time Exhumed Films has ever done something like this, and I hope they do it again. This was too much fun not to be a yearly experience. I was exhausted and felt kind of sick after the whole thing was over, but I would glad go to another one of these if I got the chance.

Rifftrax just got some competition I love Rifftrax to death, but I will give Cinematic Titanic a chance. However, this cartoon thing with Crow, Servo, and Gypsy sounds incredibly stupid.

Heroes:Origins no longer happening? I like Heroes well enough, but considering that the producers seem intent on introducing a new character almost every episode, it probably isn't necessary to air another series with sole purpose of introducing even more characters. Personally, I think the show could use its own Mutant Massacre, or failing that, the producers should take half of the cast and give them their own show.

24 Hour Party People
As Harry S. Truman once said "Ain't no party like a Hilfiger party, cause a Hilfiger Party don't stop!" This is not a Hilfiger party, but it is going to go for 24 hours and is sure to be awesome. I'm totally psyched.

Since All the Cool Kids Are Doing It
Home taping is killing music, and so am I. Here's some music I found on Soulseek and decided to share with you. You're welcome.

Stormtrooopers of Death - Crab Society North - 67 tracks in about 13 minutes. This was recorded on a Walkman in the kitchen of a recording studio, so as you might expect the sound quality is atrocious. Of course, the awful production ensures that poseurs will not be listening and that only the true fans will get to enjoy this. As it should be.

Sodom - Rehearsal 7-13-1985 - This is just 40 minutes or so of Sodom playing tracks from In the Sign of Evil and Obsessed by Cruelty. The sound quality is pretty bad, although I honestly don't mind. It's a damn shame Sodom doesn't play "Volcanic Slut" in concert anymore.

Necro Schizma - Necrocarnation - The unreleased demo from this seminal doom metal band. Three songs, one of which is a cover of Manowar's "Pleasure Slave". Good times.

Bestial Summoning - Sodomastic Rituals - I'll never understand why Euronymous and other members of the Norwegian black metal scene had such a problem with Finish black metal, as this is some quality stuff. You may recognize some of these tracks from Bestial Summoning's The Dark War Continues CD, but this is the complete demo. Bestial Summoning has never really gotten the praise bands like Beherit and Archgoat have received, but for my money, they're just as good. Enjoy!

Whitfield Crane not joining Anthrax If Anthrax had decided to recruit the former lead singer of Ugly Kid Joe to sing for them, that would have been an even worse decision than the time they all decided to start wearing Bermuda shorts.

He Who Controls the Spice, Controls the Film Rights Considering that there have already been two film adaptations of Dune, I don't really see the need for third one. Unless of course, it's the Alejandro Jodorowky version, because that would be utter insanity. If Hollywood really loves stories about people running around in the desert taking drugs and drinking their own urine, they should just do a movie about Burning Man.

The Devil Wears Prada Wear what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Americans not eating enough excrement I would think that simply eating more Hot Pockets would solve that problem.