Let's solve Jack the Ripper!

As you know, I am a fan of Jack the Ripper and associated mythology. I read The Final Solution (which is the one about how the Freemasons did 9/11 to prevent Bongland from finding out the royal family are degenerates), and became fascinated by the stories of Saucy Jacky and his poor spelling.

In this article I will give a token gesture to srs study by omitting the stupidest theories, like Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll did it.

The Crimes

I will be using the "canonical" murders as the only ones that count, those being the murders of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes (the double event), and Mary Jane Kelly. Some people like to think Jack started with Martha Tabram, only later developing his signature style. Others consider Kelly to be someone else's kill due to certain variations on the old MO. Still others contest whether the Ripper was responsible for both parts of the double event, since Stride was not gutted nor strangled. Jack's body count may then be as low as three, if Stride and Kelly were each killed by someone else. Dropping three bodies would only just make Jack count as a serial killer, but in defence of his reputation, I think someone else doing a murder like ten minutes' walk away from his on the same night seems like a pretty big coincidence, and if his alleged correspondence is to be credited, he did tell his dear old boss that he'd do two in one. The objection to Kelly's inclusion is plausible but would require us to identify the copycat as well, and the method of murder bears enough similarities given the difference in location and time available that we can call it Jack's if we want to.

The Usual Suspects

William Henry Bury

Suspected for similarities between the stab wounds found on Polly Nichols and the ones he put in his wife. "Jack Ripper is in this sellar (sic)" was also found written on his door. Hilariously, after turning himself in, and before they hanged him, he would make sulky innuendos to the effect that he was the Ripper, but stopped short of saying it outright, just to spite them.

David Cohen aka The Leather Apron aka Nathan Kaminsky

According to this theory Nathan Kaminsky was mixed up with formerly confirmed Ripper Aaron Kosminski, who was just a window-licker, and was briefly committed to an asylum under the name David Cohen, which was at the time like "John Doe" for Jews. This is a plausible story, but not much seems to be known about Kaminsky otherwise.

Aaron Kosminski

Still a popular subject, Kosminski was institutionalised at the right time for when the murders stopped. He was sometimes said to be violent, and was definitely schizophrenic, because he thought voices were telling him not to eat food that people gave him, and eat bread from the gutters instead. This has nothing to do with his ripping or otherwise, but it does prove one of history's first accounts of someone trolling himself.

Michael Ostrog

Generally ruled out these days, Ostrog was arrested about once a week for petty theft. Such a congenital fuckup was unlikely to avoid capture for the more srs crime of murder.

Nichols

A Midwife Did It

This theory, apparently raised by Inspector Abberline himself* postulates that a midwife could have done the killings as she would have been trusted by the victims, have a reason to be out late at night, and be able to explain blood on her clothes due to her work. This is a cool ass theory, but there's no direct evidence.

Francis Tumblety

Chiefly suspected for the size and sharpness of his moustache, Tumblety was a quack with a perhaps apocryphal affection for collecting uteri and a sizeable case of unwarranted self-importance. It was said that he might have sought revenge on prostitutes because he found out that his wife had been one, which is a fine origin story, but of debatable veracity. He was in England at the time of the murders but fled to America after the end of the canonical murders, and liked to use aliases like a villain in a Sherlock Holmes story.

Dr John Williams

A doctor who seems to have crossed paths with a Mary Kelly and possibly other victims in a professional capacity. He had a knife that matched the description of the murder weapon and was generally a bit of a dick. This is all circumstantial though. It probably wasn't him.

Francis Thompson

A poet who was homeless by the time his work became popular, Francis Thompson studied medicine and liked to write about murdering women, and is thought to have been in Whitechapel at the time of the murders. A great deal of circumstantial detail makes him seem a plausible suspect, but he was left-handed, whereas the Ripper is understood to have been right-handed.

Chapman

Alois Szemeredy

Implicated due to his commission of a similar crime in Buenos Aires, Szemeredy was convicted and committed to a loony bin. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any evidence that he was in London at the time of the murders.

Robert D'Onston Stephenson

A much-travelled former surgeon hospitalised in Whitechapel at the time of the murders, Stephenson wrote about his own Ripper theories involving killing in a cruciform pattern for black magic purposes, and spoke at such length and in such detail on the killings that people started to suspect him. This theory does require him to have sneaked out of the hospital where he was faking illness, which is farcically absurd and therefore stupid.

James Maybrick

Allegedly wrote a diary all about being the Ripper, which is generally agreed to be a hoax but makes him to this day one of the most discussed suspects. No one will remember you for anything.

Jacob Levy

A Jewish butcher and formerly committed nutter, Levy fit some of the details of the police profile, and may have been observed with Catherine Eddowes by his neighbour Joseph Levy shortly before whacking her. Then again, as we know, the police were useless when it came to keeping track of Jewish names, so maybe it was Joseph that did it. Oy vey.

Stride

Severin Klosowski, or George Chapman

This fuck was named by Abberline himself after he was convicted of poisoning his wives some time pursuant to the five Ripper murders. The problem is that poisoning is a very different way of killing someone as compared to strangling them, slitting their throats and gutting them.

Hyam Hyams

Loopy tune committed to Colney Hatch for stabbing his wife. Few details match eyewitness testimony.

James Kelly

Another cuckoo fruit and nut bar banged up for stabbing his wife, Kelly was sought after the Mary Jane Kelly murder but whether he was even in London is unknown. Rozzers quickly gave up on him and he spent much of the rest of his life waiting around trying to be arrested, and they didn't even bother. That's what you get for being a 19th Century schizoid man.

George Hutchinson

Famous eyewitness who claimed to see Mary Jane Kelly with the Ripper shortly before her death. Some people think he made up his account and some think he did the murders. There's no direct evidence, but people like the character. Claimed to have spent all his money going to Romford, which may be the most suspicious thing about him.

Eddowes (censored for your comfort and convenience)

Carl Feigenbaum

Executed in New York, serial murderer Feigenbaum was connected to the Ripper based on an alleged confession to his lawyer that he suffered from a madness that compelled him "to kill and mutilate the woman that falls in my way". Feigenbaum had been a merchant sailor and the theory goes he would have alighted at the London docks, whacked a hooker or two, and sailed back to Germany, leaving Abberline himself and the rest of the Keystone Kops running round in circles looking for someone who wasn't there. This is a good theory because it's funny, but relies on gaps in the shipping records. Feigenbaum could have been anywhere at the time of the killings, and it's known that the lawyer made up a bunch of bullshit to connect him to other murders around the world that had nothing to do with him or didn't even happen.

Joseph Barnett

Mary Jane Kelly's ex was raised as a suspect on the basis that he resembled eyewitness accounts and might have had access to the room where she was killed. It has been suspected that he may have written the "Dear Boss" letter which introduced the name "Jack the Ripper", and this "trade name" may have referred to his work with fish. Some also believe he only killed Kelly, using the Ripper murders as a cover. This is plausible, particularly as he was observed to be around her in the days immediately prior to her murder. However, this theory still leaves the OG Jack unaccounted for.

Montague John Druitt

Seemingly considered a suspect on the basis of suspicious innuendo, Druitt became an hero shortly after the killings, providing a possible explanation for why they stopped - if it was him. No direct evidence supports him as a suspect.

Someone Else

It is very possible that it was someone else entirely. London is very big and lots of people live there, and Whitechapel at the time was a crowded slum. It may be that the Ripper is someone everyone has overlooked both then and now. This idea isn't taken very seriously by Ripperologists because that would be history cheating, and an unwinnable game is a broken game, and should be scorned.

Kelly (everyone's favourite)

Elimination

I believe out of the suspects presented here, the only likely options are Bury, Kaminsky, Tumblety, Levy, Barnett and Someone Else. The most compelling case against Barnett hinges on his relationship with Kelly, which inclines me to think if he were guilty it would be of the Kelly murder only. If that were the case, Bury, Kaminsky, Tumblety or Levy could have been the original Jack. A lot of the case against Tumblety rests on hearsay, and there is not enough information to confirm the Kaminsky/Kosminski switcherooni, which leaves Bury and Levy the most likely candidates for the original Ripper. Both are good, but Bury closely resembles the FBI profile. He was confirmed out all night every night there was a murder, and he fucked off posthaste as soon as the heat intensified. He even had items reminiscent of trophies taken from the victims, like the rings missing from Chapman. And he had butcher experience, just like Levy.

The cases against Kaminsky and Levy are plausible because of the paucity of detail which surrounds them. Knowing more might implicate them to a greater degree or rule them out entirely. The case against Bury is strong because of positively determined facts. Bury is therefore the most likely Ripper, and the one who shall be starring in my next opus, "Whitechapel!: A Musical Comedy Extravaganza", starring Neil Patrick Harris. Look for it.

Think you know better than me who Jack the Ripper was? Leave a comment, butt head.

*In Ripperology, Abberline is always referred to with "himself", because he was clearly very important despite failing to catch the killer. If you don't call him "himself", you will be excommunicated from Ripperology.

Saws: http://www.casebook.org/suspects/

The Poughkeepsie Tapes!!!

Thought you ran out of good horror movies years ago? Never seen a good found footage movie after The Blair Witch Project? Under 6 feet tall? Then you might just be a disgusting manlet that should be exterminated from the gene pool.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was never released, lending credence to the conspiracy theory that Hollywood is this bad intentionally and scuppers anything good on purpose because Hollywood hates you. This theory is true, but fortunately you can probably find a copy on line. The first version I saw I immediately realised this was the horror movie I had been missing all these years, but the uploader CUT THE GOD DAMN ENDING OFF. Anyway, it was really good. WATCH IT.

For those of you PEASANTS who don't know, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is about a serial killer in New York State who seems to be loosely based on Ted Bundy (who even gets a shoutout in the movie), the Zodiac Killer and the fictionalised Henry Lee Lucas from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (like whom he switches up his MO to confuse everyone). He videotapes all his kills (for he is in the 90s, I think), and wears this beaky mask thing just for jolly wouldn't you?

But perhaps the most interesting part of the movie concerns what I'll call his favourite victim. I won't give away what happens to her, but it's quite unlike what happens to most characters in horror movies, and confers a note of poignancy which makes the whole experience more interesting. Watch The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and sort out your life, in either order.

Starwars 7 will be stupid and lame.

So the new trailer confirms everything I knew would happen about Starwars 7: The Goatse Widens. Jar Jar Abrams has apparently directed the film in the same visual style as his last act of necrophilia, the Startrek reboot. This looks awkward and shitty, and not like the Starwars of the 1970s and 80s, when the series was good.

If you watch the movies from the 80s you'll notice they are elegantly shot and edited, making use of space, mood lighting and shit like that. The new trailers show that the new film looks ugly and fakey-fake and has too many medium closeups and closeups. The storm troopers are standing around in like a well lit space, which isn't very threatening, and basically everything sucks.

We know from interviews that Abrams is aware of how much everyone hated his shitty lens flares in Startrek, so including them in this new Starwars movie can only be interpreted as a gesture of spite toward his audience, most of whom will still pay to see the movie anyway because they like the abuse.

The old people from the original movies still just look like old people. There's generally a good reason characters don't age that much in like comics and shit like that. It's because characters in fun escapist movies getting old is sad and depressing. But this trailer doesn't have a fun escapist tone to it, so I don't know. Maybe it's an art house movie about Alzheimer's.

Everything in the trailer looks like a copy of a copy. There are no new, interesting ideas and you can tell because the only thing anyone's been talking about is that there's a woman and a black guy in the movie, even though there have literally always been women and black people in Starwars movies. This small detail hasn't stopped the filmmarketeers (for this is what they are) from smelling their own farts all over the interview circuit.

Nobody will like this movie. Everyone will feel hollow and dead on the inside after seeing it, despite all pretence to the contrary. That's because they are dead; listless consumer zombies shambling pointlessly between one gaudy beacon of hype to the next in the horrific wasteland of our lives....

This is what Disney Princesses would look like as a horse.

Pic by Owain Davies (license)

I literally looked up how big you have to be to be a giant.

<4'10" = midget. 4'11" - 5'11" = manlet. 6' - 7' = normal. >7' = giant.

However, you must also check your BMI to make sure you're not a fatty.

<18.5 = underweight. 18.5 - 24.9 = normal. 25 - 29.9 = overweight. 30 - 39.9 = Siamese twins. >40 = Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

The category of "obese" has now been replaced by "Siamese twins" because based air lines make fat monsterpeople pay for two seats when they fly, which means that they are legally two people.

Did you like these science facts??? Leave a comment if you want more.

The Legend of Storybook Vale

Hey kids it's time for a story.

Once upon a time, Papa Bear and his wife, Tallulah Bear (Mama Bear had left him in the winter of '06) were chopping wood outside Bear Manors, Storybook Vale. It was late and it was getting dark. The sun was sinking behind the two mountains at the foot of the vale. "Say, Tallulah Bear", said Papa Bear, "it's getting awfully late in Storybook Vale. Time to tuck the kids in for the night".
"Oh Papa Bear", said Tallulah, "what a nice life we live in Storybook Vale".

So Tallulah Bear went to check on Son Bear, ensuring that his sheets were straight and his toys were safely tucked away. "I love you Son", she said.
"I love you too, Tallulah", he said.

Then Papa Bear went to see Daughter Bear and patted her head and made sure that her hot water bottle was piping hot. "I love you Daughter", he said.
"I love you too, Papa", she said.

Then Papa and Tallulah Bear went into Baby Bear's room. Baby Bear was nowhere to be seen. The air was still and cold, dead like a tomb. It was as if Baby had never lived; had been erased from the record of history. Tallulah ran to the bed and threw her arms across the empty sheets. They felt as cold as a mortuary slab. Papa stumbled, dazed, too shocked and numb to cry, into the little bathroom. There, in a childlike hand on the mirror, were the words: THIS IS THE WAY OF ALL FLESH.

Tallulah sobbed into the cold, empty bed. Her tears soaked the sheets. Papa walked out, his face drained of all hope and purpose. He stood by her, but he could not even reach out to comfort her. His whole body felt numb. Tallulah had sunk into the sheets, her face melting into her own morass of tears. Her tear ducts squeezed themselves dry, then they squeezed some more, until the pain blinded her even from her grief.

Papa Bear walked back to the bathroom. There, behind the mirror, he took out a bottle of pills. Not glancing at the label, he emptied the bottle into his mouth, and he lay down in the tub. The horror overwhelmed him.

Black and purple swirled before his eyes, like shadows of unnamed and shapeless things on the cave walls of his eyelids; of terrors too real to be countenanced by mortal reason. Down and down he sank into oblivion. He had felt loss before, and it had dragged his whole being down to the pit of his stomach, where it sat, empty, hollow. This time, it was as though the bottom of his stomach had given way, and he fell endlessly, without hope of adjustment, nowhere to ever find a foothold in his endless and utter desolation. His soul had been annihilated, but the pieces were not allowed to rest.

When he opened his eyes, all about him was dark, but he saw in the frightened greenish bluey whites of night vision, as though some outer aid permitted him the means to see. Down endless hexagonal staircases he walked, his feet, unfeeling, treading surer than a mountain goat's. Torches burned in rusted brackets on the walls, their fire lightless, as void of colour as his life. From far below he heard the sounds of tortured screams, and didn't even fear to tread toward them.

In the deepest cellar of the windowless descent, he came upon a living carpet. Mantises and double-ended rats cavorted among stranger things. A starfish opened human lips to sing, and all that spilled forth was insanity. Arms grasped and writhed from cracks in the stone floor. A dog that ate itself from its tail upwards stopped and regarded him with the eyes of an owl. Gold flowed liquid through the sprawling mass of crystallised madness. A shape flexed and distorted into endless facets in the thick, black air before his face, and in each of its faces he saw Tallulah, the Queen of Tears, from whose ducts flowed the oceans of the world.

He pressed on through the madness, the back halves of vermin fused together stumbling and warring with themselves to get out of his way as he stepped. Strings of intestines, molten effluent chugging its way down them, hung from the shapeless ceiling, but he scarcely noticed them. Through doors of breathing, sighing glass, onward he pushed. Blind old men in rags turned their unseeing heads up at him as they sat chained to the living floor.

Finally he came to a chamber entirely made of mouths. Where they led to, he could not see through the gloom, but all at once they spoke to him. "I am Y'thdrognorg", they said, some in a whisper, some in the tortured shrieking of prisoners from some dank dungeon of the Dark Ages. "I am the carer and guardian at the gates that lead to the dream-mind of that Mad God whose name I cannot speak".
Papa Bear nodded. "What has brought me here?" he said, emotionless. A rat with heads at both ends nuzzled at his collarbone, but he ignored it.
"I was sent to tend to the insane one's fitful waking", said Y'thdrognorg. "I am not the taker of your child, but even now it walks among your fellows in the living-world of Storybook Vale".
"What is it?" Papa Bear said, a faint quintessence of emotion stirring in his depths, as if from a forgotten life.
"It is impossible to pronounce its name in ways that you can hear, little one", said the many mouths of Y'thdragnorg, "but in your language it is called the erasure of the innocents".
"How will I know it?" said Papa Bear. "How will I see?"
"Things such as this are not meant to be in your world. By its wrongness, you will know it."

Papa Bear wept then, and so many tears flowed from his eyes that they flooded the chamber of Y'thdragnorg. There were more tears even than Tallulah had cried, for Papa Bear had not wept for many years more than her. The flood carried him up, up the long stairways that he had descended, ever up into the light.

When Papa Bear awoke, all was as he had left it. Tallulah still sobbed into the bed, now little more than mush. But something else was stirring in the house, and now where it had been forever, he could see it anew: a great beak protruding from the floor, that clacked open and shut, eyeless spiderlings jumping from it, snapping mandibles at the sad world.

Papa Bear went outside into the cool night and hefted the axe from the woodpile. As he turned back to the house, he saw the creature standing there, impossibly in a doorway that was smaller than itself. On either side of its beak camera lenses whirred and refocussed. Vestigial forelimbs grasped feebly at the air, protruding from its breast. Great blue wings stemmed from its back. Its legs were spindly and long.

"I know who you are now", said Papa Bear, and he hefted the axe above his head. The creature cocked its head and suckers opened up on its scabrous neck. Papa struck, again and again, driving it back into the hall of his dwelling. Son and Daughter stood in their doorways, eyes and mouths open, but Papa did not notice, and if he did, he cared not. The creature squawked and lashed at him with its sharp parrot's beak, drawing blood from his arms and shoulders, but he was a bear, and this only enraged him further. "Die", he said, and the monster buckled before him. Neighbours now were at the door but Papa was oblivious, and what they saw they would never again be able to describe. Finally it stumbled, its legs giving out beneath it, and Papa Bear raised his axe to strike the killing blow.

"This is for Baby Q. Bear", he spat, and cleft the thing in half.

Morning came quietly behind him. No one said a word. The erasure of the innocents lay dead, cockroaches spilling from each gash in its twisted corpse. Already crows were descending to tear at its suppurating flesh. Papa would drag it out and burn it, but for now his strength was spent.

That evening, he returned to Y'thdragnorg, leading Tallulah behind him. Her eyes were red and bloody now, a thin trickle of blood mixed with the water that had soaked back into her skin from the bed now made a pink stain that gave her an unearthly appearance. Papa led her gently to the chamber, where the many mouths had ingested the water from his tears.

"I will take her into me and care for her", said Y'thdragnorg. Papa nodded. Tallulah's mind was gone. This ancient, used to dealing with the madness of a deity, could care for her in ways that he could not. He watched her be swallowed up with nothing, no feeling at all, a spent battery.

It would take many years for Storybook Vale to recover from the terror that had befallen it that night. But the legend remained, and forever after, the folk of the Vale told it in whispers, until it passed into the folklore recorded here.

Did you like my story??? Feel free to use it with your own kids!!! Pls give feed back!!!!×ø®┴»

Razorback!!!

Have you ever wanted to watch a really stupidly well-made movie about a great big giant pig that eats everybody, like Lena Dunham? Well Razorback is just such a film!!!

lol guess who?

The movie stars no one of consequence, and concerns a man's quest to find what really happened to his girlfriend, who, of course, was eaten by a giant pig. Along the way he encounters an old man who lost his kid to the said pig-monster, and a pair of kangaroo hunters who drive a big beast that looks straight out of The Road Warrior. Maybe they don't realise that movie wasn't real, or maybe to Australians it was.

Get in, loser. We're going to get the guzzoline.

Anyway, this assortment of protagonists pursues Moby Pig with the dogged determination of Captain Ahab. It's Jaws with a pig. Jaws is Moby Dick with a shark. I read Moby Dick in high school and that's all I did.

He's dead Jim.

The best part of the film is when the hero gets lost in the desert and has to sleep up a creaky windmill or something to escape from pigs. He yells at the pigs "Ha ha you stupid pigs! You are pigs and cannot reach me!" He was so happy. But then the thing collapsed. Then he wandered around in the desert and goes fucking bonkers and starts seeing visions and it's really super cool because it comes out of left-field so you share him going crezzy.

holy crap look at this fucking shit

Like all 80s movies, it ends with a fight in a smoke-filled industrial space (The Terminator, Empire Strikes Back, Cobra), and the hero whacks the pig and makes so much bacon that all Australia could eat for a month.

ain't no Razorback girl

What's confusing about the movie is that it's a simple, basically inconsequential story about a few people chasing a pig, but it's one of the best visual movies ever seen. Every single shot in this movie could be framed and hung on your wall, even the ones of the giant pig. Definitely see this movie, it's way better than whatever stupid crap you like.

Mad Max Ripoffs: World Gone Wild!!!

World Gone Wild opens with the one thing even The Road Warrior was fundamentally missing: hair metal. In this world (gone wild), oh, let's say...water is scarce. A few nice hippies live in a community with water known as Lost Wells, which is made of cars.

But trouble comes looking for them in the form of a bunch of choirboys riding a helicopter. Not through the sky though; they just drive it around like a car. Maybe the budget didn't stretch to flying the fucking thing. The leader of the baddies, played by Adam Ant, is named Derek.

The Lord Humungus. The Immortan Joe. Derek.

So Bruce Dern kills one of his choirboys by flicking a bowl off the ground into his neck. Impressed by his fuckery of physics, Adam Ant decides to leave, but with the ominous suggestion he'll be back. It's up to Bruce Dern to find a hero to save his town, and that hero is none other than Michael Paré, from Streets of Fire.

Paré shows he's got what it takes by beating an Old West-style gunslinger, so Bruce Dern and the female lead take him and a bunch of other hoodlums back to Model T Fort to prepare it against Adam Ant's purposelessly delayed return. Much time is killed with Adam Ant reading from The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Manson and everyone trying to rape Main Girl, who is practically approaching Hood Ornament Girl from Wheels of Fire levels of getting raped.

Finally all the good guys' bad guys spring their trap for Adam Ant and his choirboys and motorcyclists, and have a whale of a time killing them with snakes, golf clubs and purple spandex, like this fruity fuck:

This movie is particularly endearing because of the attention to detail evident in the locations and costumes. One woman has CDs for earrings, while another guy has like a hubcap for a hat or something. This sort of repurposing of crap is an overlooked part of the post-apocalypse aesthetic. The movie also develops its setting reasonably well, and has plenty of likeable misfit characters. I would recommend this movie, if you've already seen all the good ones.

Post-apocalypse checklist:

MOHAWKS: none.

SHOULDER PADS: a couple.

CUSTOM CARS: nothing stands out, but the fort is made of cars, so that counts.

MUTANTS: none, but there are cannibals.

GOGGLES: Derek wears them.

TOTAL: 3/5 - somewhat post-apocalyptic.

Product testing for consumer benefit

How does this crash helmet I found measure up to some standard testing? Like and subscribe for moar nontent!!!

Has this ever happened to you?

Where you're asleep, and you're dreaming about something funny, and you laugh yourself awake, and it's early morning so you've got a boner, and you're just lying there at 6 in the morning, cracking up with a hardon?

Is that normal?

Finally, I found my new home.

Yes.

Mad Max Ripoffs: Raiders of the Sun!!!

It is a consistent rule of post-apocalypse movies that whatever is in shortest supply is used most recklessly. Mad Max and The Road Warrior are all about the scarcity of gasoline, yet everyone spends all their time driving around and into one another. Raiders of the Sun continues in this tradition by having a shortage of gunpowder at the centre of its plot, yet everyone spends their time engaging in massive, unnecessary shootouts. There's no mention of a gasoline shortage, but we can assume there is one too, because in one scene a bunch of dudes dance around a family of dwarfs splashing tanks of it on them. This is the movie's chilling message: in a world without the internets, we would set fire to little people for our entertainment. The sequel will be about a dwarf shortage.

Even after the nuclear holocaust, dwarfs carry axes. That's racist.

The opening narration actually suggests the world was getting better, under the organisation of good guys "The Alpha League". Unfortunately they're now in a state of civil war against a rebel faction led by this guy:

"I do not want things to get better. I want to blow things up and be a bad guy :(" - actual dialogue.

You can tell he's the leader because he's the only one who put any effort into his outfit. In the post-apocalypse, it's clearly not tactical skill that grants leadership, but the size and extravagance of your shoulder pads. The only exception to this rule is the Lord Humungus, but that's because he was fucking huge.

In their quest to get more gunpowder to prevent the civil war from sort of awkwardly winding down, the main bad guy allies with another bad guy, whose name I also can't remember, who does nothing all day but half-assedly attempt to rape the women his minions bring him. He's the most laid-back rapist I've ever seen in a movie. When the Main Girl is brought before him she kicks him in the face and knocks out a tooth, and he just kind of chuckles and sends her away. He's like the rape equivalent of a Bond villain: in no hurry.

"Alas, poor molar. I knew it well" - not actual dialogue

The problem with this movie is that it's more like GI Joe than Mad Max. There are too many pitched battles and not enough chases. There is, however, a cool scene where Main Girl's husband joins Bond Rapist's gang to rescue her, and has to undergo an "initiation" that involves swinging from ropes in a duel to the death with another of Bond Rapist's henchmen. Now, I'm no mathematician, but it strikes me that if everyone who joins his gang has to kill one of his guys, his gang is never going to get any bigger. Fortunately, this is set after a nuclear war so no one questions stupid shit like that.

Post-apocalypse checklist:

MOHAWKS: none.

SHOULDER PADS: only the main bad guy has them, but they're very large.

CUSTOM CARS: the spiky one from Wheels of Fire makes another appearance and is knocked off the cliff in the same way, probably because they reused the footage, and the dwarf family drive some kind of station wagon type effort with a bunch of crap piled on.

MUTANTS: none.

GOGGLES: Main Bad Guy has some that he perches on his military-style hat.

TOTAL: 3/5 - naht very post-apocalyptic.

Album review: LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, by Charles Manson

Hey folks it's that time of year again!!! The time when I review an album of music for your listening pleasure. Today's album is a bit of a classic, yet sorely overlooked by the music press due to its singer/songwriter being involved in some interesting side projects. Charlie "Jesus Christ" Manson was a hippy who auditioned for the Monkees and squatted in one of the Beach Boys' houses, before breaking away from show biz to develop his own sound. I used to own his live album too, but I sold it because it sucked balls. It was recorded in a prison and the main instrument was the toilet flushing in the background. But LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, an album released to help fund his trial expenses, is his real artistic statement.

Sadly, Charlie's image was a little too unorthodox for the mainstream charts.

The album starts with "Look At Your Game Girl", which would letter be covered by the Guns and Roses. This sets the standard that will be maintained throughout the artist's oeuvre, in which the lyrics start off coherent and flatten out into a repetitive drawl like something a crazy wall-slapper would say over and over. He then lurches into "Ego", an uptempo meditation on Freudian theory with a nice string break for variety.

In fact there's quite an impressive variety of sounds on this album, though almost all anchored to this cool-ass chunky guitar sound. Charlie's vocals are similarly varied, as he tries on different personae on the various tracks. "Mechanical Man" he sings like a mechanical person of some sort, and relays the sad story of his pet monkey who died, although this may not be entirely autobiographical.

Charlie also lets the Family girls chime in on "I'll Never Say Never To Always", which sounds exactly like the kind of slightly-off nursery rhyme type melody they used to put in horror movies in the 70s, so maybe Charlie invented the trend.

The production is a little rough around the edges, but that's good because it allows Charlie to spread out his ideas, which often seem like sketches and half-finished musings, but are always tuneful and intriguing.

It's a shame Charlie didn't pursue his music more successfully, because you could slip some of this stuff into a playlist of late-60s standards like Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane and Crackerjack Fuckface* and you'd never know. In a parallel universe somewhere Charlie is remembered as a rock star like Jim Morrison, instead of a crazy-eyed cult leader who cut a guy's ear off and his hangers-on killed people.

9/10 very good album.

*This is not a real band.

Trolling at the Movies: Pumpkin!!!

Hello friends! You may not have heard of Pumpkin, because no one has. I've never met someone who's seen Pumpkin, and I think it's because everyone tried to bury it. The writer and director team have no more credits after it on IMDb, as if everyone in the industry made sure they never worked again. They tried to forget the movie ever happened, because it trolled them so hard.

The expression of a star beginning to doubt the movie is exactly what it seems.

Pumpkin stars Christina Ricci (Buffalo 66) as a popular blonde sorority sister who, in a twist of fate that would make Shakespeare hang up his tights, falls madly in love with a special kid. The movie asks, Rachel Dolezal-style, a question so absurd as to be unanswerable: can retards love?

Trick question: everyone loves Christina Ricci.

Make no mistake: there is no expectation of an answer behind this. Rather, it is a work of trolling that obliterates the line between the ridiculous and the sublime. If you can get behind a normal person having a relationship with a differently clever person, you're OK with exploitation of the oblivious, but if you can't, you're saying people of slowness don't deserve to find love with hot sorority girls. I'm sorry, that wasn't very PC; "systers of elevated temperature". For people who care deeply about how compassionate and socially aware they look, this is a tortuous dilemma.

Pumpkin is a sensitive young man.

So Christina Ricci has a lark playing the opposite of her character from the Addams Family movies. But her world is turned urpside durn when she's assigned a neuro-atypical citizen to tutor! What ever could ensue????????

Oh.

On finding that she only has eyes for Pumpkin, her erstwhile boyfriend has a tearful breakdown in his car, resulting in the greatest crash ever on film, in which his car bursts into a huge, comet-like tail of fire as soon as it falls off the edge of the cliff, and burns all the way down. It's like a cross between an episode of Invitation to Love and a Jim Steinman song.

As you can see, Pumpkin is great. But I don't think you can appreciate how great it is unless you watch it. I can't even tell if Christina Ricci is complicit in the trolling, or is being trolled, so finely balanced is her performance.

I think she gets it, but won't let on.

It's a shame this movie didn't become more well known, because I would have loved to see people debate these stupid issues like they were real issues, the way people do today. Pumpkin was so ahead of its time it's unreal. Like Rachel Dolezal over a decade later, it revealed that, far from the developmentally disabled, it's the self-important and self-serious that are the true retards.

I found a site that lets you map out the effects of a nuke.

Here you go: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

It must be nice to have a bastard like me give you all the best links on the inter net.

How many people died in UR hometown??? Post your score in the comments!!!

Movie Independence Day Presents: ***!!South of Heaven!!***

South of Heaven is the best movie ever.

Make Your Own Monument Valley: $4.99 at Bastardmart.

Like Streets of Fire, South of Heaven smushes genres together to create something fresh and different. It’s a little bit like Tarantino (but better), the Coen Brothers, early Lynch (Eraserhead to Elephant Man), Raimi, Peckinpah, and Happy Tree Friends.

It's not a party until everybody dies.

There are two brothers who are meant to be collaborating on a novel, but one of them’s run off with a psycho, played by Shea Wigham in the best performance ever: “Mad Dog”. So the other brother gets visited by these two vaudeville goons who think he’s the other brother so they kick the shit out of him. This lady from a film noir keeps hanging around. Shit gets real. “Mad Dog” sings a Depeche Mode song. Then they all meet up in a little house and there’s a showdown, but not quite the one you might expect.

This is the expression of a serious individual.

Anyway, the plot isn't really that important. What’s important is the movie’s style: all the exteriors are like sets with backdrops, the characters are designed after Tex Avery cartoons, George “The Animal” Steel makes a cameo where he just sits there, and “Mad Dog” has a speech about a chicken which is better than everything. Most indie-type filmmakers try to hedge their bets by making their movies all ironical, so if they suck they can say they did it on purpose. South of Heaven is a little bit different than that: the content is funny, but the characters are serious, so you might find you actually give a shit about what happens to them. It’s a dark-comic tone of a different flavour than your typical dark-comedy.

The shirt that heralds the end times.

The other reason to see it is because the DVD by Synapse Pictures is really sweet. I don’t normally care that much about DVD packages, but this one is textbook so you should all buy it twice and give a copy to your grandma (if she likes really violent film noir cartoon westerns). It’s got three feature commentaries and three short films that are actually really long (but really inventive as well). The short films are definitely up themselves, but still really good anyway. I want to marry this DVD and have human-DVD-hybrid babies with it. I think they’d look like this guy:

Anyway, see South of Heaven.

Mad Max Ripoffs: Wheels of Fire!!!

Time for another Mad Max ripoff, my pretties. This one is fondly remembered by genre fans for the topless lady who becomes a living hood ornament for the bad guys. I can only dream of the day I'll be a big enough bastard to drive around with a topless woman strapped to the hood of my car, and frequently do. I'd give her some stock lines to learn so when we got stuck in traffic she could yell abuse at the other drivers based on their cars. I couldn't see anything, and would run over everyone all the time, but it would be worth it.

Villain solves this problem by standing, which must be fun over long distances. Image censored for boobs, as we wouldn't want to upset anybody.

To understand how she came to be strapped to the car, you'd have to go back to a different time. A time when her boyfriend is trying to win a car or something by fighting some weed. The weed subs in a big guy and the boyfriend starts getting his ass beat. Just when all seems lost, our indifference is blown by the arrival of Trace, Hood Ornament's brother and our nominal hero, who rescues boyfriend from a beatdown. They're then chased through the desert until they separate for no reason, and the bad guys capture our heroine.

I shall call the villain Standy, Who Stands On Cars.

In a bold artistic choice, she plays the whole kidnapping and sexual torture scenario with a sort of half-bored indignation, almost as if her trauma has induced a state of bad acting. We can forgive this though, as it's absolutely hilarious.

But do not be mildly perturbed, dear readers!!! For Trace slowly develops a plan to save her, or at least a general feeling that he might. But first, he picks up some other chick with a pet hawk, who falls into a cave and finds another teammate, who claims to be psychic because she can tell the cannibals who live there are planning to eat her. I think this girl is full of shit, because all her psychic insights suspiciously resemble the bleeding obvious.

She also claims to be able to translate this dwarf's thoughts into English, because in Wheels of Fire, dwarfs have their own language.

After a while, Trace, Hawky and Psychic run into a bunch of fucking hippies who are building a space rocket to get off post-apocalyptic Earth and start a new life. It would be awesome if the movie ended with their rocket climbing a few hundred feet and then collapsing, but it didn't happen. Trace, however, immediately forgets about looking for his sister and starts arguing about politics with some guy, and then with Hawky, whom he then sexes in public, then he leaves. I think Trace is autistic.

How many people were they planning to fit into that rocket? Fuck if Wheels of Fire knows!

I won't give away the ending, but it's not that the hippies go to space in their rocket ship. Wheels of Fire is somewhat of a classic, but suffers from the same problems that most of these ripoffs do: they have plenty of cars, explosions, sexy women and shoulder pads, but they're shot so indifferently you might as well be watching security footage. There's a small scene in this one where Trace sneaks up behind a rock before moving on, only it's filmed from in front of the rock, so what we're actually looking at is a rock covering most of the screen. They should have put the camera on the other side of the rock, with Trace. And that, my friends, is a free film school lesson for you.

Post-apocalypse checklist:

MOHAWKS: none.

SHOULDER PADS: a couple of bad guys have them, but nothing special.

CUSTOM CARS: there's a nice one with spikes, Trace has a flamethrower and grill attached to his, and naturally the bad guys accessorise theirs with Playboy Girl.

MUTANTS: underground cannibals that resemble the Morlocks from the 1960 version of The Time Machine, and presumably the psychic, unless she's just bullshitting.

GOGGLES: one of the bad guys and one of the hippies has them.

TOTAL: 4/5 - very post-apocalyptic.

"Humongous future in greeting cards" is the "I coulda been a contender" of St Elmo's Fire.

Remember St Elmo's Fire? The people in that movie thought the future was gonna be so great, because it was the 80s. Haha, fools.

The British rail network is a joke.

Video: a train recently leaking. Britain confirmed for third world country.

The rail network in Britbongistan is the oldest in the world and runs like it hasn't been updated since. Delays of anything from half an hour to several hours are considered normal, carriages are generally overcrowded, and there's always some old hag reading the Daily Mail. It's getting so bad that this generation of Britbongs don't even know simple rules of Bongish etiquette, like never sit next to or opposite someone. When I were a lad (I were never a lad), up to two thirds of a carriage's inhabitants would stand to avoid the terrible awkwardness of sitting next to someone. Diagonal was acceptable, but still frowned on, as it should be.

I was at a station recently where we weren't sure which of two late trains would arrive first, and on which platform. When we asked a worker which way we should gamble, she said "stay at the top of the stairs, and whichever one gets in first, run for it".

Do you remember when people in the 20th Century thought the 21st would be like the Jetsons? But instead, it was like the Flintstones.

I think we should add up all the times trains are delayed, and for every twenty-four hours of delay-time, we should keel-haul Richard Branson behind one of his shit-ass trains for ten minutes. I think this would see a dramatic improvement, but the government has yet to reply to my letters :(

12 rebel flags too hot for public viewing!!!