BECAUSE I COULDN'T DRAW A SMURF, okay? Those damn Gnomes bugged me too.

How to save some time: when you read the newspapers, skip over anything to do with a drunken movie star, or a movie star in ReHab, or about to be released from ReHab, or is about to go into ReHab. Ignore movies with Pauly Shore, Larry the Cable Guy and Rob Schneider. Do not buy a best seller. Do not purchase things endorsed by Celebrity's. Do not read about dead Celebrity's and the aftermath of their death. Avoid reality TV. Albums by anyone who has won "American Idol" suck. If you want music, don't purchase anything by Bob Dylan. If you want to watch Television Programs, wait for the DVD.

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I got on the mind jag because I was trying to load a list onto Amazon.com about books and DVD's that aren't available, or have gone out of print. It seems that you can't write about it if the product can't be sold. So part of my list would be:

GHASTLY BEYOND BELIEF, edited by Neil Gaiman...a collection of off the wall quotes from bad science fiction books and films. Amazon.com has a gentleman willing to part with his copy for $177.00

Nigel Kneale's BBC broadcast DVD issue of YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS. Other gentleman in the Amazon.Com.UK want £90. for this item. And the original broadcasts of the three QUATERMASS series are not generally available here (QUATERMASS 2 is obtainable from Sinister Cinema somewhere on the web).

THE BED SITTING ROOM was nominated for a Hugo, but hasn't been seen on a VHS tape or a DVD. An interesting all star cast for this Spike Milligan adapted play about a post holocaust world where people turn into furniture.

more later?

YOUR DOG LOOKS DEMENTED, wrote Susan Palermo, after I had downloaded this image. The dog is a cross between something like a Beagle and a runty Shi zu. (That one eyed dog a few postings back is the Daddy. I think he used a chair).

I seem to have accumulated a few biographies. It's a polite way to eavesdrop, reading over the lives of people who interested me.

I have a biographies and autobiographies of Mark Twain, John Leguizamo, Charles Addams, Richard Pryor, Wally Wood, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and a few others.... I did read the one on Charles Addams, which I found kind of sorrowful. He managed to allow others to siphon off his money and never really set up defenses against such situations. On the other hand, he dated Greta Garbo and Jackie Kennedy. Surprisingly, he found ideas for cartoons to be few, and often relied on others for suggestions.

And it has been cold these past few days. I cut up logs, haul them to the house, sit by the fire with a copy of a Stephen King or L. Ron Hubbard book. Big thick books like these two write will keep a fire going all weekend.

DEAD CAT ZEN is not the name of this e zine blog, but someone might like to use it.

Minor adventures in rural living...

My wife makes soap. She uses grease from cooking. Things that would otherwise clog up the pipes in this old house. Often she adds a few items like Matico herb to keep mold at bay.

Several bars of green soap were made. Placed in the bathroom, I used them for washing.

Then they began to vanish.

They weren't small. The dogs didn't have access to the bathroom. Currently, there are no small children living here to flush things down the loo. (There once was one.)

I set up a live trap, and several hours later, caught a nice, well fed female rat. A rat hungry enough to eat soap. I took it down a mile toward the wildlife refuge and let it go.

I'm not fond of rats, would have prefered set up a kill trap, but did not know how long the trap would be needed. Wandering around in socks tapping a kill trap didn't suit my sense of dread.

By the way, one distinct advantage in living out in the boonies, is that during the summer, if someone from the local Watchtower group comes forth with their little booklets, I just tell them to wait by the door for a few minutes. After a few minutes of fighting off mosquitos and deer flies, they leave.

THE GREEN SLIME 1968 MGM. with Robert Horton, Richard Jaekyl, Lucianna Paluzzi. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

When someone asks me, “What’s one of your favorite science fictions films that are also bad?” I mention this film, and get an odd shrug, even from people who might have seen it.

In a really useful book on Japanese cinema called MONSTERS ARE ATTACKING TOKYO (by Stuart Galbraith, Feral House 1998, and OOP), the director of this film has recollections of the films inception...Kinji Fukasaku says...”THE GREEN SLIME was about three times the average Japanese budget...Instead of using three Japanese actors we used three foreign stars....and then amateurs from the local military base.” (page 105) Other revelations included the news that the film was about Vietnam, with Americans discovering and involving themselves with something they could not understand and could not control.

The film really tries to be different and meaningful, but the one eyed unpurple people zappers undermine the whole production as something promising to be scary, but getting further away from its actual intent with the accumulation of too many off centered details.

Back to the beginning: an asteroid is heading towards earth. It has come out of no where, no previous coordination known, and heading straight for earth. Not too much time to stop it, so a crew is quickly assembled to blow it to bits. It is named Flora.

The love triangle that involves Elliot and his ol' girlfriend and her really married to him new boyfriend never graduates beyond the level of high school play. And Robert Horton's hair is prefect. He fights, he takes off his helmet, he is thrown against a wall, and his titanium welded hair is still intact. A bomb could go off next to his head, splatter his brains all over the universe, and all those hair follicles would be intact and ready to go.

What is amusing is some of the set designs that don’t match common sense. The big burly Americans are seen drinking out of teacups (on a spaceship?), clocks with analog dials are seen on the walls, with plugs coming out.There's a 1960's teletype. The spaceships emit vapor and smoke in a vacuum, the walls shake frequently. The space station is a large torus, but all the rooms seem to be square. The spaceships catches on fire and tilts towards the earth, and explodes when it "hits" the atmosphere.

And as for those rubbery flabby electricity munching aliens who hitch hiked a ride from the atmospheric asteroid...they seem kind of funny looking. I have seen the film a few times, and I keeping wondering if I'll ever see a pair of sneakers near the floor holding up the costume.

This is a great bad movie. It tries to tell a story, but loses control of it.