There is always something fascinating about a book made by the hand of an artist.  The problem with seeing books in museums is always the same though: you can only see two pages of any given book.  But since most people have no experience with turning a book’s pages, you simply would not want to trust patrons with this responsibility.

One of Kiefer’s main instincts has always been to try to look directly at the horrific history of Germany in the twentieth century.  These book pages contain some of his attempts to do so.

By Steve Bynghall

Steve Bynghall lives in London, England. Other poems about Brooke and her useless Dad appear on Smories.com.  Visit http://www.smories.com/author/steve-bynghall/ for more details.  If you want to be notified when a new Brooke story will be appearing please email brookesortsitout@gmail.com.

The End

“Brooke and the Ramshackle Ship” Copyright © 2010 by Steve Bynghall, All Rights Reserved

Vimeo user Quirky Pictures pointed me to this strange and dark little film about a dog losing its home and wandering through a rather horrible and tragic life. The film uses multiple flip book frames to tell its story in a series of loops. It was made by Stephen Irwin at small time inc. as an Animate Projects Commission for England’s Channel 4.

Another film from the Candlelight Stories Short Films group on Vimeo.

The Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles has made my latest short film, Yellow Plastic Raygun, part of their official selection!  So if you are in Los Angeles on Saturday, September 11, 2010 and you want to see an evening of short films, come by the Civic Center Theater at First and Main Street right across from the City Hall building.  The shorts program starts at 10:00 pm.  Here’s a link to the festival schedule.

I am very happy about this.  I like the idea of a film festival right here at home where I can go and hang around with some other insane filmmakers.  It should be an interesting Saturday night.

Who is Tanya Grishko? She made this film and it’s just absolutely magnificent. There’s not a false note anywhere in it. The timing is brilliant, never missing a beat. I love the scene in the bar where she starts lapping her drink and all the customers are just staring at her. Fantastic. Beautiful drawings. If you’re running an animation studio, just meet Ms. Grishko on the corner, walk her through the front door, sit her down at a desk and have her start working.

Another film from the Candlelight Stories Short Films group on Vimeo.

Dammit! I’m outta here! Weeeeeeeeee!

From DialHouse

That means that all you unattractive, bedroom-bound, nerdish, geekster, loser, babeless nobodies can actually get up a little nonexistent courage and emerge from your domiciles to take your first tentative steps across the street with a real live honest-to-god paper-printed comic book in your hands!  Woooooo!  Get it on, baby!  Jivesteppin’ along the street with my ink pages!

Flavorwire has a nice little post about what comics to read for certain locations if you want to fit in and look cool.  I don’t happen to suffer from the decease of timidity or humble nerdishness.  I’m a real bastard who likes to walk up and push ballpoints into people’s throats if I think they aren’t showing proper respect.  So whatever your problem with reading comics in public might be I’m probably not going to understand it or be very sympathetic.  In fact, I might just chase your ass through the park to have a good laugh at your expense.

So, go for it.  Read your stupid comic in public tomorrow.  I dare you.

By Mark L. Glosser

The Ketchup Bottle Genie

“Hey,” Eric yelped as he watched his younger brother Ian shake a huge glob of ketchup onto his sandwich. “You emptied the bottle. What am I supposed to put on my hot dog?”

“Mom got another bottle,” Ian mumbled as he stuffed half the sandwich in his mouth, Go look in the refrigerator.”

Eric stomped to the refrigerator and pulled out a weird shaped-bottle. “Genie Ketchup Company? I never heard of this brand,” said Eric as he unscrewed the lid.

A moment after the lid came off; all the ketchup in the bottle squirted to the ceiling, and started to spin like a tornado.Eric and Ian dove under the table.

A flash of light momentarily blinded them.  When their vision cleared they saw a man with long, black hair floating in mid-air. His red pants barely fit over his bulging belly, and his white shirt was splattered with ketchup.

Peeking out from under the table Eric asked in a trembling voice, “Who are you?”

The strange visitor floated down from the ceiling and looked under the table. “I’m the Ketchup Bottle Genie. Haven’t you heard of me?”

“No,” said Eric.

“Why are you living in a ketchup bottle?” asked Ian. “I thought genies lived in magic lamps.”

Wiping a tear from his eye the genie said, “One day at genie school I accidently said the wrong spell and turned the principal into a frog the size of an elephant. To get even, when I graduated from school, he gave me a ketchup bottle to live in instead of a magic lamp.  People laugh when they see me come out of a ketchup bottle.”

Pausing, the genie blew his nose in a large, blue handkerchief. “I wish I was famous like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp.  Then people wouldn’t laugh at me. That hurts my feelings and makes me angry.”

Without thinking, Eric laughed, “Maybe you can get a job selling ketchup at a supermarket.”

The genie jumped to his feet and pointed his finger at Eric, “I told you I don’t like being laughed at.  You’ll be sorry.”

The genie disappeared into the ketchup bottle.  An instant later a puff of smoke surrounded Eric’s head.  When the smoke cleared, Eric’s eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw his face in the mirror. His nose had turned into a big, green pickle.

In a trembling voice, Eric spoke into the ketchup bottle, “I apologize for laughing.  Please turn my pickle back into a nose.”

The genie stuck his head out of the bottle, “If you want me to give you back your nose help me become famous so people won’t laugh at me.”

Eric said, “What if we take you to school.  You can tell everyone there about your adventures.”

“Okay,” said the genie.  The next morning, a moment after Ian, Eric and the genie walked  in the school door, a voice said, “Hold it right there!

They spun around. Miss Lambert, the meanest teacher in the school, scowled over the top of her glasses and stared at the genie. “You don’t belong here. You’re not a student, and you’re not Ian’s and Eric’s father.” Go away!”

The genie glared at Miss Lambert and walked out the door muttering some strange sounding words.

Moments later Miss Lambert crinkled her nose and said, “What’s that awful smell?  Something smells like rotting garbage.”  For the rest of the day, Miss Lambert tried to figure out where the smell was coming from. No one dared say it came from her.

“Your idea didn’t work,” the genie grumbled to Eric when they got home.

“I hope you like pickles because I’m not giving you back your nose.  Maybe the next time you meet a genie you won’t laugh at him. I’m leaving.”

Eric absentmindedly scratched his pickle and thought fast.  Then he had a brainstorm.  But, he would need the genie to grant him one wish to make it happen.

When the genie heard Eric’s plan he knew he would be famous.  No one would laugh at him anymore. The genie was so excited he immediately gave Eric his nose back, and granted Eric the one wish he needed for his plan to work.

A few minutes later, Eric and Ian walked to the window and waited.  Eric smiled when, just as he had wished, a truck from the television station parked in front of the house and a famous reporter climbed out.

His plan was working.

A few weeks later Eric and Ian turned on the television to watch the new hit show everyone was talking about.

The show was called, The Adventures of the Ketchup Bottle Genie.  Now everyone in the world knew about the Ketchup Bottle Genie. He was famous.  No one laughed at him anymore.

The End

“The Ketchup Bottle Genie” Copyright © 2010 by Mark L. Glosser, All Rights Reserved

By Pam Farley

Pamela Farley is an Australian author of dark fiction. She is a member of the Australian Horror Writer’s Association and has had more than a dozen of her short stories published in magazines in Australia and the UK. Pam lives in rural South Australia with family and assorted animals. She works in a country veterinary practice.

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/PamelaFarley

Today’s weird tale takes us to a remote farmhouse… at night.  The power goes out… Where are the matches?  Where’s the cat?  What’s that glow through the trees?

Adult Themes

Reaping

Samantha had been away for the weekend with her girlfriends. The break had been fun and all the girls were still laughing raucously when they dropped her at the gate. Her small farm house was ten kilometers from town, and in the still rural-twilight the din the girls made seemed to linger in the air.

As she got out of the car Samantha could hear the telltale clinking of empty Cruiser bottles rolling around on the car’s floor. The girls were singing, loud and off key while she got her bag from the boot. When the tooting vehicle departed there were limbs flailing from all four windows. The car turned at the end of the road and disappeared. Darkness came on suddenly, accompanied by a cool wind. Samantha swayed and clutched the gate post. The three drinks she had gulped down in the last hour had gone to her head. She gave a giggle.

The sensor light failed to come on when Samantha walked to the porch. The area was in shadow and she couldn’t see a thing. She tripped on the metal boot scraper by the door and swore. It was sheer luck when the key in her hand found its way into the lock, and the back door sprung open.

It was darker in the house than it had been outside and Samantha’s hands fumbled along the walls from memory, but there was no response from any of the light switches. More obscenities sprang from her mouth as she realized that the problem was within the fuse box outside. By bumping and feeling her way to the laundry she located the torch on a shelf next to the clothes dryer.

‘At least this still works,’ she muttered to the night.

But the globe glowed dim and she knew it would not last for long. She rushed outside to check the fuses. Panic had rendered her sober and dexterous. A systematic check of the old porcelain plugs soon helped her to identify the blown one. She re-threaded it with the fine steel wire kept inside the power box. But when she replaced the plug and threw the switch there was a loud bang as it blew again.

‘You piece of shit!’ she exclaimed.

Her nearest neighbor lived over a kilometer away and she did not feel like making the trek over rocky paddocks in this blackness. She wasn’t sure what help he could offer anyway, he was no electrician. She looked across the distance toward his house.

A tiny glint of light cut through the night. Samantha glanced up to see if the moon was reflecting off something, but the sky was a blanket of black. The light must be coming from my neighbor’s house, she thought.

She shrugged and went back inside. With the dimming flashlight in her hand she went in search of candles and a lighter. Silently she cursed herself for giving up smoking. At least in those days she could put a hand on a half a dozen lighters in a heartbeat. A small oil-burning lamp sat at the bottom of her kitchen cupboard and she lit it with the last match in the box. It gave off an eerie glow but it would be more reliable than the failing torch.

It struck her as odd that her cat, Fanny, had not yet come to greet her, and she walked through the house calling her pet. From the dining room window she spotted the glow from across the paddock.

Did it seem brighter, or perhaps closer? She wondered.

Fanny’s white coat looked luminous in the lantern’s yellow flame and Samantha bent to touch her. The cat was cold and solid. Samantha’s hand flinched away as a shudder of fear passed through her. She cried out with a wet sob.

Fanny was quite dead.

Samantha tried to think what might have happened to her pet. The window was propped open to give the cat access outside, so perhaps a car had hit her. Hard to believe when only a handful of people ever used the thoroughfare. In summertime she would have considered a snake bite, but it was far too cold this time of the year for such nasties to be out and about. The animal had been in rude good health when she had left on Friday night, so whatever had befallen her, it must have been sudden.

Hot salty tears spilled down her cheeks as she carried the stiffened body of her beloved cat. But even in her misery Samantha’s blurring eyes were drawn once more to the ever-brightening glow in the paddock. It was starting to take form and it was definitely closer.

She wondered if it was her neighbor working late, perhaps tending to a sick cow. But surely it was the wrong direction. His livestock were kept much further south. With this thought in mind she felt hot prickly worry. It made her squirm. Her own pony and goat were out there somewhere, and she hoped that her brother had remembered to come and feed them.

Perhaps that was Phil out there with a torch, she wondered. Perhaps one of my animals has taken ill. She looked down at the stiff body in her arms. Surely I couldn’t be that unlucky.

Her tears had begun again and she berated herself for not being tougher.

Phil’s car had not been parked outside, she told the dead cat, and so he couldn’t be here. Samantha sniffed and jutted out her chin. She had been alone in this isolated cottage for three years since her mother had died. She was used to the remoteness but her pets were important to ward off any feelings of loneliness.

From the kitchen she got a garbage bag and wrapped Fanny in it. She put the body in the wash-trough and went outside to check on her other pets. The lantern flickered in the mild breeze but did not extinguish. Samantha used the fence as a guide, fumbling and tripping over shrubs and rocks. She pulled her cardigan tight around her. The temperature seemed to have dropped now that she stood on open ground. The cold gusts soon had her teeth chattering. She shielded the lamp with her body, knowing how vulnerable the tiny flame was.

The glow was much nearer now and she presumed that whoever was out there would call to her soon. She strained her eyes to try to pick out either the goat’s shaggy white coat, or Pip’s darker chestnut form. Her call carried across the yard but was not returned with either a bleat or a neigh.

The catch on the old rusty gate was stuck and she had to heave against it to get it to unlatch. But it still didn’t move even once it was undone, and all the pushing and cursing she expended on it could not make it budge.

‘Crap, crap and double crap,’ she cursed.

She swung her head around toward the glow in the paddock, feeling momentarily guilty about swearing. The light drew ever closer but she still could not make out who it was. An involuntary quiver caused her arm to shake and the lantern to tip. Samantha fought to steady it before it fell onto the ground. The flame ebbed and spluttered but remained lit. It was then that she saw the body of her pony on the other side of the gate.

No,’ she whispered. ‘Pip, Pip get up, please.’

But when she reached out to touch the pony’s neck she knew that it wasn’t possible. Nor was it possible for the goat nearby, whose body was stiffened and beginning to bloat, to ever stand again.

They were both dead.

‘No! No! Why?’ she howled.

Tears flooded as the pain of loss hit her like a punch to the stomach. Her head reeled with the tragedy of the situation. It took a few seconds before she comprehended that these creatures had not died by accident. An icy tingle went up her spine and her mouth became quite dry. Samantha swallowed hard. The light had disappeared behind the garden shed. When it re-emerged she wanted to greet whomever with dignity, not blubbering like some kindergarten child.

The brightness was not emitted from a torch or lamp; it came from the creature itself. It was tall and slim and most certainly not human. A malicious smile appeared to cross its face as the thing moved ever closer. It exposed clusters of needle-like teeth that dripped with a greenish-yellow liquid.

This time when Samantha trembled the lantern did hit the ground, and the darkness embraced her.

The light of dawn fell upon the small farmyard. The wheat in the paddock seemed to sing in the gusty wind. It was the only sign of life for a very long way.

The End

“Reaping” Copyright © 2010 by Pam Farley, All Rights Reserved

Check it out.  It’s fun.

Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine the far-flung past in anything other than black & white because that’s the kind of image we usually see. But here is one of the oldest color film tests from the Kodak company in 1922. Here’s a link to information about the footage.

Via Neatorama

This is the opening cinematic from the upcoming Wii game Epic Mickey. It is fun and has that ever-flowing look of a Disney cartoon. I have one quibble with it. You can’t always do in computer animation what you do in hand-drawn animation. In this case, I think the problem is in Mickey’s hands. They are a little off.

Simon Tofield has another episode of his extremely amusing Simon’s Cat series.

In general, I am deeply suspicious of the web trend for geeks to head toward steampunk, octopuses, and all things Cthulhu.   There’s a vague and creeping racism underneath the cute old-fashioned, brass-fitted surface.  I’ve also held a certain amount of contempt for H.P. Lovecraft. I think the guy was a closeted white supremacist with a knack for telling horrifying tales that are about white supremacists.  I can imagine him as Sarah Palin’s favorite author… if she reads.  The Cthulhu stories are genuinely frightening and his writing does contain a high creep quotient. But I’m just about ready to launch DOS attacks on sites that dig every alien octopus that shows its tentacles.

This, of course, is Lovecraft’s Call of the Cthulhu in under 2 minutes. It’s very well done and I like the use of the newspapers to move the story. Declan Moran made it. He also made Dante’s Inferno in Under 2 Minutes.

A film about an attractive spy during a rocket launch. By Clement Bolla, Aurelia Vernhes, and Laurent Gillot.