Stuff and things

Thank you to everyone who stopped by and said hi at yesterday's Mourning Market! It was great seeing folks.

I still have Cranky!Bloomers, blood spattered tea cups, and book roses, and will be posting all of them for sale in the next few days. As soon as I stop feeling exhausted and like I've been strung up on a rack and beaten with sticks, that is.

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Today is Ray Bradbury's 91st birthday. Happy birthday to one of my favorite authors! My signed copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of my most beloved books. Yes, I got to meet Mr. Bradbury over a decade ago, when he was at a DragonCon. He kindly signed my book, and even more kindly consented to having a photo taken with Clovis Devilbunny. (I need to dig that photo out and have the Stroppy One scan it for me.) In celebration, I think I am going to re-read From Dust Returned today.

Writer's Block: Scary movie

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Ahahaha. I love the horror genre; you people know that, right? Some of the movies that I find comforting in times of emotional distress include things like 30 Days of Night, Jennifer's Body and Zombieland. But. I am kind of a big wimp about suspenseful horror. Gore, monsters? Great, bring it on! Creepy suspense? I will cower behind clovisdvlbunny while watching, and not sleep because of being freaked out.

So, I have two answers for this question.

Scariest horror movie #1: Poltergeist. I have not seen this movie since ... the late 80s. This movie terrified me so much when I first saw it that I didn't sleep for three days. (Of course, that may have had something to do with when, on the way home after seeing it, Dad asked me what I thought the scariest part was. I answered "The clown doll,", because even then I Did. Not. Like. Clowns. My Mom replied, "But you used to have a doll just like that! I think it's in the attic ..." Thanks, Mom. No sleep for me!) I also had an unreasoning fear of TVs tuned to static for a very long time, but I'm (mostly) over that now.

There is a part of me that wonders if the scares of Poltergeist still hold up. But I'm not willing to watch it again to find out.

Scariest horror movie #2: The Blair Witch Project. Yes, really. No, I never believed it was a "true story". But the movie was a very clever play on the types of ghost stories I constantly read when I was a child, and the mounting tension of weird things happening and no one knowing what was happening? Yeah, that hit all the right (wrong?) terror buttons in my hindbrain. Plus the final scenes in the movie included a bit of imagery that was, I kid you not, straight out of a recurring nightmare I have had for decades. (The bloody handprints on the walls of the house. When the camera first panned across them, I think I tried to whimper and curl into a fetal position. I don't really remember.)

We saw The Blair Witch Project right after we had moved into the house, and about a week before the Stroppy One went out of town to go to Gen-Con. So there's me, in a heightened state of freak out, by myself in a newish house, not yet used to the creaks it made. One day, when I was about to go into the mostly-finished basement to feed the cats, I called my parents and made them talk to me, in the hopes that I would be less creeped out.

But I still love horror movies. Oooh, maybe I'll watch 30 Days of Night again tonight.