It's The World Cup!!!!

WOOHOO!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESVjzf4FzyU
Go football.

Death By Cuteness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsMgfP5JYEM

That is all.

Europe is Under Threat!

Saw this shared on the Facebook last night and rather liked it. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOo2kbEriTs

It's a rather nice response to a video posted by the Sverigedemokratisk Ungdom - Swedish Democratic Youth(SDU), the youth wing of the Swedish Democrats who, despite their name, are a far right fascist party similar to British groups like the British National Party or the UK Independence Party. Like the BNP and UKIP they are racists and homophobes who are trying to shift the blame for the current economic meltdown on to immigrants/non-whites. Yep, they're proper classy like that.

Anyway. Here's the original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR-lAGj_dlQ

The lad at 0:10, rather amusingly - and fittingly, reminds me of this lad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co

And, for the record, Europe is under threat but it isn't under threat from immigrants or a plurality of cultures. It is under threat from ever increasing social and economic stratification, from climate change, and from far right groups seeking to use these things to bolster their support through promoting and creating tensions between people who should be united in their common interest.

Anyways, because I'll take any opportunity to share good music. Have some anti-fascist and anti-racist tunes to start your day. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_97qEJ2Raw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_n2BtvKIE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMXKt99W61A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76wSk1j02_4

And yeah, yeah. I know. It's all from the 90s. That's because a) the 1990s were objectively the greatest years for music that the world has ever seen ;) and b) there was a plethora a really good political bands in the 1990s and anti-racism/anti-fascism were the default positions for many people who listened to alternative music. This doesn't seem to be quite so true today sadly. :( Bloody kids. ;)

First Submission

Submitted my first ever short story for consideration for printing last night. God knows what I was thinking, I'm not even sure it was ready - I really do need to find some beta testers who I trust rather than just relying on C having the time to look at stuff for me.

Oh well, in for a penny and all that. :D I've got a couple of Yellow stories I'm working on at the moment that are going in interesting directions. Both of them are set in Glasgow though one is focussed on Chambers' idea of the Lethal Chamber and the other more on the manifestation of Carcosa in the city.

I Am Going to Kill(probably)

"What dark forces does this online urban legend potentially release?"

"How can we be sure our children can truly separate reality from fantasy? What are the warning signs that children are confusing the two?"

"IT’S an internet horror-cult that almost caused a killing."

Here we go again.

I'm a killer. A vicious sociopathic, deranged, killer who can not distinguish fantasy from reality. Allow me to outline my credentials for you.

First off there's the books that I read, and have always read. I read the Hobbit when I was 7-8. By the time I was 11-13 I had progressed on to reading Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, and even the gory, occasionally sado-sexual, body horror of Clive Barker.

Next there's Dungeons & Dragons. I was an avid player of all manner of role playing games when I was a pre-teen and teenager. I played D&D, AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, Middle Earth Roleplaying, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Kult, and all manner of fantastic and horror games. I loved my characters, I loved designing game realms and stories for my players when I was the dungeon master/story teller. I also loved sadistically and horribly killing my player's characters.

Satanism. Yes I flirted with Satanism for a little bit as a teenager. I had Lavey's Satanic Bible, Simon's Necronomicon, and a whole bunch of other occult texts - in nomine dei nostri satanas luciferi excelsi and all that jazz.

Drugs. I did used to love me some drugs when I was a teenager. I think that between the ages of 12 and 21 I probably took every illegal drug that was available in the UK at the time. I smoked weed pretty much daily, took acid in the summer and went picking magic mushrooms in the autumn. I don't take drugs any more as a) weed has just made me paranoid for a long time now and b) I don't have the time to be able to take 2-3 days for a proper mushroom trip and all the other ones just kinda bore me now.

Music. We all know that music is the Devil's tool. How he uses heavy metal to warp young minds with backwards messages on the records and all that satanic imagery. Punk too. I am a massive punk fan. Everything from the Sex Pistols through to the crusty anarchist punk of bands like Antisect and Rudimentary Peni.

So, I've read sick horrific fiction, role played, dabbled with Satanism, done drugs, listened to heavy metal and punk music. I must be a killer. FFS I've pretty much partaken in every moral panic inducing past time of the last 30-40 years! Unless, that is, that these moral panics are all utter nonsense. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, all these things that conservatives and well meaning but idiotic liberals get all het up about are mere distractions from the things that make our society produce people who act in the most atrocious of ways? Things like economic inequality and exploitation, racism, patriarchy. You know, the things that really mess us up. Mess us up en-masse.

Nah, must be an internet meme that causes these things. Put that mirror away you damn fool!

Anyways. Have some music that will probably make you eat babies or something.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOiS0jqlkA4[/embed]

 

The Dreamlands - Go Fund This!

Huan Vuis currently trying to raise funds to make a movie based on HP Lovecraft's dream cycle stories(Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath etc). They have a target of Eur40,000 and have so far raised nearly 10k with 57 days to go!

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct-cmghDmG0[/embed]

The Forbidden Forest - The White People

I just came across this fantastic video by Keith Rondinelli, on Matt Cardin's blog, which is inspired by the fantastic weird short story The White People by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. The video has the look of a 1970s children's cartoon yet this odd format helps it to do such a great job of capturing the sense of the numinous that so often permeates the work of Machen.

Below the video(after the jump) is the full text of The White People by Machen.

[embed]http://vimeo.com/16673163[/embed]

Slender Stabbings

Why is it that the standard societal response to any horror involving children is for society to, generally, lose its shit? The reaction to the brutal stabbing of a twelve year old girl in Wisconsin by two of her class mates beggars belief. It really does.

For those of you that haven't come across the story yet: two little girls in Wisconsin attempted to murder one of their class mates in the belief that this would curry them favour with Slenderman. Slenderman is an internet horror creation that is featured upon the horror fiction website Creepypasta. He's a collaborative fiction character that is used in the production of all manner of horror stories, images, and videos. He is a fictional character.

Now; earlier today(or yesterday depending upon your time zone) Creepypasta felt the need, understandable given the attentions of the sensationalist mainstream media, to post a statement explaining that they are a fiction site.

"This wiki does not endorse or advocate for killing, worship, and otherwise replication of rituals of fictional works. There is a line of between fiction and reality, and it is up to you to realize where the line is," an administrator for Creepypasta Wiki wrote. "We are a literature site, not a satanic cult."

It seems crazy that a publisher of obvious fictional stories should have to publish a content advisory reminding people that their fiction is fiction.

The other thing that is bewildering about this case is that the two young girls are being tried as adults. They're 12 FFS!  Regardless of the violence of the attack they are still children and should be treated as such.

Hell, even if they were 42 rather than 12 the fact that they believed they were going to go off and live in the woods with a clearly fictional character should be a dead give away that they are not competent to stand trial let alone to do so as adults! If an adult made such claims then they would be sent straight for psychological assessment. Yet because these girls are kids we lose our shit and think that we've caught the next fucking Hitler rather than just a pair of disturbed and confused pre-teens.

The same thing happened in this country(the UK for those not paying attention) in 1993 when two young boys, who were almost the exact same age as these girls in Wisconsin, abducted and murdered a three year old. These boys were treated as adults and their names and photographs released to the media. They were tried in the circus of public outrage and horror. Which I'm sure did a lot to comfort the grieving families in the case. Oh wait, no, it just ruined the lives of two more children who needed help not to be thrown to the media lions.

These girls names should never have been made pubic and they obviously need help. They do not need hounding into the American penal system.

The video below features English author Will Self being the voice of reason in a debate over the release of the, now adult, killers from 1993.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5StCxzD-jQ[/embed]