Cowboy Who?
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A Bit of a Laundry Bind (with Beth Lisick!)
Ouch!
Ouch! A Book About Cuts, Scratches, and Scrapes
Berger
1991
Submitter: The information in this book is fine, but it’s pretty visually dated and hasn’t been checked out in about 10 years. Mostly I’m chuckling over the extremely dramatic, unrealistic drawings of blood spurting from assorted wounds. Be sure to check out the images of the interior pages for that.
Holly: Not to mention the advanced vocabulary, like “fibrin” and “platelets.”
The post Ouch! appeared first on Awful Library Books.
Floating Heads
Today we are going to examine the phenomenon of the floating head. The floating head (or heads) have shown up enough times that I am starting to suspect that this is some kind of weird subset of book design art. I am not quite sure what the artist is trying to accomplish. Maybe bring an ethereal look? The artist can only draw heads?
The Baby Hand Knits book, particularly, is about knitting for babies. The cover only has heads, not the whole body. Why would the cover art have heads only. Shouldn’t they feature some knits on the babies?
I will grant you that the books I am showing are of a certain age, but seriously, who thought this was a good idea?
Scratching my head,
Mary
Let’s take a look at some examples:
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In this first example, we have poor Nurse Kate. She has evidently lost her body. This romance is a about her conflict with her current fiance and her employer. The employer of course is deeply misunderstood (read "difficult") and the fiance is also kind of a jackass. Since the cover only shows one man, we are left to wonder which one is the ultimate winner of Nurse Kate's affection. Click here to read the full post |
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Major Social Problems: I think they have more problems than social since they have all lost their bodies. This 1959 text comes from a small liberal arts college and as a relic from the olden days it is a bit interesting, and disturbing. The submitter has more comments on the original post which you can read here. |
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Baby Hand Knits circa 1946 is one of my favorite examples of floating heads. The baby heads float around. Considering this is about knitting for babies, you would think they might stick a hat or something on top of the heads. You know, actually show off some knitting. Read more here. |
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Our final entry is this lovely fiction title, Against That Day, 1996. I am not sure it technically qualifies as "floating heads", but I am including it anyway. This particular cover will always be one of the more bizarre on this site. Each one of the heads on this cover has a disturbing look. These people look more like something from a wax museum. The little girl is bizarrely floating in the hedges. I recommend not looking directly at this cover! See the original post here. |
The post Floating Heads appeared first on Awful Library Books.
We are in a very hateing relationship
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Complex
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Diagrams will be included in the conference proceedings volume.
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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Whisk
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Any time you have two consonants in a row, if you flip them, you're now speaking Odl Enlgihs.
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Physical Characteristics of the Tiffanys
💖 The Tale of Tiffany 💖https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LMr5XTgeyI
Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again.
## Related Videos
💖 The Tale of Tiffany 💖https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LMr5XTgeyI
Physical Characteristics of The Tiffanys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhCAbDeLgTw
Brief History of the Royal Family: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNgP6d9HraI
Discussion on Cortex Episode out of Time -- Rio Heist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcI3Gn59J8A
The first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex74x_gqTU0
## Bonnie Bees
Ben Delo, Bob Kunz, Bobby, Nevin Spoljaric, Donal Botkin, BN-12, Andrew Bereza, Rebecca Wortham, Richard Jenkins, Marco Arment, Phil Gardner, Martin, Steven Grimm, Colin Millions, emptymachine, George Lin, Jason Lewandowski, Saki Comandao, David Tyler, iulus, Jordan Earls, Nick Fish, Nick Gibson, Tyler Bryant, Xueqi, Oliver Steele, Kermit Norlund, rictic, Alex Simonides, Tim Stumbaugh, Nicholas Welna, Christopher Mutchler, Derek Bonner, Mikko, Orbit_Junkie, Tómas Árni Jónasson, Bear, chrysilis, David Palomares, Drago175, Emil, Esteban Santana Santana, Freddi Hørlyck, John Rogers, Peter Lomax, Rhys Parry, ShiroiYami, Tristan Watts-Willis, Veronica Peshterianu, Dag Viggo Lokøen, John Lee, Maxime Zielony, Elizabeth Keathley, Birdstryke, AUFFRAY Clement
## Music
David Rees: http://www.davidreesmusic.com
Every Texas Chainsaw Massacre Movie Ranked Worst To Best
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has an identity crisis that goes deeper than interchangeable skin masks. To mainstream moviegoers in 1974, pleasantly removed from the sloppy-joe stylings of Herschell Gordon Lewis and his ilk, the standard of cinematic bloodletting sat with the black-and-white Bosco of "Night of the Living Dead" -- even "The Exorcist" opted for less sacred bodily fluids. All it took to traumatize a generation was $140,000 and a bunch of Lone Star amateurs. "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" gave terror a fresh shape and a pull starter.
And yet, the original film is not especially gruesome. Director Tobe Hooper consulted the Motion Picture Association of America constantly, even before heading to the editing room, in hopes of landing a PG rating. He failed, but the result is an optical illusion that lets the viewer see more than they're ever actually shown.
The film's immediate and lasting reputation as a grisly endurance test is only half deserved. Sequels compounded that misunderstanding by baptizing marquee maniac Leatherface in the slurry of his victims, alternately exaggerating and reducing him, rendering him the same as any other slasher icon. On account, the Texas Chainsaw franchise makes up for being shorter than any of its contemporaries by being weirder. Most of the continuations feel like remakes, with only the actual remake receiving a stylistically consistent follow-up, which happens to be the first of two prequels. The sum of all these false starts and failed do-overs is the most uniquely uneven series in the genre. Here's how they all carve up.
Honorable Mention: The Funhouse
Tobe Hooper's "The Funhouse" is a closer cousin to "Massacre" than most of the actual "Massacre" sequels and their impressionists. Looking to cash in on the craze he started, Universal enlisted Hooper to ordain their own low-budget slasher series. He thumbed his nose at that idea with a Carpenter riff in the first scene, then made something else entirely.
In "The Funhouse," the misfit family is on the defensive. All the carnies want is a moment of your time and the change from your soft pretzel. The carnival's gyrating attractions and fool's gold sparkle may be Vegas to the latest crop of teenagers, but to the barkers, it's home. So, when the meddling kids inevitably meddle and see something heinous, their terror carries a tinge of responsibility -- that's what they get for gawking after the geek show.
Hooper had always wanted to do a "carnival movie" and his excitement glows on the screen like so much candy-colored fluorescence. Cinematographer Andrew Laszlo, fresh from "The Warriors," shoots it all in lavish anamorphic widescreen, flaring even the farthest bulbs into pink supernovas. But don't let the studio budget fool you -- there's no mistaking the controlled hysteria of a hundred antique robots coming to life. Some swivel. Some rock in tiny chairs. Others claw with broken limbs at props long lost. The best one laughs, closing out the movie with the blackest punchline of all. Universal didn't get its hit, but at least Hooper got away with this.
8. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Everything wrong with this is right there in the trailer: "Witness the birth of fear." A not-inconsiderable part of the original's discomfort lies in its ragged ambiguity. How long has this family been at it? How have they never been caught? What's up with the big one?
"The Beginning" answers all that and more, but never quite justifies its own existence. Leatherface, adopted name Thomas Hewitt, draws first blood over a layoff. His chainsaw, horror's backwater Excalibur, is just what he steals on his last day.
This is as close as any "Massacre" gets to the clockwork doldrums of so many other slasher franchises, including the two "Massacres" explicitly designed to reinvent it as such. Threatened subtext, like the sheriff formerly known as Charlie Hewitt acquiring a taste for his fellow man as an abandoned POW, is just an excuse for R. Lee Ermey to play his hits. Even that committed performance, like everything else in "The Beginning," can't help but draw flies. Ermey gets the fatal line, when waxing historic about the cannibal clan's newfound might: "By God, they'll remember what we did." Easier said than done.
7. Texas Chainsaw 3D
For better and worse, it's much harder to forget "Texas Chainsaw 3D." The do-over sequel, easily the trend's most infamous, trips itself early by not just revisiting Tobe Hooper's 1974 original but revising it. There were several other Sawyers hanging out in that farmhouse and they all died in a Waco-inflected siege, save Leatherface and a baby immune to screams and small motors.
39 years later, that baby grows into 20-something Alexandra Daddario. That may be an infamously cheap shot -- co-writer Adam Marcus explained that earlier drafts took place in the '90s -- but it's only the most obvious of the film's many miscalculations. Those serial-killing, cannibalistic Sawyers are rebranded as misunderstood folk heroes. The shared blood between Daddario and her man-eating cousin, an obvious nature vs. nurture story, is instead played for Hallmark warmth. Not content with the earlier sequels' sympathy for the local devil, "Chainsaw 3D" expects nothing less than full support for his every slice.
In a post-mortem interview, Daddario recalled a producer defending the film's most notorious line, unwritten here for the sake of full shock and awe, with a shrug: "'This is the movie.'" Anything goes in "3D." That is the movie, for better and worse.
6. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
After Tobe Hooper's own sequel failed to scare up box office results, New Line Cinema was obliged to adopt the Texas Chainsaw franchise. The aptly nicknamed "House That Freddy Built" intended to make a bonafide horror icon out of Leatherface, the kind that could profitably carve a new crop of wayward travelers to bits every other year. This is as far as they got.
Splatterpunk godfather David J. Schow wrote "Leatherface" as a follow-up to the original "Massacre," but director Jeff Burr insisted on an uncredited cameo from the sole survivor of "Massacre 2." This schism, further strained by one Sawyer's return, is a watershed moment -- from here on out, continuity is only skin-deep.
The trouble with "Massacre III" is that it's not much deeper. The parts are novel -- a sexually mature Leatherface, a survivalist who faces him, a cannibal family matriarch -- but the sum is roadkill stitched back together minus the soft tissue. The film was submitted to the MPAA a staggering 11 times, with a few more teeth pulled each round. The Cuisinart-by-committee editing reduces what was advertised as "The Most Controversial Horror Movie Ever" to its own TV cut. The cast is a high-water mark for the franchise, especially "Dawn of the Dead" vet Ken Foree and an impossibly young Viggo Mortensen, but the only thing that gets slaughtered is the film itself.
5. Leatherface
This is a contentious placement without the proper curve. The enduring power of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and its sequel, both conspicuously absent so far, is that neither played to preconceived notions. The first became one of the most infamous horror films in history by forcing the audience to imagine the worst parts. The second painted the worst parts Day-Glo and hung a "Kick Me" sign on them, taking the expected gore to its morbid extremity. As originally laid out by Hooper, points are awarded for swerves and surprises.
"Leatherface," to its fortune and foolishness, is built on them. Operating as a prequel to both the original "Massacre" and "3D," the story poses one of the most doomed questions in cinema: How did this icon become an icon? After being taken from the Sawyers as a child, young Leatherface grows up as well as can be expected in a reformatory. The catch, both to the audience and law enforcement, is that the program changes all names to distance troubled youth from their abusive families, making the escapees and the resulting murder spree a who-will-do-it-eventually mystery.
If the poster promised a "Massacre," that would make it a disappointment. Where "Leatherface" does inevitably falter is in its answer. Instead of building several likely suspects to take up the saw, there's an obvious choice and a twist that's only unexpected because it's so unbelievable. Compared to the Xeroxed thrills of the other late entries, that still counts for something.
4. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Three of the prime movers on the original "Massacre" got a chance to revisit their work. Of the resulting films, co-writer Kim Henkel's is far and away the most slippery.
"The Next Generation" ropes the first three "Massacres" into the same continuity. But the Sawyer family is now the Slaughter family, and Leatherface has regressed in both name and bloodlust to "Leather." Discrepancies should be taken as a warning -- by Henkel's own defense, this is an Idea movie with a capital I. "All of the characters in the film," said the writer-director in a rare interview on the subject, "served as the various forces of authority and culture." On a personal scale, that means an exhibitionist real estate agent recommends implants to a pubescent Renee Zellweger. On a universal scale, that means that the literal Illuminati subsidize the farm for an ongoing experiment in trauma-induced transcendence. Squint too hard, and you may go cross-eyed when the businessman in charge of the operation unbuttons his Oxford to reveal three nipples on his stomach.
Henkel takes the bounced-check suspense of the original, never quite delivering on its ad campaign, and stretches it to bewildering, often unsatisfying extremes. Is Leather's newfound preference for a full, female skin suit meant to parallel the heroine's prom night journey into womanhood? Why would Matthew McConaughey, playing his own sound effects department, spray paint "ILLUMINATI" right onto his tow truck? Are the copy-paste murders part of an oppressive script that these unfortunate Texans are merely forced to re-enact, forever and ever, amen?
If Henkel knows, he isn't saying, but there's a valid reason the next "Massacre" was a remake.
3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers are easier targets for a revival; they'd already racked up more sequels and been refracted through more lenses than Leatherface. Yet, against all odds, he was first unto that breach. Against all odds, he did all right.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the power tool made compound, deals in a different kind of dread. It's too slick to play the same game -- reframing the original as a movie based on these events is a savvy way to keep the legacy both handy and at arm's length. By trading the 16-millimeter uncanny for vividly gristled unpleasantness, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" stitches together a new identity. Finally, after the butchered "III," a "Massacre" makes good on its gore.
Original "Chain Saw" cinematographer Daniel Pearl is responsible for the movie's flash in more ways than one, convincing collaborator Marcus Nispel to direct and vowing to shoot it like an entirely different movie: "There's no point in making the exact same film with the exact same look." Pearl's second "Massacre" is almost monochrome, with amber waves of east Texas molding over after sundown. Blood, rust, and mildew all stain the same in the rechristened Hewitt house. Once again, Pearl's style, honed over decades of music video work, set a lasting standard for the visual language of horror. Some of the camera moves may be questionably acrobatic, like an infamous dolly through the head of a suicide victim to a tree across the road, but the septic sheen hasn't lost its edge -- this is the "Massacre" that looks most like a massacre, and Leatherface has never been scarier.
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
"'Chainsaw 2' was a reaction to the '80s," said Hooper, and how. The posters skewered John Hughes. The violence skewered competitors. The Sawyers skewered yuppies. "Massacre 2" skewered "Massacre," and its indelicate parody was paid for by Cannon Films, the production company that gave the decade its guns-and-gore stink in the first place.
The only overt holdovers from the original are actor Jim Siedow, two recurring corpses, and an occasional sense of cross-cut derangement, aroused most potently when Dennis Hopper tests a mile-long chainsaw to the shopkeeper's giggled delight. There's a familiar shallow-breath tension to it all, due no doubt to the film's seven-month turnaround from title page to premiere, but gasps come more often from "Three Stooges"-style schtick than scares.
In concept and courage, "Massacre 2" is a masterpiece, a cackling refusal to give the people what they want with a price tag that would've paid for its predecessor 33-times over. In execution, it's a sloppy bowl of blue-ribbon chili thrown at a wall that mostly, miraculously sticks. Hooper and "Paris, Texas" screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson take aim at everything from impotence to the plight of small business. If anything survives, there's certainly not much left of it.
1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The fundamental unease of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is best explained by the dueling thought processes of its writer and director. Kim Henkel researched homegrown serial killers like Ed Gein and Elmer Wayne Henley. Tobe Hooper wondered if there was a faster way to cut through department store crowds at Christmas time.
The opening crawl rings too true. The desecrated corpses in the first shot, straddling a gravestone like Halloween decorations, look too ripe. Immediately, effortlessly, "Massacre" threads the awful textures of waking life through the aberrant rhythm of nightmares. Before the weirdo hitchhiker does what weirdo hitchhikers do, he cuts his hand open like a magic trick. When Leatherface makes his grand entrance, it's on his schedule, seconds out of joint with any goosebumps that have been forecast. By the time a blood-sucking mummy wheels to the dinner table, it's as regular as Rockwell; just like unfortunate survivor Marilyn Burns, the audience doesn't have much sanity left to lose.
"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is alchemy. It was born wrong, the reckless work of amateurs who didn't know better, and got worse, leaving all the bodies and minds responsible for production with souvenir scars. A few years in either direction, technical limitations wouldn't have crippled it in the right way, and the culture wouldn't have taken turns banning and basking in it. The impact of its thrills, real and forcibly imagined, is so seismic that everything after could've only been a whimper by comparison. Seven sequels, prequels, and remakes later -- not counting the one still to come -- there's nothing quite like it. The blade still spins. The saw still smokes. Don't mess with "Texas," because it'll still mess with you.
Read this next: The 15 Best Horror Movies Of 2020
The post Every Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie ranked worst to best appeared first on /Film.
TOUGH GUYS FIGHT DIRTY!
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Parts
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Can we just cancel sex? Is it too late? The whole thing just got creepy.
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Planet-killing astronomer who downgraded Pluto looks for a replacement
Michael Brown, professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech, is most famous for demoting Pluto from planet to planetoid—a sad but necessary consequence of his discovery that there are numerous planetoids of similar size orbiting far from the sun. His memoir, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, covers the rancor that led to the 2006 International Astronomical Union's vote in its disfavor. — Read the rest
Idaho begins rationing care as hospitals crumple under COVID load
Enlarge / A coronavirus preparedness tent setup outside a hospital emergency room entrance at Gritman Medical Center in the northern Idaho city of Moscow in March 2020. (credit: Getty | Education Images)
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare on Monday activated its "crisis standards of care" in 10 northern hospitals hard-hit by staff shortages, hospital bed shortages, and a "massive increase in patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization," the department announced Tuesday.
The crisis standards mean that the quality of care in those hospitals will be reduced for all patients. Resources will be rationed, and patients with the best chances of survival may be prioritized.
In practice, that could mean that: emergency medical services may prioritize which 911 calls they respond to; some people who would normally be admitted to the hospital will instead be turned away; some admitted patients may be sent home earlier than typical or may find their hospital bed in a repurposed area of the hospital, like a conference room; and, in the worst cases, hospital staff might not be able to provide an intensive care unit bed or a ventilator to a patient who has a relatively low chance of survival.
Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
UN Conspiracy
The United Nations Conspiracy
Lee
1981
Submitter: I guess this book was purchased in the interest of “balance” for our academic library. In 1981, apparently, it was okay to pretend that whackadoodle conspiracy theories represented an alternative point of view. I’m glad the predictions of enslavement to a One World Government have yet to come true, and that the godless commies have not prevailed, despite the “brickbats coming thick and heavy” to John Wayne, of all people. John Wayne, “far removed from Hollywood’s typical subversion and perversion as you can get!” The nerve!
Holly: I get the whole balance thing, in general, but if that’s really a priority in your library, you have to make an effort to keep the materials more current on all sides. Conspiracy theorists are like, “old news!” and in an academic library, this isn’t helping any college kid do research on attitudes and beliefs of the 21st century.
The post UN Conspiracy appeared first on Awful Library Books.
The 'Dead Internet' Theory Posits Forums are Now Almost Entirely Overrun By AI
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Quilt
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No, next you get one of the other forty.
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Waifu of the Dead - Hentai vs Evil
Totally work safe. (This isn't sarcasm.(Or is it?(It's not))xoxo)
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Happy Labor Day! Everyone Deserves a Chance to Work
It’s Labor Day today in the US, And we can look back and see how many great strides we’ve made toward employee safety, fair wages, and reasonable work hours. Of course, there are horrible companies and horrible managers who will cheat and lie and steal from their employees, but they are in the minority.
But, there’s a group that no labor union protects and who managers can abuse easily: Undocumented immigrants.
Now, it’s illegal to hire people who are not authorized to work in the United States, but people who willingly break that law are willing to break other laws. While, technically, everyone–regardless of immigration status–is entitled to things like minimum wage and overtime payments, people are scared to report bad bosses for fear of being turned over to ICE.
If you want all people to be able to support themselves and their families, we need a change. And the biggest change would be this:
Make illegal immigration extremely difficult and make legal immigration easy.
If you want to vote for me (I would never run for any office, but pretend!), my immigration policy would be based on the following questions.
- Do you have a criminal record?
- Are you willing to learn English at this free class we will provide for you?
- Do you understand that you will have to leave the US if you commit a serious crime?
- Do you understand that you will not be eligible for any welfare until you have been here for five years? Unemployment payments, reduced/free school lunch, and food stamps are not considered welfare.
If the answers are No, Yes, Yes, and Yes, then we let you in with proper documentation and a social security number.
Who cares if someone wants to come to the US for a year or two to earn money to send home? If they want to move and make this place their new home, great! Let’s get out the welcome wagon.
If we want to change labor conditions in the United States, ensure every worker can go to the Department of Labor or EEOC with no fear. Let’s make sure that our policies don’t make people vulnerable.
That would be a great Labor Day.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
The post Happy Labor Day! Everyone Deserves a Chance to Work appeared first on Evil HR Lady.
Awkward Zombie - Angle Tangle
New comic!
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Like many real-life animals, some Pokemon were only intended to be viewed from the side.
