Insomniacs Anonymous

One need never buy alcohol again. There's a far cheaper alternative that requires only a little patience.

Not hooch, although that kind of fits the bill as well. Toss some apples in a plastic bag in the back of a toilet and you can home make your own jailhouse moonshine if you're willing to wait. 

Although technically, moonshine more frequently involves corn as an ingredient and tastes like rubbing alcohol, while I can only assume that apple whiskey tastes like a hint of rustic pome mixed with dysentery and regret. Of course either of those alternatives would be illegal on the moral grounds that the government cannot properly tax you for poisoning yourself. For your own safety, of course.

Find yourself not in the illegal substance trade but want to experience the same results?

Have a hankering for occasional euphoria? Blackouts? Temporary loss of brain function and balance? Slurred, fumbling words and occasional delusions that border on full-out hallucination? Want to bolster a defiance of social mores? Want to get into more car accidents, but with less guilt? 

Rhetorical questions, of course, because we *all* want that.

Sleep deprivation is the way to go. 

Also, it helps with creativity and makes most social events more bearable, keeps various mental maladies mitigated and makes jokes far more humorous. I'm not exactly a communal butterfly, and the larger the group, the more bolstering it takes. I'm pretty sloshed on it at the moment, so I apologize if I meander.

I'm off in a little town for my wife's sister's wedding. Big crowd, remote place. A lot of older folks, and religious ones of the more judgmental inclination too. Mutterings of hellfire and damnation make a curious backdrop to vivid greens, sticky heat, open water and blue skies. 

"Provincial" is an accurate description.

Helluva view though, and really quite peaceful.

Wedding is in a few hours and figured I could either write or sleep, so I'm writing. And, by the sleep--deprivation metaphor-- I suppose I'm pre-gaming as well. I am not designed for crowds.

Almost done the first draft of Wyte, a full length horror novel about a group of amateur, middle-aged adventurers who wish to escape a generally unfulfilling office life and add the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia to the list of locations they've seen and conquered. They find themselves confronted with a nature far greater and more terrible than the one they understood, and a presence that is not only aware of them but happy to pursue and conquer them in turn.

Been working on a bunch of other projects too, but the straight-forwardness of Wyte has been incredibly fun to write, and I think it will be good to read, when done. Not as much humor as some of the projects, but a more classical aim at horror.

First draft is hardly the same thing as finished product, but it's progress. From then on, it'll take even more time and patience. Everything with writing does. Patience and a willingness to be entirely cheap. So screw the bars and expensive liquors that taste like the arse end of a hippo, those are only for the grossly wealthy and impatient. Wait a while, instead.

READING LIST: HORROR

I have previously noted an enthusiasm for horror books, movies, stories, and even the word "horror." It is a pretty word and has a nice phlegmatic sound to it. 

(Scary things)

In that vein, I decided to make a list of a few recommendations. I will attempt to avoid any sort of spoilers that could not be gleaned from the cover, name, or most basic plot summary.

Not listed in any particular order, they're all worth reading. I may extend the list if I come up with any new ones.

READING LIST:

The Ruins, Scott Smith

  

    Summary:

      Group of friends go into the Mexican wilderness and end up trapped in some ruins with something that is rather inclined toward ruining their vacation.

      This is not the best horror story I've read, but it's one of the most fun to read in all its grueling glory. Classic horror. Lovecraftian. The characters are beautifully crafted and the plot itself is a fun take on the "five go out" idea. Plus the antagonist is pleasingly malevolent. Plot holes and all, it's certainly worth reading. Movie was fine, but they kind of screwed up a few parts. Namely the characters. And the ending. 

Cujo, Stephen King

      Summary: 

      A massive dog goes rabid and attacks people.

         There are so many King potentials to mention (Carrie, Shining, Salem's Lot, Dead Zone if that counts as horror, Cell, the Stand etc) that it is hard to choose one. Chose Cujo because hot damn. It hits hard at the end and sticks with you throughout. King has his shortcomings, but when he delivers, he makes it count. 

Note: this is a less supernatural-based story than most of King's stuff.

         

The Cobra Event, Richard Preston

       Summary: 

       A bio-weapon is being prepped for deployment in New York City.

       The man is brilliant. Unlike most of the others, this is scary because of the real-world nature of it. Yes, it suffers from an agenda, but the agenda is pretty freaking scary in itself. Semi-thriller, but due to the horrific brutality of even chapter one, I have to say it's horror.

Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk

     Summary:

     A bunch of would-be writers tell the stories of their own flaws while competing for limelight.

     Hands down strongest impact a horror book has had on me. Not at all my favorite horror, but it will make you see the world in fifty shades of jade. Palahniuk puts such disgust and loathing for humanity that it seeps into your skin and makes your stomach turn. And research. Much research too. He's a helluva journalist when he's not scarring minds. "Guts" is the most famous part since it frequently makes people swoon (is swooning still a term?), but the rest just keeps digging deeper and deeper into the depravity that resides within us all. Maybe not in such extremes, but it's there. If you do read it, I would recommend you sit alone in a room and read part of it out loud to yourself. See how far you make it before you feel uncomfortable.

Dracula, Bram Stoker

     Summary: 

     Come on, you know what it's about.

     This is, oddly, my most hesitant entry on the list. It's an exceptional book with a magnitude of impact on the genre that is impressive, but it does have its short comings. It's tough to read, it's full of more latent and generally misogynistic sexual imagery than Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, and it's sometimes hard to really decide why you're rooting for some of the "good" guys. On the plus side it created one of the most iconic and awesome creatures, and it's just a damn good book. Genuinely creepy.

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

     Summary: 

     A lone man struggles to survive following the apocalypse. 

     One of my all time favorites. He is an exceptional writer, has a wickedly keen sense of what makes a good story, and IAL has one of the best reversal of expectations that I've seen. Everything he writes is drenched in bitterness, but it rings true to his worlds. Plus, he makes vampires seem... er... real? Or at least plausible. Yes, yes, the movie is cute (mostly because of Will Smith singing Bob Marley to a dog) but it has very little in common with the book. Different plot, characters, setting, morale and theme. Odd that Smith would do that. IAmRobot

And the immortal line: "Once I thought [birds] sang because everything was right with the world[...] I know now I was wrong. They sing because they’re feeble-minded."

John Dies at the End, David Wong (Jason Pargin)

      Summary: 

      I don't... I really cant sum this one up. It should be read. The closest I could get is: sentient drug screws with the user's dimensional ties, but that does it a disservice. It's so much more.

      I tentatively call this horror. My usual regimen of horror doesn't include laughing until it hurts, utter mind-savaging weirdness, or penis jokes. But in the immortal words of Robin Williams: "when in doubt, go for the dick joke." Cracked.com author keeps that terribly strange sense of humor running into the sequel too, all the while telling a gorefest horror that has some powerfully personal moments that are not at all humorous but stick with you.

Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

     Summary:

     Man clones dinosaurs, opens dinosaur theme park, things go poorly for all involved.

     It's science fiction horror about dinosaurs. It's also startlingly impressive in Crichton's own particular way. You'll either love it or hate it. Yes there's a load of time spent on science, but it's worth reading. Yes there's a lot of time spent on potential morals that can be drawn from the story, but they're philosophically sound. And the story is amazing. 

    It is better than the movie, and that is an exceptional movie. The first movie, i mean. I've vomited spaghettio's that spattered into a better story than the second movie.

Honorable Mentions:

H.P. Lovecraft

Summary:

Things got pretty weird.

      Mostly wrote short stories, and the longer his stories run, the weaker they tend to be. Hard to list him for a specific entry without mentioning a bunch of other good horror short stories. Buy a collection, though. He's the Tolkien of horror. I'd personally recommend The Color out of Space, and Call of Cthulhu. Suffer through the dialogue.

INSULTS

You fornicator of mothers!

A dire insult. Supposedly. I would dare say that most fathers have managed such a feat if you ignore the tentative implications of incest that have sunk beneath the waves of time along with such Titanics as "stymphalist."

This is a public service announcement about the death of insults, of rudeness, of banal, casual cruelty. People claim that instant gratification is the hallmark of the masses today, but that's silly. That's been the moniker forever. Another aborted insult in lieu of a real observation.

The highest casualty of the times is insults.

The internet causes a lot of things, but one of its greatest crimes (and there are a pantheon of great and unwieldy crimes...) is the dearth of proper diction and conviction to malediction. Too many learn too young the simple, laziest sorts of insults.

To quote a few less-than-eloquent youtube enthusiast examples selected at random:

• "your virgin fags who think this ugly hag is hot lmao" 
• "bitch i'm a womyn in days world. open your eyes, only half off us jerk off to literally anything. your gross penis. fuck off." 

And my personal favorite, 

• "The clean dumbbutt roughly pulls dumbbutt's like this. Fart off, you're a stupidface."

Took about 5 minutes of research on a single video, made a few brief tweaks for formatting sake and to condense the last one, which was posted primarily in two word entries.

These are the insults of weary, distracted, low hanging fruit. I love and support rudeness. It is one of my truest hobbies and penchants. There is a powerful honesty to telling someone you don't like them and want to make their day worse, just as there is a powerful and easy defense of ignoring someone's insults because you do not respect them or their opinion. It's like magic, a battle of arcane incantations and mental defenses.

As with many forms of magic, it is endangered. The state of global mockery is unacceptable. When has it fallen from common conversation to call someone a brochity quim? Why not jumentous helminth? Why not excerebrose carnal byproduct?

Yes, some more colloquial vernacular insults have a glorious ring to them. Hearing my sweet, elegant wife shout "Cocksucker!" at the TV warms my foul, beastly little heart. Shitstain, lint-licking cootie queen, warthog-faced buffoon-- there undeniably ARE acceptable commonplace insults, simply because of the beautiful way they roll off the tongue. But dumbass? Not if you mean it as an actual insult meant to wound. No siree.

Call someone a fopdoodle. Or the unimpressive byproduct of a bowlegged whore whose only qualification for producing even such a loathsome example of humanity was an affinity catching the stray misspent sperm from passing truckers. Either one takes more thought, but what you spend is what you get.

Even simple adjectives. There are few greater insults than "Normal" or "Boring" or "Pathetic" if you make them ring true. Even simply looking slightly above someone's eyes and saying "To speak with you demeans me. I do not hear you." gets some pretty fantastic results. No need for yelling that someone is sexually active. Simply tell them truth of your opinion. If they are a coward, call them one. Have reasons and examples to support it. Offer to make a power point, or devise an illustrative play starring sock puppets.

The best part is, if you use an insult with which the recipient is unacquainted, from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli resounds that great and glorious chime of "you're too stupid to understand the insult, but you know you've been insulted."

For how much more can man ask?

The reverse, sadly, is true for most slurs. As everyone's favorite N word (nerfherder, clearly) is bandied about, it makes the speaker seem like the window-licking, fetid scrapings of the stagnant scum that forms a skin across the shallowest parts of the gene pool. Use words that have real, abrasive substance. 

"Stupid" is better than "gay" because stupid has a direct and powerful meaning, while the other means a bunch of things, but mostly sounds like you're subtly inquiring about the sex object preference of the addressed while simultaneously announcing that you are indeed stupid.

Most of the -isms fall in this category. Is there some wiggle room? Sure, but if you believe it, you're still the human equivalent of the fecal slime that accumulates around the mouths of gas station toilets and cannot be removed with even the most ardent bleach and scrubbing.

Now, you say, surely these problems have existed before!

Yes. I'm aware. Shakespeare had his high points when he wrote sonnets, The Lion King, and the comedy about how dreadfully defective are the minds of horny teenagers, but such gems as "fat guts" and the dismal stream of penis-length insults are set solidly at his doorstep. Chaucer was a big fan of dropping a "C" word that I'm omitting because I think it would get me in trouble with the wife(although it was more of a "Q" back then. The problem is not new, even among the greats. But the prevalence of the problem has reached untold heights of ecstatic enthusiasm.

The solution? Simple. 

• Watch shows like Archer. Less Adam Sandler. Meditate carefully upon the nature of your dislike for your fellow man. 

• Stop watching pewdiepie. Go to https://www.reddit.com/r/insults and read. 

• Watch some classic videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEYXWmEse8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHWEZ_IjcSk 

You will like the way you insult people. I guarantee it.

The summary: Don't just say "ass," insult with class. Sonuvabitchretardjerkpunksnotnosedgianttwerpscumbagdickheadassholebastardpenisbreath