So we’re a few episodes into the second season, and we’ve seen a bit more of Maryann the Magical Pig Lady. Nothing really explaining what’s up with her, just enough to illustrate that her magic has something to do with making everything vibrate and making people horny, and that she thinks in Greek.
Sorceress? maenad? nymph? Tara’s finally snapped out of her infatuation with maryann’s nice house and free pot and decided she doesn’t wanna hang with the drunken swingers who keep a pig in the yard, which is a sensible decision, but it does nothing to help me understand why Pumpkinhead is visiting Bon Temps.
That’s right. that thing in the woods. it is, for all effective purposes, appears to be Pumpkinhead. Not that I’m complaining. the Pumpkinhead franchise is an enjoyable contribution to the horror genre, I just have no idea what an appalachian revenge demon is doing in small-town Louisiana clawing up their womenfolk.
I just think it was too early for pumpkinhead, yanno? at least tell us what maryann IS before introducing a new monster for us to learn about. Bill’s a vampire, sam’s a shapeshifter, Maryann is… umm… a magical pig lady, and pumpkinhead is not called on unless you’re tired of living. perhaps the Church of the Fellowship of the Brotherhood of the Temple of the Sun summoned him to avenge their slain televangelist?
edit following a bit more wikipedia-poking: in the novel, it is the maenad who does the poisoning. perhaps Pumpkinhead and Maryann the Magic Pig Lady are the same?
Joss fucking whedon. YOu know how I feel about his horrendous Dr Horrible, and now I can finally fully hate him because not only has he made a musical mockery of the Forbidden Sciences, but he has slain the vampire species.
Not with some arcane device. Not with the depredations of Buffy Summers and Faith Skankyhobitch, not with the sorceries of Willow Rosenberg or the ninja prowess of River Tam. he has slain the undead by domesticating them. he has taken a beloved monster and turned it into a pouty housecat for housewives and teenage girls to fawn over, and in so doing he has made Twilight something that will actually sell and induce sequels.
He is not entirely to blame. He has many predecessors who paved the road he took to make this achievement possible, reaching back centuries to Lord Byron, then onward to Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Mark Rein-Hagen, and every teenager who ever wanted to become a vampire as a way to escape being a teenager (by becoming permanently beteened, the stupid kids).
Still, he chose that road, and when he came to the end of it he chose to push on in that same unwholesome direction, and now we have sparkly emo vampires.
i can only hope that Guilliermo Del Toro’s new vampire novel, sort of CSI with undeads, will take us back towards a less whiny, more monstrous variation of the theme. All I want is for vampires to be a bit less Lestat and a little more Patrick Bateman, a bit less Barnabas Collins and a bit more Natural Born Killers. I do not want vampires I can sympathize with. I want vampires I can cheer for as they go on rampages of murder, mayhem, and destruction. is that too much to ask for?
Short version: a nice balance between tying up loose threads from last season and introducing new threads for this season. spoilers will follow below the jump.
PG-13 ghost/demon movies suck ass something powerful. people want GORE. and BOOBS. and then more gore. they want the kind of people-getting-chopped-up they can CHEER at, dammit.
attention american horror movie makers: yer doin it rong. see this Vampire Girl vs. FRankenstein Girl thing, and similar movies like Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, and make horror movies more like that. go find David Cronenberg. HE made movies like this back int he 1980s and knows all about it. Rob Zombie comes pretty close, too. Stop with the goddamn Final Destination sequels and asian ghost-movie remakes and make something with lots of dismemberment and arterial spray and mutants with giant blades that pop out of their bodies. give us Videodrome meets House of 1000 Corpses with a little American Psycho thrown in.
tired of your coffee getting cold at your desk? Did you forget to heat up the leftovers you grabbed from the fridge before meandering back to the computer to watch more porn on Redtube? then Heinz, makers of ketchup, may have the solution for you:
Heinz mini-microwave
the Beanzawave USB-powered mini-microwave. for home use, it’s completely idiotic, because everyone who lives in front of a computer and needs things microwaved A) already has a microwave and B) has probably figured out a way to get their microwave and internet access closer together when necessary (netbook and/or ipod touch, for me).
but the fact that it runs on USB power means you can plug it into a laptop, which is a great way to make a portable microwave, unless you actually need to use the laptop at some point. Microwaves tend to be big power-drains (if i run mine at the same time as my coffeepot and dishwasher, it trips the circuit breaker).
I don’t see this working as a grocery-store product to peddle alongside little microwave-safe containers of beans and chef boyardee, though. If they could just get Billy Mays to do an informercial and offer a USB Solar charger as an Order Now gift and then you’d have something worth buying.
or better yet, just stick some solar panels and a rechargeable battery ON the microwave itself. battery powered microwave. perfect for heating food during power-outages or in your car on long road trips.
on Day of Slayer’s Eve, I slept well and had a dream that me and a woman I don’t recognize were getting rather familiar with one another on an air matress in a back room of somewhere. woke up with chafed balls. I gotta find some way to protect my equipment while I sleep.
yes, my friends, that special day is upon us again, the International Day of Slayer, celebrated upon the 6th of June to honor what I firmly believe is one of God’s favorite metal bands.
I speak, of course, of the impending International Day of Slayer. Slayer is the reason for the season, and they have inspired me to create this collage, inspired by the album art of Seasons in the Abyss.
