AN EARTH SHATTERING, HEART BREAKING, LIFE CHANGING EVENT...

Dear Mr. Watterson (2013)

If you don't know who Calvin and Hobbes are, you seriously need to get off the computer dude and read a bloody book. Okay, okay, you can also find the strips online if you're that lazy... This wasn't horror, but an act of love to anyone who loved and hung on to every Calvin and Hobbes strip printed from November 18, 1985 until his final (and upbeat "Let's go exploring!) strip on December 31, 1995.

Countries and numbers are
subject to change but every
single one of you is appreciated!

Why am I watching this? Well, I'm neck deep in an exploration of the movies Kill Bill volume 1 and 2 and badly need a break. The review will not be blow by blow (pun intended) but my opinion on what makes these two movies great, not so great, downright stupid, and causes me to want to blow chunks. Before I get going though, thank you all so much for getting us to 84 thousand for this month - since I've been kind of slow getting new movies up and working on improving what I already have here - this is extremely wonderful and thank you!

Dear Mr. Watterson is a documentary that was funded through the Kickstarter program, and raised enough money that the makers were able to interview more comic writers and others influenced by Calvin and Hobbes. Note: Sorry the pictures are a bit small - the new blog format doesn't like the extra large sized pics.

First Calvin and Hobbes, November 18, 1985

I don't want to get too much into this, just watch it (it's streaming on Netflix right now) to enjoy a bit of perspective on how different Watterson was from many of his fellow artists, but in a good way. Do not expect to SEE Mr. Watterson or hear from him - he is an extremely private individual and this documentary respects that.

The last <sigh> Calvin and Hobbes printed December 31, 1995

Interviews are held with various people, including Berkley Breathed (Bloom County, Outland, Opus), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), and even Seth Green (Robot Chicken), who all have felt and continue to feel the influence Watterson has on the whole comic scene.

He is famous (some say infamous) for being so strict with his comic strip, that when the space for comics in newspapers started their ridiculous shrinking, he made his panels the size he wanted and if they didn't print it that size, they didn't get to print it at all.

He's also constantly refused, then and now, to merchandise any of his creations (if you see Calvin and Hobbes on ANYTHING it is a bootleg as nothing has been authorized) which, when explained, made a sad kind of sense. When you watch it, you'll see what I mean. Even the comics I show here, even though you can find them all over the internet, were not authorized to be shown and for that I deeply apologize. As you can probably guess, my favorites of all the Calvin and Hobbes adventures have to do with snowmen:

Tell me you've never seen anyone attempt to recreate some of Calvin and Hobbes' famous snow creations...

...or enjoyed the many attacks on Calvin by his faithful companion.

Directed by Joel Allen Schroeder, the film follows the career of Bill Watterson, the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and the influence of both the author and the comic strip on the world.

Yes I know this has been an incredibly lazy entry, but in my opinion, you just can't enjoy life without having a companion to rip you to shreds then peacefully sleep with you. I call them cats. Calvin called him Hobbes.

HOLY CRAP THIS MOVIE WAS SO BAD THAT NETFLIX OWES ME AT LEAST A MONTH FREE BECAUSE IT'S GONNA TAKE A MONTH TO GET MY EYESIGHT (AND MY APPETITE) BACK...

Ahí Va El Diablo aka Here Comes The Devil (2012) Mexico

This movie was a Mexican-Spanish movie, dubbed into English. It was shot in Tijuana and Baja California, financed by the US, and released at the Toronto international Film Festival. Although it won several awards, this movie was again one of those things that people either absolutely hated, or they loved it.

I wasn't very enthusiastic about this film, which is why I passed it over several times. That and the fact that I would have to read the whole thing, which I usually don't mind as I always use close captioning anyway, but in this case I would have to pay very close attention since my Spanish is very poor – I am not bilingual, but can pick out most of a conversation when I hear it.

However, because this was a horror movie I was reviewing, I could not count on that. I had to read the whole thing. Unfortunately. The story started out interesting, went to stupid, then to WTH, back to interesting, back to stupid, and then to I really just don't care anymore. I think the main problem I have with this movie, just to give you a heads up, is it was like a person handed this director a script and said, 'this is an interesting story, make it'. 

But then that director tripped, and dropped the script into a lake. He fished it out and decided to use it anyway, although half of it was now gone, and a lot of the remaining pages were really smudged. That's what this movie feels like – you're only getting part of a story and it's not the good part. The more you watch, the more questions you have. And you're not going to get any answers so don't even hope for them.

We start with a gratuitous lesbian sex scene. I've used that phrase several times, so let me explain to you what I consider to be a gratuitous scene in case you think that I am prejudiced in some way. When something is gratuitous, what I'm trying to say is that the scene did not need to be in the movie, had nothing to do with the plot of the movie, or did not include main characters in the movie. 

It just so happens with movie makers lately that lesbian scenes (like found footage, hand held cameras and 3D) seems to be a 'thing' with them to try to make their movies more popular. This kind of scene is simply to titillate the audience without giving them any substance or story – just nudity.

So we have these two women who go unnamed. They hear a pounding on the door. One runs to answer it. This I also do not understand - why people think that when they hear pounding on their door they have to run to get it. The same goes for telephones. They practically kill themselves trying to answer it. Do these people not know about answering machines?

The one answering the door is met by a brute of a man. When her partner comes down the stairs, to her horror, she sees her girlfriend being beaten viciously, then having several of her fingers cut off. Her girlfriend somehow scares him off and he runs into the night. 

We then see (in full daylight) the man climbing a pile of rocks (get used to this, you're going to see it a lot), strip off his clothes, and paw the ground like an animal, dropping his box which is full of human fingers. 

Apparently he's been doing this for quite a while. Too bad that all the fingers look the same, meaning none have aged or are different colors, in fact, they all look like they came from the same hand - if that hand had thirty fingers.

We move on to our family of four. We have Barreiro and Caro, and their prepubescent children. The children are playing in the sand outside of what I guess it's supposed to be Tijuana. The parents are out having a picnic. Suddenly the boy comes running up, saying his sister has been injured. This is where we get our first WTH. They make a huge deal of the girl who apparently has experienced her first 'time of the month'. They take her to the nearest gas station (thanks a lot parents), to get the girl cleaned up. We get 'treated' to a precious scene of sand with a small pool of blood in sharp focus. Okay, we get it. You're gonna gross us out to make up for the script pages you lost.

While they're there, the mother notices a strange man watching them. That's what you get when leave the door open to a freaking public bathroom. They prepare to leave, but the children want to continue playing. So the two parents, being totally responsible adults and because Tijuana is a totally safe place for children to go off and play by themselves with no one around, let them. While the kids are gone, they do a little fooling around and fall asleep. They wake up and notice their children never came back.

They do a little searching, but find nothing. They call the police in a panic who tell them to stay at a nearby motel. This is nonsensical as the movie progresses, and you will see why, unfortunately, as I did. The parents sit there, basically yelling at each other for leaving their children unsupervised. 

Then they think of that weirdo that was looking in at their little girl and they think, hmmm. They stayed the night, and now they're not the cuddly little 'let's have some nooky in the car' people, they're the 'why didn't you watch the kids better' people. In the morning, basically hating each other, they get ready to go home. But miracle of miracles (I said, with massive sarcasm) the police show up with their two children, looking just fine. How nice. They claim to have gotten lost among the rocks in a cave.


So our happy family once again heads home. They show the mother with a large bruise on her side, but if you're expecting any kind of explanation as to what it is and how she got it – you haven't been paying attention. That was in that half of the script that still in the water or that got smeared when the director stumbled.

The other half of the script that the director still can read apparently says: Naked, naked, argue, argue, look scared, look scared, naked again, argue, argue, naked, naked, naked, a little bit of story.

Later, like it makes any difference now, the mother looks through the dirty clothes apparently trying to find her daughter's panties showing evidence of her first, umm, feminine experience. She can't find them. For whatever reason, this prompts her to take her young daughter to a gynecologist. She's informed that her daughter (I'm sorry but I had to watch it so you get to hear about it) does not have a hymen.

To get the story going again, I guess, the children need to see a psychiatrist. They draw pictures of a truck with a man. The father jumps to the conclusion that this is the strange man at the gas station who looked in the door and who acts like a creep even though he hasn't actually done anything. So I guess it doesn't matter what country you're in, if you don't look normal, you're evil.

This brilliant psychiatrist decides that the children have been through a traumatic event. Well, massive duh on that one doc. He also decides that this trauma included something sexual. The children also had signs of bruising. That's it. What, you expected an explanation for that? Why? Nothing else is been explained, has it? You sure want a lot, don't you? The father is past rage, now convinced that our not-normal-looking guy in the van did something to his children. 

So let's get this going a bit faster 'cause it's way too long now. The parents, convinced that this not normal looking man had something to do with their children being weird, drives the kids past this guy who is standing by his truck and they start to scream. Well, that's enough evidence for the mom and dad. Leaving their children with a babysitter, they go out for revenge. This law-abiding couple go out, find the guy, and murder him. I guess at this point, the director decided he needed to equal out the nudity with gore. 

This scene is almost a flinch-worthy one. First, the father takes his turn. He takes a knife, and threatens the dude with it. But when the wife conveniently finds her daughter's panties in one of the guy's cupboards, the father repeatedly stabs the man in the throat. This doesn't kill him yet, because the mother wants a turn, not because he would not have actually died in real life. So while the father hold onto this guys feet, the mother actually uses her hands to completely rip this man's throat out. I have to give them snaps here, because in this ho-hum movie, we have one scene of total, horrific gore.

But of course it gets ruined. Now we get a scene which they are trying to make sexy (I'm going to be sick) of the couple taking a shower together, lovingly washing the gore off of each other. The next morning they go home like nothing's happened. The babysitter is gone, her clothing, shredded on the couch. However, both of the children are peacefully asleep in their beds. The parents do not care about the shredded clothing, nor do they ask any questions. D freaking UH.

Just as a side note, because this movie is driving me crazy, this dictating software keeps wanting to capitalize Gore, so the makers must think that Al Gore is quite the psycho. It also must think I'm the worst English speaker in the world because it is trying to translate what I tell it into Klingon and as boring as this movie is, I am getting quite for Klimt inn shore kife. I don't know what that means, you figure it out. That's what it keeps doing to me.

All righty. If you have been paying attention to even a couple of my reviews, what comes up next will be no surprise to you. The mother discovers that the children have not been going to school. They've been getting dressed, their parents drop them off, but they do not go inside. Where do they go? Saaaay it… They go back to the cave. 

This is the part where the parents driving there and having to wait in a hotel completely knocks this movie from the odd come on to value know what I just don't care anymore category. DAMMIT SOFTWARE PAY ATTENTION! I SAID that this knocks the movie from an oh-come-on-now type of movie to one where I just don't care anymore. If these two small children can walk to this place, then 1. Why the hell do the parents have to drive there; and 2. Why did they have to stay in a motel?

The mother has been observing her kids' strange behaviors but, for some reason, she is not talking to her husband. What. A. Surprise. And now we have the detective on both their cases investigating the murdered not-normal-looking man because somebody spotted their car near his van the night he was killed. Don't pay too much attention to this part, because it's just a time filler and movie killer. 

She finally talks to the babysitter about what happened the night she disappeared, leaving her ripped up clothes behind. We see part of the scene where they were just sitting there when all of a sudden she blanks out as her eyes roll up in her head. Well, sort of. 

While she does not know how she lost her clothing (we get a nauseating and don't-watch-if-you're-epileptic scene of flashes of a multitude of objects, including nudity - and I have to say a painful looking set of nipple piercings), she does have a vague, disgusting memory of going to one of the children's room and, uhh, seeing a little bit too much love going on between the two of them. Don't worry, even this movie doesn't go quite that far. We just see her watching and hear, uh, instead of sex sounds, we definitely hear pigs squealing - ewww. The next thing she knew, she was home.


Finally, the mother decides to check out the cave. An extremely well-lit cave. An it-doesn't-matter-how-deep-the-hole-is-the-sun-still-shines kind of cave. As she gets near the opening she finds a ton of melted candles in a kind of shrine.

At the bottom of an awful short looking drop, are the dead bodies of her two children. Again, what a surprise. She runs out of the cave, and the cameraman, apparently being bored out of this freaking skull, decides to treat us with zooming in and out shots of different rocks around this cave. As if that were something to keep us occupied while she sits there and cries. So she goes home. Ha! Fooled you! 

She doesn't go home, she slowly crawls into the cave - again. This is so we can waste another five or ten minutes while AGAIN she searches for and finds AGAIN the bodies of her children - AGAIN. She figures somehow (and we get to see some sort of flashback) that the daughter fell and hit her head, and started to fall over this awfully small ravine. The brother, grabbing her hand, attempted to pull her up, but fell with her. Because this is a movie and they are apparently made of glass, they both die.

In other words, they've been dead for days. So now that we know the kids at home are actually dead, the movie starts to beat us over the head with the paranormal theme of every other movie made since the 1999 gee-I-wish-I-could-have-killed-them-first The Blair Witch Project. Every time her daughter screams, for whatever reason she's deciding to scream, the lights flicker. When the mother goes to her son's room, she finds him floating in the air. Just floating. That's it.

Now the director tries to save this movie by eking out a little bit of story after ringing out the script. There's been this gentleman (Identified only as Encargado gasolinera, or Charge Station which yes, I know is not a name) hanging out at the gas station throughout this whole movie and now that the mother knows that her children are dead, he approaches her. How nice. He says this mountain (which is not a mountain, it's a hill) has a weird energy and it is a place of demons. 

What? Oh no no no, you don't get an explanation, this is just a little exposition to get you to the end of the movie. The not-normal-looking dead man named Lucio thought he could control the evil by putting up the candles. That's why he always hung around the place. That's why he knew her children were dead. Apparently, Encard.... uh, the gentleman's daughter was the woman at the beginning of the movie. He says she was the last victim of the worst serial killer the area has ever had. 

But since she did not die, the police asked her for a description. She gave them one of which was not even close to who they were looking for. That is because he was from the mountain (the hill) and to her he looked like a demon. He then further explains for no apparent reason that when a demon is coming from the mountain/hill, there is a small earthquake, just like the one that happened the night her children disappeared.

Let's wrap this sorry mess up, shall we? The woman finally goes to her husband. She drags him into the cave and shows him their dead children. This is where it ended a little differently than what I had already written down. Just a little. My version had the children sneak up behind them and kill them. What actually happened made no sense whatsoever. 

When she tried to explain to her husband that their children were no longer really their children, he pulled a pistol from his briefcase and shot her in the head. What. The. Hell. We then get this nauseating camera work of zooming in and out of rocks rocks rocks rocks rocks until we hear a second gunshot.

Our final scene is of demon mom and demon dad (pffft) somberly getting into their car as a small earthquake tells the gentleman at the gas station that… What? The world is screwed? He needs to go around shooting all of these non-humans that he knows are about? Or should he just wait for the credits? I am so glad I did not see this in the theater because they felt the need to end this with an ear shattering piece of music that was horrible along with the credits.

Which, I guess, was appropriate, because this whole movie was just one big headache.

TRUE HORROR HAS NO DISCRIMINATION - IT'S AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY SLAUGHTER




Urban Horror

Just typing those words makes me angry. Why are we 'racially profiling' our horror movies? Urban Horror is NOT a genre - it's like a signal to the audience that there may be 'people of color' in it. It's rude, it's ridiculous, and it's wrong.

Now I'm not talking about designating horror as 'Chinese' or 'Spanish' or 'Japanese' - that simply tell you where the movie is from. But a US movie is just that - a US movie! We don't give a rip what the dumb teenagers look like, just kill 'em and roll the credits...

I already knew a couple of titles that fall under this so-called 'genre' - one I just reviewed - Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. It was 'targeted' for the Hispanic community. That's the worst line of crap... are we living like barbaric human beings so badly that (besides killing each other indiscriminately) we have to 'separate' our horror like we separate laundry? I mean really? 

In a country that is fighting mad about equal rights for the LGBT communities, why is everyone so blase' about the fact that the Hollywood movie makers apparently want everyone to go back to the 50's and segregate their movies by color?

It's not just movies either - music has the same prejudices. I was once called 'racist' for the stuuuuupidest of reasons. Here's the breakdown: I like an a capella group called Pentatonix (look 'em up on YouTube, they're incredible). Included in their group is a young man named Kevin Olusola. This multi-talented guy sings, plays the cello, and beatboxes. So Pentatonix is getting very popular, 'kay? They release a song called Run To You...

Like an eeeediot (channeling my Ren Höek for a second) I commented on the video, saying it was absolutely beautiful that they could just sit and sing and sound so wonderful. A chicken troll, who must have been licking his beak and waiting for new comments, immediately attacked, saying I was being 'racist' because Kevin is a beatboxer, and to 'just' call him a singer was belittling beatboxers everywhere because bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk...

Still channeling my Ren, I responded by pointing out he wasn't playing his cello for the song either, was THAT racist? BAWK BAWK BAWK BAWK BAWK... I imagine his chicken troll feathers were flying all over the room. Please don't ask me what chicken troll feathers look like. I deleted the whole thing. I replaced the comment by simply writing that the song was beautiful and made me cry. I've only gotten +1's (Google's version of 'Like' for you Facebookers) on it since...

My point? What day is it... oh yeah. No matter how advanced we think we are, we're apparently all still racist. Even when we're not, we still are. Now this chicken troll didn't know what nationality I was, but he assumed I was still a racist. Huh.

I know, not a horror movie but doesn't he scare YOU?

I looked up 'Urban Horror' and it immediately wanted to list African American Horror. WTH? So they are trying to tell us that if ONE person in the movie with an important role is not <gasp> white in some way, the whole movie is a whole other genre? Or if a person of color lives to the end of the movie that makes it more, umm, special? 

Here's just some titles I found that seem to be in the "Hold onto your wallet while watching these in the theater" type movies (yes I know that's horribly offensive, that's the point people)...

When a Stranger Calls (1979)
The Thing (1982)
The People Under The Stairs (1991)
Candyman (1992)
Tales From The Hood (1995)
The Craft (1996)
Anaconda (1997)
Devil’s Advocate (1997)
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Stigmata (1999)
Bones (2001)
13 Ghosts (2001)
Crazy As Hell (2002)
Gothika (2003)
Holla (2006)
Shadow: Dead Riot (2006)
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Dead Heist (2007)
Nailed (2007)
Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror (2007)
I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

Stick close to this one - as long as she
keeps her clothes on, survival is a sure bet.

Hmm... seems this list is a bit incomplete. Where's The Cabin In The Woods, Night Of The Living Dead (both original and remake), Day Of The Dead, The Shining... okay, let's ask Google the most racist and offensive question I can think of without withering in shame: "List horror movies with black people in them". Know what I got? You guessed it - all the SAME entries I got from Urban Horror with some extra goodies about how people of color never survive to the end of the movie.

You're dead.

I'm saying 'people of color' because I'm not just referring to African Americans. I'm talking about anyone who isn't a Cracker (you may throw rotten fruit at this point if you wish, just not at me) in a horror film. Sure, you die in a horror film if you're a slut, a wastoid, or the know-it-all, but EVERYBODY knows if you're just a little bit ethnic... SNICK - YOU'RE DEAD!

I know, I know, I'm embarrassed too...

Which means even though I'm smarter than the average bear (sigh, ask your grandparents to explain that to you too), I, being a whiter-than-a-sheet bonafide registered Native American would be destined to bite it within the first 20 minutes of a horror movie.

So that is my rant for today. Horror is an equal opportunity genre - stop belittling people by thinking that they need their own category. Next it'll be Paranormal Activity: The American Indian Reservation Casino Massacre. Or something massively offensive like that. I'll appear in it, but I'll also be the first to die.

And if y'all don't get the point of this rant, decide that I'm a horrible, horrible person who deserves to die as a racist, then I've failed.

Update 5/27/14: I learned something interesting. I want to state right here and now that I am NOT an SJW. What's that? Cracked.com's J.F. Sargent wrote the following:

If someone tells me that they don't like my favorite movie, then it's easy to ignore it, but if they tell me that my favorite movie is stupid, I can't help but feel like they're saying I'm stupid for liking it. It's a natural response, because I'm kind of a narcissist. But then it gets even worse if they think my favorite movie is racist, because being racist is even worse than being stupid. Ever hear the term "SJW"? It means "social justice warrior," and it refers specifically to people who point out racism or sexism in movies, video games, and other pop culture.

Those people are considered worse than other types of critics because instead of just pointing out that a movie has flaws, they're accusing people who like it of being awful.

Except they're not, of course. If someone points out that the alternator belt in your car is slipping, they're not accusing you of being some kind of mustache-twirling, white cat-stroking supervillain for having car problems. They're not accusing you of anything. They're talking about your car.

Phew. For a moment there I was worried... but I do admit I'd hoped I was safe since I love roughly half of the movies listed above... 

NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW - TODAY! HAS BECOME A MASSIVE PAIN IN THE ASS

What Convenience? What Time Savers?

I'm flying solo today - Miss Mayhem is working on the blog update and I've decided that my thought processes are too weird today to try to dictate all at once (in other words, I think of something, then an hour later, something else)... Plus I'm weary of being tired of being sick and so may be doing this a few sentences at a time anyway.

I absolutely adore this movie but c'mon, how can
David be so nonchalant about everything and
why would he be friends with a guy (John) willing to
inject black shit into his arm when he didn't
even know what it was and why did they...

Let's start with this blog. We watch movies, take notes, write a review. Even if I do like the picture (sometimes a LOT) I still pick the movie apart. It's what this blog is for. But now the hubby is afraid that somebody, somewhere, is going to read a review and having been the PA for that particular movie for a total of two days, tell somebody important and BAM, I'm gonna be sued for everything I haven't got. How did that start?

Amazon.

It's a great place to go - a central location to find all manners of products, compare prices and actual customer reviews. Thanks in a large part to George Takei, people have now taken greater notice of some of the sillier aspects of Amazon wares (such as Passion Natural Water-Based Lubricant - 55 Gallon, available now for around $1,400.00) and he (and a lot of his followers) have a lot of fun writing out-of-this-world reviews on silly products, just because. I don't - not because I don't want to - but I just don't have that kind of time. Huh.



When I looked this product up to get the name right, below it says 'Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed' and among the products is a Disaster Bag/Body Bag. Yikes. What the hell is in that lubricant anyway? Just for fun I looked for reviews - one stated, in short, that he used his several times a day and now dumping them in his garbage can looks less suspicious...

Anyway that's waaay off topic. So. How does one threatened to get sued for reviewing a product in a media that will literally email you several times until you PROVIDE a review? I checked it out on a website for consumers. In short, and leaving out all names and such, a person with a lot of experience with a particular type of component was asked by a friend to find a good one. He looked and found one spendier than the others, but with nothing but the best, glowing reviews. He'd never heard of it. He investigated and found it contained the same, uh, stuff as one with, uh, stuff that cost a lot less from another company. So he checked out sites that review such things - their only info (company and all) circled right back to Amazon.

As a professional and wanting to have people be wary of something no other experts have apparently heard of, he submitted his review. He immediately got a cease-and-desist order from the company, demanding he remove the review or get sued. Umm, what? In other words, he got, what is getting popular in today's vernacular, SLAPPed, which means a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. 

These are very popular because they figure the average Joe doesn't have the money to fight back against such... stupidity. According to an attorney, because of this, a SLAPP frequently works, whether it is fair or not. Making a deliberately false statement can indeed leave a reviewer open to a libel suit, but there’s a difference between expressing a negative opinion and a statement of fact.

Requests of explanation to this particular company went unanswered and they no longer have a seller account with Amazon.

Aaaand that's not what I was going to rant about. See why I don't have my dictating stuff today?


Facebook. Just in case they start getting SLAPP happy (see what I did there?) I won't bitch, just tell you what they recently did for those people who refuse to finish their profiles in order to expose every single detail about their lives to millions of people. Now, considering you can pretty much type in ANY place in the world as both your home town and current residence (I've experimented - it works), this seems unnecessary. 

In the past when my current residence was blank on my personal account, I'd noticed that every once in a while I'd post a status and Facebook tells everyone that I'm posting from (enter city here) - usually one I'm not even close to. Sometimes it was one I'd never heard of. They're tired of our stubbornness, dammit. So they've devised an eeeeevil little plan.

Remember the poke button? When I first started on FB I was getting dozens of those freaking things every day. What purpose did/does it serve? I thought it was to make sure you were still there and alive, but now I think it was just a none-too-subtle way to piss us off. I cut that off pretty quick.

Welcome to your NEW poke button! Well, it doesn't send pokes, but what it does do is, if there is a part of your profile that you did not choose to share, anyone who can see your page will see a panel like the one shown and they can push the 'ask' button. Over and over. On every item you left blank. As many times as they want. Isn't that wonderful??? Some friends and I are currently protesting this... by wiping clean our profile. We come from nowhere, we live nowhere, we have no interests, and where we went to school and worked/currently work is nobody's business, a'ight?

Let's see - how about misleading headlines just to grab your attention (and piss you off at the same time)? 'McDonalds Closes Major Corporation Office In Chicago'. Yikes. Not only was that title misleading, but the content was confusing. First they say that they closed the office which has 2,000 employees. THEN they add that it was because of a planned protest. THEN they say the employees went home for the day - but they continue to work from home. Suckers. THEN they say there are 2,000 protesters trying to get the minimum wage raised. Wow, how coincidental. THEN they change and say that there were probably 500 people from different regions gathered for the protest. Okay, I'm confused. No I'm not - I just lost interest. Why don't y'all try to get real writers and editors and attempt to present news accurately, 'kay?

Oh here's one that really pissed me off. Being Poor Makes You Sick (From The Atlantic). Oh really? Because we can't afford health insurance, proper medication and personalized chefs to make tasty low fat meals? No. The poor are lazy. WHAT? Oh wait, not really lazy, just sedentary. Umm, that's not much better. I won't name the city, but apparently one of their 'solutions' to the fat, lazy poor people is to prescribe bicycles. 

Because they can't afford one or theirs gets stolen - a lot - for five bucks a year they can participate in a program to use a bicycle as their main source of transportation. 'Cause they're poor. And sick. And fat. Thanks a lot for nothing... But at least now they can pedal to their job at McDonalds, who doesn't want to pay them a livable wage so they couldn't afford bus fare anyway...

Security. Pick your article, they're screaming at us stupid stuff everybody should know like, 'Don't Tell People On Facebook When You Leave On Vacation', 'Don't Post Pictures That Will Turn Around And Bite You In The Ass Later', and my personal favorite, 'If You're Going To Commit A Crime, DON'T KEEP UPDATING YOUR STATUS ABOUT HOW THE POPO WILL NEVER CATCH YOU.'

Yup, internet security is just about as reliable as a condom with a hole poked in it these days. And, as we've learned this year, there's been leaks for YEARS and NOW we're supposed to find ways to protect ourselves? Really? I personally use no less than six data protection/blocker programs running at once. The problem is (thanks a lot Windows 8.1) that now some prevent certain programs from running - not because they're not safe, but because the code for Windows changed and the code for the protection programs did not. Dammit.

I don't worry much. I don't Twitter, I tried Pinterest, Tumblr, <yawwwwwn>. I have no idea what the hell WHATSAPP is, and I don't own an internet camera so no Skyping either. I only use certified protected sites, I've never shopped at Target or let my credit card out of sight at restaurants... wait, what's this? May 21, 2014, I blearily look at the news at 4:30 a.m. and the headlines on local news sites blare EBAY DATABASES HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED - ALL PEOPLE WHO USE EBAY ARE ASKED TO CHANGE THEIR PASSWORDS...

After saying words that made the cats all run away, I checked it out. The breach wasn't huge (it said), yet like the Heartbleed Virus it has been there for a couple of YEARS, but eBay only found out about it TWO WEEKS AGO (again, it said). They waited two weeks to tell us? That reminded Miss Murder about when she lived in a small town in Washington that used to print reports on their general water supply, saying things like "Those two dead beavers we fetched out of the water tank a month ago hasn't seemed to affect any of the equipment." <pauses to gag>  

Yeah, Portland, Oregon has ONE teenager pee in a reservoir and is prepared to dump millions of gallons of water - again (it happened a year or so ago too - different teenager) but this time decided to hold their water (see what I did there?). But in <mumble>, Washington, dead animals in the water supply don't even deserve a mention until the quarterly newsletter...

Anyway, no panic, eBay said, but for 'safety reasons' they cautioned users to change their log-in information. Dammit, I've had my account (buying and selling) for at least eight years without a hitch... I've got a rep, and a good one. But I changed my shit. Except for the password. Apparently, eBay couldn't handle umpteen million people panicking and trying to change their passwords at once so they... didn't crash, but it didn't work either. Sigh. 

Yeah, you WISH I looked this good - hell, so do I actually...

Call the number, get informed it's at least a 13 minute wait... OR you can get queued and they'll call you. Grumbling, I picked that. To their credit, I don't even think it was five minutes - and they were very nice. The first thing they said was whatever got 'breached' has been protected and no one should have any problems... now how does THAT work exactly? I didn't care, I already had to change my info, I wasn't in a good mood.

Of course with her on the phone going through the steps everything worked as easy as it should have in the first place. Great. Except now my account has this little... thing next to my user name telling everybody I recently changed it. Whenever I saw that when I was regularly buying/selling, I was instantly wary about that person - now it's on mine. Not. A. Good. Day.

Note: To add insult to injury and a huge kick in the nether regions, on 5/22/14 ANOTHER news source (Reuters) started my 3:30 a.m. day with the statement that this breach happened THREE MONTHS AGO and that eBay had immediately informed everybody to change their passwords. Days, months, years - these are apparently concepts that the news and these companies think are interchangeable. Oh and about 'telling' everybody to change their passwords...

This is John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay, in charge of everything except keeping little piss-ant hackers from getting into his system - fully earning the $13.8 million he made in 2013, down 53% from the $29.7 million he made in 2012 - BUT that's because Donahoe was paid $993,269 in salary, a cash incentive payout of $1.62 million, and restricted stock and option awards of $11.1 million. He also received other compensation of $165,508. That equals to roughly $27.7 million BUT he now owns MORE of the company and its future which means he is "paid" less, but has the potential to receive a lot more...

Umm, no. That did not happen. I didn't hear anything about it, it wasn't on the news, I didn't get an email, blah blah blah... 145 MILLION users were victim to the data breach. Wouldn't somebody have said something just a little sooner, or did they plan to let those dead beavers float for a while and see if they'd come back to life and swim out themselves?

Another Update: May 27, 2014, after telling EVERYONE that they had IMMEDIATELY requested our passwords to be changed, I receive this email THIS MORNING: 

IMPORTANT: PASSWORD UPDATE

Dear eBay Member,

To help ensure customers' trust and security on eBay, I am asking all eBay users to change their passwords.

Here's why: Recently, our company discovered a cyberattack on our corporate information network. This attack compromised a database containing eBay user passwords.

What's important for you to know: We have no evidence that your financial information was accessed or compromised. And your password was encrypted.

What I ask of you:
Go to eBay and change your password. If you changed your password on May 21 or later, we do not need you to take any additional action at this time.

Changing your password may be inconvenient. I realize that. We are doing everything we can to protect your data and changing your password is an extra precautionary step, in addition to the other security measures we have in place.

If you have only visited eBay as a guest user, we do not have a password on file.

If you used the same eBay password on any other site, I encourage you to change your password on those sites too. And if you are a PayPal user, we have no evidence that this attack affected your PayPal account or any PayPal financial information, which is encrypted and stored on a separate secure network.

Here are other steps we are taking:

• As always, we have strong protections in place for both buyers and sellers in the event of any unauthorized activity on your account.
• We are applying additional security to protect our customers.
• We are working with law enforcement and leading security experts to aggressively investigate the matter.

Here's what we know: This attack occurred between late February and early March and resulted in unauthorized access to a database of eBay users that includes customers' name, encrypted password, email address, physical address, phone number and date of birth.

However, the file did not contain financial information. And, after conducting extensive testing and analysis of our systems, we have no evidence that any customer financial or credit card information was involved. We also have no indication of a significant spike in fraudulent activity on our site.

We apologize for any inconvenience or concern that this situation may cause you. As a global marketplace, nothing is more important to eBay than the security and trust of our customers. We know our customers have high expectations of us, and we are committed to ensuring a safe and secure online experience for you on any connected device.

Devin Wenig
President, eBay Marketplaces 

And now we have to make sure that our accounts are safe - but people, don't do it from an email link, go to the site - lots of people are just waiting for this chance to phish your info from false messages from eBay...  Hmm, anything else to gripe about? Well, the Facebook horror page, Miss Murder's Dungeon Of Horror, is dying - besides the entries about new blog postings (which, to be honest, was what it was originally for), I can't get people to pay attention for shit. Quizzes, pictures of weird stuff, cute stuff, horror stuff - nada. 

You know how some pages get in trouble if they show something, umm, objectionable (nudity, profanity, kittens, you know - the regular stuff)? I spent one afternoon posting Boris Vallejo paintings - excellent painter, great attention to bare bodies (and very nice looking ones at that) - and breasts. Lots and lots of big nipple-y breasts. I didn't get a single comment. No complaints. No 'likes'.

I don't want to become a 'like' whore. I don't want to pay for people to look at my stuff either. When Facebook came out with their 'bug you friends' feature for blank profiles I posted that on my horror page. I expected to at least get my hands slapped, or banned for a day or a week from Facebook... what I got was - huh, it's not on my page now. It basically had said: "This post is more engaging than your other posts - would you like to boost it?" When Facebook says 'boost' they mean 'get out your checkbook'. 

How about people with holes in their face? No?

To boost an entry you target your friends or 'certain people' (I'm not sure what they mean about that) and the MINIMUM is five bucks a day - depending on how many "approximate" people you want to reach. Their top amount is $100, but of course you can 'choose your own'. For your hundred bucks, you could reach (maybe) as many as 7,300 people! I already know how to do that - just name a famous celebrity in my post, put a naughty hashtag in there and boom, an easy thousand. I've done it before just to see if people actually hover over dumb celebrity posts (they do).

So. My personal page has been 'wiped'. It has ONE entry, the latest blog update and that's it. Nobody's said a word. So much for 'friends'. My horror page is also getting 'wiped' of nothing but blog posts. Nobody's said a word. Of course, since my 'likes' have gone down, that's not surprising. I noticed something weird though - when you have a 'page' (not a profile), it used to tell you how many people viewed it. Now it says, 'This post was served to ?? people'. What. The. Hell.

Okay, rant is over, back to movies - I decided to do a (short) review on two movies I actually enjoyed even though they were very strange - Kill Bill volumes 1 & 2. I just saw an old post on my page (probably a Cracked.com entry) stating that more than 450 gallons of SFX blood were used in these two movies. Good one Tarantino! Keep those blood makers in business! I'm halfway through the second one and I'm sure Miss Mayhem won't want to touch this one so out comes the dictating software, stay tuned...