Colleen Kane

The First Cut is the Creepest: Revisiting the Childhood Trauma of the Original Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

No single film has affected my life more than a humble made-for-TV movie from 1973 called Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, which served as the scary movie deflowering of many impressionable young minds of Generation X. It seemed to run at least one Saturday afternoon every month of the 1980s on WPIX channel 11. Whenever it did, my older brother and I sat transfixed on the basement’s loop pile carpet (in three tones of brown), filled with dread.

Spoiler alert--but if you didn’t watch this movie as a child, it’s already spoiled.

 

Have You Seen This Man?

Sorry if I startled you. My husband and I are being Internet-stalked by the above stumblebum, who for some unfathomable reason is popping up in our ads all the time. 

While I agree this man would be ideal for advertising certain products and services--serial killing, bedbug treatments, urine stain removers--I can't imagine why his image keeps popping up in these other ads. Does anyone computery have an explanation?

Freaky Friday

I wanted to listen to this song, but then was fully distracted by the droves of Disney characters taking over the stage and threatening to carry Dolly Parton away. She looked good here, though, and goes well alongside cartoon characters. Maybe Doc of the Seven Dwarfs is the one who performed Dolly's most recent and bizarre facial augmentation.

Also, won't you please enjoy this gallery I made of Ludicrous Romance Novel Covers?

Newsflash! Weird stuff found on Internet

The season change is crushing me this year! Yeah...that's what it is...the "season change." It's not the Deep South Experience 2.0, wherein I am drained of 65% of life force. Anyway.

The one exciting thing is that wedding planning is a fabulous procrastination project, and the sub-project of finding a gown is the best one of all time because it's so challenging. But my focus has temporarily shifted to the registry, about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, we will get to have new items of our choosing for our home! On the other hand, I feel like a jerk for asking for expensive gifts. But this is all part of the special cross bestowed by Catholicism called Excessive Guilt, and as my pal Missy advised, if you don't ask for specific items you need, you will still get a lot of expensive random frames and vases.

In my online travels, I saw that Amazon not only has a whole green store now (excellent), but also a Breast Cancer Awareness store (good, we can pick a few things to help fight a disease that has drastically affected my friends and family this year). But the BC store is where the offerings got a little weird.

World-in-Terlet Friday Roundup

For the love of all that's good and holy.
It's:
NUKE-
LEE-
AR
!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please. Wouldn't it have been the best if that was one of Biden's rebuttals? If someone can articulate for me why they would vote for a candidate who does not know how to pronounce the world "nuclear," when they heard it pronounced correctly five seconds earlier, please state your case right now.
The fact that President George W. Bush does not know how to pronounce this word is not a valid argument.
Because I just do not understand. I'm really getting bummed out by defenders of Palin. Do they really agree with her that dinosaurs coexisted with humans 6,000 years ago? D U M

Gustav: the continuing aftermath

Oh, how I wish for an animated bumper logo for my Gustav coverage, with appropriate grim Gustav theme song.

It's day three without power and without the precious precious Internets in Baton Rouge. I'm posting this from the LSU campus. Apparently Bush is here in town, and I'm like, this goon is STILL in charge? He came to town after 9/11. That was a different city and a lifetime ago.

It's humid and after three days of rain with open windows our whole house is starting to feel damp and smell like wet dog. AND we missed the premiere of the new 90210. Bollocks!

But on the plus side, that looming telephone pole somehow never came through the window. We've even named it now: Tenny, after the yellow sticker on its face with a number 10. Old Tenny McGoo. Alfred Lord Tennyson. 

Loads more photos, after the jump.

European Vacation: Berlin

From Holland, we took a train to Berlin.

I was still in my graffiti-tagged-arse jeans, which enabled me to blend right in with the other odd-clad Europeans on the train. I had been to several German cities, but never to Berlin. The f had been there before, but it was years ago, shortly after the wall fell. We'd both heard only good things about the city it had become in the decade-plus since then. Now it was time to see for ourselves.

...And, we're back

Sort of. Tales of adventures in Europe forthcoming, but here are the answers to the little geography puzzlers in the posts while I was away: in the first one, the creeppet Je Ne Sais Quois was in Amsterdam, in the second one, Rotterdam, and in the third, Berlin.

Would you believe that bugger continued to pursue us through Europe?

Here:

Here, where he was especially tickled by the masculine mermen depicted in this fountain:

 

And here.

Back to regularly scheduled blogging very soon.

Var ist die Puppeten-Hosen?!

This was so two days ago (one day? three?), but whatevs.

Where in the World is JNSQ?

This is a much hintier hint than the last hint. We are still being followed internationally by this creepo guy named Je Ne Sais Quois. Can you tell where we are now?

Architecture and design nerds can!