AS I PLEASE IX
Before I resume Halloween Horror 2022, I thought I'd empty this bucket I call a brain into an As I Please column. It does touch upon horror movies so it's not cheating.
* While hiking yesterday I reaped the humorous benefits of my horror-movie bingewatching. I was at the part of the Lake Williams branch of the Old Field trail which crosses the stream, listening to an old-time radio program on my headphones, when a gut-wrenching cry seemed to blast out of the woods. It was so savage, so full of animalistic and almost insane fury, that I jumped like I'd been stung by a scorpion and half-expected to see some celluloid maniac burst out of the woods wielding a chainsaw. The actual culprit of this terrible noise, this deafening drawn-out dirge, was a white crane flapping overhead. I have been around cranes for many years, they frequent the C & O canal in Maryland where I basically grew up, and yet I have never once heard their cry. Believe me, once is enough. Curiously, they strongly resemble pterodactyls. Probably they are descended from them. At any rate, it was easy to picture the ancient ancestor of this flying fiend as the last thing many a large animal saw before it was whisked off its feet to be eaten alive in a bone-littered nest somewhere.
* My temper is never improved by malfunctioning smoke alarms. Especially if there are two in such close proximity I can't tell which one is making the eardrum-piercing chirp. Especially if one of them is twelve feet off the ground and even on a step-stool and using an instrument and standing on tippy-toes I can't reach it. Especially when I finally do work the battery out and it still chirps. Especially when I finally manage to dislodge the thing so it's hanging on wires and it's still out of reach. Especially when somehow I pull it off without breaking it and now the chirp is clearly coming from the other alarm. Especially when I pull the battery from the other alarm and it still chirps. Especially when I replace the battery with the battery from the apparently fully functional alarm and it chirps a final time as I'm putting the stool away, simply as a fuck you.
* Speaking of fuck yous, many years ago, in this same apartment building, I was aggravated to the point of violence by a similarly unreachable alarm which decided to shriek and stay shrieking in the middle of the afternoon. I tried every civilized method of switching it off to no avail. Finally, in a rage, I seized a broom and proceeded to beat it from the ceiling, destroying it completely. Bellowing villainous laughter, I kicked the now-shattered alarm all over the apartment and then gleefully dropped it into the trash. The very next day -- the very next day my landlord slipped a note beneath my door informing me that the city fire marshal was coming "the day after tomorrow" to inspect each and every smoke detector in the building. No longer smiling, I went to three different home improvement stores before I found a smoke alarm that matched the original, and with considerable difficulty (because of my very high ceilings), managed to get it screwed into place and functioning. I was feeling smug again when the marshal arrived, looked at the alarm, and said, "That's an outdated model. Better swap it for a new one." The landlord's handyman immediately produced said new one from a bag, removed the "old," and promptly fired it down the nearest garbage chute. There went $27.50.
* I am now twenty films into my "31 horror films in 30 days" Halloween extravaganza, and therefore ahead of schedule. I cannot deny, however, that watching all of this scary shit in such amount and close proximity hasn't had its effect. Aside from jumping out of my skin because of the afformentioned crane, after about the fifteenth movie in less than two weeks, I was feeling jumpy before bed and had troubling dreams. Having worked in the make up effects industry for many years, I should be more immune than most to stage blood and screaming actors, and I admit I am no longer as vulnerable to scary movies as I used to be, but neither am I immune. In the long run it's probably not psychologically healthy to watch so much carnage on the tube, even when it's fake. That having been said, the news is full of carnage, too, and despite what you've been told, it's real.
* My fourth novel, and most recent release, THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER has now won a second trophy, specifically the Pinnacle Book Achivement Award for Summer 2022. Why am I telling you now, in the fall? Because my notice ended up in a spam folder and not my e-mail inbox. The goddamned congratulations message with all of its links and bells and whistles was hung up like a fly in a spiderweb for almost 45 days before I accidentally stumbled upon it. Notwithstanding the fact a congratulatory phone call would have been nice, Gmail can kiss my ass. It's back to my 1998-era MSN address for me.
* G4TV, once the most famous and influential show devoted to the gaming industry, has officially gone out of business as of today. I care about this in the sense that I was a part of that industry from 2011 to 2020, during which time I worked at no less than seven different trailer houses, helping to make game trailers for some of the biggest brands in the industry. G4TV was once funny, sexy, irreverent and innovative. Later it was rebooted to be wokeist, political, and decidedly antigamer, to the point of hiring a contentious talking head called Frosk who boasted she did not even play video games. As incredible as it seems, G4TVs post-reboot content was deliberately calculated to anger and insult its own audience. Even more incredibly, this is now a trend with studios. Not incredibly, it doesn't work very well: G4TV 2.0 went out of business. I have a great deal to say about how wokeism represents a clear and present danger to every form of artistic content regardless of one's political beliefs, but for now it will be sufficient for me to repeat the mantra "go woke, go broke."
* My novella THE NUMBERS GAME got a positively lovely review from beautys.library on Instagram. It opens with, "Oh man… This was intense. This was my second story by Watson going into this, so I knew to expect something morbid. And this did not disappoint." I am not going to lie, I laughed pretty damned hard at that.
Tomorrow I resume my horror-movie orgy, which I intend to climax on Halloween night with, appropriately enough, HALLOWEEN ENDS.
* While hiking yesterday I reaped the humorous benefits of my horror-movie bingewatching. I was at the part of the Lake Williams branch of the Old Field trail which crosses the stream, listening to an old-time radio program on my headphones, when a gut-wrenching cry seemed to blast out of the woods. It was so savage, so full of animalistic and almost insane fury, that I jumped like I'd been stung by a scorpion and half-expected to see some celluloid maniac burst out of the woods wielding a chainsaw. The actual culprit of this terrible noise, this deafening drawn-out dirge, was a white crane flapping overhead. I have been around cranes for many years, they frequent the C & O canal in Maryland where I basically grew up, and yet I have never once heard their cry. Believe me, once is enough. Curiously, they strongly resemble pterodactyls. Probably they are descended from them. At any rate, it was easy to picture the ancient ancestor of this flying fiend as the last thing many a large animal saw before it was whisked off its feet to be eaten alive in a bone-littered nest somewhere.
* My temper is never improved by malfunctioning smoke alarms. Especially if there are two in such close proximity I can't tell which one is making the eardrum-piercing chirp. Especially if one of them is twelve feet off the ground and even on a step-stool and using an instrument and standing on tippy-toes I can't reach it. Especially when I finally do work the battery out and it still chirps. Especially when I finally manage to dislodge the thing so it's hanging on wires and it's still out of reach. Especially when somehow I pull it off without breaking it and now the chirp is clearly coming from the other alarm. Especially when I pull the battery from the other alarm and it still chirps. Especially when I replace the battery with the battery from the apparently fully functional alarm and it chirps a final time as I'm putting the stool away, simply as a fuck you.
* Speaking of fuck yous, many years ago, in this same apartment building, I was aggravated to the point of violence by a similarly unreachable alarm which decided to shriek and stay shrieking in the middle of the afternoon. I tried every civilized method of switching it off to no avail. Finally, in a rage, I seized a broom and proceeded to beat it from the ceiling, destroying it completely. Bellowing villainous laughter, I kicked the now-shattered alarm all over the apartment and then gleefully dropped it into the trash. The very next day -- the very next day my landlord slipped a note beneath my door informing me that the city fire marshal was coming "the day after tomorrow" to inspect each and every smoke detector in the building. No longer smiling, I went to three different home improvement stores before I found a smoke alarm that matched the original, and with considerable difficulty (because of my very high ceilings), managed to get it screwed into place and functioning. I was feeling smug again when the marshal arrived, looked at the alarm, and said, "That's an outdated model. Better swap it for a new one." The landlord's handyman immediately produced said new one from a bag, removed the "old," and promptly fired it down the nearest garbage chute. There went $27.50.
* I am now twenty films into my "31 horror films in 30 days" Halloween extravaganza, and therefore ahead of schedule. I cannot deny, however, that watching all of this scary shit in such amount and close proximity hasn't had its effect. Aside from jumping out of my skin because of the afformentioned crane, after about the fifteenth movie in less than two weeks, I was feeling jumpy before bed and had troubling dreams. Having worked in the make up effects industry for many years, I should be more immune than most to stage blood and screaming actors, and I admit I am no longer as vulnerable to scary movies as I used to be, but neither am I immune. In the long run it's probably not psychologically healthy to watch so much carnage on the tube, even when it's fake. That having been said, the news is full of carnage, too, and despite what you've been told, it's real.
* My fourth novel, and most recent release, THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER has now won a second trophy, specifically the Pinnacle Book Achivement Award for Summer 2022. Why am I telling you now, in the fall? Because my notice ended up in a spam folder and not my e-mail inbox. The goddamned congratulations message with all of its links and bells and whistles was hung up like a fly in a spiderweb for almost 45 days before I accidentally stumbled upon it. Notwithstanding the fact a congratulatory phone call would have been nice, Gmail can kiss my ass. It's back to my 1998-era MSN address for me.
* G4TV, once the most famous and influential show devoted to the gaming industry, has officially gone out of business as of today. I care about this in the sense that I was a part of that industry from 2011 to 2020, during which time I worked at no less than seven different trailer houses, helping to make game trailers for some of the biggest brands in the industry. G4TV was once funny, sexy, irreverent and innovative. Later it was rebooted to be wokeist, political, and decidedly antigamer, to the point of hiring a contentious talking head called Frosk who boasted she did not even play video games. As incredible as it seems, G4TVs post-reboot content was deliberately calculated to anger and insult its own audience. Even more incredibly, this is now a trend with studios. Not incredibly, it doesn't work very well: G4TV 2.0 went out of business. I have a great deal to say about how wokeism represents a clear and present danger to every form of artistic content regardless of one's political beliefs, but for now it will be sufficient for me to repeat the mantra "go woke, go broke."
* My novella THE NUMBERS GAME got a positively lovely review from beautys.library on Instagram. It opens with, "Oh man… This was intense. This was my second story by Watson going into this, so I knew to expect something morbid. And this did not disappoint." I am not going to lie, I laughed pretty damned hard at that.
Tomorrow I resume my horror-movie orgy, which I intend to climax on Halloween night with, appropriately enough, HALLOWEEN ENDS.
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ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION
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