Ero guro: "The term is often used incorrectly by western audiences to mean "gore"—depictions of horror, blood, and guts. In actuality the "grotesque" term implies malformed, unnatural or horrific.[1] Items that are pornographic and bloody are not necessarily ero guro, and ero-guro is not necessarily pornographic or bloody."
If you could pan back while I did a Google Image Search on this term you'd see a picture of me tilting my head to the side, eyebrow cocked, not saying a word. Lots of tentacles, grue, viscera, prepubescent Japanese girls, blood and more tentacles. You've been warned.
Anyway. Here's something I've added to the queue...
Strange Circus, (Sion Sono, 2005)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Japan, The Series, Part 1
Contrary to popular belief, "japan" is not a proper noun. It's an adjective. It means, "phenomenally bizarre, profoundly disturbing, beautifully grotesque and chock-a-chalk full of assorted brainfuckling." Not Just Weird, japan is cracked-out, super-psycho, haunt-my-dreams-forever weird.
State's Exhibit 1: Butoh, a kind of modern dance. According to the Wiki:
In this clip from (shudder of glee) Horrors of Malformed Men (1969, Ishii) you can see Tatsumi Hijikata being hyper-japan. Check out the hypno-t'eyes.
State's Exhibit 1: Butoh, a kind of modern dance. According to the Wiki:
It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. There is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all.
The first butoh piece, Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered at a dance festival in 1959. It was based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima. It explored the taboos of homosexuality and paedophilia and ended with a live chicken being held between the legs of Kazuo Ohno's son Yoshito Ohno, after which Hijikata chasing Yoshito off the stage in darkness.
The earliest butoh performances were called (in English) "Dance Experience." In the early 1960s, Hijikata used the term "Ankoku-Buyou" (ζι»θθΈ – dance of darkness) to describe his dance. He later changed the word "buyo," filled with associations of Japanese classical dance, to "butoh," a long-discarded word for dance that originally meant European ballroom dancing.[1]
In this clip from (shudder of glee) Horrors of Malformed Men (1969, Ishii) you can see Tatsumi Hijikata being hyper-japan. Check out the hypno-t'eyes.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Winter Soundtrack
(Antidote for previous horror)
Reason #4 Russia is Awesome: Tchaikovsky
This, and many other fantastic choices, are part of Rot's Christmas playlist.
Reason #4 Russia is Awesome: Tchaikovsky
This, and many other fantastic choices, are part of Rot's Christmas playlist.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
This Sentence Has Five Words
Via my current infatuation, Old Is The New New:
Gary Provost, quoted in Roy Peter Clark’s (terrific) Writing Tools:
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Gary Provost, quoted in Roy Peter Clark’s (terrific) Writing Tools:
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Monster Man
Rotten News had an article about a child rapist. Tragically nothing uncommon about that. But look at this guy:
He has something called Noonan Syndrome. According to Wiki, a genetic disorder considered to be a type of dwarfism.
Reminds me of this guy in all kinds ways...
He has something called Noonan Syndrome. According to Wiki, a genetic disorder considered to be a type of dwarfism.
The principal features include congenital heart defect, short stature, learning problems, pectus excavatum, impaired blood clotting, and a characteristic configuration of facial features including a webbed neck.
Reminds me of this guy in all kinds ways...
Twinnies
Excerpts from The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace. All below are direct quotes.
----------
Cathy also made audio tapes of the twins' conversations when they thought they could not be overheard. She was curious to know whether, like many twins, they too had developed their own private language. June and Jennifer's private conversation sounded more like the twitter of birds than the voices of human children. Even Gloria [their mother] could not make it out, apart from a few words. It sounded as though they were talking very rapidly, so Cathy played the reels of tape back at different speeds and discovered that the twins' private language was, like that of the San Diego twins, only every English spoken at enormous speed, with subtly changed stresses on many words. (36)
When Greta came to visit with her new husband or on the few occasions when a visitor arrived, the twins would come downstairs and listen outside the door. They observed acutely and were aware of every small family event: the trips planned to the supermarket, the decision to buy a new kettle, discussion about Greta's new curtains or David's jobs. They sat on the stairs or spied from an upstairs window as the cars came and went. Nothing escaped their notice. Like the Listeners in Walter De la Mare's poem, they heard and watched, but made no response. They were invisible presences, haunting the ordinary little house on the estate, commanding and manipulating by their silence and their disembodied messages. (50)
So at the age of sixteen the twins, together with Rosie who shared their room and with whom they were still able to talk, created their own Happy Families, giving the dolls all the warmth and fun, the parties, outings and friends they had never known [...] Rosie, the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, kept account of them in her personal book, an innocent enough looking notebook but containing some gruesome events.
Samantha Miller. Aged 6. Operation on face. Never succeeded.
Anne Miller. Aged 6. Operation on both eyes. Never succeeded. Glasses worn.
June Gibbons. Aged 9. Died of leg injury.
George Gibbons. Aged 4. Died of eczema.
Bluey Gibbons. Aged two and half. Died of appendix.
George Gibbons. Fatally struck down by a back injury.
Peter Gibbons. Aged 5. Adopted. Presumed dead.
Julie Gibons. Aged 2 1/2. Died of a 'stamped stomach'.
Polly Morgan-Gibbons. Age 4. Died of a slit face and Susie Pope-Gibbons died the same time of a cracked skull.
The records became more worrying. Wesley Miller, a small doll, died of battering, and Randy and Rebecca (formerly known as Louise and Jody Miller), twins aged ten, died in 'cremation burial with fire'. (54-56)
The bedroom upstairs in Furzy Park became a powerhouse for these fantasies, rich and alive, while the girls looked out through their rusted window at lines of washing and bleak, rain-soaked patches of grass. The streets and slabs of terraced houses on the estate had become a graveyard from which they had to escape. They did so by building their own kingdoms of the imagination, much as the Bronte sisters had done, huddled together against the tombstones outside Haworth parsonage and the eccentricities of their father within.
The twins, like the Bronte sisters, were cut off from the world around them, fueled by adolescent yearning and a desire to overcome their barren surroundings. The twins' fantasy was not the swashbuckling worlds of Napoleonic battles nor the imperialist-dominated Glass Town: it was a Clockwork Orange land of violent, suburban America. Their dream city was Malibu, the place where teenagers are perpetually stoned on drugs and alcohol, parents divorce and remarry and divorce again. The 'dolls' took part in gang warfare; they were hijacked on Greyhound buses; they became terrorists involved in assassination plots; they robbed stores and murdered their parents. They were the twentieth-century teenage heroes and heroines -- immature, gauche, and often funny. (69)
----------
Cathy also made audio tapes of the twins' conversations when they thought they could not be overheard. She was curious to know whether, like many twins, they too had developed their own private language. June and Jennifer's private conversation sounded more like the twitter of birds than the voices of human children. Even Gloria [their mother] could not make it out, apart from a few words. It sounded as though they were talking very rapidly, so Cathy played the reels of tape back at different speeds and discovered that the twins' private language was, like that of the San Diego twins, only every English spoken at enormous speed, with subtly changed stresses on many words. (36)
When Greta came to visit with her new husband or on the few occasions when a visitor arrived, the twins would come downstairs and listen outside the door. They observed acutely and were aware of every small family event: the trips planned to the supermarket, the decision to buy a new kettle, discussion about Greta's new curtains or David's jobs. They sat on the stairs or spied from an upstairs window as the cars came and went. Nothing escaped their notice. Like the Listeners in Walter De la Mare's poem, they heard and watched, but made no response. They were invisible presences, haunting the ordinary little house on the estate, commanding and manipulating by their silence and their disembodied messages. (50)
So at the age of sixteen the twins, together with Rosie who shared their room and with whom they were still able to talk, created their own Happy Families, giving the dolls all the warmth and fun, the parties, outings and friends they had never known [...] Rosie, the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, kept account of them in her personal book, an innocent enough looking notebook but containing some gruesome events.
Samantha Miller. Aged 6. Operation on face. Never succeeded.
Anne Miller. Aged 6. Operation on both eyes. Never succeeded. Glasses worn.
June Gibbons. Aged 9. Died of leg injury.
George Gibbons. Aged 4. Died of eczema.
Bluey Gibbons. Aged two and half. Died of appendix.
George Gibbons. Fatally struck down by a back injury.
Peter Gibbons. Aged 5. Adopted. Presumed dead.
Julie Gibons. Aged 2 1/2. Died of a 'stamped stomach'.
Polly Morgan-Gibbons. Age 4. Died of a slit face and Susie Pope-Gibbons died the same time of a cracked skull.
The records became more worrying. Wesley Miller, a small doll, died of battering, and Randy and Rebecca (formerly known as Louise and Jody Miller), twins aged ten, died in 'cremation burial with fire'. (54-56)
The bedroom upstairs in Furzy Park became a powerhouse for these fantasies, rich and alive, while the girls looked out through their rusted window at lines of washing and bleak, rain-soaked patches of grass. The streets and slabs of terraced houses on the estate had become a graveyard from which they had to escape. They did so by building their own kingdoms of the imagination, much as the Bronte sisters had done, huddled together against the tombstones outside Haworth parsonage and the eccentricities of their father within.
The twins, like the Bronte sisters, were cut off from the world around them, fueled by adolescent yearning and a desire to overcome their barren surroundings. The twins' fantasy was not the swashbuckling worlds of Napoleonic battles nor the imperialist-dominated Glass Town: it was a Clockwork Orange land of violent, suburban America. Their dream city was Malibu, the place where teenagers are perpetually stoned on drugs and alcohol, parents divorce and remarry and divorce again. The 'dolls' took part in gang warfare; they were hijacked on Greyhound buses; they became terrorists involved in assassination plots; they robbed stores and murdered their parents. They were the twentieth-century teenage heroes and heroines -- immature, gauche, and often funny. (69)
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Christmas Nightmare
Haunted holiday house, ho ho ho. These are the people that whack carolers over the head with a shovel and bury them in the backyard. Until they make the bodies part of the display. See if you can spot the reanimated corpses...
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