A Christmas Wish

I haven't asked for anything, no special requests this year. Probably because I spent so much time this past semester hoping and praying and wanting everything to turn out very well with classes and grades... especially Microbiology. I just wanted to do well in school, despite the misgivings that continue to pop up...

Am I really going in the direction that I want to pursue?
Is medicine really right for me?
Will I be happy and successful as a nurse?
My father's voice always erupts from the back of my mind... have something to fall back on.

The truth is, I would really be happiest if I were able to sustain myself as a writer, publishing short stories and articles and working on a book, the book, some books, compiling all the stories I've got wrapped around inside my head on paper and sending them out for publication and reading by the general public.

So far, I've read three books since the holiday began, spent as much time as possible reading and writing and thinking and resting and planning and wondering how difficult the next two years will be while I finish school then find a job practicing what I've learned in a position that allows enough free time to do what I really love.

Every time I find myself in the wonderful world I love, the world of fiction, my wants and desires return and I remember how much I love the craft, how much I would give to be able to do only this: read, write, create, live happily in the universes I fathom. My creative juices are flowing once again, I forget how furtively they can erupt.

My only Christmas wish is to have my happiness endure, and to see happiness endure in the lives of those in my non-fiction world.

The Break So Far

It isn't beginning to feel much like Christmas this year.

I suppose I should be happy and content. The semester is complete. Despite my score in Microbiology, I still left 2009 with a very high GPA for the semester and a very high GPA overall. I managed to leave my last final exam and have a position with a health foods department in a store in less than an hour. Everyone I know is in good health and in good spirits, but there are no decorations gracing the walls of my house, and I don't feel as if much has come to bring Christmas and holiday cheer into my heart.

Not every holiday can really be feeled with the warmth and hope that so many were in my youth, I suppose. I guess the image of December changes a bit with time. Things can't always re-occur with the same zest with which I remember. Maybe tomorrow will bring more. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel more like I think I should at Christmas.

On Writing, On Cleaning, On Resting, On Cooking...

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead." -- Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I don't suppose I could think of a better way of having officially begun an extended vacation from lectures and power points and recopying notes and exams and minimal minutes of personal time than with a great classic suddenly riddled with attacks of flesh-eating zombies. Except maybe some of the other books that I've selected for reading over the scholastic break.

It's funny. I completed my last final in Human Anatomy and had a new position at Vitamins Plus within hours. Suddenly, I'm able to begin putting my newfound nutritional knowledge into practical application, and the time was only minutes after departing campus and enrolling in the long, much anticipated semester conclusion. It's another new and exciting chapter in my life, I suppose. One that will work very well with the approaching spring semester and the other job I'm currently holding as a student worker when classes are in session. I'd barely had time to think or contemplate the ideas of where and when and how I might possibly find a suitable position before I saw the posting for a position and had an application turned in. I suppose that I was ready and the time was right... the stars were appropriately alligned.

I begin indoctrinating myself to the world of organic foods and supplements and better health on Saturday morning, and I'm excited to be able to glean all this new knowledge and experience. Almost as excited as I am at spending this time working on my step (the last one I completed and reviewed with Mariann was in August). Almost as excited as I am at the anticipation of having my movie-viewing buddy, Jeremy, over on Saturday nights to watch more buckets of Bava and an array of Argento...hopefully a symposium in which we can begin to discover new directors and production styles and gather more ideas for working on a screenplay together. Almost as excited as I am at the reading list that includes Wilkie Collins, Thomas Tryon, Tom Robbins, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Wolfe, and John D. MacDonald. Almost as excited as I am at my family arriving so that we can spend an evening consuming my cousin's haute Louisiana-style cuisine and wrapping presents and setting up a tree and decorating and sending out Christmas cards and sending out notes and letters to all my friends and family to let them know how the semester has run its course.

Without further adieu, I suppose I should get started.

Motivations

Nothing in weeks. Nothing since recopying notes and formulating note cards and reading and highlighting chapters all took over my life and suddenly became so imperative and necessary and detrimental to having a flow of my creative juices.

Another final down. Two more to go.

I wish I felt more confident. I wish I felt less scattered and undisciplined and more at ease with things today, but I really don't. Once this is over, I have a series of essays to compile to send for a collection of scholarships for which I'm applying. I just hope to have some original thought, some new creative bug infect my mind and find its symptoms at the pace of my whispering fingertips along and around and over and into this small keyboard.

Sleep. Maybe more tomorrow. Unless the impact of Micro and Anatomy prep overtakes my obsession-oriented mind.

Monday Third Post

I don't think that I have ever seen this much food in any house I've ever lived in. It's really kinda crazy when you think about it... all this to be cracked and sliced and diced and stewed and sauteed and baked and boiled and chilled and prepped for this one spectacular dinner that takes days and hours and minutes and effort to prepare... and will take more time to recover and send away in go-plates than it will to eat. Such an American tradition, oui?



The cabinet. Why did I think we needed three boxes of Ritz crackers?










Pre-prepatory fridge contents.











And the biggest, fattest, heaviest turkey I have ever seen or carried or pushed through acres and acres of supermarket aisles.








Oh! And I had to get a snap of these. The two most-difficult-to-locate items ever created.

Monday Pix Set 2

Okay, guys. So... you kinda have to know my mom to really get this sequence of pictures. If you are one of her children or a close friend, then please look at what's in her hand, what's in her lap, and the progression of her facial expressions.

... ie: "Miles, I'm eating! Call her off me!"

I tell her to kiss Mary Louise.






Next frame: Mom is not only NOT going to kiss Mary Louise, but she is now going to press her lips together just in case any dog hair might get in there.

Next shot: Mom is getting frustrated (clearly) and ready for the game to be over.

Obviously, I'm encouraging Mary Louise to give her grandmother kisses while Mom is telling her that she'd better not.

That's it. Mom's had enough and wants to get up. Notice how the bowl and the spoon are both respectively extended away from her body (laterally, for all you Human Anatomy terminologia anatomica nuts).

Monday

Another example of the diva, Mary Louise. First, she sees the camera, then....












She reacts. RCA dog? Kinda? A bit of a drama queen, I think.













All the food that's in there and weather that's dipping down into the forties, and the ladies break out the ice cream and chocolate sauce.











My grandmother. I had to sift through their photos because they looked like they'd been hitting Glaucoma medication in every one of the pictures I took.










I told them I'd post the pix to get Aunt Teresa and Didi nice and jealous.

The Story (To Be Continued...?)

Not to place any inducible plausibility out there, but I'd half expected some regular readers to comment... looking for the resolution to the on-going story I've been posting here. Although it has yet to have a definitive ending, I was at least hoping for a little banter between some looking to find just what is in store for all the characters mentioned.

I'll wait to see if there are any questions or interested parties before finalizing the rest.

New Room Progress

The Story - Part III

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle



Despite a deep and resonating need to be focused on everything else in life, isn't it really only human nature that drives us to want to share our focus with someone else? Even the most resilient island or rock in the center of the ocean has to want a visitor sometime, even if it's only a castaway, buoying for something to grasp onto from the turbulence of the ocean.



There are tons of sites out there for single people. In fact, it seems that Americans alone spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in their attempt to find the perfect match, their soul mate, the one with whom they can share their lives. If not, our society wouldn't be so hell-bent on perfection and fitting in, diet and weight loss, cosmetics and cologne, designer labels and fast cars. If none of this really mattered, then everyone would truly be marching to their own personal drum, feeling the arrhythmic heartbeat from within.



That being stated, one can only imagine that even the greatest students, at home in a world of questions and answers, research and study, sometimes find that the answers they seek, the quest they embody can never be really conquered and found and successfully attained through the pages of a Human Anatomy textbook or in the land of the lost night as they stay awake with coffee and cigarettes, recopying their notes and trying so diligently to study, to learn, to commit innumerable facts and figures to their memory for quick and easy recall. Everyone gets lonely.

Cue the twenty-first century. The proliferation of the Internet and cable connections and text messaging and newer, smaller, faster, better. Of being on the go and being in the know and never falling behind. Don't want to be alone? You don't have to be. Never alone. Never again. Take a number. Join up. Fill in your profile. Sign on the dotted line, date it, and initial just below. Name. Age. Race. Occupation. Height. Weight. Hair color. Eye color. Body Type. Smoking? Drinking? Drug Use? And just what are you seeking in a partner? What are you looking for? Short term companionship? Long term companionship? Dating? Romance? Passion? Sex? Regular Sex? Casual Sex? Group Sex? What are your interests? What are some of your hobbies? And give us a few words about yourself now... in two hundred fifty characters or less, of course.

There is more information about me circulating singles sights and personals ads beginning in 1996 or 1997 and constantly innovated and updated since then... up to now. Up to today. Some of it still at your fingertips...only a few minor keystrokes away.

I'm not the only one. Even the men and women who are married and have children and have committed themselves to life and love and permanence with a significant other. Even them. They still look. And chat. And hope. Even the men and women who so vehemently oppose homosexuality and smoking and criminal records and Democrats. They look, too. Only they're more secret and selective, and they believe that they will never be discovered. Never be found out. The options are endless. The territory is vast. The ramifications are deep.

So I filled out the ads and the questionnaires and I wrote a few things about myself and I posted a few recent photos and I waited. One needn't wait very long. The responses are quick. And endless. And vast. And deep. Conversations were had. Ideas were discussed. Arguments were argued. Pictures were exchanged.

One bad date after another. One smooth talker after another. One other potential who turns out to have more secrets than the last, more issues than the last, a potential who is potentially crazier than the last.

It's all enough to exhaust a guy.

Enough to make you want to give up for good.

But every once in a while, kismet smiles down from his perch high above Mount Olympus. He smiles, he winks, he nods, he points, and suddenly something is born that is unexpected. And well received. And amazing. And successful. And funny. And odd. And potentially life altering.

And there are still those out there who say that these are just coincidences. Luck. Chance. Just something that happened.

2009.

Shreveport, Louisiana.

328 Albany Avenue.

Well into the late-night hours.

To Be Continued...

The Story - Part II

"While I'm far away from you, my baby, I know it's hard for you, my baby because it's hard for me, my baby, and the darkest hour is just before dawn..."
-- The Mamas and the Papas

I have, waiting on me, more notes for Micro and three quizzes that need to be taken for Anatomy Lab; however, most everything else that should be completed has been completed, and since I overslept and missed my meeting this morning, I have a little more time to wake up slowly and restfully to start my day. I have yet to meditate today just as I have yet to clean up the morning mess from the kitchen and brush my teeth and get everything around my desk into an ostensible, working arrangement. I do have time, though, to post the next installment in the story. I'm sure that this second folio is one which many are all-too-familiar with already.

If I were to consider this a memoir in its entirety, I would be failing in the historical accuracy of my plot if I considered moving from, say, point A (Magnet) to point G (today) without mentioning several bumps and interventions representative of all the letters in between. However, I know everyone reading probably just wants to know the punchline of this protracted tale, so I'll try not to digress much along the way.

Although the circumstances of this particular yarn focus around Whitney Burke as she one of the other two main characters, I would be remiss in not mentioning a few other people whose support and friendship established the genesis for what would come after graduation from Magnet High. Without Katie Gregg, I never would have learned that there was something comforting in actually following my dream. She and I spent the tawdry end of our senior year discovering Andy Warhol and John Waters. When the summer was closing, she left for San Francisco to pursue a career in Interior Design. Among others, the one who stands out the most is Bijal Patel, a beautiful and brilliant girl that I'd been close to longer than any other. In middle school, Bijal introduced me to the world of Jackie Collins and Judith Krantz and many other writers of glitz and glamour fiction, each of the tales structured around a core character who came from nothing, encountered unimaginable obstacles, and managed to follow his or her dream all the way to the pinnacle of success.

Katie was going to be on the cover of any and every Conde Nast publication highlighting brilliant bedrooms and bathrooms. Whitney was probably going to end up on Saturday Night Live. No matter what avenue Bijal explored, it seemed clear that she would rise to the top. I, on the other hand, never really wanted to go to college. My plan? Graduate high school, move to New York, and write.

However, I was the baby in the family. The dreamer. The one with an ounce of creativity, which led me to believe that the words I printed on paper would take me to a world where I could sustain myself through writing alone. Yes, I was the baby... in a family of overachievers. My sister was a genius, my brother found opportunity and perseverance on roads following his ranks in the army. My father definitely instilled ideas of practicality in all of us, the thought that we could dream, but we should always be realistic no matter what.

As the writer and star of the student-produced soap opera, my family saw that I did, in fact, have some talent, but the majority of my high school teachers stifled my creativity because the things that I found interesting and alluring and wonderful were the people and arts they considered lowbrow trash. I preferred Valley of the Dolls to Heart of Darkness and Alfred Hitchcock to Daphne DuMaurier. In fact, my senior year, I took every possible creative class I could find, in hopes that something had to give. The morning began with Creative Writing, then Video Journalism, then Novels, then Drama, then English... I had hopes and dreams. I even remember writing a short story called "The Secret Game" that my English teacher almost refused to get behind as a possible submission to ArtBreak. She stood behind a fellow student who had written something that was a bit more on tap with the other entries that would hit the student competition. I remember my English teacher's shock when my story won the top prize: the Superintendent's Award.

Once again, I digress... Suffice to say, I just wanted to write. Reality sat in. I was forced to choose a college and a career goal and a life plan. I opted for Louisiana State University in Shreveport to major in Public Relations, which led to Psychology, which took to down to Lafayette to visit a friend named Rachel one weekend in October of 1997. I fell in love with Lafayette, and by the end of the following year, I was in the final stages of transferring to the university down there and on my way to moving to a town that would change my life and take me in directions I never could have anticipated.

Lafayette is a predominantly Catholic town. There's a huge music and art scene with constant openings of new restaurants and festivals and live bands playing every night of the week. It's the perfect town for a young, up and rising artist to develop his voice. Unfortunately, being a town that I consider The Garden of Nocturnal Delights, there's a degree of exposure to other alternative behaviors. I tried it, I liked it, you all know what happened. 1999-2001 was bad. 2001-2005 was worse. A darker time, a different story, only important to mention in working my way to the events of the early part of November, 2009.

July 16, 2005.

308 East Texas Street.

Bossier City, Louisiana.

I had only talked to Whitney on the phone. We had seen each other briefly in 2001, but I was drunk and out of sorts. Other than that, life had taken us on different paths, different routes, and it would take the next several years following July of 2005 for me to find the path, discover the routes, accept matters, and move on.

It is suggested to recovering addicts that they avoid relationships and sexual escapades for one year. How can I be expected to be half of a healthy relationship when I am not a healthy individual (Mariann M.)? Good advice. Sound advice. For those who take the route it works. A recovering person is allowed to get clean, stay clean, lose the desire to use, and find a new and better way to live his or her life.

One year. Done. Two years. Done. Three years. A new prospect: Northwestern State University College of Nursing. The ten year reunion. I met with friends and familiar faces before, but I didn't attend the reunion. Time had passed and things had changed. Whitney and I rekindled our times and our talks. No matter what time and experience had passed between us, some relationships never die. In reminiscing and remembering, she would always remind me of the moment I told her of my big secret, when we were sixteen and just pack from the month in France. And good ole Whitney. She could never let me forget that she knew I the revelation before I did, because she'd had prior experience with this guy named Jeremy who she'd grown up with. Her gay boyfriend before I was her gay boyfriend.

As I encountered the beginning of my fourth year in recovery, life had shown up, I'd encountered obstacles and changed and developed, and I'd learn to see the light. July 16, 2009 came and went along with math classes and English classes and psychology classes and chemistry and first aid and CPR and I saw myself achieving and maintaining. I saw that the things I thought I'd always wanted and hoped to reach really weren't as important and imperative as I'd once believed, and I found that I had an alternative route. I saw that there was this other thing, another objective that I was actually good at, something that I really liked.

I realized that there was only one thing that I didn't want. I hoped that I would never look back at my life and see that the biggest and best thing that I ever did was go to rehab. I wanted to have a list of brilliant achievements and life rewards for doing the next right thing and trying not to hurt anyone along the way. So far, so good.

But sometimes, in the wee, dark hours of the night, when the quizzes are completed and the notes are recopied and the chapters are read and the note cards are made and I realize that I actually have a little time on my hands, life feels lonely.

To Be Continued...

The Story - Part I

"And you can be sure that if you're feelin' right, a daydream will last a-long into the night. Tomorrow at breakfast you may prick up your ears, or you may be daydreamin' for a thousand years...What a day for a daydream, custom made for a daydreamin' boy."

--The Lovin' Spoonful

I made a promise to several, and I'm a man of my word. It's something that I've been diligently working with for the past several years: saying what I mean, meaning what I say, standing by the statements I make, and attempting never to over-obligate myself. Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes I struggle with success. Sometimes I just have to go into a bathroom and catch my breath and cry, but that's only when I realize that I've promised a million different things to a million different people and they're all expecting me to fulfill those things for which I've obligated myself. Those rigidly stiff moments of somber humility when I realize that it's impossible ("it's all right now, I've learned my lesson well; you can't please everyone, but you've got to please yourself") are the most painful periods of growth. I've had a few recently. Too many, it seems. I'm exhausted, but I'm glad I reached this point of exhaustion and dis-enthusiasm because I see that I am, in fact, a human being. I'm not a robot. I'm not a soldier. I'm not a human doing (thanks, Chopra). All that being written, having voiced my dissatisfaction with the week that's slowly ebbing into the past, I'm ready to give the people what they want ("make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait!"--attributed to Wilkie Collins and Thomas Hardy depending on your citation; both were masters of all three).

In telling this story, I realize that it may be impossible for me to compile every detail into one post. I have yet to decide if I'll include everything in this terribly true tale in a few short posts tonite or if I'll get the events out slowly but surely. Without further adieu...

Going back.

Going way back.

1993.

Caddo Parish Magnet High School.

1601 Viking Drive.

(Sometime after lunch). The year before, I'd been in an audience at Caddo Middle Magnet that was recruited to attend a special program called Fair Park Medical Careers Magnet. They saw me coming. I began my freshman year with Algebra, Medical Terminology/First Aid, and Biology as the first three classes of the day at Fair Park, then took the bus to Magnet for the GT (gifted/talented) block of English and Civics/Free Enterprise. My day ended en francais avec Madame Harris.

We were working on a project during the two hour block of time devoted to gifted and talented students using the new Macs, conducting interviews, compiling research, and concocting an innovate, computer-generated presentation on a year in the 20th century. I was 1929, a very good year, according to wine aficionados (any odd year, if I remember correctly), but that was also an end to a lot of things: the roaring twenties, profitable speculation, the flappers, big oil. The stock market crashed in October, and the world was plunged into a major depression. Sounds familiar now that I'm writing this out.

Students were encouraged to consult books, roll through old newspapers (I'm pretty sure this was before I'd ever even heard of the Internet), and use the myriad other sources of the Shreve Memorial Library system to create something like 20 or so pages of material that we would later present on the Macs to the combo class just before the big holiday break. Of course, we still had a mountain of other work to complete during this time. We were reading Great Expectations, but supplementing our leisure time with a selection of books that were supposed to encourage to rise and conquer. One of the books on the list was a slim volume called Jonathan Livingston Seagull (I may have liked it had I not been forced to read it), which I asked one of the teachers if she had a copy for me to use.

One of my classmates overheard and sang out that she had a copy that she'd let me borrow. I'd never noticed her before, probably because when regular classes were running and we weren't completing a project of this magnitude, she was in English when I was in Civics and vice versa. Smart-looking. Red hair. Casually pretty (not that that descriptive phrase registered at the time, but I'm recalling this with the memory of a thirty-year-old looking back sixteen years).

She went across the boardwalk to Sledge's English class while I went to another area to get something, I forget what. When I returned, I ran into her. "I put it on your notebook where you were working," she said, then introduced herself: Whitney Burke. And then, "I can't believe you've got a quote from Lace on your notebook." I fell in love.

Allow me to explain. In the late seventies and early eighties, cable television was really just starting out. For the most part, the majority of American viewers still only had the three major channels to get their nightly viewing pleasures. Naturally there were several regular television series from which everything that we now have on tv today was based. Additionally, networks competed with each other through the release of a great concept: the miniseries. Rather than having to commit oneself to a lifetime of television viewing, people could begin a story on a Monday night and see it through to its completion by the end of the month. Most of the best were based on novels that had been extremely successful. There was Roots, of course (I've heard it said that when it was on, that was the nicest that white people ever were), and there was Rich Man/Poor Man, and Herman Wouk's great epics The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. These were sweeping, lengthy, well acted, and extremely expensive to put on television.

Of course, by the 1980's, the wants and needs of the American public were really changing. Dallas was a huge hit, and it seemed that every network was ready to launch its own version to compete with the CBS superstar. Following suit, the miniseries that aired changed from the socially conscious and well drawn historical novels for television to the filming of the works from bestselling authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz. Some were good. Some were bad. Some were awful. But there is only one that will ever reign as the all-time greatest. The queen. The one that I could probably still drop absolutely everything to watch when I see its airing soon. Shirley Conran's Lace. The worldwide, decade-spanning five or six hours worth of pure escapist entertainment that gave us Phoebe Cates with a really bad accent, conniving girls at a boarding school in the Swiss Alps, Angela Lansbury as their benefactor, and the answer to one of the greatest lines in television history. It's that line that I'd written across my English notebook with a sharpie, the line that Whitney had read, smiled over, and led to our friendship:

"...and perhaps I will have nothing more to do with Maxine's son...perhaps. And maybe I will stand by every word I told Judy, and maybe not. And Pagan's noble cause might benefit from my film's premier, or some other worthy charity will. I haven't made up my mind yet. Incidentally... which one of you bitches is my mother?"

Pure cinematic excellence.

Whitney Burke and I became great friends. One year later, we took a trip to France with the school... a month long excursion to have a taste of the idea of foreign exchange for a year. We opted to remain in the states. Probably a good thing because the two of us were always in trouble. The first time I got drunk... really drunk... I was with her family at Ernest's Orleans Restaurant. I was sixteen, I think.

The thing that always stands out to me about Whitney is her great love of books and movies and art and quotations and ideas. Whitney also loves people, she always has. As a lover of people, and an advocate for human rights and equality and activism and expression, it should come as no great shock that she would be the first that I'd tell the big secret (not such a secret, but it was a big freakin' deal to me at the time). Even less of a shock that Whitney tell me I was not her first gay boyfriend, but that the first gay boyfriend was a guy she'd grown up with named Jeremy, who had come to Magnet the same year as her, but moved away shortly after. In fact, for the remainder of our symbiotic (oft-parasitic/tempestuous) friendship, I would hear the name of this ex-gay boyfriend on and off. She'd hear from him, she'd bring him up, along with the fact that he still hadn't come out to tell her his own truth, but she was convinced it was only a matter of time. Whitney was/is a good person. I have to imagine that anyone she'd hold in such high regard would be as well.

Junior year waned. Whitney helped me to fight my battles and further the cause. Other shows came and went. Assignments popped up. Books were assigned. Trips were taken. We did the National Merit Scholar stuff. And the one-act play stuff. And the student-produced soap opera stuff. And we fought. And we made up. And we learned to smoke cigarettes. And we walked away from Magnet High School in May of 1997, dressed in red and gold and totally unprepared for the wild, wonderful, horrifying world that was waiting.

To Be Continued....

Something

I couldn't think of an appropriate title for this post. I thought simply of "Redemption", but it seemed so finite. I considered "Success", but it has the connotation of a game or a contest. In fact, I really can't seem to find the right words to compile into the post that I really would like to make right now.

Suffice to say that something really cool happened tonight. And all I can really think is something that I wrote in one of my previous logs from the past several days: There are no coincidences. There is only God.

I had an experience tonight that is so cool and so warm and so incredibly... awesome... on so many levels. I am literally... Yes, Miles Jay Oliver is officially... speechless... at a loss for words with the brilliant waves of electricity and possibility and excitement that I feel in the air.

All I can do is smile. Hopefully, I'll recapture the mood and find a way to put it all down in words that will come out here on my personal wall of honor sometime tomorrow.

Sometimes, I really love life.

This is one of those times.

You Are A Pain in the Back!

I've been hoping that this lingering lower back pain that I've been having would turn out to only be the residual effects of the stonage I peed out last week. Unfortunately, the pain has been persistant, and I can only assume that it is related to the lumbar strain and herniations that I got the injections to relieve over the summer. I guess I really need to sign on with United Healthcare through the Student Nursing Association so that I can get back in the swing of having this whole thing checked out and potentially relieved for another while.

When is there ever a good time to be sick or hurting or feeling less-than-up-to-par? Rarely. Nothing that is a burdensome task or difficult struggle ever seems to arrive at just the right time. I'm praying for the Advil to kick in and cut this out for a while so that I can get busy on everything on which I should be concentrating: Microbiology...reviewing and preparing for next Monday's exam, Anatomy...covered two chapters today which can only mean there will be two chapters on Thursday and Lab will follow suit with a plethora of questions on how well I've informed myself with the material, Finite...a combination of notes that need to be recopied and assessments that need to be completed and an exam on Thursday night, after which I'm fairly certain he will have to hold class, Nutrition...a Discussion Board and preparation for next weekend's Portfolio--due right in the middle of Camp Recovery weekend.

And I seriously need to get to campus early to meet with my advisor about this situation regarding the spring semester. Do they really think I'm willing to drive to Natchitoches twice weekly to complete my lab requirements?

The only thing that could possibly de-stress my bulging brain would be to come into a windfall involving two or three thousand dollars so that I can worry less about my car payment and car insurance and the myriad bills that arrive just as soon as I've paid the last. Such are the ways of life and higher education. All I can do is have my eyes on May of 2012, the month when I can translate this arduous work and tireless dedication into a steady paycheck doing everything that I really love.

Sandbags

There are three guys I know, all very integral parts of my recovery, whether they realize it or not. Amazingly, all four of us can find ourselves in the same isolated, foul-minded, discontented state at the same time. All four of us in our own personal brains for four totally different reasons, none of us very eager to share with anyone else how we're really feeling, to verbalize what's really on our minds. Of course, I speak for myself only when I write this. Chances are, the other three look at things very differently.

Recently, one of the three lost his job and fell on trying times. He found himself behind on bills, failing to make the payments that he'd been so consciously endeavoring to continue making for so long before. Restless and irritable, he didn't let his negative outlook stay framed in the black for very long, and he has been continually out, pounding the networks and seeking something in the form of culpable and lasting employment.

Saturday night was one of those nights. Yes, it was Halloween, and the costuming was fun, and there were high hopes for the party. Unfortunately, some of us left the party in a less passable and uplifting state of mind... anything but hopeful... really just wanting to go out to our own personal spots in the middle of nowhere to contemplate who's bad and what's what, looking for places to shift the blame. I came home and took photos of my bath water after scrubbing off the fake blood and layers of grey all over my face and eyes. After drying off and helping my mom with a computer issue, I received a phone call from Trish. Eager to spend some time with someone who always leaves me feeling a hundred times better, I invited her over and welcomed her at the door with the cold, end-of-autumn night at her back. We sat at the bar in the kitchen, drank lattes, and talked. We watched the news and saw the reports about the multiple local bodies of water that are at or near or above flood stage and rising. We saw that one of them had broken, flooding nearby neighborhoods and promising more proliferating waters in the coming hours and days. After a wonderful visit, Trish left and I poured myself into bed, ready to sing for the sandman to bring me a dream.

Sunday, I met Victor and Sllim and Lisa at the clubhouse where we pulled every speck of dust and beyond from the recesses of a storage closet. We tossed things, cleaned things, catalogued things, and set up a whole new avenue for storage. Just something to make sense of what we have and to prepare the next ones for what to do. It was nice, superceding our meeting with idel talk about who's who and what's what and the final steps we're taking to clear out the end of our commitments and the beginnings of new lives.

Sllim and Victor were in great spirits, smiling and happy, joking around and picking on us and on each other. Of course, they were both exhausted because they'd seen the breach in the water barrier and the orange jumpsuits bent over bags, with shovels in their hands, piling scoops of sand into bags to line against the rapidly approaching waters as they neared nice neighborhoods lined with nice houses inhabited by nice families. Sllim and Victor weren't alone when they saw the inmates performing the task, and as they passed and saw the men performing something that could have been their own fate, there must have been an instant of gratification that they were in the warm vehicles traveling on the road to transferring their anger onto something else, but the instant passed and the moment set in where they remembered that if life were fair, they would all (we would all) be under the jail, never to be seen or heard from again... dead and buried without a trace, for no one to ever know for sure, only to assume that we'd all gotten exactly what we deserved.

Sllim and Victor and the other party pulled up and spent the next several hours alongside the men in the orange jumpsuits, bagging sand and issuing orders and being grateful to help, being grateful to feel like they were doing something that really mattered. The party was forgotten, the angry feelings vanished, the men were men, and all found a resolve to those negative feelings that had been so insistent as they pulled away from the fete.

Altruism. When do we know when we are really doing the right thing? Is it when we're doing the things that we do for awards and recognitions? To be handed the plaques and the trophies that are inscribed with lists of our accomplishments and beyond-the-call-of-duty endeavors? Or are they in the quiet moments in time when we pull up behind a stranded motorist and offer him or her a lift or a cell phone or a jack?

I hear that the guys all had to ride home from sandbagging in their underwear. Cold and sweaty and dirty and layered with a fine film of Red River water and clay, they drove home in skivvies, happy to be done, feeling as if they'd done the only thing, the right thing. They knew that they had done the right thing to do for all the right reasons with no expectations, no eyes on the future, no hope for recognition or reimbursement, just helping out some guys that could have been their cell mate, their sponsee, their brother, their son...knowing that it was mere luck that had them passing in their vehicles, when they could have been watching the vehicles pass... and looked on as it kept going...had it not been filled with a bunch of recovering addicts.

Going on very little sleep, tired muscles, induced fatigue, and the memory of a commitment, Sllim and Victor still showed up on time for their commitment at the clubhouse. And they smiled. And they were proud of themselves, with good reason.

They were two of the three... which were actually all part of a group that grew in size when others of their family arrived to invoke whatever assistance they were able to generate.

There are no coincidences... there is only God.

After completing our work at the clubhouse yesterday, we all sat down and smoked cigarettes and talked. The best kind of talks. The talks that usually precede late meetings when everybody sits there and promises to smoke just "one last cigarette" until almost the entire pack is gone. Everyone expresses their fears and their resentments and their hopes and their values. No gossip or hurtful words, just sharing among friends. Getting to know each other a little better. Realizing that we all think very similarly about some things, and will never agree on others. Realizing that the disagreements don't really matter because they are what makes the us in us, the things that make us fit as irregular pieces of a great big jigsaw puzzle that we won't ever see totally put together and framed until we're long gone from this tangled life we lead.

Monday was here. Manic Mondays. Mundane Mondays. Monotonous Mondays. Microbiology Mondays. Mondays suck.

But I had a phone call this morning. It was Tricia Davis, calling to ask me about the party and to tell me all about the wonderful weekend she had, finally having the opportunity to do something she'd always wanted to do before she died, and she got to do it with her family, the people in her life who are the most important to her. We laughed, and I smiled at the excitement in her voice, and we made plans to talk later.

The morning was over. The men were outside and I could hear hammers and drills and saws and the regular buzz of power and progress. I had another call. This time, it was Amy. She was calling to tell me that she had blown her interviewers out of the water, exceeded their expectations, exceeded hers, she'd followed through and pursued her dream and achieved a goal... ready to set one hundred more. She was buzzing and elated and happy and empowered and ecstatic. We laughed, and I smiled at the excitement in her voice, and we made plans to talk later.

The afternoon set in, along with the reality that Microbiology was approaching and I really needed to prep a bit futher for the quiz. After going over notes and reviewing the material, I was preparing to walk out the door when the phone rang. This time it was a male friend, the one I mentioned earlier. The one who lost his job and had fallen down on his luck and was struggling to stay afloat, put his head above water. After leaving a Halloween party on Saturday night, he had been with two other guys, and the trio had spent the night and early morning hours with the inmates filling sandbags and being grateful for what they had. And they'd done it for all the right reasons. And that afternoon, my friend had received a phone call from a man who told him to be at work in the morning, who was calling to answer his prayers without even knowing what they were. We laughed, and I smiled at the excitement in his voice, and we made plans to talk later.

Micro was a drag. My professor is a typical PhD in Microbiology...pompous and arrogant and intimidating. And I feel lost in the class. I feel behind and lazy and dumb and average and not worthy. But I kept taking notes and some of the information actually made senese and we were eventually dismissed with the knowledge that we do, in fact, have our third exam next Monday night. I drove home listening to the OUTQ Sirrius Satellite station that I got free from VW until the beginning of January. I thought about dinner and Micro and Trish and Amy and Sllim and Victor. I thought about the sandbags and perseverence and honesty and willingness and hope and redemption.

I told my mom my stories about this weekend, and all the wonderful things that had come to pass for everyone I care about, all these people who have been struggling and pushing. All these wonderful things that came out of a weekend that began with tornados and lightning and thunder and floods. All these wonderful things.

I called Mariann in Vegas and I told her about everything. I'm sure I was talking at a mile a minute. I always do. Especially when I talk to her. It might only be three days after our last conversation, but I'm so anxious to tell her everything, tell her who's who and what's what, let her know what I'm experiencing, what everyone else is experiencing, tell her what's happening in every possible facet of my life. She asked me about me and I told her about me and we talked about me. I asked about her and she told me about her and we talked about her...and Tattoo and her furniture and her new glasses. She gave me advice on handling Micro and how the knowledge of cellular function will actually, honestly, realistically come back and be useful for a variety of things in clinical practice and application.

Mariann is my sponsor, a second mother, a second sister, a best friend, a wise teacher, a leader through steps and traditions and recovery, a beacon at the top of a lighthouse, the shelter from a storm, someone who really seems to have a direct line to God the way Catholics say the Pope does. Well, maybe not comparable to the Pope, but pretty darn close. She advised me and gave me suggestions and gave me more hope. We laughed, and I could hear her smile at the excitement in my voice, and we made plans to talk later.

Mary Louise Sees A Camera...

All Saints Ends Daylight Savings Time

What's funny about last night's events is that I actually had more fun in the time leading up to the party and in the time following my departure. It's just another example of why I really want to continue in my endeavors and hopefully, slowly, morph to a life that's completely and totally separated from the list of things that really don't sit well with me in life and in my recovery.

What's more, I wake up this morning with that weird, unyielding tingle in the bowels of my nasal cavities and a slightly sluggish, I-hope-I'm-not-running-a-fever-but-I-sure-feel-like-I-am feeling that doesn't seem to have any intention of vacating the premises any time soon. I'm supposed to meet up with Sllim and Victor this afternoon and catalogue everything that we have in the Activities closet, but I'm on the verge of making a few phone calls and cancelling the plans that we have for that. It would just be a lot easier to put it off until next weekend and sort everything out myself in the final stages of preparation for Camp Recovery.

I'm tired. I'm not feeling well. I believe that my attitude may generally be unpleasant for the day. We shall see if my state of mind makes any improvement soon, or if I shall just resign myself to being infective and inhospitable for the next several hours.

1. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974, Directed by Tobe Hooper)

I pick this film as the scariest movie ever made for a variety of reasons. Some reasons are due to the association I have of it to the first time I saw it. I was very young, and I remember hearing about it long before I ever actually had the opportunity to rent it from the video store. It seems like there was a major rumor that it is extremely gory and horribly graphic. In fact, it may have been one of Europe's Video Nasties at one time in the eighties when it was common for any film that depicted acts of sex or violence to make this list of forbidden films. However, when I remember the scenes in the film, aside from the infamous meathook scene, I don't remember very much gore at all. And if I'm not mistaken, the only blood that we really see in the movie is when Sally's finger is pricked with the knife in the unbearable dinner scene.

What scares me about the whole picture is that the whole time I watched it, I remember feeling like I was watching something that was really happening. These were people I knew, friends I could see me riding in a van with, and it would probably be our dumb luck to decide to stop at the worst possible place in Texas. However, I don't think I'd abide by any one of us ever picking up a hitchhiker, let alone one that looked like the guy they decide to give a ride.

I found all the kids in the film to be really likeable, with the exception of Sally's paraplegic brother, Franklin. He seemed very spoiled and really kind of gross, somebody I don't think I'd ever want to spend a Sunday afternoon in the back of a Lester-the-Molester van with no air conditioning. Pam was the type of chick I could really see myself as probably having been friends with, especially in my early college days. In fact, I found her decision to follow her boyfriend into the house to actually be believable. There are so many times that I'm wondering what the hell the characters are thinking, but this is one film where I could really see an honest motivation....just looking to see if they had any gas. After all, these were all good country kids who were probably very accustomed to a close-knit atmosphere in their home towns... really remind me of the kids I grew up with from east Texas and all the small towns all around Shreveport.

Hooper performs masterfully as the director of this debilitatingly horrifying opus. There is truly something about the print and the look of the film alone that makes it even more unsettling. It has an almost grainy quality, as if it were filmed locally, on a very small budget. In fact, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre looks almost like a porno that would have been released during the same era. And what's with the family anyway? Maybe that's the scariest part, the idea that there are, in fact, probably really people out there like that. And one can only sit there, mouth agape, eyes wide, staring at this bizarre tale unfolding before you.

I've heard some say that they felt almost dirty after seeing the movie, that they felt they needed to go have a shower. I am inclined to agree with that sentiment, just as I am inclined to agree with the notion that Hooper's work is almost like watching an underground snuff film... like you've just been handed a print of something that is banned and sold on the black market like a Russian secret.

Not for the faint of heart, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is about an hour and a half of shock, surprise, unrelenting terror, a protracted and jarring chase scene, and the most suspenseful ending of any movie made in the last one hundred years. I've only seen it once in its entirety, and I doubt I will ever be able to actually sit down and take it in any time in the future. However, as a sample of what I consider to be the best and most terrifying horror movies of all time, it is undoubtedly, my absolute number one.

Also recommended: Eli Roth's Hostel, Helter Skelter (The miniseries---in fact, isn't the lady who plays Linda Kasabian, the witness for the prosecution, our heroine here??? I just realized that), Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects, Chris Kentis's Open Water, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Greg McLean's Wolf Creek, John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

{I would like to state that several of the movies from the also recommended section for this particular film are not, for the most part, films that I would say were redeemable or well made. In fact, several of these on the list are there simply because they made me have a similar, dirty feeling as Tobe Hooper's film had. However, with the exception of Roth's Hostel and Kubrick's Orange, I don't know if I can find much in the other films that is truly...necessary.}

2. Black Christmas (1974, Directed by Bob Clark)

To decide on the best film from the slasher genre is a difficult task for a film buff, especially one who doubles as a horror movie aficionado. Let's face it, Alfred Hitchcock opened the door for movies like this. When it was released in 1960, Hitchcock revolutionized the way people became members of the audience permanently. Before Marion Crane stole $40,000 and stopped for the night at the Bates Motel, people would just walk into movies whenever. In order to build buzz around his latest film, he refused to admit anyone to the theatre after the film began. People wondered why, people began to talk, and people walked in to the opening credits, believing they were watching Hitchcock build suspense around superstar Janet Leigh stealing an exorbitant amount of money from her boss and fleeing town... they had no idea what was in store for the movie's heroine when she made that fateful stop for a sandwich and a shower. Film history was made.

The other film that goes without question for this particular genre, of course, is John Carpenter's Halloween. There is no element of Halloween that I do not believe to be completely and totally perfect. The actors, the clothes, the story, and the music that is almost as scary as the film itself; however, Bob Clark had done the same thing several years before Michael Myers escaped the Smith's Grove Sanitarium and went on an All Hallows Eve rampage. In fact, in many ways, I feel that Clark created a boogeyman one hundred times more terrifying than any other character in film history.

The setting is a sorority house, the days leading up to Christmas. Jessica Bradford is one of the girls forced to stay at the house for the holidays while she deals with a personal crisis of conscience. Phyllis is the smart-looking friend who has remained for reasons of her own, and Margot Kidder plays "Barb", a perpetually sloshed alcoholic whose mother has decided to spend Christmas with her new boyfriend rather than having her daughter home from school. As the girls have one last party before most of them depart, we take on the point of view of someone crawling up the house's exterior and into the attic. Then we get our first taste of what the girls have apparently been experiencing for some time: extremely graphic and unbelievably upsetting phone calls from a myriad voices (man? woman? both?) making all sorts of sexually aberrant and violent threats. Then one of the girls is attacked as she packs a bag to leave, but nobody hears her struggles with the party ensuing on the floor below.

When Claire doesn't meet her father as planned, the tension really begins to mount. The phone calls continue, people are missing from town, the police are investigating the events, but can find no definite correlation. The boyfriends all fall under suspicion and it become apparent that Jess's secret has sent her boyfriend over the edge. Then a little girl is found murdered in the park, and the police decide to put a trace on the phone.

Slightly predictable by today's standards, this film is actually able to stand on its own as an experience in tension and terror.

Also recommended: John Carpenter's Halloween, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th, George Mihalka's My Bloody Valentine, J. Lee Thompson's Happy Birthday to Me, Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Armand Mastroianni's He Knows You're Alone, Roger Spottiswoode's Terror Train, and Fred Walton's When a Stranger Calls

3. "Spoorloos"/"The Vanishing" (1988, Directed by George Sluizer)

"...obsession...that fixed idea that takes us back time and time again..." --the Basic Text

A film that plows deep into the furthest sulci of the human mind. What drives us? What are our motivating factors? Is it better to search and search and seek the answer until we know we've found the truth? To know that we've gotten the answer to our questions? How far do we have to go to be satisfied? How great is that curiosity... really? Afterall, we know what happened to the cat...

After his one, true love disappears without a trace, Rex finds himself ready to pounce when he hears from a man who claims to be the abductor. After a significant amount of tension building and very crafty filmmaking filled with a study in psychology and vividly compiled symbolism, we see the madman tell Rex that he can show Rex what happened to her better than he can tell him...

Rex follows his instructions....

Rex finds out exactly what happened to his love... and it's truly horrific.

Also recommended: Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs, Terence Young's Wait Until Dark, Richard Attenborough's Magic

Photos From Last Night's Flood...The Ones That Turned Out Well

'Twas the Night Before Halloween and All Through the House...

I'd thought that I was off to a good start with my day. After the storms last night, I figured the only way to go was up. Unfortunately, the suspense that has been building so furiously for the past month was finally to come to a rather shocking and unexpected climax shortly after two cups of coffee...









Opal. The small, irregularly shaped black dot at the very bottom of the toilet bowl. She popped out at 10:02 this morning...Dead on Arrival. The only noise she made was the clink of her connection with the porcelain toilet bowl.









Finally, after a rigorous week of recopying notes and formulating notecards and memorizing stories, I was able to begin celebrating my favorite holiday of the year. He'd been sitting in the kitchen for days... waiting. I put him on layers of newspaper, but I couldn't decide what direction I wanted to go, what face I wanted Jack to have this year. It came to me this afternoon, but I had to finish the Anatomy Lab exam and try to fully re-group from my stonage this morning.



He looks better in the dark. Kind of eerie. I wish I'd been able to get the photos from the flood last night to come in better, illuminated like this.












The perfect Halloween set up. A jack-o-lantern, candles, the lights out, and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho beginning its story to bring in the holiday...

...which reminds me...

The Morning After

"...came in from a rainy Thursday on the Avenue, thought I heard you talking softly. I turned on the lights, the tv, and the radio; still, I can't escape the ghost of you. What is happening to it all? Crazy, some say. Where is the life that I recognize...." --Ordinary World, Duran Duran

It appears that everything that was scheduled has been cancelled. All classes were dismissed. There are lists of streets that are closed, and places I dare not tread. After being woken from a very pleasant slumber to the phones in the house ringing constantly with Purple Alerts from NSU that campuses are closed and classes will not commence, I had two cups of coffee before peeing out the kidney stone. I took pictures, named it, sent out a birth announcement, and I was surprised that I didn't feel any tremendous pain, just a feeling that something was stuck in my tract before it shot out into the toilet. What's funny is I started to hurt after, and I still have a strange, slightly dull pain in my pelvic region. Photographs are forthcoming, to match those already posted for review on Facebook.

I completed two hours' worth of work on the Activities Binder, and I finished the small list of goals I was hoping to cross off my list before the week is over. There is still a rather large pile of shirts and pants that desperately need to meet the iron, and the porcelain veneers lacquered over the bathroom appear to be developing a biofilm that needs to meet the bleach. I have only one pressing t0-do that's about to pull me out of the warm comfort of my bedroom, and then I'm back home to do the Microbiology shuffle and work on the upcoming quizzes and exam. I also have an Anatomy Lab exam to prep for and take sometime in the next few hours.

I thought I'd take a few moments early this afternoon, the day before Halloween, to post the next in my list of my personal horror top ten. Let's see... we're up to number four now, aren't we?

4. Jacob's Ladder (1990, Directed by Adrian Lyne)

There is something that is seen in war, something that is so horrible and permanently debilitating to those who have been subjected to its wrath never seem to really get over it. It seems as if veterans are changed forever by the experience. My father was definitely scarred from what he saw during the Vietnam Conflict to such a point that he rarely discussed that period of his life, and if it was brought up, very little was said. I remember his very loud, very vivid nightmares waking us all up well into my adolescence, and I never had the chance to actually sit down with him to discuss what it was all about.

This movie is terrifying on so many levels. In fact, there are two scenes that are permanently burned into my memory. The scene of Jacob and Jezzie dancing in the nightclub and the bizarre morphing that begins to occur in the startling strobe light is one I'll never be able to forget. What is she dancing with? Wait... is that her? What in the hell is that? The other is the scene of everyone trying to get Jacob's fever down as they pour him into a cold bathtub and begin throwing ice all over him to try to lower his body temperature. Every time I've been sick and run a fever since seeing this movie, I always revert back to the memory of that scene. Lyne does a fine job of mixing reality with the surreal and is able to effectively deliver a story with something of an intense political message at the same time.

Also recommended: John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter - One could argue that neither is typically classified as a "horror" film. One would have to watch both films and judge that ideology for themselves.

Paratornadic Activity

If I hear another tornado warning post, I am going to scream. Shreveport has been under assault since this afternoon, and our street has converted itself into a roaring stream... as if we have been moved to newfound lakefront property. Unreal. I've been hoping to come update my blog for the last several hours, but every time I've moved to my laptop, another Severe Weather Alert beeped across the house or sirens went off in a distance or the lightning began to strike like a strobe on gay ravers night at Studio 54.

Silently waiting on the pad beside my computer is the list of films still waiting to be announced as being part of my top-ten. Tonight, I give you numbers six and five.

6. Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971, Directed by John D. Hancock)

Unless you're a member of the VCR generation of kids raised on weekend trips to the video store, this is a surprisingly frightening gem of unease and tension. I remember first watching the movie late one Saturday night on a local station airing it as "The Late Late Show" or the "Midnight Movie", although I definitely saw it well past midnight. What strikes me most about this film are the memories of all the feelings it gave me. The interiors of the house are sparse and look very old. I remember thinking that the house and the grounds really reminded me of the antique decor and style that was my great aunt Louise's house growing up. For that reason, I came to associate her house with this movie...thereby associating her house with ghosts and dread and insanity.

The story is quite simple, and probably a bit trite by today's standards as the twists and turns and focus on a recently released psychiatric patient have been done and re-done again and again in recent years, but the film's star is sympathetic and believeable. Any time a director can have me wondering what's real and what's not real, I realize that he has definitely done his job. This is a thinking person's foray into terror and madness, and something that still gives me the chills when I give it any further thought.

Also recommended: Brad Anderson's Session 9, Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls, Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Alfred Sole's Alice Sweet Alice


5. The Brood (1979, Directed by David Cronenberg)

To watch a Cronenberg flick is to know that you are about to experience the most disturbing and totally unsettling imagery outside a David Lynch film. Where Cronenberg and Lynch stray from each other is in what is implied and what is actually shown. Where Lynch shows us a severed ear in a field and builds a taut story of secrets and depravity around its discovery, Cronenberg is more likely to show us disgusting moment that led to the actual severing of that ear. In fact, Cronenberg is something of a master of taking issues of body dysmorphia to extremes the human race may never have thought possible. It's impossible to say which of his films is really his best, but I know one thing for certain: The Brood scared the shit out of me.

Imagine a moment when you found yourself at your absolute angriest... do you shake? cry? sweat? lash out with your fists? bitingly insult with a caustic tongue? There are many times that I feel anger is the worst possible character defect, I think there is never an appropriate place to channel it. Based on that idea... meet Nola Carveth. She has found a way to channel her anger that has got to be seen to be believed. Absolutely disturbing, gross, jaw dropping, and perverse. If this movie doesn't scare you, then you've got bigger issues than Nola.

Also recommended: Cronenberg's Rapid, Cronenberg's The Fly, Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Roman Pulanski's Repulsion, Roman Pulanski's The Tenant, David Fincher's se7en, Ridley Scott's Alien

Happy Anatomy Exam Eve

This afternoon, I did something I haven't done in quite a long time: I laid down to take a nap for a couple hours after devouring a plate of the chicken florentine I made for supper. Now awake, I feel rested and clear-headed... ready to take on two more chapters on the circulatory system and the three chapters on the brain, the spinal cord, and nervous tissues.

The solution to the major essay question was finally solved at around one in the morning... right before I was ready to throw in the towel and just do the best I could. I realized that one of the eight Anatomical Chart Company posters hanging in my room is, in fact: The Vascular System and Viscera. The route for this single drop of blood was glaring at the back of my head this whole time, and I'd never looked up long enough to notice. I've alternated some poster placements, and I took the journey of that single drop of blood and turned it into a creative writing to help me remember.

I suppose I could share that with my readers, but I've previously promised two more installments to the list of my all-time horror genre top ten. Tonight, I'll give you numbers eight and seven...

8. Poltergeist (1982, Directed by Tobe Hooper, a man who will make this list twice)

This was the family that we were all growing up with. The mom was a real mom, the dad was a real dad. They were putting in a swimming pool and going about their normal lives. The scares start as low key and subtle, and then the little girl disappears in her closet in the middle of a storm. Spielberg and Hooper did a phenomenal job of remembering everything that scared them when they were little kids: thunder, lightning, clowns, the chairs re-arranging themselves... The things I remember most about this movie were the hushed and whispered conversations and the pink gunk that's all over everybody when they come out of the light... oh, yeah, and everything that happens the night they finally decide to move.

Also recommended: Robert Wise's The Haunting, Peter Medak's The Changeling, Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On, and Dan Curtis's Burnt Offerings

7. The Skeleton Key (2005, Directed by Iain Softley)

Of all the movies that have come out since M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense have had to have some kind of twist at the ending. Alexander Aja's Haute Tension was an absolute masterpiece of true, visceral horror up until the killer is revealed, and I'm still contemplating just what the hell really went on with those cave spelunkers in Neil Marshall's The Descent. This 2005 feature role for Katie Hudson is a little less contrived, a little moodier, and a little more relatable for a guy growing up in the deep south and always heading straight for the voodoo shops during trips to New Orleans when growing up. There isn't a single second of this movie that I did not find totally seamless, and I never once thought to suspect that everything was leading up to the climax. In fact, I found the twist startling, and I was left sitting there during the credits thinking about the ramifications that the ending meant to the rest of the story. Hudson's not a bad actress at all, but she is very outdone by Gena Rowlands as the suspicious lady of the house and John Hurt as the nearly catatonic patient. The setting looks just like houses I remember passing and seeing glimpses of between the trees and spanish moss when journeying through the most southerly Louisiana parishes. The music, especially from the Papa Justify record really had me feeling like I was right there in the house.... even encouraging Caroline to take the steps she followed in attempting to protect herself. In fact, I was definitely a believer.

Also Recommended: Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow, John Schlesinger's The Believers, Jack Clayton's The Innocents, Roman Pulanski's Rosemary's Baby, Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (in fact, I had to really decide between this film and The Skeleton Key for the number seven spot), and Janet Greek's Spellbinder.

On The Fifth Day of Halloween My True Love Gave To Me....

"I got the ways and means to New Orleans. I'm going down by the river where it's warm and green. I'm gonna have a drink, and walk around. I got a lot to think about, oh yeah..."

--Concrete Blonde (Bloodletting/The Vampire Song)

My sister said it best earlier today: growing up in the Oliver household meant growing up with Halloween as a national holiday, on par with Thanksgiving or the fourth of July. I read her facebook posts today and I started thinking.

....and remembering the long hours sitting on the closed seat of the toilet while layers of white face paint and fake blood was applied to my face, the house on the corner where a vampire greeted me at the door and left me fleeing back to the sidewalk with a stream of urine running down my leg, the hours of marathons of Halloween and all its sequels, the days leading up to the big candy giveaway, and the great parties we hosted every year in honor of my dad's birthday: Halloween.

Things changed a bit after the spring of 2000. I was forced to grow up in more ways than one, and I guess I left behind some of the childish idealisms that holidays such as these held. Some of the magic and mystique of picking out costumes and buying bags of treats and carving pumpkins passed a bit, but the spirit that surrounds this time of year is still there. I hope I never lose any of that immature spunk that accompanies my steps and thoughts for this time of year. And I hope that Halloween will continue to symbolize a little piece of childhood make believe that will never really entirely disappear for good.

In honor of the great and secret holiday, I'm starting to post clips on Facebook from several films that I think best represent the genre of the horror film. I've seen multiple lists and critical ideas of what they think are the all-time scariest films ever made; however, I've decided to compile my own list of the all-time top ten best (and why).

Rather than putting the entire list up in one post, maybe I can make a commitment to update my blog every day for the rest of the week to slowly reveal to you, my reading public, just what scares me and makes me tick. Some of the films on my list are exactly what one would expect to find on any other top ten list. However, I believe there are a couple of surprises.

10. The Exorcist (1973, Directed by William Friedkin) - I remember my Mass Communications professor during my freshman year at LSUS bringing this one up. She said that it had been released in a serial format in Cosmo or some other magazine, and that she waited for every upcoming issue to finish reading this story. There's a lot of backstory with this particular film. The book was a huge hit, it was supposedly based on a real incident involving Jesuit priests in St. Louis, and the producers of the film went to great lengths to incorporate imagery from every facet of real life that scared people: hospitals and medical procedures, spiders, the Bible, the devil, Iraq.... I would definitely have to say that I saw the movie when I was WAAAAYY too young to watch it (I remember sneaking it in with my brother and Uncle Timmy), but I don't know what appropriate age could ever possibly be assigned to being mature enough to watch it. That being said, I have to note that I spent the next several weeks laying awake, thinking that my bed was shaking, and feeling terrified that I was going to be possessed.

Additional recommendations: Scott Derrickson's The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Richard Donner's The Omen, and Paul Wendkos's The Mephisto Waltz

9. Suspiria (1977, Directed by Dario Argento) - Argento is a master of the giallos, an Italian cinematic art form that, if done right, can be very effective. There are all sorts of elements that should be present: the black-gloved killer (check), beautiful girls being relentlessly stalked only to meet extremely grothesque yet somehow very alluring ends (check), extended chase scenes (check), something of a mystery to the real identity of the killer (check), a main character suddenly thrust into the mystery after seeing something that they have no idea to be significant (check), and the main character suddenly recalling a very important clue that will unlock the answers (check: in Suspiria-- "....the secret... I saw behind the door.... three irises.... turn the blue one!!!"). This was one of the few giallos that also had elements of a supernatural storyline, and for that reason, it is Argento's haunting, colorful masterpiece that one has to see to believe. The music arranged by the Goblins is memorable, the sets are a story in themselves, the blood is so incredibly red, and there is no doubt that the things that we see falling from the ceiling as the boarding school girls begin getting ready for dinner will have anyone watching squirming in their seats. This was the first of three films that Argento calls his trilogy of the "three mothers". The eighties followed with Inferno, then the new milleneum finally gave us Mother of Tears. Although both films have merit, neither will ever compare with the cinematic horror permanently etched into the brains of cinephiles with Suspiria. The only downside, for me, is my wonder why Argento insists on such deplorable dubbing for his films. Doesn't matter, he's still a genius.

Additional recommendations: Mario Bava's Twitch of the Death Nerve, Argento's Deep Red, and Argento's Tenebrae.

Stay tuned. I'll post numbers 8 and 7 tomorrow...