Pessi-Mystic

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors,

But I think God's got a sick sense of humor, and

When I die I expect to find him laughing

-Vince Clarke, Blasphemous Rumors

The day so far has been a busy one. This morning I managed to find a good deal on a car, a '96 Buick LeSabre, which is actually in near-mint condition. I went to Twister Auto Sales, here in Lawton, and they did a really good job, so feel obligated to plug them on the blog- go there if you're in the Lawton-OKC area and are looking for a good used car, they will treat you really well, and cut you a good deal, especially if you're military- we all stick together, after all. So now I'm mobile, and driving an old-guy mobile. If I start eating dinner at 4:30 and wearing pastel golf pants around my armpits, well, then feel free to smack me. But at any rate, it's a good car, has been well-kept and didn't cost me an arm and a leg.

I also was down at the local nursery, as my Norwegian dwarf pine had been looking a little down lately- I figured the extra growth it had been doing meant that it needed a larger pot, as it was getting its roots squished in its current pot. Turned out I was right, so hopefully it will be a little happier now. While I was there I figured what the heck, might as well liven up the place a little more, and picked up a couple new additions, a moon cactus, which is a really funky little plant, as I found out. It looks like a cactus with a big flower on top, but this is actually a false impression- it actually is all cactus- the flower part is the same structure as the rest of it, though incredibly this flower part has no chlorophyll, which is what makes plants green, and allows them to derive energy from the sun. Why it's a bright shade of magenta, I don't know. But it seems to live quite contentedly without being green over a good part of its surface, so if that's what works, more power to you.

The third plant now inhabiting my room is a croton plant- it's a tropical foliage plant, kind of yellow and green, with big flat waxy leaves that for whatever reason point upwards. See, this is why I like plants, because they have so many eccentricities like that, yet are perfectly happy leaving the rest of us scratching our heads as to why they're like that. They follow their own internal logic, I guess. But at any rate, this croton plant, I learned, is poisonous. Probably not enough to do any major damage to a human body, apart from getting you good and sick, but perhaps a more severe problem for a dog or cat with a penchant for eating houseplants. Luckily, there are no dogs here, and so these plants are are likely to remain uneaten. Still, kind of an odd surprise.

I also got to catch a movie last night during my usual Friday night do-nothing session- No Man's Land- Rise of Reeker, it was called. All in all, not too bad! I think the movie was a pre-quel to the film Reeker, which follows the same format, yet takes place sometime after the events of the prior. The basic premise of this movie is this- there's a welding-supplies salesman (much like, Chipman blog historians will remember, the Salesman of the poems your humble narrator wrote many moons ago-though my Salesman was occasionally involved in a little illicit chemical exchange here and there, was no murderer, just a working guy), who also happens to be known as the Death Valley Drifter, who, being a travelling salesman, kills people on a lonely stretch of California highway and keeps either parts or whole bodies in an unrefrigerated shack out in the middle of nowhere. His actual rationale and motives for this are never clear, and he himself claims to be directed by voices of an unknown origin. So at any rate, on goes his 'work', until he's captured by a lucky deputy, surrenders, is tried and executed. Then, he winds up back in a kind of limbo, apparently between life and death. Except he himself continues to decay- California heat being what it is, hence the name Reeker. So, time goes on, Reeker is presumably kicking it at his shack in the semi-afterlife, apparently with the job of dispatching the recently- dead to wherever it is they go. At first this was confusing, as if they're already dead, what's the point of having a monster to kill them? In actuality, they're not all the way dead- only mostly dead- with all dead, there's only one thing you can do. At any rate, Reeker has been transformed into a kind of grim-reaper-esque, semi-mechanical figure, having lost one of his hands during his arrest and grafting a series of bizarre mechanical apparatuses onto it, the better to flay you with, my dear. He also (and this isn't easy to portray in a movie) stinks to high heaven. Apparently in this limbo, your goal is to either defeat him or outrun him, in which case you get to return to the land of the living- anyone who doesn't walk that line between dead and could be resuscitated apparently doesn't get to make a pit stop in Calli on their way out. But if you defeat this guy, you get a second chance.
So the moral of the story is, if you die, you go to California to face a smelly undead guy (and believe me, get a large quantity of decaying flesh together, and it will indeed knock you on your ass from smell alone) who will try to make you more dead with any number of cleverly home-engineered tools of personal destruction. If you can outwit, outrun or generally beat the un-living crap out of him, you get to return to the world of the living.Otherwise, the powers that rule the universe have decided that a travelling salesman will usher you into the afterlife. The theology of this is mind-boggling.
But the movie did have some grotesquely humorous scenes, and was overall very creepy, the kind of atmosphere of gloom and weirdness that can really make a scary movie. The photography and sets really lent a surreal, dream-like atmosphere to the film, and overall I found it pretty easy to get drawn into the story, convoluted though it was. If you happen across either this or the very-similar sequel/prequel, they're definitely worth the cost of a rental. I found myself laughing at scenes of dismemberment, which has more to do with a good film than it does with me being a sick twisted bastard.

Also definitely worth a peek is fearnet's website- as always. Users of high-speed internet may enjoy their collection of horror films you can view online. I've probably mentioned that before (boy, looks like my day to plug stuff on my blog), but it's worth a look- if not for decent movies, just for sheer love of B-movies. I checked out Waxwork, and found a low-budget gem. Predictable from scene one, it is more unintentionally funny than anything else. It does have (actually very good) actor David Warner in it., who for some unexplained reason dresses like an insane pimp, a roundabout reference to Freaks, and a woman who is reminiscent in some ways of Audrey Hepburn, if Audrey Hepburn was blonde and couldn't act. And John Rhys-Davies turns into a werewolf. So all in all, just sit back and enjoy the goofy ride, and cheer (yes, we all do it) whenever one of the thoroughly unlikable characters gets it.

So I guess that's about all the news fit to print from here- Monday starts the custody battle, which I'm hoping will be no battle at all- the best war is one that's settled at the bargaining table, not the one that ends in a bloody victory. Stay well, everyone, and enjoy the spring!