Spiders Creep Me Out

Karen Schindler at Miscellaneous Yammering had a cute post yesterday about removing insects from one's home without harm to the wee beasties. The 'without harm' is important if one is attempting to adhere to one's Buddhist principles.

The wolf spider and the ant...you'll have to link to her post here to find out which was released safely into the wilds and which encountered the business end of a vacuum cleaner.

I'm reminded of an incident as a teenager. I woke up in bed one night and felt a tickling on the hairs of my right leg (get your minds out of the gutter). I flung the sheets aside and shrieked like a little girl leaped from the bed, flinging on the light. On the sheet was an enormous wolf spider. I got a slipper and tried to smack it but missed and it flew through the air and fell behind the bed which was fitted into an alcove in the wall and could not be removed. It was a bit unnerving going back to bed after that.

I try to safely remove wildlife from the house and share a few of those Buddhist principles but had I caught the beastie, he would have met a punishment similar to that which Garfield metes out below. I hope that it's readable; I had to dig it out from the Davidson comic archives. I didn't use this one in June's post that tried to explain me through comics strips I had collected from newspapers over the years.

I'm kinda feeling itchy all of a sudden. Spider Karma.

How Bad Can it Be?

The bad, in this case, is the movie I attended last night for our semi-regular "Bad Movie Night".

Picture, if you will, six adult males cuddled huddled together on two couches in the basement of a middle-class house. They watch a really bad movie on a flat screen mounted to the wall with sound emanating from two tiny speakers sending vibrations through their bodies and shaking the floor beneath their feet. Such is Bad Movie Night. Last night's offering was a tasty movie involving a lot of blood-letting, political incorrectness and sweary words. The feature was Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

I thought to myself "Yay, a musical!". I was sadly mistaken. Coincidentally, I was reading today that Karen Schindler over at Miscellaneous Yammering dreamed about stripper zombies. I got wondering if there was something deep and Jungian at play here.

The 2008 movie was subtitled the more appropriate Strippers vs. Zombies and was about a certain 'lady of the night' getting some tainted drugs and turning into a zombie and infecting clients and passersby alike after biting them in assorted locations of the body. A group of strippers, Ho's, their pimp and a sundry others hide out in a strip club awaiting the inevitable climax...

Of course one of the girls has time to perform a lap dance on her boyfriend despite the death and dismemberment about them. My first inclination the movie would be special was when, only 60 seconds in, a zombie had his eyes gouged out by the sharp, pointy ends of a pair of figure skates when a girl used them as weapons. That chainsaw in the poster above gets used a lot near the end of the movie. The acting, of course, sucked and the script had plot holes large enough for a stripper pole to pass through. If I had a dollar for every time the words "F*&%, A%*hole, Bi&^$, and dirty Wh*&% were uttered I could pay off my family wagon.

There were several "one liners" during the movie that kept us in stitches but don't ask me to repeat them as my memory for remembering jokes is terrible and I'm shy and don't like to say those bad words. They did remarkably well with special effects considering how low budget the movie appeared. The dismembered limbs looked quite real and the zombies digging into stomachs for intestines was very gruesome. The chainsaw jabbed through the guy's face was very impressive, I must say. The highlight for me was the zombie guy walking about near the end of the movie with a silver coloured stiletto heel embedded in his left temple.

It's only my opinion, but I would have to say that there will be no Oscars going to this movie, but if bad is what you're looking for, Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is the place to go. Just don't eat before watching. And make sure the kids are tucked away in bed.

On a side note, and quite possibly more entertaining, is the contest going on at Laurita Miller's blog Brain Droppings. You have until Monday the 19th to submit your stories or poems to her reflecting an 'ocean side theme'. Click on the link for full details. I've heard that for a prize she is giving away her first born, or the Avalon Peninsula or something like that. I'm working on my story this weekend, but it's way too long and I'm struggling to dismember chunks to get it to the 500 word maximum. Perhaps the chainsaw...