A lot of the short films Dust releases are 75% solid, then fall apart at the untangle/resolution (often by not having one at all: they have a terrific Setup, then a nice Tangle, then roll credits—grrrrrrrr). But this one holds up nicely. Give it a watch:
Author: dave-o
This pirate story is *amazing*, but, man, is my brain stuck on that dog
The nut of the story:
An amateur historian has unearthed compelling evidence that the first Australian maritime foray into Japanese waters was by convict pirates on an audacious escape from Tasmania almost two centuries ago.
Fresh translations of samurai accounts of a “barbarian” ship in 1830 give startling corroboration to a story modern scholars had long dismissed as convict fantasy: that a ragtag crew of criminals encountered a forbidden Japan at the height of its feudal isolation.
The “samurai accounts” listed above included watercolor sketches made by Makita Hamaguchi, who was sent to investigate the interlopers and their “unbearable stench.”
What really gets me, though, is the detail of the dog in this sketch, which Hamaguchi noted “did not look like food. It looked like a pet.”
Man Plays Dope-Ass “Smooth Criminal” on a Barrel Organ in a Wood Pile
Stick with it past; the breakdown around the 3min mark takes this from schtick to rad-as-fuckyeah!
Beats per Week #01: Music from THE NOCTURNAL (original soundtrack)
Time-Travelers Beware: Pre-Renaissance Europeans Will Think You Walk Like a Weirdo!
(For more on Dave’s Obsession with the Many Ways Footwear and Wear to Your Feet Will Out You as an Undercover Time Traveller, please see my novella “Where There Is Nothing, There is God.”)
Come Read a Transcription of Dave-o Babbling!
I was interviewed by Lisa Haselton for her Reviews and Interviews blog this past summer. This was technically part of the publicity for Expiration Date, but mostly ended up being about other things. I tell a long anecdote about “When I First Knew I Was a Writer” (i.e., “The Most Important Thing I Learned About Writing at 15-years-old”) and “My Most Interesting Writing Quirk”:
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I subvocalize almost constantly. Like, this sentence I’m typing right now, I’m thinking about saying it as I’m typing it. I can feel it on my tongue. It’s the same when I’m reading (and a big part of why I’m such a slow reader). Almost every thought I have is composed as an imagined dialogue with someone. Very little of what I say is spontaneous at all. I guess, for a lot of people, their process of reading/writing as actually fairly divorced from their process of speaking/hearing. For me they’re mashed into a single thing.
A good read, I guess, if you have a deep and persistent interest about what the heck is wrong with me.
Recommended Listen: “The Madness of Bill Dobbs: A Tale of Snuff Movies and Cannibal Cults” by Sean Pearce
I pretty much always at least like the stories included on the Pseudopod horror podcast, but boy-oh-boy, is this one spot-on for me. It starts like this:
Eaters is regarded by some as a flawed masterpiece and an underground classic. To others, it is vile, racist, ethically bankrupt, and derivative.
It makes for peculiar viewing. The plot follows the formula of the Italian cannibal movies for which director Bill Dobbs had an unashamed fondness. An anthropological expedition into the Amazon jungle encounters and brutalises a tribe of ‘savages’ in the name of science, and find themselves pursued, captured, and finally gruesomely eaten alive.
(The film was originally going to be released as Dark-skinned Cannibals of the Tropics, though thankfully someone more enlightened than Dobbs suggested the title we now have. It almost goes without saying that Dobbs has been unanimously described as a completely unrepentant racist.) …
And gets much better from there.
Check it out online: PseudoPod 530: “The Madness of Bill Dobbs: A Tale of Snuff Movies and Cannibal Cults” by Sean Pearce
Given my level of ethnic paranoia I’m sorta shocked . . .
. . . that it never dawned on me that the dwarves in Snow White, etc., are Jews—especially because I was already familiar with this and this and a slew of earlier print sources (see e.g., the “Lead” section of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, Richard Wagner’s descriptions of Jews, etc.) as well as stuff like this, and so on.
Anyway, just no idea where my game was at for this one to have given me the slip for four decades.
Continue reading “Given my level of ethnic paranoia I’m sorta shocked . . .”
Are Cops Still Permitted to Deploy this “Jimmy Hold”?
’cause daaaaaaaamn, bro!
In L.A. County they call that lil number the “drunk come-along”:
‘course, this one is even more superfantastic:
(source—scroll to the “Move-Along Techniques” on page 29)