I have a Net-pal who is a huge Oz fan, so I sent him a little package including an Oz book and a pamphlet advertising the new Oz movie. I don't want to show any photos now so it can remain a surprise for him. Got some cool Snake & Disney stamps for the envelope too!
Nice scribbling job, eh!
I also sent a package filled with Hulk paraphernalia to another Net-pal. In return, he's sending me a set of Mars Attacks cards! Woohoo! More Snake stamps!
I'm not just sending stuff though, today I actually received some stuff! My pal Hinnie who is a recent recipient of some Masking Tape sent me some goodies in appreciation. A Spider-Man mug and some Captain America socks! Yay!
She's a devious one though, she also ordered a pair of socks for herself, another tape and an incredibly cool Stay-puff man for her iPhone.
Not a problem though, I forgot to send her some stickers last time and I recently acquired several new tapes for her as well. I can't wait to see what new loot I'll be getting in return!
I'm not sure how I did it, but I managed to successfully scan this page! (Pats self on back. Gives credit to BigBob whose birthday it is today and to the Computer Geek co-worker Yo.)
What we have here is the Yokai drive. Several things that go bump in the night decide to go for a drive in the night.
On the far right cheering (or jeering) them on is the Echo Tree 木霊, Kodama, from Germany. I don't know much about our arbourial friend but this gal has an interesting take on it.
Resting at his roots is 土精プッツ, Tsuchi-Sei-Putz, a Mud/Earth spirit from Austria. Here's another version of the wee goblin.
The guy riding the Skeletal Horse is ウストック, Ustocc from Iraq.
Beside him chowing down on a fish is an エルフ Erufu (that's Elf for the non-Japanese literate) from Europe. Definitely a different version than Peter Jackson's creation.
In the bottom left-hand corner is a ケルピイ Kerupii who hangs out in England. I do believe he had a cameo in The Godfather. I say, "Neigh!"
That little yellow driver with the one eye is supposed to be a レプラカーン, Leprechaun from Ireland. Obviously Shigeru Mizuki has never eaten Lucky Charms!
One of its passengers is an 狼男, Ookami-Otoko (werewolf). Try checking out one of the hosts of the Countdown to see what John Rozum has to say on the subject!
The big grey rock in the background is a ゴーレム, Golem from Czech. I notice that it doesn't have גולם carved in its forehead. I think that's a good thing.
What the Puck is Puck doing atop the roof of the car? It's from England so I can only assume that it's the same one that appeared in A Midsummer's Night Dream.
The little pink lad behind the Werewolf is Kobalt (?) from Germany. He looks as though he's in the middle of a probe.
Finally, flying above them all is チョンチョニー、 ChonーChoni from Chile.
I fairly wiped so it's time for bed. More Yokai action tomorrow!
As for other Wackier Racers, check out the チキチキマシン猛レース!
This has been a gruesome summer vacation for August is the month for ghosts and goblins and gremlins and ghouls and that's just the Gs. It's also been a month for Horror movies. My movie channels have been running 1-2 scary flicks per night and I've seen several so far. I'd already seen two Saws before (are there really five of those?) so I gave them a pass.
Quiz for you... Punctuate and capitalize the following conversation:
"did you see saw yeah I saw saw did you see saw two yeah I saw saw two too I didn't see saw 3D but I saw saw four what did you see saw four for if you didn't see saw three because I wanted to see saw five"
Also Juon/Grudge (Japanese and English versions) have been viewed by me fairly recently so I avoided them as well besides the Juon gave me a nightmare last time I saw it. In a similar vein, I recently saw Sadako 3D (latest of the Ringu movies) and it was good creepy fun.
Surprisingly, I'd never seen Dawn of the Dead though I've seen the Sarah Polley remake a few times. Quite fun. In a similar Dead vein, they showed the Tom Savini remake of Night of the Living Dead. Considering the amount of Living Dead movies, those are odd choices for the Movie Network to single out.
Yesterday, I caught Contagion. Lots of creepy fun, all the more worrisome because unlike Outbreak, this one was more scientifically accurate. I was really impressed with this campaign run in Toronto a while back. Creepier fun!
The night before that, I chased 12 Monkeys around my living room. Brad was a tad over the top but it was nice to see it again. I never knew where they got the title from. It's a reference to Oz! (From the IMDB trivia page: "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys is inspired by a passage in Baum's novel, "The Magic of Oz", in which
the Nome King and Kiki Aru convince twelve monkeys they will have an endless
supply of food if they become human soldiers for them.")
The reason for today's post is that I just viewed Frozen. Nice little chiller! (Tee hee.)
If movies aren't your thing, you can always check out a really cool book recommended by one of my followers. You Don't Want to go to Bed.
Also known as Fox Tuesday or a tale of several tails.
A few weeks back, I requested that my pals from around the Net enlighten me with a few of their ghostly tales. I received one from my foxy friend in Canada this morning. A tale of an Arctic Fox. Here it is unedited (except for a typo or two) and I've added a few scammed photos.
When I was around 8-9 years old, my father worked for an oil company way up near the North Pole and, while there, he made friends with the native Inuit population. One day, a man named Levi gave my father the snowy white fur hide of an Arctic fox, a fresh kill from a recent hunt, as a present.
Upon my father’s return home for a short visit, he gave me the sensuously thick fur hide, which was complete from nose to tail, including the paws. I stared at its dried and wrinkled face, touched the ears and whiskers, imagining what it might’ve looked like when it was alive and roaming the Arctic tundra. I was sad that it was killed for sport (just to obtain the fur), of course, but I nonetheless accepted it as a gift from a loving father. My mom tacked the hide up on my wall, right at the foot of my bed, so I could look up at it every night as I fell asleep. In retrospect, that might not have been a great idea.
A few days later, I awoke from an unsettling dream about the fox hunting me down in a vicious snowstorm, and at the foot of my bed, lying across my legs with its vacant eye sockets staring right at me, was the fur hide. Somehow, it had come lose from the wall and fell on top of me in this perfect position. Weird, right? Well, this story gets even weirder.
Over the next few weeks, I kept waking up from nightmares about the fox chasing me across a barren northern landscape only to find the fur hide lying on top of my bed, its head always facing me. My mom would tack it back up, using stronger and stronger nails, until its paws were decimated with Swiss cheese-like holes.
Finally, after a couple months of this, I decided that I needed to make peace with the soul of this once majestic creature and thank it for its sacrifice – something I doubt Levi did when he was ripping the fur off its still-warm carcass as a trophy. I was only nine at the time, but I had an intuitive, dare I say psychic-empathic, understanding of these kinds of metaphysical and theosophical situations, and so I just knew what had to be done in order to release the fox’s soul from what was left of its body.
I laid the fur hide out on the floor and performed a little ceremony, the details of which I won’t get into, as it was a very personal and private thing between me and the fox’s angry, vengeful spirit. Once it was over, I slept with the fox hide beside me for a few more days, just to make sure its soul had finally crossed over into the netherworld.
Hooray! No more bad dreams. So, I tacked the hide back up on my wall where it stayed for another twenty-five years, without incident.
Spooky, eh?
Nice story. I wrote at length about the Japanese Fox, 狐 kitsune a while back but the beginning of that post got all political so ignore that and just read past the picture that looks like this:
I'll end with a repost of some kitsune masks that are both regal and creepy.
Several years ago, I travelled to Mt. Zao with a friend and we went to a Mink-farm that also had a few caged foxes. It was an incredibly depressing sight to see these really fat old foxes hobbling around. There were rabbits within the same cages that were not frightened of them at all.
I'm going to bed before I depress myself further...
I tried assembling my costume today which is proving to be a little trickier than I anticipated. I may have to go with Plan B (if I can figure out a plan B.)
Where has the time gone? It's only a few days until Friday's Devil's Night party at Ernie's Bar and there's still so much to do!
There's another much larger party on Saturday (RENSA) as well as my Work-party and I have 3 formal Halloween lessons this week in addition to my informal Halloween lessons.
I also fear I've been neglecting my Countdown to Halloween duties as well. Today, it'll be a bunch of Masks from Korea! Didn't really enjoy most of my Korean trip, but I did like the cool museum where I got these from.
That last one is my favourite! As you can see, these are postcards and if you really like one of them, drop me a line and I'll send it to you. Speaking of sending stuff, I haven't received a single request my Kitty-Kreature Kontest. Either they aren't appealing (hard to believe) or nobody is reading this blog! (Easier to believe.)
Speaking of Masks, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that two of the Countdown sponsors are presenting masks all month long. Check out John Rozum and Shawn Robere for some Masquerade fun.
It's officially Halloweek since I began my Halloween lessons today. Today, we talked about Japanese monsters, especially ghosts & oni.
Here is one of the most famous 幽霊 (yuurei) stories "Bancho sara-yashiki (The Story of Okiku)". Okiku works as a maid at the home of the Samurai Tessan Aoyama. One day while cleaning a collection of ten precious ceramic plates, which is a family treasure, she accidentally breaks one of them. The outraged Aoyama kills her and throws the corpse into an old well. Every night afterwards, Okiku's ghost rises from the well, slowly counts out nine plates and then breaks into heartrending sobs, over and over and over again, tormenting the Samurai. Finally, vengeance is wrought when Aoyama goes insane.
お菊は青山鉄山の家に、女中として働いていました。ある日家宝である十枚の高価な陶器の皿を片付けているとき、お菊はうっかりその皿の一枚を割ってしまいました。怒った青山はお菊を殺し、その死体を古井戸に投げ捨てました。その後毎晩お菊の幽霊が井戸から現れ、皿をゆっくり九枚まで数えると、突然悲痛なすすり泣きを始めるのでした。それは何度も何度も繰り返され、青山を苦しめました。ついに青山は気が狂い、お菊の復讐は果たされたのでした。
Here are a couple of oni idioms:
鬼に金棒 (Literally means, "Oni with an iron club") To make one invincible.
鬼のいぬまに洗濯 (Literally means, "Do laundry while oni are away") When the cat's away, the mice will play.
Thus since it's now Halloweek, I thought today I'd offer up some goodies for a CONTEST. Here are three more Kitty-Monsters. Regular Kitty, Franken-kitty and Dracu-Kitty.
Interspersed throughout my blog this month are 5 more of these Kitty-Kreatures, all you have to do is identify the date when each were shown over the last 3 weeks**. Do so correctly and I shall send one to you sometime in the next week or so. I'm not insisting that you Follow me but if you aren't already doing so and choose to join or give me a shout-out on your blog, I'll add a few more treats to your kitty-booty.
To make your task easier, here are all eight of them in a bunch. Sorry for some reason blogger isn't letting me upload my picture, I've tried 3 times...one more time.
That got it.
This is the dumbest and awesomest video ever! I luv the B-52s and their YouTube group, the Superions, have outdone themselves with this:
**As a hint to solve my Contest, you can always hit the Kitty-chan label below! Try and rsvp before Friday because all unclaimed Kitties will be given out at our Halloween Party at Ernies!
I realized that I've had entirely too much cutsie Halloween tidbits over the last week. For example, (A brief commercial message:) Why is there a container of Halloween candies sitting on my windowsill next to Atomu? Because it isn't candy at all but an air freshener with the pleasant odour of Halloween candy!
So here is something in a more sinister vein.
Here is part one of Spider-Man-Woman:
Yet another reason why I hate Elmo. He doesn't know the difference between a pumpkin and a squash! Capybaras, on the other hand, ROCK!
You may have heard me complain in the past about Halloween getting shunted aside to make way for Christmas. It usually happens around October 25th, 2 months before. The other day though, I was in a UFO Catcher looking for goodies to blog about and sure enough, they were putting out the Xmas crap already. To their credit, they had both the Halloween and Christmas characters side-by-side so you could try for either one, but why-oh-why do they have to put it out so early?
Did you enjoy Japan's version of Spiderwoman? Here she meets Sherlock Holmes!
I did this post specifically to frighten the arachnaphobic Frog Queen whose annual Haunt is heating up this fall. Check it out why don't you and while you're at it, try this little game on the back of this Frog-witch cheesies package. Which of these two croakers are the same?
We're all familiar with スウィーニー・トッド, フリート街の悪魔の理髪師 (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), aren't we? There is of course the Tim Burton extravaganza...
This 1982 filming of the stage play looks intriguing. Stars Murderer She Wrote star Angela Lansbury. I'll have to check it out in its entirety some day.
In 1936, Todd Slaughter (an appropriate name if I'd ever heard one) directed a non-musical version that I'd never seen but now we can all watch it here: ST: TDBoFS.
Most recently, I saw the Curtain Call Players' version on stage in Toronto when I was home in April. I had just arrived from my earthquake stricken adopted homeland and was fortunate enough to land tickets to see my former Curtain Call cronies, Karen & Paul who did the lighting. I'm surprised that I hadn't reported on it earlier (it was a fairly hectic month back then) and, alas, I can't find any of my photos from it.
Why the sudden interest in the deadly barber, you may ask? Well, I've acquired another follower! (It's nice that they come so infrequently so it gives me a chance to write about them.)
A warm MTYW welcome to...Kweeny Todd! Check out her blog, it has far more bells & whistles (but don't forget about mine, please.)
It's September 1st and that means that we're only a month away from the official "Countdown to Halloween 2011" which appropriately enough refers to the month of October as we countdown to Halloween. For the last two years, I've participated with almost daily posts during the tenth month and this year I hope to do the same. I haven't yet decided what my theme will be (last year, I had a Yokai of the day, the year before was just random stuff that popped into my head), but I assure you it'll be Cheezy, Japaneezy, Sleezy & Halloweezy.
Once October rolls around, click on the funky badge featuring ヴィンセント・プライス (Vincent Price) in his Dr. Phibes role and surf to other Blogs of interest. I'll try and highlight some of the more intriguing ones (ie. see my list of followers) for you to peruse.
Speaking of Vincent Price, how many of the following movies do you recognize?
Those are cool movies, but here is my all-time favourite Vincent Price appearance:
ps. I had a whole bunch of other VP stuff here but when I went to publish it, I lost it all and it's too late to start from scratch. So ciao for now...
