Books: Gay for Johnny Depp?

In 1991, a year after Edward Scissorhands first brought the director/actor team together, Tim Burton wrote this poem about Johnny Depp. Click to embiggen and read. The poem originally appeared in Roddy McDowell's Double Exposure, Take Three.

Books: Jibber-jabber.

Though I can't seem to embed the video here, this here click-click will take you to a video of Sir Christopher "Blood of the Saxon Men" Lee reading Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."

Link Proliferation: Humerus? No. It's dead serious business.

Parts Is Parts

Giving new meaning to "forced to sell you body," the German magazine Der Spiegel takes a look at the global market in human remains. Volunteer programs have pretty much put paid to classic resurrection men, but corpses remain a hot commodity: The tissues of the deceased are used to create spare transplant materials, provide demo bodies for medical tech firms, and create tech parts that the human body won't reject.

Plus, there's this hand graphic to make sure you don't get taken to the cleaners come time to sell your windpipe.

Horror Poetry, Automated

The fine folks at the Artic Chaos Gothic Off-Ramp website have created a Goth-O-Matic Poetry Generator. It's sort of a Mad-Libs for the white face paint set.

It's the Only Way To Live

Here's NIN backing Gary Numan on his post-punk classic "Cars."


Where's Lucien?

From the folks at Shelfari, here's some shelf porn from Neil Gaiman.

Stuff: Hello, poetry lovers.

Recently I wrote a long review of Sharp Teeth, using that book as a launching pad for discussion of the importance of experimentation in genre fiction. Today, to support the other side of the coin, is a short poem by American poet Ron Padgett. Enjoy.

Mad Scientist

Up goes the mad scientist to the room in his tower
where his instruments gleam in the half-light
while his thoughts are surrounded by the half-dark
that filters out from his heart, but when he goes in
and looks around, all he can see is the chair
covered with a bright red and green serape
and sparks are fizzing in the thought balloon
above his head, for yes, he is a cartoon scientist,
just as everything I think about is a cartoon something
because anything cartoon is immortal
in its own funny little way.

You can find "Mad Scientist" in Padgett's 2007 collection How to Be Perfect from Coffee House Press.

R.I.P.: Nameless here for evermore.

On this day, in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore, Maryland.

By way of tribute: here's John Astin reciting Poe's "The Raven."



And here's the bizarre beginning of Roger Corman's extremely loose adaptation of "The Raven," starring Vincent Price and the voice of Peter Lorre.



Finally, the greatest of adaptations: the Simpsons do "The Raven."

Contest: We have a wiener.

It was a close race that ultimately came down to a choice between a touching and heart-felt ode to notable actor and a haiku that mentioned carrot rape. And carrot rape won out in the end. Because, I think, that's how Basho would have wanted it.

The books go to Screamin' Dave!

Thank you Screamin' Sasquatchan and Screamin' Cattleworks (especially for your innovative Alien life-cycle series) for sounding off. And Scared of the Television – who is actually my old lady and was therefore disqualified – thanks for the poem anyway.

Contest: Horror haiku.

On this blog, I've reviewed three novels from Dark Horse Press' Universal Monster tie-in series. The first was Paul Di Filippo's Time's Black Lagoon featuring everybody's favorite man-fish. Next up was Stephan Petrucha's monster versus madman showdown, Shadow of Frankenstein. Finally, today, I reviewed Witcover's excellent Dracula: Asylum. I going to give you all three of these books, slightly used but free of charge!

What do you have to do? Nothing.

Well, almost nothing.

And Now the Screaming Starts is holding its first ever contest and entering is as easy as counting to five, then seven, then five again.

Write a haiku featuring your favorite horror figure. It could be an 80s slasher or one of the Universal stable or one of those creepy ghost chicks that J-horror can't get enough of. I can't tell you who to pick. How the hell do I know who your favorites are? Get your head in the game, man. Think.

Here's the rules:
1. Write in English.
2. Submit your haiku as a comment to this entry. Haikus that show up elsewhere can't win.
3. The title of your haiku should be the character's name.
4. Submit as many as you like. Go to town.
5. Contest limited to residents of the continent of North America.
6. I'm choosing a winner on the afternoon (NYC-time) of the 22nd, so get your best efforts in before then.

Here's a sample:

Freddy
Nightmare teen stalker.
Can do anything he wants,
Except pick his nose.

Like that, only not sucky.

The winner will be the one I like best. If I pick your haiku, I'll send you my copies of all three books (they've been read – if you're anal about that, don't enter) and I'll pay the postage.

Have fun, dear readers.