Why Snakes? Why Did It Have To Be Snakes?

Whoa! I just had to mention something interesting that happened to me today. I slept late this morning after working most of the night and early hours on an art project that had a deadline at 7.00 A.M. I got out of bed around 2.00 P.M. and turned my computer on to check my e-mails etc. About ten minutes into doing this I heard one of my cats " Boy " making weird growling noises in the hallway to my studio. I turned around to see what all the commotion was about and there in Boy's mouth was a two and a half foot Black Racer snake. Anyone who owns cats knows that trying to pry the animal away from it's prey is virtually impossible without getting clawed and bitten to death. I was in a quandary...how the hell do I get this snake out of the cat's mouth and how do I get it out of the house without hurting it before it slips behind something that makes it impossible to catch. The first part of the operation was a necessity; shut all the three doors in the hallway that lead to other rooms, place cushions on the floor to block off the small spaces under those doors. The cushions wouldn't prevent the snake from accessing the rooms beyond, but they would act as a partial barrier and slow it's progress down buying me some extra minutes. The last thing I wanted was for the snake to get away and slither into my studio which has a lot of shit to maneuver around or worse still my step son's bedroom which is like the pit of hell when it comes to shit everywhere. If the snake got into any of those rooms I would be fucked. It would be a monumental operation to find a snake in there.

When I came back with the cushions from the living room couch I found to my horror the snake had gone. Well at least that took care of the problem of seperating cat and snake. I figured the snake had bitten him and had wriggled into the place my cat was now intently staring at... the hall closet. Well at least the snake chose somewhere that had less junk to move. Living in Florida the past few years has taught us to put all our personal belongings in boxes just in case we have to leave the house with them in a hurry because of severe hurricanes. Most of the closets and cupboards in our house are stocked tight with heavy boxes full of personal stuff we either want to take with us in an emergency or leave in a relatively safe place to wait out the storm. The hall cupboard was no exception. I took on the task of removing all the heavy boxes and put them in the guest bathroom and locked Boy in there too so I could attempt this procedure with as little problem as possible. The snake was a tricky bastard. It snuck under the last box in the closet and when I removed that it made a dash towards my studio door. The cushions gave me something to trap him underneath and carefully I edged the cushion and the snake towards a cardboard box I had prepared earlier. It was time consuming and very nerve wracking, but I finally got it in the box and released it outside unharmed. I've heard that these species of non venomous snakes are one of the the fastest in the world and I can testify to the reptile's speed. They are also known for putting up vigorous fights, biting hard and often once cornered, so I guess I was very lucky not to have gotten bitten by it. I hope Boy or Mini, my other cat didn't get bitten during this encounter.

Forget about the snake handlers way of grabbing them by the back of the head, these things are way too agile to do that, If anyone else has this problem happen to them I suggest the plan of attack I used here. At the end of it all I was pretty proud of my achievement, but I don't think I would want to take on anything more dangerous than that. I think I'll leave the giant snake slaying to Conan the Barbarian and anyone who wants to go hunting for for Blood Orchids.

Take Your Stinking Paws Off Me You Damn Dirty Disease!

In the early hours of Saturday morning the world lost a big screen hero and a real life tough guy Charlton Heston. For me the chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice of the actor were the qualities that made him perfect for the characters he played. I will fondly remember him as Ben Hur ( Ben Hur 1959 ) George Taylor ( Planet Of The Apes 1968 ) Robert Neville ( Omega Man 1971 ) Detective Robert Thorn ( Soylent Green 1973 ) He was my Mum's screen idol and because of this she took me to see him in one of the first films I ever saw as a child, Planet Of The Apes. It was this film that made me make - up effects crazy and a science fiction fan for life. It was also my introduction to this man's body of excellent work and I still haven't gotten around to seeing all of them yet. Now that he's gone I shall be investigating his back catalogue of films and perhaps find the time to see more of him in action. Today at my house we will be holding our own little tribute to him by watching one of his films and creating a little mini shrine on our computers with photos of him. I'll also move my 12 inch Sideshow figure of Heston as George Taylor the Astronaut to a place on my desk besides my computer.

Memorable Charlton Heston quotes.

"I don't seem to have a 20th century face"
Charlton Heston

How true and how perfect his face was for the man who raced chariots in 26 AD, or the astronaut who crash lands back to Earth in the year 3978 AD and has to fight for survival in a land of simians, or the doctor who saved mankind from a plague in the not so distant future of 1977 or the cop in 2022 who uncovered the secret of Soylent Green.


"It's been quite a ride. I loved every minute of it"
Charlton Heston
And so have we, thank you Mr. Heston may you rest in peace.

Warriors Are Real Men And They Come Out To Play-eyay!

My wife and I were watching the directors cut of the Warriors last night and it was really interesting to see this film again having not seen it in several years. It has dated somewhat, despite the fact that it was meant to be set sometime in the future.The clothes the actors wore in 1979 simply don't pass for the apparel being sold in today's stores. I suppose it's conceivable that 70's fashions like the large fuck off Concorde wing collars proudly displayed on men and women's buttoned shirts could make a comeback, but I wouldn't put a large sum of money down on betting it will happen any time soon. I think trouser flares, otherwise known as bell bottoms, will continue to come and go because each generation discovers the flattering effects they have on people with chunky legs such as myself. I could never wear drainpipe jeans as a kid or as a teenager because they made me look like a strangely shaped duck arse man. It wasn't as if I was a fat child in fact I was stick thin until I turned the age of 25 easily slipping into jeans with a 21 inch waistband. No my problem was I was short and drainpipe legs were specifically designed to look better on a taller, proportioned pair of pins.

I'm sure even way back then the film looked ridiculous to the tough guys who belonged to the real gang communities in the New York area depicted in the film. However the flamboyant gang colors and costume designs were a great way to identify each street or neighborhood clan individual, and was one of the strongest and most memorable elements of the film. But real hard men wouldn't be seen dead in those kinds of "faggoty" duds. Wearing that kind of accoutrement would most certainly get you your head kicked in on the mean streets of a notoriously dangerous city in the USA or UK. Which brings me to the topic of masculinity.

I never considered myself a macho man, you know, the type that likes to get together with the guys, chug down copious amounts of beer, watch the football match = soccer game, on telly ( British slang for television ) or going out to the pubs and getting into fisticuffs ( fight ) at the end of the night because someone "looked" at you the wrong way when you had one too many to drink. No I've always loved the company of women and being involved with more feminine pursuits.

A lot of guys who go clothes shopping with their other halves find the whole process unbearably dull, and intolerable to deal with without the distraction of alcohol or food to pass the time away. I see the hurt in their eyes when I stand alongside them outside the changing rooms of a female clothing shop while we both wait for our partners to spring fourth and give us an impromptu display of form and fashion. Time and time again I find most guys give me the rolled eyes expression to articulate their feelings of impatience and displeasure with the situation. It's their way of connecting with another like-minded individual and sharing some solidarity with another human being. Of course I play along in order to make the other dude feel at ease, but in all honesty I always look forward to lending my artistic eye and giving my wife some feedback on the clothes she's trying on. I guess I will never understand the other man's grief. It's not like you're being water boarded or having your eyeballs spooned out with a jagged teaspoon. All you have to do is wait there in the relative comfort of an air conditioned room and wait until you are asked to participate in the duty of decision making. It's not that hard and sometimes you get to sit in a comfy chair while you do this. So what if the female in your life can't make up her mind and has to visit and revisit various retailers for several hours until she's sure of what she wants it's a small price to pay for a happy coexistence.



If I happen to be wearing a baseball cap when accompanying my wife on our shopping jaunts this invariably prompts further interaction with blokes who are impatiently tapping their feet and shifting uncomfortably from side to side until their companions emerge from the mysterious aperture of the women's changing room. The reason for the verbal interplay is brought about by the fact that most of my hats usually have a sports team logo printed or sewn onto the front of them.

I buy hats that look good on my head. I have a very large forehead so to counteract the immensity of skull flesh on display I like to cover up. I buy hats that also suit the shape of my face ones that will slim my features down. I buy hats with colors and logos that I find attractive. I do not buy hats because I support a baseball team. In fact I don't know much about baseball at all and I never felt the need to get into it. Baseball just doesn't interest me. My lack of familiarity and enthusiasm for the sport often leads to very difficult conversations with those in the know, and I found that if I just keep my side of the chat to " yeah's " and let the other guy do all work I can come through it reasonably unabashed.

I didn't realize clothes were such a big part of American cultural identity until I moved here. Don't get me wrong; in Britain it's a similar situation. You are judged by how you look and what you wear to a certain degree but it's not on as grand a scale as it is in in the Land of Uncle Sam. A large percentage of society has been preprogrammed by the media and fashion police to invalidly assert that specific styles equate to a person's individuality, professionalism, intelligence and good standing in the community. It's bullshit. These archaic principles all adhere to the rule that the clothes maketh the man, but sensible, informed people know better, but unfortunately official bodies like to stick us with these antiquated protocols at work and at play and like the mindless sheep we are taught to be, a lot of us do not question or disobey these rules.

The style of clothing we wear is not an equivalent to ones individuality, it is simply a means of expressing ones individuality and probably in most cases not a very good marker for expressing a persons individuality when you consider we can only buy what clothes retailers sell us, the choices are not infinite.

The most commonly touted benefits for wearing casual clothing in a professional working environment has been improved morale, increased worker productivity, more open communication between staff and managers, cost savings to employees because casual wear is less expensive, and improved quality of work. The few pitfalls caused by a casual working environment have all been cited by the old guard a generation of people who stick rigidly to obsolete beliefs because it makes them feel in control and comfortable in their surroundings. All the complaints come from a place where the practice of " dressing down" is only practiced on one day of the week. The confusion of not knowing what to wear would be virtually eliminated if you could go casual every single day. People eventually get into the groove if given enough time to settle into a routine. The arguments for the lack of uniformity and conformity are valid depending on which profession you're talking about. I think those are a matter of executive decision.

Intelligence comes from the wearer of the clothes and in no way do the clothes have some invisible union with the brain. Here is a link http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54984 to a funny article on a the web which takes a satirical look at an IQ test involving the use of baseball caps.

As for good standing in the community... well, we all know how our perceptions of the holier than thou, frock wearing priests have been turned upside down after one sex abuse scandal after another. Yet bikers continue to get the bad rap simply because they have a penchant for wearing leather, have long hair and like to bike the open roads. The fuds of the world regard them with distain and consider these individuals raunchy, boozy, dangerous, unsavory misfits, who happen to raise millions of dollars for children's charities everywhere.

After watching the Warriors together my wife said to me the next morning that it was refreshing to see a man with chest hair. I believe she was referring to the character named Vermin played by Terry Michos. In the film he wore a leather waistcoat unbuttoned exposing his manly man of a hairy chest. This after all was the era of the Bee Gees, golden medallions resting upon weaves of virile fur. It was perfectly acceptable in those days to look like this; in fact it was preferred,
but at some point in the 80's it became unfashionable to have body hair anywhere except on top of your head or face. People like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone shaved their chest hair in order to show off their muscles.

The Glam Rock and New Romance movements of the music scene encouraged guys to wear make up, shave unwanted body hair and in some respects transform their appearance to that of a more androgynous creature. This, I think, was the beginning of the end for guys with their fair share of animalistic, naturalistic body coats. I have chest hair and my wife loves it. In fact when we first met, I was a patient in hospital and she was the nurse assigned to my ward and she tells me that seeing my chest hair under my open pajama top was one of the first things that attracted

her to me. My stepson's girlfriend absolutely hates body hair on a man so the poor kid has to shave all the time to keep her happy. The aversion to this kind of hair has grown to pandemic proportions. This younger generation of girls want their male bodies bald and soft to the touch and won't accept anything less than artificial perfection. Maybe this is payback for all the years men told women to get bigger tits and plumper lips and shave their bushes away until no hair was present. Indeed something has changed the public consciousness in regard to what is pleasing to the eyes, the fingers

and the nose.

Guys have lapped up the trend to become more feminine just like the poor teenage girls who became anorexic and bulimic in their singular quest to try and become the impossibly unattainable Barbie body beautiful. Guys bathroom medicine cabinets are now stocked full of all manner of creams, potions and lotions when once there may have been only some toothpaste, shaving cream, and a bar of soap on the sink basin. The female only domain of moisturizers and exfoliates has now been invaded by the enemy.

So where does this leave me? I don't shave my chest hair. I don't use any health and beauty products. A bar of soap a flannel and some shampoo does me fine. I have no need for conditioners, hair gels or waxes, styling mousse etc. By these standards I should be considered a throwback, but on the other hand I like shopping with my wife and I hate sports and beer. So what the fuck does that make me? A metro sexual? Not quite, not by the definition of that word. I guess I'm just complicated and maybe there are other fellows out there who are equally complicated and refuse to be pigeon holed and categorized. Perhaps there are people out there like me who are disgusted at how superficial both males and females have become and are sad that we can't just be ourselves anymore. In a way, watching a 70's film like this reminded me of freer times when men could be men and women could be women, more or less. It's funny the things that go through your head when viewing a film full of beefy testosterone action.

Silverscreen Movie Posters...To Your Right & Down A Bit!

This blogging malarkey is all very time consuming, especially when you try to spruce things up by adding a page element like the new slideshow facility. Fuckin ell! You can't link to photos on your computer's hard drive because of the way it is all set up so you have to be a member of Picassa Web Album, Flickr, Phototbucket, or some other picture hosting service. So in order to have some flashy visuals to look at I had to join up to one of these websites. I picked Flickr and over the course of half a day I collected the pictures I wanted from the net, saved them on my computer then uploaded them to my newly created Flickr account. Then I had to do some hot linking thing between the two websites. Phew! It's now up and running and looks ever so pretty on the right hand side of my page. It's just a visual representation of the list of movies I recommend to others. It's not a list of the most obscure and avant-garde art house pieces which will give me an air of superiority in all matters of film knowledge and taste. It's just a film list littered with mainstream blockbusters from all eras. I'm not interested in trying to prove anything nor do I have airs of pretension. I hate film snobs who try to do that and I do not wish to be one so I guess that elitist attitude makes me a kind of snob anyway. I am what I am and I simply love any kind of B-Movie and make no apologies for it to anyone. They are always great to watch and pure escapist fun. If I needed a dose of melodrama then I would watch the Lifetime or Hallmark TV channels. If I crave a film which studies matters of the human condition and the milieu which brings about such cultural and sociological variations then I'll go to a multi medium art gallery or an independent film festival. For all my other needs I'll trundle off to my local cinema and see the magic unfold there. The list mainly comprises films in the following genres...Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Live Action Comic Book and Animation. There are some other films from other genres stuck in there which I absolutely adore and couldn't leave off the list, but they are the exceptions to the rule.

Blogging Mania! I Blog Therefore I Am!

Since I decided to create a blog I also looked into some interesting facts about this online entity. I read that 8,000-17,000 new blogs are created every single day. That works out as one created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds. 36 per cent irritated friends or family with their musings, while an incredible 12 per cent attracted the attention of lawyers with their venomous commentary.

According to the data from Weblog search engine Technorati, 45 per cent of the weblogs have not had a post in over three months, I'll probably join this percentage of people because I can't sit on my arse in front of a computer for hours on end. There are other things to do in life so they will always come first, still I'll try my best to write something every day, but I have a feeling with all the will in the world, just like New Year's resolutions, I'm setting myself up for failure or piles.

Still, there are a significant portion of people out there who are still posting each day. Yay, keep the dream alive brothers & sisters. The number of conversations are increasing to over 275,000 individual posts a day. On average, more than three blogs are updated every second. Which goes to show you there is a lot of shit to talk and write about.

A survey run by MIT conducted earlier this year stated that a majority of bloggers identified themselves on their own sites: 55 per cent of respondents provided their real names, while another 20 per cent provided some variant of the real name: first name only, first name and initial of surname, or just a pseudonym.

Anonymity would appear to be the way to go. Keeping schtum as to your real identity would protect you from becoming one of the 360,000 people per year who allegedly receive subpoenas as a result of their blogging. It would also protect the 1,080,000 bloggers who annually piss off their loved ones and acquaintances. Well this kind of makes sense to me, in this day and age it's not really a good idea to upset the status quo by accusing " the man " of all manner of crimes and then freely revealing your true identity online. Thats' just stupid, although I suspect the government or bad individuals out there who really want to know your secret identity have lots of ways and means at their disposal to find out who you are. So how secretly can you blog in a modern fandangled world such as this?

After doing the research today I have become aware of all the blogging pitfalls. With this useful knowledge in hand I consider myself forewarned and I will try to be fair with my assessements of people and will try very hard to avoid sensitive subject matter at all costs. Yeah right!

A Blogger Is Born! Something Bloggable Is About To Happen!

My meandering exploration of the digital realm, otherwise known as the world wide web, has brought me presently to this place... a free web service hosted by Google for bloggers. I resisted the temptation to... no, scrub that; I ignored the possibilities of setting up my own blog page because I was merrily posting my thoughts and opinions on message boards everywhere on the net. I saw no need to duplicate the same thing under the guise of what basically amounts to a personal journal for all to see and read.

It's true, web forums come and go quite rapidly and anything valuable you may have had to contribute to a topic in one of a thousand multiple threads may well be permanently deleted forever. This is the chance you take when making use of those available services. The better ones work very efficiently and a good search function can bring back one's online past at a dizzying speed. If one creates a good rapport with the other users or posters on these message boards then the experience can be very rewarding and enlightening, unfortunately, most of the time it's a just a pain in the arse dealing with replies from morons who create multiple user names to push their agendas forward. Anarchy usually ensues and people, instead of debating, start arguing, then insulting one another.

I have to admit I didn't see the beauty in having a permanent platform to voice ideas and views until recently. To me the blog culture represented another outlet for the narcissistic tendencies of a younger dystopian MySpace/Face Book/Leet Speaking/Text Messaging generation. I wasn't interested in pushing my ego, my vanity, my conceit on everyone else. Plenty of people do that already, but I did need a place to rant about some of the injustices in the world that make me rather mad. This is as good a place as any to set up camp to bitch and moan especially since plenty of my friends and family kept telling me I needed to do something like this... a place I could vent all of my pent up frustration with the world and perhaps furnish my knowledge and give insight to subjects I have special interests in unto others.