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Happy Valen-Slime–I mean Valentine’s Day, everyone! :)

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Harry is doing great.Seriously, guys; everyone who donated, or offered moral support, thank you.He's active and walking and eating and using the litterbox without any help. All on three legs.

Oh, and, yes, he does have to wear the Cone of Shame to prevent him from licking at the stitches, but my mom took it off for the photo to make it less embarrassing for him. :P

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Harry the Cat: Update #5!

My mom says Harry is up and walking fine on just three legs now. A little groggy sometimes from his pain meds, but getting around without any real difficulty. :)

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Harry the Cat: Update #4!

Harry's surgery went well, although they ended up needing to take the entire leg. Fortunately, the vet said it didn't look like the tumors spread to his body.

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Harry the Cat: Update #3!

In more important news, Harry the cat goes in for his surgery today. Wish him luck, everyone. :)

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Demonic Color by Pauline Dunn

Nabbed for about $4 and some change on eBay. I'm unsure what the plot is, but that cover intrigues the hell outta me. According to one (mostly) spoiler-free user review on Goodreads, this book, written by Dawn Pauline Dunn and Susan Hartzell using the former's middle and last name as a pseudonym, it's about an evil green gas (gettin' some "Colour Out of Space on steroids" vibes). As long as two 90s fashion victim kids with gelled hair get eaten by the killer green fog, I'm down. Of course, there's the elephant in the room, which is that in some respects, this book is simply Dunn and Hartzell's earlier The Crawling Dark with a different title and a slightly different plot (evil flesh-eating gas as opposed to evil Satanic worms or whatever it was in Crawling Dark)... and that both steal entire passages from Dean R. Koontz's Phantoms but just change the characters' names and the nature of the threat. That they got away with this twice before someone finally caught on and Zebra pulled the books from shelves following a court case is amazing. Dunn and Hartzell did manage to write one more book for Zebra, Flesh Stealer, but by then the damage had been done (or should I say "Dunn?"). According to Goodreads' bio, Dawn Dunn continued writing under her own name without Hartzell after the plagiarism fiasco, at least until '01, and she currently works as a nurse practitioner. No word on Hartzell. Anyway, I eagerly await Demonic Color's arrival by mail. And I eventually wanna get Crawling Dark as well. I'm a big fan of Koontz's Phantoms and I wanna see exactly just how badly these two plagiarized it. I'm hoping it ends up being decent despite this, because the idea of killer green gas sounds interesting.

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The Corpse of Charlie Rull by Joseph Payne Brennan

Written in 1959 by Joseph Payne Brennan, The Corpse of Charlie Rull is an early zombie short story, predating 1968's Night of the Living Dead, and is one of the first stories that involves a zombie that wasn't resurrected by voodoo. It's also shockingly violent and nihilistic for its time, and, like Slime, was published in the short story collections The Shapes of Midnight and The Feaster from Afar, but, once again, because these can be prohibitively expensive, my man on YouTube Edward E. French has got you covered (as before, see below)! Charlie Rull is a homeless man who lives in the town dump outside of the town of Newbridge. Aside from being a chronic alcoholic, he's never harmed a single soul in his entire life. That all changes the day he's out for a walk and suffers a fatal heart attack after his years of hard-drinking and general unhealthy living catch up to him, and he promptly pitches forwards face-first into the cattail swamp that lies between the dump and a nearby scientific research facility. He lies there undiscovered for three days, but in those three days, he undergoes a few... changes. Y'see, the scientists working at that lab aren't aware of this, but their waste disposal system has sprung a leak, and radioactive chemicals have been steadily oozing into the swamp for some time now. After three whole days of floating in this toxic, swampy bath, Charlie comes back to what can charitably be called life, but he isn't quite himself. In addition to glowing and possessing immense, inhuman strength due to the experimental chemicals infusing every single cell of his body, he suffers from amnesia and remembers nothing of his former life. All he knows is pain, because, well, apparently having that much radiation coursing through you hurts a lot. The pain drives him mad and he promptly flies into a murderous rage, determined to kill anything else that lives upon the Earth. A salesman on his morning commute to work is startled when the waterlogged Charlie staggers into the road in front of him. Unable to stop, he hits him. As there are no other cars on the road, he decides to do a hit and run and speed away from the accident, but Charlie is no ordinary vehicular manslaughter victim. To the salesman's surprise, he not only gets back up, but flips his car over! He fortunately dies from fright before Charlie gets ahold of him, for, in his effort to pull the man out of the upside-down car by the hair, Charlie only succeeds in ripping his head off (!). That accomplished, he gives chase to a rabbit, but loses it in the woods before stumbling out towards the highway, where he sights his next victim, a hitchhiker. Handsome and well-groomed with a sweet 'stache and a charming smile, he's got what you might call a way with the ladies, and can charm his way into getting a ride from almost any woman. He especially enjoys being picked up by single women. Women he can use the rope and knives he keeps in his backpack. For, you see, he's no ordinary hitchhiker, but a wanted serial killer posing as one, and he's already planning his next murder when Charlie Rull emerges from the bushes. What will happen when professional murderer meets recently resurrected undead maniac? Listen to Edward E. French's excellent read of this short but chilling tale to find out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr_gi4KcqS4

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Slime by Joseph Payne Brennan

Written in 1953 by Joseph Payne Brennan, an early bibliographer of H.P. Lovecraft, the novella Slime is the granddaddy of all blob monster stories, apparently the inspiration for everything from The Blob to Dean R. Koontz's Phantoms.

Originally published in Weird Tales, it's also available in this wonderful but sadly out of print and expensive paperback collecting several of the author's works, with the awesome title "The Shapes of Midnight."

But never fear! A certain Mr. Edward E. French has got you covered (see below)!

Wharton's Swamp, a coastal marsh located near the town of Clinton Center, has an unsavory reputation for being haunted. Most of the locals avoid it. But homeless man Henry Hossing isn't aware of it. He's just passing through, having stopped to take shelter from a rough storm the night before. Hassled by the local cops, he makes a camp in the swamp and drinks his troubles away. Come nightfall, though, as he awakens to tend to his campfire, Henry becomes aware that the night is different somehow. There's an evil smell in the air. An unpleasant stench accompanied by an alien presence that freezes Henry's blood. Something, he doesn't exactly see what, comes rushing out at him from the darkness as the fire's embers die down. When he's gone the next morning, everyone just assumes he passed through. Farmer Rupert Barnaby goes hunting for raccoons in the swamp after dark with his dog Jibbe. Unlike the rest of the locals, Barnaby, a proud, stubborn man, is one of the few who is unafraid to enter Wharton's Swamp. He's hunted in it for years. But the swamp he enters that night, against the advice of his extremely neighbor and sometime enemy Giles Gowse, who is more superstitious about Wharton's Swamp than most and whose cow Sarey has gone missing, is one he doesn't recognize. There's no signs of raccoons... or any other animal life, for that matter. Wharton's Swamp is as quiet as a tomb. And for the first time in forever, Jibbe the dog gets spooked, turns tail and runs away. And then suddenly Barnaby himself is gripped by a powerful and overwhelming primal fear. A stench, followed by a bizarre, slithery sound, assails Barnaby, and, terrified, he unloads his hunting rifle in a mad attempt to defend himself as the very darkness itself seems to envelope him. The next morning, Giles Gowse comes to call on him, but finds only a cowering Jibbe. His attempt to report both his missing cow and his missing neighbor to the police don't get him anywhere. Chief Miles Underbeck is sure Sarey the cow just ran away, and as for Rupert Barnaby, the man knows Wharton's Swamp like the back of his hand. He'll turn up, surely. Despite Underbeck's reassurances, Gowse has decided to leave his farm, moving into the local hotel for the time being. When Rupert Barnaby remains missing come evening, Underbeck finally begins to start taking the old farmer's concerns with a grain of salt, especially when a driver from out of town comes in with a terrified local woman, Delores Rell, who he found on the side of the highway near the swamp screaming for help. Her boyfriend Jason Bukmeist has been killed, she screams. Taken by a living darkness... For something ancient and evil has been displaced from the bottomless abyss of the ocean's depths by an undersea seismic upheaval and into the oozy coastal plains of Wharton's Swamp by a storm's tidal wave. The thing has existed unchanging since the dawn of prehistory, possessed of incredible strength, stealthiness and swiftness, capable of devouring everything from tiny fish to sharks and giant squid. It was the apex predator in the abyss where it lived, and now it finds itself in a strange new environment with interesting new prey... humans. Used as it is to the pitch blackness of the abyss, the thing, the creature, the living darkness, finds daylight abhorrent and so buries itself in the swampy muck during the day, coming out at night to feed. Can one small town police force hope to battle such a thing...?

Available as a very creepy audiobook here in three parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cZLTVgp25Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDS800uqD1E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2DZ-on2gCs

If you like good sci-fi horror, you'll love Joseph Payne Brennan's Slime!

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Harry the Cat’s GoFundMe: Update #2!

The GoFundMe for Harry's leg surgery has hit $650! My mom is so happy! Thanks to everyone who donated, or even just spread the word! :)

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Harry the Cat’s GoFundMe: Update!

Harry's GoFundMe - https://www.gofundme.com/harry-needs-a-leg-removed?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb_dn_cpgntopnavlarge_r&fbclid=IwAR18hIKkcE5nBd-l11N-VibI0n4rbd7LK7XQK9olt094FTeQD5xtDhH_nec - is up to $470 of the $650 needed. My mom is just about in tears in gratitude to everyone who donated. Thanks, guys, honestly. :-)

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Please Help My Mother’s Cat Harry

My mom's cat Harry has a tumor in his leg and he needs an operation. It isn't cheap. Please, give anything you can to help him out. As you can see from the photos, he really, really needs this operation (beware, the pictures are pretty icky):

https://www.gofundme.com/harry-needs-a-leg-removed?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb_dn_cpgntopnavlarge_r&fbclid=IwAR18hIKkcE5nBd-l11N-VibI0n4rbd7LK7XQK9olt094FTeQD5xtDhH_nec

If enough people give just $20, it could add up really quickly.

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Happy New Year!

Welp, it's officially 2019, everyone! Happy New Year! :)

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I hear fireworks! Bring the hammer--er, torch down! Smash that evil Jell-O mold, Lady Liberty! She's tough! She's a harbor chick!

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Happy New Year from the Manhattan Museum of Art! Party times!

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Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Here’s a pic of my dinky little tree with the presents I gave to my sister and her family yesterday. :)

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Meet Burton, a.k.a. "Pinky," my new pink-footed tarantula, a surprise from my mother today because she knew I was still a little upset over my scorpion Richard's death. So far, he (?) is a greedy little booger, gobbling up three crickets in his little critter carrier. He seems very active and healthy, though, which is good. I'll need to clean out Richard's tank before putting Burton into it, though. (As well as change the name if I find out if "Burton" is a girl, heh.)

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So my favorite present I got this year was the Masters of the Universe Classics figure of Karg, the leader of Skeletor's mercenaries from the 1987 live-action Masters of the Universe movie. Created for the film, he resembles a goblin with 80s glam rocker hair and he's one of my favorite evil minion characters and didn't get an action figure back in the 80s, unlike his buddies Blade and Saurod, which, initially, prevented Mattel from doing him in the Classics line (unless they'd been made as figures in the vintage line, movie characters were off-limits because Warner Bros. owned the rights). But now Super 7 has Classics, and they found a workaround to finally give us Karg: specifically, in the Star Comics adaptation of the film, Karg had green skin and blonde hair instead of his gray-skin-and-white-haired look in the film. So now we have Karg, albeit green-skinned, blonde-haired Karg. But, eh, I loved the comic adaptation (mostly because Saurod doesn't die in it), so I'm happy with him until (if?) Super 7 can finally wrangle the likeness rights from Warner somehow. Super 7 was able to give him some movie details, though, like his Elizabethan-style ruffled collar and fur stoll (the latter of which isn't really visible here), and his laser pistol is dead-on to the one he uses in the movie, from what I can remember. They didn't give him the sai he had, though, instead substituting it with a more unique-looking curved blue blade. Referred to as "Crucia, the Dagger of Agony," it looks a lot like one of the implements used by the English to torture William Wallace at the end of Braveheart. Fittingly, Karg's new bio on the back of his figure's card says he's Skeletor's chief torturer. My guess is Crucia has gotten many a poor captured heroic warrior to spill the beans (among other things, ick). He's a great figure, and I'm glad to finally have him!