In talking with Terri about Splice yesterday, I eventually figured out what I disliked so much about the movie.

The trailers made it look like some kind of sci-fi monster movie.  Lots of running, lots of screaming, Dren looking very frightening and aggressive.  I was expecting something more-or-less along the lines of Species – a monster movie featuring a monster that was the product of genetic tinkering.

But that is not what Splice is.

Splice is actually a movie about a couple who make a bad (immoral?) decision, and slowly slide down the slope to ruin.  Their relationship suffers.  Their jobs are in jeopardy.  They can’t trust anyone anymore.  Elsa’s mental health declines, and she starts acting like her abusive mother used to.  There’s tension between Clive and his brother as they try to keep the secret buried.  There’s incest, of a sort…  And child abuse, of a sort…  And rape, of a sort…

Splice, it seems to me, belongs on Lifetime more than on SyFy.

Just like Signs wasn’t actually about aliens, Splice isn’t actually about genetic tampering.  It doesn’t matter that Dren is a genetic chimera until the last 10 minutes of the movie.  Until that point Dren is treated basically like a human child.  It could easily have been a story about child abuse, rather than genetic tampering.  But it isn’t even really about Dren being abused…  It could have been virtually any deep, dark secret they were trying to keep.

It could have been a movie about infidelity of some sort.  Or alcoholism.  Or drug addiction.

The movie was about a couple playing for their mistakes – not the mistake itself.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that kind of movie.  I know there are plenty of people out there who enjoy that kind of thing.  And that’s fine.

But I’m not one of them.  I don’t watch Lifetime.  I don’t like V. C. Andrews.  If I had known what Splice was actually about, I wouldn’t have gone to see it.

And I think that deception was intentional.  I think they intentionally crafted the trailers and commercials to make the movie look like something it wasn’t.  To draw in folks who wouldn’t go watch it otherwise – folks like me.

I can’t say too much about Heart Shaped Box, as my wife hasn’t finished reading it yet…

Suffice to say that it was easily one of the best books I’ve read in a while.  Certainly the best horror story in a good couple of years.

I’m definitely going to have to keep an eye on Joe Hill…

Don’t worry, it’s not a crusade.  Honest.  Just ignore the biblical references inscribed on our weapons.  Yeah, it’s all about freeing the oppressed masses and spreading democracy.  Really.

Carnal Nation | Jennifer Love Hewitt “Vajazzles her Vajayjay”

Actress Jennifer Love Hewitt claims she “vajazzles her vajayjay” with Swarovski crystals and you can too! In the video below, she tells talkshow host, George Lopez, that she began decorating her “precious lady” like a crystal ball to feel better after a rough breakup. She advises other women to do the same and exclaims that she is currently vajazzled in hot pink for the show.Since the vajayjay is actually the space on the inside, it seems unlikely that she actually glues crystals inside of her vagina, but she may very well attach them to the outer portion of her privates – her vulva.

Hewitt even offers to bedazzle Lopez’ goatee and when the amused host suggests that the crystals could be irritating for “the dude”, she replies, “I’ve had no complaints.

Finished reading Already Dead last night.

Good book.  Fairly quick read…  Not terribly deep or substantial…  But a lot of fun.  I’ll definitely be reading more of these Joe Pitt books.  Which clearly shows the wisdom of making that book available for free…  It really isn’t the kind of book I would ever have purchased for myself.  But, because it was free, I read it anyway.  And now I’m going to go out and buy more.  Smart.

I’ve just started in on DEAD(ish) by Naomi Kramer.  Another ebook I got for free on the Barnes & Noble website.

Honestly, I didn’t even really check to see what it was about.  The cover looked cute, it had “dead” in the title, and it was free.  So I grabbed it.

When I opened it up for the first time on my nook I noticed something interesting though…  In the first few pages, where the copyright notice normally is, it indicated that the ebook is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution and Non-Commercial Use license.

This is interesting, because no dead tree publisher would ever touch such a license.

A quick search showed that while someone named Naomi Kramer does have some other books published…  DEAD(ish) is only available in ebook form…  And is published by Smashwords, Inc.

Smashwords appears to publish only ebooks…  And it appears to be completely free.  Simply create an account, submit your manuscript, and off you go.

So, once again, we see digital distribution breaking down the barriers to entry.  Just like the advent of the Internet, inexpensive computers, good-enough recording equipment, and MP3s made it possible for pretty much anyone to record and distribute music…  The advent of the Internet, inexpensive computers, and good-enough ebook formats is making it possible for pretty much anyone to publish and distribute books.

Very cool stuff.

Looks like I won’t be doing too much mining this next week…  Hulkageddon II will run from January 7 to the 14th.

Hulkageddon is an irregularly re-occuring in-game event in the space MMO EVE-online.

Organized by Helicity Boson of the Python Cartel the event takes the form of unprovoked terrorist suicide attacks on mining players. Prizes are sometimes given out for special achievements or to the pilots aht claim the most victims.

Hulkageddon isn’t some official CCP-sponsored event…  It’s something that the players of EVE have arranged.

In theory, the idea is to cut down on mining bots.  Mining bots are notoriously stupid and will frequently just sit there and let you kill them.  Someone who is actually at their computer, playing, mining, is unlikely to lose their ship during Hulkageddon.

It does mean, however, that folks who mine half-AFK like I do, are going to have to play it safe for about a week.

I won’t even be undocking my hulk during that week.

Just in time for my nook to arrive, I’ve finished reading Ghost Story.

I’ve always been a fan of the movie…  It’s kind of the quintessential winter movie.  It’s so bleak and cold.  The small New England town…  The old men reliving tales of their youth…  The pervasive sense of death hanging over everything…  The snow…  Every bit of that movie simply screams winter.

So, I had to read the book.

For everyone who told me that the book was vastly superior – you were right…  Sort of.

Frankly, the book and the movie are so dis-similar that it’s hard to compare them.

Much like Dune and the movie based on it…  The two are different enough to be perfectly enjoyable based on their own merits.

It took me quite some time to get into Ghost Story…  The first couple dozen pages are all about Don driving a little girl down to Florida.  You’ve got no idea who Don is at this point in the story, nor who the girl is, nor why either of them would be heading toward Florida…  I couldn’t decide which of them was the villain…  Which one I should care about…  Hell, I didn’t even know what was going on.

Then the story shifts back to Millburn…  You meet the Chowder Society…  Start getting to know some people…  Bad things start to happen…  And then I was completely hooked.

The biggest problem I had was simply reconciling the book to the movie.  I’ve got such strong ideas of how things happened from the movie, that it was hard to read something completely different in the book.  And it was truly completely different.

Ghost Story, the movie, takes the title a bit too literally.  It is about a group of men who accidentally kill a woman, and she comes back to haunt them.  She is literally deceased, and come back as a ghost.  It is a haunting.

Ghost Story, the book, means the word “ghost” more metaphorically.  It refers more to the memories and deeds that haunt us…  Our past…  The skeletons in our closet…  Our baggage.  The woman doesn’t come back to haunt them as a ghost, because she never died.  Not really.  Since she was never human to begin with.

It’s still a tale of the supernatural…  Still creepy and horrific…  But it just isn’t a ghost story, exactly.  It’s more of a monster story.

I felt a great fondness for the characters in the Chowder Society.  A bunch of classy old men who were enjoying life to the best of their abilities.  They had problems…  Regrets…  Issues…  They were very humanly flawed characters…  But very likable.

The town of Milburn, as well, was a likable character.  Full of New England-y goodness…

And the villain…  The thing that called itself Alma Mobley…  Absolutely wonderful.  I haven’t read such a detestable villain in a very long time.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

As if we needed any more proof that religion causes people to do stupid things…

Columbian farmer, Luis Alfonso Sanchez, removed his testicles to avoid cheating on his wife, who no longer wanted to have sex with him. This painful and unsafe procedure has landed him in the hospital where he is now recovering.

In the ITN News video below, he explains that he no longer wanted to bother his wife and needed to ensure that he could respect his Christian values. He erroneously assumed that he would heal quickly within a matter of days, as he had observed animals that recovered from castration within three days of the procedure.

“I thought that’s what it was going to be like with me,” he explains. “I had practice with animals, so I went ahead, put some pressure on it, and cut them to remove them by force.”