Associations

Currently watching The Unseen. It's a fairly cheesy low-budget horror flick starring Apollo from the REAL Battlestar Galactica (not that thrice damned smegma that Sci-Fi/USA scraped from it's pustulant corporate phallus and flung at us last month) and Tim Thomerson (one of those classic typecast actors who's in a hundred or more movies).


It vaguely reminds me of a short story written by Ambrose Bierce, titled "The Damned Beast". That story has a special place in my soul for a number of reasons. I first read it in, believe it or not, one of those godawful public school "reader" books like Lavender Sky Writers or something back when I was a wee lad in middle school. My reading level was a tad higher than the rest of the simpering dolts in my school so I would always find myself distracted in class by reading stories that were "not on the list".

The thought of an animal who's natural colouration was outside the visible spectrum of the human eye just seemed like such an amazing story back then. Sadly, for over a decade I lost the story. I didn't know who wrote it. It became my personal "Questing Beast". I would think of it often but not know how to search for it. After all these were the days before the internet was widely used.

One day in 1994, I came across a copy of a "campfire tales" anthology of spooky stories. Lo and behold, there was "The Damned Beast". I couldn't believe my eyes. Though I did believe my luck. I didn't have any money on me at the time. Of course when it was gone when I came back to buy it and I had forgotten to check the title of the anthology.

It was not till 2002 when I had the story in my hands again. The PBE had given me "The Colour Out of Space" (a anthology of weird fiction from the masters of the the genre, Blackwood, Bierce, Poe, Lovecraft and others) and the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) cookbook for the holidays. The quest was over.

Odd how the most minor of things can stick in your head for more than 20 years.

Late night/early morning snowy musing

For some reason I only stayed awake for about four hours after getting up Sunday afternoon. Of course that meant I woke up at 1am.

Decided to go for a walk at 2am. 2am monday morning is an interesting time in Buffalo. NO ONE is out and about. It is easy to imagine being the only person alive as I walk up and down the streets, making fresh tracks in the untouched drifting snow. Sometimes I think this is why I stay in Buffalo. It's "big city" compared to where I am from - and yet there are times it is as asleep as my hometown.

(no subject)

Sean, Sher, Scott, and Paul ... with a few who were more "fringe" members made up our little group. We weren't the jocks, though some of us were on an athletics team for a few years. We weren't the brainiacs, though three of us were in AT (Academically Talented) back when OM was still Olympics of the Mind instead of Odyssy of the Mind and two of us are/were MENSA. We weren't the stoners, even though more than a few people thought we were due to how we dressed or acted. We weren't really anything. We were just US.

ALL of them except me are married now. All of them except me have kids. Only one still lives in the town we grew up and surpirsingly enough he is the only one with whom I am still in contact. Last time I was home we sat at his kitchen table and it came to us that his oldest boy is now at the age we were when we started having our adventures.

Adulthood hits us hard and slams our mortality home at the weirdest times. I wonder if his boys will someday camp out on the beach scaring each other with stories of DOGMAN while they hope to catch a glimpse of him. I wonder if they will ever pack a convertable full with their friends and cruise down Crystal Lake road in the middle of the night trying to scare each other with local legends.