Teenager stabs her best friend to death with a pair of tweezers! Chicks are so crazy.

Danilova told detectives: ‘Olga remarked that I was ugly and would never ever find a boyfriend.

‘How could I stay calm on hearing something like that from someone who I had always considered my best friend?’

She continued: ‘We were at a birthday party. It was late.We had been talking about guys, when Olga said she was in great demand with the lads.

‘She said it was because she was blonde and advised me to dye mine the same colour.

‘I replied that being blonde was an incurable condition, not something to aspire to. Word by word our friendship just unravelled.’

The pair went outside to talk things through when Danilova stabbed Olga repeatedly in a frenzied attack.

She claims she had no recollection of the attack.

She said: ‘I didn’t mean to kill her, it happened accidentally.’

Filed under: Screwed-up News | 3 Comments »

Jeff never made up a snazzy graphic like last year so plain text will have to do.

4 weeks into the season, and the standings are tight. MaT and Jeff are tied for 1st place with records of 3-1. Nate, Jeremy, and Carlin are one game back at 2-2. Explodey Jo at 0-4 is, well, maybe we should call her Implodey Jo from now on

Next week is the battle for first place: MaT vs. Jeff

God vs. Satan has nothing on this battle! who ya got?

Filed under: Dead Lantern News | 2 Comments »

Update: The embedded video is not working for some folks. Here is the YouTube url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW9b0xr06qA

There has been a lot of activity around this video on the YouTube site over the last 24 hours; it’s been one of those things that explodes and racks up many thousands of views in a short period of time. A number of clever response & parody videos have also been taken down.

Here’s some silly bullshit for ya. Of course, it’s silly like a fox since they’re totally going to win. Good to see that they’ll have an “Obama Youth” program ready to go on day one.

Filed under: Dead Politics, Music | 7 Comments »

Here’s a list from Ben Greenman at The New Yorker, his picks for the 5 scariest movies ever. I’m generally a bit tired of “top X lists” but this one’s sort of fun. I like the inclusion of things like The Body Snatcher, and Mulholland Drive is something of an unusual choice.

Filed under: Movies | 1 Comment »

…or what’s the deal with that? I want someone to come “bail me out” already. Free up my finances so I can go snag that 25th Anniversary Redneck Zombies DVD that’s coming out. Times are tight, yo.

My apologies to anyone who’s not interested in this sort of writing, but I sort of feel compelled to make response posts to some of Mat’s political commentaries. We actually both have our own personal blogs (SameOldSchmidt & The Stygian Hollows, respectively) that might be better-suited for these posts, but neither of us have updated those sites in quite some time. Not to mention that Mat & I are probably the only people who ever read those sites anyway.

I guess I should assume that most of our readers/listeners actually do fall more in line with Mat’s point of view on political issues. Horror is something of a “counter-culture” thing, after all. Shakin’ up the squares and whatnot. Just off the top of my head, I’d wager that most horror fans do skew liberal.

Personally, I’m a conservative/libertarian. That may make me a minority within horror fandom. On the off-chance that some like-minded folks are fans of our site or our podcast, I just want to say: Hey, how’s it goin’? I’m with you. We’re not all ultra-leftists here at Dead Lantern.

I think the way it pans out is: Mat’s left, I’m right, Steve’s indifferent and Deejay’s insane.

Moving on… I like the way Dead Lantern has evolved over the past couple of years. Initially I think we intended to be a news & reviews site, but we’ve moved away from that (why try to carbon-copy Arrow or Dread Central, right?) into more of “our own thing” with the Splattercast and the commentary posts and the film projects. I recoil at first, but then I think: There’s really no reason why Mat or I, or Steve, etc shouldn’t post non-horror commentaries and other random blog stuff. It’s not like we’re going to run out of blog space, right? I have to think that non-horror updates are better than no updates at all.

So what am I even talking about here? I dunno… I guess I’m just getting my arms around what our site is becoming – and again, I don’t think the changes are negative; I’m not saying that, but it is becoming different.

Would it be good to redesign our layout a bit? Should we maybe move away from our homegrown reviews database and just post reviews in the main blog? Stuff like that, design stuff, how this all fits together… Should we rethink our visual layout? The red/black and blood spatter makes you think “horror site” but maybe we could tailor things a bit differently to reflect our evolution?

I welcome & appreciate everybody’s feedback! We have an awesome group of readers/listeners.

Filed under: Commentary, Dead Lantern News | 6 Comments »

I think I like Screamers. It was free on demand via my Fearnet channel and I took the opportunity to revisit it yesterday. I hadn’t seen it since the late 90′s. It’s hokey and predictiable, but I enjoyed it on a fun b-level. I’ve never read the Phillip K. Dick story that it is based upon, but the screenplay was by Dan O’Bannon, whom I am a big fan of (check out Bleeders if you ever get the chance. an underrated indie). The film sort of falls apart in the last 30 minutes, which is unfortunate, but it has a great final beat.  You might want to revisit this one if you have the time.

Oh, I’m not going to bother posting the newest Splattercast tonight. I don’t feel like dealing with the post-production tonight. I’ll get to it tomorrow.

There’s about 1 month to go in the weirdest presidential campaign I’ve ever been a part of. Obama supporters are pretty much on top of the world right now. John McCain looks like a complete retard for his “non-suspension suspension” of his campaign (way to “save” the bailout, johnny!) and Sarah Palin has become the laughingstock of the entire country. Obama has hit 50% or better in three of the daily tracking polls and he’s leading in places like North Carolina…where not even Bill Clinton could win. This comes on the heels of a debate in which all evidence suggests the public believes Obama “won” and McCain looked terrible. If only the election could be held today…

…but it isn’t. There is still a month in which, as this race has shown, anything can happen. For all anyone knows, the media could find out about Biden’s Sarah Palin porn fetish. Conservatives have seen the writing on the wall. Their days are numbered. So expect them to do what every rabid animal trapped in a corner will do: smear the world. The only way conservatives can actually win this thing is to inundate the country with armageddon imagery. No doubt you’ll see the great return of Jeremiah Wright. You’ll probably even be festooned (props go to Johnny McCain for that one) with Bill Ayers propaganda. There will probably be a return of “bittergate”.  Conservatives have nothing to run on. They can’t even run on their “ideas” because by now the country views them, fairly or not, as the devil incarnate. It’s gotten so bad that even Republican senate and house candidates are fleeing like rats on a sinking ship. I would love to be Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, waking up on November 5th to find out that not only are they stuck with a President Obama for the next 4 years, but a fillibuster proof Democratic senate majority as well. That would be priceless from my own sadistic point of view (for the record, I do not like the idea of any party having a fillibuster proof majority, even the Democrats. Gotta have some checks and balances).

Even McCain is dropping like a lead weight in all of the polls and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. Especially if Biden drops the hammer on Palin this thursday. The entire country is going to be tuned in to find out “Is she really this friggin’ stupid?”. Will Biden blow the opportunity to fully sink McCain by saying or doing something stupid of his own? My guess is that Biden will avoid engaging Palin directly on almost everything. I’ll bet he only talks about McCain unless specifically asked about Palin herself. Better to simply let her destroy herself with her own words. The funny thing about Palin’s complete stupidity is that the expectations of her performance are non-existant. That’s what Obama has to worry about. Biden must hurdle an Olympian length bar. Palin doesn’t even have a bar. Here’s what is going to happen: Palin will not flame out as much as everybody assumes she will and Biden will not be as great as everyone expects he will. When you’re in the lead, there is no reason to go on the attack. Biden just needs to calmly get through 90 minutes without any big gaffes. God help John McCain if Palin screws up, though…

The banking meltdown is having a funny impact on the polling that I do. You see, the company I work for does a lot of bank surveys. Had a dude completely go ape-shit on a certain bank because he pulled an enormous amoung of assets out of a failing bank and gave it to them. They promised it would be “safe” from this crisis. Turns out, this bank stuck all of his money in Washington Mutual. Oops. People are freaking out. I don’t know how many people I’ve talked to who have lost craploads of money, but the number is high enough that I’ve lost count.

Oh, one more thing that the media isn’t focusing on because of the bank crisis: early voting in just about every major battleground state is currently underway. Nebraska started yesterday. So as this financial meltdown happens, and John McCain flails around wildly while Sarah Palin looks like a moose caught in the headlights, people are voting. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the McCain campaign is trying so desperately to spin everything as Barack’s fault. They are losing votes by the minute.

I feel better right now about Barack’s chances than I have all year. But make no mistake, the other side is not going to give up without a fight (unless that fight is against Nancy Pelosi, in which case Republicans will cry like little bitches in the presence of her awesomeness). Don’t assume victory is in hand. Get out and vote. Challenge the smears. Keep working. You can have a break on November 5th.

Filed under: MaT's Stuff | 5 Comments »

some films: Psycho (1960), Night of the Lepus (1972), The Fog (1980), Halloween H20 (1998)

Filed under: Women of Horror | 1 Comment »

This will be my last post for the weekend. See ya on Monday.

Less than 24 hours away from the big debate. I’m looking forward to it. McCain is acting all puffy, but we all know what’s going to happen: he’ll make some dramatic flight down to Mississippi and arrive 15 minutes before go time. “Campaign First” is the slogan, after all. I saw an interesting interview with Pat Buchanan earlier tonight in which he said McCain has pretty much screwed himself with his actions that past couple of days. He’s completely boxed himself in. First, if he signs off on the government bailout, then he’ll completely piss off the conservative base that he pandered to with Palin (who just keeps getting worse and worse. Makes sense now why McLiar is hiding her from the press). Second, if he doesn’t sign off on it, then he’ll have to take all of the blame if the economy meltsdown which, considering the largest bank failure in American history happened about 10 minutes ago, seems more probable than not.

Republican loyalists are screaming to anyone who will listen “John McCain is taking action and looking presidential!!!!”. Of course, these same idiots called Barack Obama “Presumptuous” and “Acting like he’s already the president” when Obama went to meet world leaders earlier this summer. Yet somehow, McCain is totally presidential and taking action? What action? Nobody is quite sure. This is a guy who admits he doesn’t know anything about the economy, yet he’s going to ride in on a white horse and save the day? Just last week he said the fundamentals of the economy were strong, now he says this is the greatest crisis the country has faced. He was against the AIG bailout, then he was for it. He wanted to fire the SEC chairman, then he said he was a good man and should resign. As of a couple days ago, he hadn’t even read Paulson’s bailout plan….all 3 pages of it. Then he “suspends” his campaign, which was actually just a blatant lie; a political ploy to make it look as if he’s doing some honorable thing. So McCain flies to Washington…18 hours after he first said he was going (apparently, the financial crises could wait for Bill Clinton’s Global Inititive). Then, suddenly…no more potential deal. No more excitement.

And what happens? Exactly what Obama said would happen yesterday. The press goes crazy, presidential politics becomes the main storyline, and everything blows up. You see, it just becomes a gigantic distraction. Conservatives are blaming Barack Obama for not showing “leadership”. Maybe it’s just me, but leadership is more than a photo-op (and please, if Obama had done what McCain did, every conservative on the planet would be claiming he was playing politics). You see, McCain and Obama can’t do anything but hurt the process by showing up in Washington. When they do, it becomes a zoo, as evidenced by what happened today. Instead, isn’t it a smarter strategy to stay behind-the-scenes, pulling strings when you’re not in the media spotlight? I guess I’d challenge any conservative to actually say what Obama couldn’t do by phone/video conferencing/etc. that had to be done, with his physical presence, in Washington? The media is already in a frenzy over the bailout deal, why complicate it even more by just being there? This line of attack against Obama is even more illogical when you realize that the Democratic caucus isn’t the problem. It seems pretty clear that the Democrats are going to go with this modified plan. In other words, there is no faultline within the Democratic party like there is with the Republican party (with the “no way” conservatives and the “let’s do it” moderates). Hell, Obama was the one who told the Democrats not to include any of the extra stuff they wanted to do (bankruptcy reform and stimulus package). But somehow, he’s the bad guy in this situation? Spin is incredible.

So Obama is calling McCain’s bluff and heading to the debate tomorrow night. Will McCain show up? I predict that he will since his campaign makes decisions based on polls. If he doesn’t, maybe he could send Sarah Palin in his stead? She’s obviously not doing anything and since McCain will be busy single-handedly saving our economy from disaster it would be a good opportunity to prove to her critics that she’s actually smart. Of course, then she’d actually have to answer real questions and we know she doesn’t like doing that.

I have no clue as to what is going to happen tomorrow but it’s going to be fascinating nonetheless.

What do you think? Will McCain show up?

Filed under: MaT's Stuff | 9 Comments »