Pictured: Your typical sea squid in the ocean, all slimey and pretty
[Editor's note: Yeah, I know what time it is but it's STILL Wednesday in Alaska!]
Isn’t July fun, Merry Readers? The warm, sunny weather and the endless days of vacation filled with magnificent barbecues and ever-flowing Kool Aid. Yes, that time of year when we invite our neighbors over to enjoy the pool or toss lawn darts while we secretly hope one lands on the bad neighbor’s roof. The very month that the glorious bastion of freedom we now know as America burst forth from the womb of Europe to declare itself independent of kingly rule. The month when a slippery, screaming Red Hawk (Happy birthday, dude!) squirted out into the world never knowing that he’d one day write for us here at Happy Horror. Also there are fireworks!
Yes, July offers us all the pleasures of summer that we can’t get from Newports or Marlboros alone. Since we were kids we’ve looked forward to the sunburns, the wasp infestations and the perennial torching of California which is unfailingly followed by Florida’s hurricane beatdowns. There’s no substitute for summer, really, especially if you’re a kid.
So this week, in celebration of the year’s hottest month I’d like to offer up what’s perhaps the hottest story I’ve ever offered here at the world headquarters of horror entertainment.
Relax and let me tell you a little story. Sit back, grab a cold one and pop the top because we’re about to go where no Hollywood flick has ever gone and when we get there, there ain’t no comin’ back because the tentacles of my imagination never let go and grow back EVEN IF YOU CUT THEM OFF WITH YOUR SOURPUSS ATTITUDES. I mean I’m gonna unroll a gripping story. Really.
Okay, so we got a summer camp. Let’s call it Camp Aspenbrook. For decades, the camp’s served as one of the hottest locales for upscale suburbanites to send their pubescent offspring. Kids whose lives are rich with opportunity, promise and the latest fashions. Kids who enjoy buying albums the day they come out and get digital cable in their rooms. Kids who get a car on their 18th birthday and have all their freakin’ college paid for them including books and money to party with even though they totally won’t even buy you a beer unless they think you’re cool enough and honestly, who’s cool enough? Right? Still with me?
All right, these high school Dawson’s Creek wanna-be’s get up to Camp Aspenbrook and start unpacking. Of course, the camp directors pride themselves on rustic accomodations meant to build character so they won’t have sattelite TV or any of that, but they’ve got internet access via their cellphones because they cut a deal with Verizon to install a tower about twenty minutes from the camp. And that’s good. We want that. We want them sending frantic cellphone pics and videos as things get interesting.
Of course, these are teens we’re talking about and you know teenagers – they want to get frisky and with a whole gaggle of good lookin’ guys and girls you know that they’ll be up to more than roasting weenies and getting sticky marshmellow goop all over them. These hormone-laced hotties sneak off repeatedly into the woods to score.
However, we got Ivan the caretaker. He’s a local in the small village that’s the only
civilization close to camp at all. He got hired because he understands the local wildlife. He arrived in town back after the fall of the glorious Soviet Union and back in dear sweet Russia he used to be a fisherman. A whaler, in fact. A salt of the sea who still bears the scars of his former career and has grey-hair-covered bulk of muscles to back it. Obviously his English is poor and deeply accented. He’s also generally in a terrible mood, hates the capitalist piglets he’s paid to deal with and drinks on the job as he’s done for decades.
Thing is, Ivan lives with a secret guilt. He never did want to whale but that’s what his daddy did and his daddy before him, etc. And killing whales pays good money. Not necessarily to the sailors themselves, but you get the pride of saying you kills Earths largest mammals. You also get exposed to squids. Giant squids. And if you’re tripping on acid at the time, you hear messages from those squids. Death threats and promises that, "I will stalk you until the end of your days, Ivan." Except in Russian so this part would be subtitled so you unilingual types could still understand the Message of the Squid.
Ivan knows it’s impossible for a squid to be anywhere near the Rocky Mountains. He moved there for a reason – to get away from any kind of squid. He’s secretly in fear that the message will one day come true because that was one nasty LSD trip and he still gets flashbacks. Especially if he drinks and ole Ivan drinks like the proverbial fish if you’ll pardon the cheap irony.
When he begins suffering from a series of awful nightmares, he knows things are going bad for him. When he begins noticing small tremors in the earth, he gets the hell out of camp as fast as his beat up Isuzu will take him.
The kids, though, they stay at the camp. They ignore the ground shakes and keep working to bang each other other. They do some white water rafting and sing a few awful campfire songs along the way, but mainly they’re each on a quest to dabble in the desires of the flesh. That means lots of boobies and that’s a critical component in a film like this.
Then one day, tentacles begin to appear and grab campers one by one at first. Gradually we work our way up to a spectacle to rival King Kong where the squid erups right in the middle of the main lodge and begins squeezing people so hard they pop like ripe grapes! Some he flings about and dashes to pieces. Then the National Guard’s called in but they can’t make it so the Marines arrive and a huge tank-flinging, Apache-slapping battle ensues.
As you can see, this movie will sink the Titanic’s level of popularity and outshine any other monster movie ever created. Tickets will clearly go for twice the price by scalpers milking the E-bay masses. You guys make it happen and the Oscars will follow!
Welcome back to yet another traipse into the fantastic, horrific unknown that we’ve so lovingly to come to cherish. That’s right, the very weekly feature that you’ve come to set your clock by: Monster Laboratory!
Before we begin, I’d like to point you back in time, back to last week’s entry, the ever
infamous Shapeshifting Android Trolls! As you’ll see when you take a peek, our favorite artist Rey from Illustrated Movie Reviews has crafted a tremendously AWESOME rendition of the beasties that devour in order to transform. Take a look because I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of the art – it’s precisely what I had in mind when I wrote the piece!
Now that you’ve got a glimpse of one of my diabolical fantasies come to graphic reality, let us progress further down the demented path I’ve delighted in rendering for you here this evening. Let us go back centuries in time, to the mud-splattered reality of the old days. Back to Europe during the time of the great Black Plague that brought so much horror to peasants across those lands. Let us peer through the distorting glass of history.
Listen to the clop of horses carrying knights in clinking armor, listen to the village dogs
barking and carrying on long before leash laws. Listen to the merry and unruly children
screech and giggle in the filthy streets, playing with the carcasses of rats and other such childish games I’m positive were popular back in those days. Smell the dirt, the sweat, the endless piles of horse manure buzzing with crop after crop of pestilence-spreading flies! Yes, these were times of sickness and poverty and surely among them were painters, struggling in a newborn medium and trying to convey the spirit of those days as best they could.
We’ll zoom in on the grimey figure of Porlon Grumschnickle, a deathly thin man clad in a crud-coated cloak that maybe once was black. A beady-eyed, greasy-haired savant of sorts, capable of majestic colors by paint only he knew the secret of properly mixing. A guarded, distrustful sort of man with long fingernails and few teeth, fond of wine and women though of no ability to attract even the lowest class of village whore. Yes, Grumschnickle was something of an outcast, frequently pelted with rocks or rotten apples whenever he dared encroach upon the territories of others so mostly he kept in the shadows, feverishly splashing paint upon canvas. He knew nothing of other artists or even that painting was an artform.
Grumschnickle slid down the slippery slopes of madness, over time. He wandered from village to village and nearly always ended up being chased away for fear he might disease the local dogs.
He took to cutting himself and mixing his blood into the paints. This gave his work a rather unique appearance and upon his death these works of art he so ardently strove to create would find themselves in the homes of collectors worldwide. His name would be toasted by nobles as that drank wine that cost more than he ever earned his entire life. Each painting he sold somehow found its way into the home of these art fanciers and eventually even museums.
These days a Grumschnickle goes for well over $200 million and so only the most well-to-do collectors could possibly afford to own one. Those who have them seem obsessed by them, staring for hours into the grim paintings that show people living and dying during the Black Plague. Images so stark and evocative that historians consider them to be likely the most accurate portrayals of life during that era that remain in existence today. The twisted faces, the running sores, the flies feasting on the fluids of the dead – all is shown in reddish shades of sorrow. Grumschnickle’s enchanting artwork far outlived him. Of course, no one knows his real name.
The name they toast is merely what he scrawled on the back of each painting. Porlon
Grumschnickle happens to be a poorly translated English version of what he wrote, but old Grumschnickle wrote in a long dead tongue that no translator on Earth could possibly interpret. He was writing in a magical language of glyphs and what each painting bears is the phrase, "You shall know my madness." As you might guess, each and every collector doesn’t last too many years before tasting the final results of owning the sad painter’s art.
You see, the spell on each painting, activated by Grumschnickle’s blood, causes it to act as an energy sponge. The painting absorbs the focus of those gazing upon it and collects it. As it collects the energy, it seems to grow more vibrant, more intriguing. People stare and stare and the painting grows stronger by the minute. Until eventually, the figures within the painting exit the frame and step into reality. Every Grumschnickle owner who’s ever kept a painting for longer than five years has died a grisly but artistic death at the hands of killers who are never found.
Why are they never found? Because they are artistic avatars summoned by the very people who worship the paintings! Those Black Plague victims leap forth and have their merry way with the art collectors in a gruesome ceremony that often lasts hours, but never leaves any physical evidence. If you think about it, Grumschnickle’s the perfect serial killer, continuing his mad reign down through the centuries from beyond the grave!
There’s no reason why this story should not be made into AT LEAST a book if not a full length feature film. Let’s make it happen, Merry Readers! Let’s make Grumschnickle a household name!
Well, Merry Readers, we come once again to woeful Wednesday and that implies yet another installment of Monster Laboratory! I know what you’re thinking… yes, the rent’s due and no, when she says get milk at the store she doesn’t mean Nestle Quik. Gawd, you people!
No doubt you’re curious at to what sort of foul sacrement I’ll offer up for this week’s ritual
of monsterness. So am I. I’ve been so freakin’ busy this week that I’ve not taken the five or six pages of notes that usually lead up to my grand creations. I’m also lying, but you’ll need to use all the tools at your disposal to figure out WHAT I’m lying about! Clever.
I do believe I’ve struck upon something both disgusting and fearful. It’ll make the finest
movie ever, too! Which is good since "poopdidoop" accused me of plagiarism last week in a round-about way over my Mushroom Zombies.
Honestly, I’d not read David Wellington’s take on zombies so I’ll plead innocence on that one. I can’t be expected to read every damned novel in the universe hacked off by some two bit writer! Not saying Wellington’s a hack or a two-bit writer, I’m merely saying that if he WERE I’d have quite a bit more leeway but as it stands I STILL cannot be expected to know everything about everything. If you want an oracle, go read Warren Buffet and put yourselves to sleep.
/end.rant
Alright, now that I’ve tugged that outta my chest, on to this week’s exercise in
pseudo-scientific dabbling. What I’m about to offer you is perhaps the most terrifying vision that’s ever struck my mind. It’s so evil, heinous and disturbing that many of you may not be able to finish the article. I promise not to include pictures, but I *do* encourage you to photochop up a few examples if you’re skilled with Adobe’s magical Photoshop (or, if like me you’re a total cheapass and use the GIMP). I know there are those of you reading this who know how to make marvelous creations and IF YOU MUSTER THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT MY CHALLENGE I promise to display your works right here on the site, okay?
But, Glow, wtf are you getting at? What could be so frightening that I’ll soil this thong I
borrowed from my sister? I hear you, Merry Readers, I truly do. I also think that’s gross.
We open our mind movie on a sunny field in mid-June when all the world’s groovy for elementary kids across our great cornfed nation of America. We’ve got three kids throwing a ball around out there and catching solar radiation like it’s 1982 – but it isn’t 1982 and as a result these little rapscallions may be heading towards an early grave due to their careless lack of sunscreen. Who are these three stars of our mental cinema? Why it’s Kyle (with the obnoxious red curly hair), Melanie (our leggy little slut-to-be) and Justin (a crew-cut snotnose who’s got a strong lisp and will totally pinch you in class when the teacher’s not looking). They have a little conversation that goes something like this:
JUSTIN: Kyle, you’re such a pansy! No one beweaves (believes) in ghofs (ghosts)!
MELANIE: My mom does.
(Remember this is set in modern times)
JUSTIN: You’re mom’s a slut any how!
MELANIE: *glaring* You shut up! Just because me, Theresa, Dylan, Monica and Tyler all have different dads doesn’t mean anything!
*both boys laugh while MELANIE continues to glare*
MELANIE: SHUT UP or I’ll turn YOU into a ghost!
JUSTIN: Whooo. Scawee (Scary)!
MELANIE: Mom says ghosts are just people who haven’t passed over.
KYLE: Passed over what? Like they’re Jewish?
MELANIE: No, dorkstick, like died. Like they passed over into Heaven or whatever.
JUSTIN: Only babies beweave in heaven. Any way, ghofs aren’t scawee unless you’re a weetard (retard) so you guys must be weetards.
MELANIE: You’re just jealous because your dad still works at McDonald’s.
JUSTIN: He’s a manajo (manager)!
KYLE: Manager of what? Chicken nuggets?
JUSTIN: Shut up, dooth (douche) bag, or I’ll tell your sisto (sister) you found her webcam videoth (videos)!
JUSTIN: So ghofs are the scaweeiest (scariest) thing you guys can think of? Seriouswee (Seriously)?
KYLE: I heard this story once…
JUSTIN: Oh gwate (great), here he goes again!
MELANIE: Let him finish, queerbait!
*JUSTIN’s shocked into silence*
KYLE: Well… My great grandma said that in the Old Country, where she came from before she migrated to America, they have trolls. Kind of like in World of Warcraft, except smaller like the gnomes.
JUSTIN: My Blood Elf’s a level-
*KYLE and MELANIE glare JUSTIN back to silence*
MELANIE: What do the trolls do? Did your Grandma say?
KYLE: Well, she talks kind of funny because of her accent and the fake teeth, but I think she said the eat people. That or they eat pebbles, I’m not sure.
MELANIE: Did she mean the Flintstone’s cereal?
KYLE: I don’t think so. She looked kind of scared to tell us. She says trolls live in
basements and dark places and that you only see them when you’re by yourself. They pick on little kids the most.
MELANIE *shivers*: Maybe they eat spiders and rats, too, then. What do they look like?
KYLE: That’s the scary part. She says that they’re short and stumpy. Real fat and ugly, too, with gross hairs and moles and stuff.
MELANIE: Ew!
*JUSTIN simply watches, wide-eyed, wrinkling his little queerbait nose*
KYLE: Except trolls don’t have their own look. They steal it from the people they kill. Like
if they kill you and eat you then they look like you except all fat and nasty.
JUSTIN: Imagine if you went home and one of them popped out fwom (from) behind the couch and wooked wike (looked like) your mom or something! I’d fweak (freak) out!
MELANIE *shudders*: Oh my god, I hope I never see one!
But she will, Merry Readers, she certainly will. For the sake of our motion picture, Melanie MUST confront the trolls in her own home. Of course, these aren’t the trolls that Kyle’s dementia-drunk grandmother was babbling about. No, these nightmare are not from Hungary, they’re from – outer space! In fact, they’re not actual life forms as we currently understand them. Instead, they’re products of an extra terrestrial race who are unable to survive within our atmosphere. As a result, they turn to their own hybrid of magic and science to create artificial life forms that ‘research’ our fragile species. We come to call them: Shapeshifting Android Trolls! Or SAT for short.
Now the SATs might’ve been harmless, except the aliens really weren’t looking to preserve life while they carried out their research. They noticed that unlike their kind, creatures on Earth ‘feed’ on things by stuffing the food into their mouths. They designed their trolls to operate in a similar fashion, cramming humans into their mouths and allowing them to break down in the stomach area. The stomach of an SAT is designed to sift through the physical matter of the digesting human and beam back the data in alien-friendly laser code. Then, the data’s used by the troll’s internal systems to attempt to re-create the person it just gorged on. This means that Kyle’s grandma wasn’t far off: each meal alters the troll’s appearance to resemble the last victim.
Imagine, if you will, a fat, short and totally gross version of any person you can think of.
When I say fat, I mean similar to Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movies. A sludge-like blimp of a person no taller than three and a half feet. Perhaps they’ve got bulbous, misshapen eyes and oddly arranged teeth – use your creative powers here! Obviously they’re ungodly strong and cannot be "killed" so they’ll be able to rampage through our world terrorizing children for ages to come!
I’m kind of creeped out now so I’m going to go into another room where the lights are on.
Until next time, this has been GlowStormLion reminding you that children and the elderly should never, EVER be left alone together.
Wednesday’s almost gone but if you’re on the West Coast or the insurgent state of Arizona, then it’s not yet midnight and that means I got this week’s Monster Laboratory in on time! I took a long time because I almost decided on Giant Killer Snakes, but at the last moment I swerved into deliciously disgusting new territory. I believe you’ll find this week’s monster to be the most disturbing that I’ve yet set up. I’ve taken a classic horror mainstay, zombies, and bred in a bit of my own evil genius to create a new species of zombie that I promise shall re-invent the zombie movie as we know it today!
Without further banter, let’s take a trip down into the Lab and learn what abomination I’ve put together. I’m not going to give you the passkey, I’ll unlock the vault myself and now you’re in a dimly lit corridor strung with bare bulbs. It’s low budget but that’s what we’ve got to work with. Follow me and be sure NOT to touch anything. Ignore the piercing shrieks from that door over there, it’s simply a longterm experiment and the world’s currently unprepared to view that particular simian at this point. We make a sharp turn and I believe you can see him there through the glass once I’ve turned the lights on, but first take a gander at this:
Looks harmless enough, right? And it is. That’s a ‘powder puff mushroom’ and it’s quite similar to those that grew in the Pacific Northwest neighborhood Red Hawk and I used to play in. We had bark dust in my front yard and combined with the damp, mild weather it proved to be fertile grounds for these types of mushrooms. They start as little round balls and then swell over time. Fascinating, really.
However, the real joy came when it was time to play war! We’d gather these suckers up and toss them at one another as makeshift grenades. You see, upon impact they burst open and a dust cloud of spores is released. For poor kids like us, these were wonderful for imitation explosive devices and hurt a hell of a lot less than pine cones, too!
In case you’re unaware, spores are the ’seeds’ of mushrooms and being fungus, mushrooms take root just about anywhere that’s got soil (preferably decaying matter) and moisture. They’re incredibly primitive plants that are wildly effective at scavenging the environment and growing themselves in colonies. In fact, certain kinds of mushrooms actually only bloom in odd cycles like once every five years or something like that. Even today there’s a great deal of mystery and intrigue that surrounds the humble mushroom.
So, I decided that if mushrooms could spread themselves by spores what a terrific way to create a monster! Imagine spores, spread wildly by wind when these mushrooms explode in the forest. The spores are carried into the oral and nasal cavities of humans where the moisture there gives them all they need to begin to grow – INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY! Then, having taken root and siphoning off the necessary oxygen and fluids, they take firm hold and work towards blossoming.
While that, in itself, seemed horrific enough, I’m going a step further. As you’re most likely aware, certain mushrooms produce halleucenogenic effects – they alter the mind. By interacting with the chemistry of the human body (in fact, intoxicating it as literal poison), these mushrooms alter the perceptions of the individuals who consume them whether on purpose for recreational use (ie, "shrooming" as drug users call it) or accidentally. Either way, the effects are profound and generally last several hours. But that’s if you EAT the mushrooms. What if the mushrooms were reproducing inside the body? Far more profound effects! And if those mushrooms caused far stronger effects, perhaps the infested individual would be prone to disturbing things such as: cannibalistic tendencies!
These sinister mushrooms could spring up in a highly unusual cycle, blossoming maybe every 200 years. Thus our movie would show a group of people out in the woods near a small town. Perhaps enjoying the ‘great outdoors’ and going on a hike. One of them discovers this small circle of unusual looking brightly colored mushrooms. They check their field guides but there’s nothing even remotely similar in the pages. One of the group points out that they might’ve stumbled across a brand new species that’s completely unknown to science! They decide not to disturb the shrooms and instead, set about taking photographs. One amateur photographer leans in close wanting to capture the exquisite details of a particular bulbous mushroom. As he gets in on it, POOF! it explodes and reels backwards, choking on the dust it released. The other hikers freak out but then it all becomes quite hilarious. He gets some more pictures and they continue on their way.
Later the group returns to the small village where they began their hike. They’re proud of themselves for not exploiting nature to make a quick buck or a splash of fame. They swear each other to secrecy, agreeing to check on the mushroom patch from time to time and enjoy a private piece of the woods only they know about. Of course, you’ve got the one girl who’s a sneak and after every one’s left the village to return to their home town, she lingers and harvests a few of the mushrooms. If she gets big money for them from scientific researchers, she won’t need these lousy friends anyways, right?
That, then, is how it all begins. The guy who got a lungful of dust continues on his merry way and it’ll be weeks before anyone notices changes in him. The sneak girl accidentally inhales a smaller burst of spore cloud herself while harvesting the mushrooms, but she goes on to contact someone over the internet who agrees to pay her several thousand dollars for the fungi. She’ll never make it to the secret meeting to receive her money, though, because the guy who’s offering that payment is the same guy who started the patch in the woods! He’s an evil genius of a teenager who not only cooked up these genetically altered mushrooms, he also hacks satellite information to find the girl’s house. He waits until she’s not home and then he gathers up his precious creations. We won’t see him until far later in the film, of course, so that’s all I’ll say about this guy.
Weeks roll past and finally the effects begin to show in the photographer guy and the sneaky girl. They seem a bit glazed over, their friends complain. It’s like they’re not listening, they’re too busy staring at strangers. They lose their appetites – for normal food that is. Within a few days of the first effects, these two no longer bathe or change their clothing. They quit sleeping altogether and they no longer are capable of holding conversations. And the cough – a terrible, wracking cough that grosses everyone around them out. The mushrooms have blossomed inside them and each cough now spreads fresh spores. Before long, the entire town will be sick before the government’s had time to take notice of the infestation.
Then it’s nationwide news. People growing gradually delerious and then turning sharply predatory. Not the lumbering dead goons we’ve seen time and again, these are filthy living people who care about nothing but the decimation of their own kind. They dig up graves to gnaw the bones, they invade hospitals to finish off the sick and dying. If it’s living and human, they’re obsessed with killing it. If anything, their mental powers are heightened. They’ve become killing machines who’ll use any and all weapons at their disposal to do away with the unifested. Knives, guns, even ramming vehicles through shopping malls! The carnage won’t quit until they’ve annihilated anyone who won’t house the mushrooms within their body. It’s as if the fungus itself has declared war on the human race.
That sums it up for me. Utter chaos and blind prejudice all rolled up into one big ball of gore. A planet crawling with zombie ninjas, that’s what I’m proposing. Now it’s time for you Merry Readers to get out there and drum up the financial resources to make this happen! Mushroom Zombies will give the world nightmares for decades to come! Move over Romero, there’s a new breed invading the zombie genre: Mushroom Zombies!
Oh, and did I mention how the fungus’ life cycle culminates? They overcrowd their host and it results in a messy explosion with the person’s body splattered far and wide.
Written on June 11th, 2008 by GlowStormLionno shouts
Wednesday is upon us and I’m sure each of you Merry Readers realizes by now what Wednesday signifies: yet another cannonball run through madness known as the Happy Horror Monster Laboratory!
*insert maniacal laughter here*
As usual, I’ve had various visions battling in my mind as to what sort of fiendish creature I should cook up. And that’s without any peyote or anything, too. Different ideas were proposed and shot rightly down. Then I came across something on Red Hawk’s MySpace profile that I’d forgotten about entirely. Remember those Jack Link jerky commercials featuring a big foot or sasquatch or yeti or whatever the hell you want to call the giant ape-like, upright monstrosity of hair? Well, the crazy bastard’s got his own MySpace profile! Check it out, right? He’s got videos, blog posts and the whole nine!
Just seeing this, one of the best promotional schemes in years, spurred me to the finest idea I’ve given intellectual birth to in the Monster Laboratory yet! In order for this to work correctly, we’re going to need to set things up properly. I want you to relax, ease your tensions and open your mind so you can get a mental picture of majesties I’ve not got the talent to draw. Let’s watch a mind movie, as yet unmade.
Ready?
A group of, let’s say, hunters prepares to hit the woods. They’re gathered around their trucks, decked out in camouflage and different trucker hats. You can make the hunters be from whatever region you’d prefer, just make sure that particular region has forests. These hunters are readying to go shoot some game in a heavily wooded area far from the troubles and stresses of their home towns. They’re getting their tents ready because this excursions going to be an excuse to get away from the wives and young ‘uns for a good week or so. These are your average blue-collar guys and they’re planning to not just bring home some meat, but crack a few beers out there at night while they enjoy the wonders of the primordial wilderness.
Or so they think.
In case you’re having trouble picturing a setting, let me offer you my own photograph of such an area:
Off the hunter caravan goes! Blaring Freebird or Johnny Cash or what have you and bantering with the other menfolk. These guys are in good spirits because this year they’re all going to bag trophies worth bragging about, they’re sure of it! With the opening credits out of the way, we watch them roll through the countryside, celebrating the good times that are about to begin. Hell yeah!
After arriving at the camping area they used last year, they start unpacking and setting up their tents. Several of them start drinking because it’s already afternoon, so no hunting will go down until the morning. Then ole Joe, we’ll call him, decides he’s gotta drain the lizard so he tromps off into the woods to take a wizz. The camera follows him and he’s not in too big of a hurry, kind of whistling to himself and taking pulls off his tallboy of Coors. We re-join the rest of the camp and they’re joking about women or whatever, like good ole boys will do when no women are around.
Then we hear a burst of gunfire and everybody freezes.
Now, gunfire during hunting season’s nothing unusual around these parts. However, at this time of day and with what the guys believe must’ve been a fully automatic? That’s a damned unusual. Freakish, really. While they’re unnerved, they go ahead and carry on figuring it’s probably some guy teaching his kid how to shoot. Pisser he’s gotta be doing that during this time of year, they agree, might scare the game off. Oh well, they’re not gonna let that ruin their merry good times. Before long they’re sitting in lawn chairs and arguing about what to barbecue for the night.
Time passes.
Funny, someone says, Joe’s been gone an awful long time. Probably had to take a dump, one of the guys shoots back and they all start laughing like a locker room full of adolescent boys. Various scatalogical jokes are told. Then the guy who noticed Joe’s lengthy urination time starts insisting they go look for him. Maybe he got lost, that guy suggests, making himself into the nag of the group already. A couple responsible-looking old-timers decide they’d better at least go stand out in the woods and call his name otherwise if a bear or something got Joe they’d never hear the goddamned end of it from Mr. Nag over there.
Off into the woods they go, obviously taking their hunting rifles because cougars and wolves and all that still come out in the late afternoon from time to time. Not scared, you understand, just better safe than sorry, that’s all. They tromp around out there, a couple pairs and a couple lone wolves. Calling for Joe, but Joe doesn’t ever answer. You and I know the truth, Merry Readers, but the hunters haven’t the scarcest notion. Suddenly, the camera zooms in on one of the guys and we can see over his shoulder. Here’s what we see:
Then it’s gone.
Just like that, blink of an eye, etc. Of course, this old timer goes scurrying back from whenst he came, rifle at the ready. He’s a veteran so he’s taking no chances and he’s got combat experience so he stays careful while he makes his way back to the campsite. The guys who stayed behind look up from their beers with a what the hell look on their faces. The old timer explains what he saw and normally they’d doubt any kind of "bigfoot" story, but this guy’s got cred with his peers. They start calling in the rest of the searchers. After a huddle, they determine they’re going to divide into squads and begin systematically scouring the forest for poor lost Joe.
Of course, the Nag thinks they ought to call in for assistance from the authorities but who listens to Nag, anyways? Not these guys. They’re here to hunt and if that means forming Sasquatch death squads then by god that’s what they’re gonna do!
Out in the woods, it doesn’t take long before the guys make a sighting. Not one, but two Sasquatches (Sasquatchi?) padding through an open area. No sign of Joe, but they begin following the big creatures and soon enough, they spot Joe: hanging naked upside down from a tree branch! What’s amazing is how HIGH Joe’s been hung. Surely it’s the work of these fiendish bigfoot-types, one of the hunters mutters as the others in his group scowl and wave for silence.
Too late!
The creatures heard them and turning, we now see they weren’t carrying clubs. Instead, each Sasquatch holds one of these:
Yep, an AK-47 and you know what my good friend Ice Cube says about that? Ain’t gonna be a good day – for the hunters. The beasts open fire, blasting the woods apart and proving an early theory in the camp, that Joe disappeared due to the work of "environmental nutjobs", to be only partially untrue. We’ve just come face to face with a brand new form of terror: TheSasquatch Militia!
That’s right, heavily armed Sasquatch guerrillas who know the wooded areas like the back of their hair-covered hands. They’ve trained, practiced and they’ve not only got huge muscle-corded bodies, they’ve got senses sharpened by longterm life in the wilderness. These big, angry giants don’t need money and they don’t need all the things the pansy race known as homo sapiens clings to for comfort. These massive dudes fear nothing and they’re as silent as ninjas. Big, furry ninjas with guns, that is!
What would The Sasquatch Militia want from mankind? Their freakin’ homeland back you dumb bastards! They swear on the blood of their ancestors that right now, in 2008 they’re initiating the war the Native Americans tribes spoke of when they prophesied the civilization of humans coming to an end in 2012. These fuckers ARE Armageddon, Merry Readers, and they’ll be trouncing the bejeezus out of one nation at a time until they’ve conquered our entire bald race!
Imagine it: Sasquatch in stolen humvees, one driving and one firing the mounted machinegun. Sasquatch comandeering tanks and helicopter gunships. Sasquatch carrying 2,000 rounds of ammunition slung over their wookie-fied shoulders as if it were a pretty ribbon and then blasting entire malls full of us into a scene that looks like someone spilled a gigantic, gory Slurpee. Sasquatch means business and they’re not having any more of these bullshit jerky ads to represent themselves. Soon they’ll have obliterated our entire infrastructure by TEARING IT ALL DOWN WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!
If you’re not scared then I pronounce you soul-free. This movie’s obviously an epic classic needing only the money to get it made. You really don’t even need a script. You just need a whole bunch of WWFWWE wrestlers in furry suits breaking shit and people will buy tickets. You don’t want them looking too much like Chewbacca, though because I’ve heard that angry little toad Lucas is lawsuit-happy. So be careful to make these Sasquatch look very un-Star Warsian. Now, I want to be clear here: this isn’t enough of a vaginally-aimed movie to win an Academy Award or anything like that. We’re talking more along the action flick lines. But it’s a money-maker, guaranteed. The world needs heroes and The Sasquatch Militia delivers with a fur-flying powerbomb of adrenaline and a heart-warming story of the underdog rising up to win back his rightful due, in this case: Planet Earth.
Clearly, I’ve said enough. Now it’s up to each and every one of you Merry Readers to beat the pavement and make some phone calls to get this thing a solid budget and hook the Hollywood machine’s engine up to it. I expect it in theaters by 2011 because I’d like to see it before the world ends, ok? Thanks!
Until next time, this is GlowStormLion, reminding you that you don’t have to be hairy to be a hero – but it sure helps!
This week, I think I scared myself researching for the Monster Laboratory. I mean I’m writing this article more than a little freaked out. Two things I learned to fear legitimately at an early stage in my life are: wasps and spiders. Bites and stings are not my thing. Fortunately, I grew up mainly in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, so I rarely encountered too many big evil bugs. Besides the occaisional brown recluse or bald-faced hornet. Both of which ought to make anyone sensible run for their lives – but being a young boy with inclinations towards becoming a zoologist, I actually caught these things and ’studied’ them. No one can accuse me of overdosing on common sense!
I remember when I was around seven years old my parents got the Disney Channel for me as part of my birthday present that year. Since they wouldn’t let me watch anything cool this made up for it because they had incredible nature specials and I could not have been more obsessed with animals and insects if someone had genetically engineered me specifically to love such creatures. One nature special I was particularly fond of was Walt Disney’s True Life Adventures – The Living Desert (which is extremely hard to get ahold of). I had no idea the show was from the 1950’s, but I remember every time it came I on I totally ditched Count Duckula or Danger Mouse to watch it, instead. Aside from the sidewinders, I found the tarantula hawks disturbingly fascinating. Never heard of a tarantula hawk?
WELL ALLOW ME TO SHOW YOU ONE – PH33R!
In case you’ve not yet wet yourself at the mere site of this shiney blue-black death angel, get ready cause you’re gonna. A Tarantula hawk (not to be confused with the San Diego band of the same name) is a wasp. I could be a jerk and rattle off a bunch of Latin names to try and confuse you to soften you up for the freak out, but nah. This sucker’s scary enough as it is, trust me. Unlike the wasps you may have encountered thus far in your lives, Merry Readers, these wasps are pure evil. Sure, other wasps are stingy, bitey creatures bent on ruining your picnic or whatever, but tarantula hawk wasps don’t mess around. They do one thing and one thing only (aside from reproducing, obviously): hunt and kill tarantulas (and other spiders).
But hey, so does my dog Marilyn, so what’s the big freakin’ deal, right? It’s in the how, grasshoppers! The sinister method of it all. See, these blue-black wasps with their orange colored wings are warning nature to leave them the [edit] alone! At up to two inches long, they’re not small and the stinger of the female can be up to 1/3 an inch long BY ITSELF! You think I’m exaggerating like I do with the other articles? Ha! I wish. According to the Scmidt Sting Pain index (yes it’s real science check the link if you think I’m messing with you, cynics), the only creature in the world with a more painful sting is the bullet ant. Oddly enough, wasps, bees and ants are all in the same order of insects: Hymenoptera which means ‘membrane wing’ in Latin. Sorry, had to throw that in there. It’s been said that the sting’s so powerfully painful that even highly disciplined entomologists who are mentally prepared (not to mention experienced) with stings just melt down into screaming wrecks. The only thing that CAN eat them is the roadrunner (No not the Looney Tunes kind).
Alright, so they’re big and painful and predatory. Pretty badass, no? That’s not the sick part, Merry Readers, not by a stretch. Here we go into the sort of evilness horror writers wish they could invent. See, the tarantula hawk female is the primary hunter of the species. She flies around searching out spiders. Now you’re thinking ‘so what, she eats spiders‘, right? If only it were that simple. What she does is first stalk them (walking along the ground and she’s quite strategic, too, as you’ll see in the videos below) and leap on top of ‘em, sting ‘em a few rounds and finally the spider’s paralyzed. Not dead, you understand, merely unable to move or fight back. Sick.
Then she drags the sucker either back into its own lair or into one she’s dug herself with those wicked hooked legs she’s got (good for spider grappling). Once in the lair she then lays a single egg on the spider and makes her way back out, closing the nest behind herself. Once the egg hatches, the larva (think: maggot) will begin drinking from the juices of the STILL LIVING BUT PARALYZED spider. As it grows it will burrow into the spider, feeding on its body while carefully avoiding vital organs that way the spider’s alive for as long as possible while the larva develops itself from the dying spider’s body. If you think I’m making this up then dance yourself over to wikipedia and check for yourself!
Cool. Great, but this isn’t "Happy Bug Palace" it’s Happy Horror and we’re doing Monster Laboratory so you’re probably wondering how in the hell all this random wasp info applies. See, when glittersoul and I saw one of these in our front yard a couple days ago, she pointed out that it’d be perfect for Monster Lab if you combined the concept of a tarantula hawk wasp with that old movie, The Fly. Genius, I know, she’s good with this kinda stuff. Here’s our proposal…
You’ve got an angry entomologist, a former employee of a lab that does insecticide testing for a major pesticide company. They’ve screwed this guy over because he doesn’t want to test certain slow-killing poisons on the occupants of his insect lab. He finds it totally immoral to do what this major company’s doing to the poor bugs who’re only doing their job. He takes it upon himself to fight back using what he knows about: bugs. Networking with a bunch of other crazy eco terrorist types he helps genetically engineer a new species of ten inch long wasp. The group decide to release a few into the wild with radio-tracking devices glued on, in order to study the behavior of this new highly predator super wasp. They hope that with wasps this potent flying about the woods of the world, the environment could stay intact longer because logging it would be far too dangerous. All’s going well until one of the three females somehow loses her tracking device. They cannot find her anywhere on radar, so a search team is sent out and the angry entomologist is now burning up to find his precious creation.
While in the woods he comes across an unusual sight: the un-tagged female’s gotten ahold of one of his colleagues. The man’s dead, blue and pasty looking. The wasp crawls all over the body, biting away at the man’s shirt. All the entomologist (let’s call him Dr. Grinner) can do is watch in silent horror that slowly gives way to awe. This new wasp lays an egg inside the colleague, then flies away.
Dr. Grinner approaches, mystified and leans down to look at the puncture spot, still oozing blood, where the wasp laid her egg. When he gets close he realizes that the man’s still breathing. Barely, but he’s clearly alive just not conscious. Hearing a strange sound, Grinner turns and sees the wasp not five yards away, busily excavating a pit. Knowing the habits of the natural tarantula hawk wasp, Dr. Grinner radios back to his teammates that he’s going to be late returning because he believes he’s found something he wants to take notes on or some silly BS like that.
As it turns out, Dr. Grinner’s far too selfish to admit to anyone that he saw the wasp paralyze his colleague. Since these guys are terrorists, they can’t very well go ask the FBI for a search and rescue team in some obscure forest. He witnesses the female wasp completely bury the man and secretly monitors the progress of the larva’s development – all for science, you understand.
Then one day the the larva emerges and Dr. Grinner (who’s long gone without bathing or enough to eat and is now slightly derranged) sees the new wasp emerge from its burrow after having devoured the corpse. It’s a disgusting sight, fer sure, with the wasp being slightly larger than what Dr. Grinner anticipated. In fact, it’s not really a wasp at all. Somehow the DNA of the super wasp mixed with the DNA of the Grinner’s colleage and what emerges is an infant-sized creature with arms and legs that have hooks for toes. This new species looks creepily similar to a human if humans were blue-black with orange wings and had segmented bodies. While Grinner rejoices, praising himself and taping the whole thing for science on his camcorder, he notices the creature tilting its head to watch him. Then the wasp-person begins crawling towards him and Grinner gets nervous, backing away.
Suddenly, the wasp thing scurries over to him and when he begins to outrun it, it takes flight and we see it covering the camera as he screams while it stings him – presumably, to death.
From here the movie can go pretty much anywhere it pleases. A predatory species of half-human half-wasp that I’m proud to name the Human Hawk Wasp. You’ve got to admit a movie such as this holds high potential for scaring the bejeezus out of audiences worldwide. Maybe the creatures set up a hive or some sort of society and go on a quest of vengeance for having been created. Perhaps they stalk and erradicate entire towns! Remember, insect armor is incredibly strong. Their exoskeletons bear (proportionally to their size) incredible amounts of weight. These things would be bullet-proof!
I’ll leave the rest of the imagining up to you, Merry Readers. If this movie doesn’t have ‘Sci Fi Channel Original‘ written all over it, then I don’t know what does! So start writing your letters and making those phone calls, let’s bring the Human Hawk Wasp into reality!
Oh, and here’s some videos of these wasps in action to get your blood pumping. But I warn you, they’re remarkably disturbing so make sure you’re willing to see how these things do their business before you go clicking the links.
That’s it from me regarding the Human Hawk Wasp, so be sure to turn in next week when I bring you yet another unheard of monstrosity for your demented pleasures! Until next we cross digital trails, this has been GlowStormLion warning you that just because man dominates nature right now doesn’t mean Mother Earth won’t eventually get fed up and shake us off like so many two-legged fleas!
(which is extremely hard to get ahold of). I had no idea the show was from the 1950’s, but I remember every time it came I on I totally ditched 
