PLEASE STAND BY . . .

It seems like there are a number of other bloggers out there with the same issues, but the MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD BlogSpot has been experiencing some technical difficulties in the last few days.

The worst of it is the Google Blogger scheduling function. When a blog is completed and scheduled for posting later, it does not do what it is supposed to, which is post the blog at the specified date and time.

Other, no less vexing issues have cropped up of late, I suspect due to another tiresome "upgrade" of the Blogger interface. A look at some trouble report forums for Word Press yielded similar angst from loyal users who just want to follow the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" maxim.

Fortunately, the posting editor has not been freezing up while writing this, because earlier this evening, it was.

All this has forced me to rethink the stability of this giant electronic Frankenstein monster that we have, for the most part, unknowingly created. I'm wondering if delivering a regular HTML-formatted electronic newsletter mailed to a subscriber audience may not be a viable alternative?

In any event, if you see some weird things here (besides the usual that you have come to expect, that is), and the postings seem a bit off, etc., then don't blame me. Google is off busily trying to make the biggest online file folder in the universe, so it probably wouldn't pay to nudge the bear, either. Guess I'll wait it out . . .

Read More → PLEASE STAND BY . . .

Thanks to all you readers who voted, MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD has, for the second year in a row, received an "Honorable Mention" in the Best Blog category in the annual RONDO AWARDS. I want to thank each and every one of you who voted for my blog and for continuing to support my efforts.

As I have mentioned before, my mission here is to share with you my experiences from bygone Monster Craze days that have left a lasting impression, as well as provide comments and opinion regarding the current state of affairs with this very active industry.

You also spoke loud and clear with the last Reader's Survey when you said you liked the format and length of the postings here just the way they are. Accordingly, I will give you what you like best.

I also reminded you that MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD is available in a reader-friendly mobile phone version for all you monsters on the go.

I recently offered for sale the first-ever MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD 2011 BLOG BOOK that includes an entire year's worth of posts. It is still available at the ridiculous price of only 99 cents (order info on the sidebar).

Plus, I have a few more surprises up my sleeve that I will spring on you in the coming months.

So, once again for your readership and support. Please take the time to comment once in a while or use the reaction buttons to let me know you're out there. I REALLY APPRECIATE the time you spend here at MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD. I will do my best to give you a reason to keep coming back.

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DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF WIRELESS SHEEP?

I downloaded my first app today. This has come about three weeks into owning my Samsung Galaxy II Skyrocket "smartphone". It came complete with 4G and LTE technology for "lightning fast" use. I soon found out, though, that my provider, AT&T, doesn't at the moment have a huge network of 4G cell towers in the Seattle area. Oh, and the "lightning fast" LTE technology? Well, that's not even available yet. Now, I've heard about taking products out for a beta test drive but this is ridiculous. Talk about over-hype and over selling. Oh well, I've got it now, and I'm not about to let them take 35 of my hard-earned bucks for a "re-stock" fee just for the pleasure of returning it.

I've been living up 'til now in that fertile plot of mobile phoneland known as BlackBerry. The company that owns it, Research In Motion, has tanked as of late. With only 10% of the market share, they've got a new CEO who has big plans to revitalize their interest in this very competitive field. My Skyrocket operates with Google's Android software, and much of the gizmo's inner workings are based on Google's ever-expanding pallet of . . . apps. So, if you want one of these and have it be fully functional, you're gonna have to give up your heart and soul to a Google account.

Also, everything's app driven. Mine came with a number of default programs already loaded. But, while the BlackBerry comes ready to use as a phone, I'm going to have to download an app to enable voice dialing. Ultimately, I guess the Skyrocket is more of a hand-held, multi-functional computer that doubles as a phone instead of the other way around.

Why did I buy one in the first place, you might ask? Well, the story's longer than I care to relate here on a MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD blog post, but I can tell you that my wife played a major part in it. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not blaming her -- just that she had a lot to do with the 400 dollar purchase of two phones that retail for over a thousand. Plus, I think I'm starting to like it.

Anyway, I was taking a look at the latest UK horror 'zine, SCREAM, when I spotted one of those increasingly familiar pixelated Rohrshach squares that seem to be popping up all over the place these days on an ad for a free horror app. So, I launched the pre-loaded app that allows me to read these things, lined the viewfinder up with the image on the magazine and clicked away. The screen prompt asked me if I wanted to either go to the app's website or the "market" folder on my smartphone. It was then that the singular thought occurred to me that I could have just gone to the website in the first place. For that I could have used the really cool Google voice-activated search app to go to the website (that's not entirely correct -- it will prompt you to click "yes" to go to the website if it's recognized your voice command properly).

I'm not a techno fuddy-duddy, and while the app itself doesn't exactly blow my skirt up, I can see these things have promise, and I can't honestly judge the concept without first trying out a few. This one was free, but a lot of them you have to pay for.

This all has got me wondering about the use of apps when it comes to my beloved monster 'zines. I know RUE MORGUE's got one, but I'll have to check -- I recall it only being available for iPhones. I have downloaded some of their RUE MORGUE RADIO shows on mp3. Those are fun to listen to with the Skyrocket's ample built-in speaker.

Samsung is known for their marvelous screen displays, and I have to say that the MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD blog looks pretty good on the Skyrocket, which has a screensize that's about 2 1/2 times the size of my BlackBerry's.

More and more I think you'll see this market forcing down our throats stuff that we think we need. Some of it's really cool and some of it is a big WTF. I also think that exclusively digital monster magazine content -- that is, monster 'zines that will someday only be available on smartphones -- is a long way away. I won't be surprised, though, to see the envelope being pushed from now on. Kindles, Nooks, and tablets are all the latest craze, offering the user the ability to read and browse content like never before. Frankly, I'm thinking how much is enough? It has me wondering about the phrase that Jeff Goldblum so sagely put in the film, JURASSIC PARK, that goes something like: "Maybe it's better to think about why we should have instead of that we could." Somehow I don't think that advice carries much weight with technology.

In the meantime, I'll still be pining a bit for my BlackBerry, sitting quietly in its holster and waiting for me to reactivate it. But, as I said, I'm beginning to like my 4G, LTE Samsung Skyrocket running on Google's Android. And, in order to fully answer the question as to these so-called "smartphones" being as "smart" as they say they are, I guess I'll have to buy another app that will tell me that.

Read More → DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF WIRELESS SHEEP?

HAPPY NEW YEAR -- TO SEX, BLOOD, AND ROCK 'N ROLL!

Depending on your point of view, the year 2012 will be a year, a) like any other, b) whatever you can make of it, or, c) the year the world ends. While little has been discussed by the media about the first two points, much has been bantered about by the third. And if you are to believe what the so-called “experts” think, then you will also know what the ancient Mayan long-count calendar suggests by its running out – December 21, 2012 will be doomsday.

In the January/February 2011 issue of ATLANTIS RISING magazine, publisher J. Douglas Kenyon encapsulates the collective consciousness of “end-times angst” by explaining:

“The persistence of the [doomsday prediction] phenomenon seems itself to be symptomatic of a deep-seated, society-wide anxiety mechanism, and there are those that argue that such fear of cataclysmic destruction is itself the product of a materialistic culture which has lost contact with its source and, thus, in the guilty fear of having offended its parent, now, tragically – albeit subconsciously – seeks it own destruction.”

Ironically, this seems to me to sound not unlike the apologists who are springing up like weeds, with the notion that the United States should not only minimize, but abandon altogether its power and influence in the greater civilized world.

At the expense at coming across as bellicose, it appears like more and more people (don’t hyperventilate here – I'm saying more, not all) are walking around, dosed up on irrational and obtuse ideas as a result of having formed their overall (albeit quotidian) opinions regarding morals, culture, government, money and other elements of the fabric that makes up civilized society, by the seductively sweet artifice of pop culture. Nurturing a mindset and a philosophy by feeding mainly from the plentiful mother’s milk supplied by Ellison’s Glass Teat and other popular media leads the way to an absurd equivalency that is tenuous at best and carries with it the pervasive taint of ignorance.

Examples of this “phenomenon of guilt” are omnipresent: Just watch any of the multitude of reality TV shows (which have become so numerous that parentheses are no longer needed around the term “reality”) to learn your social graces, or just take a look at any of the music videos for the latest in dress codes and de rigueur fashion, or take a look at any video game for a heaping measure of sex, blood, and rock ‘n roll. These info streams, pipelined straight to the brain via wireless remote and hypodermic HDMI have already become the roadmap of the new reality. So, here’s a message to all you conspiracy theorists: the real New Order is not the World Bank, it’s not the Illuminati, and it’s not Sarah Palin – pleased to meet you -- it has been going by the name of Pop Culture for a long time.

From a historical perspective, this type of collective behavior always seems to coincide with mankind’s great advances. We are in the midst of a digital revolution – the last example that comes to mind was the industrialization of Europe and the United States, and it drove a good many people literally into the arms of Morpheus (in one form or another) so that they could escape the impending doom of the mechanized monster called “Progress”.

I grew up in Southern California, not far from some of the most well-known beaches, tourist spots, and destinations in the world. As a result, I can’t say I had it all bad. My Christmas list was most always filled, and I had plenty of comics to read and TV to watch. I remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in Elementary School, I remember the occasional “drop drill”, just in case the Commies bombed us with nukes, and I remember when my teacher told our class that President Kennedy had been assassinated – we had to put our heads down on our desk in mourning.

Now, I’m no stranger to end-time angst. In my teens (which would have put the date in the mid-to-late-1960’s) I can’t tell you how many times that an eschatologist (usually self-professed, or promoted by a small group of glaze-eyed acolytes with looks not unlike those that were about to be released in a movie called NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) found themselves in the news, proclaiming that the “end is near”. This boy-who-cried-wolf hue and cry became so pedantic that you began to see many magazine and newspaper cartoons lampooning the phony pop culture phrase. There even appeared a poster of a map showing exactly how the San Andreas Fault was going to split and send half of California plunging into the Pacific Ocean.

Well, the last time I looked, California is still whole, land-wise anyway. One thing is for certain – the end will come sometime. And if we listen closely enough, it’s still coming soon, just like it was 40-plus years ago. I’ve had to rotate my dehydrated survival food several times now, but I know I’ll be ready when the time comes.

Come to think of it, though, we monster lovers have seen the world end – as a matter of fact, many times over, haven’t we? We’ve seen Godzilla tear up Tokyo and a giant octopus rip up bridges, and aliens land on earth and immediately lay waste to the countryside, haven’t we? In my book, that gives us a distinct advantage over the rest of the population. And that might be just enough of an edge to keep us alive and watching our favorite monster movies on Ellison’s Glass Teat, right? Let’s see . . . let’s start off with Vincent Price in THE LAST MAN ON EARTH – or, how about Charlton Heston in PLANET OF THE APES, or . . .

Read More → HAPPY NEW YEAR -- TO SEX, BLOOD, AND ROCK 'N ROLL!

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: FULL MOON OVER PORTLAND

 
This past weekend I escaped ever-so-briefly from the Mysterious Mansion to where us Washingtonian's call "South of the Border" -- that means the State of Oregon -- and particularly in this instance, Portland. Lots of us go there for quick stops to buy cars and other high ticket items because Oregon mercifully does not have a State Sales Tax.

The purpose of my visit this time was to meet up with a portion of my wife's family, some of which live further south in the beautiful town of Corvallis, the rest who were in town from SoCal. We stayed in the "Rose Quarter" in the City of Roses, Portland, right smack dab in the middle of the Historic Waterfront District.

After spending a very pleasant afternoon with the family, we headed back downtown to one of the largest bookstores on the West Coast, the world-reknowned POWELL'S BOOKS. Taking up several floors and an entire city block, they even have a parking garage dedicated to patrons.

After leaving my wife to her beloved Astrology section, I went upstairs to the rare book department. On the way I browsed briefly at a collection of several hundred books that were up for sale that belong to noted vampire novelist Anne Rice. Lots of different tiles and looked like they might be a part of her research library that she might have used while writing some of her books.

A short stack of horror books were found through the secure door to the rare books. A couple of signed editions, a couple of Lovecraftian tomes, and one signed first edition of Fred Chappell's Southern Gothic Lovecraftian novel, Dagon.

Then, it was off to the film section where I found a couple titles that I had been casually seeking for a few years. After that, it was back downstairs to one of the largest selections of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror books you'll ever want to browse through.

The pics shown here are from a batch I took Friday during the full moon, just a few hours before the eclipse.

A great trip and good to get out of town for a couple of days. Now, Return of the Blob .... er, Blog!

Read More → UNDER THE INFLUENCE: FULL MOON OVER PORTLAND

LET'S "GREEN" UP EBAY A LITTLE, SHALL WE?

Over the last few weeks I've spent my Birthday money on a trove of monster treasures from that Giant of Colossus otherwise known as eBay. Along with Amazon, these two mega-sized merchants have got a Bombay Strangler-hold on the electronic shopping market. Consequently, merchants gravitate to the marketplaces that draw the most customers -- especially those who spend a lot of money. Call it by any other name, but I call it the beauty of Capitalism at work.

While there are other online auctioneers, eBay seems to me to be the most user friendly . . . or the most seductive, depending on your point of view. With the "Buy It Now" and "Make An Offer" options, eBay is hard to beat when you're shopping for monster merchandise both old and new.

Now, I'm not a "greenie", "tree-hugger", or militant environmentalist by any strectch of the imagination. What I am is a responsible person who calls "Foul Waste!" when I see it, and do my best to conserve energy and to recycle. You may be wondering, what's this all got to do with eBay? Well, it's not exactly eBay I'm talking about . . . it's the sellers.

Here's my beef: After receiving a multitude of packages in the mail from these recent orders I have made a couple of observations. One, although they would probably say that they're just being careful, I've come to the conclusion that eBay merchants are paranoid about package tampering. I say this because, being a mail-order merchant myself (full-time once, part-time now) I know that one can simply overdo the packaging, period. I've got nothing against securing packages from the ravages of the careless postal carrier and the roving eyes of the potential thief (sometimes even the postal carriers themselves), but when I've got to break out a pair of scissors, a knife, and a box cutter, and an arcane magical incantation, that's when I have to say, "Enough!". I've come pretty darn close a couple of times to hacking up my mag trying to delicately cut around the merchandise before I can even see what's inside. But you know, that's really not what peeves me as much as the second thing I've observed.

The second thing I've observed is the wasteful use of certain wrapping materials. Let it be known I am a strict advocate of recycling packing, right down to plain 'ol newspaper if that's your fancy. But what I have noticed is the dubious practice by many 'a merchant of the outright plundering of the U.S. Postal Service's free shipping envelopes and other gratis items. Mostly I see a Priority Mail envelope used as half-assed "backer board" for books and magazines. I've even seen the Small Flat Rate Box used for this, also. And don't give me that line about already paying for it with your tax dollars (considering that you have the moral scruples to pay them in the first place, that is).

Why is this a bad thing, you say? Well, how about it's damn wasteful for starters. And, if you're not going to use the USPS envelope or box to actually mail your items in, don't use it for packing filler just 'cause it's free, please. That's pretty cheesy and downright lazy in my book. The economy's not that bad where a mail order merchant has to grap an armload of "free" stuff at the Post Office to make up for the few cents it costs for stuffing the gaps in a mailer or box.

So, if you care to listen to it, the best advice I can give is this: Try lightening up on the shipping tape on the outside of the package so that you can afford some of the inexpensive materials for the inside.

You won't ever catch me advocating the use of windmills as a replacement power source, but I do see through green lenses once in a while -- especially when it's something as clear as this. 

Read More → LET'S "GREEN" UP EBAY A LITTLE, SHALL WE?

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY AND I'LL BLOG IF I WANT TO!

Hi, everybody! Today is my birthday. I don’t have to tell any of you original Monster Kids what another year feels like – physically, that is. What I can tell you is how weird it is having a body that’s turning into the likes of a cousin to Kharis with a mind that’s as sharp as a werewolf when the autumn moon is bright. It wouldn’t seem any fairer if it were the other way around, either. Consequently, it makes me wonder about the importance of that proverbial phrase: “make the most out of life while you can.”

This has all got me thinking about why I spend time on things like this blog. Well, I’ll tell you why.

First, it allows me to participate in leaving something behind in the way of a legacy, historical or otherwise, of a moment in time that influenced not only me, but popular culture as a whole in a significant way. Pop culture, if you haven’t guessed, is a huge influence on how people think, act, and, most importantly, spend their time and money. Remember, many Monster Kids from the day went on to shape the style and substance of the entertainment industry, most notably horror and science fiction films.

Second, along with playing music, it allows me the space to disentangle myself from the worries and problems of the day-to-day world. Some may call it checking out of reality; I call it therapy.

The last reason is the most selfish of all – it’s because I want to! For some inexplicable reason (even though I just did my best to explain it), I feel compelled to share my experiences from this period of my life, and in some strange way, reconcile it with the present. I don’t think it particularly needs justifying, but motivation is always good to understand.

Now, before you go and try to analyze me, I think it was Freud who said something to the effect of: “Sometimes a tentacle is just a tentacle” or something close. In this case, I fancy myself as part historical conservator and part hopeless pop culture junkie. I have spent the last several years as a member in S.T. Joshi’s Esoteric Order of Dagon, otherwise known as the H.P. Lovecraft Amateur Press Association. If there ever was a body of individuals – both armchair and academic – that have explored and extracted the minutest details of a historical figure’s life, it’s these guys. Having some of my own research published alongside today’s preeminent Lovecraft scholars has been a proud accomplishment.

So, has this all been a monumental waste of time? I think not. Along the way, I have got to know a number of people, even made some friends. All-in-all, I feel like I have, in some way, contributed – like a lot of bloggers -- to the collective time capsule of our society. It may not be all about the advancements of science, the arts, or industry, but it does have something to do with the human aspects of friendships, sharing, and the desire to preserve a part of our cultural heritage. This may sound all lofty and high-handed, but, hey – it’s what I came up with at the moment. After all, it’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to!

Read More → IT'S MY BIRTHDAY AND I'LL BLOG IF I WANT TO!

A few days ago I mentioned that I was getting a little frustrated with Blogger's "noodling" around with so-called improvements to my "Blogging Experience". I know that it is the nature of this industry, as well as the digital industry as a whole, to constantly evolve, grow, and (hopefully) progress. My most recent experience with this not-always-welcome phenomenon was seeing the news about Nikon's next gen line of cameras about a month after I bought a D5100. While it probably won't put this model to shame anytime soon, it still illustrates the fact that electronics manufacturers seem to revel in constatntly dangling the digital carrot in front of consumers.

But, like everything else in life -- artificial or otherwise -- this all comes with a price. Hackers, spammers, and other unsavory characters are out, surfing the bandwith for cracks in any firewall that they can get their nefarious string of code through, all for a buck -- and a lot of times just to see if they can frack up someone's day.

Case in point: I have a link to Jim Clatterbaugh's MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT blog on the sidebar of MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD. I hadn't seen anything new on it for a while, so I decided to drop Jim a line to see what was up. He replied that his blog had been "temporarily" shut down by Blogger because their security software had detected that his site was being used as a host for a spammer. I don't have any other details except that he has to go through some sort of "authentication" process before he can resume. There was even a cryptic implication that he might have to even vacate his space because of all this. As of a few minutes ago (Monday, September 28, 5:00 PM PST), his blog remains shut down.

So, in my mild rant of a few days ago I mentioned that Blogger had suddenly started using an image interface pop-up that was similar to Facebook. My beef was that you couldn't resize the image easily to read smaller scanned images that had text in them. Well, this condition seems to have returned to the original setup where, after you click on an image it will open in another window where you can click again on it to enlarge the picture. Yay!

Seems like my worries are slight compared to my friend, Jim Clatterbaugh's, though. What does raise a larger question with me however, is that this huge, seemingly chaotic miasma of online madness -- despite the prevalence of "social networks" such as Facebook -- is creating an ever-widening gap between the individual and more meaningful human interaction. And, as with everything else, there are outlaws, predators and flim-flam artists to watch for, along with scams and schemes that serve no pupose other than to either cause someone misery or remove them from their money as quickly as possible.

Now, I don't mean to paint a dim picture here. This all has its bright spot, and it is mostly bright, I might add. While I am a veteran computer user and fairly adept at the use of the Internet, I was once extremely averse to jumping into the world of blogging -- not because I was a Cyberphobe, but because I thought the idea of "journaling" about my life and my interests to anyone who cared to read about it was, well, kinda dumb.

Boy, was I wrong.

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GOOD BYE, BORDERS

First it was Ruby's Diner, one of my favorite places for a burger. Great Cobb Salads, too. And the shoestring fries were pretty much second to none. Then, one day they were -- BANG! -- gone from Washington State in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but my thirst for their syrupy-sweet Cherry Coke.

Now Borders Books (a.k.a. Waldenbooks) will be closing its doors for good in just a few days. And this time it's on a national scale.

At least once per week I'd go to the local Everett Mall for my lunch break. They have a food court there that's no great shakes, but at least they have an Ivar's Seafood joint and a Teriyaki place where I can get chicken and stir-fried veggies. After that, I could browse the Border's right next door. They were generous with their discount coupons and I purchased many a book and CD this way.

This is also the place where I purchased a good share of my monster mags, too. I usually found titles like SCARY MONSTERS, VIDEO WATCHDOG, FANGORIA, and RUE MORGUE lurking in their magazine racks. Guess I'll be going to the nearest Barnes & Noble for that now. The other options are to buy direct from the publisher where offered or otherwise online, or Diamond Previews (the lease profitable for indie publishers). The point is that brick and mortar bookstores are slowly going the way of the DoDo and Billy Beer. There was some hope that a benefactor would come in at the last moment to rescue Borders from bankruptcy, but alas, the miracle didn't occur.

Ironically, MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD'S recent survey showed that readers prefer their monster 'zines in printed form rather than digitally. I, for one, also much prefer the traditional bookstore/newsstand. Call it Pavlovian, a learned response, or whatever, I still like to browse the shelves and smell the fresh paper and ink of a newly printed book or magazine. I'll just be doing it at one less place in a few more days.

Read More → GOOD BYE, BORDERS