HEART TO HEART

On March 16, 1995, Terry Cottle shot and killed himself in the bathroom of the home he shared with his wife Cheryl. There had been an argument—there had always been arguments—and Terry had threatened himself with a gun just months before. Cheryl heard the shot from the other side of the door after watching her husband enter the bathroom with a .22. She heard him gasp “Help me, I’m dying,” and then he was gone. He’d fired a single round into his brain.

The only possible silver lining was that Terry, 33, had been in good physical condition—and an organ donor. Terry’s heart saved the life of 57-year-old Sonny Graham, who had contracted an incurable virus of the heart a year earlier.

In 1996, Sonny wrote a letter of appreciation to Terry’s widow, and though the donor procurement agency had advised against contact, they decided to meet. And when they did, Sonny fell instantly in love with the widow of the man whose heart now beat in his chest. “I felt like I had known her for years . . . I couldn’t keep my eyes off her,” Sonny told a local newspaper in 2006. They were both married at the time, but within a few years both had divorced, and they moved in together in 2001. It was a rocky relationship, just like Cheryl and Terry’s had been, but they eventually married in 2004.

Four years later, with no indication that anything was seriously amiss, Sonny’s life ended the same way Terry’s did—suicide by gunshot. The heart that had beat on for 12 years of borrowed time stopped beating for good.

Story source.

Text source.

REVIEW: THE DEAD AND THE DAMNED 2

You know what we need more of? Zombie movies. 

Just kidding!

But people keep making them. Thanks a lot, "The Walking Dead."

The zombie sub-genre is hard to get right. That show I just mentioned (perhaps you've heard of it?) is currently getting it wrong, as is...well, mostly everything else that contains the Z word. It's been a while since one came out that was even worth valid analysis. But that doesn't keep filmmakers from trying to make them.

The Dead and the Damned 2 (I have not seen the first one, though I sincerely doubt that matters) weaves together a cast of different characters coming together in the wake of a zombpocalypse. One of them is a former military soldier on a mission to lay his family to rest; another is a deaf girl being victimized  by decidedly non-zombie threats (read: redneck penis); then you meet an old man named Wilson living in a train car; and then we've got the immortal Richard Tyson as a fatigued police sheriff - so fatigued, in fact, that he's barely awake for any of his scenes. Naturally, all these characters come together and begin to rely on each other to survive the zombie-infested landscape their world has become. (Well, maybe not Richard Tyson, who shot one scene and fucked off from the rest of the film.) Along the way, some of these characters will be eaten like today's fricassee, and the ones that survive we'll soon "care about."

The Dead and the Damned 2 is not a good film, but that doesn't at all mean you shouldn't watch it. Entertaining for all the wrong reasons, it was a film made when a bunch of people were probably at the diner when one of them asked, "What do you wanna do now?" and someone answered, "We could make a zombie movie?"

And then The Dead and the Damned 2 happened. And we're all the better for it. It's sort of like the Forrest Gump of zombie films. It means well, and because it does, you give it a pass, but you just know there's not all that much going on upstairs.

(Zombie.)

The Dead and the Damned 2 is charming in its execution, although it's not trying to be. It's one of those accidental glorious train-wrecks that has to be seen to be believed. With a score clearly aping bits of the one John Murphy created for 28 Days Later, the "putting the family to rest" concept from the excellent Exit Humanity, and seemingly the amusing over-sized zombie head design from Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror, The Dead and the Damned 2 is a combination of everything zombie-related that came before it, only getting everything wrong to such a degree that it validates its own existence because of the sheer ridiculousness it creates. There's even a scene in a shopping mall, because, why not?

Sledgehammers slammed into pudding-filled rubber skulls and charmingly stupid zombie designs await you, as does the most non-confrontational attempted rape scene ever committed to digital, dialogue so awkward and unnatural that it sounds like it had been run through an online auto-translator, and even a scene where our deaf girl strips down for bed and the camera pans down ever so slightly after its operator realized not all of her bare boobs were in frame. There, now they are.

The Dead and the Damned 2 is an excellent time waster. Don't expect good and you'll have a good time.

And that's all I have to say...about that.

THE JUDAS CRADLE (OUCH)

 

The Judas Cradle was a torture device intended to slowly impale the victim. Forced down on the point of the pyramid by either ropes or weights, the orifice placed on the point would slowly stretch and rip. Judas Cradles were never washed, so if this slow torture didn’t kill, the infection afterward would.

Source.

ESCAPE

My stepfather always hated me. When my mother married him and he moved into our house, my life turned into a living hell. He finds fault  in every little thing I do, was constantly shouting at me and calling me names. For him, I can never do anything right.

Pretty soon, all of the chaos at home began to affect my school life. I found it impossible to study and my grades started slipping. At the dinner table, I was so nervous that I hardly ate a thing. I gradually withdrew into myself and stopped hanging around with my friends.

Things began to grow from bad to worse. I became my stepfather’s punching bag. He started beating me at the slightest excuse. He was a strong man and I was too small to fight him off. Each punch and kick he delivered hurt me both physically and emotionally. It wasn’t long before I was diagnosed with depression and the doctors put me on medication.

Through all this, my mother stood by and refused to intervene. She obviously chose her new husband over me. That hurt me more than anything else. I gave up hope and prayed for the day when I could escape.

One day, I couldn’t take it anymore and ran away from home. I made it as far as the city, when the police found me and brought me home. When they took me back to my house, my stepfather was standing at the door waiting for me. His face was twisted in anger and rage.

As soon as the police left, he turned to me and said, “Did you think you could escape?”

That night, he beat me twice as bad as before. I cried myself to sleep. After that, the violence escalated. Every evening when he came home from work, I tried to avoid him, but it was no use. He began inventing excuses to beat me up. I never understood how anyone could be so mean and cruel. It seemed like it was all a big game to him. Each time he hit me, I could see how much he was enjoying it. My body was covered in bruises that it hurt to breathe.

He eventually went too far. One evening, he beat me so badly that I couldn’t move anymore. I just lay on the floor of my bedroom, staring at the ceiling. I didn’t know it at the time that I was bleeding internally. My mother begged him to bring me to hospital, but he just ignored her. He said I was faking it. During the night, I lay on the floor of my bedroom, moaning in pain and slowly slipping into unconsciousness. The next morning, my mother came in to check on me. However, it was too late. I was already dead.

Time passed…

I don’t know how much time passed…

Suddenly, I saw a bright light.

I heard a voice announce, “It’s a healthy baby boy!”

I started crying loudly.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I opened my eyes.

A man and a woman were staring at me.

They were smiling from ear to ear.

The man leaned down and touched my cheek.

In a gentle voice, he said, “Did you think you could escape?”

Story source. 

AXE

PRESERVES

Photograph from 1873 of a body preserved in a bog. The body had been found in 1871 in the Heidmoor near de:Rendswühren and is now on display at Gottorf Castle, Schleswig Germany. Dated around 1st or 2nd century AD.

MACABRE ART: MURDER SCENE

© Dave Irvine

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