I was promised a rain-soaked weekend that would allow me to indulge in my natural cave troll behavior of not journeying outside. Instead, there is now sun streaming through the window, dredging up childhood echoes: “It’s a beautiful day, you should get outside.”
Nonsense.
No nice weather can sway me from my entirely unnecessary commitment to send out an email newsletter every week. There’s nothing at all that depends on my ability to meet this commitment that I never explicitly made, and as such, it must come first above any other adult responsibility.
So here we go. Indoor activity.
the promised contest
A few issues back, longtime subscribers may remember that we showcased original artwork from AJ Summers featuring Detective Yeti, that popular franchise character born of this project. It was a modified postcard that originally was a reprint of an EC Comics cover. I said that we’d come up with a contest to determine who would get that postcard mailed to them.
Well, contest time is now!
If you would like to be in the lottery to receive an original Detective Yeti postcard, just reply to this email and, somewhere in the body text, include the words: I AM A VERY GOOD DETECTIVE
You can put other words in the email, in any order, but those particular all-caps words really ought to be in that recommended order. You can even copy & paste.
Deadline for entry is Saturday, March 12th, and we’ll announce the winner in the next newsletter.
cap’n ahab
A bit of recycling, in case you missed it. From my Twitter account this week:
Sad to think that Capt. Ahab could have avoided his fate, but someone wrote “don’t ever change” in his yearbook… makes you think.
Later the same day I posted that joke, I unsubscribed from a mailing list, which gave me a new audience to share the joke with: Whatever low-level intern was charged with reading through the reasons people gave for unsubscribing. A captive audience. The best kind.
I figured I would just paste a few sentences in, then come up against a character limit. But nope! Every time I added more text, the box kept expanding. So I grabbed the entire first chapter of Moby Dick from Project Gutenberg.
movie trailer [creepy music plays]
[the camera pans up and through bare tree branches, black against a night sky, then approach the lit windows of a hospital as the creepy music intensifies]
VOX: This summer… pray you don’t get sick…
[a nurse screams and from off screen, red syrup is sprayed at her as if squirted out of two hand-held condiment squeeze bottles]
A SERIOUS LOOKING MAN: This hospital, I gotta tell you. I don’t like working here.
[in an empty room, unoccupied hospital beds vibrate and jump as if manipulated by unseen forces]
VOX: HOSPITAL OF BAD THINGS… the movie that dares to ask the question: Why are you still watching movies? Oh my gosh, there are so many better things you could be doing. Pet a dog. Doesn’t even have to be your dog. Wash a dish. Even one. Movies are terrible.
A SERIOUS LOOKING WOMAN: I’ve never liked movies. And that was true even before all the murders and hauntings started happening at this hospital.
A DOCTOR: Okay, open your mouth and say “aaaah”…
[a voice responds with an “aaaah” that increases in pitch and volume until the doctor’s ears bleed and from off screen, he’s sprayed with clear syrup as if the budget ran out and there was no more red food coloring]
A DOCTOR: I thought you were a patient, but you’re something scary! Ah! Oh no!
VOX: HOSPITAL OF BAD THINGS. You’ll never visit another hospital… again. Well, I mean… you probably will. Statistically, somewhere in your future is a terrible accident or health problem that’s going to require you to–
[a tornado of clipboards and thermometers and stethoscopes whirls in the air around a small girl whose intense stare is directed into the camera and, by extension, you, the audience]
VOX: –visit a medical establishment, if not a hospital. I mean, if you think big picture, we’re healthy for just this brief, brief window. In a geological scale, we–
[a medical intern runs down a hallway, looking back over his shoulder as if pursued as wind rushes past him… he trips and crawls and regains his footing and… ]
VOX: — don’t exist for so much longer than we DO exist. HOSPITAL OF BAD THINGS. March 25th at select theatres. Be sure to stay in good HELL-th… that’s “health” but with the word “hell” inserted into it, which you might not be able to tell if you’re just listening to this trailer.
TITLE: MARCH 25th.
TITLE: HOSPITAL OF BAD THINGS
TITLE: We should have spent our time petting dogs instead of making this film, sorry.
ending theme song
Dang it. The weather still looks nice outside. I don’t think I can ignore my inner Mom voice for much longer. I’m going to have to go outside.
Thanks for sticking around for another week. If I don’t make it back, please send a squad out to look for my bones, drying out there in the unfamiliar sunlight. Keep any bone that strikes your fancy as a souvenir, if you like.
Later, gators,
Michael Van Vleet