The Tale of the Fax Machine

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!

Halloween is finally today! It is the greatest day of the entire year, a day in which people can wear witches hats and orange socks and scarves with dancing ghosts, and only some of the people on the sidewalk give them a wide berth. It is a day of greedily shoving fistfuls of candy down your throat, a day of watching horrifically terrible horror movies that were put together with a couple of red necks and a hand held camera, and a day of drinking yourself into a coma because hey, it's okay, you're not an alcoholic if you're celebrating the day when the dead supposedly walk the earth. You're only an alcoholic if you actually see the dead walking the earth.

Which brings up an interesting question, since I saw Smoking Santa lurking outside the front doors again at 1am and then again at 7:30am this morning. Hm.

But I digress. Before I launch into my daily ramblings, I'd like to launch into an equally as long winded - but scarier, if you can imagine - ghost story. Another true ghost story. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story...

The Tale of the Fax Machine

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Chelsea, and she was beloved by all in the... uh, kingdom. She had glossy, rich chestnut colored hair, a sprinkling of delicate love kissed freckles across her snow white skin, and perfectly sized, perfectly round, voluptuous, heaving... eyeballs. Nice green color, sometimes hazel if she wore gray, really complimented her skin tone. Yeah, she was good at dressing herself.

So Chelsea was a street savvy girl with hope in her heart and a shockingly above average brain in her head, dedicated to working as hard as she could on various important social issues like "why doesn't online yahtzee want to ever give me four-of-a-kind," and "which Hollywood starlet is in jail today for her 5th DUI." She had no way of knowing that on a cold, crisp autumn day in October, her life would be forever changed by the forces of evil.

It was an ordinary day, photocopying, scanning, drinking 17 Coke Zeros from the office fridge - no blanket of darkness, no foggy mist, no ominous background music to suggest the horrors that awaited her. At the ungodly hour of 9:30am, it happened - the phone rang.

Ring. (dramatic recreation of actual events)

"Hello?"

BEEP. BEEP. GURGLE. FAX SOUNDS. ZZZZZZZ. BEEP.

Chelsea warily hung up the receiver, convinced it was merely children playing a prank. The Halloween spirit was in the air (never mind this started in September) and kids will be kids. Imagine her surprise when, minutes later, the phone rang again.

"Hello?"

But all that answered was the deadly, droning robotic noises of the persistent, murderous fax machine.

Chelsea screamed and hung up the receiver once more, her heart pounding, fear beginning to beat through her veins. Why was a fax machine calling? Was it a self-aware fax machine? Was someone programming the dastardly thing to call? And why was this such a big deal?

This horrifying event happened several times throughout the days, stretching on into weeks, months even, if you can count the end of September through October as technically "months." Chelsea was reaching her breaking point when suddenly, everything changed.

Ring.

No! Chelsea thought in horror, her hand shaking as she reached for the phone. Much to her shock, it wasn't the dastardly fax - but the police.

"Chelsea, we've tracked the calls - they're coming from inside your office!"

Chelsea dropped the receiver in one of those slo-mo movements in horror movies, and ran in the same slow motion manner around her desk, but what she saw next made her freeze, her blood turning to ice in her veins.

It was the fax machine.

Waiting for her, a knife in it's... uh, dangling from it's phone cord. It hopped closer, and closer, Chelsea could hear it's digital, heaving breath, the way it scratched against the carpet as it lunged for her, she could see the way the dials reached out for her throat, the way the incessant red ERROR light had it's sick, twisted gaze locked right on her-

And that's the end of my story. I'm like Stephen King, baby, I leave you hanging, wanting more. Or it could be because the fucking fax machine just called yet again. Seriously, how does a fax machine place calls? Especially from different points of origin? There are like, 6 separate phone numbers that call with a fax machine, it doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna start throwing punches as soon as I find out who is behind this wicked deed. Or maybe I'll just keep making hot chocolate, cause we have some in the office, and damn but that shit is good.

In a surprisingly mostly-horror-free twist of fate, Erin and I watched Marie Antoinette yesterday, and shockingly I didn't hate it. I was a bit baffled by some of the additions/omissions (such as the fact that it's Marie-Antoinette with a hyphen, the fact that Sophia Coppola chose modern day music ["I Want Candy" anyone?] and the fact that they glossed over many things, like yes indeed Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI were killed, and oh yeah, the Princess of Lamballe didn't actually make it to Switzerland, she instead chose not to swear against the monarchy, and accordingly was gang raped by a mob, had various womanly body parts cut off, most likely had her heart ripped out and then eaten, and, to spice things up even further, had her head put on a spike which was then paraded past the Queen's prison windows. Yeah overkill!) but otherwise actually liked the movie. I did feel like I'd taken a hit of acid, especially because it kept jumping years at a time, but I guess if you want to cover an entire lifetime in the span of 2 or so hours, certain sacrifices must be made.

I want all the gambling, frivolity, and partying of her life... just without the beheading, thanks

I think it was a combination of several things:

1) Kirsten Dunst was regularly bathed during the production of this film. That in-and-of itself is huge. She's pretty, but the girl always looks like she just crawled out of a particularly greasy fryalater. Showered is a good look for you, bb!

2) Kirsten Dunst can actually act, unlike most young, blond Hollywood actresses. I have to admit that she did a really good job of portraying what it must've been like to have been Marie-Antoinette. She had her fun (and lots of it), but she was good at the close ups and quiet moments. And I have to further admit that they did a great job with aging her at the end, so that she looked older and weary and frightened, but had that same sense of innocence that really made you feel badly for her. Considering Marie-Antoinette and Louis were teenagers when put on the throne, and neither really understood the mechanics of it (ahem, among other things), you really just have to feel badly for them - they were in so over their heads.

3) I love Jason Schwartzman. And I love period dresses. Yep, that about wraps it up!

See, this is my pattern. When everyone hates something, I like it, but when everyone's raving about something, I detest it. I guess I just go against the masses - I'm a rebel. What can I say? I ooze sex appeal and a flagrant disregard for society and authority.

Smoking Santa

Days till Halloween: TOMORROW

Tis the season and all, so I thought I would regale you with a true ghost story that takes place in an eerie little town that I like to call the District of Columbia. Now let me give you some background on the area, because apparently there has been some confusion: this spooky little ghost haven is not, contrary to popular belief, in either Virginia or Maryland. The district is actually just that - an independent district located between two states, which lacks Congressional representation but makes up for that with a mayor that gets reelected riding on the coattails of his previous cocaine and prostitute benders. See, we all just learned something there - and they say ghost stories aren't educational!

Anyway.

In the district, there is a derelict building full of bloodthirsty murderers, deranged psychopaths, and foreigners of indeterminable scent: this is my apartment complex. One would imagine any spectral beings lurking around the property to be missing several limbs and quite possibly be covered in a splattered array of blood. However, I believe I have finally come in contact with a spirit, and to my great surprise, he is a peaceful, kind spirit, who is unable to enter the front door; he spends his dreary days wandering the grounds, gazing speculatively at the sky without really seeing it at all. And chain smoking close to 40 packs of cigarettes a day. This ghost is Smoking Santa.

Anyone got a light?

Smoking Santa keeps a steady guard over the front doors, almost as if protecting his beloved inhabitants from the ever-present threat of hobos, anti-abortion protesters, and Republicans. When he doesn't suspect a threat, he wanders into the bushes, his tiny, rotund body poking out from beneath a sprout of Chimonanthus, the lively wintersweet horticultural specimen (not to be confused with the bastard Chionanthus, whose fringe-tree shrub is the work of the devil.) It always gives him the appearance of an exceptionally fat elf, with the top of the bush looming like a jaunty green cap, blending nicely with his long white beard.

Okay, so he might not actually be dead. He could live inside the building, or he could even be a wandering hobo, but the man is out there close to 20 hours a day, as far as I can surmise. He is out there in the early morning when I poke my head out the window to see if it's magically snowed so that work might be canceled; he is out there when I depart at 8:30am; he is there at 6:15pm when I arrive home; he is there at 7:00pm when I go to watch tv at Erin's because I cannot function on my own for extended periods of time; he is there at 12:30am when I return home despite the fact that the temperature has taken a nosedive; and he is there at 2:00am when I go to bed, still merrily puffing away at his cigarettes, the red tip a burning beacon in the burgeoning darkness.

(Not that the darkness is technically burgeoning at 2:00am, but I really like alliteration.)

And that is my story. There is a fat old man outside my building at all hours, who resembles a squashed-looking Santa, and he smokes so many cigarettes that I'm amazed his lungs haven't violently repelled themselves in a giant fit of dry heaves. Give me a freaking break, it's the day before Halloween, my brain is hardly in top form.

In other news, since tomorrow is 1) Halloween and 2) we are old ladies that cannot handle going out and drinking when we have to work in the morning, we are having a Horror Movie Marathon! I present to you three movies we will be watching, and one we will not be watching:




Hocus Pocus: We begin with the Halloween staple; the hijinx, gleeful mayhem, and child aura absorbing that makes Hocus Pocus a Halloween classic. I used to be in love with Thackery Binx, and I wanted to grow up to be Sarah Jessica Parker's character. While I still strive to be just like a fictional portrayal of SJP's, her ditzy flirt persona has been replaced with her hard drinking, pessimistic, sarcastic journalist persona, and that fits me better. ILU, Carrie Bradshaw!



28 Days Later: I went into this movie with my ex, thinking I'd have a thrilling time, scream a little, laugh it off, enjoy getting spooked. What actually happened was I screamed so loudly for so long that I gave myself laryngitis, instead of laughing I clawed all the skin off the back of the poor guy's hand, and instead of getting "spooked" I spent the next four years sleeping with the light on, convinced that an Infected person would come bursting through my window and chew me into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. Actually, I'm still scared of it.



Flight of the Living Dead: Well, Erin and I just watched Children of the Living Dead (the bastard younger brother of the Romero trilogy) in which the most frightening thing in the entire movie was the acting, and a rogue chicken that some PA kept flinging across the screen. I'm just hoping that there's a Samuel L. Jackson look-a-like that bursts onto the screen and screams "Let's get these mother fucking zombies off this mother fucking plane!" Zombies + Planes = my greatest fear. Seriously, that shit is just too fucked up for me.



Erotic Nights of the Living Dead: Yeah, this'd be the movie that we're not going to watch. Because as thrilling as it would be to watch a porno comprised entirely of rotting corpses rutting each other like there's no tomorrow (ah ha, maybe that is the point!) I just can't handle it. I lied before: planes + zombies aren't my biggest fear, it's pornographic necrophilia made by a fat 47 year old man that lives in his mother's basement and will never lose his virginity no matter how hard he tries. Now that is truly frightening.