A friend of mine recently turned me on to the salt-flavored pop of The Decemberists, who mix tales of the seafaring life with indie rock, using traditional melodies, offbeat instruments (if you consider accordion and and even a balalaika, I think, to be offbeat in pop music), and an almost punk attitude to craft songs that stay with you long after you shut off the CD. One of these that has stayed with me all week is "The Mariner's Revenge Song," probably the saltiest cut from the excellent Picaresque--the tale of two sailors trapped in the belly of a whale who discover they have more in common than one of them would care to think. Seek it out an give it a listen, and it'll imbed itself in your brain. Full lyrics on the jump.

And then dead on the boat. :(

But still, amazing video available to you by clicking here or, at a lesser quality, here.

As I've written before, giant squids fascinate me, and to see one of these creatures in the (albeit moribund) flesh is just gobsmacking.

Damn, that's a big baby.

In the spirit of the holidays, a fun article on THE MOST DANGEROUS TOYS OF ALL TIME!!!

How many did you have?

Okay, probably every geek around knows this already, but for borderline-ubergeeks like me, or non-geeks like my wife and parents, this is pretty freakin' cool. 15 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With Google.

You ever spend time on the Google looking for a Farenheit-to-Celsius calculator so you can figure out whether your British friend just texted you that it's freezing, or that it's rather balmy out? Me too. Little did I know you could just google "30C in F" and have Google spit out the answer.

Go ahead. Try it. It works the other way too.

Besides converting units of measure quickly and easily--which is what I'm going to be doing A LOT from now on (ever wonder how many teaspoons in a cup? I have), you can also use Google as a dictionary, a glossary, a package tracker, a phone directory, and a repository of All the Facts. (Examples: population of Little Rock, Alexander Pope's birthday, the date of Amerigo Vespucci's death, and pretty much anything you can think of.) Plus there's more!

So there you go. Don't say I never gave you anything. This should fill the tedious hours for you, and might even prove useful in some situations--esp. when cooking, I'm thinking, as certain measuring spoons are often unreachable and I have to substitute others. Anyhoo, have fun.

Hmm, I wonder what the planetary mass of Uranus is? Oh.

Maybe I'm just thirsty to put a positive spin on anything remotely non-rejectional that happens with my writing, but I was happy to see the following review of my story "The Skeleton Club" on Tangent Online, a sci-fi/horror/fantasy short fiction review site that's been around for years. Maybe it's just pleasantly positive, but I'm calling it a rave. Take it up with the site admin if you don't like my terminology. ;)

The entirety of issue #8 of City Slab is reviewed here, but since this is my own personal website, I'm pasting only the part about my story below:

In Scott Standridge’s “The Skeleton Club,” Gerald has a problem: the flesh of his lower face is falling away. It’s a transformation worthy of horror director David Cronenberg, whose movies also look at the connections between our bodies, our minds, our sexuality, and madness. “The Skeleton Club” tackles these same connections, and also delves into the problem of self-identity. Can Gerald renounce his membership in the human race and throw in his lot with the Skeleton Club—others, like himself, who have lost flesh?

The first half of the story, detailing Gerald’s physical transformation, seems a necessary prelude to the second half, which looks at his initiation into the Club. He has to lose his humanity before he can accept something new (and, arguably, better). The point is to make Gerald’s final transformation seem both inevitable and desirable. “The Skeleton Club” certainly succeeds in that respect.

Nice to hear nice things about one's work. Nicer still to be mentioned in the same breath as Cronenberg, and even nicer to gloat about it. Send your congratulatory flowers to this website. ;)

Go Vote.

Wow. I just read the most amazing article about folklore of homeless kids on the streets of Miami. Haunting, beautiful, tragic tales. Here are a couple of excerpts:

On Christmas night a year ago, God fled Heaven to escape an audacious demon attack -- a celestial Tet Offensive. The demons smashed to dust his palace of beautiful blue-moon marble. TV news kept it secret, but homeless children in shelters across the country report being awakened from troubled sleep and alerted by dead relatives. No one knows why God has never reappeared, leaving his stunned angels to defend his earthly estate against assaults from Hell. "Demons found doors to our world," adds eight-year-old Miguel, who sits before Andre with the other children at the Salvation Army shelter. The demons' gateways from Hell include abandoned refrigerators, mirrors, Ghost Town (the nickname shelter children have for a cemetery somewhere in Dade County), and Jeep Cherokees with "black windows." The demons are nourished by dark human emotions: jealousy, hate, fear.

One demon is feared even by Satan. In Miami shelters, children know her by two names: Bloody Mary and La Llorona (the Crying Woman). She weeps blood or black tears from ghoulish empty sockets and feeds on children's terror. When a child is killed accidentally in gang crossfire or is murdered, she croons with joy. "If you wake at night and see her," a ten-year-old says softly, "her clothes be blowing back, even in a room where there is no wind. And you know she's marked you for killing."

Full text here. More on the jump.

Just a note for those who might be interested--looks like The Undead Anthology vol. 2: Skin and Bones, which will feature my story "Till the Lord Comes" and was originally scheduled to be published this month, has been delayed and is now shooting for an early- to mid-07 publication date. More as I learn it.

However, the latest issue of City Slab hits the street this week, with 3 (count 'em!) interviews by me in it, and lots of gorgeous layout and color pages. This is the first issue that will be distributed by Ingraham distributing, too, which means you might just be able to find a copy in your local Barnes & Noble. So go look for it, and tell everyone you know one of the editors.

Halloween bargain time! I recently purchased several $1 Horror Double-Feature DVDs from my local Dollar Tree store, hoping to find a few gems among the public domain goodness, and figuring that for 50¢ a movie I couldn't go wrong. How right I was. Today I review the first gem unearthed from the pile, and a better half-buck I have seldom spent. Read on...

Everyone is looking for that one thing that will make him happy, that will provide him with the inner peace he needs to finally stop all his striving and struggling and just enjoy the mystery of being. For some, that thing seems to be money. For others, it's love. Still others seek achievement in a chosen field, such as voodoo or Eastern mysticism. And for others, the only thing that will let them truly enjoy life is the freedom from the worry of death. In the low-budget Spanish horror masterpiece Vengeance of the Zombies, we get a view into all these disparate but interconnected struggles, and in the end are left to question what we, the viewers, truly need in order to be happy.

It's easy to get caught up in the rush to exploit tragedy for personal or political gain--and because of that fact harder for many people (myself included) to retain their faith in the basic goodness of humanity at times. Though I try. I was disheartened more than angry about the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 that sought to use the tragedy to further attack Bill Clinton's legacy (even star Harvey Kietel had problems with it, not to mention former FBI agents hired to vett it who later resigned), much as I'm more discouraged than pissed off at the political need of just about everybody in office near a microphone to begin their partisan support of whatever pet project they're pushing with the knee-jerk phrase, "Since 9/11..." It just makes me sad that we had an opportunity to come together as a country, and for reasons that will continue to be the province of debate, spin, and subjective reasoning, we blew it in a big way.

That said, I think this article, which posits an alternative history to the post-9/11 events had different decisions been made, is rather interesting and worth a read. Some might see it as a blatant slam against Bush, and maybe it is, a little--but it's become clearer and clearer to all but about 36% of us give or take that some of the decisions made were not the best. So anyway, give it a look.

Also, on this somber occasion, a poem for my grandmother.

That's all.