A Long Winter’s Night – Let the Good Guys Win

| December 31, 2011

I’ll be looking at the past year in a retrospective tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s my favourite New Year’s Eve song, dedicated tonight to Sarge, a persecuted dog you’ll be reading more about here in the very near future because in my opinion, what’s being done to Sarge and his family in the name [...]

A Long Winter’s Night – Dark Creatures for Dark Times

| December 28, 2011

Every time I embark on a series of articles that connect with a theme, for example Dark Sentiments that runs the entire 31 days of October each year, and now A Long Winter’s Night which will likewise be an annual event running from 21-31 December, my fevered brain generates content that far o’erflows the allotted [...]

Of Books and Their Covers

| December 15, 2011

  “In judging a book by its cover, never forget that you may come to be afforded a closer view while you are being bludgeoned with it.” ~ The Large Fierce Mammal’s Small but Weighty Book of Etiquette, Vol. 1 Abroad of a recent evening, Mrs. LFM and I were exiting our local shopping mall [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 29: The Chair

| October 29, 2011

The Chair By LFM Malcolm found a shop one day He’d never seen before. It sold antiques and bric-a-brac, And dusty tomes of lore. He went inside to look about And as he made his rounds He found a chair marked, “Cursed Antique” “Reduced to 20 pounds.” Superbly carved from pitch black wood, It looked [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 28: Hellfire, Damnation, and All That

| October 28, 2011

For my own part, I regard stories that involve people making a pact with the Devil, or an ever burning Hell pit of damnation, as suitable fodder for entertainment, but nothing else. As a case in point, in the course of my research for Dark Sentiments 2011, I found the original, accept no substitutes, Dante’s [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 25: The Shag Harbour Incident

| October 25, 2011

The skies over Nova Scotia were a source of great interest on the night of 4 October 1967 as large numbers of witnesses, including members of the Royal Canadian Mounted police (RCMP), observed moving and hovering lights in the sky off most of the province’s south shore, from Lunenburg west to Shag Harbour. At approximately [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 23: Trick and Treat

| October 23, 2011

A friend of mine recently brought something to light that I had forgotten about until this morning. Back in 2008, a team led by French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio announced discovery of a bowl dating from between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D, inscribed with what they believe to be the [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 22: An Insidious Curse

| October 22, 2011

Today’s Dark Sentiment is about a very real curse that stalks our girl children, our wives, our mothers – in fact every woman. It entwines them in its evil tendrils and draws its nourishment from them by draining their sense of self-worth, forcing them to suppress their intellectual and creative spirit, and filling their hearts [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 20: A Recent Zombification

| October 20, 2011

Yesterday we looked at zombies and zombification – the dark art of creating a zombie. Part of that was the bizarre tale of Clairvius Narcisse who turned up alive 18 years after his “death” with reports of his zombification, 2 years enslaved as a zombie, his escape, and 16 years trying to find his way [...]

Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 11: Of Ambrose Bierce

| October 11, 2011

On 7 October 2010 I published here my article concerned the curious life and end thereto of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Tonight I’ll speak to another literary legend with his own dark baggage – Ambrose Bierce. Born 24 June 1842, Bierce was a prolific journalist and writer in such genres as the history of the [...]