A Long Winter’s Night 2015 – Day 4: A Greeting or Two

| December 25, 2015

There’s a standing traditional association of revelry at this Yule time, for reasons aforesaid, and with that comes the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Oh, and Elves. Not the consumption of them, you understand, it’s just that Elves are also associated with it all, for reasons not so clear other than it might have something to […]

A Long Winter’s Night 2015 – Day 1: Another Winter Solstice

| December 22, 2015

Pre-Christian history is full of spiritual beliefs that personify the sun as a deity who dies and is resurrected, even as the sun that reaches its shortest period of life in the sky is reborn to linger just a little longer each day in the blessed march toward what is hoped to be a new […]

Hot Time in the Olde Town Tonight

| December 14, 2015

They’re rattling their rapiers And prancing in their livery, They’re howling at the gates again, Hot time in the olde town tonight. ~ Fight Song ~ I’ve mentioned Halifax, Nova Scotia based band, The Stanfields, a couple of times before; on 12 February and 3 October of 2011. Today I’d like to introduce you to […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 24: Vincent

| October 24, 2015

Vincent is a short film employing stop motion animation made in 1982, the same year my Wife was born. The years notwithstanding, both she and I are dyed in the wool Tim Burton fans, this delightful item being designed and directed by Tim Burton, and produced by Rick Heinrichs. At approximately six minutes in length, […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 21: The Alchemist’s Letter

| October 21, 2015

Directed by former Student Academy Award finalist Carlos Andre Stevens, voiced by the incomparable John Hurt and Eloise Webb, The Alchemist’s Letter is just what the chirurgeon ordered. The Alchemist’s Letter is a 2015 animated short film that tells a story likely to echo in the darkest and most personal catacombs of what those who […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 17: Sharing

| October 17, 2015

My Boxing Day 2013 article, A Long Winter’s Night 2013 – Day 6: A Winter Lesson in Community, told the tale of a blizzard that buried my home town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia when I was about 3 years old, and how the citizenry had no choice but to suspend all matters of commerce and […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 16: The Stranger at the Door

| October 16, 2015

I’ve spoken before of the Hávamál (sayings of the high one), that being one of the poems in The Elder or Poetric Edda, also known as Sæmund’s Edda. For those of us with eyes to see, ears to hear, minds to think, and hearts to feel, the world of now is every bit as dangerous […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 14: My Name is Gourd and I’ll be Your Server This Evening

| October 14, 2015

No season of Dark Sentiments would be complete without our annual foray into the shenanigans and goings on perpetrated by the denizens of Villafane Studios. Always exciting and constantly honing their craft, we’ve been keeping a watchful eye on Ray Villafane and his merry band since the very beginning with DS2010. Although they run events […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 13: Just Delicious

| October 13, 2015

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is in the form of an animated short film by Brian Bear, published to YouTube by aniBoom. Just Delicious is the title of a dark tale based on a story in the third volume of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthologies written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammel. […]

Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 12: Tooth and Claw

| October 12, 2015

When in this world’s unpleasing youth       Our godlike race began, The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,       Gave man control of man …. ~ Rudyard Kipling, The Benefactors While I will stop short of joining the Esteemed Mr. Kipling in granting the Human species the epithet “godlike”, I admit to absorbing no […]