Randy | October 28, 2012
“Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun, And baby when it’s love if it’s not rough it isn’t fun …” ~ Lady Gaga, Poker Face The sudden upswing in popularity of such books as Fifty Shades of Grey is at once unsurprising and inexplicable to me. Unsurprising because the dark side of desire […]
Randy | October 23, 2012
Last November I published a poem here that was finished too late to appear in Dark Sentiments – 2011. My Angelique is the strange story of a man who was one day visited by the Angel of Death, for the usual reasons, and seduced her instead. Carpe diem indeed! This poem is a bit more explicit, […]
Randy | October 20, 2012
It’s with thanks to the ever vigilant Jim Keating that I’m bringing you this today. I always start every year of Dark Sentiments with a surplus of material, and every year he throws me curves that are too good to miss. This is one of them. Born in Bogota, Columbia, raised in Miami Beach, Florida, […]
Randy | October 18, 2012
Last year’s Dark Sentiments profiled the work of Juan Cabana, and described him then as, “… a taxidermist of a different sort, who plies his trade mounting the remains of sea creatures that never were.” The world is too full of artists working in the dark and bizarre realm of creativity for me not to […]
Randy | October 17, 2012
Growing up, I was always ahead of my contemporaries in my skills with the written and spoken word. To my great fortune, that gift was recognized and cultivated by a succession of exceptional Teachers. While I can’t pin down the date beyond the certainty that I was still in elementary school, I remember a day […]
Randy | October 15, 2012
Our third featured artist is Andy Fairhurst, a brilliant digital graphic artist who, at last report, resides in North Wales. He lists his extra-curricular interests as, “Wildlife, Bruce Lee, spooky stuff, weird stuff, ancient stuff, writing and beer,” and reports his favourite style of art as, “Anything original. Dark nightmarish with sexy women also.” Obviously, […]
Randy | October 9, 2012
Our next featured artist for 2012 has been a Dark Sentiments fixture since the beginning. Ray Villafane’s pumpkin carving and sand sculpture represent dark arts against which there is no defense. To get the gist, watch Ray’s 2011 zombification of a couple record sized pumpkins for the New York Bontanical Gardens – You can also […]
Randy | October 4, 2012
I first heard, indeed first heard of, The Burning Hell only last week when Stuart McLean played their song When the World Ends to end an episode of The Vinyl Cafe. Give it a listen and you’ll get a clue why I was instantly hooked, and why The Burning Hell is the first featured artist for […]
Randy | October 1, 2012
October again, and the harvest is in, by every definition of the word. Welcome to another season of Dark Sentiments! If you’ve never experienced it before, “Dark Sentiments” is an annual series that appears here every October, each day of that month presenting observations and tales of people, things, doings, and goings on that come […]
Randy | September 23, 2012
I recently encountered this idea on one of the forums I frequent – rugged, sealed, screw top containers for carrying a small supply of pain killers, anti-allergy meds, or whatever; built out of a single plastic bottle and two bottle caps. The originator of this idea employed a sealant for waterproofing but that didn’t sit […]