Large Fierce Mammal

On their YouTube channel’s “about“ page, the “CGBros” describe themselves as, “… relentless curators of the best educational & inspirational examples in CG from around the world ….”

In our relentless search for Dark Sentiments, we’ve found their efforts have more than hit the mark. So, with their aid, for your edification tonight Dear Reader, we offer three short, animated films about Death. Specifically the entity, not so much the event. So well crafted are these marvelous specimens that I’ll spare you any lengthy preamble and dive right in. (more…)

Image source http://jalopnik.com/.

The Thomas The Tank Engine series has the creepiest, most awful method of vehicle anthropomorphization in the history of human culture. ~ Thomas The Tank Engine Is Destroying All Cartoon Vehicles And Creeping Me The Hell Out

I put being “creeped out” behind me a long, long time ago, but as a writer of the kinds of things I write about, particularly in this seasonal series of Dark Sentiments, I do know how to make it happen to people. Today, we’re going to look at two deliveries of this effect, both in the form of popular television productions, each unrelated to the other and in fact separated from one another by a significant interval of time.

Like many parents of young children, Mrs. LFM and I have found that our Number One Son, AKA SFM Viktor, is crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine. Intricately and even quite beautifully animated, the program features an array of anthropomorphic vehicles with the most disquieting array of faces and attitudes ever put to film absent the intention of giving the audience nightmares.

Watching Thomas and Friends with Viktor, I came over time to find the characters were tweaking a memory that I couldn’t quite grasp. And then one day, I found the thread when chasing Viktor around the living room with his large remote control Thomas toy in my hand. I would cackle menacingly as Thomas approached to gently attack assorted ticklish bits … or rather, he was about to, but as Thomas came close, Viktor’s eyes got wide and fearful as they fixed on his face, and he cried out, “Daddy! No!” (more…)

Tableau of leaf and seed atop a Whale’s skull that was a gift to us from Hurricane Juan in the Autumn of 2003. Seeds long sent on their way, some of our Maples are sporadically dropping leaves, but the glorious canopy and its evolution to an ankle deep carpet of gold is still weeks away.  (LFM photo. Photo editing by Mrs. LFM. Click the image to enbiggen.)

Death Songs and Promises

By LFM

The leaf of Autumn’s bright display
Comes bittersweet with tinge of death,
Yet shares the bough with wing-ed seed
Poised now to glide on hopeful breath.

Even as the leaf doth sing
Its death song loud in colours bold,
Upon the ground joins humble seed,
Now scarcely glimpsed amid the gold.

The mourning of a Summer lost,
The brilliance of the leaf forfends,
As drab seed speaketh whispered vow –
Renew-ed Life, not bitter ends.

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is a Welsh documentary from 2007 that touches in many places on material I visited in 2010 – the first year this series every saw the dark of night. I therefore recommend that you revisit those heady days of yore with Dark Sentiments – Day 15 and Dark Sentiments – Day 23, either before or after watching this film.

If I were The Devil rather than a marginally lesser evil, I might take exception to the film’s title alleging it to be THE history of me, but nevertheless, according to what appears to be pretty much everyone who has posted anything on line about it:

The History of the Devil is wickedly good, informative and concise. A no-frills Welsh film produced in association with SBS Australia and distributed by Siren Visual, it’s roughly 52 minutes in length and packs a fair dinkum amount of history into its slender running time.

The documentary itself is made up entirely of mostly still images alternating sporadically with talking heads; religious scholars, theologians and reverends.

Directed by Greg Moodie and written and produced by Dave Flitton, it was researched by Eibhleann Ni Ghriofa, Deirdre Learmont and Craig McGregor.

It’s an impressive and very open-minded account and offers some fantastic insight into the evolution; the hows and whys the specter of the Devil has existed and morphed through the ages from the dawn of civilization through to the new millennium.

So despite its relatively low-fi approach, the richness and diversity of its imagery; the historical plaques, plates, engravings, illustrations, paintings, drawings, and the occasional staged re-enactment (some dude dressed up in rather bemusing demonic attire), keeps the documentary at a high level of beguilement.

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“Blood Moon” of 27 September 2015. (Mrs. LFM photo)

This poem was inspired by the Lunar eclipse that coincided with last weekend’s “super moon”. The brilliant round edge of white on the rust red orb of the “blood moon” in this photo was the kicker, and there’s nothing else to say beyond that I see hints (sometimes not so subtle) of primal, raw sexuality in everything; especially now that the rutting season is upon us. Much mythology shares the propensity, so I lay no claim to originality in the thought. Only to the rhyme.

Bloodied but Unbowed

By LFM

How better is’t to spend the night,
Than sharing it with she,
Who’ll race through blood and dark to bare
Her sweet round arse for me?

Our research department has, as usual, been riding abroad all year, scouring the planet for the ingredients to bring you this most piquant of seasonal dishes! – [Départ pour le Sabbat by Albert Joseph Pénot (1910)]

So you’ve come back Goode Readers. Welcome, and may I say that it’s nice to see your faces again, even as I note more than a few of you are a little more scarred and worn about the chassis than this time last year. Ah well; you’re still above the sod, and time wounds all heels they say.

I also see some new faces, no doubt driven before the Autumn’s chill promise of coming Winter, and so attracted to the warmth of the hearth. Greetings to you also to this 2015 incarnation of Dark Sentiments, being our annual month long foray into the Darkness, in all its wondrous variety.

If this is your first voyage, or you feel you’d enjoy a refresher, by way of explanatory introduction to soil yourself in, I quote myself …

As our regular readers know, the month of October has a special significance to Mrs. LFM and me, and Hallowe’en marks the anniversary of our marriage. Last October we launched what will be an annual event here at LFM – 31 days of Dark Sentiments – one each for every day in this most meaningful of months. In keeping with our mission statement from last year, and in addition to regular programming, each day of this month we will be posting articles and items, music and movie reviews, film clips and book recommendations, memories and artifacts, all connecting straight back to the dark side. Some will make you laugh, some will trouble your dreams, and some will prevent sleep as we delve into the unknown, the misunderstood, and the better left alone. ~ Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 1: It’s Back

Also,

Darkness, as it inspires me, isn’t limited to expressions of evil, mayhem, and bad outcomes. Something can also be considered “dark” if it is unknown, misunderstood, or incorrectly interpreted.  So, depending on your sensibilities good reader, I believe that if the title of the series, let alone its author,  didn’t dissuade you from stepping inside, then you will find some modicum of entertainment in what follows. Nevertheless, you may also come to find, albeit too late because by then the arrow will have already found its mark, that some portions are best avoided by those imbued with that tortured combination of empathy, clarity of visualization, and a propensity for nightmares. ~ Dark Sentiments 2012 – Day 1: Another Harvest

So, as in the dull guttering candle light of Dark Sentiments past, you ponder what this portends, I’ll leave you today with these lines of verse.

If you seek for the harvest that’s fruitful and green,
You’re in the wrong place, and it’s not very clean.
If a bright, cheery Autumn’s the way you would lean,
Look not here, for these pickings are dark and obscene!

Strange to tell, Mrs. LFM had to win over my own Dog, Cinders, to get to me. Nothing quite so nasty as this mind you. (Click the picture to enbiggen it.)

Billingr’s girl watches on while Odin encounters the bitch tied to her bedpost (1895) by Lorenz Frølich is a lovely piece of art work depicting a monumental moment in the history of the cock tease. The piece is based on a tale attributed to Odin Himself that has come down to us by way of the Hávamál (sayings of the high one), that compendium of goodly and Godly advice to govern the affairs of Men.

It was while I mused upon this etching that today’s bit of verse sprang forth, and so Goode Reader, I offer it up for your Saturday amusement.

The Bitch Tied to the Bedpost

By LFM

“A bitch tied to the bed post
“I think you might enjoy!”
She spoke the words as she dropped her frock,
And skipped away, so coy!

But when Odin followed after her,
And found her on the bed,
Her snarling bitch was at his throat,
To offer death instead.

Or something.

In the tradition established by my earlier pieces, The Game – Sharp and To the Point and When Zip Met John, I offer this.

I Honed My Knife for This?

By LFM

An urge to drain my bilge was how
I met the stupid lad.
He was lurking just outside the door
Where toilets could be had.

Ten paces up ahead he was.
I slowed my steps a bit.
A hulking, hoodied miscreant
In pants that didn’t fit.

He looked in my direction
As he grinned a loopy grin.
His right hand in his pocket
Fingered something hard within.

“That better be your dick,” I said
My Bowie coming out.
His eyes now drawn toward
Its every gleaming inch of doubt.

His legs, as on their own, now moved
Him backwards ‘cross the floor,
Then spun him ’round to help him find
A fire exit door.

Making sure the door was tight,
I went about my piss,
And as I did, I thought aloud –
“I honed my knife for this?”

Some lads never get beyond the most rudely direct approach in their quest for sexual gratification. Paul is one of those. Sadly, such as he stay the course because, once in a while, it works.

A Wee Foul Limerick

By LFM

A cocky young fellow named Paul
Approached a sweet lass at the mall.
He suggested some sport
Of the sodomy sort.
What she gave him was sweet bugger all.

By all reports, Mrs. LFM and I were both colicky babies. Having both been born at a very young age, neither of us has any direct recollection, so we’re forced to take parental word on that.

Rumour has it that 40% of babies have colic, and whether or not that is accurate, SFM Lukas represents the 50% of the LFM offspring who has turned out to be so afflicted. Poor wee shite. Poor parents too because a child who takes on the behaviour of a Bat, but instead of flying through the night skies swallowing Mosquitoes ends up screaming his lungs out for hours that inevitably begin at exactly the time everything in the house is most desirous of sleep, is a trial on the patience of even the most saintly.

I am happy to report that young Lukas is moving beyond this stage in his life, and you will not be surprised to learn that working through it required a healthy dose of humour, mostly in the form of poetry, and some of which will never see the light of day. We Love our children Goode Reader, and will never let them come to harm, but sleep deprivation is its own reward if you get my drift.

The poem that follows describes a dream I had one night after sitting for three hours listening to Lukas scream while Mrs. LFM soaked up some desperately needed sleep. No, I would not shoot my kid out of a potato cannon although I can’t say I feel the same about some others I’ve met, and I don’t plan to launch either SFM into the void at 17 or any other age. That’s to be determined at a later date.

Ode to the Colicky Bairn

By LFM

A gun to fire potatoes lad,
Built with exquisite care,
Is what I made to shoot a spud
With speed from here to there.

Soon after you arrived my Son,
One night amid your screams,
The darkest inspiration came
To visit in my dreams.

I’d never see you harmed my Son,
Yet dreamed as though t’were real,
The building of another gun;
Its every tube and seal.

And in that dream I measured you
To fit the barrel snug,
Enwrapped within your flannel wad,
As snug as any bug.

But as it was, you grew so fast
That every time I tried,
I found you’d grown a tad too big,
So fitting was denied.

I kept installing barrels that
Would fit your larger size,
But still you never seemed to fit
Whatever I’d devise.

And this went on and on my Son
Until I came to lean
Toward delaying launching you
Before you’re seventeen.