Hollow Eve's Mourning After (2021)

Some Truth (Betwixt the Lies)

Many moons ago, in a Kingdom United, October's end was a seasonal occasion duly respected by the nature-loving folk who dwelled there. But all things change, sooner or later, and during a night of storms and knives a wicked hunger was born in the hearts of some men, which quickly spread.

The Kingdom's protectors were unwilling or unable to stop the capitalist greed that slowly consumed the once-good people.

In time, the cruel equation that ensures the rich get richer and the poor become poorer was added to a child's primary education.

Generations later, behind closed doors, handpicked scientists, doctors, and surgeons began working on a method to have it coded directly into the DNA of newborns. But it wasn't necessary, because the children copied what their parents did: as they grew, they looked around and deemed what they had to be of lesser economic value to what they felt their peers had, so they embraced the government approved ideology with great zeal, as if it were mandate.

The Official Star Trek Fact Files (1997-2002)

The Official Star Trek Fact Files (1997-2002)

Authors: Various | Illustrators: Various | Page Count: 8512 (28 pp x 304 issues)

(Alternatively, 7904 not counting the cover + table of contents of each individual issue.)

Partworks - they keep making them, so there must be an acceptable profit margin in it for publishers, even though a huge percentage of folks will get pissed off with the duration and expense and give up buying the damned things before the final issue rolls off the presses.

The Official STFF ran longer than most, over five years, and anyone buying the bi-monthly issues was lucky if their copy wasn't dog-eared and coming apart at the seams, which were designed to come apart (they were perforated), but not, I think, before they even left the fuggin' store!

Information on what the Files contain is better documented on the dedicated Star Trek wikis (Memory Alpha, for example), so if you want a detailed rundown, I recommend visiting those.

What's below is just one person's thoughts on the publication. I didn't have the full collection, I stopped buying the issues when the store that I got them from failed to fulfil the request, but I'd a hell of a lot. I donated the entirety of what I had to a children's charity some years back, when moving into a smaller property, but I got years of enjoyment from them and am pleased that they also aided a good cause - and this post.

Edgar Allan Poe: A Dream Within a Dream (1849)

A Dream Within a Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe | 1849

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

Mothra: US Lobby Cards (1962)

Mothra: US Lobby Cards (1962)

W.A.S.P. - Reidolized - The Film (2018)

W.A.S.P. - Reidolized

(The Soundtrack to The Crimson Idol)

Dir. Ralph Ziman

Even though I'll be referring to the album itself, the text below is primarily for the sixty-minute 'film' that accompanied W.A.S.P.'s re-recording of their fifth studio album, The Crimson Idol, which was originally released back in 1992. If ever I do a band discography post I'll give the new version of the album the kudos it deserves.

The 'film' is the album's songs with occasional v/o narration by vocalist Blackie Lawless; i.e., parts of The Story of Jonathan (Prologue to the Crimson Idol) track that was included on the 1998 remaster of the 1992 concept album.

Documenting the tragic rise and fall of a fictional rock star named Jonathan Aaron Steele, and incorporating such themes as abandonment, emotional need, addiction, ambition and, ultimately, self-worth, it's presented in grainy lo-fi B+W with frequent splashes of symbolic crimson. It's a conceptually interesting idea that nevertheless gets tiresome pretty quickly.

ABANDONED POST: Star Trek Voyager TV Movies

Star Trek: VOY: The [In]Complete TV Movies

Dirs. Various / 12 feature-length TV Movies / 1008 mins (approx total)

I've no plans to cover the individual seasons of Voyager on The 7th and Last blog, but because I did the TV 'Movies' for both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I wanted to finish that timeline. There are twelve VOY two-parters in all and once again this post will be longer than the usual length. For the record, I won't ever be doing the same for Enterprise or Discovery.

Samuel Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834 vers.)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | 1834 vers.

The Argument: how a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?