We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 422

 stand-out viewing for the month of December (more like MEHcember amiriteyouknowwhatimtalkingaboutnewnormalnewnormalnewnormal) 

(November)

SMILEY FACE KILLERS (2020, dir. Tim Hunter)

unknowable creepers methodically stalk gay porn meat markets for mutilated tributes to an obscure drowned god. 

COMIN' AT YA! (1981, dir. Ferdinando Baldi)

no one can deliver a resplendently brain-damaged spaghetti fight collage quite like Baldi. the dimension-breaking psychosis gets ramped up even further in Get Mean. seek out both. 

 RENT-A-PAL (2020, dir Jon Stevenson) 

a soot-dark cringe-comedic cautionary tale warning of the dangers of unmanageable expectations tied to the thirst for society's misplaced overimportance on a strain of companionship that is ultimately one-sided and all-destructive. 

ELLIOT (2017, dir. Craig Jacobson) 

every frame is a singular work of deranged art beamed from the private hell of the aimlessly alienated. 

PSYCHOMAGIC: A HEALING ART (2019, dir, Alejandro Jodorowksy) 

an emotionally overwhelming spellcast that suggests Jodorowsky's realities ate even more intoxicatingly bizarre than his fantasies. 

FETUS (2008, dir. Brian Paulin)

belongs in the same rarified territory as other elevated gore filth such as Cat Sick Blues and the works of Hisayasu Sato, Olaf Ittenbach, and Barry J. Gillis as being something crafted from a place of raw, frustrated mental aggression.

POSSESSOR UNCUT (2020, dir. Brandon Cronenberg) 

an undercover psychomanical netherworld hellride. 

MISS VIOLENCE (2013, dir. Alexandros Avranas) 

to lighten things up after watching this one, i made it a double feature with Mysterious Skin. womp womp. 

NAIL IN THE COFFIN: THE FALL AND RISE OF VAMPIRO (2019, dir. Michael Paszt) 

the real violence is tenderness. 

MOPE (2019, Lucas Heyne) 

at the nexus of the fork where the roads of  the Disaster Artist, the Talented Mr. Ripley, and Wonderland converge, you get this inevitable cult classic cringe opera that should be mandatory viewing for any delusional nut-bust who thinks they can climb the ranks of male porn stardom. 

Awwwwwww Yeah vol. 189

 

Sasha Grey 

and Isabella 

Lovestory 

are the future 

of post-digital 

desire

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 421

 

A Stupendous Trailer Arrives For EVANGELION 3.0 + 1.0: THRICE UPON A TIME!

RIP Jon Huber aka Mr. Brodie Lee

 

AEW Star Brodie Lee Dead At 41

Chris Jericho, AJ Styles, Sheamus, Others React to Death of Brodie Lee

i don't talk a lot about pro-wrestling on this blog, but it's legitimately one of my absolute favorite creative mediums, and for the past ten or so years, Jon Huber, whether under the personas of Brodie Lee or Luke Harper (his WWE handle, where he was the "lieutenant" of perennial bright spot Bray Wyatt's doomsday swamp populist faction), has been at the very top of personal PWI 500. 

with a presence both monstrous and cerebral, Huber occupied one of wrestling's most enduring and captivating Jungian archetypes; the rampaging human Kaiju, and brought to it the kind of sinister intelligence and cagey pathos not seen since the days of Bruiser Brody and Abdullah the Butcher, not to mention the comic book athleticism of fast moving joint manipulators like Taka Michonoku and Minoru Suzuki. 

from Chikara to AEW, i can't say i've ever seen Huber deliver a bad match, even when being stifled by the micro-managing constraints of the WWE Mechanism. i can't help but call this passing unfair, given that Huber was finally getting his just due in the white-hot AEW, where he turned what could've been a pale echo of past wrestling cult leaders (Kevin Sullivan, Raven, Don Callis' "Jackal" persona) and morphed it into a blissfully choleric splicing of Reddit board incel recruiters and his previous employer, one Vincent Kennedy McMahon, raising the profile of the one-time punch line stable that was the Dark Order into one of the program's most compelling angles. 

 but don't take my word for it...    

YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH

Books... are FUN vol. 10

 “The kernel of this necropolis is a cell where Gille de Rais is enthroned, a banished monarch bearing astrolabe and caduceus of vitrified memory. Dirty iron light shudders from a fulminating althanor fired by carbonized embryos, flanked by catafiques laden with lymphs, bile phials, pederastic essences, bottled catatonias, a panoply of pharmaceutical arcana, ichors and drugs to oblivionise, hermetic grimoires and profane blue velvet bibles.”

The Unreprinted: RAISM by James Havoc

Negation Aspiration vol. 257

 

Eric Clapton joins Van Morrison’s ‘anti-lockdown’ crusade. Twitter is not amused

of all the people you'd think would be in support of windows being closed and locked

Negation Aspiration vol. 256

 

Part Robot, Part Frog: Xenobots Are the First Robots Made From Living Cells

Negation Aspiration vol. 255

 Young people ages 18 to 29 are moving back in with their parents at record rates (and, often, that’s spun as some sort of moral failing, an innate inability to “make” it on your own, without regard for the circumstances, culture, and caregiving that might play a role). Meanwhile, many college students have been booted from campuses, losing jobs, communities, and stability in the process. The pandemic is set to exacerbate postponement of “key” life events, including getting married, having kids, or buying homes, which were already happening later compared to previous generations, if one chooses to or can do them at all. A popular meme depicts the contrast between young people today and their parents’ generation when it comes to major life decisions.

But framing these statistics as “setbacks” relies on myths about a period of life that were always mired by harsh realities — from job failures to becoming a caretaker for aging parents to navigating finances and health insurance sometimes for the first time solo. Of course, these things don’t only happen in young adulthood nor are young adults the only ones who have experienced a year of pause, loss, or personal chaos. But because this period is often heralded as a crucial period of identity formation, it’s worth looking at how that narrative isn’t serving anyone — young adults included.

2020 felt like a “wasted year” for many young adults

But the fantasy of young adulthood has always been a myth.

Negation Aspiration vol. 254

He had an unsuccessful run for office in 2017 for a spot in the Virginia House of Delegates. In that race, he listed allowing fathers to marry their daughters, diminishing women’s rights, and legalizing child pornography among his goals if elected. Larson ran for local public office twice more, always either losing or dropping out of the race.

In 2018 he told Vice News that “we’re wasting resources by allowing women to work.” He described his political beliefs as “mostly a libertarian platform with a neoreactionary flavor,” and said “there's some truth” to Adolf Hitler’s racist ideology.

When confronted about his pro-pedophilia stance in 2018, he admitted to HuffPost that he ran two now-defunct websites where pedophiles discussed their fantasies in chat rooms. Among numerous posts written under a pseudonym on one of the sites, Larson is said to have once suggested “every pedo” should impregnate a “pedo wife” to create “fucktoys.”

Fresno authorities noted Larson’s “deeply disturbing” track record of promoting pedophilia after announcing his arrest on Saturday. “This is a man who runs a website, which encourages the raping of children and sharing of naked photos and video of children being raped,” the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said. They believe Larson convinced the young girl to send him inappropriate photos of herself before her abduction.

Larson has also reportedly admitted to raping his ex-spouse, who was transgender and later committed suicide. The two had a child that Larson lost custody of in court.

‘Pro Pedophilia’ White Supremacist Forced 12-Year-Old Girl to Wear a Disguise as He Kidnapped Her

Awwwww Yeah vol. 188

 The Carini case, however, includes a previously unreported twist: His mother testified in court this summer that her son in fact was in an ongoing physical relationship with a steady girlfriend over the past two years. At the same time, an FBI agent said he found writings by Carini that explored the possibility of killing both himself and “a female named Jamie,” which was his girlfriend’s name, according to court records.

Incel Who Fantasized About Killing ‘Hot Cheerleaders’ Pleads Guilty to Bomb-Making Charge

Negation Aspiration vol. 253

Limitations to the Doomsday Machine comparison are obvious: Facebook cannot in an instant reduce a city to ruins the way a nuclear bomb can. And whereas the Doomsday Machine was conceived of as a world-ending device so as to forestall the end of the world, Facebook started because a semi-inebriated Harvard undergrad was bored one night. But the stakes are still life-and-death. Megascale is nearly the existential threat that megadeath is. No single machine should be able to control the fate of the world’s population—and that’s what both the Doomsday Machine and Facebook are built to do.

The cycle of harm perpetuated by Facebook’s scale-at-any-cost business model is plain to see. Scale and engagement are valuable to Facebook because they’re valuable to advertisers. These incentives lead to design choices such as reaction buttons that encourage users to engage easily and often, which in turn encourage users to share ideas that will provoke a strong response. Every time you click a reaction button on Facebook, an algorithm records it, and sharpens its portrait of who you are. The hyper-targeting of users, made possible by reams of their personal data, creates the perfect environment for manipulation—by advertisers, by political campaigns, by emissaries of disinformation, and of course by Facebook itself, which ultimately controls what you see and what you don’t see on the site. Facebook has enlisted a corps of approximately 15,000 moderators, people paid to watch unspeakable things—murder, gang rape, and other depictions of graphic violence that wind up on the platform. Even as Facebook has insisted that it is a value-neutral vessel for the material its users choose to publish, moderation is a lever the company has tried to pull again and again. But there aren’t enough moderators speaking enough languages, working enough hours, to stop the biblical flood of shit that Facebook unleashes on the world, because 10 times out of 10, the algorithm is faster and more powerful than a person. At megascale, this algorithmically warped personalized informational environment is extraordinarily difficult to moderate in a meaningful way, and extraordinarily dangerous as a result.

Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

The architecture of the modern web poses grave threats to humanity. It’s not too late to save ourselves.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 324

 

Right-Wing Embrace Of Conspiracy Is 'Mass Radicalization,' Experts Warn

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 420

  “It’s out there. I wear a skintight black leather jumpsuit with grenades attached to different body parts, and if I don’t rescue the governor’s daughter from this state line where they’re all ghosts and bring her back they’re gonna blow me up.”

Your New 

Nic Cage 

Obsession 

May End Up 

Being 

Sion Sono’s 

Action-Horror 

Movie 

‘Prisoners of 

the Ghostland’ 

[Images]

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 419

 

Controversial South Korean director Kim Ki-duk dies of Covid aged 59

Kim Ki-duk: punk-Buddhist shock, violence – and hypnotic beauty too

AHHHHHHHHHH vol. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Imploding MAGA World Turns to Civil War Fantasies, Secession After Supreme Court Disaster

#gorenoise vol. 50

 

The Human Body 

as War Zone and 

Receptacle of Pain: 

The Body Art of 

Martin Bladh and 

Karolina Urbaniak’s “The 

Torture of the 100 Pieces”

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 418

 

PSYCHO GOREMAN: Awesome New Trailer And Poster For Steve Kostanski's Awesome Horror Comedy

#gorenoise vol. 49

 

Suffolk Police Scandal’s Effect on Gilgo Beach Probe Eyed in Investigation Discovery TV Special, Podcast

Awwww Yeah vol. 187

 The specific stories that OUR tells are intensely cinematic: bold, heroic, and extremely difficult to fact-check. They are also not the entire truth. An investigation by VICE World News focused on OUR's operations identified a divide between the group's actual practices and some of its claimed successes. What we found aren't outright falsehoods but a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading. 

A Famed Anti-Sex Trafficking Group Has a Problem With the Truth

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 323

hey so yah remember that time conservative diaper mufflers lost their doodie-feces because left-leaning activists had the temerity to interrupt someone's dinner?

Armed Trumpists Surround Michigan Secretary of State’s Home Screaming ‘Stop the Steal’

Negation Aspiration vol. 252

 

Dutch Man Invents Coffin That Turns Bodies Into Mushrooms: ‘We are nutrients, not waste’

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 417

 There is a found footage film that has gone viral on Tik Tok and social media over the past few weeks. Viewers claiming they are being traumatized. Some are convinced it’s real. It’s even become somewhat of a dare to even sit through it, going so far as to prompt its creator to post an eerie video on Tik Tok (below). Over 200 million views on the hashtag and counting. It has even recently soared to the number one spot on IMDB.

The movie is.....

The Stars 

and Creator 

of Viral Film 

‘Megan Is 

Missing’ 

Reunite on 

The Boo Crew 

Podcast

AHHHHHHHHHHH vol. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Giuliani has tested 

positive for 

the coronavirus,

 Trump says.

Awwwww Yeah vol. 186

 

Far Right Claims COVID Orgy Was a Honeytrap Set by Western Spies

#gorenoise vol. 48

 

Netflix Releases 

First Trailer 

For Yorkshire 

Ripper 

Documentary

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 322

 That's right, the people who routinely say they don't read the president's outrageous tweets are now pretending to care about online civility. Moreover, they are complaining about "partisanship" when they all voted to confirm Mick Mulvaney, the onetime Tea Party congressman and founder of the House Freedom Caucus, which was so "partisan" it chased both John Boehner and Paul Ryan out of the speaker's chair and forced regular government shutdowns. (Mulvaney himself told the Washington Post that Tanden has no chance of confirmation.)

We are seeing a return to the smarmy, sanctimonious, "adults in the room" pretense of Republicans who will wring their hands over Democrats' alleged incivility and partisanship — toward Donald Trump, the crudest, most insulting brute in American politics since Joseph McCarthy. Hypocrisy doesn't even come close to describing this. It is shamelessness on a level that is downright psychopathic.

Suddenly Republicans want norms, ethics and "civility": Are they actually psychopaths?

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 321

 

'I gave every inch of my life to him': Brad Parscale opens up about final days in Trump campaign

#gorenoise vol. 47

 

‘Cannibal 

Holocaust’ 

Video Game 

‘Cannibal’ 

Retitled 

‘Borneo: 

A Jungle 

Nightmare’; 

Watch 

New Trailer

#gorenoise vol. 46

 

Chinese Guy Who Faked Image of Australian Soldier Killing Child Says He's Doing More

Awwwww Yeah vol. 185

 

An anti-gay Hungarian politician has resigned after being caught by the police fleeing a 25-man orgy through a window

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 416

 stand-out viewing for the stressful few years of November 

(October)

AMULET (2020, dir. Romola Garai)

oh i get it. 

SPUTNIK (2020, dir. Egor Abramenko)

like a less bonheaded version of Venom. 

THE BLACK CAT (1989, dir. Luigi Cozzi)

a meta-sequel to Daria Nicolodi's (RIP) Three Mothers trilogy that was also released as a Demons sequel? if this was anymore of an Italian stereptype it would be using a large turtle shell as a hoverboard.

DOGS OF WAR (1980, dir. John Irvin)

like a way more existential, way less heroic take on the whole "assemble a team of bad asses to murder a dictator so we can install our own" thing. 

BLACKOUT EXPERIMENTS (2016, dir. Rich Fox)

full disclosure; the part where the low-muttering woman in her underwear close-straddled the dude tied to a chair while making him fist-fuck a raw chicken gave me some tingly wingly in my special area. it's been a rough. few. weeks. 

DIAL CODE: SANTA CLAUS (1989, dir. Rene Manzor)

like a Spielberg (or Spielberg-esque) holiday epic from a child murdering hell dimension populated by violent French art-whores.

BLUE MONKEY (1987, dir. William Fruet)

"what's a blue monkey?"

"well, it's not quite blue, and it's not quite a monkey, but maaaaaaaaaaan hahahahahahahaha.... so to answer your question i don't know."

CRAZY, NOT INSANE (2020, dir. Alex Gibney)

a fascinating, frustrating, and feeling look at how we fail us. 

CATEGORY III: THE UNTOLD STORY OF HONG KONG EXPLOITATION CINEMA (2018, dir. Calum Waddell)

a deep dive into cinema's guttural id

COLD LIGHT OF DAY (1989, dir. Fhiona-Louise) 

dumps floodlights upon the dismal alienation of a serial killer's private universe.