I'm sure you already experienced it: you fall asleep, make a nightmare, try to wake up, believe you're awaken but actually you're still sleeping, and then, things go darker and darker… I learnt today that those nightmares have a cute name: hypnagogia. Vice Magazine has interviewed seven regular hypgnagogia sufferers, so let's see if your nightmares are worse than this one:
I suffer from sleep terrors. It’s a more physical version of nightmares where you act out what you are dreaming. Apparently it’s caused by anxiety. There have been cases of people committing stabbings and murders in their sleep. It gets pretty extreme.
The worst experience I ever had happened about a year ago. I was asleep next to my girlfriend and I was dreaming that something was attacking me. When I woke up I had her hand in my mouth and blood all over my face. I had bitten her in my sleep and taken a huge chunk out of her hand. It was so horrible. It’s weird, but in my dream I thought I was saving her.
Pretty strange, eh?
If you like night related topics, you may enjoy reading this interesting essay : If we had no moon.
In the past I used to be greatly in love with horror movies and in many ways I still am. That love affair hasn’t always been smooth sailing though. There’s been a huge horror boom in the film industry over the last few years and a boom at anything is very likely to result loads of crap being produced. Same applies here; Hollywood has been pushing out a crappy horror movie after another for quite some time now and there haven’t been too many quality productions to keep the genre alive in a way it deserves.
In case you’re in a mood for celebration Halloween by watching some of the best horror films out there I decided to make your life a little easier and more frightening by making a list of 13 movies that will scare you off your pants. Some of the more sensitive users may even soil those pants before that.
In no particular order my unlucky 13 movies are:
"The Exorcist", "Carrie", "The Others", "The Shining", "Halloween", "Storm of the Century", "The Birds", "Cujo", "Hellraiser", "Candyman", "Psycho", "Pet Sematary" and "It."
Each one of these has resulted in losing some sleep which is a great way to judge a horror movie. If it makes you feel uneasy and uncomfortable enough to stare at the ceiling while you’re wide awake in your bed at 3AM it was a decent movie!
Oh, besides those older movies it actually seems that there’s a new one hitting the theatres in a couple of days and the trailer seems quite promising. “1408” is based on a novel by Stephen King and the lead roles are played by John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson – these should serve as a recommendation.
Found in Wikipedia:
- Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the earth. (Mussolini, erm, you know who he is)
- Never Born, Never Died—Only visited this planet Earth between December 11, 1931 and January 19, 1990. (Rajneesh, Indian spiritual teacher)
- Finally I am becoming stupider no more. (Paul Erdos, Hungarian mathematician)
- Life's a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once, and now I know it. (John Gray, English poet)
- Don't Try. (Charles Bukowski, drunk poet and novelist)
- The Best is yet to come. (Frank Sinatra, American singer)
Are you depressed enough now ? Oh, maybe you didn't understand anything. French readers, please, follow the guide. European readers, stay with me, the torture is not over (it's Halloween, remember). Let's focus now on the best dying words :)
- I am still alive! (Caligula, Roman Emperor, stabbed to death by his own guards)
- Ay Jesus. (Charles V, King of France)
- I'm bored with it all. (Winston Churchill, before slipping into a coma. He died 9 days later)
- I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring. (Richard Feynman, physicist)
- Why do you weep. Did you think I was immortal? (Louis XIV, King of France)
I don't know why I enjoy reading those kind of sentences. You may think I'm a weirdo but it really makes me feel better. There's so much peace when you give up… It's my own Prozac!
There are days when poking someone’s eyes out with a pencil seem like the natural course of action and somehow that would also fits the gruesome spirit of Halloween. While living this fantasy over and over again inside your own head is quite alright (maybe not quite sane, but alright!) hurting other people is never right. The next best thing to do is to get yourself a Living Dead Doll pencil sharpener pictured below.
Just stick your favourite pencil in the doll’s bleeding eye and it’ll gently push the shavings right out of it’s mouth. The experience itself is the key point of the whole deal but as an added bonus you get a set of sharp pencils. The sharpeners have already become collector’s items – they were sold for $2,99 and the price was so sweet that these are long gone by now.
The pic is from the site of Matthew James Taylor – a guy that has made an artform out of sharpening pencils among other things. Cheers!
Be scared, you small human beings. Today tears of terror will be crushed from your eyes, while Jouni and I will die… laughing. Halloween on laFraise is a serious topic. It means that the Beast itself takes possession of this blog. Its servants will post like slaves, every hour, from noon till midnight: thirteen posts, thirteen ways to thank Satan for being with us today (hi Satan, which of our tshirts do you prefer?).
Arioch, Mighty Lord of Chaos, Duke of Hell,
Aid me now ! I give you blood and souls and freakin' good new designs.
Erm. Sorry. So let's begin with a present to the lord of the Dark Side: dogs. Yep, dogs are man's best friends, but devil's best friends as well. Because they are so friendly, and never fear to appear ridiculous, they needed their own Halloween's disguise. And I know you want the same.
See you in one hour for the next scream… Jouni's already preparing it. Ha ha.
Today’s new shirt combines the qualities of Monday’s shirts – it’s cute and horrifying at the same time. Poor kitty has probably seen better days but at least the adorable puppy got the nutrition he needs to become a big and handsome pooch. “Oukilekitty” is one of Lufograf’s designs.
"Oukilekitty" (orange) in our store
"Oukilekitty" (cranberry) in our store
The winner from the “American Politics” theme competition we had here on the EU site a while back has now made it to a shirt and in a very special way, I might add. Since we are constantly trying to improve laFraise in all ways possible we’re also trying out new printing techniques whenever we have the chance to do that. The print on this shirt uses actually not one but two different new techniques never seen before on our site; “discharging” and metallic foil.
The main part of Conker’s design has been done using the “discharge” technique which essentially means that all color has been removed from that part of the shirt. The end result feels wonderful – there’s just the fabric itself and nothing else. Some details in “U.Scream” are done using gold foil to give a bit more bling. Personally I’m just all too excited about this to skip the shirt – My order’s already in!
If you have any questions about the new techniques just fire away. I’d be happy to answer them.
"U.Scream" (longsleeve) in our store
"U.Scream" (t-shirt) in our store
Today’s blog entries are purely about the shirts and new winners, bare with us and I promise you’ll get your fair share of other content starting tomorrow at noon. ;)
I’m happy to announce that we’ve got a new EU winner and this dude comes from Brazil – meet Bizparulz and his design “Curiosity ate the Cat.”
Since we still don’t get quite enough people voting on the EU competition this is a crew choice. It’s encouraging to notice that the numbers of votes for each design are going up and that we’ve actually knocked down the “100 votes” barrier on a few designs but it would be great to get more people into voting and writing critique. In the French competition each selected design needs to have more than 500 votes which somewhat makes sense since that’s how many shirts were making from each winning design. It also makes sense because when there are more votes sabotage on the voting has less effect – unfortunately there are people out in our community that are dropping 1’s on designs just for the hell of it and to be mean.
To give you an example; if you have 500 votes on a design it doesn’t really matter if 5 bullies are dissing your piece for no reason at all since those 5 are only 1% of the votes. Then again when you have 50 votes on a design the votes from those same 5 bullies are now 10% of the total and that has a fairly significant negative impact on the total score. Enough about the negative things though – this entry was supposed to be about celebrating!
“Curiosity ate the Cat” really hits my nerve when it comes to a sense of humor and the designer chose a nice color for the shirt too. Don’t think I have any on that color yet so this is a definite “gotta have” for me. Also the way tiny pink areas have been used is wonderful – you don’t need to put in a whole lot of all the colors you decide to use in your designs and little highlights do the trick at least for me. The designer hasn’t been contacted yet but I’ll do that right away after publishing this blog entry and we’ll probably get some comments from a fairly happy guy that just made 1000€’s.
New EU winner is also waiting just around the corner – we will select it in two weeks and if you “hurry up the cakes” (which is just a wonderful expression from the land of Engrish) it could be you!
