» The Dirty Secrets of Your Trade

Cinema Projection
Ah the hallowed back rooms of the movie theatre. Things I and other people have done when you either haven't been there (late at night) or have been watching your film.

1. Someone is watching you in the movie theatre. We can see you make out, we can see you stupid simian fuckers who insist on texting all through a film (you useless limp dick half brained visigoths fucking die). We can see if it's a half two in the afternoon session and you are an old man who feels a need to wank and it's us who open trap doors and yell 'Stop wanking you fucker'. Best thing I ever saw was two hot girls who thought they were alone make out. Alerted other via intercom and soon there was three guys watching from the rear window.

2. Sometimes your projectionist will be naked.

3. Often stoned

4. Another trade secret that people always ask about since fight club is the classic 'do you splice porn into kiddies movies?' line. Most people seem to think that if you take a porno picture from a magazine you can somehow magically insert it inbetween two pieces of 35mm film, wind it onto a reel at thousands of revs per second, then shove it through steel plates and expose it to intense temperatures and magically have the image both survive and appear on screen. The answer is no, we don't splice in porn because we don't have any 35mm porn stock.

5. We do splice in violent content from other films or innocent content into violent films. Yes it's noticable.

6. Yes it is no co-incidence that the oil company adverts seem to be the most scratched and unviewable. This is because of me standing there with a drawing pin against the film as it runs through the projector.

7. Movie seemed to start late? I wanted to listen to the end of that song / album. Fuck you.

8. After hours we lock the door and have access to our own private cinema. Deluxe. You can get horrendously mashed and watch all the old films in the vault. Or fuck your girlfriend at the front of the cinema in front of Donnie Darko.

9. This activity can also be done on the job while you are watching your film.

10. I make scary faces with a torch and a mask through the windows sometimes, just in case someone turns around.
(Wed 3rd Oct 2007, 7:26, More)

» Messing with the Dark Side

The dark side fucks with us...
Apologies for the length (its fucking huge) but all this is a true story. I fucking swear. It seriously changed my outlook on circumstances like this permanently. I've even included the address of the actual house. So if you feel like it, go get a cup of tea and have a read, if not skip it.

It started with the house.

I had to live in this house. I was recently unencumbered of a young lass I had been living with. In a very short space of time I had to acquire new lodgings for my self and my personal affects. My friend of old times fortunately had room in his house.

The house.

The dwelling in particular was numbered as 13a on Adams terrace and was situated in Aro Valley, A suburb of Wellington, New Zealand. The valley itself was the first placed where European settlers built significant homes some 140 odd years before. All of it’s houses are aged, some decrepit, some protected. Backyards were scrub and thick, knee high under bush leading into forest.

13a was set into the left hand side of the gully, set deep back away from the road by a good twenty five to thirty meters of stairs. Our house, as it was when I moved in, never saw the light of the sun. It was eternally in shadow throughout the year. To say it was damp would be approximate to saying that there is a little bit of rice in Japan. 13a was a house damp to the point of decay. Myself and my housemates would, on a regular basis, find exceedingly large, dead spiders scattered around the house. Spiders would crawl inside our cold abode to end their days, it was their graveyard.

As the days progressed after my arrival I became aware of a background sense of uneasiness within myself. I labeled the feeling as a symptom of my recently terminated relationship, yet when I was outside of the house I felt in no way perturbed by the same vague and somewhat unpleasant feelings I had while in the house. I did however notice the same behaviors in my housemates. The mood was often hushed inside. People were quiet, withdrawn, on edge.

Then I started noticing the regular and constant footfall noises coming from below our house, as if walking up stairs, for the house was split into two levels.

Winter set in. It grew bitterly cold in our mildew pit within the pine trees. One day, being on edge while sitting in the lounge I once again heard the heavy footsteps of our neighbor below, tramping up and down on his stairway.

“Why does he have to be so loud when he’s walking up and down those stairs?” I commented aloud, greatly vexed by the number of times he felt inclined to walk up them of a day, like some insane bee plagued with a wasting mental deficiency.
My friend looked at me from across the sitting room,
“There are no stairs down there bro. They were demolished years ago when the house was split in two.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean no one knows who is walking up and down those stairs that don’t exist anymore.”

A chill came over me as the tale of a previous house mate who had been more than a little too interested in study of the occult was related. While too long to relate here it led to his eventual mental breakdown and subsequent departure from the flat, leaving behind him only a mutilated copy of the King James Bible.

Time wore on and I grew accustomed to the noises from the stairwell that didn’t exist, though it brings chills to remember the noise now. Winter descended like a hellish roller coaster into what can only be described as uberwinter.

I was seated on my own in the lounge, not one of my housemates was at home of the evening. I was reading a book.
The footsteps in the hall started again, they walked up, down, then up again. A small knock at the door disturbed me. I glanced out towards the smoke glass doorway through the hall. No one was illuminated in the porch light. I rested myself back against the wall, noticing the sudden plume of steam from my breath. Then down one end of the hallway, near the door

BANG!

A huge sound, as if a fist was being slammed into the wall. Every hair on my body stood on end!

BANG! BANG BANG!

Coming down the hallway to me faster and faster. I sat paralyzed with a horrible crawling fear! Jesus God What was happening?

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

Behind my head I could *feel* the impacts on the wall. The paralysis snapped as I fled in terror though the hallway, daring not look, into my bedroom, slammed the door and played music at an extremely loud volume. The noises stopped or were drowned out by the music.
Sometime later my friend returned home and found me in my chambers still in a perturbed state.

He took one look in my eyes, leant back on the doorframe, and, raising his head slightly from where he had rested it on his chest asked me quite plainly,

“Banging on the walls?”

I nodded furiously in ascension, relieved he had obviously experienced the same. I felt myself clawing my way back to sanity as he related the story of his experience, similar to mine. It did not end there however. This whateverthefuck was not adverse to manifesting in front of groups of people.

Have you ever heard the sound of phantom breathing? I have and it's fucking horrible.

After a night of playing records in our lounge I was in the process of retiring to my quarters of an evening. I had performed my regular evening ablutions and was walking down the cold, dark hallway when I heard my friend call my harshly name from under his breath, almost like a whisper he said

“Get in here now!”

I joined him and his lady companion who were sitting on the couch. They both looked pale and shaken.

“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Quiet, listen!”

Then I heard it.


From directly in front of our faces, not from the ceiling, not from the floorboards and certainly not from any outside source, came the sound of heavy, distinct, dreadfully cold, breathing. It was sound a person might make as they breathed their last.

It was an eerie, disjointed sound, un-natural and uniquely disturbing, seen The 6th Sense? Yeah, just like that. It's freakin me out all over again writting about it. We gazed at each other in pure disbelief, a look that mingled both terror and sheer amazement at what was manifesting before our very eyes and ears. Whatever it was, it was definitely intended for us to hear it. We could feel the tangible presence of something inhabiting the space just in front of our faces.

Something, that was looking back at us
It continued manifesting for maybe a minute, then faded away. We all retired back to our rooms immediately, leaving all the lights on, not trusting our senses in the dark and jumping at the shadows in the corners of the room lest they hold some spiritual vision of unchained malice. For this was the feeling that all these events held, malice. We were unwanted, extremely unwanted.

The months progressed and during the daytimes and in the bar’s of the city we would make light of our haunted house. Then the moments would return in the late evenings. When you were afraid to glance in the mirror for fear of glancing something over your shoulder. When you were surprised by a cat moving through the house. When you heard those echoing footsteps in the hallway again.

Other events happened that were not experienced by me. A friend sleeping in our lounge overnight told us how he felt a presence move through the room, disturbing glasses and cups on the coffee table, walk up to him and tug on the bone pendant hung around his neck. He refused to stay with us in 13a ever again following that incident.

We eventually moved out from 13a in the early spring, we were all of us desperately ill with complaints relating to the overwhelming dampness of the house. One night we returned, to clean the empty house for the new tenants before their arrival. The house stood empty and dead, in a way I’m sure it was happy to be. We entered the dark structure and turned on all the lights. Without our familiar furniture and belongings around, the menace of the house increased one hundred fold. Five minutes cleaning separate rooms was enough to convince both of us that we should stick together. We felt continually watched by the presence we knew existed in the empty rooms of the spider’s death chamber. Eyes watched us from behind the walls, regarding us with an intent that was palpably hostile. We finished our cleaning, moved backwards through the shell, turning off lights one by one, until only the porch light remained. We turned it off, locked the door and moved with haste down to the road below. Forever sealing off the chamber from all but our memories. We never ever have returned to 13a Adams terrace.

That is the end of the stories I have to tell of 13a Adams terrace. Maybe others have more, maybe they don’t, but the details as I have related them to you did in fact happen.

Apparently goths live their now, and they love it. Filthy goths.
(Mon 24th Apr 2006, 6:58, More)

» Rock and Roll Stories

Nothing rocks more than Kittens
I saved a Kitten yesterday!

We have very deep storm guttering in our town that is six feet deep and a good five feet wide. It's needed for the rainy season (which is now...bollocks)and is infested with snakes and large tropical spiders (southern Japan)

I heard this pathetic "Meeeeeow! PLOP splash splash splash..." when I went across the road the get a beer from the vending machine the other night. Pull out my cellphone and switch on the light to find tiny little kittenness paddling around at the bottom of the open storm guttering. He was trying to jump up the sides but he would get halfway, run out of Kitteny power and slide back down.

Couldn't reach down far enough, so I ran over to my neighbours and borrowed their lads fishing net, scooped him up out of the drain.

When I went back a while later to get my beer I saw his mum carrying him across the road in her mouth.

Off topic, but like, I saved a Kitten!
(Thu 6th Jul 2006, 3:48, More)

» Guilty Pleasures

Stupid Gaijin part 2
There are a variety of fun things you can do to keep yourself entertained while living here in Japan.

I often make my students do or say inane or bizarre things. One day I had them stand up and sit down repeatedly in a perverse abuse of power. While learning the phrases
“Once, Twice, Three times,” I could not resist throwing in the line “A lady” and sure enough the entire class repeated. A good trick is to exploit their lack of peripheral vision and sneak up to the side of them, scream, and run away. I have taught 300 students how to mimic chickens perfectly and ALL my students say the word “Spaghetti” with the worst Italian accent I could possibly teach. I made each student wear a Jason style hockey mask and speak English. I chase the head of discipline around and constantly try ton undermine his authority. Any tongue twisters will after being mangled by 14 yr old Japanese students will of course contain multiple swear words and I laugh for no apparent reason. I sing to my lunch at my desk loudly. I refuse to answer my phone by saying “moshi moshi”.

I also enjoy doing very bad things in public away from my city while drunk and explaining to all passers by in my best American accent that I am American and I work in the military.

I OFTEN WEAR SHOES ON MY TATAMI….muahahahahahaaaaahahaha….ahem…also if you leave a red wine stain on tatami alone for long enough it will eventually dissapear.
(Fri 8th Apr 2005, 4:45, More)

» Housemates from hell

The Jizz Master
Just to keep things confidential, let’s give this guy a made up name, um, let’s call him Kevin.

Kevin was 26 and lived in a flat filled with 19 year olds. He was a short, stocky, hairy, profusely sweaty chap whose sexual urges and desires far outweighed his ability to fulfill them in the normal time honored tradition of shagging girls. This led to some rather aberrant behavior. Let’s move through the list shall we?

1. Caught masturbating on the upstairs landing while listening to our girlfriends chat in the downstairs lounge. On two different occasions.
2. Describing to said girls the color of their underwear while they leaned forward to grab their drinks.
3. Consistently winning the household trophy for the longest shower in the history of masturbation.
4. Having a constantly wet mattress (he had the only video player in the house and we used to have to go into his room to watch movies)
5. ‘Jizzumriffic’ scented room.
6. Caught sleeping, sucking his index and middle fingers with his ear pressed up against the door of my bedroom after a night spent listening to me and my missus shag. He got a kick in the stomach for that one.
7. There was a little young Asian chap who would come round from time to time…
8. Describing his experiences of ‘circle-jerking’ when he was twelve.

Other non sexually orientated weirdness from Jizz master K…

1. Wearing tiny little stubby shorts, sitting in the middle of the lounge and eating mandarin oranges, but instead of eating the whole mandarin he would eat swallow the juice and spit the mashed up rind into a plastic bag, noisily, in front of anyone.
2. Once not making it up the stairs to the toilet in time to realize he needed more bog paper, falling down on the stairs and screaming until someone fetched him some.
3. Having a hissy fit when anyone ever touched his food, which was odd because he was…
4. …an avowed Marxist. I thought they were all about sharing everything until no one has anything except the guy at the top? I hate you filthy commies.

In the same flat there was a guy called Dinky. Dinky was a young Maori boy, quite skinny and prone to, um, we believe it was schizophrenia. One day some fool company gave him a credit card. He went on a drug binge. He was dancing around the lounge, singing about Jesus and waving a decent size knife or two. We tried to get him to put the knives down, but he didn’t and instead proceeded to run into the city. He was eventually found dancing in a convenience store, with said knifes. The police set about him with dogs, which savaged him, and then they beat the living shit out of him. When some mail eventually did come for him, it turned out his name really was Dinky.

On the other hand, once I lived with a guy who managed to grow five enormous (6foot plus high) cannabis plants in our backyard. I remember harvest day fondly, and not much more of the next few weeks after that.
(Thu 12th Apr 2007, 6:55, More)