All posts by Eric Robert Nolan

Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. He spent several years a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia. His work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress. Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1996, as a grant writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations. Eric’s poetry has been featured by Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dagda Publishing, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere. His poetry will also be published by Illumen Magazine in its Spring 2014 issue.

“Paris is a moveable feast.”

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“Berlin Undead” is playing for free over at Hulu.

There’s a German zombie movie over at Hulu that I highly recommend.  Its name is “Rammbock” (2011); the somewhat unimaginative Americanized title is “Berlin Undead.”  (And that’s also inaccurate, because the baddies chasing us are infected people, a la “28 Days Later.”  A Hulu membership isn’t required.  The film is in German, with English subtitles.

I’m surprised I don’t hear more praise for this movie among zombie horror fans.  It’s nicely made, and it’s scary in parts.  Its lovelorn, likeable oaf of a protagonist (Michael Fuith) is such an everyman that he’s easy to identify with.  And his cunning high school-age companion (Theo Trebs) seems like he would be the coolest foreign exchange student ever.

Check it out:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/398201

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http://www.hulu.com/watch/398201

Folio 8 from the Aberdeen Bestiary (the tiger)

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Pete’s Perspective: “Fuck all the bullshit!”

Here is a guest post from Blog Correspondent Pete Harrison.  As you might recall, Pete is a veteran of Afghanistan, where he served as an intelligence specialist for the United States Air Force 55th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron.  I believe he knows a thing or two about fighting terrorism.  Based on his message below, I think he also knows a thing or two about common sense.

Pete’s Perspective:

I want to make something clear. I would like to see everyone affiliated with the cowardly terrorist organization ISIS wiped off the face of the Earth. Every last one.

They have proven that they value no human life at all. Not even their own.

They are like bad dogs who will do nothing but attack and maim and kill any and all other dogs.

So they need to be put down. Everywhere they are.

Now to my POINT. If they all CLAIM to be a certain religion, that doesn’t matter to me at all.

They need killing BAD.

If they were all Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Mormon, Protestant, Lutheran, I don’t care what faith they CLAIM to be, I don’t care if they’re all atheists or if they worship canned sardines.

They’re just animals who need to be put down.

So to everyone out there starting up the bullshit argument that saying you want to see all these scum dead equals saying you want to see all Muslims dead, please, give me a break.

Not the same thing at all.

So don’t try to muddy the issue.

Thanks.

 

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A hyena, pictured in the Aberdeen Bestiary

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Photo credit:  “F11v-aberdeen-best-detail” by Unknown – The Aberdeen Bestiary project [1]. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F11v-aberdeen-best-detail.jpg#/media/File:F11v-aberdeen-best-detail.jpg.

“The Second Coming,” by W. B. Yeats

“The Second Coming,”

by W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

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Photo credit: Icon of Second Coming, circa 1700, Greece.  Christ is enthroned in the center surrounded by the angels and saints, Paradise is at the bottom, with the Bosom of Abraham (left) and the Good Thief (right) holding his cross.  The creator is anonymous, the source here is Wikimedia Commons.

“Spending and Saving,” by Dennis Villelmi

You people need to read “Spending and Saving” by poet Dennis Villelmi, recently published by Dead Snakes.  I swear it’s the best poem I’ve read in a long time.

Damn, I wish I could write like this.

Click here for the link to Dead Snakes:

“Spending and Saving,” by Dennis Villelmi

 

 

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Photo credit:  “Greek Silver Stater of Phaistos (Crete), Depictions of Herakles in Greek Numismatics” by Ancient Art – Flickr: A Rare and Magnificent Greek Silver Stater of Phaistos (Crete), Among the Finest Depictions of Herakles in Greek Numismatics. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Wolf sneaking up to the sheepfold, from the Aberdeen Bestiary

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“Oh, Watson. Nothing made me. *I* made me.”

It’s a damn quotable show.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud.

And that Cumberbatch guy is a damn fine actor.

I have no idea which original story the title of “The Abominable Bride” is parodying.

“In a lonely field the rain/ Lashes an abandoned train.”

The Fall of Rome

by W.H. Auden

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

 

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Photo credit:  By Ben Salter from Wales (…and didn’t it rain!!)