I wake up screaming #7: How-to
It’s been nearly two years since the first I wake up screaming post appeared on this site. More recently, Jane’s urging me to form a Flickr group centered around the motif has yielded a lot of fun. It’s fascinating to watch others send their own contributions from their personal catalogues of horrors. Though the group is still in its infancy, the range of entries is already impressive, and there’s a lot to love in the group pool. However, in a very limited number of cases, there is also a certain genetic drift in the direction of the merely annoying or puzzling. Rather than going in with the heavy hand of a group administrator, I prefer just to post this little how-to for those unsure about how to approach the daunting task of photographing a worthwhile IWUS candidate:
Step 1:
See how easy that was?
Notes:
- The above tableau is in the foyer of a popular local restaurant
- My first apartment in Nova Gorica also featured entryway taxidermy: a snarling ferret immediately inside the door
- Squirrels are noted climbers and have never been known, in the wild, to rely on ropes or fixed anchors
- Likewise, their use of rucksacks for nut transportation is undocumented
- Taxidermy mounts are vulnerable to the same moths that eat sweaters, apparently
- ‘Can you mount this owl I found on the side of the road?’
There are rules, and one of them is that you never, ever, under any circumstances mount anything found by the side of the road.
Comment by Jane — Thursday 28 June 07 @ 21.52 MDT+2.00
And never ever mount your cat. What are people thinking when they mount vermin and hang it in the entryway?! This is a serious violation of all that is Feng Shui.
Comment by gwynne — Friday 29 June 07 @ 00.46 MDT+2.00
The thing is, these are eerily similar to the famous Brixton Crack Squirrels, which my pal Rik claims “used to hang out in the little park in front of the Ritzy Cinema, twitching spastically, dancing to music only they could hear and generally creating a malevolent ambience”.
If they were black, they’d also be similar to the squirrels that ACTUALLY ATTACKED ME ONCE in Vancouver’s Stanley Park in 1995. They were most assuredly as moth-eaten as the ones pictured above (despite being, you know, still alive), and I’m pretty sure they hungered for human flesh. Or my sandwich. I didn’t care to stick around and find out which. Those things will stalk you with robotic determination, their bloodshot eyes bugging out of oozing sockets, limbs rigid with disease, fur emerging in tufts between patches of scabby flesh — and these things — these exhibitions of God’s neglect — will WALK UP YOUR LEG. (Possibly using ropes, harnesses and fixed anchors? It is the west coast after all.) And then, I’m quite certain, they’ll eat your face.
(This memory has in fact resulted in me waking up screaming.)
Comment by Roo — Friday 29 June 07 @ 01.26 MDT+2.00
Wow, Roo!
Your comment is so outstandingly horrific, it has been awarded the CATALAN COLOSTOMY APE HIGH HORROR HONORS AWARD BADGE PASTE-IN HTML AWARD BADGE HONORS.
As seen in the I wake up screaming Flickr group. Some restrictions may apply. Award void in Canada.
Comment by sgazzetti — Friday 29 June 07 @ 20.08 MDT+2.00
Awesome. I’ll post the honorsawardhonorsbadge and note for my six readers that it’s void. I’m so happy!! Thank you God for helping me to win this award, thanks mom and dad for encouraging me and believing in me when no one else would, and thank you rodentia of Greater Vancouver for freaking me the hell out regularly, profoundly, and to the lasting detriment of my mental health. I’d also like to thank the Isoglossia Academy and everyone who voted for me.
Comment by Roo — Saturday 30 June 07 @ 03.24 MDT+2.00
The Isoglossia Academy.
Heh.
Comment by Jane — Saturday 30 June 07 @ 14.45 MDT+2.00
No! The SQUIRRELS!!
That photo was my workplace desktop wallpaper for DAYS. Which is really saying something. I even left it up when a potential hire was doing some testing at my desk.
My family have always fed rodents in the wild, which is why I was so surprised to find out that they like knapsacks. See, I never knew that.
Comment by Cate — Tuesday 10 July 07 @ 02.24 MDT+2.00