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I'll admit it -- I'm a horror movie fanatic, though I'm relatively picky about them. There are a lot of great films I enjoy which are not on this list, so fear not if I've left off your favourite -- I'd love to hear about it in the comments! I've tried to keep it to under 10 per decade, going back to the 1920s, since I'm definitely a silent film fan as well. I FAILED MISERABLY IN THE LATER DECADES. They're in no particular order, otherwise.

1920s

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Metropolis
The Phantom of the Opera
Nosferatu
Faust
The Man Who Laughs
The Penalty
Haxan

1930s

King Kong
Freaks
Dracula
Frankenstein
The Mummy
The Black Cat
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
White Zombie
The Raven

1940s

The Wolf Man
Cat People
I Walked With a Zombie
The Curse of the Cat People

1950s

House of Wax
Godzilla
Them!
Les Diaboliques
The Curse of Frankenstein
Night of the Demon
House on Haunted Hill
Rear Window
The Mummy

1960s (... couldn't get this decade below 15, lol)

Black Sunday
The Horror of Dracula
Les Yeux Sans Visage
Psycho
Village of the Damned
The Innocents
The Pit and the Pendulum
Carnival of Souls
The Haunting
The Last Man on Earth
The Masque of the Red Death
The Devil Rides Out
Night of the Living Dead
Rosemary's Baby
Witchfinder General

1970s (... nope, not this decade, either!)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes
The Crazies
The Exorcist
Black Christmas
Young Frankenstein
Jaws
The Stepford Wives
Carrie
The Omen
Suspiria
Dawn of the Dead
Halloween
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Alien
The Amityville Horror

1980s (I GIVE UP)

Altered States
The Changeling
Friday the 13th
The Shining
An American Werewolf in London
The Evil Dead
Scanners
Poltergeist
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Gremlins
Cat's Eye
Fright Night
The Fly
Aliens
The Lost Boys
The Lair of the White Worm
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Beetlejuice
They Live
Pet Sematary

1990s

Flatliners
Gremlins 2
IT (tv miniseries)
The Silence of the Lambs
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Hocus Pocus
In the Mouth of Madness
Interview with the Vampire
The Stand (tv miniseries)
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
12 Monkeys
The Craft
Scream
Ringu

2000s

From Hell
Donnie Darko
28 Days Later
The Ring
Shaun of the Dead
Pan's Labyrinth
28 Weeks Later
Paranormal Activity
[REC]
Let the Right One In
Coraline
Pontypool

2010s

The Cabin in the Woods
Trollhunter
The Conjuring
As Above, So Below
The Babadook
It Follows
Crimson Peak
The Witch
Train to Busan
Get Out
Hereditary
Parasite

2020s (So far...)

Smile

Last night I found out my childhood best-friend (and neighbour for the first nine years of my life) passed away in August 2023. We fell out years ago for reasons I won't get into, but I have occasionally googled him to see if anything came up. He was a deeply unhappy, troubled person -- and for good reasons, to be fair. The world didn't treat him very well at all, from an early age. Severely dyslexic, indigenous, bullied mercilessly, etc. ... and then a major cardiac arrest (more than a heart attack) at the age of 32, which left him unable to work. I mean, it was hard enough for him to convince people to hire a 6'5" native guy for anything but labour to begin with. I have so many good memories of him from when we were kids, building "time machines", roaming the neighbourhood, climbing trees, playing in an airband at school, him teaching me how to whistle.

I don't know how he passed away. It was sudden, that's all I know. I'm sad. But I also know he's finally at peace, which is a relief. Rest well, D-----. No one can hurt you anymore.

to silent heroes (Oct 20, 2023)

to the girl who
pressed a finger to her lips
quieting a stranger
as an officer went by

to the boy who
passed a morsel of bread
through the bars
as a guard looked away

to the woman who
opened the attic of her home
to frightened neighbours
as jackboots rang aloud

to the man who
refused to speak a name
rejecting his own pain
as a baton came down

to the adult who
knew the hate
but chose instead to help
in seemingly small ways

to the child who
remembered the fear
but chose not to hate
for a better future

to the silent heroes who
showed humanity
when being human
was a dangerous matter

These are ten unconnected haiku I've recently written, in no particular order.

1
Empty, discarded
There sits the shattered vessel
No tears left to cry

2
The sun burns harshly
On both the vast desert sands
And the tundra snow

3
Trailing through the sky
Fiery eyes and razor teeth
Leading the night march

4
Crackling, cozy, crisp
A floating leaf is caught up
And lit by the fire

5
Peering and judging
So many eyes everywhere
Perceiving nothing

6
Through a pane of glass
Brilliant shades of colour
Can be clear as mud

7
The hostile terrain
Rigid, raucous, and radiant
Metal and concrete

8
Slick and serpentine
Vines wind up and up and up
To where green meets blue

9
Endless injuries
Scored deeply into the earth
Bleeding the future

10
Inside bone and wood
Rest effects a whispered song
A soundless chapel

She hides in the centre of a nightmare
Where others fear to tread
But in the middle is where she's safe
And the monsters are her friends

I want to turn this into a longer piece.

take up space

take up space -- in a corner -- out of the way -- safe -- motionless -- no one moves around you -- no one dances around you -- no one needs to -- out of the way -- no one needs you -- move -- dance -- crash -- learn -- bend and weave -- you dance -- they dance -- we take up space -- move around -- crash around -- the dance of life -- don't sit in a corner -- out of the way -- take up space

Glass Moon

As she walks along the darkened shore
Her breath sparkling silver in the air
And heartbeat of waves the only sound
She looks back once, just one last time
At a tiny cabin on the rocky hill

Cast from the window's dark frame
Is the warmth of a single yellow flicker
A candle, the only warmth it holds
She turns away and walks through
The palest of sapphire light

A soft swirl of foam meets her feet
She has tried to catch the tide before
It retreated from the darkened shore
When on other nights she walked in
The palest of sapphire light

As she walks beside the heartbeat
Each grain of sand crystallizes
Into shards of moonlit glass
Tearing at the naked flesh
She has no matches left

Her silver breath escapes
She looks upon the moon
Held as an orb above the sea
Forever shining, cold and vast
Waiting to be grasped

The heartbeat and
The silver breath --
a matchbook falls.
She waits no more
And swims

Over a long process during Covid times, I had decided to give up my teaching career. I still love the kids and my colleagues, but after 18 years, I can't deal with the hypocrisy, nepotism/cronyism, and general bullshittery of the school board and ministry. There's a lot to it, but I won't get into the details. Suffice it to say that the whole situation, plus the town where I live, has had a severely negative affect on my mental health. I've been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Despite the medication and (utterly useless) therapy, I still struggle with suicidal ideation at least a few times a month. Or week, as the case may be.

I had decided, therefore, to move once I had been fully vaccinated. I've had my first shot already, and it looks like I'll have my second before the end of July. I was already full of fear at the idea. I've tried to move before and failed. Teaching skills don't translate well to other jobs. Interviews give me full-on anxiety attacks. Living alone is not particularly safe for deaf people. I don't make friends easily due to massive trust issues. I'd literally be starting over all alone with little to no support at an age where single, childless women are dismissed. The list goes on.

Then it happened. I got a teaching contract until the end of the school year (June 25) a few weeks ago and I promised myself I wouldn't get "attached" to teaching again. It's happened before, where I've tried to move on, knowing the situation is incredibly unhealthy, then have taken a position and fell in love with the kids and teaching again. Being a SERT (Special Education Resource Teacher) is just... who I am. I don't know if I could possibly be anything else because I've never done anything else. Maybe I'll end up panhandling to survive. I told myself it's good money I could put into the move... but it would be so "easy" to stay, even though I know I'll never have a stable, permanent position.

Needless to say, I'm not in a good way. At work, my emotions get pushed down well enough (really well, if I'm being honest) that I can happily do my job. At every other moment where I haven't distracted myself with reading or knitting or something else, I'm in a weird state of terror and hopelessness. I just wish I didn't have to face the future alone.

Just watched the first few episodes of "In Search Of..." with host Leonard Nimoy, originally aired in 1977. Oh, dear... I think it might be the progenitor of "Ancient Aliens". I mean, it tries to be open-minded, and in many cases the theories they present couldn't have known to be false in that time, but I find myself facepalming so much.

I can forgive it all that, because it was never meant to be taken too seriously -- there's even a disclaimer at the beginning -- but what's really disconcerting is the way history is presented. Very, very, very white-washed and inaccurate. Referring to indigenous peoples as thoroughly "primitive" when Columbus "discovered" the Americas, and stuff like that. I admit it IS fascinating to see how far we've come, but it also makes me wonder how WE'LL be seen by future historians and how racist/bigoted/small-minded they'll see our theories to be.

My mom had my older brother at 16 years old. Given than my father is a fair bit older than she is, this never quite sat right with me, even though she has insisted over the years that "it was a different time" and that she was "the age of consent." Insisted vehemently. It wasn't until a few months ago that it hit me why those explanations didn't work. I won't go into the math I did, but the bottom line is she had to have been 15 when she got pregnant. My dad would have been 23 at the time. It disgusts me.

She was born and grew up in a very isolated, American-owned mining village in Liberia, West Africa, and anyone who is aware of such situations would immediately have sirens going off in their head. The substance abuse, mental illness, and draw of pedophlic individuals to such communities is rampant. The stories I've heard would fill a good sized tome -- mining communities are bad enough without all the other bonuses of being in isolated African locations.

"A different time" or not, she and my father moved to Canada when she was 20. Did things improve? In some ways, yes. My mom could have friends and community now, far healthier than anything she had growing up. But my father didn't change. He was never physically abusive, but always made sure she felt stupid enough not to be able to live without him. I'm not going into all the details... let's just say my mom had to give up a lot because of him. Her self esteem, her education, her dreams to become a nurse. It wasn't until she was in her 30s, I believe, that she began to recognise him for what he was. A pathological narcissist. A selfish sociopath. And yet she still believes it was all her fault -- it was a different time, and she was of consenting age.

They're still married. But they haven't lived on the same continent in 20+ years. She has managed to raise three children, basically on her own, and I'm proud of her for that. She also has three beautiful grandchildren. However, I'm saddened that she still thinks so little of herself and doesn't believe she could have ever attained her dreams. She gave up on happiness for herself a long time ago.