Poe's "The Raven" as Read By Five Great Actors

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" is a classic of English poetry, no doubt. The creepiness of the subject assuring himself at various times that noises and situations are "nothing more" has a macabre tone that makes it one of the best of the best from the best.

As with all poetry, "The Raven" sounds even better when read well. And it sounds beyond awesome when read well by five great actors. (And yes, Stan Lee is totally an actor. He made a funny face at the camera in "X-Men.")

So here we go.

Christopher Walken


James Earl Jones


Christopher Lee


Vincent Price


Stan Lee




Now tell me that wasn't pure liquid win.

In Which I Do Poem Stuff

So for rhetoric class this term, we're delving into a pool of poetry. I'm pretty excited since it's not something I've really swum through before. Our first assignment was to go through a dictionary and pick ten random words (yay for my Oxford Slang Dictionary!), make up a word, and put it all together in 6 - 12 verses.

So here is my first poem (apparently it doesn't have to rhyme).


Once the daylight had spitchered
The veiny cobblestoned streets were flowing
Pikers with ducats in their pockets
Blockers on their heads
Rosiners in their hands
And claptrap on their tongues
Headed out, they, the slickers to the imbos
Jitterbugs, afrontious magsmen with no care
But themselves.

The Biopic We've All Been Waiting For!

With original recipe!

Jane Austen Is Rolling In Her Grave

How do you return to a blog that's been inactive for some time? What kind of zany post will say to readers..."come back to me."?

I have the answer.




All of a sudden, as in the past few weeks, the Internet has been buzzing with the news of a new adaptation of Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice." It's a re-updated version of the novel called "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." It's not even out yet (and no, I am not making this up) and already, rumor has it that every studio in Hollywood is scrambling to snatch up the movie rights faster than Miss Bennet (she's in P&P, right?) fleeing from the side burned suitors in her parlor who have inexplicably turned into the living dead. Hooray for public domain!

But it doesn't stop there. Neither the book or movie are out yet, and they're already getting ripped off. Elton John - yes, "Elton John" as in "Goodbye, Yellowbrick Road"- is producing a movie called "Pride and Predator" also based on Pride and Prejudice. Except there's a bloodthirsty space alien that gets dropped in from outer space, causing buckets of mayhem among the English countryside. (No word yet on whether it's actually the real Predator...but wouldn't it be crazy if they actually got the rights?)

There's something about re-imagining 19th century literature that makes me happy (like Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman - and not the movie), but I'm not gonna lie: these two horror versions of Austen's classics sound incredibly stupid. So stupid that I might actually have to see them.

But the more I think about it, the less clever it sounds. When I first read this, my brain exploded and screamed: "BEST IDEA EVER!." But honestly...how are they gonna stretch either of these to at least ninety minutes?

Still, I'd love for these two to be on a movie poster together.


This is going to be bigger than Snakes on Plane!

A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words

So I won't say anything. Plus, my feeble hands are cold.

A Thought on Orthodoxy

G.K. Chesterton's book "Orthodoxy" is amazing. (If you haven't read it, please do yourself a favor and buy a copy. It's worth it. I plan to read it several more times in the future.) I finished reading it today and probably about 80% of my commonplaces for this and last week were culled from its enlightening pages.

In one portion of the book, Chesterton critiques the modern novels of his day. A few pages over, he has an amazing quote:

"Mysticism keeps men sane."

So true. These two passages in his book connected in my brain, and in a molten explosion of neurons and dendrites, I had a thought.

Mysticism seems fairly lost in storytelling today. Rarely do we see a book or movie that stands on its own. Even if they were made to, someone eventually comes along with a sequel, or even a prequel. Even if every component of the story wraps it all up, someone will always get dollar signs in their eyes and decide to cash in. Rarely do these work. It is very popular for villains to have back story explained...but it destroys the mystery that helps their characters work on the page or onscreen. Some recent films have kept the mystery for the villains (No Country For Old Men and The Dark Knight come to mind), but then we've got prequels out the wazoo for characters from Darth Vader to Hannibal Lecter. Is it really necessary? Sure, a sequel can still be good. But mystery still needs to keep its place in story. Tolkien didn't treat us to a long analysis of Smaug's troubled past. The red guy just shows up at the Lonely Mountain out of nowhere and the story goes from there.

More Thoughts on Blade Runner

Today in Lordship class, something Pastor Wilson said sparked my thoughts on the film Blade Runner. In speaking about heaven, Pastor Wilson referred to us being more than real than we are now. In Blade Runner, the company that creates the androids, the Tyrell Corporation, has the motto "More real than real."



The view of artificial life in the novels "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, which was the basis of the film, and another sci-fi classic, "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov is an interesting, but false one. The views that Dick and Asimov present are views without God. In their views, humans are nothing more than soulless biological beings with some sort of life possessing us. Our creations are therefore the same as us, just with a different physical structure. This sort of view tries to put man and God on the same level. In their world, people are the godlike ones, giving life to lesser beings, and then arguing for the equality of the created to the creator. This is most likely a metaphor for the desires of man to be equal with God, the Creator. Near the end of Blade Runner, the main character's own humanity is called into question but never affirmed or denied. This ambiguity of one's own self further proves that the writers are convinced that humans are little more than robots, just made out of an organic goo.