This Week in Normality (Saturday Edition) — Bring the Pain

Good day to you, faithful reader, on this last Saturday in August, in the year of our lord two thousand and nine.

I won’t go into all the horrid details about my Friday…the first day of the fall semester for me, in fact, and how everything that could possibly conspire against me posting this week’s articles did, in fact, conspire against me. I mean, I guess a comet didn’t crash into my car and I didn’t lose a limb in a lumber mill accident…but aside from those two things, everything that could conspire against me did. Suffice it to say, by the time I got home last night and had the kids fed and asleep I had just enough energy to stumble into bed.

So here we are…

But aren’t you glad you had to wait?

Isn’t the anticipation of what this week’s Normality Restored would bring you even better now that you have had to marshal the reserve to wait a full day more?

Just go with me on this.

And, you know what? It’s fitting, having to make you all wait so long. The waiting, no doubt, pained you faithful Normalinauts endlessly. I imagine you all suffered from severe cramps and headaches all night, unable to sleep, wondering when…dear god when!…you would find the weekly succor you so crave on Fridays.

It was, of course, cruel of us to have unleashed such wanting on our adoring fans. But such is the fate of the faithful on this week in which we Bring the Pain!

And this week’s theme was inspired by the newly released Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds, of which Stoker has written a…dare I say, glowing?…I dare…GLOWING review.

Tengu takes us back to his childhood to reminisce fondly, and not so fondly, about the work of filmmaker Paul Verhoeven.

Mustardseed, in his continuing attempts to prove he is the most literary of NR contributors, highlights Blood Meridian, the oft overlooked debut novel from now Pulitzer Prize winner, Cormac McCarthy.

What I have learned about, if not people at large, at least those associated with this website is that you tell them the theme is blood and violence, then they come out of the woodwork.

Stoker, for instance, was not content to just review a movie, oh no! He also felt compelled to give us all a taste of the, definitely not for the squeamish, Bendis graphic novel Torso.

And lastly, though certainly not least, a new guest contributor shares with us all both, the joy of Peter Jackson’s early work, and the savory taste of gore in general.