Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

855 stories

Bio

Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com

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To Quote the Dead Kennedys
"Jigger of formaldehyde," Up my ass, Like a rectal suppository... (Farts in the breeze.) --Okay, so I can't write a fucking haiku, what's it to ya'?
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Poets
The Sleep of Reason . Top Story - November 2023.
The scene could be a selection from a feverish nightmare. It could simply be a metaphor for the callous "care" shown by the bourgeoisie toward the starving peoples of the Third World. Do they really get off on watching their victims twist in pangs of desire and hunger, while they dole out the literal equivalent of Marie Antoinette's famous cold-blooded quip?
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Geeks
Glitch City Blues
"Our love can destroy this whole fucking world [...] Let's rust this fucker!" Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) "In the future, everyone will be living in a TV studio." J.G. Ballard (Mid-1980s)
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Gamers
Amarcord
Fellini's Amarcord is a film I had not seen in twenty-five years; suddenly, though, I had the urge to watch it again, and many other Fellini films I hadn't seen in years as well. Perhaps I'll spend a month or two getting reacquainted with masterpieces such as La Dolce Vita, 8 and 1/2, Satyricon (my personal favorite), La Strada, and City of Women. Amarcord may not trump them all, but it is quite a slice of life: an image of a historical time and place, the little circle of existence as the viewer peers deep into it giving them a glimpse of other little circles. It is a testament to the power of humans to celebrate and dream, to fantasize escape in the midst of struggle and turmoil. Like the fireworks set off during the opening festival in the little Italian village at the beginning, these pops and bangs of human beings enact their weird, seemingly absurd roles, trapped in their dream of who they are, and dreaming all the while of Who They Wish to Be.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Journal
Whom Gods Destroy
I had a dream last night I shoplifted an old DVD of "Star Trek," so I got up this morning, signed into my telephone job, and watched the second episode (the second pilot, after "The Cage"), which by now featured familiar faces acting in familiar ways, including Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), a now emotionless Mr. Spock (the late, great Leonard Nimoy), Sulu (George Takei), Scotty (James Doohan), etc. However, still no Bones (the late, great DeForest Kelley, who died back in 1999). Instead, we have the brief (very brief) tenure of Paul Fix as "Dr. Piper."
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Futurism
Max Fleischer's SUPERMAN
I watched all seventeen short episodes of Max Fleischer's excellent, excellent "Superman" series from the early Forties, from start to finish. They were great, well-animated, slam-bang actioners the lot of them, and, although there was little plot to get in the way of the derring-do, they were all that much more a visceral bang of enjoyment, an old-fashioned childlike pulp fiction, comic book dive into all-American costumed hero mythology.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Geeks
Pair-A-Dice
Hey you. Yeah, you over there. I got some bad news for you, Sunshine. You're nothing more than an aggregate of the thoughts and feelings, really the fantasies of your Image of Self. But, guess what? None of that has any tangible reality.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Gamers
"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November...". Top Story - November 2023.
"The State sanctifies its own violence as law. Yours it calls crime." Max Stirner I've quoted the above little observation by proto-anarchist and egoist Max Stirner, author of The Ego and What it Possesses, many, many times; perhaps too often, but there is no other way I could think to introduce an essay on Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, the most important graphic novel ever penned, a book so transcendent in its scope, so vast in its vision of humanity (both dark and light), it has become a piece of cultural iconography. The Guy Fawkes Face Mask is now an endemic, ubiquitous symbol of covert rebellion. Adopted by the Anonymous hacker group, it has gone the rounds of the internet and the face of the globe, a way for the most radical and dedicated and subversive elements of cultural fuckery to disguise themselves, as well as meld into one single "hive mind"; a collective unit pushing against repression and corruption; or, alternately, pushing the world forward past the edge of the envelope of nihilistic rebellion. V for Vendetta, more than any other single comic book creation I can think of (outside of Superman and Batman) has transcended the realm of mere entertainment into having a permanent place in the cultural zeitgeist.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Geeks
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is a so-so entry in the Hammer Horror canon, starring Peter Cushing as a particularly loathsome incarnation of Herr Doctor, and Freddie "Mr. Bytes" Jones as some version of Frankenstein's creature, albeit not one stitched together out of the decaying parts of dead men. Simon Ward stars as Dr. Holst, a young drug-dealing (cocaine) psychiatric doctor who becomes the virtual slave of Cushing, who, masquerading as "Dr. Fenner," blackmails Holst to help him with his experiments to transplant brain El Numero Uno from the dead and insane (not in that order I guess) Dr. Brandt (George Pravda), into the body of Freddy Frankenstein. It is, as they say, a pip.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Horror
The City of the Dead
City of the Dead is a somewhat subdued little spook show shocker wherein Christopher Lee holds forth as a professor of witchcraft studies or some damn thing, who gives a real detailed and evocative description of a witchcraft burning in a small New England town where there is always a thick layer of fog on the ground with fake tress thrusting upward toward a sky that is always dark. Okay?
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Horror
Halloween Heavies
Halloween is a time for soaping cars, vandalizing your neighbor's house with toilet paper rolls, playing with Ouija Boards, trespassing into graveyards at night, and who knows? maybe committing mass human sacrifice at some hitherto undisclosed location run by a drug cartel in Buenos Aires and presided over by a huge, skulking, black-clad woman named Juanita. It's all fun and games until someone loses a soul.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Beat
Legends from "The Book of Halloween"
The Book of Halloween is an obscure little tome from 1919 or thereabouts, full of the legendry and lore of Hell's Christmas (to use a term I invented). Within it, we're greeted with the strange customs and creepy lore of this twisted season of terror. As an example, in Scotland, it is said the "Samhanach," a goblin, goes about on November Eve, stealing babies from their cribs. Perhaps he blows the icy breath of Hades upon their pudgy, unsuspecting faces. But, off with them he flies, gliding into the night, presumably, like Krampus, in a sack slung over his shoulder. And whence goeth he? No one has ever found out. (At least, none who lived.)
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Horror

Tom Baker

Bio

Stories .css-1svwz57-Text{display:inline-block;color:var(--text-default-mute);}(855)

Filter by community

To Quote the Dead Kennedys

The Sleep of Reason . Top Story - November 2023.

Glitch City Blues

Amarcord

Whom Gods Destroy

Max Fleischer's SUPERMAN

Pair-A-Dice

"Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November...". Top Story - November 2023.

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

The City of the Dead

Halloween Heavies

Legends from "The Book of Halloween"

Stories (855)