Library Lunacy, Stories Written More Than A 180 Years Ago

If there is a dark power which malevolently and treacherously places a thread within us, this unseen force may become our very selfs, and once we have surrendered our thoughts to the dark influences of the mind, all cheer and tranquility is lost. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann)

The above paragraph is from the 1816-1817 short story, "The Sandman" by the German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Olimpia, she was a robot woman who appeared human to the character Nathanael. "The Sandman" author, Hoffmann never referred to Olimpia as a robot, but she was indeed inhuman and meticulously manufactured and appeared real, especially to the Nathanael.

Nathanael forgets his love for Clara, the leading woman in "The Sandman."  A savage hurricane lashes the ocean, its waves rear-up like black giants with white heads filled with  the rage of combat. Through all the chaos, Olimpia has no eyes, just black caverns where the eyes should be. (Hoffmann)

"The Sandman" is a tale of love and horror, a graphic mind journey into the depths of bad dreams, brutal murders and the mystical doctrines of the Devil.

A man's head is shattered on pavement, and the brutally murdered man is either Nathanael or Lothar, Clara's brother. How would Clara's mind cope with life without her brother or the only man to arouse her loving gaze? 

Is the Sandman a real beast who tears the eyes out of children, and brings their eyes to his hideous children to feed upon under the crescent moon? 

"The Sandman" is one of over a dozen stories from the book; "Horror Stories: Classic Tales  From Hoffmann To Hodgson." The stories where written in the 1800s.

Author James Hogg's 1827 story, "George Dobson's "Expedition To Hell" explores thoughts and dreams. Hogg claims dreams are the results of the soul having intercourse with the external world. "Expedition To Hell" poetically illustrates 'Ultimam Cogita,' consider the end or think of the last hour of life, vanish into the gloom and tread the dreary labyrinth as best you can. 

I learned from "Berenice," the 1835 tale written by Edgar Allan Poe that I'm a monomaniac, meaning that I tend to fixate on a single subject to the point of insanity, like the focal character in the story, Egaeus.

All my passions are of the mind now, nothing is real. I'm a creature of chaos and the infinite imagination is my only link to serenity. The untapped reservoirs of ancient and new tales spawned on the printed page cater to my soul and justify some kind of reason for my existence. 

The nearly 200 year old tales from the book "Horror Stories," spurned my imagination and enhanced my desire to seek out the works of writers long past. Long live the library!
                                                                                              Izzy Schurr, aka, me.   

Modern Moron

Nonsense and a sense of humor are the only senses I posses. My bombastic thoughts and opinions are displays of drivel amidst the Internet. I'm thankful I'm innocuously insane.
                                                                                                        Izzy Schurr

Write Handed XVII

Emotions and feelings cannot be controlled, there like the weather, they just happen. Joy, grieve, laughter, tears, humor, anger, love and lust, it's all a whirlwind of the human condition. Pause, breath and think before unfiltered responses wreck havoc amidst us all.

Suddenly, everything has become so clear, easy to understand. Mental illness and cerebral chaos cannot be controlled either, but arrowed words, tantrum's and outbursts can be caged. Just now, I've grasped perception and have realized my knowledge is shallow, my existence a mere blip in time and only more reading can cure my unspoken woes.
                                                                              Izzy Schurr, aka Mark Schurr

Photo of Nebula, the galaxy past Andromeda, from the young adult book "George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt."  
                                                                             

Time...A 'Twilight Zone" Episode Review

Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in a fraternity of dreamers whose passion is the printed page, conspired against by his boss, his wife and a world full of tongue cluckers in the unrelenting hands of a clock. (Rod Serling)

"Time Enough At Last," the 8th episode of Rod Serling's TV show, "The Twilight Zone" marvelously transformed writer Lynn Venable's short story from the 1953 magazine "If, Worlds Of Science Fiction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last into a compelling tale of imagination, intrigue and frustration.

Acclaimed actor Burgess Meredith (1907-1997) portrayed Henry Bemis, the focal character in 1959s "Time Enough At Last" with aplomb. Bemis is an avid reader to say the least. His reading causes problems at his banking job and with his wife. His boss and his wife do everything they can to thwart his reading.

The minor mistakes at work and Bemis getting reminded by his boss that a voluptuous women complained about him because he was looking down at her chest, but Bemis was not being a typical male eyeing a beautifully breasted women, Bemis was simply trying to read her election button to see who she voted for.

Writers Venable and Serling cleverly conceived a way for Bemis to be the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust with an abundance of food and water. At first Bemis is lonely, even suicidal until he discovers a vast collection of undamaged books from a rubbled city library. Bemis excitedly makes countless stacks of book as he prepares his days and years of which books he's going to read until he drops and breaks his prescription reading glasses. The end.   
                                                             
                                                                             Izzy Schurr, aka Mark Schurr

Insane Politics

What your seeing and what your reading is not what's happening President Donald Trump said on July 25 in Kansas City, Mo.

That's good, because what I'm seeing and reading is that Trump is a racist horny old burger goblin who literally steals children from poor people, Stephen Colbert said. The above statement by Trump was addressed to many of his cult followers at this year’s national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert also pointed out that president Trump has reduced international relationships to a fight between two 14-year-old girls in 1988.

Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me old, when I would never call him short and fat. Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen! A Nov., 11 Trump tweet about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Politician John Kerry said on Real Time With Bill Maher that Trump has the maturity of an 8-year-old boy and the insecurity of a teenage girl.

A tweet last year by North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un stated that he has a nuclear button is on his desk at all times. Trump tweeted back; I too have a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his, and my button works!

How wonderful to live in a world with leaders possessing nuclear weapons who brag and argue like petulant children. Welcome to America and the rest of the world, which is a fiasco of futility and a ludicrous reality TV show. Real news is shown in bits and pieces, if at all.

Across the Atlantic sea in the Middle Eastern lands, the raping of very young girls and women is legal. Several years ago, Rawan, an 8-year-old girl from Yemen was forced to marry a man approximately 40-years-old. Rawan died of internal sexual injuries after spending her wedding night with a husband five times her age. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/09/bride-aged-8-dies-internal-sexual-injuries-wedding-night-_n_3892892.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tLw&guce_referrer_cs=jAmXkuJT-efMs-TkiMuxeg 

A Huffington Post article in May, 2015 stated that about 95 percent of girls in Somalia between the ages of 4 and 11-years-old undergo Female Genital Mutilation, a practice that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for no medical benefit. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/somalia-may-soon-ban-female-genital-mutilation_us_55bfaf59e4b06363d5a2e560 FGM is also a common practice in the Middle East. George Carlin said it's so women in these countries will be less likely to cheat on their husbands because having their clitoris forcibly removed vastly decreases sexual pleasure. 

Earthlings tend to be a bunch of narcissistic numb-skulls that fail to adhere to the Bible's commandment; thou shall not kill. In August, a U.S. backed Saudi Arabia led coalition air strike hit a school bus in Yemen that killed 29 children. All the children where under 15-years-old. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/09/dozens-dead-in-yemen-as-bus-carrying-children-hit-by-airstrike-icrc

Since March, 2015, 60 percent of child deaths in the Middle East have been from air strikes by U.S. backed coalitions with Saudi Arabia, according to the United Nations. Nearly 1,500 children have lost limbs or have been maimed by U.S. drones since March 2015.  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-war-the-girl-forced-to-marry-at-11-whose-story-exposes-the-conflicts-toll-on-children-a7125151.html  

In the 90s drones where called smart bombs, which the government still fools the masses into thinking these insanely priced bombs only kills military enemies. All the money spent of these sadistic weapons of war could end world hunger and  provide a free four year college degree to tens of millions of people, do the research! The words peace and harmony are shrouded in death and destruction. Mankind is not so kind.     
                                                               Izzy Schurr, aka, Mark Schurr

DACA, A Quick Recap

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a cruel and misguided policy that violates U.S. law and international human rights law, and the officials who decided it and implemented it should be held accountable, I heard today on KQED PBS news.

As of today, there are still at least 380 parents separated from their children under the Trump administration laws.

President Donald Trump and his partners in crime justify this criminality be bringing up the American families that have had their children killed by illegal aliens. Yes, murderous crimes have  been committed by illegal aliens from outside the U.S., but this doesn't justify jailing children and separating 6-year-old Marianita from her Honduran parents Ana Liliana Zuniga and Misael Ponce Herrara.

In June, Misael Ponce Herrara came into the U.S. illegally with his daughter Marianita. Misael was deported and is still in Honduras while his daughter is still caged somewhere in New York. Herrara is still trying to get into the U.S., now legally, and reunite with his daughter. He wants to leave Honduras to escape poverty and frequent violence in his town. Look out now, Herrara is a barber who may cut into Caucasian business.

In June, Trump's soulless wife Melania displayed her compassion for the caged immigrant children when she wore a jacket with the words; “I really don’t care, do u?” in huge letters on the back of it while she was departing a Texas detention center with unaccompanied children taken from their parents for not being white. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/22/what-melania-trumps-i-dont-care-jacket-says-about-the-state-of-the-east-wing/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8abf1bd3063f

                                                                                   Izzy Schurr

Modern Moron Movie Review; "I Married A Witch"

As a disembodied entity, her foreboding, yet alluring voice fueled the flames of desire when she softly said; it would be nice to have lips, lips to whisper lies, lips to kiss man, make him suffer.

Jennifer (Veronica Lake) and her father Daniel, portrayed by Cecil Kellaway were burned to death by puritans in 1672 at the start of the movie.

"I Married A Witch" is a comedy, and the burning of Jennifer (Lake) and her father (Kellaway) are not shown, just puritans purchasing anti-witch charms from a vendor in the woods as a dying fire fades to transparent smoke amidst the trees.

Jennifer and Daniel's (Kellaway) ashes are buried under an oak tree which has the power to imprison their souls for eternity. A bolt of lightning frees there smoke laden souls 270 years later in 1942.

When Lake delivers the line about wanting to be a tangible body again, yearning to whisper lies to men, kiss them and make them suffer, I became an instant fan of this movie.

If vintage or black and white movies are not for you, this film would be a boring barrage of balderdash. For those who like the early morning or late night ambience of a different generation and suggested sexuality, this off-beat noir of nostalgia may spark some laughs, and perhaps some insight in the realms of politics. 

Jonathan Wooley played by Fredric March was the man who revealed to his townsfolk that Jennifer and her father were witches. Before her burning death, Jennifer (Lake) cast a spell on Wooley (March) and all his family. Jennifer's curse deemed that Wooley and all his descendants would always marry the wrong women and be miserable in love.

Wallace Wooley, also portrayed by Fredric March is the 1942 descendant of 1672 Jonathan Wooley.
Wallace is an honest politician, yes, "I Married A Witch" is a comedy. Veronica Lake is the corporeal and gorgeous form of Jennifer, and with the aide of her father Daniel, she sets out to ensure the Wooley curse lives on.

Wallace is about to become a senator and get married to Estelle Masterson (Susan Hayward). It's obvious Masterson (Hayward) is anything but thrilled about the upcoming marriage, but Jennifer decides to meddle more in the curse she cast upon Wooley. Jennifer conjures up a love potion in an attempt to make Wallace fall in love with her before his wedding. The conflict for Jennifer heats up when she accidentally drinks the potion and her boozing father forgets spells, and eventually becomes her foe.

In the end, the mortal Wallace marries the witch Jennifer, and she decides to keep her magic under wraps, and their first born daughter is eager to test her mothers patience with her powers. Yes, the 1960s and early 70s sitcom "Bewitched" acquired its origins from this 1942 comedy.

                                                                         

                                                                        Izzy Schurr, aka Mark Schurr