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Does Hannibal Lecter use bone black paint in his artwork?

Like, he’s got all those bodies to get rid of. He’s likely got his own furnace in his big old mansion.

So does he make his own “art supplies”? He seems like the crunchy sort to do such a thing.

He kills a LOT of people, and other than the ones he puts on public peacocking display to catch the elusive attention of Will Graham, he’s got a ton of bodies to get rid of.

I imagine him using the extra flesh and viscera as fertilizer for his organic garden, and then he’s got whole skeletons to deal with. So like, he probably pins some together and sells them secondhand to medical schools or something, and then other ones he probably burns them up into bone fertilizer. But he’s just got SO MANY bodies to deal with.

In the various media, do they ever examine his paintings and test them for people residue? Are they able to do carbon tracing to differentiate between sources of carbon?

When you think about it, Hannibal was only caught because of his ego and hubris. On some level, he simply wanted to be known. He wanted to hear people talking about his alter-ego, but then it kind of hurt his feelings that people were like “Ew gross” about his “art”.

It’s probably the same for that one artist who used feces as his medium of choice. Everyone around him was like “Stop. Yuck!” But eventually someone was like “How creative!” And he thought that was a compliment–a love letter to his skill–and he ran away with it to create a whole gallery show. That probably smelled terrible.

Anyways. I was just curious.

I think it will be hilarious–the zeitgeist, as it were–when in ten years people can just be like “Diarrhea Farms.” And everyone will know that they’re talking about Taylor Farms, purveyors of poop lettuce.

So… The Bing AI recap of my life thinks I’m a libertarian?

Considering how often I bitch about libertarians… I am both shocked and confused. I guess because I talk about libertarians so much, Copilot thinks I love them or something?

Just to clarify: I think modern libertarianism is just being a Republican with extra steps. And those extra steps involve child marriage and pedophilia. So… being a modern Republican.

I just think it’s amusing. It’s a little worrying that if someone looks me up, they’re gonna think that I write a bunch of stuff from a libertarian perspective. Like all my stuff is "We don’t need police or firefighters and everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps" when really I’m more of a democratic socialist.

We need to vote and have representatives and the government should take care of all people rather than just the few with a lot of money. There should be a universal basic income (UBI), medical for all, school meals for all children, well taken care of roads and bridges and other infrastructure, disaster relief, people shouldn’t become homeless because of financial debt, everyone should be able to read and write and communicate their wants and needs (and if they can’t, for whatever reason, their needs should still be met), the environment should be protected and cared for, and animals should be treated well especially because human hubris is ruining their ability to live and survive independently.

I like solar power, wind power, and I was fascinated by a thing someone shared from China where they made a giant air filter to remove pollutants from a city. I like stuff about composting, vaccines, medical treatments, animal conservation, science, medicine, wildlife, botany, etc.

I believe that everyone has the right to live a happy life as long as that happiness doesn’t involve harming other people. So like, pedophiles shouldn’t be happy because their happiness involves hurting other people. BUT someone with pedophilia should not automatically be "put to death" or anything like that, they should receive medical care that includes therapy, counseling, and not being around children.

(Seriously, back in the day Cracked did an article from a real life person with pedophilia. And that person, knowing of their own wrong desires, was a good enough human being to seek out psychological counseling and ensuring that they have no contact with children. Just because they had a sexual attraction to children, they aren’t a monster because they didn’t choose to hurt children.

And yeah, pedophiles CHOOSE to hurt children. Therefore pedophiles deserve prison or death or all the bad things to happen to them and to the people apologizing for them. Which means child marriage is disgusting to me. Adults grooming and having sexual or psycho-sexual relations with real life children disgusts me. AI companies disgust me with their models so entwined with CSAM (child sexual assault material) that that content can’t be removed without breaking the models.)

So I believe in medical FOR ALL. And when I talk about medical, I don’t just mean body care, I mean teeth, sight, hearing, preventative care, long term care, palliative care, mental health care, all the care for all the parts that make up a complete human being.

I believe in prison reform. I don’t think police should have qualified immunity, especially since most of them aren’t qualified for their jobs. I don’t think someone should be scared about taking a cross-country trip with their lifesavings in cash because they could be pulled over by the police who think someone having so much money in cash is suspicion of a crime, so they get to take and keep all that person’s money.

I think there should be fast, smooth, reliable public transportation and that it should be affordable for everyone. I think air travel should be safe. I think train travel should be safe. I think bus travel should be safe. I think car travel should be safe. I think all travel should be safe, easy, and affordable.

I think people should be vaccinated, and if they choose not to be, they should not be allowed out in public without a mask for both the protection of the public and for their own protection. I think people need to be better educated about rabies, tetanus, polio, measles, amoebas, prions, folate, and vitamin K, which is a very necessary shot for newborns.

I think Internet should be available free for everyone. People should be able to visit the sites and social media that they want to without fear of government interference, and at the same time there should not be CSAM or abuse material involving real humans and animals. Like, people should be able to choose what they want to be exposed to as long as real human beings and real animals and the real environment aren’t being harmed. (Some people get so upset about anime characters being abused that they forget that the abuse of real life people is a million times worse and is actually something to be concerned about.) And sites hosting malware and viruses should not be accessible through common search engines, which themselves should be overhauled and mandated to be useable tools that aren’t simply devices by which corporations gather peoples’ data.

I think there should be places kept open for children and teens. By that I mean, for whatever reason, all the entertainments that used to be available for kids and teens have gradually been closed down or coopted by adults that refuse to grow up. Teenagers have no places for them to sit and talk and just be without worrying that some random adult is going to call the police on them. Or worse, that some adult is going to enter their space to groom or assault them.

I think that movie theaters need to better themselves for the movie watching experience. If they’re going to show a movie, there should be two viewings, one for rude people that talk and are loud and obnoxious during movies, and the one for actual movie watchers where people are expected to be as quiet and considerate as possible. At the very least, people should put their phones on silent and shouldn’t be constantly turning their screens on and distracting other people.

I think sports should be open and available for everyone that wants to enjoy it. And if you don’t want to have anything to do with sports, that should be an option as well. School districts should not spend their entire ten year budget building a stadium and then not being able to provide basic school for the children. Families should not have to pay for pencils, paper, markers, coloring crayons, notebooks, text books, books for reading in class–that should all be paid for by the education budget. And the teachers definitely should not be forced to pay for school supplies out of pocket, and there should be no expectation that they should have to use their pay checks to pay for things their job should provide.

I have strong feelings about "family content" creators and the way children are being treated as tools for their parents to make money. I don’t think kids should be forced to live in vans and buses and one bedroom for fifteen kids so their parents can film them and use them to make money. I don’t think unschooling should be allowed; it is child abuse. I think there should be national requirements for education and that if someone’s homeschool or charter school or private school or public school doesn’t meet standards, then the situations needs to be corrected in a timely manner so the children aren’t "left behind."

For reals, if there had been educational standards, people would have known what a tariff is and that it’s not paid by the person selling stuff but by the person receiving stuff by way of higher prices. There wouldn’t have been videos of people letting their children splash around and swim IN SEWER WATER during a flood. People would know to wash their asses when they take a shower and to wash their hands and that sexuality isn’t decided by what toys a child plays with but by their physical and emotional attraction to other people.

There are so many things I think about and believe in. And I truly think that Libertarians are just Republicans with extra steps.

I am honestly offended by the association. And I hope people don’t simply trust AI search results without doing some further research.

I think I write entertaining and maybe thought-provoking stuff. I hope people find my stuff and that some of it appeals to them and people spend money or donate money or that somehow I start making some real money from it. But even without money, I’ll still be writing and sharing and making content because it’s basically who I am.

And I am not a libertarian. They don’t do anything for free.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

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https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
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https://www.everand.com/author/262822558/Harper-Kingsley.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/author/harper-kingsley.
https://books.apple.com/us/author/harper-kingsley/id444850597.

When I take a shower, my mind tends to wander to different subjects. Some are interesting. Some are irritable things bothering me. Some are silly or weird little thoughts that fall apart when you really consider the feasibility. And some are thoughts that follow me out of the shower and linger in my brain afterward.

And that’s what this post is about. A shower thought about the movie "Old."

Sometimes I watch the movie reviews of Amanda the Jedi on YouTube, which means when I finish watching a video and the next one auto-starts, sometimes it will be an Amanda the Jedi video. And yesterday it was "A Knock at the Cabin," which today had my brain segue into thoughts about the movie "Old" while I was showering. Mostly because I was thinking about "Flowers In the Attic" and "My Sweet Audrina."

"Flowers in the Attic" was a societal phenomenon back in the day. There were the books, trashy novels that you would find on the coffee tables of some of the people you would least suspect of reading such things. And then later there was a TV mini-series starring a pre-Buffy the Vampire Slayer Kristy Swanson.

And that grandma? She completely terrified me.

It was because of watching reruns of that mini-series that I ended up reading V.C. Andrews novels at much too young of an age. Like, I didn’t understand half of what I was reading, but it’s all been stored up in the ol’ memory vault.

I started with "Flowers in the Attic," then followed it up with her other novels. Just delving way too deep into the fucked up drama of the Dollanganger family. It’s been YEARS since I’ve read those books, and maybe I don’t remember things clearly, but what I do remember? Stuck in my brain forever.

Like, I was scared of the grandmother in "Flowers In the Attic." Then I read her story and I couldn’t help empathizing with her. Like, she had a bad marriage but didn’t think she had any other choices. And she was raising a daughter that wasn’t her own? So she had all this resentment toward the girl she was expected to raise and love, which translated into her anger and resentment toward her husband being focused on the spoiled young girl. And that the girl grew up to be worse and worse of a person? A beautiful but poisonous flower? It was like proof that her dislike was always justified.

And I’m pretty sure, if I remember correctly, that while the grandmother was the terrifying figure in the children’s life, it was actually their own mother that was the worst one.

It was their mother that brought them the arsenic-laced donuts. As a treat. That they were grateful to receive because they thought it was proof their mother still loved and cared for them.

It was their mother that brought them into that house. That told them they would have to live in the attic "For a little while. Just until my father forgives me. Just until he dies. Just until…" Then her father died and she didn’t tell the children. Then she was getting remarried and she was worried her new husband wouldn’t like that she was bringing children into the marriage. Then she was married and it was "too late." And the whole time, the children were withering away in that attic, mentally and physically warped by their confinement.

And then Cory died. And it was tragic because he was the sweetest of the children. Their heart and soul.

And that was just the START of the fucked upness of the Dollanganger family drama.

And my mind drifted to "My Sweet Audrina" and the ephemeral nature of memory. She was assaulted and forgot herself and her parents let her, thinking that it would be better for her. And her cruel cousin who was jealous of her tormenting her when she was "seven," telling her that she would never be as good as the first Audrina, the real Audrina.

And that Audrina married her rapist. Oh, sorry, he didn’t rape her. He just watched and didn’t stop it. But he’d had a crush on her and he loved her and he’d made sure to run into her and wiggle his way into her life when she didn’t remember him and they’d fallen in love and they’d gotten married and they had a happy life together and…

Everyone around Audrina knew what had happened to her except Audrina. They tried to use the excuse that they were protecting her. Which meant that it was okay that they lied to her and gaslit her and manipulated her memories and entire sense of being into becoming the person they wanted her to be. It was okay because it was for her own good.

And she spent her whole life envious and jealous of "the real" Audrina. That perfect beautiful girl everyone spoke about and that she could never be even close to being as good as.

A beautiful girl. A flawed girl. A girl with her own thoughts and feelings, but who now only exists in the memories of the people around her. A girl Audrina could never even think of becoming, because she was made out of starlight and memberberries, sweetly poisonous to the Audrina left behind. An idol with all the rough bits scraped off, retaining only the perfections and none of the flaws and uniqueness of the real girl she was.

The "real Audrina" never existed. And "the sweet Audrina" was actually someone terrified of not being good enough for the people that had loved the real Audrina.

Which made me think of the movie "Old."

The doctor who shows all the signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s, but who the movie makers decided to give schizophrenia instead, when he clearly has Alzheimer’s, a disease of the memory.

Alzheimer’s would have made so much more sense. But I guess there are some things that terrify even people that make horror movies. Forgetting. Remembering. Losing yourself in the past while the present and the future become dark and terrifying places to be.

Alzheimer’s is a frightening disease. And that it can effect anyone? That it can suddenly start and there’s nothing you can do about it? That you might not even realize that you’ve been effected, and that it will be the people around you that notice your oddities first?

Alzheimer’s is not a disease of forgetting. It’s a disease of remembering. Of your mind going back to places and times you want to remember or that you want to forget while your body continues to exist in the present. And everything around you becomes terrifying because your mind was in one place, and then suddenly you find yourself somewhere else surrounded by unfamiliar people.

It’s why "50 First Dates" isn’t really a romantic story. It is the description of one woman’s nightmare.

A man fell in love with her and decided that he was going to make a life with her. And she’s meeting him for the first time every single day with only his accounts of their life together to tell her that she’s happy. That she chose to be with him. And her family corroborate his stories.

And her father and brother and her friends are all getting older and older as the years pass. And she remembers herself as a young woman with a bright future ahead of her. Only to wake up every day to see herself in the mirror, changed and changing. And that she woke up suddenly pregnant. That she woke up suddenly a mother. A grandmother. An orphan. A widow. An old woman in a care facility.

Alzheimer’s can take anyone. And I can understand why that might be a concept too terrifying for even a horror movie maker to face.

Before the vaccine, there was a 19-year-old girl that had early-onset Alzheimer’s as a sequela of COVID. I didn’t see any follow-ups of her story, but I assume that her family is trying their best and want to retain some privacy. They simply wanted the world to know that Alzheimer’s is a possible result of COVID.

And thinking about her, I have to wonder how it must be like to have Alzheimer’s when you’re so young. To only have 19-years worth of memories to sink back into.

People that are 90 years old with Alzheimer’s have 90 years worth of history to re-experience. But what do you have when you’re only 19?

Do the years of infancy come back to you, sharp and present? Do you mentally return to being a baby in your mother’s arms only to find yourself in an adult body in a cold cruel world? Or do those early life memories still remain dark and you only have the memories from when you’re like 5 and older? So you only have 14 years of memories to live in?

Do you forget how to read and write? Are you sad because you suddenly go from having childhood friends to being in an adult body?

I can understand why the movie makers were too afraid to have the doctor suffer from Alzheimer’s in the movie "Old." Because at our core, memories are what make us who we are. They are the strands holding our consciousness together. And without them, we are vulnerable to the world and people around us, forced to accept the person we are told we are supposed to be.

And then I let those thoughts be washed down the drain. And I got out of the shower. And here I am. And writing down the memory of those thoughts isn’t as horrifying and disquieting as when those thoughts lived in my head.

And I can’t imagine being stuck in that moment with those thoughts forever vivid and fresh in my mind. Trapped in a recursive loop with no way to break free.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.

https://www.everand.com/author/262822558/Harper-Kingsley.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/author/harper-kingsley.
https://books.apple.com/us/author/harper-kingsley/id444850597.