What do you think?

So I've been thinking of asking this for a while--

Should I monetize this blog?  I don't think that it would necessarily bring me in any revenue worth writing home about, but it might be nice.  I just don't want to alienate everyone.

So leave me a comment on this posting and tell me what you think of ads on a blog.  The overall opinion will win.

So, this happened

Link to my audio recording of an old post

A couple of things:

Do I have a proper recording setup?  Hell no.

What is that clicking?  Not a clue.

Why don't you just use Audacity to clean it up?  Look, I just got Audacity to record more than a minute without freezing my computer.  Baby steps.

WHAT'S GOING DOWN IN CORNWAAAAAAAL

I promised that any person who would offer me a suggestion would receive a reward: I want to thank mrskippy for suggesting Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. I'll be working on that next. In the meantime, here's your picture:

So today I've decided to mix things up a bit and dissect a Poirot story. It's difficult to make fun of Poirot because, frankly, he makes fun of himself

but I wouldn't be doing my internet job if I didn't try.

The Cornish Mystery really highlights something I've only touched on in the past—what the fuck is going on in Cornwall, y'all? The mystery itself is a fairly simple redirection, which Poirot solves by bluffing the shit out of a stupid bad guy. In fact, the bad guy is actually pretty intelligent right up until Poirot needs him to be a moron, which highlights my second point—that Poirot causes contact stupidity.   

Which might very well be the most advantageous secret power for a detective to have.

So catalyst lady shows up at Poirot's house because she suspects that her husband is poisoning her. This wouldn't be a Poirot story if catalyst lady was just being poisoned by her secretary-banging husband, so let's go ahead and dismiss that right off the bat. There are two more people involved in this tale: Hot niece and sexy young dude. Oh, and Catalyst Lady and her husband both receive some sort of money each month. Sexy people, vague romance, and money? Must be an Agatha Christie story.

Guys, I have to be honest here, I'm having trouble really getting into this. I mean, Agatha Christie writes a mean romance with a mystery twist, but she basically makes fun of herself. Unintentionally. This story relies on a bad guy who is both clever and idiotic, the gossiping of a Cornish town, and FUCKING POIROT WAXES HIS GODDAMNED MOUSTACHES AND DRINKS CHOCOLATE.

Fuck. Okay, so Poirot agrees to take this case for some... reason, and he and Hastings decide to follow her, by train, to Cornwall. Catalyst Lady is already dead, let's just get that out of the way. She basically shows up, meets secret bad guy at the train station, and has a load of arsenic just shoved in her face.   

Once Poirot and Hastings WHO COULD HAVE TAKEN THE SAME TRAIN BACK WITH HER BUT NOOOOOOO arrive, they learn of her death. Shock! Awe! Horror! Poirot is so aghast that he starts speaking in french again

Yeah, fuck, I know you're fucking Belgian. Spoilers: No one gives a shit.

They decide to go and meet with Hot Niece, who is also meeting with Sexy Young Dude. Hot Niece admits that Catalyst Lady was under the impression that Sexy Young Dude totally wanted her, but silly auntie, he's actually engaged to Hot Niece! This is seriously a plot point.

Poirot and Hastings leave Cornwall as quickly as they can, because I seriously think that county just gives off murder-vibes, and some time elapses. The next thing you know, Husband is in jail for poisoning his wife. I thought I said that wasn't actually what happened? Yeah, well, the police don't realise they're in an Agatha Christie story.

Sexy Young Dude meets up with Poirot again and moans a bit about how awful it is to have a future relative in jail for murder. Poirot agrees, and tells SYD to just go ahead and admit that he was the one who killed Catalyst Lady in the first place. SYD laughs and then becomes rightfully angry, storming out. I mean really, he doesn't need this shit in his life right now, am I right?

Wait, no, I was reading a story that isn't about stupid people for a second. No, SYD sits around so that Poirot can detail for him his needlessly complicated murder plan. It goes as follows:

Please remember that Poirot has ZERO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS WILD SUPPOSITION. No, all he has is his fortune-telling moustache and because he has seen many murders like this before. And yet, somehow, he manages to convince this idiot man-child that he is totally gonna tell on him unless he signs a goddamned motherfucking cunty-ass murder confession WHAT THE FUCKING HELL OKAY THE DUDE SIGNS A MURDER CONFESSION BECAUSE POIROT LOOKS AT HIM FUNNY.

That's it. That is seriously the end of this story.   

To all the followers that I have loved before...

...y'all can suck it, I have a bunch of NEW friends.

I'm just kidding, I love you all personally.  On a personal level.  At night.  While you sleep.

I watch you sleeping. 

But hello to the new people who have shown up, because you've assuredly shown up because of http://bettermyths.blogspot.com/ and that is a pretty damn cool blog by a pretty cool dude who I love personally even when he isn't sleeping (not that he knows it yet).  I sure hope my main page has a 'contact me' form on it, because I'm going to suggest that you contact me!  Because I'm running out of stories to retell that wouldn't involve me getting my books out of storage.  Every person who suggests a story will get, for free, a picture of a hot person that I know or at least have passed on the street. 

Sherlock Holmes Loves The Drugs

Sherlock Holmes is many things; if Doctor Watson is any source to be trusted, one of those things is humble.  Ignoring the fact that Holmes exhibits all the signs of a narcissistic personality 

sure, okay, humble. Let's go with that.

Watson starts The Adventure of the Devil's Foot by explaining that Holmes has been far too unimpressed with fame and notoriety to allow Watson to publish any of his cases—you know, except for the other 63 ones he's published—but he decided, on a whim, that this story had to be told. This story, he explains in a telegram, is the strangest case he has ever handled.

Flashback to the spring of 1987. The boomboxes were filled with Bonos and Peter Gabriels, the streets rife with giant shoulder pads and larger hair, the... oh wait, that's 1897. My bad.

So spring of 1897, Holmes has a breakdown. He's taxed, overworked to the limit

and forced to go on a holiday. While vacationing in the Cornish countryside—yeah, I guess having a holiday in France wasn't invented yet—Holmes decides to spend his time researching some obscure remnants of the Cornish language.

I bet this guy is the most fun at parties.

So here's the breakdown: Holmes decides to be a goddamned archeologist, meets the amateur archeologist/vicar, who lodges the strange looking man named Mortimer Tregennis, who spends the whole story filing a name change. I mean, who happens to meet the doctor who is going to the house where the horrible murder happened. Do you get that? This is the sort of coincidental happening that Sherlock Holmes LIVES FOR

A woman is found dead, with her two brothers driven completely insane. They sat down to cards one night, and the next time anybody saw them they were driven horribly out of their minds, to the point of death. And in Cornwall, of all places! Won't someone think of the children.

There is one person left alive in this senseless tragedy—remember kids, card games always have four players!--and that is the third brother, Mortimer Trege... huh. And he's strange looking, you say? Oh yeah, he did it.

What? Fine, christ, I'll finish the story.

Holmes prowls around the house for a bit and asks a lot of senseless questions to everyone, and returns to his room. The next day a strange man enters! He's a distant relative of the family who also, as it turns out, was supposed to marry the now dead sister. Guess who's going to end up dead next?!

So the next day Mortimer is found dead, in the same way his siblings were found. Holmes prowls around some more, leaves a few cryptic clues for the local police, and goes back to his room to wait for them to find him. He waits for a while, because apparently the Cornish police don't give a fuck about no Sherlock Holmes up in their business. After getting tired of waiting

 

Holmes reveals that he totally jacked some substance from Mortimer's room, and offers it to Watson. I mean, I guess that it ends up being the hallucinogenic drug that was the murder weapon, but I'm not totally convinced that Holmes isn't just lighting shit on fire in the hopes that it'll get him high.

After nearly killing his long-time friend and companion, Holmes almost sort of apologizes, and they go to visit strange man. Strange man reveals all—some business about a root that he found in Africa that causes death. Deus ex machiroot. Holmes lets him off with a warning because he only killed for love, and a lovely vacation was had by all.

Holy fuck.