Now I'm a REAL Internet writer.

Now all I have to do is use more emoticons. #8-)

OK, all writers on the Net have to rant every now and again. So I am going to rant. I am going to deliver as many thoughts as I can come up with.

You know what I hate? Sugar coating. Which is not to say I am the self-styled nemesis of jam doughnuts. I'm using sugar coating in the figurative sense.

I'm referring here to trying to hide nasty things from children and innocents. Everyone does it. Take TV. In England you're not allowed to swear or show bouncing boobies before nine p.m. in the evening. Er, why? Why, when, in these enlightened times, your average child (a) swears like a particularly spiteful sailor and (b) is a known patron of the local open-minded top-shelf newsagent? There's no POINT anymore in trying to conceal the real world from the toddling tots.

Go back in time a few hundred years and small children were practically slaves. A few thousand years and they're spearing gazelles. Sometimes I want to intercept the signal of popular children's programming and replace it with, say, Evil Dead 2. Every child is someday going to have to face up to the fact that, in the real world, people bleed when they're hit, and that large animals cannot be stored in small red and white balls. The best thing to do is hand them a newspaper and order them to read it. Then cut off the heads of their favourite pet and shove their little crying faces in the stumps, saying "See that? That's LIFE. Get over it."

Now if that doesn't produce socially well-adjusted children, I don't know what will.

And another thing - why is the watershed fixed at 9pm? This smacks too much of trying to control the populace. The evil government are trying to make all the kids go to bed at the same time. In essence the big boys upstairs are saying "Well, you COULD let your kids stay up a bit late, but that'd make you a bad parent, wouldn't it?" It pisses me off. Especially 'cos most kids that don't stay up past 9 anyway are either too young or too retarded to care about violence or bouncing boobies.

I consider myself a fan of the horror genre, and the other day I went to my favourite second-hand video shop ("lowest prices in Warwickshire!") and purchased a copy of Hellraiser for a cool £3.99. Then I went home and watched it.

It's a good film, I heartily recommend it. An interesting tangent from the 'slasher' landslide of the 1980's. But there was something nagging me about the opening credits. Y'see, they had the usual sort of heavy bass opening theme horror films have, and as the first few credits appear and disappear you can instantly tell the music is building up to something. And it does. It builds up to a crescendo. Now, I know my horror films, and I know for a fact that crescendos at this stage always lead to the opening title. So I was expecting the word 'Hellraiser' to appear in a big red serifed font as the music dithered up.

But wait! The music was closing in on the crescendo fast, and some nobody credit is still on-screen! You always need a dramatic pause before the crescendo and title, and this sequence was cutting it a bit fine to say the least! Credit disappears. Good. Another one appears. WTF?! It's the make-up artist! As it appears it suddenly becomes clear that the music is gonna crash down like a mighty wave on the MAKE-UP ARTIST. Now, I'm no director, but surely everyone knows that a big crescendo at that stage has to produce the opening title?

Maybe I'm being petty, but for some reason that bothered me. It nagged me all through the film. I was still able to enjoy the bits where the Frank character got torn to pieces by hooks on chains, and the bit where Pinhead speaks the film's tag line: "WE WILL TEAR YOUR SOUL APART!" But I just know that if I'm ever called upon to describe it I'm going to have to say "Yeah, it was a great film, but they reached a crescendo on the make-up artist!!" and be taken for a complete weirdo.

I want to close this rant with a bit of advice: Always read the credits. I have gotten into the habit of reading the credits at the end of a film. Did you know that Pinhead, at this stage in the Hellraiser series, was listed as "Lead Cenobite"? See, you can pick up all sorts of snippets of movie trivia by reading the credits. And there's always some nice music to listen to. I particularly recommend the credits after Wes Craven's New Nightmare. A most challenging read.

Sayonara.

This little slice o'heaven brought to you by Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw.