I am usually not the sort of blogger to try and veer too far off the theme of the blog. I try to keep as focused as I can on the needs of the blog with what little free time and energy I have. But sometimes I enjoy reading this sort of thing on other people’s blog sites and so I thought I would give a brief glimpse into what is going in behind the scenes so to speak. First I should mention that there is really no horror culture worth mentioning here in China. No comic books culture either. Simply does not exist comfortably along side a skewed Marxist education I suppose. I am a person who likes ‘real’ things when I can get them. By this I mean, for example, books rather than PDFs. Nothing wrong with PDFs and CBRs and digital media. It is where the world is heading and who am I, a mere ESL teacher in China born in the humble hamlet of Peru Indiana, to stand in the way of progress. But I love to lie in bed and read before I fall asleep. Back to my Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe lately and yet sometimes I want some lighter fare. Something with pictures even.There are no magazines or books here in English worth looking at and certainly no horror book section in the dreary book stores here. In Kunming there is a book stores with a narrow selection of western literature that sells for about threes the normal cover price. A five dollar paperback can cost fifteen here easily or 105 RMB. Commie bastards! I would have nothing if not for the subversive underworld of bittorrents and Rapidshare files. I have literally  thousands of PDF and CBR type files. I can actually enjoy looking at comic books on my PC since I got my new flat screen monitor. But I miss horror books. Film books in general. I fixed that by printing out my PDFs and taking them to the printer and having them cheaply bound for about .50 cents. Yes, the Jack Hill (224 pages) book cost me about .50 to make.

SEE WOODY THE DOG AND MY TOOTH BRUSH HERE! >>

I tend to not regularly check the sites I belong to that do that ranking thing. I have slipped off the proverbial ‘radar’ at Horror Blips and over all have gotten back into a frame of mind I had when I first began blogging; and that is  that I have achieved something if I just see my site on some body’s blog roll and I did not have to bride them to put it there. I am not competitive enough to pander and promote my blog and it seems to exist in that border world of horror/cult movie blogs, somewhere between fairly popular and totally unknown. There are some cool ‘unknown’ blogs out there and I guess I am happy (in that resigned to be a loser sense) mine is one of them. But earlier I was monkeying around with my sidebars here and at Necrotic Cinema and decided to check into the Horror Society 100 and was happy to see The Uranium Cafe at #3 (beating even the perennially popular Chuck Norris Ate My Baby for a day at least) and that even dear little Necrotic Cinema was ranked in the top 30 there. Not sure how the stats are tallied and I may not even check back there for another month or more but it just seems cool to  expect to see myself at 100 or worse and there is my humble site at number three and I did not even have to post pictures of nekked girls or beg all my friends on Facebook or Twitter to click the banner to boost my rank artificially. I did the old fashioned lazy way. By doing nothing but blogging. To be honest it inspires to me to work a little harder since it seems someone out there likes the site and the work I put into it. Thanks to whomever you are.

I went set and me up one of these new fangled Tumblr photo blog sites to help me share some of the images I have saved on my computer and disks over the last few years. Not really sure how the site works other than I get to post all sorts of sleazy pictures and have it all pass off as high art or something there. I  have tons of images stored away in the form of movie posters and VHS covers, comic book art, movie and rock-n-roll images and who knows what the hell else. Of course I am pandering the obligatory girlie stuff since that is what gets the attention of folks and I am not adverse to gawking at pictures of lovely women in provocative situations. I am still a bit burned out with doing movie reviews and that phase will pass but lately I am just not up to it really. Life issues have my concentration compromised. But there is tons of stuff on the back burner and it will be coming out eventually. For now expect a few posts of eye candy with the barest of text to explain what is going on. If you want to check out my Tumblr.com stuff click on the image above or find the link  button in the menagerie that is my sidebar.

I have not posted anything here in ten days and that is a long time for me. Just sort of stepping back I guess and want to rethink where I want to be going with this site. Have been busy setting up the new podcast page but have no motivation yet to do a new podcast. Have several films in my draft folders here but cannot finish up the articles. I guess sometimes we have to take a break and come back refreshed. Next post will be a review of The Alligator People, a mutli-film ‘Necrofile’ post and after that I am going to focus hard on film reviews. I will still sprinkle the site up with comic book stuff and some music selections but really want to focus on pandering the types of films I love seeking out, watching and writing about. Those are older films, b-movies, exploitation films, mid-night movies, select foreign films and influential but forgotten dramas,westerns and comedies. I have no shortage of films here and am watching one or two a day on average. I watch more than I go do a good review on. I may be changing some approaches to that. Shorter reviews. Less spoilers. Fewer images. But it is hard for me not to get into a long review of some of these films once I start uncovering trivia and information. I simply am a little burned out lately. My teaching job is stressful at times as is my day to day life in China and after a while I sort of get worn down and need to recharge. I have also had insomnia for a while and my thinking is not as organized as it should but that will pass I hope. In short I am still committed to my cult film/trash cinema & culture blog. I just need some time to refocus and come back with a new perspective. Next: The Alligator People!

While I have not gotten much posting done recently I have nonetheless been busy behind the scenes. I have been working with audio files and trying to replace some of the files that stopped working in previous posts. There were more than I realized. I also set up a second blog as a sub-domain from this one that will host only my podcast and beatcast material. All podcast post here will be removed and transferred to the new site which is up and running finally. I am about finsihed posting my old podcasts and next will be my old beatcasts (original tunes) as well as getting off my arse and doing some new podcasts. I never really liked mixing up the podcast with the regular movie osts on this site. Setting up the sub-domain was harder than I thought it would be and I had help and advice from the helpful tech people over at maiahost.com in getting it off the ground. If you’re looking for some great specials on a self-hosted blog you should go check out some of the deals going on there now. I have set up a new Feedburner RSS feed for the new site and you can find in my side bar under the image link for my podcast/beatcast, next to the Viddler vidget thing. I will be deleting my old Feedburner feeds for my podcast soon. The site itself is still fresh but please check it out and give me some feedback. It will focus only on podcasts and beatcast and maybe some video stuff one day. No movie reviews or stuff like that. All your Uranium Cafe podcasting needs in one nifty place. Hopefully my audio hosting issues are behind me. My advice is to self host your files if you want them to remain somewhat permanent. You may have to pay some money to someone but in the end it is better. I tried so many ‘free’ file hosting services with nothing but one regret after another. Hopefully all of this will be the motivation I need to get back to doing the podcast section of The Uranium Cafe.

I was actually about to vote for Pierre’s fabulous Frankensteinia blog over at the Rondo Awards based on a post from Arboghast’s blog. But while on the Rondo page I noticed a blog had been nominated that I have long admired and would like to style my site after in some way in the future if I have not already started on some level. That blog is Kimberly’s Cinebeats. Cinebeats is in no way strictly a horror blog and covers many other genres from a period usually before 1980. She promotes exploitation, Japanese and British cinema as well and gives attention to musicians and artists. I do not know her but I can sense from her writing she is a kind person and is passionate about her varied subjects. She handles the topics with the respect they deserve. The blog has a nice retro themed appearance that I love as well. So many horror blogs these days use that standard annoying black Blogger template with red letters for the font. Cinebeats has a cool look that shows pure creativity and relevance to the themes it addresses. When I first began The Uranium Cafe I did not want it to be seen as strictly a horror movie blog. I lifted the retro sounding title from the famous diner near the site of the early atomic bomb tests. I usually feel my direction is all fragmented and not focused while Kimberly has managed to handle a variety of classic and cool topics and  keeps it all wrapped up nicely. I cannot say enough about Frankenstenia as well but I had to choose one or the other and I am going with Cinebeats as the official vote from The Uranium Cafe as the best horror blog for the 2009 Rondos.

The Café reached it 200th post before the end of the year, which was something I was hoping for. I know some other bloggers who started out abut the same time I did have passed me up in sheer terms of post numbers. I had hoped I would be closer to 300 now than 200 but given some situations it seems I am lucky to have reached this amount even. As people may or may not know I live and work in China and therefore blog from here. Not the easiest country in the world to blog from. My other site Necrotic Cinema, which focuses on newer horror films, simply died after Blogger was yet again blocked here. I maintain that site from a VPN proxy now. I had loads of hosting issues that almost made me give it all up more than once. I had to change hosting providers and my URL. My site was hacked. Bandwidth and storage became problems. I now pay more per year than I want to admit too and do it with Chinese RMB. I think the rate right now is around 7 RMB to one American dollar. If you’re traveling to China and spending the dollars you made in USA that is sweet. If you’re in China paying for services in the US it blows big time.

But I am happy with the way things are for now. I love the way the site looks. My traffic is around 1500 to 1800 visitors a day and it’s more than I thought I would have at this time. I get very comments but I can tell by my stats I have good traffic and that they like to look at pictures of sexy girls more than read studies of K. Gordon Murray or Al Adamson. My most visited post is my tribute to Julie Newmar which I wrote off the top of my head. So I am giving my fans what they want with this 2ooth post with a chesty picture of Hammer gal Madeline Smith. I have tons of stuff to report and comment on. New Podcasts and Beatcasts in the works and who knows what else. Barring any unforeseen disasters with my hosting service or my ailing Lenonvo PC the Café will continue to churn out the high quality posts that it has come to be known and revered for in horror circles all over the world (that last part I sort of made up but it sounds great). Thanks to every one who helped me out in hard times and to any one who visited the site more than once. Now I am back to working on my slightly too long Inglourious Basterds post.

Bill D. Courtney aka Uranium Willy