Day: July 26, 2022

My Favorite Horror Movie

/ animar64 / 7 Comments

#100daysofhalloweenhappy asks what my favorite Horror Movie is and after really thinking hard about it this is my response:

My favorite Horror movie is also my favorite Christmas movie- hang on before you grab a DVD of ” The Exorcist ” or one of the ” Halloween” installments or even ” Scream ” and wave it under my nose before you smack me with it, let me tell you why ” A Christmas Carol ” is must see TV at my house on Halloween.

First off there are ghosts- say what you will but all of the ghosts are pretty grim and spooky. Even when they are speaking softly or laughing.

Here is a perfect example of that point:

Those two  little kids that travel with the Ghost of Christmas Present are purely demonic.

In the movie and in the book it’s pretty clear that given the chance they’d eat you alive. Literally. The ghost doesn’t warn Scrooge about his ghoulish maid and her creepy friends who rob the dead before the undertaker shows up- not in so many words anyway. But he warns him about the children. They have one function and one function alone. They exist to corrupt the human soul. SPOOOOOKKKYYY and horrifying.

The we learn that from his staff, to his business acquaintances, to his one and only friend- Scrooge is surrounded by people who don’t care if he lives or dies and the worst part is they relish the idea of him in a neglected grave. In fact they’ve been pushed to the limits because of Scrooge’s own dark soul and I get it- they’re at the point where they would dig him up and spit in his worm eaten face.

Of course, at the end Scrooge finds rememption and the even the blind man’s dog that seemed to say, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master.” liked Scrooge.

However- when I think about the movie and those ghosts that travel the Earth and haunt people in the hopes that people like Scrooge can be saved, it begs the question-

What happens to the ones they can’t save?

And that my friends is where the horror gathers itself up and flies and why  ” A Christmas Carol ” is my favorite Horror Movie

100 Days of Halloween Happy 2022 Prompt: Horror Movie

Enter Sheer Terror

/ animar64 / 1 Comment

I have been captured by anything  about Saturn ( maybe because my Great Grandmother was named Satunalia?) in a way that Mars- my most favorite planet ever does not. Something about that quiet giant triggers my imagination every single time I think about it.

Specifically, one of the things that always tugged at the dark side of my imagination was Cassini’s final trip to Saturn.

Cassini fought to keep it’s antenna turned to Earth so that it would be able to continue to transmit data until Saturn pulverized it. I learned little things like Cassini went into Safe Mode, that it was trying to correct it’s failing systems as it navigated into Saturn- so I know this is a leap but I’m a writer so that’s ok- but Cassini was fighting to stay- operational.

It was trying to figure out how to live.

My imagination runs wild at this- on one hand I am full aware that Cassini was built and programmed to do just that- solve problems and keep itself operational.

But I do that every single waking moment of my life, so I can relate.

In the mornings when I’m walking my dog, Hamish ( pre-dawn before I go to work ) I pull out my phone and pull up my Star Chart apps and I work out where the planets are and when I come across Saturn I’ll stay there for a bit, looking up into the sky and wonder-

What if Cassini  hadn’t been destroyed? What if it had survived? Would it have sent a message back saying ” Hey here’s some more cool data to add to the collection? ” Or would it have sent a message back saying ” Think I’ll be keeping my atoms in one place instead of letting them sail around Saturn until the Universe burns itself out. Later days Bitches. ”

Me. I know which message I would have sent back. But like I said we are talking  about a machine that was crafted, molded and programmed and it did what it was designed to do. But as we design these computers and robots I can’t see that these machines, which are extensions of ourselves, won’t eventually learn  what fear is.

And that thought really does scare me.

CASSINI’S ‘LAST DANCE’: A FINAL PORTRAIT AT SATURN In the early afternoon of 13 September 2017, the venerable and much-loved Cassini probe captured this final portrait of Saturn and its main ring system, before plummeting to fiery destruction in the planet’s hazy atmosphere just 48 hours later.

Cassini’s Grand Finale

Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech
Published: April 4, 2017

Behold The Bat

/ animar64 / 1 Comment

As we fly towards Halloween consider the awesome bat- the fruit bats, the vampire bats and the cosmic bats.

There is such a thing as a Cosmic Bat and if you didn’t know that before you saw this post,

  consider this little fact a treat as we celebrate  reaching the 97th Day To Halloween

“The Cosmic Bat”
Processing: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby, Mark Hanson Astrophotography

 “The Cosmic Bat”
Located in Ophiuchus and rarely imaged, LDN 43 is a dark nebula consisting of very dense material blocking light from the background stars

. Two cometary nebulae (GN 16.31.3 and GN 16.31.7) are found inside the dark nebula area, which certainly looks like a flying bat. The nebula spans 12 light-years at its estimated distance, about 1,400 light-years from planet Earth.