Breast Cancer Awareness Game: HOAX!

I recently saw, from someone who has been a Facebook/actual friend for a very long time, a sudden, dramatic announcement on her status update: WE'RE MOVING TO VERMONT AT THE END OF THE YEAR! This was followed by a ton of comments from her friends: "Oh no!" "Why didn't you tell me?" "I thought you said you'd never leave (your hometown)!", etc. etc.

Then I got a message from her that made no sense at all:

Bahahahaha~~ You shouldn't have liked or commented on my last status! Now you have to pick from one of the below and post it as your status. This is the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness game. Don't be a spoil sport. Pick your poison from one of these and post it as your status.

1. Just found a squirrel in my car!
2. Just used my kids to get out of a speeding ticket.
3. How do you get rid of foot fungus?
4. All of my bras are missing!
5. I think I just accepted a marriage proposal online?!
6. I've decided to stop wearing underwear.
7. It's confirmed I'm going to be a mommy/daddy.
8. Just won a chance audition on America's got talent!
9. I've been accepted on master chef.
10. I'm getting a pet monkey!
11. I just peed myself!
12. Really thinking about getting butt implants!
13. Just won 700 on a scratcher!
14. We're moving to Vermont at the end of the year!
15. Mayonnaise on Reese's peanut butter cups is sooo good! 

Post with no explanations. Sorry, I fell for it too. Looking forward to your post. Ahhh don't ruin it. (Don't let the secret out). And remember it's all for the 2016 Breast Cancer Awareness." Go Pink!!

This was an invitation to play a kind of Facebook tag, the kind I never participate in anyway. I'm offended by all these kinds of things, but this one. . . The fact that it was somehow (?) connected to breast cancer awareness particularly offended me. It felt as if something incredibly serious was being trivialized. I was given no choice but to be a good sport and go along with it, when it wasn't funny or constructive at all. When I checked this on Snopes, it turned out this sort of thing has been going on for years and years, with variations in the nature of the status posts. The worst of them involved women claiming to be pregnant ("Surprise!"). Not surprisingly, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with breast cancer funding or research, or even (as far as I am concerned) "awareness".

There is a sense that if people are aware of something, it's always a good thing that can only lead to MORE good things. Oh yes? The Kardashians? Donald Trump? Awareness on its own means nothing, and can lead to the kind of endless, pointless blather that is currently choking the internet.

I messaged my friend back and pointed out that this was a hoax, which she denied: she said she had researched it (in other words, she was right about it and I was wrong). Furthermore, she had a friend with breast cancer who loved it, supposedly making it not only OK but (?) desirable and effective, though no donation button existed anywhere. Then she prescribed (presumably, for my bitterness and anger in NOT playing the game)  a favorite self-help book of hers called Loving What Is.  Self-help/acceptance for someone who obviously needed it. The message seemed to be: if I didn't go along with her cancer boondoggle, I must have something wrong with my emotional health.

I cannot really describe the welter of feelings I have right now. I feel condescended to, and jerked around. It just isn't funny, but if I don't play along with it I am a "spoilsport" and don't care about all those suffering women. I wonder if any of her other (baffled?) Facebook friends are having the same reaction, but it may well be the usual Greek chorus thing: "ohhhhh, you fooled me there!" "Oh, I'm so glad you're not moving to Vermont."

The following is an excerpt from a powerful 2013 blog post by cancer warrior Lisa Bonchek Adams.
http://lisabadams.com/2013/10/04/breast-cancer-still-facebook-game/

I will not say she "lost her battle" in 2015, as everyone seems to phrase it. Rather, she lived with her disease as fully and openly as is humanly possible, and wrote magnificently while doing so. I quote her here because nobody has ever said it with more eloquence:

"Once again Facebook games about breast cancer are making the rounds now that it is October. I posted this last year and got some flack from people who thought anything that 'raised awareness' about breast cancer was good and couldn’t understand why I am critical of these messages.

My point is that this isn’t awareness.

There probably isn’t anyone on Facebook who doesn’t know that breast cancer exists. But there certainly is a lot of myth-busting to be done. This is not how to do it. . . There’s a lot of work to be done educating. Education is awareness, these Facebook posts are not.

(There follows a version of the above list of options)

The above instructions are not awareness. This is offensive. Breast cancer is not a joke, awareness does not come from sharing the color of your underwear or your marital status (the whole “tee-hee, wink-wink” attitude adds to my disgust). Even if it ended up on TV, that still would not be educating people about breast cancer they didn’t know before. All it does is show the world that lots of people are willing to post silly things as their status updates.

Just because it says it’s about breast cancer awareness doesn’t mean you have to agree. Go ahead. Ignore it. Or write back and tell them why you don’t want to be included in these things anymore. Another blogger, Susan Niebur, wrote about her take here. She was an astrophysicist, by the way. She died of metastatic breast cancer.

Anyone who has breast cancer and uses your FB status update as an indicator of whether you support their cause is not very enlightened. When I rank 'how to help those of us with cancer,' sharing one of these paragraphs as a status update is the lowest possible method of showing support. There are endless ways to do that. I think it actually is the opposite; sharing these status updates makes people feel they are doing something real for breast cancer causes when they aren’t. (emphasis mine)

I say: count me out of these Facebook games.

I have stage 4 breast cancer and it is no game to me."

LOL, YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE LIKED OR COMMENTED!!!! NOW YOU HAVE TO PICK ONE FROM THESE BELOW AND POST IT TO YOUR STATUS. THIS IS THE 2014 BREAST CANCER AWARENESS GAME. DON’T BE A SPOILSPORT, PICK YOUR POISON FROM ONE OF THESE AND CHANGE YOUR STATUS, 1) DAMN DIARRHOEA 2) JUST USED MY BOOBS TO GET OUT OF A SPEEDING TICKET 3) ANYONE HAVE A TAMPON, I’M OUT 4) HOW DO YOU GET RID OF FOOT FUNGUS? 5) WHY IS NOBODY AROUND WHEN I’M HORNY? 6) NO TOILET PAPER, GOODBYE SOCKS. 7) SOMEONE HAS OFFERED ME A JOB AS A PROSTITUTE BUT I’M HESITANT. 8) I THINK I’M IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE, WHAT SHOULD I DO? 9) I’VE DECIDED TO STOP WEARING UNDERWEAR. 10) IT’S CONFIRMED, I’M GOING TO BE A MUMMY/DADDY! 11) JUST WON £900 ON A SCRATCH CARD 12) I’VE JUST FOUND OUT I’VE BEEN CHEATED ON FOR THE LAST 5 MONTHS. POST WITH NO EXPLANATIONS. SO SORRY I FELL FOR IT TOO!!!!! LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR POST HA HA.

I realize I take the risk of my friend seeing this and being offended. But if we are real friends, there will be a conversation about it, not just "here, read this self-help book, you obviously need it". I have no idea if she will get anything but positive feedback from her other friends on her baffling, confusing post, and I suppose it's none of my business.

People have pointed out that the "ice-bucket challenge" of a few years ago was gimmicky, too - but I seem to remember it was tied to actual donations of money. I am not "against" all awareness projects, nor am I "against" cancer research. I am not grim and humourless, nor do I believe that breast cancer can never be approached in a light-hearted way.

But there is a difference between light-hearted and goddamn stupid.

Social media, so promising at the beginning, has become a cheap and silly game, and I often wonder why I stay with it. I only opened a Facebook account because I had a book coming out and my publisher required me to do so. Especially during the American election, I've seen comments that made my hair stand on end from people I thought I knew.

It saddens me to say I had to unfollow my friend, and I may have to do more than that because my insides feel like a milkshake. Social media would say, "Don't feel that way" or "ignore it", the good old turn-off-your-feelings advice that has the world on the brink of total meltdown. Or, I guess, embrace acceptance as a way of life and never be angry again.

It's hard to unfriend someone I've known for 30 years. But I don't want to feel this way because of something she sent me. It's my life, and I can feel what I want to - and I will.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

If you love your country

Husky Loves Blowing Bubbles

Trump's white trash army

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
’Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoofbeats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ’neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.

The day Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game

Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Brothers

There were those, back in 1963-64, who felt Bob Dylan was being too sympathetic towards the "poor white man" who was indoctrinated into the ways of hate, so that he became a powerless, easily- manipulated "pawn in their game".

But look at the way it is.

If anyone believes Dylan did not deserve his Nobel Prize, they should LISTEN to the lyrics of something he wrote more than half a century ago.

These lines are eerily prescient:

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain.
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

If this bellowing tyrant actually wins, will the "poor white" ever reap the rewards they have been promised? Well, what do YOU think? Or are these people, like everyone else Trump engages with, merely pawns in his toxic, terrifying game?

It is depressing to me that after all the hard work of the 1960s, things could be even worse, all progress undone and kicked backwards. But how else would an evil man like this have ascended to gain control an entire political party?

"White trash"/ "trailer park trash" - poor whites, mostly men, mostly down South - are being blamed for this frightening ascendency. But is it their fault? Doesn't the rise of this despot indicate the desperation and powerlessness of his supporters? 

But if they think Trump is a remedy for all this, they had better guess again.

Trump exists only for himself, and does not give one good goddamn about anyone who does not further his single cause - which is Donald Trump. The day of reckoning is terrifyingly close, and at this point there is absolutely no getting away from it (and I live in Canada!). His win could be the death of democracy as we have known it. I never wanted to write about this! Never. I try not to let this blog get political, because in the best of times I am almost apolitical. But not now, no matter how much I long to be.

And even if the tyrant "loses", will he go away? He will whip up his ignorant forces with even more vehemence, urging his white trash troops onward to ever more heinous acts of violence, while Trump does not sustain so much as a single bruise.

Only a pawn in his game.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Beautiful bondage: the erotic prison of the Victorian corset

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author page!

What's inside a Magic 8 Ball?

I've always wondered.

Snoopy and the leaf

The ABCs of Donald Trump

Why did Tesla fail?

Election hell: we need another miracle

I didn't particularly feel like writing this today. It's a horrible grey day out there, merciless. We just had Halloween, and it freaked out my cat so badly that he's still anxious, with huge eyes. Now it's plain rotten out.

I hate it when something partially comes to me. Yesterday I couldn't remember the name Joyce Carol Oates. I kept thinking of the name Cornelia. I was thinking of another author, Cordelia Strube. . . Another name was Robert Fulford, the Canadian literary critic, and all I could come up with was "Bob".

My mind plays these games with me, chasing itself. Like charades, it will give me one syllable, then two. . . then take them away again. I am reminded of my favorite scene in one of my most beloved movies, Young Frankenstein: "SED-A-GIVE??"

But this isn't a can't-remember thing so much as a CAN-remember-and-can't-find-it. This is rare on the internet. As with Alice's Restaurant, you can get anything you want. At first I thought it was a song by a Canadian group, which would partially explain it.

One of the other songs I couldn't track down was called Africa and was by a Canadian group called Thundermug. Until I found the name Thundermug, I couldn't find it anywhere on YouTube.

This played incessantly all during one summer when I had just left home, so it evokes both excitement and utter terror. Now I realize it must only have been "Canadian-famous" (like Robert Fulford, who may not even be alive any more). It's a unique sound, with all those kazoos and bird calls. For years, I thought the lyrics were, "South Africa, ah-AH-ah." Doing a bit of digging, it turns out to be "LOVE Africa, ah-AH-ah."

Africa

written by Bill Durst and Joe De Angelis

Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Hot is the sun, cold is the night
You're mine!

Thunder saw savanna
I can look out to the sea, look at me

Live off the land (ah-ah-ah)
Smoke Mashmakhan (ah-ah-ah)
Forests so green, jungles so deep
Sublime!

Up the great Zambezi
Sail the Congo to the sea

You're my father, you're my mother
You're my sister and my brother
You're my friend

Soft rolling sand (ah-ah-ah)
Where life began (ah-ah-ah)
Song of the bird, roar of the beast
Sublime!

???? ???? ??? Turkana
Tanganyika call to me, call to me

------ kazoo solo ------

You're my father, you're my mother
You're my sister and my brother
You're my friend

Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Sing coloured man (ah-ah-ah)

Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa (ah-ah-ah)
Beautiful land (ah-ah-ah)
Love Africa

These are the only lyrics I can find, and I think there are several mondegreens in them, but it's hard for me to correct them. "Sing coloured man" sounds pretty racist to me, even though it came out in the early '70s. I always thought it was "sin-coloured land", which is more poetic, even if it doesn't make much sense.

But that is NOT what I am talking about now! I am talking about the chorus of a song I heard one billion times on the radio - a long time ago, probably in the '70s when so many cheesy-but-memorable songs came out. ("And honey, I miss you. . . ") It's a gospel number, and over and over again I am hearing the chorus in my head:

Hey Lord, don't you think it's time

Hey Lord, don't you think it's time

Don't you think it's time

We had another miracle

Lord, don't you think it's time 

That's all. No verses. No name of group. But I can hear that spirited chorus singing in four-part harmony, hands clapping, organ playing. I want to find this! I want to hear it again. At first I thought it might have been recorded by a Canadian group, The Bells, who had a few mainstream hits before fizzling out like most '70s groups did. But when I traced it down, it was a different Don't You Think It's Time. There are a lot of songs with similar titles, and none of them are "it".

If I could get the name of the group. . . Until I somehow found the highly questionable name Thundermug, I could find nothing of Africa, because I kept calling it South Africa (which is exactly what it sounds like - a serious mondegreen). So if I could get a little more of it - 

I've tried all the million-and-one lyric sites. Nothing. I've beaten the YouTube bushes, which always seem to yield something up sooner or later, even some pathetic cover with a drunk guy on an out-of-tune guitar.

Yet I hear it, rollicking, spirited - I want to hear it, and guess why?

I think it's time.

I think it's time we.

I think it's time we had.

I think it's time we had another.

I think it's time we had another MIRACLE so we could get through the swamp of horror that is the American Presidential election. My stomach queases, I feel not only downcast but doomed. It just doesn't seem to want to go any way that could be good.

I've had a lot of thoughts. Trump is a cancer on the body politic, no doubt, but what about Hillary Clinton? I think she's tough, astute, and has the capacity to lead the free world. She's more than capable. The email scandal is nothing but blowing smoke. It's a non-story.

But like Nixon in the infamous Kennedy-Nixon debate, Clinton has no camera presence.

This isn't something she can help or change. And I did not fully realize it until I saw Michelle Obama's recent speech - the one that took my breath away.

You know what I mean. Unless you're Republicans, in which case, you may kindly take a hike.

Michelle Obama glows with charisma. Her speaking voice is warm and expressive. She is full of passion. Hillary Clinton's voice - and again, this is not something she can help or change - is rough and monotone. It just has no emotion in it, is almost croaking. She isn't always grim, and some of her facial expressions are quite delightful - but TV is merciless, and insists on a certain kind of vibe, and she doesn't got it. 

Doesn't got it, my friends.

What does Dump-truck have? Nothing, as far as I am concerned. He's just a rich asshole who tapped into something, a seething unrest in a large group of people who felt powerless and saw him as the way out.

Or, The Way. 

I won't say who this reminds me of. I don't have to.

So all this leads back to a rollicking gospel number that I cannot find anywhere. It's as if it never existed. That never happens on the internet. It's all there, always. Even Thundermug was there, for God's sake! I didn't hear this song in church, by the way. No. I heard it on the radio. Over and over and over again. And I want to hear it now, so badly! So, so, so badly:

Don't you think it's time

we had another miracle?

Lord, don't you think it's time?

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Creepy, creepy stuff

I just realized that throughout my adult life, I kept trying to forget about "Sonovox", the miraculous sound phenomenon of the 1940s. Until just now, I didn't know exactly how it was done, maybe because I didn't want to think about it at all.

But now I just found out. 

Here is what it said on a music site dedicated to sound aberrations: "You could make just about any musical instrument 'talk' with Sonovox.  The sound of the instrument was fed into two small speakers placed on the sides of the throat. Those sounds were transmitted to the larynx, so that they came out of the throat almost as if they were produced there." Thus if you shoved speakers blasting the sound of a clarinet against your larynx and mouthed the words "scoobie doo", you'd have a "scoobie-doo-saying" clarinet. The miracle of the ages.

I don't know why this didn't seem to bother people then, but the Sonovox produced the most ungodly spectral whining sound.  Really, it's impossible to describe, except to say that it is not quite like anything else you've heard, or would want to hear again. The only thing it remotely resembles is the robotic vocal effect of autotune. Most of the instruments don't sound like themselves at all. They just sound weird.

I've been here before, I know I have. I've suffered from Rusty poisoning. This was the recording I was required to listen to ad nauseam as a child, so that I could be indoctrinated into the Joys of Classical Music. I listened to it again recently (for old recordings never die - they just keep getting reissued), and it was, if anything, worse than I remembered. This recording was probably the first widely-known use of the Sonovox, and it became a sensation. Or at least, it wouldn't go away. The different instruments whined and gulped and sounded like bees trapped in a bottle. Most of what they said to Rusty was unintelligible, in spite of the slow robotic way they said it.

I don't know why the people who invented this didn't realize, or perhaps care, that their invention was incredibly creepy and that they would be scaring little children and making it impossible for them to sleep. (Or was it that Civil Defense "this is only a test" thing on TV?)

But to find out that others had used or abused Sonovox - or their listeners - was quite a revelation to me, a painful one, because then I sort of had to listen to some of it. It gave me flashbacks. 

This must have been some kind of fad. People must have gee-whizzed over it. There is a talking guitar on YouTube that is so bad, I won't subject you to it here (except for the silent gif above), but people loved it back then. They loved it so much that they completely dropped it a few years later. Disney used Sonovox as the voice of Casey Junior, the circus train in Dumbo, but he only says "all aboard" in a not-too-obnoxious way. 

All the same, trains aren't supposed to talk.

(Rusty outtakes)

Rusty: the REAL story!

A spooky little girl like you: happy birthday, Caitlin!

OMG OMG OMG!!!!!

Put that phone away!

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

Can I hang out with you?

Ryan's first trombone solo!

Be my little fruit dove

Before last night, did I know anything at all about the fruit dove?

Did I know there WAS such a thing as the fruit dove? 

This is the kind of thing I learn from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology .It's overwhelming, is what it is, because when you decide to study just one variety of one kind of bird, this is what you get. And this list is by no means a complete list. There are some fifty (or: there were some fifty, until mankind in his infinite wisdom wiped them out forever) kinds of fruit dove, and if you want to know more about any of them, just click on the links below.

I made this little gif slide-show to demonstrate just the tip of the iceberg. I'm not going to tell you which fruit dove is shown in each photo, because that would take me all day! But if you're interested - and I swear I did not give two hoots about the fruit dove until last night - this information will get you started. 

Species

Dwarf fruit dove (Ptilinopus nainus), Lobo, New Guinea, 1828
Banded fruit dove, Ptilinopus cinctus
Black-banded fruit dove, Ptilinopus alligator
Red-naped fruit dove, Ptilinopus dohertyi
Pink-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyreus
Flame-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus marchei
Cream-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus merrilli
Yellow-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus occipitalis
Red-eared fruit dove, Ptilinopus fischeri
Jambu fruit dove, Ptilinopus jambu
Oberholser's fruit dove, Ptilinopus epia
Banggai fruit dove, Ptilinopus subgularis
Sula fruit dove, Ptilinopus mangoliensis
Black-chinned fruit dove, Ptilinopus leclancheri
Scarlet-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus bernsteinii
Wompoo fruit dove, Ptilinopus magnificus
Pink-spotted fruit dove, Ptilinopus perlatus
Ornate fruit dove, Ptilinopus ornatus
Tanna fruit dove, Ptilinopus tannensis
Orange-fronted fruit dove, Ptilinopus aurantiifrons
Wallace's fruit dove, Ptilinopus wallacii
Superb fruit dove, Ptilinopus superbus
Many-coloured fruit dove, Ptilinopus perousii
Crimson-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus
Ebon purple-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus marshallianus - doubtfully distinct; extinct (late 19th century)?
Purple-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus ponapensis
Kosrae fruit dove, Ptilinopus hernsheimi
Palau fruit dove, Ptilinopus pelewensis
Lilac-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus rarotongensis
Mauke fruit dove, Ptilinopus rarotongensis "byronensis" - extinct (mid-/late 19th century)
Tubuai fruit dove, Ptilinopus sp. - prehistoric
Mariana fruit dove, Ptilinopus roseicapilla
Rose-crowned fruit dove(Ptilinopus regina) from Australia and Indonesia
Rose-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus regina
Silver-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus richardsii
Grey-green fruit dove, Ptilinopus purpuratus
Makatea fruit dove, Ptilinopus chalcurus
Atoll fruit dove, Ptilinopus coralensis
Red-bellied fruit dove, Ptilinopus greyi
Rapa fruit dove, Ptilinopus huttoni
White-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus dupetithouarsii
Red-moustached fruit dove, Ptilinopus mercierii - extinct (mid-20th century)
Henderson fruit dove, Ptilinopus insularis
Coroneted fruit dove, Ptilinopus coronulatus
Beautiful fruit dove, Ptilinopus pulchellus
Blue-capped fruit dove, Ptilinopus monacha
White-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus rivoli
Yellow-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus solomonensis
Claret-breasted fruit dove, Ptilinopus viridis
White-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus eugeniae
Male pink-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyreus
Orange-bellied fruit dove, Ptilinopus iozonus
Knob-billed fruit dove, Ptilinopus insolitus
Grey-headed fruit dove, Ptilinopus hyogaster
Carunculated fruit dove, Ptilinopus granulifrons
Black-naped fruit dove, Ptilinopus melanospilus
Dwarf fruit dove, Ptilinopus nainus
Negros fruit dove, Ptilinopus arcanus - possibly extinct (late 20th century?)
Orange fruit dove, Ptilinopus victor
Golden fruit dove, Ptilinopus luteovirens
Whistling fruit dove, Ptilinopus layardi

A cat in the cupboard!

"I AM THE PENGUIN!"

The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy (just the good parts)

For my million and one loyal followers: you're already aware that this blog is extremely gif-heavy. Ever since I learned how to make a decent 15-second gif a couple of years ago, I've decorated my blog with them, watching the action run in perfectly-executed little circles. I particularly like to boil down a movie to its bare essence, and never is this more effective than in the case of poorly-dubbed, low-budget Mexican horror films. 

Can you guess which one I have in mind? 

Since I'm bringing you just the good parts, and I hope these don't run slow and jerky for you as they do when the net is a little busy (they straighten out after one cycle), I'll need to explain that this movie is about a robot vs an Aztec mummy. It eventually comes down to a cage match between the two of them, and I won't tell you who wins - you'll figure it out, I think. In between all this feverish activity, there is an unbelievable number of reaction shots. People also spend a lot of time tromping through graveyards, but I left most of that out. As with most films in this genre, it's incredibly slow-moving: believe me when I tell you, this really IS the best part of it, and it comes in under less than two minutes.

This mummy kicks ass. This mummy wants revenge. He has come back from the grave to get some goodies stolen from him by some greedy archaeologist (or something like that). Something about a breastplate and bracelet, though who knows why? Must be because he's Aztec and all.

This is an action scene. There aren't that many of them. People fall down a lot, and cover their faces and scream, and one guy gets real scarred up because the mummy touches him (or is it the robot?)

Sorry this one is so long, but this guy kills me! He looks like Orson Welles, or a crazed opera singer or something - and the human heart, which I guess ends up inside the robot, is straight out of Frankenstein. But the special effects are a tad simpler. That old heart just kind of sits there stewing.

This is a great example of endless, tedious reaction shots. I suspect a good many of them are repeated, a common trick in the low-budget horror industry where recycling footage saves cash. It takes forever for the robot to actually DO anything, and until then all we can do is watch a lot of flashing lights.

At last, the beast is on his feet! This is a magnificent construction which appears to be made from a large spray-painted cardboard box and some furnace ducts. I'm still puzzling out why there is a thing like a mail slot in his chest. My favorite part of the ensemble is the remote control, wielded with fiendish glee by The Bad Guy.

This is really unfortunate. It's just some Mexican guy with a serape on, hanging out in the graveyard, and look what happens to him! Orson Welles just pounds on that remote, and look what it makes the robot do. I'm not sure what it does, but like a lot of people in this movie, the Mexican guy runs away screaming.

CAGE MATCH! Here is where it gets good, and it happens in the last two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The robot is smokin' by now, and is reducing our poor mummy to pulp. Things look pretty grim for the Aztec guy.

But just when you think - ! Once more, the mummy kicks butt! Could there be hidden symbolism here, i. e. ancient spiritual tradition beating out shallow man-made technology? Or is that robot, when you think about it, just a piece of shit anyway?

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Geckos and guava!

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Bentley the cat levitates!

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Truth in three takes

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