Alien 1979 Review

 Alien 1979 Review 

Alien 1979

Science Fiction is about merging technology with any given aspect of humanity. In the case of Alien, it’s a merging of technology with horror. Horror has three major conventions. Confrontation with evil, the uncanny, and a final sublime moment when the evil is defeated. Science can be fun, but science has a dark side and can be used for evil. People have used science before to make deadly gasses and to make malware. We see evil merged with technology this in the film as the evil Company Weyland Yutani assigns an android to front as an on board doctor with orders to capture and retrieve an alien lifeform. Their goals are unclear, but they want the most dangerous alien they can find and are willing to see the crew killed off to bring him home. The android facilitates the birth of the alien and even protects him. We see the uncanny merged with technology when the crew finds the ruin of an ancient spaceship helmed by an alien skeleton. We see the sublime merged with technology as Ripley escapes in a lifepod and enters cyrosleep after defeating the alien.

The horror of extraterrestial life is merged by sci fi in the film Alien. The alien is a powerful creature that turns our strengths into weaknesses and thrives where we are most vulnerable like air ducts and vent shafts. Emotions are one of the things that make our brains so powerful over the millennia. Lambert freezes, overcome by her emotions, when she sees the sheer power of the alien. Before that, the crew gets so worked up after bringing the injured Kane aboard, that they begin fighting because Ripley was going to leave him quarantined outside the ship. We think we are ready to meet aliens until their blood turns out to be acid. The spaceships that once inspired hope and wonder become moist, greasy, poorly lit tombs. What we discovered out there doesn’t bring us love, it ushers in our doom.

Science has a dark side, and it can be very beautiful and scary. In the time of HP Lovecraft scientists were making huge discoveries that challenged how humans had seen the world. We thought the whole universe was one big galaxy, but we discovered different stars of different shaped galaxies, young galaxies, growing galaxies... dead galaxies. Black holes. Dead stars. We began exploring the bottom of the ocean because of the advent of the submarine and diving suits. We discovered amphibious predators of the deep sea where it's so dark that the lack of light deprives the human brain of its senses and causes permeant damage to the nerves of the mind. Anthropologist also discovered enemies of ancient hominids when they  disinterred the extinct breeds of human. We would identify these creatures as monsters, not human. They had cone shaped skulls because their brains were so small, or teeth so giant they couldn't close their  seething mouths, or thick ridges on top of their skulls which held together an extra layer of muscle around the face. Anthropologists considered these some kind of human, but agree that these species were cruel, stupid, and ugly. They cannibalized their own young, and terrorized the early humans by sneaking into their caves until the humans finally had the power and intent to destroy them.... or interbreed with them. HP Lovecraft was inspired by these terrible discoveries. 

The real question of the day: What terrible thing will we discover next? And do you really want to know? If you said "ew" when you read my introduction, then you are not ready to confront the Cosmic Horrors. In HP Lovecraft's view, humans are weak, small, defenseless, self centered, and ready to be eaten by bigger, smarter, cooler, more interesting, more powerful... and wiser entities. 

The best quote in Alien is in the scene when they receive the mysterious signal. Ripley asks if it is human, captain Dallas says "Unknown". This movie is Cosmic Horror manifested in its most perfect form. HR Giger created a wondrous monster who embodies everything we fear about the "Unknown". We don't know where the Xenomorph came from, it's history, how it breeds or how it eats. It seems to be an animal only interested in killing, but at some point these thing were flying around in spaceships. We don't know what it is feeling, we don't know what it's thinking. We assume it has no emotions or conscience because of its hostility, but with an elongated head like that- its possible that the Xenomorph is actually capable of thoughts and feelings that our minds can not even fathom. 

The thing about horror that people who aren't fans of the genre don't understand is that it's not just about thrills and danger and violence. You can get that from a spy movie. It's about the confrontation of the very real threat of evil, the ensuing battle, and the final sublime moment when the viewer overcomes their fears, and the evil is destroyed. It's scary because we don't start off strong and equipped to deal with this. It's a process. In this movie, we see the Cosmic Horror challenged and defeated by Ellen Ripley. Ripley is the first true female hero in any film up to this point. In most old movies, the roles of women are limited. They are either running away from a monster or running into the arms of the male protagonist.  It's a shame that the "cinema as high art" crowd of the 70s didn't embrace the ground breaking Sigourney Weaver who did not get enough attention for her role. The irony is that at the same time the Government was trying to pass the ERA *equal rights amendment* which even Richard Nixon wanted to see passed. It's a shame because of all the Cosmic Horror this film projects, it is countered by the very existence of this woman and her cat. 

If I have one more thing to offer in this discussion, it's that the human emotions in this movie overwhelms and dooms the crew of the Nostromo. Emotions on Earth helped us survive and evolve over the millennia but they are useless in the cold darkness of outer space. Emotions are our greatest strength, our empathy, our compassion, our fear, our curiosity, but they are also our most fatal weaknesses. 

"The Perfect Organism" The Xenomorph

Omon Ra Review:

 Omon Ra Review 

Graham Swanson

 The stereotype is that Science Fiction is for nerds so they can be entertained but I think it can be for creative minded people so that they can learn science. I was a nerdy day dreamer for a long time. Thinking of my own sci fi stories, I began to wonder how space worked, how time worked, how minerals and moisture worked in the vast vacuum of space. I learned no science from school, it all came from sci fi stories. Omon Ra spoke to me because I was a little communist who dreamed big and thought he had big things coming just like how Omon played with a toy jet and dreamed of being a pilot. I ended up growing into an adult who listened to Kino and Molchat Doma from Eastern Europe. Omon expected big things for him too, but the real world is unfair. Other peers get good jobs because the party likes their names, Vladnen, Seven. When a door finally opened for him, it was a glorious suicide mission. Then it turns out to be a conspiracy to fake a Moon landing. Likewise, no one ever called me with a job offer, when it did happen, it was for a job moving “hazardous waste” (which I would kill for now). Omon once saw the USSR as a world of wonder that was destined to send men to the stars. He believed the propaganda and thought he’d be a flying among them. The books ends with him escaping the Metro, and ascending to the Moscow ghetto. He can finally see life on Earth for what it really is.

Almost everyone can admit to life being unfair, and in Omon Ra we see that even sci fi can persuade us to believe in a dream that someday the world will be better. The USSR used sci fi to persuade it’s people into believing a bright future was one rocket blast away, when really they were still trying to figure out how to hook your house to a sewer, how to industrialize the struggling sectors, and how to bring backwater villages in Turkmenistan into the 20^th century. The novel came out after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it never achieved those things. The USSR did invent sputnik and send a man into space, but just as depicted in Omon Ra, their technology was hastily put together patchwork likely stolen from a science facility in the West. People at the time of the Cold War didn’t know the USSR had these weaknesses. The USSR reached an economic peak in the 60s and 70s, and spread it’s message of the future so effectively that few even in the West doubted that the USSR would one day prevail. Not that long ago everyone thought that the internet would make everyone equal, that there would be no rich and poor, and that we’d all share the same information. Then one day, the internet turned out to be a big ghetto over the Metro of Amazon, Social Media, and news commentary shows.

The USSR used propaganda to make its people look into the future of Communism to distract them from the reality of the present. Afterall, Communism was an ideaology of the future. There is a very popular misconception that the Soviet Union was communist. It wasn't. It was ruled by a Communist Party that wanted to ACHIEVE communism, and never did. Every Premeir took office with a plan to achieve Communism in their lifetime but it never happened. Marx didn't think people could force Communism. He believed it would occur naturally over time just as Monarchies and Capitalist Empires did. The USSR would become convinced advancements in science would lead them to the Communist Utopia, and so they invented their own genre of Socialist Sci Fi to create the idea that the People of the USSR were on the brink of a glorious future. However  the contradictions of Soviet society created a dystopian vision that mixed science fiction with the squalor of East European slums. Omon Ra is heavy with this imagery. The young cadets sit with their friends over a small fire, drink fluid from chipped bottles, smoke inferior cigarettes, while looking up at the stars and discussing space flight. They play with toy spaceships in their youth, but as they train to leave earth, their equipment is described better as kitchenware. Saucepans, handles, pedals. The small pilot they discover in their toy ship reflect an eerie fate that they are expendable agents who will be sacrificed to the dream of a futuristic utopia. 

The USSR did launch a man into space, not for science, but for propaganda. In Omon Ra everything the cadets are taught is some kind of indoctrination. It even seems that their value is determined by the kind of message they provide to the advantage of the party ideology. Truth is not the goal, but an illusion that someday the hammer and sickle will be carved into the face of the moon. Scientific truth is a cold thing to find. Oman Ra ends with a surreal question of if the journey to the Moon was even real. For propaganda purposes, all they need to do is put the idea in people's heads that the USSR made it to the moon, but the actual accomplishment is not necessary. People do not need to know the truth, they just need to believe. Reality in this sense is perception, not experience. Truth exists in our consciousness, and its often manipulated, if not challenged. Science is hard to believe because it challenges many of beliefs humans have possessed for about as long as we've been alive. Humans of the modern age must face that we are a speck of dust in the grand scale of the cosmos, not the center of the universe. They must face that fossil evidence suggests that life on Earth derives from Tiktaalik, it didn't come here on a spaceship with fully developed brains and spinal chords capable of speech and a desire to perform dance concerts. Fantasy grasps the perceptions of reality and plays with them to create a new reality that seems wondrous yet plausible like the Nordic Wonderland of Skyrim. Science Fiction plays with the what science considers to be true to merge reality with technological concepts. 

I heard once about a man who was from Ukraine, and spent ww2 in a POW camp. During his confinement, he wrote a science fiction novel, but he threw it out after the war. "The science had changed" is how he explained it. There was things that he didn't know going into the camp that he knew when the war had ended, and the facts and measurements no longer held up. Personally, I say the scientific errors are what makes Sci Fi so great. We aren't watching documentaries when we watch Star Trek, Omon Ra is a not an instruction manual on how to drive a Lunokhod. It should be CONSISTANT to the world it takes place in, but the ending of the novel creates as much joy as seeing junk explode in outer space in Star Wars. Before we know he is beneath the Moscow metro, he is essentially riding a tricycle on the moon, turns the moon red, and tries to fire a gun in outer space. I must say, I preferred the propaganda. 

Socialist Sci Fi Propaganda

One America. Now and Forever: Fallout and the New Millennium

 

One America. Now and Forever:

Fallout and the New Millunium.

Malcolm McDowell, the voice of John Henry Eden

Reactionary Leaders Have Achieved Popularity across the West in the 2000s.

The fateful Battle of Hoover Dam is the most significant geopolitical event since Stalingrad 

The Fallout series takes the technologies that bind us to a globalized industrial capitalist system and eradicates our dependence on them with the post apocalypse sub genre of Sci fi. There are no smart phones and no internet because they were never invented. The timeline is a retrofuturistic alternative history that resembles the early cold war. Even the impressive technology that does exist looks like something they might imagine in the 1950s. The remains of big, bulky, atomic powered super suits and rocket cars litter the radioactive wastes.

Imagine Washington DC, but it’s now a warzone of ruined monuments that once stood for America’s promised liberty. The Congress is now fortified by a race of Super Mutant cannibals who feast on the bones of the fallen survivors of nuclear war. It’s no accident that in the dawn of the New Millennium the generation following the end of the cold war welcomed the promise of a post apocalypse. It was called Fallout 3, and in 2008 it blew the hinges off the post apocalyptic genre. Ever since then, a post apocalyptic dystopia has been the prominent setting for video games, movies, novels, tv shows, and there is no end in sight. The Fallout video game series is an experience in which its audience confronts concerns over the instability of the 2000s, the merging of devices that bind our lives to tech companies, and the rise of Reactionary political parties across Western Democracies.

The Cold War ended 30 years ago. The Berlin Wall went down. Soviet leaders drained Vodka in hidden bunkers and committed suicide as one East European republic after another declared it’s independence from the USSR. The promise of a glorious socialist future never came true. Communist countries like China opened up their markets and joined the globalized industrial capitalist system.

Many believed a bright future of peace and prosperity now awaited them. Instead the 2000s gave us meth, 9/11, wars, economic decline, oligarchy, the reemergence of Nationalism, outbreaks of deadly diseases, riots, social isolation, distrust and division of society, the theft of our private information by tech companies, and limited job opportunities that often fail to cover the ever rising expenses of living, most of which involve soul sucking long hours, no weekends off, in industrial dungeons, while AI programs make art and write poetry. The effect has divided people, caused the birth rate to drop, and wrought havoc to the globalized industrial capitalist system that not so long ago looked like it would last for one thousand years.

That is why in 2008, a mere sci fi video game became a hit, and it was no accident. It was Fallout 3. Despite it’s dreadful tone of a future without a social contract, morals, terrorized by monsters and deformity, and juxtaposed destruction with wholesome imagery of the American 1950s, many people welcomed it. The series provided an escape from the swift transitions of the New Millennium. No debt, no health insurance payments, and no anxiety created by the volatile era.

The re imagining of a world where we can start over and carve our own destinies became a popular fantasy in the New Millennium. Fallout not only brought the science fiction genre to its next phase, it also merged technology with the fear, anxiety, and promise that even in the Post Apocalypse, we can overcome these issues. We see this throughout the entire Fallout series. “War never changes,” is the first line spoken in every Fallout game. New societies emerge with their own social contracts and visions of the future, but just like today, these partisan factions won’t stop fighting, and they seldom address the needs of the people they claim to serve.

The only manufacturing that seems to exist is small scale, independent “chem” labs that keep the bottle cap currency alive. Drug use is rampant, if not depended on, among the people. The player gets a chance to end the faction conflicts, gets opportunities to help addicts, but at times the drug use seems to be the right thing to do when encountering injured people who can’t go on with broken limbs without a dose of morphine or “Medx.” These player actions are a reflection of social problems that members of modern society can face in real life. In Fallout, as today, we turn to technology for answers.

By the 2010s, technology had been merged into the lives of the New Millennium like nothing before it. Smartphones, pocket sized computers, had been merged with their jobs, their food, their friendships, their money, even their love lives. They weren’t just using technology, that began to depend on it, and it created a huge changes in their culture and imaginations. This assemblage challenged long held traditions, and arguably had as negative of an effect on their society as it had created positive changes. On one had, smart phones stole user’s information and sold it without their knowledge, on the other hand, they ended phone booth kidnappings.

Technology only helps us as much as it hinders us. It’s convenient to believe that any technological progress is good, welcomed, or miraculous. Elizabeth Holmes convinced billions of dollars worth of people to invest her “technology” which she made sound like it was destined to change the life of every single diabetic forever. Really it was a box that spilled their blood in a warming tray. A microwave!

It may seem to be a cruel joke, but this relationship the New Millennium has with technology is reflected in the Fallout series as well. They don’t have the internet, smart phones, or AI dance clubs, but they do have strong messages about technology and its (mis)use. Fallout is world where that hyper connection to Silicon Valley Technology is removed from our lives. We are still experiencing this on a video game console, but it is a liberation from these technological confinements nonetheless.

Technology as seen in Fallout has led to the destruction of the world. War may never change, but the weapons did. The nuclear bomb feared in the mid 1900s was the ultimate symbol of how our creations could turn on us. In this world, the fears came true. Now humans must learn to grow food again. They must learn what water is good to drink and water isn’t again. They must learn to read again. They must learn to build shacks again.

One of the iconic factions, the Brotherhood of Steel, a knighthood that lives underground, dedicates their very lives to the principle that technology must not advance, and that people should be kept away from it. They however believe that with guidance and discipline, technology can be used. Another faction, Ceasar’s Legion, agrees, but to an extreme. They think that technology corrupted people and caused the war, but that all technology since the Bronze Age should be destroyed. They want to bring back a society that depends on slavery, pillaging, and magic spells.

The reactionary view that technology has harmed people is consistent throughout fallout, but it is challenged by the presence of the the PIPboy. A wristbound computer that can manage inventory, analyse health condition, play songs on the radio, generate a GPS mapping system, detect hostile entities, write notes, and detect radiation. It’s extremely helpful, essential to survival, and does nothing but support it’s user. In a world of technology gone wrong, it is a hopeful reminder that technology can be our friend.

Though it may seem to be inherent to the beliefs of the reactionary that technology should be removed in order to prevent the corruption of traditions and culture, one of the things that led to the rise of Right Wing parties in the New Millennium was technology itself. Since the early 1990s, far right political parties organized in small groups around the Netherlands, centered around deporting immigrants. After 9/11, the FBI took their thumb off far right groups and began to keep an eye on international terror, more than domestic threats. The result was the far right being free to assemble, spread messages on the internet, and to run for political offices.

They used the internet masterfully. A lot of them had already been communicating in codes and with inside jokes for decades. They were ready to spread their messages when Memes became popular. Far Right commentary shows popped up all over Youtube. Some of these people have been disgraced, but many are still on the air. They didn’t challenge technology, they saw what it’s power was, and they took the opportunity to use it.

Reactionary leaders in Europe, Brazil, Argentina have used the internet to achieve success in leadership. American President Donald Trump is famous for his effective Twitter posts. He even made alliances with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon, and Elon Musk of the Cybertruck. It’s very reminiscent of the Far Right in Fallout. If there is progress in Fallout, there are elements that want it removed.

In the Lore of Fallout, before the war that ended the world, America was ruled by a Nationalistic government. They invaded Canada, sucked Europe’s resources away, and while it’s ambiguous who started the war that destroyed the world, signs imply that it was a political party called the Enclave.

The Enclave was the government, and they might have caused the war because they were ready to protect themselves when it happened. They already had the best bunkers ready to go. They made sure all the food had radiation and preservatives so they could eat it, and they made sure to flood the country with guns so they could use them. When they arise again, it’s to conquer the former United States, destroy any lifeforms “corrupted” by radiation. They mean to wipe anyone mutated from the war, or anyone living in it’s poverty, from the face of the Earth. They plan to do it by taking over the only known water purifier and hooking poison up to it.

The Enclave is led by President John Henry Eden. Though he is never seen, his speeches will sound familiar to anyone alive in the New Millennium.

“We live in an age of poverty, greed, violence, destruction. Indeed, the very seat of the federal government, Washington D.C., has been reduced to what is now known as the "Capital Wasteland." The Capital Wasteland... How did it come to this, America? How did your leaders allow the most powerful nation on Earth… to die? The answer is really quite simple: Incompetence. Incompetence at the highest echelons of power. We put our trust, our faith, in halfwits. Our intrepid leaders had everything they wanted! Power. Wealth. Prestige. And it made them lazy, America. Oh yes, and laziness breeds stupidity. Rest assured, I will not make the mistakes of my predecessors. When John Henry Eden builds a country, he builds it to last. The American way. Don't you, my darling America, deserve that? Don't you deserve a future free of war, and fear, and terrible uncertainty? Of course you do. As President of the United States, you have my solemn pledge that I will never rest, NEVER rest, until we all have what we deserve: A place to truly call... home.” (Enclave Radio. Fallout 3).

The players in Fallout must confront and defeat the in game Nationalism that is rising in the very real world around them. They overcome this threat by bringing peace to the waring factions, and getting them to join forces. They help the people of the wasteland, providing water, protection, medicine, everything the Enclave claims to provide but never does. They must use technology for the greater good, like turning on old power plants and distributing energy across the grid, getting Hoover Dam back online, by powering on the water purifier. The player always has a choice though with this power.

It may seem like black humor, but the option is always presented to the player to use technology for evil. You can launch a ship into space, or you can cause it to crash because it would be funnier that way. You can turn on the power plant for everyone, you can send it all to a satellite that aims a deathbeam back at the planet, you can send it all the Casinos so you can gamble 24/7. The reminder of how technology can be misused tempts us everyday in the New Millennium. What keeps the world alive and growing is the mindful use of the technology we possess. In the end of things, most will use it’s power for the greater good, if we fail, the world will bring destruction to us.

Outlaw Poem

 Outlaw Poem

by Graham Swanson

I will protect you from people who mean you ill-

for I am one of them.

I can protect you from the police for I know all their tricks. 

I can recognize the scammers, the hustlers, the eels. I've seen them before.

I'm not afraid of the gangs. I recognize who they are. 

Stand back, good man, for I will take the mantle. I will fight them for you, and overcome as I've overcome many foemen. 

Be cool, say nothing, draw no attention, trust no one; I've got a bullet in the chamber for every man. 

I fear no man.

I give my heart to the maidens. 

The Vikings did it, so will I follow. 

I slay with my big knife. Your best soldiers have already failed. Your most powerful weapons are destroyed. 

Don't step up to me, you'll lose your honor.

Don't pick a fight with the defiant, you'll never be redeemed. 

Don't mess with me, I know how to take what you love apart.

You can't kill my friends, they are all ghosts.

I'm sick. It's a sickness. The world is infected with it, and I caught it. 

The witch hunter  tells me that mortals can't face demons without becoming one.

Hope tells me that he wants to accompany me so that we may understand, not hate, those who would cause us harm. 

I am at the boundaries. Unleash me when you want, and with haste I will chase down trespassers. 

The Jester's Conflict

 The Jester's Conflict

A poem

The Jester mustn't speak his mind, and so forth, he invented his own persona to satisfy the whims of his lords and ladies. Here are two poems he writes in secret. One is what he says to the court with his mask on, the other is his real thoughts and feelings kept in private.

The Jester sings:

I am happy all the time.

I never get angry.

All women are queens

All men are kings. 

I'd rather be fat than have hate in my heart.

I should like to marry a fat princess or one with a troubled mind. 

The people owe nothing of me.

For I am rich in happiness.

All day and all night.

Just like the lords and ladies of high. 

Let take the hammer of happiness and bonk your noggin with it! 

What's really in his mind: 

No one can possibly be happy all the time. 

I process feelings in a healthy way so I don't lash out or get depressed.

Some women are good some are bad.

Some men are good some are bad.

I work hard on my body and on my empathy

I should marry someone who is good to me

Selfishness is not a sin, but it is still wrong.

I get by day by day with growing well being.

Some days are good some days suck

Most people can relate to this

I mean no malice. If you don't like it leave me alone.

I mean no hate. I am not crazy. I am a reasonable man. 

The Horror of AI

The Horror of AI

The Horror of AI

Hating AI will not help artists. Most people who make a living with their art have silver spoons in their mouths. Most talented artists who have overcome adversity will never get to make a living doing what they work so hard on. It happened to photo developers when the digital camera was invented. It happened to silent film stars when talkies were invented. It happened to writers when the internet came to be. People say they want something made by a human, not a robot, and yes human made stuff is superior (so far) because we can understand emotions, a machine cannot. Yet how many people can you name who purchase art on the regular? Society doesn't value it's own art and culture and THAT is the real tragedy of AI. Whenever someone says they want to support art and not AI, I say, "Great. My work is for sale." And their brains leave the planet.

Lets be honest, how many people are truly comfortable with emotions? When's the last time you cried in public? If you type a long angry spiel in the morning and post it on Facebook, no one will read it. They will step over you like you’re a madman ranting on the city street. People say they prefer human made stuff because it has flaws, feelings, so on. But do they? I think they prefer the AI generated material. It’s boring, generic, formulaic. The algorithm knows it. THATS what people are comfortable with.

If you take someone out of their comfort zone they won’t buy your art. They may even deem it offensive have it it pulled down. Ask anyone who works in media. It was true when TV was new, it’s even more amplified with social media. People don’t want to be challenged. They want their biases confirmed, they want to feel like they're getting a peak behind the curtain, and they want it fast. Now. Me #1. That’s what they want. Within a generation, AI art will be all there is. It’s coming. It’s a huge bubbling cauldron, and we are the teensy weensy spiders dangling by a thread over it. Breath in the steam and tell me I’m wrong. Lionsgate has already spent 20 million dollars opening an all AI studio.

They say AI takes no skill. This is not true. You have to have computer skills. You have to be able to describe to the computer EXACTLY what it needs to produce down to the finest detail of the finest detail of the big picture of the finest detail. Ever tried to make a video game? It’s brutal, painstaking, hair splitting, repetitive, boring, frustrating, and overwhelming. It takes forever, and that’s just to render one single image of a floorboard. Creating AI art will be worse than that.

A lot of the skepticism of AI they said in the past to. In the 1700s they thought novels would corrupt the youth, cause illiteracy and crime. They were wrong. In 1899 they thought moving pictures would cause a decline in moral character causing women to leave their husbands and sons to become alcoholics. Well, maybe, but probably not. In the 1920s the radio they said would bring about age of equality and fairness where we all share the same facts and there won’t be rich and won’t be poor. Hasn’t happened yet. In the 1980s, they said Pong would cause boys to lose their social skills and never get married (though it may appear there is truth to this, it’s quite possible that people just were not aware of Autism and were not diagnosing kids with it) and that Japan would take over the world because they invented a calculator that could do algebra. Let’s not even forget that not too long ago the whole of the United States assumed that the world would end in a shower of nuclear fire. It didn’t.

So what is everyone so worked up about? The real fear is this. AI MIMICS. It STEALS what we have made, doesn’t pay us for it, and replicates it on the internet so that it becomes worthless. Since when did artists care about money? These tech companies are BUILT on intellectual property theft. Bill Gates stole Microsoft. Zuck stole Facebook. I don’t even want to know what Musk did. What did people think was going to happen? Most artists don’t even receive esteem or respect until long after they’ve crossed to the other side. Their work gets hoarded until they die by the leisure class for the leisure class so that they can trade it for the highest possible profit. AI art will put an end to that once and for all. That’s who is afraid of AI art.

I was always a kid that drew in the sand with a stick. I would not do my assignments in elementary school, instead I’d drew elaborate battlefields on them. Once you’re an adult, other adults will bully you into quitting. It’s sad but true. Fantasy football is more respected than an adult who paints or writes or makes video games in his bedroom. If AI is going to be this nuclear bomb that destroys art, then I say that the bomb fell long ago. It’s not in our computers, it’s in the fault of man, it’s his failure to grasp what he goes not understand, it is his failure to protect his creation, and he is millions of men and women all over this planet.

Doom Tree of Arach

  The Doom Tree of Arach

by Graham Swanson

Far from the green river and its steamy valley shacks twists the lost roads once fabled among exiles and bandits to a place of dark clouds and sharp hills. Behind the white trees on the hiss crest are muddy fields occupied by mounds of machinery and salt. Goats wander among trenches dug by large fog moles while families of vultures rest on the radio tower. As the sun breaks the shield of clouds, they raise their wings over the roofs and shadows of Arach town. Quiet. Deserted. Except for the lone quiet street leading to the Doom Tree. 

Roots and cracks in the earth contorted the ancient brickwork. Boots flexed as feet paraded down its narrow path. Ivy and hanging branches veiled the hooded faces joining the moving shadows. The trees along the path curled up and died long ago. Before the floods and fires came there had been nothing. Then one wild summer, thunder and tornados buried even the ruins under the hills. With the black clouds came a red lightning. Where it struck the clay, a pillar arose, and as time went on, it took on the properties of the trees around it.

    The surviving people stepped over the holes in the street. Haggard elders watched on from their porches as pale children looked on from windows. They stayed quiet and avoided looking at each other. The beginning of the old street of the tree looked like any except for its size and the shape of the branches. It could be a thousand years old. The tree limbs themselves seemed to grow towards the ground, away from the light, but its branches then pointed up like stakes. The holes where limbs trickled with protoplasm. The bark that covered the tree changed color depending on the light. In the dark it looked like cool glass, in the sun it looked like crisp flakes of bronze. Beneath the thin paper bark was hard, wet, green cells. Beneath those bubbling cells, jaws and crowns of human skulls protruded.

    The blindfolded maiden was hauled off the cart by masked members of the procession. This one was the youngest yet. 6 years old. The girl belonged to the disgraced Sydow clan. Her father was in jail during the naming ritual. Osmond Sydow, detested by the society of the town, got sent there to sober up. It didn’t matter, in a week he’d be out, and find a new substance. Clever man, they all knew he smoked it and cooked it up, even sold it along with guns and stolen knives, but they never caught him in the act. He was a smart man, he just used those smarts for evil. He fumed in his cell and pounded his head against the concrete. He rapped the cage on the window and kicked until the bench fell to the floor. The other silent men in the jail with him gave him space and left him in silence. Not in fear of his wrath, but in respect for his reaction. They paid no interest to the idea of escaping. The world had changed too much for them, and they had been transformed by the cramped darkness of the dungeon. They preferred the confines of their jail, laying where they last rested, their ribs housing nests for rats.

“They’ll pay for this!” Sydow vowed to skeletons shackled to the drain rack in the next cell. He almost collapsed from exhaustion, hanging to the bars, his stomach dropping. Acid and backwash pumped up into his mouth. Heavy plague covered his remaining teeth already so he didn’t notice it. Abscesses bled on his gums. His fingernails chipped off, and he had dropped his glasses. He sank and rested on the stone cold floor. All he could do was watch out the window as the hooded procession was swallowed by the enchanted lane of dead wood.

Sydow understood the brotherhood and their magic worship of the Doom Tree. As a boy he watered its roots and tended to its fallen branches just as had the other children, sons of lords and peasants alike. However the masters of the Arach insisted they made their selection by lottery. Those who counted the lottery made a little profit by excluding certain names. When they determined his daughter’s name in the drawing, he smoked all the glass he had, and tried to burn down the court house. Police tackled him, bruised his face up and tore his ear. He had fought the police officers many times, they knew him by first name and even knew what his kind of pop he liked to drink since he spent so much time in their custody. All night he waited for the sacrifice to commence. 

The procession gathered in rings and rows. They took the girl out of the cart by her delicate arms. They covered her face in a white shroud, and guided her to the mantle of roots. Heavy branches swayed and moaned. Sap bled from the eye holes in the bark. Pieces of teeth and bit of jaw bone stuck out from depressions in the wood. Knots and creases where branches once grew wept with a stinking sap. A thick hide of flesh grew over the wounds on the tree. The slender branches on top almost seemed to have  thick tendrils of gray hair hanging from them. 

They had one masked spectre stand behind her with a shotgun. Another spectre stood at her shoulder bearing a long knife. Both wore black coats and covered their faces from the rest of town. The spectre with the knife guided the girl by the shoulder to the spot where the sun light reached the doom tree. Sensing her presence, the hairs lifted and a hiss escaped from the tree. The longest hairs descended from the highest boughs while the smallest ascended. When they couldn’t reach anymore they created a strange vibration that created a high pitch whine that made all the animals flee, while people’s pets desperately tried to escape their ropes and chains. 

The spectre with the knife brushed the girls hair off her shoulders, held it up high so not to tarnish her locks, then held the blade against the side of her throat. With three clean slices the skin opened, blood drained, her spinal cord separated from her head, and the muscles peeled from the vertebrae of her skull. Blood washed down his hand, arm, and feet. He held her small head by the hair, one eye semi closed, the other bulged out and turned wet and purple. He set it in the empty empty gap while other hooded spectres began chopping her body apart and disposing the pieces into the mulch bed where the roots twisted and curled around her remains. The hairs of the tree went from gray to red. The branches lifted to the torch light. Thorns protruded from the trunk. Thorns so robust and sharp that other smaller thorns grew from them sprouted and impaled her limbs and head. A veiny film developed over the bark of the tree. It grew like a pulsing crust over the wounds of the trunk, then it reached the branches and the ground below. It grew around the thorns and the remains of the dead girl.

    All evening long the tree exhausted hot air. Storm clouds cycloned over the falling sun. Some trees in the gallery combusted and burned. Some strange creatures the likes of which on one had ever seen emerged from the pond to lay eggs in their front yards. All night long the wind howled, and as the procession removed their hoods and sought shelter in their basements. A convention of hideous creatures emerged. They gathered around the tree and wailed into the night. Scales, utters, and wings fluttered aloft. The moon itself shined silver light upon them. The beauty of the midnight hour was magnified by the everlasting splendor of their suits and weapons.

    The people of Arach huddled in the safety of their hovels. Deep basements nailed shut and boarded up. The cars on the street melted as their computers spat out sparks. The monsters of the tree devoured any living thing they caught in the street. People covered their ears from the terrible songs the abominations sang into the night, for the beauty of their voices caused human ears to go deaf. Smoke and chemical vapor filled the air. Amid floating candles, the brotherhood of darkness swarmed the streets. The bloody knife in hand, the hooded spectre walked alone. A heavy torrent of freezing rain fell upon him. The streets flooded, the fields flooded, the sacred grove flooded. 

In the morning the sun rose and its golden light sparkled in the early fog. Heavy drifts of moisture sank back into the mud. Only scant echoes of the creatures remained in the early hours. The rest of the town awaited the signal. The spectre with the knife stood in the orchard until the light reveiled it to him. All the blood had washed from his robes, he bared witness to its deformities and its adornments. A groan of relief escaped from the mask. The spectre smiled as it developed in the exposing sunlight. A young branch emerged.

In the past so many folk of Arach lost their lives by a sudden and terrible transformation. Fruits grew in their bodies like tumors as their flesh hardened. In an agonizing and slow process, they twisted around, lost their eyes, their voices, as hard amber formed in their blood. Contorted, arching in ways the human body mustn’t bend, their heads split, their legs curled, thorns grew in their throats and mouths. Oozing sap from their eyes sealed their faces and blinded them.

They discovered that when a branch broke off, someone who breaths the oxygen of the tree is claimed by this fate. But as long as they provided the tree the flesh and blood of a young maiden, a new branch would appear. The old crones of town who sat on heaps of hidden gold, the ancient farmers that carved apart the land, the witches who had been in their estates since time before the hills formed, they all lived longer days in the comforts of their bedroom apartments. 

When the guards came to release Sydow, they found the drain rack broken open. The cell flooded during the bewitching. It poured in from the cell door, the windows, and the drain on the floor. Black mud covered the walls, the floor, the bedding. 

“If he went down the pipe he’s a goner.” they recovered blueprints of the town’s waterways and pipe routes and canvassed the woods until they found where the drainage pipe exited the ground. They crawled inside until they lost daylight. They corkscrewed and climbed as the pipe narrowed. They squeezed in until one man got stuck, and the only way he could breath was by breaking his ribs. 

“He’s not in here. If he is, he’s dead.” 

“We have to find him.” 

“Oh my GOD!”  Someone screamed around the grove. 

They ran to their car, and drove there. When they got out they fell to their knees and turned so white that their constricted throats choked on their own tongues. They only made baffled groans like the primitive neanderthal they descended from. The spectre with the knife lay slain in the orchard. The tree trunk lay on the ground amid debris and chunks of heartwood. An axe covered in red carnage stuck out, lodged in the jagged ridge of stump.

Nosferatu (2024) Review

 Nosferatu (2024) Review

Nosferatu 2024 poster, 

Nosferatu 1922 Ad

Ellen, Greta Schröder, Nosferatu, 1922

Ellen, Lily Rose Depp, Nosferatu 2024

Count Orlok, Max Schreck, Nosferatu 1922

Count Orlok, Bill Skarsgard, Nosferatu 2024

It's refreshing to see a scary vampire again. It's also fascinating how the story is essentially the novel Dracula, but overtime Orlok became a completely different character than Dracula. Dracula is too cool to be scary. The Twilight Kid was infamously glittery. Orlok however possesses a cruel inhumane danger with his mere presence. Though the 20s version is iconic, its so cool to see a horror classic brought from the silent movie era to a new.... and darker... generation.

Director Robert Eggers says he has always loved Dracula and vampires, but this movie is really about Ellen. Even without Orlok she suffers from sleep walking and seizures. There's nothing the doctors can do. They tie her up, drug her, drain her blood. Nothing works because the first Psychology labratory didn't exist yet, so they turn to sorcery. The movie takes place in Germany, where the school of psychology began.  

The Witch, Eggers other historical period horror, is the Puritan Nightmare. In Nosferatu he takes another dark period of history set in the mid 1800s. Men and women in the 1800s are nicely dressed, but besieged by things that want to kill them. Even without a vampire, they still had disease outbreaks, leaving your family for long periods of time just to get a signature, loved ones striken by metal illnesses for which science knows little about, and the untimely deaths of their children. Ellen is one such character terrorized by what we now call Epilepsy. They had important jobs too. Killing vampires and healing cursed.

This version of Count Orlok does not try to mimic the appearance of the 1922 version. Many scenes themselves are reimagining of classic moments and fan favorites of the original, but the vampire in this has a voice, he has flesh, a body, and an accent. In many regards at no point is he seductive or glittery Nor at any point is his love of a young maiden welcomed. He is impatient, tyrannical, commanding, abusive, brutal, morbid. He is undead, there is no mistake from the unveilings of his naked corpse.

There is a fair amount of sex in this film, but it's not going to make your date horny. It's going to traumatize you into never thinking a vampire is sexy ever again. Well done! Vampires aren't sexy, they're corpses. Their flesh is rotten and you can see their bones through the folds of decomposing muscles. They will rip your head off and eat your baby. That's how they stay alive.