The Crawling Eye & Random Notes

This is a British science fiction picture which means that people talk a lot and we don’t even seen the beast until late into the picture.

A strange cloud is seen on the Trondhem mountain – as the movie starts we are with 3 climbers who are climbing on a very fake looking back lot set – one (off camera talks about the cloud) then screams and then falls off and is barely held from plunging all the way down the steep cliff face by the safety rope which is tied to his companions. They pull him up but the safety rope breaks before they can save him. Did not matter in the end because his head was gone.

Sound standard horror movie chords and head for the credits.

We come to a train where Sgt. O’Rourke – sorry Forest Tucker – sorry it’s from my growing up, every time I see him I expect him to say “Egarn I don’t know why people say you’re so dumb” and then when ever I see Larry Storch (which isn’t as often) I expect him to say “who says I’m dumb” Sorry – it’s a F-Troop bit that they did about 15 times a show – still it was funny the first 4 after that not so much.

Well that jumped the track quickly. It’s that kind of a film. People are talking in the same kind of polite way people do at parties where most folks don’t know each other – and well you find your attention wandering and thinking maybe playing world of warcaft all day in your underwear isn’t that bad a deal.

Can I add as a side point here that John McCain’s campaign has become “A Noun, A Verb and ‘I was a P.O.W.” – especially whenever (and this happens a lot) St. John steps in it verbally. Like the most recent bit where he doesn’t know how many homes he and his wife owns – which is really kind of odd – even for a very very rich person not to have at least a guess is weird. Of course the answer is that his wife holds the purse strings and she is the one who buys the houses – which is kind of bad for McCain’s image as a two fisted maverick I mean can you be that and a rent boy at the same time?

So back to the film, tucker is getting off at Trondhiem where the cloud is and a friend is. there are two women in the car with him, they originally are going on to Vienna but then the younger one is compelled to get off the train with forest – her sister tags along because that’s what you do in these things.

And there plenty of room at the hotel because of a rash of accidents on the mountain – it’s not clear weather all of them involved head losses but really one of those is enough. And then in the way of British films of the 50’s and early 60’s they start drinking – forest is doing the buying and other folks read meat for the things in the fog come in and start drinking – they explain they are going up the mountain – one fellow seems rather fit and the other is more than a bit overweight – he’s the one doing the drinking and then taking a bottle of brandy for later when they get to the cabin at the base of the mountain.

Off they go to get killed – with Forest who goes to see his scientist friend who has a cosmic ray observatory in the side of a mountain – the geography is a bit confusing here - you can see the mountain in the window – but they are at the base of the mountain – you get there by fake looking cable car – the climbers go off to get killed and Forest and his scientist friend (SF from now on) talk about some doings in the Andes and how this is similar and how Forest got in a lot of trouble and how it is almost the same as the Andes thing except for the lack of mania – at which point forest mentions the girl.

The girl it turns out is psychic – a telepath or something that causes her to faint a lot and to link with other minds!!!! That evening she gives a demonstration of mind reading her sister holds something behind a screen and she says what it is – and then faints because she links to the cloud and it’s moving and it’s killing one of the guys in the cabin after luring him out with a noise – Forest calls the cabin finds out one man is missing and tells the other man to stay put – which is nice of him that way the cloud won’t have to look all over the mountain for it’s next snack.

Forest – who by the way is a UN scientist – back in the days when that apparently meant something – what I don’t know – organizes a rescue party – and then the next day they go up to the cabin and find the guy they told to stay put dead without a head. Gee that was helpful advice.

Meantime they search for missing man (let’s call him John) and two people find him. Actually they first find a knapsack and inside the knapsack is a head – one assumes of the fat gent – it’s hard to tell it’s not a very convincing head. Then John – with a weird light in his eyes – kills the two searchers with his ice axe.

Back at the hotel – the psychic is trying to get up the mountain but she doesn’t know why.

Anyway, it gradually (and for an 84 minute film things take a long time) comes out that something like this had happened in the Andes – everything matches what is happening now except for the weird detail of a man who was dead moving about. The SF and Forrest insist this must be the work of aliens.

And of course on cue – John returns with no memory of what happened (but apparently doing a neat job on cleaning the blood off his clothes, I mean an ice axe is a pretty sloppy weapon.) – he has a drink and then wanders away.

Then he tries to kill the telepath – turns out, he’s under the control of whatever is in the cloud and he was dead – even deader when Forrest shoots him.

At this point they decide they would be safer in the observatory (built like a fortress in case of avalanche) so they load the village up into the cable cars and off they go. Except for one guy who is going to try and drive through the cloud. Good luck with that.

But just before they leave we have to have a moment of drama – as everybody left the hotel somebody knocked a ball out of the one kid in the crowd’s hand – okay foreshadowing 101 – and then, just as we’re all about to get on the cable car – the woman notices that her kid is missing. Ah just how stupid do you have to be to foregut you kid when the town is being evacuated – cell phone yeah – kid no not so much.

At this point – like 70 minutes into the film we haven’t seen the damn monsters yet- not a sausage really. It’s like come on! Make with the crawling eyes already!

Which they finally do – as the child returns for her ball – and the door opens and ta- da there is the crawling eye in all it’s glory – it’s pretty gruesome for about 30 seconds and then well, you see the tentacles are well on wires and then you start to wonder about side vision and all that.

After Forrest rescues the stupid child and the ball from the tentacles of the crawling eyes they go up into the observatory were they find them selves under siege from the eye creatures – who look stupider the longer they are on screen so I can understand the filmmakers hesitancy to put them on but still sometimes you must embrace the dumb and have done with it. There is a goofy charm about the old style special effect monsters that the current CGI creatures just don’t have and sometimes you have to go with that.

Anyway, in a last plot twist the psychic is again assaulted by another human turned zombie and she remains unconscious until the end of the movie. Of all the little weird missteps this movie has – this is the biggest – they go on and on and on and ON about this psychic and how the creatures think she is a threat to the point of trying to kill her several times and yet at the final denouement of the plot she’s out cold and does nothing.. We never learn why the aliens are afraid of her nor does she have anything to do with the final defeat of the aliens by the air force. The Aliens as will come to no great surprise are venerable to fire bombs– they burn quite nicely and then the film is over and all who still have their heads are happy.

Which does lead to another damn question what the hell were the aliens doing there in the first place – it surely wasn’t to conquer the world – a) there were five of them and b) they blowed up pretty easily? I’d have to think they were stupid but they had at least access to interplanetary travel which is something we don’t have. Who knows maybe they were pests dropped off a ship or something.

Who knows.

I suspect the number of people who are going to vote for McCain because Hillary didn’t win the democratic nomination is going to be smaller than the number of folks who still like New Coke. Yeah they’ll get TV time but TV always looks for freaks.

Peace Love Crawling eyes.

A Line in the dirt and an eye that crawls

McCain seems to be well milking being a pow until it moos with pain. While it can’t
have been a very pleasant experience – he can’t lift his arms over his head because
what the NVA did to him – it’s not really a guarantee of being a good, well anything.
In fact I remember reading somewhere where he admitted that he ended up at the Hanoi
Hilton because he was a bad jet pilot.

I also remember during the first bush election they kept replaying the footage of Bush
being picked up by a submarine after he crashed in his Avenger TBA – which again
was a puzzler for me- Elect Bush president because he survived a plane crash? It
just stuck me as bloody odd – inability to keep a plane in the air (granted they
were being shot at) equals presidential timber I don’t get it.

The latest flap is that John has been talking about his experiences as a pow add
this story that as he was walking about in the yard and a North Vietnamese guard drew a cross in the dirt.

That’s slightly implausible in a few ways: Viet Nam was Communist then (and still
is now if memory serves) and religion was frowned upon. Second Buddhists were far
and wide the largest religious denomination in the country – there was a Roman Catholic
presence but it was in South Vietnam – the unlamented Diep South Vietnam’s first
president was Roman Catholic – so the chances of someone working near prisoners
of war in a government run facility being Christian are pretty damn small.

The worrying thing here is that the story bears more than a passing resemblance
To a story told by Alexander Solzaneitizen when he was in the gulag – which does
make more sense – the Russian Orthodox church was despite government interference
and harassment viable out in the boondocks of Siberia and indeed though most of Russia.

Anyway what’s been happening as people have noticed that this story is a) fairly new in the McCain stump speeches and b) kinda full of holes McCains people’s response has been to attack the messenger – which means mostly what he’s said is true, cause if they could really prove it happened they wouldn’t be attacking the messengers would they.

Tired and discouraged tonight – just a long day and we’re only Tuesday in what looks to be a long week. Nothing I can really put my finger on just things are wrong.

But tomorrow I’ll be off to see Laura sing after being fed – that should make things work out better.

In addition, I have the Crawling eye to write about – no it is not my internal dialogue – it is where Forest Tucker saves the world.

Yeah it’s pretty dumb. It doesn’t try to be but it is.

Later when I’m less grumpy.

Peace Love would I lie to you?

Georgia on my mind and bombs

Again this will be quick – things to do

I’m not sure if the relauch of the cold war was planned by the White House - but I suspect that it was more just them being stupid and not thinking what would happen – I also notice that the Georgian army (trained by the US by the way) has distinguished itself mostly by tossing their equipment away and running as fast as they could. I don’t really blame them – they aren’t really fighting for anything but their leader’s over the top dreams and who the hell wants to die for a crazy person.

I notice that Condi Rice – who was if memory serves a Russian Expert has been missing from all this.

Just as well given her record of accomplishment.

I have noticed that the tame geeks in the American Press are trying to stir up some old cold war era panic over Russia’s next move – huge headlines stating “Which of Russia’s neighbors is next?” and what not. I expect the Fox Moive Channel to be running Red Dawn daily for a while.

But I don't think it'll work.

For one thing – I don’t think any of Russia’s neighbors are next since none of them are going to be as stupid in poking the bear with a stick like the president of Georgia was – so that won’t play out – two I don’t think 11 people in America know where the hell Georgia is in relation ship to Russia is anyway. And the best reaction I heard was “The Russian’s have invaded Georgia? Let me know when they get near Atlanta”.

My job doesn’t have that many yuks in it but we have contract with a fed agency (doesn’t matter which) and part of the contract has regulations on what to do if someone calls a bomb treat into the building. Be the instructions you are supposed to ask the caller some questions such as

“When is the bomb going to explode?””Where is the bomb?”
“What kind of bomb is it?”

You are then requested to try to keep the bomber on the line and if possible transfer him.

Right. I think by the time you got to the third question “What kind of bomb is it” the only answer you’re going to get is “The kind that blows up jackass” followed by the guy hanging up.

I remember reading back in the 70’s where there was a rash of bank robberies in New York (leading to the huge plastic walls in older banks today) Citi put out a training film on how to handle robberies including helpful suggestions like giving the robber only small bills.

The mind-boggling thing about these kinds of things are 1) someone had to write these down and 2) people had to say yes to them.

Thoughts on Issac Hayes when I get the chance.

Peace Love Listen can I put you on hold for a minute?

Humor, Fences, Hawaii and what not.

Many many years ago my dad was doing work on a publicity film for something involving atomic power – it was the 50’s and they were tying to use atomic power for everything including airplanes – you could look it up. They did try to build an atomic aircraft engine.

It didn’t work mostly because it had to be the size of a railroad flat car but anyway – as they were working on it they needed someone to write and shoot an internal documentary for the air force or someone on the damned thing. My dad was picked and as a result, he had to fill out about 1,000 pages of forms from the Atomic Energy Commission and submit to a back round check and the whole 99 yards. It was the height of the cold war and everybody was just a little paranoid about spies.

Well my dad was getting just pissed off having to fill out these forms to do a project that was – if it was any good – would mean he’d be doing all of them. So finally, at the end of the form he saw one last question

“Do you have any nicknames?”

He wrote in “Old Blabber mouth”

The next day his boss called him in and told him to change the answer saying, “There’s nothing funny about humor”

It’s a Zen like phrase that has stuck with me ever since dad told me the story.

I was thinking of it today when I read that it seems that the fence being built to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border is actually being made using illegals to build the fence. The right-wingers see nothing funny about that at all.

I think it’s hysterical.

And would lead me to thing that the fence isn’t going to shall we say as sturdy as some would like.

Other notes:

Well if anyone wondered – yes the Mets miss Billy Wagner.

Cokie Roberts needs to have a new brain put in, the one that she has now doesn’t work well. I’m not sure when Hawaii succeeded from the United States but in Cokie’s World it must have happened a few years ago as now Hawaii is now foreign and exotic.

Pearl Harbor – remember? That was in Hawaii.

Jesus what a bumper crop of stupid we have here.

Meantime the president is getting some heat because he’s in china while Russia is invading Georgia (the country not the state) pretty much doing jack shit – clowning around with Athletes who have been told they have to be polite to him, talking about himself – like anybody cares and looking bored when it isn’t about him.

Well if it was anybody else I’d be upset – but considering it is W and the track record when he does take action is so poor it’s best he stays in china – maybe until January?

I haven’t seen much of the Olympics and now every time I turn it on we get the replay of the US beating France so I don’t think I’ll see much of them as we go forward.

Peace Love Humor is not funny

Short Post, Batman and Brett

Sorry the Blogging has been light recently but it doesn’t look like that is going to change for a while – new duties and well just a sense in the air that noses must be to the grindstone – and after all they are paying me – will make these posts fewer for a while.

It’s interesting that the right wing is touting the batman is Bush line about this
film – their talking point is from the last part of the film where batman essentially
taps into every phone in Gotham to try and track down the Joker. This they argue
is the same with W and the wiretaps. However, I see several problems here.

1) For better or worse, Batman is after one person – The Joker. W’s wiretap powers
are to fight ‘terrorism’ which is, for the 1,000th time – a method not an ideology
– the Irish used the same methods back in the 19th century. W’s foe is a foggy nebulous
thing - not even Osama Bin Ladden just ‘terrorism". I also notice that the phrase Islamo Fascism has been dropped from the list of things we’re fighting. Which is good since it never existed in the first place.

2) Batman hands control of the device to someone else because he agrees that this
is way too much power – Bush has shown no sign that he understands what the words
‘too much power’ actually means and insists upon being in total control of the wiretapping with no outside oversight at all.

3) it is a fucking movie. I worry about these people from 24 hrs’ to Batman they
continue to use fantasy to justify their violence/spying hard ons. It’s scary.

In other news Bret Farve is now a Jet – Bret I wish you lots of luck – because the
sound you’re going to hear a lot when you snap the ball is “LOOK OUT!!!!” just before
you get smashed into the artificial term of Giant’s stadium. It’s gonna be ugly Bret
and I’m sorry for that.

A convenient suicide, Water Cannons and Good Gorilla News

By convenient, I mean Dr. Iwins. This isn’t the first suicide that is linked to the build up to the Iraq war. Over in England the there is the still mysterious suicide of a weapons expert who claimed that the British government “sexed up” the Iraqi WMD claims in a dossier. Considering that there where no Iraqi WMD, that claim seems true despite high ranking investigations of themselves essentially clearing them selves of any wrong doing.

Yes that was being sarcastic.

Anyway – the portrait being leaked is of a world class creep, pervert and dangerously violent man – which suits more a man grabbing several guns and walking into the nearest MacDonald’s and opening up rather that carefully and cautiously using weapoinzed anthrax to mail to various senators and congress men (democratic to a man by the by) along with letters to media figures said by the Rush Limbaugh crowd to be leftists and one to the New York Post (this letter was also one of the last and could very well be a kind of red herring) .

But we’ll see – the problem is several fold – that Irvin is dead makes it hard for him to defend himself – and can lead to sloppy work by the prosecutors and the like. Two – it’s just the kind of thing that rings the conspiracy alarm in people’s heads. If it wasn’t for Oswald’s bizarre death there wouldn’t be an 1/8th of the conspiracy theories that float about JFK's murder. And it’s not like this administration isn’t above lying – today’s’ hot news is an accusation that a letter linking Al Queda with Iraq was a complete forgery. While in a sane world, the scandal, if true, would probably force the president and vice president to resign, especially after the revelations of Dick Cheney wanting to dress Navy Seals as Iranians to get the US Navy to fire on them - this will be a three days wonder at most

Meantime – Dick Cheney is not going to speak at the convention as the campaign slogan for McCain this year is “McCain he’s not a Republican so stop saying that.” – They do have to let the president speak but I suspect they will give him 11 am on the first day – which means nobody will see.

Meantime meantime – W has arrived in Korea as he makes his way to china to embarrass himself again. I remember reading a report that he thought he was getting more popular in the US as the crowds of demonstrators was getting smaller – (because well – frankly folks are tired as hell of him and want him to do away) that however doesn’t seem to be the mood of some Koreans who at last report were being sprayed by water cannon.

Good to see some things haven’t changed yet.

Meantime meantime meantime – 125,000 lowland gorillas have been discovered living in some swampland in the Republic of Congo - prior to the survey they knew there were gorillas in this area but they didn’t know just how many of them there were.

Just as long as they are not heavily armed and waiting this is good news.
Well other things to do.

Peace Love Gorillas, lots of gorillas.

Thanks,a Touch of Fall and some depressing nonsense

Well thank you all for coming.

It was a great show – and it was great to be with all of you. It was funny – maybe it was just a new venue or something in the karma of the day but I didn’t feel comfortable on stage that night – but we did a great show by all accounts – maybe I should just pay less attention to that part of me and just do things yes?

And again for all of those who came – thank you so much – hope you enjoyed it. We sure as hell did – I even got to play a little electric guitar and pretend to be a real rock star for a minute or two. Thanks to George who told me stop whining and buy the damn Tele already.

Honestly I don’t think on some level it’s right for me to have this much fun. All I want now is a light show – more songs about UFO’s Monster movies, Bigfoot, food, sex and people with issues and the occasional neck snapping cover.

But that’s just gravy.

Touch of fall in the air this am – not much but just enough to remind one that summer is not forever and that the cycle continues to turn.

I notice that following the election is something that can only depress someone who has the slightest faith in Humanity – after running the ad comparing Barrack to Paris Hilton and Ms. Spears – (which pissed the Hiltons’ off a bit since they have given big bucks to the McCain Campaign) – they have launched an ad that gives the impression to those who want to be given that impression – that Barrack Obama is not only a hidden Muslim terrorist but that he actually is the Anti-Christ hisselff.

It’s stuff like this that makes other countries treat us like we are a large angry drunk Orangutan with a chain saw. They are just waiting until either the gas runs out or we manage to cut our own legs off.

Speaking of that – it looks like the second wave of homeowner defaults is starting up – these are people who had jobs and the like but couldn’t put a down payment down – (unlike the subpirme market who had enough fingers to hold a pen). There are lot more of these than the subprime so we’re in for a treat.

Meantime the GOP under their rubric of “let’s not do anything sane here” are distributing tire gages with the word’s Obama’s energy plan on them. It’s intended to ridicule Obama who when talking about off shore oil drilling – mentioned that in essence the small amount of oil that would be added to the total pool would be equaled if people just kept their cars tuned and their tires properly inflated.

It’s the Purple Heart Band-Aids all over again with the idea of making Obama look ridiculous – which is about all they have. It’s going to a long few months.

But god in heaven what the hell is their bug about drilling? If it isn’t Alaska it’s off shore and hell the oil companies are only drilling about 40% of the offshore sites they have already – I suspect that opening up the off shore oil area will also be linked with more federal money for the oil companies. Like Exxon-Mobil which made a profit of 11.7 billon dollars - profit mind you – this last Quarter.

I’m just so tired of these people spouting this nonsense on the air and having the silly talking heads nod at them like they are not spouting utter gibberish. It’s depressing and arouses in me a very cold anger that is not a good sign.

Meantime the whole Anthrax thing is causing some puzzlement – except among the reporters of the Main Stream Press who are fussing with tire gages – which I can understand they were fed a line of horse shit by the White house back then and it’s embarrassing to be show up as credulous saps with horse dung dripping from their lips when they portray themselves as cynical savvy insiders. I wouldn’t be too willing to do that either.

There seem to be some problems with the case now – like the doctor didn’t actually have access to any anthrax which makes it hard to send letters with the stuff in it. Also there are all those embarrassingly public announcements linking Iraq to the anthrax by such folk as John McCain and Joe Lieberman – where did they get that Idea? Who told them that?

It’s all very puzzling – and very murky – with little or no interest among anybody to clear it up.

Well enough for now

Peace Love Tire Gages

He's just too whatever, a Canadian beheading and other signs of the Apocalypse

Once again I get enough sleep and it looks like the discourse has been taken over by idiots.

One – the most recent meme to surface from the right wing spam swamp is that perhaps Obama is TOO SKINNY and TOO FIT to be president.

Now if one remembers back in 2000 or so – there was much and oh god so much made of what a fitness buff W was how much he ran, worked out yadda yadda yadda and that made him okay to be president. Now that Obama runs and works our and is pretty skinny that means he can’t be president.

McCain also accused Obama of using the race card – which isn’t really the race card – using the race card these days is saying the other guy is using the face card – and trying to be smirch the reputations of white people. Hillary used a version of this in West Virginia – it worked in West Virginia but not so well elsewhere.

Expect more of this nonsense as we get closer to the nomination conventions and then for it to be flowing like a river 24-7 as the election nears.

A sign that the rats are jumping ship – more than a few GOP congressmen who are expecting a tough fight to get reelected are not going to the convention in order not to be seen with W.

Meantime – in a story that illustrates Hunter Thompson’s conviction that your worst nightmare can come true at any moment – a man boarded a Greyhound bus in Canada sat next to a sleeping man then first stabbed the man in the neck several times then decapitated him and carried the head out with him.

There is something Grand Gingoul about the last touch I have to say.

I mean there you are one minute sleeping on the Edmonton to Winnipeg bus and the next minute someone is chopping your head off. One minute you on the bus from Edmonton to Winnipeg (and think of how depressing that fact alone must be) and the next – someone is chopping someone’s head off and then taking his gristly trophy up to the front of the bus.

Meantime in what seems to be an previously unknown sign of the apocalypse – a Texas border town has been over run by Skunks – while not as bad as the Canadian town that gets overrun by Polar Bears every year – it still would be enough to make me consider moving.

News comes that a man who worked with the FBI to analyze the Anthrax mailed to various political and news figures in the days immediately after 9/11 has committed suicide as the Justice Department was going to file charges against him.

The anthrax attacks are mostly forgotten although they were much with us in the days after 9/11. They always felt internal to me – the list of names that t the letters were mailed could have been gotten from listening to Rush Limbaugh’s show for a week or so – except for the Florida newspaper which if memory served had published the information about W’s DUI in Maine.

There is something wrong feeling about all this – add to this ABC is withholding the names of the government officials who back in 2001 assured ABC that the Anthrax found in the letters had traces of a chemical that only the Iraqis used. (looking back now – from a vantage point where we hear that Dick Cheney was asking for American seals to dress up as Iranian Republican Guards and drive motorboats near to American Warships to get them to fire on them – you have to say “how convenient”) when the truth was there was never any chemical sign or anything else that pointed to an Iraqi source. EVER. ABC is sitting on the names of the people who lied to them about the Anthrax. I’m willing to guess one of them was scooter Libby.

In another previously unknown sign of the apocalypse there are villages in northern Greenland where only girls are being born. It has something to do, they think with the concentrations of pcb’s in the women’s blood stream – pcbs are especially concentrated in marine animals in the Artic and in northern (and hell even southern) Greenland – there isn’t much else to eat.

In India comes news of a mass sacrifice of goats in an attempt to ensure that the Congress Party remains in power in India after the next Election – I wouldn’t be surprised if McCain tires this later. Hell he seems willing to do anything at all to get elected.

Well need to dash – end month and gig stuff wish us luck

The picture - well something about Hello Kitty terrifies me deeply so it seemed apt.

Peace Love One, Two Three Four!