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"What We Fear" Fears & Phobias Movies

Death, Fear and Bad Decisions: Green Burial Options

graverobbedHalfway through the presentation on green burial options, I was fully creeped out but not at all by the practical and creative alternatives presented by Merilynne Rush of After Death Home Care. I was terrified by the fact of my own death in a way that was rather embarrassing. I write horror fiction, review horror culture, heck, I even collect skulls and skull-shaped sculpture. I’ve buried both my parents and, within the past four months, watched my brother-in-law die at home, at peace and surrounded by love. My earliest childhood memories are of family gatherings at the funerals of obscure relatives. I know death, right? But the photo of a hole in the ground ready for a shroud burial, a bare cavity in the earth, one without marker or protection from the elements, and I was side-swiped by the fact of my own fragility, mortality and insignificance. And this reaction really brought home the point of the presentation: how many important decisions do we make based on unexamined fears?

I am also no stranger to green alternatives. I’ve tended a compost pile since I was 7, grown at least some of my own food ever since and the grand “circle of life” is a potent metaphor in my imagination. Except, perhaps too often, I imagine the circle going on around me without fully realizing the realities of my own “passing away.” We don’t simply “pass away;” we leave a very corporeal residue. As a culture, we’ve fallen into certain habits for dealing with these physical remains. Embalming, I learned, became popular during the Civil War as a way to ship soldiers’ bodies home for funerals. Ms. Rush’s presentation taught me, however, that in most cases, dry ice can chill and preserve a body more than long enough for public services. Those services can be very personal affairs. Home funerals were common in this country less than a hundred years ago. The photos she showed of such home funerals– all with the complete consent of family — depicted dead persons surrounded with stuff of their lives, a guitar, a hand-decorated coffin, their own bed. The bodies looked peaceful, oddly wholesome, naturally dead without the professional interventions of a mortician. Bodies can be washed and dressed at home and the presenter noted that the task is often an opportunity for those grieving to understand and accept the reality that their loved ones are no longer there. I was surprised by how few legal requirements are actually involved and there are more in Michigan than in other states. If I understand it correctly, only two signatures are needed for a home funeral but getting those particular signatures on those particular documents during a time of grief can be a challenge. Green alternatives to conventional burial don’t just happen without a bit of forethought. The guidance of an experienced consultant like Merilynne Rush of After Death Home Care surely would be helpful.

The ecological impact of our deaths continues on long after our burial, however. Conventionally maintained cemeteries require continual investments of gasoline and attention to tend the grounds perpetually for visitors who might not ever come. Ms. Rush showed various green alternative burial places including a full conservation site that looked like a prairie dotted with saplings. And I found this image as hard to cope with as the one of a naked grave. Weird, right? I feel most alive when I am wandering that very kind of terrain. I have often joked about wishing to be composted when I die, but that humor must have masked some deeply seated fear of passing away without a trace. I found it oddly comforting that State records meticulously record the precise locations of all burial locations. I might dream of becoming as famous as Edgar Allen Poe, whose grave was visited by anonymous libation-bearing stranger every year on his birthday but seriously, is such a nebulous and unlikely dream really worth the real and predictable costs of a traditional grave? I wonder yet again, how many of my life choices are guided and constrained by such unfounded hopes and unexamined fears.

The presentation was hardly dour and grim memento mori. Merilynne exuded a peaceful, reverent demeanor, very conducive to discussing these hard options. She also played a segment of Caitlyn Doughty’s “Ask a Mortician” video podcast. We at the DailyNightmare LURV Doughty’s Order of the Good Death and have linked to her videos in the past. A little humor and good will goes a long way when dealing with such sensitive, final issues.

Are you intrigued by greener alternatives to traditional funerals and burial? If you’re in SE Michigan, you’re in luck. After Death Home Care is sponsoring a showing of the movie “A Will for the Wilderness” a feature length documentary, at the Michigan Theatre in Downtown Ann Arbor, June 1st at 1:00. The film records one man’s attempts to be treated in death according to the values he held in life. Read more at the After Death Home Care site here. in ways that better align with his values in life

Tucked away in the thumb of Michigan is an old cemetery where my people are buried. I visit it usually once or twice a year, pause in front of the stones like a solitary family reunion. My beloved grandmother who taught me how to bake bread, the grandfather I never knew, my uncle who tucked a baby chick under his jacket, my aunt who had all the cats… and also my mother and father are there. But of course, they aren’t there. They’re in my heart, my oh so perishable heart. In a hundred years, it’s unlikely many will have such memories to attach to these very permanent markers. Merilynne Rush’s presentation certainly got me thinking about how I might better request treatment in death according to the values I held in life. I was startled to find that some facets of this question seriously creep me out, a devoted horror-hound. This terror intrigues me. This Memorial Day, consider your notions of what should happen to your remains after death if for no other reason than such unexamined fears shape our behavior in life.

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"What We Fear" Doktor Fears & Phobias

Life Lessons from an Active Shooter Training

bangbang

I am not the bad-ass in life that I am in my dreams but today, I learned that I’m not very bad-ass even in make-believe. I “survived” a two-hour scenario-based training session designed to model responses to an active shooter in my workplace. It was not at all what I expected and in particular, my responses were not what I expected.

I thought there’d be little new for me. Heck, I’m a horror writer, who has researched mass shootings for my writing. I’m a gamer who has played my share of “First Person Shooter” style games. I have fired a variety of hand guns during my life from flintlock to nine millimeter. Ho-hum. Come to find out, however, I have not really been shot at.

The training started, as all training does these days, with a slide presentation. It was boring and factual and though it presented horrifying information, numbers can induce only a limited amount of shock. There were technical difficulties, but when the closing video finally did play, my heart began to beat in a different way. I’ve seen surveillance footage of school shootings, listened to numerous 911 calls but somehow this was different. I was being encouraged to actively imagine myself in this context, to learn from what was happening. The presentation took so long that I thought, maybe, there wouldn’t be enough time to run the scenarios, that we’d be let go chastised with a bit of book-learning. I was wrong. There was plenty of time. Many of the worst shooting incidents in history were over in 8 minutes.

We broke into groups, roughly the same number of students in an average class, and filed into classrooms. There were to be three scenarios where we were to model three different techniques: lockdown, barricade, confrontation. We waited until we heard the shots to start our reactions. The shot sounded fake, too high, lacking the presence of the rounds I’ve fired on a shooting range. If I didn’t know what to expect, it would have been extremely easy for me to dismiss it as something innocuous. I dove beneath a table, knowing we were sitting targets if the shooter came in our room. Then someone noticed an attached office. We regrouped into this smaller space, blocked the plate glass windows as best we could. The shooter entered and fired, describing the people he could see, naming his victims. I cowered behind a filing cabinet, out of sight I hoped.

The second scenario we were to barricade the doors. These doors had no internal locks, but the lever-action door handles meant that we could wedge a chair leg in such a way that kept it from opening. That was the idea at least. Our wedge slowed down our shooter for an instant but he still got in. We’d piled flimsy desks in front of the opening too, but since the door opened outward, they simply toppled out into the hall. When the gun shots started, some of us retreated to the back office to a secondary barricade back there. When this scenario ended, my back was pressed against a short cinderblock wall. It was difficult to coax my body to move.

After this second scenario, I began to realize I was no bad-ass. I could not feel my fingers on either hand, my lips were numb, I could see my pulse throbbing in my vision. I felt fundamentally weak in my upper torso, just above my solar plexus. I thought “Do they have many casualties during these trainings, old fat guys like me who keel over with heart-attacks?” Part of what I was feeling was dread though. In the first two scenarios I had not actually seen the shooter. I hid. The final scenario was to role-play confronting the shooter. I knew that in a couple minutes, I was likely going to be shot.

I mean of course “shot.” The shooter was a well-trained professional, skilled in the use of blanks. Still there was the scent of a discharged weapon in the air, that dry spicy smell, something like burning leather. It seemed so wrong, so out of place to smell gunfire in a classroom. The shooter entered. He fired. We began throwing things at him to distract him. We’d been equipped with foam balls to represent objects we could throw (water bottles, a stapler), but it didn’t take long to run out of easy distractions. He kept shooting. In the end, the most effective thing I did during the entire training was to toss a stack of index cards. They fluttered through the air in all directions, buying someone a couple more seconds of life. Then the shooter aimed and shot me. Dead.

And it was over. The scenarios had taken roughly 15 minutes. The survivors and the slain helped re-arrange the classroom. We’d broken three of the desks. The trainers warned us that sometimes the people portraying shooters are actually wounded by over-zealous participants in the confrontation phase. I had made a mental note, don’t be too rough on him since I still thought I’d be a bad-ass. The closest I ever got to the shooter was after everything was done, when I went up to shake his hand, to thank him for the valuable lessons I’d learned.

“Is it hard?” I asked him, “to play the shooter?”

He smiled, “Not really. I don’t cuss in everyday life, though.”

Maybe we were all role-playing, pretending to be someone other than who were really are. Maybe really, deep down, I am a bad-ass and I’d be a hero if the moment came. After today’s training, I hope I never, ever have to find out. But I did learn that it doesn’t take much to make a difference. A few seconds of delay, a bit of distraction, a frustrated entrance, an obscured shot. The scenarios –like the real-life incidents they model– were over before we knew it. Moral of the story: stay alive, keep responsive and keep looking for options, do whatever you can.

That’s probably good advice even for days when you don’t encounter an active shooter.

Categories
"What We Fear" Fears & Phobias

Video: Your Brain (without drugs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHxyP-nUhUY#t=350
Ladies, Gentlemen, a brain. Stuff like this just fills me with wonder and delight, as is fitting for the son of a science teacher who kept stuff to dissect in the basement freezer. Come to find out that many medical students only encounter brains that have been fixed by formalin, a preservative, which changes their texture to that of a rubber ball. Brains in the wild, so to speak, are squishy… and really REALLY cool!

I post this video also as realistic references for those making brain-shaped jello molds, y’know what with the holidays coming and all.

Looking at this exposed brain, reminds me also of the sensation I had when I first looked in a mirror reflected in another mirror and saw precisely how large my bald spot was. It felt like I was peering into a hole in my skull, one that obscenely revealed a truth about me as naked and vulnerable as my corpus callosum.

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"What We Fear" Events Performances

Theatre Bizarre 2013 “The Procession”

Theatre Bizarre is a little hard to describe: a masquerade run amok, immersive environmental theatre, a derelict circus ressurected for just one more night of tattered debauchery… In a different world, I would studiously document John Dunivant‘s magnum opus for a multi-volume dissertation but, in this sad beautiful universe, allow me just a few words and a couple photos.
small masonic
Elsa and I arrived early this year, while Detroit Masonic Temple was still bathed in twilight and the occasional blast of fire.

Foyer

Many performers mulled about the foyer, beside the Fiji mermaid and the scale model of Theatres past. These boxed representations are the circus I would run away to join, or at least display in my bedroom — handcrafted stages peopled with paper maché characters engaged in all manner of bizarreness and lit by blasts of flame. My favorite detail was a sword swallower who was part anatomical model. An occupational hazard, I suppose.

model1

model2

Being an early bird allowed my hungry eyes and itchy camera finger to record some of the classic set pieces before the real fun began.

Zombo'sEmporium

This photo depicts the one moment when the PeepShow was not stuffed to capacity with patrons eager for Good Ol’ Timey Burlesque.
peepshow

Odditorium
One of the rooms was filled with what a friend called “Satanic Kitsch” which is an apt description. These massive paintings of horned beings on scuffed plywood echo props from a tawdry sideshow while evoking the iconography of 70’s demonism, scandalous and nostalgic. When the festivities began, this room shook with heavy metal and poorly-clad performers suspended by hooks in their flesh.
Asylum

SatannicKitsch1

SatannicKitsch2

Other nooks of the massive structure were filled with sights that, let’s say, can’t be posted to Facebook. Thrilling, titillating amusements best left unmentioned.

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In the “Sinema” Elsa and I munched popcorn and caught bits of Caligari as well as a performance by the rollicking Detroit Marching Party Band. But there was music EVERYWHERE. Elsa and I shook our tail-feathers to rockabilly in a place we came to call “The Pumpkin Room,” bounced gleefully to techno in the central court, and even swayed and head-banged to the bands rocking out the Ballroom on the very bottom floor.

Ballroom

Any night of magical indulgence should have at least one regret and this is a photo of mine: the prizes awarded for the carnival games. I must have spent $20 throwing darts and tossing beanbags but did not walk away with one of these odd mementoes. I would have treasured it, not just as a souvenir, but as tangible proof that the visions of Theatre Bizarre were more than just a Mid-Autumn’s Night Dream.

prizes!

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"What We Fear" This Just In

Dogman Legend update

wolf-mask
The Grand Haven Tribune posts this update about ongoing Dogman sightings. As a part-time lycanthrope myself, I take more than a passing interest in the “Dogman” legend… but I’m stuck on the NAME of the guy who wrote this article: “Collier” as in “Even MORE Collie…” If I were the curious type and interested in doing a follow-up, I might see if he knows more about this Dog-man than he’s letting on. Like a LOT more.

http://www.grandhaventribune.com/article/strange-grand-haven/622261

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"What We Fear" Bug du Jour Doktor Fiction

Bug du Jour: Battle Cricket

Cricket1

“When King Abimelech made war on the Martians, he based his strategy on the one liability these swollen-headed aliens possessed: their intellects. Instead of attacking supply lines as he had with the round-bellied Venusians, he targeted their libraries. The royal geneticists bred armored crickets as shock troops, ravenous creatures hungry for book tape, binding glue and paper. These tiny soldiers quietly emptied the bibliotechs, left dry husks, while the smug Martian guards patrolled the city domes. When the battle finally came, the aliens had forgotten even how to work their laser pistols. Worse, they no longer knew what was worth protecting.”

© 2013 James Frederick Leach

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"What We Fear"

A Brief History of Dark Clowns

stovepipe1
Dig this Smithsonian article that traces the dark side of Clowns. These darker, non-comedic or even anti-comedic elements have been an intrinsic part of clown lore, at least since Grimaldi (1778 – 1837) — whom the article’s author likens to a “homo erectus” of the modern clown, i.e. the first example who we’d still recognize as an example. It’s an intriguing perspective that clowns have gotten more sinister in the popular imagination as a response to a suppression of those darker aspects in the interests of depicting clowns as child-safe, innocent fun. There’s a bit of The Joker’s disruptive anarchy as well as Emmett Kelly’s heart-wrenching pathos always just beneath that greasepaint and this article makes a good case that it’s always been.

I’ve had dark clowns on the brain in anticipation of that Theatre Bizarre and its patron dead clown Zombo.

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"What We Fear" Bug du Jour Doktor Fiction

Bug du Jour: “Creepy Beetle”

ScreenBeetle

“Egmont woke from a dead sleep at the sound of a heavy thump. He bolted upright in bed. His ears hungry for sound detected just the normal night sounds of summer. Yet Egmont knew in his heart that something else lurked in the midnight. He quietly padded across the floor, switched on the flood lights, threw open the front door. A beetle the size of a dinner plate perched on the screen, hideous spots across its carapace, vicious pinchers eager for flesh worked open and closed. Egmont was overcome with emotion, but he stammered, “My Precious, you’ve finally come home!”

© 2013 James Frederick Leach

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"What We Fear" Halloween Other Haunts

Motor City Haunt Club HAUNTED GARAGE SALE

Flyer2013web
‘Tis nearly the season for scary fun and the Haunted Garage Sale, Saturday, September 7, is a great place to pick up new or gently used haunting gear. Located at the Halloween Bazaar, 50 North Grosbeck in Mount Clemens, the sale runs from 9:00 AM until 2:00 PM. Admission is free with a canned good donation to the Gleaner’s Community Food Bank.

Who’s behind this shindig?

• The Motor City Haunt Club an association of professionals, amateurs and afficianados of haunted attractions — Check out their website for resources on making the most of Halloween in Southeastern Michigan —

Zombie Walk Detroit

• and Amanda’s Nightmare, a new premier haunted attraction based in Monroe, MI.

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"What We Fear"

Bug du Jour: “Dead YellowJacket”

DeadBug

Nothing bespeaks the nihilistic futility of existence quite like a dead bug, its life, fleeting and insignificant though it was, snuffed out into nothingness. I found this memento mori on a window sill, its corpse warming in the morning sun.

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"What We Fear"

Bug du Jour: “Art Deco Moth”

ArtDecoMoth

Given that there are eleventy-billion different kinds of moth previously identified by Science, I feel on somewhat shaky ground to claim I “discovered” this creature… but I did discover it the other day and was able to snap two photos that capture different moods. I dubbed in “Art Deco” due to the bold, high-contrast angles daubed on its wings.

ArtDecoMoth2

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"What We Fear" Doktor Fears & Phobias

Bug du Jour: “Common Green Darner”

GreenDarner

Summer is the time for bugs — and bugs creep out a lot of people. I spotted this little fella on a recent walk and was struck by the coloration and the delicate structure of the wings. The InterWebs say it’s a Common Green Darner, a male, since, y’know, males tend to be the more ostentatious of the species.

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"What We Fear"

BUGS! – An Analysis of Fear at Home

Centipede2

When the Doktor and I refer to our house as being “lightly haunted,” we are not referencing the fellow pictured above.  (Click to view a larger image– I dare you!)  His occasional appearance in our basement, or that his colleagues, could no longer be termed a “surprise.” During our years of inhabiting this house, we have witnessed only a handful of creatures from the spectral realm, but these creatures, the common house centipede or Scutigera coleoptrata , have had a larger presence.

When this fellow and I crossed paths in the other night, I steeled myself and attempted to analyze the sensation that threatened to overwhelm my reactions.  Let’s just call it fear, for simplicity sake.

My first impulse was to run away, to hurry back upstairs where drier, warmer temperatures and brighter lights seem to discourage visitations from arthropods.  However, I made myself stand still and observe the creature and my reactions, a decision made possible by the fact that the insect sat motionless on the basement wall.  The cold column of discomfort that settled in my spine, the shivers of repulsion — oh my, what exciting sensations.

Having managed the inclination to flee, I then had to squash the impulse to murder the house centipede. Having attempted such crime in the past, I can assure you that it is usually less successful than one would like.  These many-legged critters are swift and acquainted with defensive maneuvers, which can result in an embarrassing miss.   At the best of times, it’s difficult to deliver the decisive hit needed to obliterate the entire insect.  Leaving half a bug writhing on the floor is truly disgusting.

My final psychological move was to attempt to view the creature as friend.  Indeed, this is most difficult step of all, one motivated by knowledge gained in a gardening seminar a few years ago.  The house centipede is an insectivore, meaning it kills and eats other insects; his menu is made up of even less desirable household arthropods: bed bugs, termites, cockroaches, silverfish, ants and more.  In other words, the household centipede is a good guy, in spite of appearances otherwise.

I held my fears in check long enough to take the picture and then I fled upstairs to a strong cup of tea and a snuggly blanket.  I must admit that I was impressed with my own bravery, although I’m not sure the Doktor shared my sentiment.

What makes your spine tingle or your skin crawl?  Some people think ghosts are creepy, but I think several creepier things exist, close at hand or under our feet, going about their existences, unaware of our intentions or our emotions.

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"What We Fear" This Just In

New Year’s Monsters from Japan

I do love a good folktale, especially ones that mix in a bit of terror. That’s why I was pleased to read about the Japanese New Year’s monsters called the Namahage, who are portrayed by men wearing big masks and straw capes.

From the Namahage Museum
From the Namahage Museum

In olden times, the Namahage visited each house in the village, pounding on the doors and brandishing their (fake) deba knives. The Namahage would seek out the newcomers and children specifically and encourage them to work and study hard and to obey their parents or inlaws.

It’s a version of “Scared Straight” just in time for New Year’s!

And may yours be happy as well!

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"What We Fear" Events Movies Other Haunts

Flint Horror Convention – October 20th


If you read this blog and you’re near mid-Michigan next weekend, stop in to the Second Annual Flint Horror Convention, right down town at the creepy Masonic Temple kitty corner from the original Halo Burger. Vendors, Movies, Panels and all so close to the center of this mitten-shaped wonderland. TV horror celebrity Wolfman Mac is playing host and, among many other guests, my friends from the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers will be on a panel. Last year’s inaugural convention was a blast and this year promises to be bigger and better.

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"What We Fear" Other Haunts

“Darkness and Dawn” – a vintage “Hell House”

It’s October and officially the time for Haunted House attractions and their evangelical knock-offs known as Hell Houses. A Hell House takes the thrills and chills of a traditional haunted house but dresses them up with a heavily moralistic and pietistic spin. A common feature, I gather, is a lurid depiction of Hell and all the tortures awaiting immoral, impious folks. This phenomenon is nothing new, heck some of the best medieval plays are thinly veiled cautionary tales. But I was charmed to find a post about a midway attraction from the early decades of the 20th C named “Darkness and Dawn” that featured a peek into Hell, presumably for pure amusement not instruction.

The first reference I found came from the blog Anonymous Works that featured a ticket for this attraction plus a snippet of information. They noted the attraction was located in Coney Island, that is burned down in 1903 and was later re-built in Luna Park. The style of the attraction was a cyclorama, a circular panorama intended to give a sense of all encompassing vista.

The blog Gaping Media Hole had several postcards from the attraction’s appearance in different locations, including the promotional card shown above and the shot of the midway that shows the front of the attraction. The locations noted are Revere Beach and Venice Beach.

The best description about the attraction came at a site devoted to the Pan-American Exhibition of 1901 held in Buffalo, NY. If I read the information correctly, “Darkness and Dawn” grossed the highest amount of any of the Midway attractions, scoring 17th overall behind restaurants and concession stands. The attraction started with a “Cabaret du Mort” where patrons drank from skulls and sat at coffin-shaped tables. Likely these beverages were alcoholic since at this time, amusement parks were aimed at young couples and were not particularly family friendly. I found little description of the Hell portion other than the note that while the creator of the attraction was puzzling out a way to get patrons over a lake of fire he came up with the idea for another attraction, “Visit to the Moon.”

These were the details I was able to piece together with a few minutes of research. I’m sharing them here mostly to remind myself to look into it further when I get a chance. Suffice to say, our interest in fear as thrill is sometimes served with a candy coating of instruction, and sometimes that candy coating is quite thin.

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"What We Fear"

Zombie Walk Ann Arbor 2012


Hordes of undead shambled through downtown Ann Arbor last weekend and they did it for charity…and presumably for brains. The 2012 Zombie Walk Ann Arbor was held last Saturday, Sept 27. The undead were requested to bring canned goods to benefit Foodgatherers, a charity that feeds the hungry in Washtenaw County. I do not know if Foodgatherers has an official policy on feeding hungry zombies, however. I caught up with the zombies as they dragged their partially rotted corpses through picturesque Nickels Arcade.

The macabre parade was kept in line by “armed” representatives from the local chapter of Zombie Squad, a national organization that seeks civilian preparedness for zombie outbreaks and other types of disasters. The decomposing crowd ended it festering stroll at the Michigan Theatre, just in time for Three Corpse Circus, the annual festival of short horror films, where the undead were given a discounted admission.

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"What We Fear" Other Haunts

Video – “Ask a Mortician”

A few years ago I was researching a piece about funeral parlors that I finally abandoned because, I am embarrassed to admit, I was too afraid to actually ask a mortician about specific details of the embalming process. File under “Thank you, Internet:” this running video blog of perky mortician Caitlin Doughty who gleefully responds to viewer questions about death, dying and funeral customs. She runs a website too called Order of the Good Death . com

The videos are quirky and light hearted with plenty of illustrations edited in to satisfy the tachistoscopic tastes of the MTV generation. But Caitlin’s warm personality and gentle wisdom are the real attractions of this vblog.

Check out the first episdoe at least, will ya?

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"What We Fear" Christmas

Ten Best Christmas Monsters: #8 – The Angels

“The Angels” – Forget for a moment, those chubby cheeked cherbubim from the dime-store Xmas cards. Also erase the Renaissance puti, those cute winged baby heads… though frankly the thought of winged baby heads gives me the shivers. And even depictions of seraphim that we’ve grown accustomed to are too anthropomorphic and beautiful. Angels were bad-ass. These other worldly messengers are far closer to Christopher Walken’s character in The Prophecy than those feel-good bundles of fluff and hence they fit perfectly on this list of the Ten Best Christmas Monsters.

How dare I assert this?

Monsters for the purpose of this list are scary or threatening, non-humans beings.

Non-human? Check. Don’t get me started on the idea that dead people turn into angels when they die…

Threatening? Well, one of the original Christmas stories describes angels appearing to a group of shepherds and those shepherd were scared out of their wits. The first “message” that the angels had to deliver is a bit of crowd soothing. “Fear not.” This injunction suggests that the shepherds’ first reaction was to be afraid.

Shepherds have also been nerfed a bit through a couple millennia of metaphoric over-usage. Most of us have little association with real sheep, let alone career shepherds while we are inundated with sweet as spun sugar depictions of “the loving shepherd” made infamous by kitsch meisters like Holman Hunt. As I figure it, shepherds in first C Palestine were pretty rough and tumble. If chewing tobacco existed, they’d chew it. They had to be prepared to protect their flock against marauding beasts at midnight using little more than a crooked stick and a sling.

And when these angel things come along and these tough guys collapse. Imagine John Wayne weeping, and I mean the tough John Wayne like in a cowboy role not the bogus “Roman Solider at the Cross” gig he did — or am I the only one who saw that movie?

So for being non-human and scary… even if that terror is based on a misunderstanding, we at the DailyNightmare award #8 Best Christmas Monster to the Angels. Disagree? Add a comment.

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"What We Fear" This Just In

This Just In – Send More Exorcists!!!

When I was a kid, everyone I knew thought “The Exorcist” was the scariest movie they’d ever seen. Me? When I watched it, I had the overwhelmed sensation “Damn, that looks cool.” Forget fireman or doctor or lawyer, I wanted to be an EXORCIST!

Trouble was, the high school guidance counselor didn’t really have much advice for that career path. Things might be changing though, following this report:

Catholic Bishops: “More Exorcists Needed”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40151974/ns/us_news

The most recent guidelines appear to have been updated in 1999 – so they won’t be able to address any juicy new demons that the 21st century has spawned. And of course, they’re written in Latin, which wasn’t exactly one of my strongest classes. I suppose the most damning blow to my demon-evicting job search is that I’m not Catholic must less a priest nor am I likely to become one in the near future… like this life-time.

Maybe I’ll have to fall back on my other childhood dream job: astronaut who leaves earth never to return.