Perfect Horror Movie Setting

In honor of Halloween I decided to post about a place that creeps me out. It is all the more terrifying because until yesterday I had no clue I was afraid of the place.

Yesterday my father decided to take me to his old home town and some me where he grew up. I saw the house he was born in, his old school, where his aunt and uncle's store used to be, my grandfather's old radio shop, and a few houses that he lived in (my grandparents moved every time the rent was due.)

Then we went past the hospital.

This is a real place. It is Cobb Hospital. You can google it, but I warn you that the pictures that come up look nothing like the way it is now. Dad and I drove by the side of the hospital where the ER used to be. It's a vast empty loading dock with lurking shadows now. Worse, coming along the side street like that you don't expect to see a big medical building because it's a residential (mostly) area.

But we rounded the curve and BOOM- a story began to unfold.

I imagine some innocent tourist breaks down. Maybe a loose belt. They pull off the major highway into the Wal-Mart parking lot. The people are strange and unfriendly. Wal-Mart doesn't stock fan belts. The unsuspecting victims are unhelpfully told there's a mechanic 'down the road a ways'

For true horror we need a man and a woman. The woman doesn't like walking down these narrow and neglected streets. Her man thinks she's silly.

It's a lot farther away than they were told. Two blocks become four. People stare hatefully from porches and windows. No one speaks.

Eventually, too tired to think, the weary couple comes to a rusty metal building with several junk cars in a weedy parking lot. No mechanic is in sight. They wander around, calling out, look for car parts. There is no one.

Now they think they should go back to their car. They head back. The people are all gone. It is strangely quiet. The woman thinks they are on the wrong street. She is right, but her man is too tired to notice and he tells her to hush. It is very dark, the sun went down all they were at the garage.

Suddenly a building looms in the distance. The couple can't tell what it is, other than abandoned. It starts to rain. The husband decides they should stop and rest on the loading dock. The wife doesn't like it. Sounds echo eerily. Shadows seems blacker.

But she is tired so she leans against a post and closes her eyes. Her husband, ever the practical joker, takes a little dead grass and dips it in an oil spot. He throws it on her.

Of course she screams, wouldn't you? She's mad, too. He's picking on her, it's dark, it's raining, now he's ruined her shirt. In a snit she stomps off.

Which is exactly the wrong thing to do. Never go off alone in a horror movie.

I think she walks around the building. Her husband is dense so he goes in via a broken window. He's thinking when she comes back he'll jump out and scare her again, except he never comes out, does he? The only thing worse than going off alone is going into a horror movie hospital. Aah, the dried blood, the dirty tile floor, the lab of experiments gone wrong. The ghosts of tortured patients, the morgue...

I was telling all this to a friend of mine today and she told me to stop because I was scaring her.

Anyway, our woman, let's call her Sarah, is wondering around in the dark and hearing strange sounds. Every once in a while she trips over sticks. Finally she rounds a narrow alley with one working (barely) light bulb and discovers it is not oil on her shirt. It is red...

Now she wants to run away. She runs back, trips again, this time holding up a stick, but it's a bone.

Somehow she gets back to the loading dock. Her husband, we'll call him Bob, is gone. Sarah is pissed now. 'James Robert, we have to leave NOW'

Of course Bob can't hear her, he's dead. Bob was dragged off by sullen rednecks who chopped him up with surgical instruments still strangely sharp despite laying in the damp morgue. Mr. Bob has been fed to the mutant living in the hospital basement.

Sarah isn't much brighter than her hubby so of course she goes in via the same broken window. I don't think she dies right away. I think she follows the grunts and screams down to the lowest levels of evil hell just in time to see her husband's head fly across the room.

Sarah probably faints. I think she gets strapped to a table and the rednecks wait until she wakes up to kill her. No, they don't kill her. She's fed live to the mutant. Fresh meat and all.

The next day the police find the car at Wal-Mart. An all point bulletin is put out. A few days later some clothes are found in the Chattahoochee River. The police surmise the tourists fell in, hit their heads on the rocks, or were trapped by the rushing water near the dam, where they drown. No bodies are found. This is not unusual because the Chattahoochee is one of the five most polluted rivers in the world (no lie. Now if I was mayor of a town with such an embarrassing distinction I would want to keep it a secret. The towns on either side of the river built River walks. Yep, they made trash into recreation. At night the water is so black it appears thick enough to walk on. And the smell...gak) Anyway, due to the pollution it is suspected that the tourist where eaten by three eyed-fish. Any bones that were left were destroyed by toxic waste. No charges are filed and the locals are reminded once again not to eat fish from the river.

Sleep tight.

Pink Wa$hing

I think it was the car tag that finally made me snap.

See I hate pink. It's just so girly and not white, not red, can't make up it's mind kind of color. I don't grasp the big deal about pink.

So years ago when pink became THE color for breast cancer I thought it was highly stereotypical.

But alas, pink went on and on and now there's Pink cookbooks, Pink quilts, Pink shirts, Pink key chains, and now, now, damn it, there's a freakin' Pink car tag.

The state of Alabama DMV has just released its Support Breast Cancer Research Tag. And now we get to what's really bothering me.

I first learned about this tag while driving to work one morning. There on a HUGE billboard was 'SUPPORT BREAST CANCER RESEARCH' Beside the screaming message was an over sized image of the tag. The tag in this advertisement carries its own message. The letters on the tag are spelling out words. Those word are NOT 'Hope' or 'Cure' oh no, the words are BUY NOW.

The yogurt ads also bug me. For every pink (of course!) lid you mail in, the yogurt company will donate ten cents. What the F*ck? It's a multi-million dollar company and all they can come off is .10? There's not even a cent sign on the keyboard anymore, that's how meaningless the dime has become.

Last year I was on a herbalist website which had an article on PREVENTING breast cancer. It stunned me. Before that I had never considered that one might be able to prevent a disease that robs women of both health and self-esteem. This, I thought, must be some new findings.

Nope.

It's plain ol' vitamin D found in whole milk (which no one drinks b/c it's fatty) and sunshine (which everyone stays out of- skin cancer)

Now why aren't doctors telling women to drink more milk and get out more? I found the answer in a link to a feminist website.

The article on the fem site was written by a really angry woman. She ranted about how breast cancer is preventable but doctors don't tell you that b/c if you never get sick you won't spend hundreds of thousands on treatments which make your hair fall out and your stomach churn.

After reading that I found examples of PINK PROFIT everywhere. The grocery store has a Pink Ribbon plan- they donate X number of dollars per year IF the customer signs up for a savings club. So they'll do it if they get more money in return. I'm sure some people sign up without even thinking about it, after all who wouldn't find to find a cure?

Drug companies.

Research can go on for ever. But when you're cured...well, you won't buy any more meds, right?

There are some companies which sell Pink products. They sell shirts, key chains, hats, stuffed animals, whatever you can think of with the little pink looped ribbon stamped on.

But does any of that money go to research? Is it all profit? Are companies taking this money and building hospitals? Does the money go to families to help buy food and pay bills while the lady of the house suffers through treatment? How do you know you're actually helping someone when you buy this cheap worthless junk?

I'm not saying that every organization involved with breast cancer is bad. I'm not saying we should not find a cure. I'm not telling anyone the situation is hopeless.

What I am saying is in this society opportunities abound to make a profit off of human misery and suffering. I believe that is wrong.

All I am asking people to do is two things:

1. Please take good care of yourself.

2. Think carefully before spending the almighty dollar.