What Really Happened During the Recession?

Michigan Central Station, Deroit. Image Source: Next Nature.

The Great Recession did not hit everyone equally. The suffering went deep, but not everyone felt the downturn to the same degree. There is a quote attributed to Harry S. Truman: "It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours."

Some people still consume in a pre-2007 fashion. And the recession is only reaching some industries and economic regions now. As a result, understanding what really happened during the recession is skewed between the experiences and corresponding perceptions of the new haves and the new have nots.

All Hallows' Eve Countdown: Happy Hallowe'en!

"I can't see. Where are my teeth?" Image Source: Facebook.

Happy Hallowe'en! Here are some great photos for today from around the Web.

All Hallows' Eve Countdown: The Curse of Tolkien's One Ring

The Vyne ring, aka the Ring of Silvianus. Image Source: BBC.

BBC has reported on the likely original source for Sauron's One Ring in J. R. R. Tolkien's stories. The history of the ring is complicated. It was found in a farmer's field near Silchester, in Hampshire, UK, in 1785. In 1929, with Tolkien's help, archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler connected the ring to a curse tablet in a late Roman Celtic temple in Gloucestershire, 100 miles away. The curse tablet describes a stolen ring. The area around the temple was also awash in superstitions about elves and dwarves. It is commonly believed that this research helped inspire Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937) and the The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1955).

All Hallows' Eve Countdown: The Curse of the Purple Sapphire

The Delhi Purple Sapphire, in an arcane setting designed by one of its owners to contain its maleficent power with binding spells. Image Source: Live Science.

Today's Countdown to Hallowe'en post is about a curse of imperial plunder. Above, a gemstone with a reputation for leaving disaster in its wake. The gem is in fact an amethyst, stolen by a British soldier from a Temple of Indra - Hindu god of rain and thunderstorms - around the time of the 1857 Indian Mutiny. The current owner, the Natural History Museum in London, claims that it was stolen in 1855. From Kanpur, India, the stone made its way to Britain in the hands of Bengal cavalryman, Colonel W. Ferris. According to Live Science and The Indian Express, the gem spread misery to all who possessed it.

All Hallows' Eve Countdown: Devil's Horse Cake

Sorry for the slowdown in posts, everyone. There was an unexpected family crisis here. Never fear, there are more posts to come in the last few days leading up to Hallowe'en! The photos of the day go to edible horror from Tattooed Bakers in London, UK. This very sweet monstrosity is a super scary devil horse cake - a red velvet cake body with rum pouring out of its flared nostrils. From i09:

How do you follow up a pony-sized unicorn cake with rainbow filling? If you're the Tattooed Bakers, you don't rest on your equine laurels and instead concoct a demonic rotting horse-shaped confection with liquid rum snot.

Following the unicorn's meadow that was Baketopia, the Tattooed Bakers participated in Feed The Beast 2013, adding this monstrous confection to the festivities. Kraken rum poured from the horse cake's nostrils and into a skull font below. And the cake's interior is red velvet, meaning it looked perfectly gory even as the partygoers dug into its sugary hide.

Head over to Miss Cakehead's blog for more photos of the cake; all of its various gashes look much better photographed up-close than from a distance.

You can see a gallery of other cakes from Tattooed Bakers here. Images from i09 and Eat Your Heart Out.

See all my posts on Horror themes.

See all my posts on Ghosts.
 

Check out other blogs observing the Countdown to Hallowe'en!

Amnesia Around the Present Moment

Illustration by Lonni Sue Johnson. 

After a bout of encephalitis, Lonni Sue Johnson suffered brain damage to her hippocampus in 2007. Since then, she has lost all her memory and lives entirely in the narrowest sliver of the present moment. Time has covered her case, with a focus on the ways she has retained her creative knowledge, talents and skills after her unfortunate affliction. For example, she can still recall how to play the viola - but cannot remember that her father died many years ago. She illustrates her experiences in the present moment in order to continue to retain and build ideas through the course of the day. See the video below the jump.

All Hallows' Eve Countdown: The Girl Who Survives

Image Source: Djano23 at deviantART via In the Mouth of Dorkness.

In Halloween II (1981), Donald Pleasence's psychiatrist character mumbles about the meaning of Hallowe'en. He says it really refers to the pagan Gaelic festival of Samhain, the start of the darker half of the year. This seasonal shift provides an elemental connection to the other world, to memory, death, and ancestors. The spiritual dimension is also an elaborate folkloric metaphor for access to the darker parts of ourselves. The screenplay combines Christian symbolism with these ideas:

Samhain, it means the loft of the dead. The end of summer. The festival of Satan. ... In order to please the gods, the druid priests held fire rituals. Prisoners of war, criminals, the insane, animals were burned alive. By observing the way they died the druids believed they could see elements of the future. 2000 years we've come no closer. Samhain is not spirits, it's not goblins, ghosts or witches. It's the unconscious mind. We're all afraid of the darkness inside ourselves.

Dr. Loomis says repeatedly that Michael Myers is not human; he is "pure evil." Michael is a violent supernatural force, an instinct to kill that never stops, which is why he can be shot repeatedly and not die. Of the first 1978 Halloween film, director John Carpenter said, "The movie's about the 'revenge of the repressed' and Jamie Lee has a connection with the killer because she's repressed too."

Horror films are morality plays. The horror stems from some transgression or violation through indulgence of the unspeakable. The story is about a collapse due to that degradation and the effort to correct the problem, to return to safety and security, to survive.

A collection of African horror stories on Wattpad offer typical examples. Swish, Swish! is a warning against laziness, vanity, selfishness, shortcuts around hard work, and hurting others to get ahead. Another, The Witch's Mist, is a grisly injunction against black magic and vampirism (here the literally cannibalistic form, not the soul-sucking variety). Cannibalism, the ultimate horror, is never far away, as the current lifestyle and tribal subculture of human-blood-drinking vampires show.

Curios: Titanic's Lead Violin Auctioned

Image Source: Yahoo.

The violin played by the band master on the Titanic to calm the passengers as the ship was sinking has fetched a record price at auction. BBC:

The violin that was apparently played to calm passengers on the Titanic as it sank was sold for £900,000 in just 10 minutes at auction in Wiltshire.

It was played by band leader Wallace Hartley, who died along with 1,517 others as the ship went down. It had a guide price of £300,000.

The BBC's Duncan Kennedy said the buyer was believed to be British. Auctioneer Alan Aldridge said the violin was the "rarest and most iconic" piece of Titanic memorabilia. ...

Mr Aldridge set the bidding at £50 for the violin, which was lot 230 of 251, so "two of his friends could bid" - but after just a couple of minutes it had passed £100,000. It eventually sold for £900,000 after fierce bidding between two telephone bidders. Hartley has become part of the ship's legend after leading his fellow musicians in playing as the vessel sank. They are famously said to have played the hymn Nearer My God To Thee.

... [I]t is claimed the violin survived in a leather case strapped to Mr Harley's body who was found wearing his cork and linen lifejacket. A diary entry by his fiancee, Maria Robinson, said it was saved from the water and returned to her.

Following her death in 1939, the violin was given to her local Salvation Army citadel and was later passed on to the current anonymous owner's mother in the early 1940s. The auction house said it had attracted interest from collectors all over the world and added that more than 315,000 people viewed it during a three-month exhibition in the United States.

See more images on the BBC site.

Image Source: Branson Tourism Center.

Image Source: Yahoo.

Memorial stone to the Titanic's band master. Image Source: The York Press.