#rural geometry

[eva-mix]

moradia S+N by @eva_atelier | obra concluída #quiet #wall #eva_atelier #rural #igersoaz #igersportugal #oaz #architecturelovers #arquitecturadonorte #PortugalComEfeitos #portugaldenorteasul #portugal #ossela #archilovers #architecture #arquitectura #sun #arquitecturacontemporanea #geometry #green #house #light #countryside #nature #moradia #nothingisordinary #mountain #moradiaS+N #portugalframes #architectureporn (em Oliveira de Azemeis) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpQQEkJMnQp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#quiet #wall #eva_atelier #rural #igersoaz #igersportugal #oaz #architecturelovers #arquitecturadonorte #portugalcomefeitos #portugaldenorteasul #portugal #ossela #archilovers #architecture #arquitectura #sun #arquitecturacontemporanea #geometry #green #house #light #countryside #nature #moradia #nothingisordinary #mountain #moradias #portugalframes #architectureporn

[thefirststarr]

What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east-west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle. Yesterday, in some parts of the world (today in others), is one of those days: an equinox. Not only is this a day of equal night and day time, but also a day when the sun rises precisely to the east and sets due west. Displayed here is a picturesque rural road in Alberta, Canada that runs approximately east-west. The featured image was taken during the September Equinox of 2021, but the geometry remains the same every year. In many cultures, this March equinox is taken to be the first day of a season, typically spring in Earth's northern hemisphere, and autumn in the south.

Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Dyer, Amazingsky.com, TWAN

#astronomy #space #science #universe #equinox #vernal equinox #spring #first day of spring #spring equinox #sun #east #west #sun set #Sun rise #sunset #sunrise #follow #like #reblog #the first star #the first starr #thefirststar #thefirststarr #nasa #apod #hemisphere #seasons #autumn #autum equinox #autumnal equinox

[apod]

2024 March 19

A Picturesque Equinox Sunset Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Dyer, Amazingsky.com, TWAN

Explanation: What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east-west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle. Today, in some parts of the world (tomorrow in others), is one of those days: an equinox. Not only is this a day of equal night ("aequus"-"nox") and day time, but also a day when the sun rises precisely to the east and sets due west. Displayed here is a picturesque rural road in Alberta, Canada that runs approximately east-west. The featured image was taken during the September Equinox of 2021, but the geometry remains the same every year. In many cultures, this March equinox is taken to be the first day of a season, typically spring in Earth's northern hemisphere, and autumn in the south. Does your favorite street run east-west? Tonight, at sunset, you can find out with a quick glance.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240319.html

[artmialma]

George Copeland Ault (1891–1948) American

Ault was trained in British Impressionism whose style was shaped by his interests in the avant-gardes, realism, and folk art. 

He became associated with Precisionists such as Charles Sheeler and Ralston Crawford, who had in common a prominent interest in architecture and the stark use of line, geometry, and planes of color. 

In Ault’s work, scenes of urban modernity and the nostalgic rural were captured and preserved in streamlined compositions of ordered shapes.

[ton-618-ton-618]

2024 March 19

The sun sets in the distance at the horizon end of a long road over open country. The sunset is very orange, as is the surrounding sky. Telephone poles line the right side of the road.

A Picturesque Equinox Sunset

Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Dyer, Amazingsky.com, TWAN

Explanation: What's that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east-west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle. Today, in some parts of the world (tomorrow in others), is one of those days: an equinox. Not only is this a day of equal night ("aequus"-"nox") and day time, but also a day when the sun rises precisely to the east and sets due west. Displayed here is a picturesque rural road in Alberta, Canada that runs approximately east-west. The featured image was taken during the September Equinox of 2021, but the geometry remains the same every year. In many cultures, this March equinox is taken to be the first day of a season, typically spring in Earth's northern hemisphere, and autumn in the south. Does your favorite street run east-west? Tonight, at sunset, you can find out with a quick glance.

#astronaut #astronomers #not astrology #star #stars #art #astronomy #outer space #space #artist #earth #sunset #sun #sunshine #road #town #landscape #view #Equinox Sunset #equinox #alberta canada #alberta #canada #september equinox #autumn

[mybeingthere]

Mark Laver was born in 1970 in Victoria, British Columbia and raised in a rural area of Vancouver Island, where he spent his childhood exploring the surrounding beaches, tidal swamps, creeks, and forests. This early immersion in nature has resurfaced as a major influence in his current work.An avid drawer into his teenage years, Laver nevertheless had almost no exposure to art history or painting until he moved to Victoria at the age of 19 to attend a two-year visual arts diploma program. “At some point in first year I fell head-over-heels in love with painting,” he says. His first instructor agreed, saying emphatically, “Mark, you’re a painter, and you are just going to have to paint for the rest of your life.” A year-long backpacking trip across Europe followed and he met his future wife in Edinburgh in 1993, with whom he now has three children. In his mid-twenties he was recruited to join a small collective of artists who believed that contemporary art had not kept up with thinking in other fields—and he applied ideas from quantum physics, evolution, and non-Euclidean geometry to experiments with pictorial space, color, and narrative. Around this time, Laver also pursued a BA in Art History and Philosophy at the University of Victoria where he specialized in phenomenology, philosophy of art, and the history of pictorial space in painting. “I did this solely for my art,” he says. “The idea was that I would learn the history of thought (philosophy) and the history of art at a higher level than I would at art school and this, in turn, would benefit my work. I figured I could continue to develop the technique part on my own." Laver has also been working all along, as a cook, food writer and jewelry assembler, part-time when possible, enough to support his family, while leaving as much time, and mental space, for his art.After the more theoretically based work of his early years, he spent about ten years painting what he called Rural Disasters, paintings of car crashes and rural structure fires inspired by documentary photographs found online. As a counterpoint to the more ambitious studio work, Laver has also painted landscapes onsite, both in daylight and at night, finishing each work outdoors in a single intuitive burst.His current and ongoing body of work depicts landscapes of a mysterious beauty that is at once luscious and moody, cohesive and in flux. Without reference to photographs, drawings, real places, or even conscious memories, Laver starts with a limited palette and no pre-existing plans, and discovers his paintings in the act of painting, arriving at the composition last. Each work provides its own surprises, as new symbols and motifs emerge, grow, and repeat, adding to his ever-expanding invented world. https://www.riccomaresca.com/.../47-mark-laver-a-wild.../

[oneominousvalbatross]

After basically 5 straight days of work, I finished a physically accurate model of the night sky! This whole thing was done in blender, the inputs are just the raw data from the Hipparcos star catalogue, everything after that is geometry nodes. This is all the stars brighter than magnitude 6, which is just about the dimmest you can see with the naked eye (In your average medium-populated area, obvs it changes in true rural areas and in big cities).

This is what it looks like if I don't filter by brightness and just dump all 118k stars onto the model.

#astronomy #blender #blender3d #3d art

[cycling-life101]

With a Gravel bike all routes are open to you: Whether you tackle the fast after-work ride or the extended weekend tour, whether on trails, gravel or asphalt. With a Gravel bike you simply don't have to worry about where to ride anymore. You just ride.

Gravel bikes are the best choice for riders who want to ride on both urban roads and rural trails, without losing precision or speed on both terrains.

Gravel bikes, also called adventure bikes, are tougher than traditional road bikes, and more agile and faster than mountain bikes. They are designed to cope with many different surfaces and offer the possibility of carrying backpacks or bags.

A gravel bike is intended to be more durable and robust than a standard road bike. The frame geometry, head tube and bottom bracket are designed to offer more stability and comfort. It has wider tyres for tackling dirt, mud  and gravel roads with ease and a wider gear range.

Are you looking for the best place to buy a gravel bike online? Visit JaxBan.eu today and see our collections of gravel bikes from renown bike manufacturers

#bikes #luxury car #gravel bike #road cycling #cycling girls #cyclinglife #ciclismo #bicycle #cyclist #cycling lb #tour de france #cycling bulge #girls on bikes #biking #bikelife

[moocha-muses]

For @mystical-evergreen. This one is about a barn.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the Ashburn barn. Yeah, I, uh I know the one you mean I mean, haha, I guess everyone knows that barn around here. The, uh, do you know the Ashburns? I mean, are you close? Okay, come here come here, come here. . . . They're witches. Oh! Oh, you knew? Oh, on . . . rural mythology and mysticism? That sounds- -that sounds . . . cool. Sure, it's just- -well- people don't really go out that way? There's supposed to be a public path but . . . we hear stuff? Like, chanting? And sometimes you smell blood and sometimes fire and sometimes sage and licorice and rue- it smells like- Oh. You know. They used to raise pigs and goats and now they -they don't. They don't have pigs or goats anymore. And they used to have a dog and now they- -they don't. You want to- what? Sneak in? I mean, they don't keep it locked sometimes some kids? They dare each other to stay the night. I guess they come back. I think they come back. I'm sure they come back. So I guess you could sneak in and- Stay the night? Wow, you couldn't pay me to stay the night- . . . How much? Just to keep an eye on some recording equipment? Well- . . . You know it's not so bad in here! I mean if you ignore the bat shit and the owl shit and and the shadows. And who cares about shadows! What are you drawing? Oh, that's- I guess they teach you that kind of thing at college! Some kind of weird geometry. So, uh, where's this sound equipment? I guess it's in this bag- Uh. Are - are those pliers? Wh-what's that brown stain, is that oil- What did you say your name was again oh flora ashburn haha that's such a nice oh you want the pliers i i don't want to give you the pliers please i promise i can make any sound you want is that blood please

#hallowpoems

[tim-official]

it's fascinating, I hadn't realized the extent of it until your post, but I really heavily internalized the "bad at math" thing. first due to bad rural US education, and later as a gay thing. even now, in my job that requires a lot of dense, number-heavy excel sheets, I lean really hard on making macros and formulas to do the work for me because "I'm bad at math" and I trust the machine more than myself. I want to do better. any advice for articles/videos/tools that spark a love of math in you?

sorry to inform you that by using macros and formulas to do math you are, in fact, doing math and understanding math! congratulations.

i have no idea what will spark love of math in other people because i'm silly and not normal. 3blue1brown and numberphile and mathologer are the canonical Big Math Content channels. for more straightforward "doin math on a blackboard" michael penn is fantastic. by far my favorite math content on youtube though is zetamath, who have been building up to a really accessible understanding of the reimann hypothesis without skipping over or handwaving any of the tricky bits. i straight-up cheered halfway through their most recent vid lol

also here is a game about geometry and complex analysis that fucking rules

[eva-mix]

moradia S+N by @eva_atelier | obra concluída #quiet #wall #eva_atelier #rural #igersoaz #igersportugal #oaz #architecturelovers #arquitecturadonorte #PortugalComEfeitos #portugaldenorteasul #portugal #ossela #archilovers #architecture #arquitectura #sun #arquitecturacontemporanea #geometry #green #house #light #countryside #nature #moradia #nothingisordinary #mountain #moradiaS+N #portugalframes #architectureporn (em Oliveira de Azemeis) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpQQBUbsUvi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#quiet #wall #eva_atelier #rural #igersoaz #igersportugal #oaz #architecturelovers #arquitecturadonorte #portugalcomefeitos #portugaldenorteasul #portugal #ossela #archilovers #architecture #arquitectura #sun #arquitecturacontemporanea #geometry #green #house #light #countryside #nature #moradia #nothingisordinary #mountain #moradias #portugalframes #architectureporn

[a-bombyx-mori]

LEMME RAMBLE ABOUT THE NEW CHELOVEK PV because oh my goodness

it's not a simple copy and paste of the first version with an illustration difference. we now have the theme of mannequins expanded with the piko design and extra destruction footage.

of course the symbolism of the mannequins is obvious (displaying a persona, then having it break down due to high expectations OR just being angry at the high standards themselves [and eventually rejecting them]) but. the geometry.

PENROSE STAIRS!! aka the escherian stairwell. an object that can't exist in real life due to its impossible nature. this mirrors the theme of impossibility but also shows a lack of progress. the other content shows disdain towards expectations, while the stairwell portrays the process of trying to reach them. it's illogical and loops forever- that is, until you decide to stop trying.

also, note the building to the left. we get more optical illusion/impossibility imagery.

that's my ramble. and most importantly. remember that content creators are people too.

sidenote: recording yourself destroying a mannequin on the side of what is probably a rural road is so fucking. mmm cool. wish I could reach that level of chaos some day

#ghost and pals #chelovek #chelovek ghost #rambles

[unepikal]

ooOOooOo

can u explain the "other world that he woke up in"

how does it look?

doing the little snoopy happy dance right now

i think i wrote a bit too much? i don't know, i just had fun rambling about this! it's definitely not anything set in stone, so it might change? but this is what i have so far!

anyways i believe their world would be similar to ours, but slightly more advanced in technology? i'd say it looks cool and futuristic until you realize that it's not too far off from our world, they just have cooler flashy signs and other minor things.

there are probably things that would be considered as way more advanced than technology we have today, but it's most likely going to be only accessible for things like hospitals, laboratories, or rich people. otherwise it's mostly just more advanced forms of holograms, electronics, and other minuscule things.

one thing i'm very sure of is there's definitely a lack of rural areas. most places are cities, or at least large towns. i'd say there would be a couple small towns and maybe even villages here and there, usually located around coastal areas. at least where i've placed the protag! in other places around the world, it may be different! i still haven't thought much about other places though, wah. maybe once i get everything on my priority list down.

as for the little residents of my little world,, they're not too different from us. psychologically mostly! anatomically they are. similar but different? i guess?

since they are geometry dash cubes, i like to imagine they express themselves in different ways depending on how they look.

cubes that faces that are easy to figure out, like the little ( ._. ) cube or the ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) cube would definitely rely more on their facial expressions to express themselves. they don't typically use much body language besides relaxing when happy or stiffening when angry or something. it's very subtle compared to other cubes.

cubes like,, the companion cube,, or default cube 1 would definitely rely more on tone of voice and body language to express how they feel. they use a lot more hand gestures and exaggerated body movements more due to their lack of facial features or face entirely. gotta make the most of what you got!

of course this is typically, there are exceptions and such! but this is generally.

#...rambles #i still need to work on it #but this is what i got so far! #it's not a lot but i really like what i have right now

[gender-contain-protect]

Planned Coins

Alt Coining - [1] [2]

Gendersafe | Safe

Gendereuclid | Euclid

Genderketer | Keter

Genderthaumiel | Thaumiel

Genderneutralized | Neutralized

Genderapollyon | Apollyon

Genderembla | Embla

Genderunnecessary | Unnecessary

Genderarchon | Archon

Genderuncontained | Uncontained

Containment Classes

Flor Galana

Gevurah

Heimal

Tiamat

Ticonderoga

Cernunnos

Enochian

Draugr

Finis

Gödel

Maksur

Disruption Classes

Dark

Vlam

Keneq

Ekhi

Amida

Risk Classes

Notice

Caution

Warning

Danger

Critical

Amnestics

Amnestics (General)

Class A | General Retrograde

Class B | Regressive Retrograde

Class C | Targeted Retrograde

Class D | Progressive Retrograde

Class E | Ennui

Class F | Fugue

Class G | Gaslighting

Class H | Anterograde

Class I | Transient

Mnestics

Mnestics (General)

Class W | Reliable

Class X | Restorative

Class Y | Drill

Class Z | Lifetime

Gnostics

Gnostics (General)

Agnostics

Agnostics (General)

K-Class Scenarios

AK-Class "Madness" Scenario

CK-Class "Restructuring" Scenario / RK

EK-Class "End of Human Consciousness" Scenario / MK

GH-Class "Dead Greenhouse" Scenario

HK-Class "Deific Subjugation" Scenario

IK-Class "End of Global Civilization" Scenario

LK-Class "Species Transmutation" Scenario

NK-Class "Grey Goo" Scenario

SK-Class "Dominance Shift" Scenario

XK-Class "End of the World" Scenario

XK-Δ-Class "Solar Singularity" Scenario

ZK-Class "Reality Failure" Scenario"

"Broken Masquerade" Scenario

ΩK-Class "End of Death" Scenario

Authority

MTF Alpha-1 "Red Right Hand" | Overseer Council

MTF Epsilon-11 "Nine-Tailed Fox" | O5, Internal Security

MTF Omega-1 "Law's Left Hand" | Ethics Comittee

MTF Rēsh-1 "Seat of Consciousness" | The Administrator

Anomalous

MTF Omega-7 "Pandora's Box" (Disbanded)

MTF Alpha-9 "Last Hope"

MTF Omega-12 "Achilles' Heels"

Environmental

MTF Epsilon-6 "Village Idiots" | Rural, Suburban

MTF Tau-51 "Urban Brawl" | Urban

MTF Pi-1 "City Slickers" | Dense Urban

MTF Zeta-9 "Mole Rats" | Underground

MTF Theta-90 "Angle Grinders" | Unstable Geometry

MTF Lambda-5 "White Rabbits" | Unstable Reality

Undercover

MTF Alpha-4 "Pony Express"

MTF Iota-10 "Damn Feds"

MTF Psi-7 "Home Improvement"

Cognitohazard-Control

MTF Eta-10 "See No Evil"

MTF Eta-11 "Savage Beasts"

MTF Upsilon-4 "Sugar Pill"

Anomaly Specialists

MTF Beta-7 "Maz Hatters" | Bio/Chem/Radio Hazards

MTF Gamma-6 "Deep Feeders" | Oceanic

MTF Eta-5 "Jäeger Bombers" | Gigantic

MTF Theta-4 "Gardeners" | Flora

MTF Kappa-10 "Skynet" | Cyberspace

MTF Lamba-4 "Birdwatchers" | Airborne, Avian

MTF Lambda-12 "Pest Control" | Vermin

MTF Mu-4 "Debuggers" | Electronics

MTF Mu-13 "Ghostbusters" | Intangible

MTF Rho-9 "Technical Support" | Cybersecurity

MTF Phi-2 "Clever Girls" | Prehistoric

MTF Psi-8 "The Silencers" | Reanimated

MTF Chi-9 "Page Turners" | Literature

Other

MTF Gamma-5 "Red Herrings" | Information Control

MTF Nu-7 "Hammer Down" | Emergency Battalion

MTF Omega-0 "Ará Orún" | Noöspheric Constructs

MTF Epsilon-7 "Forget Me Nots" | Mnestics

[ACS Guide] - [Esoteric Classes List] - [Amnestics Guide] - [K-Class Scenarios] - [Task Forces List]

Send a request if something you're looking to see isn't here, not everything under each category is included.

#plans

[kydeliusofevirwinter]

You're a firefighter? What's it like?

this has been in my ask box for almost a year now oops

this is going to be quite the ramble.

being a firefighter (especially where i live in conservative rural pennsylvania) is interesting

i’m a young firefighter, still a junior and still learning. it’s real tough being the only (CLOSETED) queer +trans +disabled person in the whole department.. despite my disability i still go on fire calls (though now i go on the less interesting and intense ones)

here’s some stories from my years

i remember my first ever call so clearly, everyone was so mad, it was chaos, it was pitch black, and there was a whole group of girls who were giggling and laughing (they had been in the crash but were uninjured) i was giving them candy out of my pockets- but on the other side of the road the drunk man who hit them was holding back tears and asking if everyone was alright and that he was so very sorry (no one was critically injured)

a local restaurant burned to the ground, and this place was a huge castle themed restaurant which was a real fuckin doozy and a pain in the ass. but everyone loved that place, including my nana. the coolers were still intact when the fire was out and we saved so much food from the place, and so much booze (god like whole kegs just spewing everywhere ; so gross). we managed to save a tin knight statue from the building before we had to tear it down. the owner told us to keep it. we were there until late and an old woman who lived across the street sheltered us in her garage and made us coffee and pancakes. my musical director at school told me that musical was more important than “whatever (i) do on my weekends” i rolled almost 900 feet of 5inch hose that day. i ached for weeks. (still proud of that)

i remember the screams of a family begging for us to look for their father in the building. the guy they were looking for was actually right across the street and wasn’t ever in the building. the sisters held each other and cried on the side of the road while their brothers pulled what belongings they could out of the (extinguished) building. it was easter and the whole family was wearing white. those brothers took like 3 rifles just from their living room and the big deer head they had mounted on the wall. i saw it all while i was packing hose on the roof of the truck. shit was crazy

putting some facts and the more heavy stuff under the cut

winter of last year i saw my first death. no one knew what happened until we got there. he had been sitting there for hours over the bank near a youth camp. he was driving home from the grocery store, with soup for his wife. i watched the coroner (in all her cheerfulness ) zip up his body bag. i haven’t told anyone about this but my parents. i was congratulated as the toughest guy in the station by the other juniors for not even frowning. that man was in his 20s. i still remember his face. i had geometry homework due the next day.

—————————————————————————

this got way darker than i wanted it to but that’s the job. I wanted to help people just like my father, and his dad before him (and practically my whole family)

support your local fire department. the only good cop is a fire marshal!

Volunteers comprise 65% of firefighters in the United States. Of the total estimated 1,041,200 firefighters across the country, 676,900 are volunteer.

85% of fire departments are volunteer or mostly volunteer and protect approximately one third of the population. That’s 18,873 stations out of the 29,452 nationwide.

the leading causes of death amongst firefighters is cancer, heart disease, and stress. Outside of the department however, firefighters are more often taken by suicide. a total of 48 deaths were from accidents on scene last year. however in 2022, 100-200 deaths were from suicide. 1. 2 3

remember clean gear is safe gear. dirty gear is UNCOOL

Please volunteer or donate to your local fire company today. every bit of help counts.

#disability #swearing #death #death ment tw #death tw #death mention #cancer #cancer mention #suicide mention #suicide tw #tw sui talk #good lord lots to tag #firefighting #firefighter #firefighters of tumblr #is that even a thing #i feel like i’m the only one

[wanderingnork]

Cosmic Horror Movies (Without Cthulhu)

Cosmic horror has a really bad rap these days, and frankly...with pretty good reason. In a lot of cases, stories that claim the title of “cosmic horror” use a lot of the trappings without digging into the actual cosmic bit. Tentacles, weird geometry, and people running around screaming gibberish are used to say “this is cosmic horror.” And that approach, pardon my language, gets absolutely fuck-all done with actual horror.

The “cosmos” referred to in cosmic horror isn’t just the stars and planets, but an orderly and harmonious universe. In a cosmic horror story, something opens a protagonist’s eyes to some truth about the cosmos. The harmony of the universe is revealed to be a lie hiding chaos, or the order is revealed to be nothing like what the protagonist believed it to be. The result is existential dread, a sense of the threat to a person’s identity--or maybe to the identity of all humankind, or even to the nature of all life as we know it. 

In this list, I want us to take a glimpse of chaos. Consider a different order of the universe. Maybe even question our own reality a little. And we won’t see a single amoeba, space sea anemone, or fish person while we’re at it.

1408: The closest to a conventional cosmic horror movie on this list, 1408′s subject is a hotel room. Not a haunted room, not a cursed room, just--as Samuel L. Jackson memorably tells us--an evil fucking room. Whatever the hell is going on in that room with time and space is completely incomprehensible. It might well be a sentient entity. It might be an architectural pitcher plant. No one knows, but by spending the night in the room, a person gets a look into a world that works by incomprehensible, inhuman rules. For all that the action is contained to a single hotel suite, the implications of the room are cosmic in scale.

Come True: Dreams are mysterious. The worlds that wait for us in our sleeping minds abide by different laws than the waking world. They help us to analyze our memories and rehearse our lives, but they also expose us to wonders and terrors that defy reality. Dreams have been used around the world to predict the future, to interpret the will of gods, and more. Even though dreams serve a concrete purpose for our brains, it’s still easy to perceive them as connecting us to something else. Come True asks us to imagine if that something else was hostile--and significantly more powerful, when given a full conduit to the waking world, than we could have predicted.

Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County: By their very nature, the idea of Little Grey Men is a cause for existential dread. Alien abduction stories are terrifying. Aliens with incredible technology that descend from the stars, perform seemingly purposeless experiments on hapless livestock and confused humans, leave behind indecipherable patterns in cornfields, and vanish without a trace are an alarming concept. If they exist (which they most likely don’t), then they call into question so many things we know about biological life, evolution, physics, time, and more. The universal order is overturned. This movie brings all of that home to a rural family and forces them to confront the incomprehensible as it invades their home.

Jurassic Park: I’m sure the soaring John Williams score, the size and scale of the dinosaurs, and the resoundingly triumphant ending have you convinced this can’t be a cosmic horror movie. But consider this: what’s more terrifying and hard to conceptualize than Earth’s deep time? In order to conceive of the history of our planet, we have to pack 4.5 billion years of the planet’s existence into a 24-hour clock where the earliest humans appeared less than two seconds to midnight. On that scale of time, entire continents move, whole branches of the tree of life grow and die, and our species is a drop in the bucket. Jurassic Park brings us face to face with animals which died sixty-five million years ago on the impact of an asteroid the size of a mountain. The kicker: in order to bring them forward to live in the park, the scientists at work have to mix the ancient DNA with the DNA of modern birds and amphibians. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, as majestic and wonderful as they are, still leave the real dinosaurs as much a mystery as they are when they’re only the mineralized remains of bones. Talk about dealing with an unfathomable cosmos.

Halloween (1978): A well-ordered, calm, ordinary suburban neighborhood in idyllic Midwestern America is thrown into chaos by the arrival of an unstoppable, remorseless killer. Violence breaks out in a place where even the very idea of danger seems too remote to believe. It happens on the night of America’s great--maybe its only--inversion ritual: Halloween. During inversion rituals, the social order is overturned, allowing for behavior that would never be acceptable on a typical day. Still, there are some things that even an inversion ritual can’t countenance. Like mass murder. Even the rules of the inversion ritual are overthrown. The impact of Halloween, though, might hit a viewer in 21st century America a bit harder. When reports of senseless violence regularly make the news, the existential question of whether the world really is a safe place after all comes to mind. While fictional, Halloween is asking us a very real question about the order of our very real universe.

Some questions for thought: Do you disagree that any of these belong on this list? Why? How would you personally define cosmic horror, if it’s different than my definition? With that definition, what movies would you want to see on this list? For the sake of argument, let’s count Jurassic Park and Halloween as cosmic horror stories. So what does it mean for our sense of order and identity that both of these movies were followed by a host of increasingly actionized sequels which downplayed or even removed the horror elements of the originals? Do we want to think about the insignificance of our place in the universe, or is that pushing even the bounds of horror a little too far?

(Previous Recommendations)

#nork rants #the horror tag