Nazis cheating death, Stephen King movies, cemeteries
I think we can safely say that the Bauer family is well and truly screwed up and dysfunctional. o_O
Today's Sentenced Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg delivered its verdicts, after 216 court sessions. Of the original twenty-four Nazi defendants, twelve (including Martin Bormann, tried in absentia) were sentenced to death by hanging.
Hermann Wilhelm Goering cheated the gallows of Allied justice by committing suicide in his prison cell shortly before the ten other condemned Nazi leaders were hanged in Nuremberg gaol. He swallowed cyanide he had concealed in a copper cartridge shell, while lying on a cot in his cell.
The one-time Number Two man in the Nazi hierarchy was dead two hours before he was scheduled to have been dropped through the trap door of a gallows erected in a small, brightly lighted gymnasium in the gaol yard, 35 yards from the cell block where he spent his last days of ignominy.
Culled from: The Execution of Nazi War Criminals
Generously submitted by: Eric
**********************************************************************
Ignominy! Now *there's* a word with which to impress your friends!
ig·no·min·y
1. disgrace; dishonor; public contempt.
2. shameful or dishonorable quality or conduct or an instance of this.
*******
Wretched Recommendations!
PandaThief has a film recommendation for us:
Dreamcatcher (2003)
"Dreamcatcher is a pretty weird movie. Stephen King has been writing for longer than I've been alive, and I think his works fall into three categories: stuff he was getting started with, stuff he wrote after he first got popular, and stuff he wrote after he didn't really have to care what people thought about it any longer.
"Rather than distract by digging into my own inner weirdness, I'll tender a simple explanation of what I think I mean. When SK was getting started, he published a lot of short stories that had a certain thematic appeal to them. I'm not exactly a student of literature, but I think that he was writing very cerebral and visceral horror in a time when society was trying to cling to its happy thoughts, and he had to be really damn good to get anyone to take him seriously.
"After he got popular, he as able to rely on his image to get people to sit through what he had to tell them, and this - in my humble opinion - is when his works settled firmly into our culture. This period is when most of his popular works came out. People started falling into two categories: those who loved his stuff, and those who hated it. SK doesn't give you a thumbnail sketch; he starts setting up a scene, and then he takes the reader back to a particular time in each character's past where a pivotal event happened, something that shaped who and what they are. He then draws us back to the present scenario, and we suddenly understand why this person does this thing, and that person does that. If you can sit through hundreds of pages of background story, it makes for a good read: there is no such thing as a two-dimensional character in SK's work.
"Then we enter the latter stage, where SK is too rich and well-established to need to care what people think. I don't mean to cheapen him in any way - hell, I've never met him; who am I to judge? - but he certainly passed the "authorial success event horizon," where it's obvious that the writer is more concerned with what he thinks than how his or her work will be accepted. Herein we see such books as the Gunslinger series, where the story - at least for me - stays hot, but the timeline starts slowing down to a gradual crawl. The first book wrapped up 20+ years of the protagonist's life; the second book was set more in the present, and took on an "everyday" speed; the third book started picking apart daily events; the fourth book kind of sat down and gave you an exhaustive seminar on the how and the why. I guess it was dynamic in the sense that things happened, but it would make for a better A&E documentary than a Spike TV one-shot.
"But it was still pretty damn good, if you ask me.
"Anyway, Dreamcatcher. In order to watch this movie, you kind of have to know ahead of time what you're getting into. SK once said that he keeps his fingers out of the pies that moviemakers build from his stories: he understands that it is a separate art, and he feels he put enough work into the written story, that he is exempt from putting forth any more effort. He's already said what he has to say. I think this is why SK movies are kind of 50/50: half of them are good, half of them are rotten pieces of stuff. The Shining: classic. The Mangler: I want my five dollars back. (Yeah... back then, a movie ticket cost five dollars. Why you need a mortgage to go to the movies these days is beyond my understanding. Then again, our society pays people millions a year to play sports, and then sits back and takes it when they go on strike for more money.)
"So, Dreamcatcher is pretty strange. All five of the main characters are psychic, and rather than spelling it out, you're expected to pick up on it. That's because there's too much else going on to waste time with details. For example, the sixth main character is a mentally retarded super-psychic who knew at the age of maybe 15 that in twenty years, the earth will be invaded by alien psychic vampires - and not for the first time - and this time, there is an excellent chance our species won't survive. So, he sets up the other five with psychic powers, and later tricks one guy into walking out in front of traffic because the guy needs to have his heart stop twice so the Evil Boss Alien - Mr. Gray) can inhabit him without fully possessing him.
"I said it was a weird movie.
"I can't really describe the movie any further without trying to write it out, but if you are "into" SK and you like taking chances with movie rentals, this one's a good bet.
"'I... DUDDITS!'"
*******
Morbid Sightseeing!
Trixie has a morbid sightseeing suggestion:
"Another key sightseeing spot in Atlanta, Georgia has to be the Oakland Cemetery.
"Oakland Cemetery is rather expansive with incredibly mausoleums, statues, and landscape - especially in the middle of the night). There is a vast amount of ghostly activity and definitely casts an air of foreboding. A must-see for nocturnal troopers!"
Today's Sentenced Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg delivered its verdicts, after 216 court sessions. Of the original twenty-four Nazi defendants, twelve (including Martin Bormann, tried in absentia) were sentenced to death by hanging.
Hermann Wilhelm Goering cheated the gallows of Allied justice by committing suicide in his prison cell shortly before the ten other condemned Nazi leaders were hanged in Nuremberg gaol. He swallowed cyanide he had concealed in a copper cartridge shell, while lying on a cot in his cell.
The one-time Number Two man in the Nazi hierarchy was dead two hours before he was scheduled to have been dropped through the trap door of a gallows erected in a small, brightly lighted gymnasium in the gaol yard, 35 yards from the cell block where he spent his last days of ignominy.
Culled from: The Execution of Nazi War Criminals
Generously submitted by: Eric
**********************************************************************
Ignominy! Now *there's* a word with which to impress your friends!
ig·no·min·y
1. disgrace; dishonor; public contempt.
2. shameful or dishonorable quality or conduct or an instance of this.
*******
Wretched Recommendations!
PandaThief has a film recommendation for us:
Dreamcatcher (2003)
"Dreamcatcher is a pretty weird movie. Stephen King has been writing for longer than I've been alive, and I think his works fall into three categories: stuff he was getting started with, stuff he wrote after he first got popular, and stuff he wrote after he didn't really have to care what people thought about it any longer.
"Rather than distract by digging into my own inner weirdness, I'll tender a simple explanation of what I think I mean. When SK was getting started, he published a lot of short stories that had a certain thematic appeal to them. I'm not exactly a student of literature, but I think that he was writing very cerebral and visceral horror in a time when society was trying to cling to its happy thoughts, and he had to be really damn good to get anyone to take him seriously.
"After he got popular, he as able to rely on his image to get people to sit through what he had to tell them, and this - in my humble opinion - is when his works settled firmly into our culture. This period is when most of his popular works came out. People started falling into two categories: those who loved his stuff, and those who hated it. SK doesn't give you a thumbnail sketch; he starts setting up a scene, and then he takes the reader back to a particular time in each character's past where a pivotal event happened, something that shaped who and what they are. He then draws us back to the present scenario, and we suddenly understand why this person does this thing, and that person does that. If you can sit through hundreds of pages of background story, it makes for a good read: there is no such thing as a two-dimensional character in SK's work.
"Then we enter the latter stage, where SK is too rich and well-established to need to care what people think. I don't mean to cheapen him in any way - hell, I've never met him; who am I to judge? - but he certainly passed the "authorial success event horizon," where it's obvious that the writer is more concerned with what he thinks than how his or her work will be accepted. Herein we see such books as the Gunslinger series, where the story - at least for me - stays hot, but the timeline starts slowing down to a gradual crawl. The first book wrapped up 20+ years of the protagonist's life; the second book was set more in the present, and took on an "everyday" speed; the third book started picking apart daily events; the fourth book kind of sat down and gave you an exhaustive seminar on the how and the why. I guess it was dynamic in the sense that things happened, but it would make for a better A&E documentary than a Spike TV one-shot.
"But it was still pretty damn good, if you ask me.
"Anyway, Dreamcatcher. In order to watch this movie, you kind of have to know ahead of time what you're getting into. SK once said that he keeps his fingers out of the pies that moviemakers build from his stories: he understands that it is a separate art, and he feels he put enough work into the written story, that he is exempt from putting forth any more effort. He's already said what he has to say. I think this is why SK movies are kind of 50/50: half of them are good, half of them are rotten pieces of stuff. The Shining: classic. The Mangler: I want my five dollars back. (Yeah... back then, a movie ticket cost five dollars. Why you need a mortgage to go to the movies these days is beyond my understanding. Then again, our society pays people millions a year to play sports, and then sits back and takes it when they go on strike for more money.)
"So, Dreamcatcher is pretty strange. All five of the main characters are psychic, and rather than spelling it out, you're expected to pick up on it. That's because there's too much else going on to waste time with details. For example, the sixth main character is a mentally retarded super-psychic who knew at the age of maybe 15 that in twenty years, the earth will be invaded by alien psychic vampires - and not for the first time - and this time, there is an excellent chance our species won't survive. So, he sets up the other five with psychic powers, and later tricks one guy into walking out in front of traffic because the guy needs to have his heart stop twice so the Evil Boss Alien - Mr. Gray) can inhabit him without fully possessing him.
"I said it was a weird movie.
"I can't really describe the movie any further without trying to write it out, but if you are "into" SK and you like taking chances with movie rentals, this one's a good bet.
"'I... DUDDITS!'"
*******
Morbid Sightseeing!
Trixie has a morbid sightseeing suggestion:
"Another key sightseeing spot in Atlanta, Georgia has to be the Oakland Cemetery.
"Oakland Cemetery is rather expansive with incredibly mausoleums, statues, and landscape - especially in the middle of the night). There is a vast amount of ghostly activity and definitely casts an air of foreboding. A must-see for nocturnal troopers!"
Labels: 2003, 24, books, characters, death, drugs, family, jack bauer, martin, maxed-out tags limit, money, morbid facts, movies, rich, spelling, sports, stephen, war, weird stuff, words
posted by Flami at 9:43:00 PM
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