Mind Space Apocalypse

Animated Horror, Fantasy, and Dark Comedy Short-Films

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 14:57:00 +0000

Palm Rot

Investigating a mysterious explosion in the Florida Everglades, a crop-duster named Bill discovers a lone crate that survived the wreckage. Curiosity gets the better of him and he pulls the crate unto his airboat. That’s just the first in a series of decisions he learns to regret.

PostHuman

Animated sci-fi thriller short film featuring the voice of Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica).

Set in an adrenalized future of espionage, assassins, and out of control super science, PostHuman follows a genius hacker and his dog as they help an enigmatic young woman to free the remaining test subject of a black ops ESP test lab.

Produced by Colliculi Productions.

Directed by Cole Drumb.

Animation studio: Humouring The Fates

Voice of Kali: Tricia Helfer

Voice of Terrence: Ulric Dihle

Original Music: Neill Sanford Livingston

*Awards:

Screamfest 2012 -- Best Animated Short

Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival 2012 -- Best Animation Short

Arizona Underground Film Festival 2012 -- Best Animation Short

Couch Fest Films 2012 -- Best Sci-Fi Animation

After The End

For Rene Fustercluck, life was bad, the Apocalypse was awful and then Gordon arrived. 'After the End' explores the possibility that the only thing worse than being the last man on earth, is being the second to last man on earth.

I Am Glad We Can Be Honest About This

Father not really there, mother the guardian still, daughter with her secrets and son with the solution. In this erratic classically animated short film we meet a modern family that is divided and battling demons. Murder, Vengeance, Lust, Truth, Loyalty. And Dance. Oh sweet dance!

Less Than Human

In the aftermath of a zombie outbreak, zombies are cured and exiled to secluded camps. There has been talk about rehabilitating post-zombies back into society.

Steve, the journalist reporting on the case, thinks the zombies still pose a threat to society. He ventures into one of these camps to prove to the world that rehabilitation is out the question.

Steadfast Stanley

Stanley the Pembroke Welsh Corgi is left behind in the break of an apocalypse.

All he wants to do is get back to his owner…

Asian Horror
Tokyo Gore Police

The Family Cult

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:52:00 +0000

The '60s and ’70s were famous for ushering in an era of open-mindedness, music, and revelry. Unfortunately, this period also marked the rise of many cults that would stretch far and wide, from San Francisco to Japan.
One such cult in Australia is called “The Family".
Even though its followers—mostly children—have grown and have been disconnected from the group for decades, the trauma of living in the highly abusive environment still haunts all of those who were involved.

The Family was led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a charismatic yoga teacher whose practices to raise a “master race” were largely unethical—and nearly homicidal.
In 1963, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, a glamorous delusional Australian yoga teacher, met the highly-respected bullshit artist British physicist Dr. Raynor Johnson. Together, under the influence of drugs like LSD, they began adult education classes called
“The Macrocosm and the Microcosm.”

In Anne’s mind, it was up to her to raise children who would be able to create a “master race” in the wake of the apocalypse. Through scams and other questionable means, she adopted children throughout the ’70s and ’80s. Fourteen were believed to be her biological children with husband Bill Byrne, while others were born to other cult members. To Anne, they were all her children.

Anne preferred that the children have identically bleached blonde hair and bob haircuts. “I wanted them to look like brothers and sisters,” she said.

----

Village of the Damned much?

----

But the children weren’t always treated lovingly. Allegedly, they were starved, beaten, and injected with LSD by Anne and other leaders of the cult. When asked why she imprisoned a total of 28 children, Anne replied, “I love children.”

Anne and Bill created a special school for the children so that they wouldn’t be “tainted” by the information from the outside world.

Anne was one of the few female cult leaders in the world. At one point, she had up to 500 followers.
Anne was filmed saying,
“We’ve received the call—and great things will be done.”

Trouble arose for Anne and The Family in 1983, when police visited their Lake Eildon compound in Victoria, Australia in search of a missing girl. The girl was not found, but officers became suspicious of the goings-on in the area.
It wasn’t until 1986 that police had sufficient evidence that 13-year-olds were being injected with LSD against their will. This sparked the first of many investigations.

In 1987, after two children escaped the property, police were able to raid the compound to save six more. Shockingly, Anne and her husband, Bill—pictured below with a teen from their cult—were only ever charged with fraud due to forging birth certificates.
Now 96, Anne has never been convicted for her crimes. She refused to take responsibility, and now lives with dementia in a nursing home.

As a young woman, Anne never knew her father and her mother was severely mentally ill, which might have accounted for her own psychological issues.
The meetings became increasingly religion-based, and they incorporated a mixture of Christianity and Hinduism. During an LSD trip, Anne had a vision that she was the reincarnation of Jesus (yes, she thought she was Jesus), and that an apocalyptic third world war was about to wipe out most of humanity.
----

Documentary:

A SECRET diary uncovered after more than 30 years has revealed how notorious cult The Family trapped people in a web of fear and dependence.

The document shows how cult leader Anne Hamilton-Byrne convinced followers that she was Christ who had returned to save the world. Her cult was based on a mix of warped Christianity, Eastern mysticism and threats of alien invasions. The warped teachings included:

* ALIENS were going to invade the earth to cleanse the world of evil.

* NO-ONE should intervene if children were suffering because they should not interfere with God’s plan

* HAMILTON-Byrne told followers that she died for a few minutes and rose from the dead to prove her power to a sceptical psychologist.

* A FOLLOWER believed he was John the Baptist reincarnated, and,

* MIRACLES were delivered during yoga practices.

The diary was written by Raynor Johnson, an academic who lived at Melbourne University’s Queen’s College for decades before joining the cult on his retirement in 1964.

Read it here:

Smallville Sex Cult
Allison Mack, a US actress known for the TV show Smallville, has appeared in court on charges of aiding a sex trafficking operation disguised as a mentoring group. Keith Raniere, the leader of the so-called self-help group, was arrested by the FBI in Mexico in March.

T.o.T5 Cults & Cannibals - part 1
Some occult murderers twist the words of a religion to fit their agenda, and then some just completely invent and make up their own "religion" Despite cults being a reality as far back as recorded history goes, it was in the '80s that America began to really fear cults and Satanists more than usual, most...

Roch Theriault, The Twisted Cult Leader and Babushka Yaga, aka Granny Ripper, whose cannibalistic crimes were called The Nightmare on Dimitrova St.
The Sadistic Cult Leader Roch Theriault and 'Granny Ripper' 69 yr old the Russian woman, aka 'Baba Yaga', who admitted to beheading, dismembering, and eating 14+ people. She kept a macabre diary of her dark secret life that police are comparing to similar unsolved murders from the past 20 years to see if there may...

Beyond the Night - 360° Horror Film and more 360 Horror

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 26 May 2018 23:49:00 +0000

First, a few 360 Horror Shorts Worth Watching:

*This one isn't 360*

Chloe (Rachel DeRouen) and Ryan (Zack Scott) arrive late to their engagement party due to the start of the zombie apocalypse in the first ever 360 full feature horror/zombie film.
With Zack's brother Vinny (Brennen Cowart), the couple fights to survive in this 360 homage to George Romero's Night of The Living Dead.
Co-starring Andrea Flowers, Timothy Allen, Patricia Eakin, William Swift and Jason Fought.
Written by Michael Hennesy and Brennen Cowart.
Directed by Jason Fought and Michael Hennesy.
Director of Photography/Editor Daniel Shih.

(Playlist)

Amazing 360 Views
Beautiful 360° Videos and a World Map of Awesome 360 Panoramas

Asian Horror
Movies

"Põrgu" / Hell

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 12:55:00 +0000

"Põrgu" or "Hell"

An Estonian grotesque animated film by Rein Raamat, Tallinnfilm, 1983. The animation brings three Eduard Viiralt (Wiiralt) engravings from the 1930's to life:

”The Preacher“

“Cabaret”

and “Hell”

"The engravings and the animation were created in a time of great uncertainties: in the 1930's Viiralt was reacting to the anticipation of the War and in the 1980's Raamat was having a presentiment of the chaos that the USSR’s collapse would bring about. Both depicting a feast in the time of plague, indulgence, and surreal satirical representations of people’s vices."

*More Art by Wiiralt:

Chopper

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 08:04:00 +0000

First, for those not familiar with who he is:
Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (November 17, 1954 – October 9, 2013) was an Australian convicted criminal, gang member and author.

Read was born to a former army and Korean War veteran father and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. He was placed in a children's home for the first five years of his life. His father, usually on his mother's recommendation, would beat him often as a child. Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where he underwent electroshock therapy.

When he was still young, Read was already an accomplished street fighter and the leader of the Surrey Road gang. He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers, based in massage parlours in the Prahran area. He later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove the toes of his victims as an incentive for them to produce enough money so that Read would leave them alive.

Read spent only 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, having been convicted of crimes including armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping. While in Pentridge Prison's H division in the late 1970s, Read launched a prison war. His gang, dubbed "The Overcoat Gang" because they wore long coats all year round to conceal their weapons, were involved in several hundred acts of violence against a larger opposing gang during this period. Around this time, Read had a fellow inmate cut both of his ears off in order to be able to leave H division temporarily.

Read was ambushed and stabbed by members of his own gang in a sneak attack when they felt that his plan to cripple every other inmate in the entire division and win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far. Another theory is that James "Jimmy" Loughnan, a longtime friend of Read, with Patrick "Blue" Barnes, wished to benefit from a contract put on Read's head by the Painters' and Dockers' Union. Read lost several feet of intestine in the attack. At the time Read was serving a 16 and a half-year sentence after attacking a judge."

Now this should be funnier..
*I have no idea who this guy is. Apparently, from what I read without really looking into it, he's some Australian comedian who did a Chopper impression that people loved so he went around doing some stand-up as the 'character' and even got this late-night show for a while that basically revolved around the Chopper skits, which I thought were funny as shit:

There's actually been a movie made about him too:

Starring Eric Bana as Chopper:

*Chopper has written a bunch of books, including "Hooky the Cripple" which he calls a 'kids book for adults':

and if you've never seen it...

House of Pain

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 12:25:00 +0000

An American documentary by James R. Whitney about his grandfather, Melvin Just, and the devastating consequences of the sexual abuse he inflicted on his family.

(Scroll to bottom to watch the full documentary)

Roger Ebert said the film was "one of the most powerful documentaries I've seen" and

"Just, Melvin," is a portrait of a family that still has open wounds and deep psychic scars after decades of abuse. The title refers to Melvin Just, who as a husband, father, stepfather and grandfather repeatedly committed incest and abuse against almost everyone in his family. Two of his stepdaughters were witnesses when he strangled a visiting nurse, a crime for which he was never tried. The survivors to this day are in a state of shock, which the camera plainly shows: Some live in campers or vans, and alcoholism and prostitution are symptoms.

The film was made by James Ronald Whitney, one of Melvin's grandsons, with the support of his mother, Ann Marie. It is not the first documentary about family abuse, but it is probably the most painful. It isn't uncommon to hear abuse or incest victims share their memories, but "Just, Melvin" does the unimaginable and shows the evil old man being confronted by the accusations, first in an extraordinary meeting with James, later in a family visit to his hospital room.

Whitney said after the screening that he had escaped the fate of other family members because of the strength of his mother, a woman who once tried to shoot Melvin, and who, strong and intelligent, steered him away from drugs and trouble and into show business (we see him as a winning dancer on "Star Search").

His film is not only devastating but subtle in its artistry, with great attention to a soundtrack that suggests the echoes of long-ago words of hate and current painful memories. Nothing in the film quite prepares us for the closing scenes at a burial service, where a pastor reads futile words of comfort while drunken family members alternate between grief and rage."

Geoffrey Gilmore:
"There are few subjects as abhorrent to our sensibilities as incest, particularly when it involves very young children, and Just, Melvin chronicles a truly monstrous case. The film tells the story of an individual whose path of destruction was so insidious and devastating that it's almost impossible not to be provoked to feelings as varied as sympathy, rage, and disgust. That this is not an account by an outsider but the story of a survivor makes it all the more remarkable and significant, but not any easier to digest.

James Ronald Whitney is the grandson of Melvin Just. His mother was abused and molested from a very early age, as were all her sisters and step- sisters. And as we consequently discover, the same is true of all the women in Melvin Just's second marriage. This litany of violation and mistreatment is especially disturbing because the film has an odd, almost-matter-of-fact tone. There is no need for dramatic histrionics. The reality of these confessions makes us witnesses to violence that is frighteningly genuine. The confessions themselves were perhaps triggered by the reopening of a case involving the killing of a social worker, a murder that undoubtedly was the act of Whitney's grandfather.

The fact that the filmmaker himself was also the subject of abuse and managed to 'escape' his madly dysfunctional upbringing just adds to the many elements that make this film so intriguing. But Just, Melvin is a story that will never have a happy ending, a chilling and candid portrait of the cycles and consequences of abuse."

Just, Melvin: Just Evil captures the history of extreme sexual abuse within one very confusing family. The story revolves around Melvin Just, a habitual child molester and a suspected murderer, and through him we soon discover the countless atrocities that affected nearly every member of the family for three generations. Certainly the interviews and testimonials are nothing short of jaw dropping, and the crimes discussed are of the most serious and horrendous imaginable. However, director James Ronald Whitney’s approach to such subject matter is perhaps the most unsettling aspect to the film.

As the grandson of Melvin Just, Whitney delves through his horrific ancestry while delivering what feels like scripted monologues, often while playing a grand piano. Even though the film’s theme is nothing short of ghastly, the director takes intermittent breaks from the family’s story to dwell on his quasi-successful past as a Star Search contestant, dancer, college cheerleader, pianist, and martial artist.
(It may be insensitive, but these sequences leave the viewer with the same creepy feelings one derives from Herzog documentaries.)
Like proposing marriage during a funeral, Whitney's inability to resist indulging in the spotlight, especially in such an odious context, is unfortunate. Even so, his encapsulation of the events is exceptionally effective.

Whitney’s disquieting moments of self-promotion sit in stark contrast with the surreal story of Melvin Just and his victims. The ancestral tree is rotten with child molestation, suicide attempts, incest, and substance abuse. The majority of women in Just’s two families recount numerous acts of abuse from infancy to their teenage years. As Melvin remarries, each time into a family ripe with young, pre-existing daughters, the list of abominations grows longer.

Additionally, though it’s less highlighted in the film, many of the male members in the family describe being assaulted as well, or witnessing abuse at one point or another. Eerily enough, though not including the very brief and ambiguous confession of Whitney’s own experience, the men in film seem so thoroughly steeped in denial, and/or conditioned acceptance, that not only do they not recognize any apparent problem, they seem to be continuing in the hideous tradition: An effort which seems likely to produce many more generations crippled by life altering trauma.

The account of this family’s grievous past, accompanied by its seemingly inherent and infectious proclivity for tolerated sexual abuse, is really nothing short of stomach turning. Regardless of the director’s method, the creation of this film and the story being told is undeniably important. The sequences where Whitney speaks with his mother, Ann, as well as his aunts, are tangibly therapeutic, and – in an almost invasive way – touching. Whitney’s narration is not always the most irritating thing ever heard and, while I’m not a big fan of a documentary filmmaker's forced inclusion of themselves so deeply in their film, his declaration that he will not stop until Just is either dead or in prison – not to mention his one-on-one confrontations with Melvin during filming – create an interesting dynamic that promoted a sense of urgency.

Experiencing the admissions of these women and men and the sense of acceptance they share is uniquely unnerving. The lasting affects drove nearly every single entity of the bloodline into dire circumstances, immersed in substance abuse, physical abuse, and homelessness. (Many of the director’s aunts, in fact, lived in stalled cars, alongside current boyfriends, dogs, and cats.)

Above all, there is absolutely no attempt at providing an unbiased account of the acts committed, nor should there be. Just, Melvin: Just Evil is not a picture-perfect documentary. Its occasionally uneasy juxtaposition between child molestation and how well director Whitney can do the splits doesn’t make for the easiest ride down an already uncomfortable road. Nevertheless, the overall effect is heartbreaking, virtually unimaginable, and pretty fuckin' disturbing...

Five Random Facts About "Just, Melvin":

This all happened in Northern California.
Melvin Just died before the film was completed, and was never convicted for the murder of the county nurse.
Grandma Fay was a collector of her “suitors'” underwear and he also won a pissing competition once against four guys. (don't ask)
Whitney’s dad, estranged for decades, left Ann and James to join the Hell’s Angels when James was 9 years old.
Because this family makes The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia look like My 2 Dads, here’s the family tree:

More Free Documentaries on YouTube

"Serial Killers: The Real Hannibal Lectors"

"Underground Tunnels of Ireland"

"Serial Killer Couples"

"The Bridge" (Suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge)

"Accounts of Paranormal Entity Attacks"

"Dangerous Mega-Cults Scientology and Jehova's Witness"

"Lifting the Veil of Polygamy"

"Inside Scientology"

"Mormon Cult Secrets"

The Golden Gate Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 23:06:00 +0000

The Golden Gate Bridge

is a movie star that people just love to destroy..

Construction began on January 5, 1933, but February 26th was the official ground breaking ceremony at Crissy Field

(Click to enlarge)

Three years after completing the transcontinental railroad, Charles Crocker, a railroad executive, made a presentation to the Marin County Board of Supervisors in which he laid out plans for a bridge that would span the Golden Gate Strait, the entrance to the ocean from San Francisco Bay. (The strait was named Chrysopylae, Greek for “golden gate,” by U.S. Army Captain John Fremont in 1846.) Many didn’t believe it could be done: At its narrowest point, the strait was still more than a mile wide, with turbulent currents ranging from 4.5 to 7.5 knots. The project wouldn’t be seriously considered until 1919, when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had the city's engineer, Michael O’Shaughnessy, do a study to determine the feasibility of a bridge. The initial results estimated that constructing a bridge would cost $100 million.

In 1920, O’Shaughnessy sent letters to three prominent engineers inquiring about building a bridge over the strait: Joseph B. Strauss, Francis C. McMath, and Gustav Lindenthal. Strauss submitted plans for a symmetrical cantilever-suspension hybrid span, which he had developed and later patented. Reports vary, but Strauss thought he could build the bridge for $17 million or $27 million.

The bridge commission hid the design from the public for a year (though Strauss was drumming up support for the bridge using his design during that time). When they did reveal it, the public wasn’t pleased. The local press called the design ugly, and one writer described it as “a ponderous, blunt bridge that combined a heavy tinker toy frame at each end with a short suspension span. It seemed to strain its way across the Golden Gate”.

Eventually, Strauss would abandon his design in favor of a more conventional suspension bridge.

Because the War Department owned the land on both sides of the strait, it had to authorize the construction of the bridge. A temporary construction permit was granted on December 24, 1924, and a final permit was issued on August 11, 1930.

"The Golden Gate Bridge in 1930 had 2300 lawsuits against it,” transit expert Rod Diridon told NBC Bay Area. One of those lawsuits was brought by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which owned 51 percent of the ferry company that took commuters and cars between San Francisco and Marin County. Ansel Adams and the Sierra Club were also opposed to the bridge, which they felt would mar the natural beauty of the strait.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, getting the bridge approved “took several favorable court rulings, an enabling act from the State legislature, two Federal hearings prior to approval from the U.S. Department of War (which had long feared that any bridge across San Francisco Bay would hinder navigation), a guarantee that local workers would have first crack at the jobs, and a mass boycott of the ferry service operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad.”

The engineer hired Charles A. Ellis, author of Essentials in the Theory of Framed Structures, in 1922. Ellis’s job would be to oversee bridge design and supervise construction. In 1925, he and Strauss brought Harvard University’s George F. Swain and Leon S. Moisseff, designer of New York City’s Manhattan Bridge, on as consultants. By the end of 1929, the team had switched from Strauss’s initial design to a suspension bridge designed by Moisseff. According to Purdue University, Ellis’s work “included performing thousands of calculations for the bridge, writing specifications for ten bridge construction contracts, and supervising the test boring and siting, which involved the complicated process of locating firm footing on the Marin shore.” He did his job tirelessly for three years, including spending several months figuring out the complex calculations with Moisseff.

By November 1931, Strauss—who, according to PBS, “did not understand the complexity of the engineering work” and couldn’t understand why it was taking so long—ordered Ellis to take a vacation. Just three days before he was slated to return, Strauss sent a letter informing Ellis that he was to take an indefinite (and unpaid) vacation and turn all of his work over to his assistant.

Unable to find other work, Ellis continued to crunch the numbers on the Golden Gate Bridge, unpaid, for up to 70 hours a week. (He submitted his report in 1934; Strass and Moisseff ignored it.) He eventually took a job as a professor at Purdue, and when the bridge opened in 1937, Ellis received no credit for his work, despite the fact that he had, in his own words, designed “every nut and bolt on the darn thing.” His role in the bridge project wouldn’t be revealed until his passing in 1949.

After years of setbacks and fundraising, Strauss and his team finally broke ground on the bridge on January 5, 1933. It was, apparently, a big event: According to the official program, there was a parade to Crissy Field, where, after opening remarks were given and a message from President Herbert Hoover was read, there was a 21-gun salute and a bridge was painted in the sky. Next there was a pageant where engineering students showed off an 80-foot-long model of the bridge containing carrier pigeons that were to take news of the groundbreaking all over California. Finally, San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi and bridge Board President William P. Filmer broke ground using a golden spade and a closing prayer was read. At least 100,000 people attended the celebration.

Take out any element of a suspension bridge, and the structure won’t stay standing for long—but the cables are particularly important: They're strung horizontally between two massive concrete blocks called anchorages on each side of the bridge, with additional vertical cables called suspender ropes attaching the main cable to the bridge’s deck (or roadway). Vehicles push down on the roadway, but the suspender ropes transfer that load to the main cables, which transfer it to the towers, which support most of the weight.

For the Golden Gate Bridge, Strauss needed cables that would be strong enough to support the structure of the bridge and bend 27 feet laterally in the Gate’s high winds—and they’d need to be made right there on the construction site. So he turned to the experts: Roebling's Sons Co., which had made the cables for the Brooklyn Bridge 52 years earlier and spun them on site. For the Golden Gate Bridge, the company developed a method called parallel wire construction. The spinning began in 1935; PBS describes the process:

To spin the cables, 80,000 miles of steel wire less than 0.196 inch in diameter were bound in 1,600-pound spools and attached to the bridge's anchorages. A fixture within the anchorages called a strand shoe was used to secure the "dead wire" while a spinning wheel, or sheave, pulled a "live wire" across the bridge. Once it reached the opposite shore of the Gate, the live wire was secured onto the strand shoe, and the wheel returned with another loop of wire to begin the process again. … One wire at a time, the cables for the Golden Gate bridge were spun from tower to tower, anchorage to anchorage. The spinning was tedious; not only did it take time for the spinning wheel to travel the mile between the two shores, but the work had to be performed in a precise sequence, in order to create the balance needed for the cables to absorb the proper amount of wind pressure.

To get the spinning done within the time frame—14 months—and on-budget, the company created a split-tram system that would eventually be capable of spinning six wires at once, which allowed them to spin 1000 miles of wire in a single eight-hour shift. Thanks to Roebling's methods, the cables were finished eight months ahead of schedule.

The bridge’s two main cables are each 7659 feet long, over three feet in diameter, and contain 27,572 parallel wires. The largest cables ever spun, they’re long enough to circle the world at the equator more than three times.

The first step in the main cable construction was the erection of a “footwalk” which was suspended directly under where the main cables would then be spun.

In the 1930s, the odds were not in a worker’s favor: On average, one man was killed per million dollars spent on a big project.

Strauss wanted to beat those odds, and spent a ton of money on safety. Goofing off was forbidden: “Old Strauss enforced the rules,” Pete Williamson, one of the workers on the bridge, said. “All a guy had to do was to stand out there on one foot, and he was fired.” Workers had to wear glare-free goggles, use hand and face cream to protect their skin from the high winds, and go on special diets that Strauss believed would fend off dizziness. The engineer had the E.D. Bullard Company create special hard hats for the bridge workers, which they were required to wear at all times, and in 1936, Strauss installed a net under the bridge that cost $130,000. The device, similar to what’s strung below the circus trapeze, was manufactured by the J.L. Stuart Company and extended 10 feet wider than the bridge’s width and 15 feet longer than its length; it helped to speed construction while also giving workers a sense of security. It saved 19 men who otherwise would have plummeted into the water below; they were said to belong to the Halfway to Hell Club.
For most of the construction, Strauss’s site was fatality-free. Then, just a few months before the bridge opened, one worker was killed by a falling derrick. A few weeks after that, scaffolding collapsed, falling into the net with 12 workers holding on. The net tore and the scaffolding plunged into the water 220 feet below, killing 10. One survivor, 26-year-old Slim Lambert, recalled, "As I was falling, a piece of lumber fell on my head. I was almost unconscious. Then the icy water of the channel brought me to." He had broken his shoulder, some ribs, and a few neck vertebrae, but managed to swim to shore.

Albert "Frenchy" Gales, a construction worker, was on top of the south tower when the quake hit in June 1935. “[The tower] was so limber the tower swayed 16 feet each way,” he later said. “There were 12 or 13 guys on top with no way to get down. The elevator wouldn’t run. The whole thing would sway toward the ocean, guys would say, ‘here we go!’ Then it would sway back, toward the Bay. Guys were laying on the deck, throwing up and everything. I figured if we go in, the iron would hit the water first.”

When the original rivets become corroded, they’re replaced with galvanized high-strength bolts. Proposed colors for the bridge included carbon gray, aluminum, or black, and the U.S. Navy wanted black with yellow stripes (for greater visibility). But Irving Morrow, the consulting architect (who was also responsible for the bridge’s Art Deco look), didn’t want any of those colors: The black was unattractive and would reduce the scale of his bridge; aluminum would make the towers look tiny.

In the end, he was inspired by the red primer the steel beams had been coated in at the factories back east, and settled on International Orange, which complemented the bridge’s natural surroundings but also helped the structure stand out from the sea and sky. “The effect of International Orange is as highly pleasing as it is unusual in the realm of engineering,” Morrow said. As an added benefit, the color is highly visible in fog.

*The CMYK formula for International Orange is Cyan: 0 percent, Magenta: 69 percent, Yellow: 100 percent, Black: 6 percent.

The paint for the bridge is currently supplied by Sherwin-Williams. The exact color's not available to the public, but supposedly their color "Fireweed" is the closest (it looks a lot darker to me, but whatever..)

It took a little over four years to build the bridge, and the total cost of the project was $35 million. When the bridge was completed, San Francisco feted it for a solid week; The Golden Gate Bridge Fiesta lasted from May 27 to June 2. Strauss—an engineer as well as a poet—read a poem he penned for the occasion, called “The Mighty Task is Done,” which begins:

At last the mighty task is done;
Resplendent in the western sun
The Bridge looms mountain high;
Its titan piers grip ocean floor,
Its great steel arms link shore with shore,
Its towers pierce the sky.

Opening day was “Pedestrian Day,” and 15,000 people an hour went through the turnstiles, each paying 25 cents to cross; some traversed the bridge on stilts and roller skates or on unicycles.
Vendors set up along the roadway sold an estimated 50,000 hot dogs.

At noon on May 28, FDR pressed a telegraph key in the White House that announced the bridge’s opening to the entire world, and at 3 p.m. a fleet of 42 Navy ships sailed under the bridge; the day was capped off by a fireworks display at 10 p.m. At some point during the celebration, a Fiesta Queen of the Golden Gate Bridge was crowned, although reports differ as to who won.

(This playlist has various drone footage of the Golden Gate Bridge & S.F. Bay Area with music but, if you want to skip that, there's also some old silent black-and-white footage from the Golden Gate Bridge Opening Day)

When the bridge opened in 1937, the weight of the bridge along with its anchorages and approaches was 894,500 tons. Re-decking in 1986 reduced the total weight to 887,000 tons.

The longest closure in the Golden Gate’s history occurred on December 3, 1983, when winds reached 75 mph; the roadway was shut down for three hours and 27 minutes. But there have been full closures for anniversaries and construction work, and brief closures—on two separate occasions—for visiting dignitaries Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle.
The Bridge has an influence in directing the fog as it pushes up and pours down around the Bridge. Sometimes, high pressure squashes it close to the ground.

Bridge Toll started out at 50 cents.
Currently, an average of over 100,000 vehicles use the Golden Gate Bridge every day. Approximately 40 million vehicles used it in 2003, which is not much more than its first year’s volume of 33 million. There have been over 1.8 billion crossings since it opened in 1937.

50th Anniversary: Officials expected a maximum of 50,000 people to attend the bridge’s 50th anniversary celebration on May 24, 1987. Instead, 800,000 people showed up, and what happened next, as described in a report filed the year after the incident, sounds like a nightmare:
The Golden Gate Bridge responded visibly to the large live load with a reported deflection of its roadway of almost 10 feet at the midspan. ... The situation was compounded by the 17 mph winds blowing across San Francisco Bay. Suspension bridges are vulnerable to wind loads and, while the bridge was swaying from side to side because of the winds and flattening under the heavy live load, near panic conditions resulted. People were suffering from nausea and claustrophobia in the density of the crowd, making it increasingly difficult to alleviate the situation by directing the people away from the bridge.
“The whole bridge flattened out—its whole arch disappeared,” Gary Giacomini, president of the Bridge District Board, said at the time. “The bridge had the greatest load factor of its 50-year life. The suspension cables at the center of the bridge were stretched as ‘tight as harp strings,’ while the lower cables near the tower seemed to flap in the wind … I thought, ‘Wow, this isn’t a good idea!'"
But there was never any reason to fear. According to the report, the bridge deck was designed to move 15 feet vertically and 27 feet from side to side, and Charles Seim, a former supervising bridge engineer with the state’s transportation department, said that “I knew we were exceeding design loads, but I wasn’t worried in the slightest. Even at the maximum design load of 5700 pounds per foot the stress in cables is only 40 percent of their yielding stress, that’s a large factor of safety.”

Golden Gate Suicides

If you've never been to the G.G. Bridge, or even if you have, here are some 'next-best-thing' views of it:

Crazy 360 Panoramas:

Street View 1

Street View 2

Street View 3

Street View 4

Satellite View

Map View

Bridge Walk: start
look forward | walk forward |

Golden Gate Bridge Website

Short Films and Interactives

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 03:36:00 +0000

This short film "WEIRD BOX" integrates your Instagram (or anyone's account, you just enter an Instagram username) into the story..

WEIRD BOX
An interactive short film by Noah Levenson

"All Flowers In Time"

"A guided tour through the shattered remains of memory and identity."

Directed by: Jonathan Caouette
Written by: Jessica Brunetto and Jonathan Caouette
Starring: Chloë Sevigny

"On the TV, “I am not from this place” declares a French cowboy. An old toothless man asks, “Do you know why you’re here?”. These shape shifting personalities infect young children with an evil signal in the form of a Dutch TV show. The red eyed girls and boys believe they can now become other people and monsters much to their delight."

and since we're on the subject of Chloë Sevigny,

here's her short-film directorial debut

"Kitty"

"Alike"

Alike, an animated short film

"A father tries to teach his son about life"

CREDITS:
Directed by: Daniel Martínez Lara & Rafa Cano Méndez
Produced by: Daniel Martínez Lara & Nicolás Matji
Music by: Oscar Araujo
Production Manager: Eva Márquez Matías
Sound by: Aleix Vila

"MELTDOWN"

"Last night's leftovers battle for their lives."

STARRING:
David Cross as Ham Sandwich
Emanuel Borria as Spaghetti
Genevieve Jones as Milk
Ryan Bradley Heine as Celery, Jam, Pudding
Daniel Hartley as Mayo
Sunny Peabody as Butter
Justin Uretz as Orange
Marty Dusig as the Man
DeAnne Trimarchi as the Woman
Directed by Dave Green
Producer: Ryan Hendricks

"Blue Season"

Director/Producer: Lee Jones
Producer/Scriptwriter: Georgina Higgins

"Blue Season"
starring Daisy Ridley ("Rey" in Star Wars: The Force Awakens) as Sarah.

"Sarah wakes up to find herself hanging upside down in a cellar and receiving instructions from some creepy guy through a Bluetooth headset."

*It was originally made for a 48-hour film challenge, where the filmmakers were given prompts and make a short-film before the deadline.

Lastly, here's the newest set of short films like the ones I posted not too long ago:

The Previous Sets Of Short-Films
Check these out if you haven't seen them

These new shorts are about Motherhood, the set is called "Conception":

A Mother's Promise: You Can Be Yourself
Laurin's husband was an activist. Her son chose to be brave in his own way.

Bonus: Shorts:

Billed as “the world’s first interactive narrative film, "Possibilia"

DIRECTED BY DANIELS

PRODUCED BY XBOX LIVE STUDIOS, PRETTYBIRD & INTERLUDE made in the USA

POSSIBILIA: An interactive love story.
What if you could influence someone else's breakup? From acclaimed director duo Daniels. Starring Alex Karpovsky and Zoe Jarman

Amazing 360 Views - Map and Videos - Medium
Beautiful 360° Videos and a World Map of Awesome 360 Panoramas

More Shorts

Short-Films: Michael Cera, Megaball, and Monsters

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 11:05:00 +0000

POLAROID

"It's the things we can't see that terrify us the most..."

---

GREGORY GO BOOM

Starring:
Gregory: Michael Cera
Rose: Sarah BurnsTom: Brett Gelman
Summer/Cheyenne: Anna Rose Hopkins
Attendant: G. Maximillian Zarou

Written and Directed by: Janicza Bravo
Executive Produced by: Doug Deluca, Daniel Kellison and Mickey Meyer
Produced by: Janicza Bravo, Debbie Chesebro and Brett Gelman
Director of Photography: Christian Sprenger
Edited by: Cine Bravo
Head of Production: AJ Tesler
Post Production Supervisors: Josh Kurz, Trish Hadley
Assistant Editor: Aron Fyne
1st AD: Crystal Munson
Production Designer: Rachael Ferrara

---

YOUR LUCKY DAY

"A megaball drawing sends a convenience store spiraling out of control."

Short-Films

New Horror Film Hereditary Has Everyone Scared

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 16:52:00 +0000

A movie called Hereditary recently premiered at Sundance and has filmmakers, critics and viewers going crazy and they all say it's fucking scary.

"Hereditary follows a family and the mysterious legacy they find themselves entwined in once they move into their dead relative's home. Strange and eerie things start happening to the family as they begin to unravel the cryptic dark secrets of their ancestry."

It's already scored a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (so far) with people calling it "emotional terrorism" and "deeply upsetting" and even warning viewers that it'll leave them "too scared to turn off the lights in their own home for weeks" and that it's too scary to even watch, that Critics are leaving the cinema terrified, and not only are people screaming inside the theatre but people are just walking out completely..

And we're not talking about the usual reviews you always see here & there that say every fuckin' movie is the greatest shit they've ever seen, the 'reviews' for this are similar pretty much anywhere you look and posted by everything from viewers to bloggers to critics to filmmakers etc.. which might not be a good thing cause people are going in expecting too much rather than being shocked or surprised. I never listen to critics personally, and we'll find out for ourselves when it opens on June 8 (2018).

*Here are some tweets, comments and reviews from various random places:

- “Hereditary” ... I haven’t been this upset and freaked out by a horror movie since the original Ju-On. My stomach NEVER turns because of a movie, and there’s a moment in this movie so upsetting I almost lost it. Every inch is crafted to horrific detail. Fuck me. #sundance2018

- Hereditary isn't just the freakiest thing I've seen in ages, but by far the most emotionally upsetting. Never feels like a tease; every scare has a very cruel purpose. Toni Collette astonishes. Couldn't have asked for a more satisfying end to my #Sundance2018.

- Just watched a really fucked up movie called Hereditary. It’s the kind of horror flick designed to get under your skin and holy shit does it. I recommend any viewers go in as cold as possible.

- HEREDITARY chilled me to my bone. It's pure emotional terrorism, gripping you with *real* horror, the unspeakable kind, and then imbuing the supernatural stuff with those feelings. I loved it/resent it for the nightmares I'm going to have. #Sundance2018

- #Hereditary is so disquieting, you’ll be gasping for air in the theater. Utterly believable supernatural horror. There will be no scarier movie this year. If there is, it means we’re in a new golden age. #Sundance

- I just saw the scariest movie I have ever ever ever seen in my entire life. I. Am. Shook. #Hereditary #Sundance

- There are moments of #Hereditary where I felt genuine terror. Not shock. Not “oh that’s a clever twist” Just. Pure. Terror.

- Move over IT, Get Out, Annabelle: Creation, and The Exorcist. There is a new king of horror coming to

- After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, critics have unanimously called Ari Aster’s Hereditary the “scariest horror movie in years”.

- “This isn’t a scary movie. It’s pure emotional terrorism, gripping you with real horror, the unspeakable kind, and then imbuing the supernatural stuff with those feelings,”

- Hereditary is the most traumatically terrifying horror movie in ages

- ‘Scariest Horror Film In Years’ Hereditary Is So Terrifying People Are Crying In The Cinema

- People are literally walking out of the cinema because it's just too traumatizing.

- “Hereditary seeks to confound by swinging between moments of controlled Kubrick-ian terror and unhinged emotional hysteria,”

- The screams in the theatre were almost as frightening as what was on screen. #Hereditary

- the most insane horror movie in years, If you’d ever like to sleep again, then you should probably steer clear of A24’s latest horror offering Hereditary

Tweets by HereditaryMovie

Some Star-Studded Surreal and Scary Short-Films

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 16:13:00 +0000

Maybe I'm alone, but I didn't know that for the last few years NYT Magazine has teamed up with filmmakers and "actors-of-the-year" to make a series of short-short-films based on a subject.

After watching them, last year was the best in my opinion. It was Horror or "Fright Club" and the year they did villains in the "Touch of Evil" series was good too. You can see them all below and each short is only around 1 minute long. I went ahead and gathered them all because if you go looking around on NYTimes Magazine they only let you read a few articles for free and then they want you to pay for a subscription to continue, but if you still want to see the original layout and stuff, those links are below too. I'd check out "Fright Club" first, it's semi-interactive and has a pretty cool design and look to it.

Fright Club and Touch of Evil:

The Villains:

1. Jack Nance as Henry Spencer in David Lynch’s ‘‘Eraserhead’’ (1977).

2. Images of invisible men, including ‘‘The Invisible Man’’ (1933) and a photo of the Chinese artist Liu Bolin (in front of the taxi van).

3. The ventriloquist’s dummy Fats from ‘‘Magic’’ (1978).

4. Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in ‘‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’’ (1975).

5. Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in ‘‘Wall Street’’ (1987).

6. Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh in ‘‘Mutiny on the Bounty’’ (1935).

7. Dominique Sanda as Anna Quadri in Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘‘Conformist’’ (1970).

8. The silent film star Pina Menichelli.

9. Catherine Deneuve as Carole in Roman Polanski’s ‘‘Repulsion’’ (1965).

10. Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker in ‘‘Bonnie and Clyde’’ (1967).

11. Malcolm McDowell as Alex in ‘‘A Clockwork Orange’’ (1971).

12. A still from ‘‘Green Street Hooligans’’ (2005).

13. Lana Turner as Cora Smith in ‘‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’’ (1946).

The rest include some 'girl-power' in an all-female series, surreal dreamlike scenes in Take Flight and Wide Awake, some classic Noir with a 360 twist, "Making a Scene", some kissing, and more.. Enjoy..

Cool 360 intro to Take Flight:

The Take Flight Series:

All of the rest:

Links to articles:

Russian Roulette

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 13:31:00 +0000

A "Russian Roulette" I threw together real quick. Pick a video, in any order, and see how long you'd last..

More Games Here, or:

360 Russian Roulette:

If you liked the "Loser" video, watch the ridiculously extended version:

New Years Countdowns, Interactives, and Live Streams

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 01:14:00 +0000

⌛Fullscreen Countdown⌛

🎇

EarthCam - New Year's 2018 / New Year's Eve 2018

Webcam Network | EarthCam is proud to present New Year's 2016 from Times Square and a host of cities around the world. Enjoy multiple webcam views, along with streaming video and audio, and watch as the world ushers in 2016!

The Top 10 Google Searches of 2017:

1. Hurricane Irma
2. Matt Lauer
3. Tom Petty
4. Super Bowl
5. Las Vegas shooting
6. Mayweather vs McGregor fight
7. Solar eclipse
8. Hurricane Harvey
9. Aaron Hernandez
10. Fidget Spinner

New Years Countdown Clock 2017, New Years Eve Countdown Clock Timer

Online New Years Countdown Clock 2017 in any time zone. Map shows the New Year's Eve Countdown, the number of days, hours, minutes & seconds until the beginning of the new year 2017.

Tweeting HAPPY NEW YEAR around the world

An interactive visualization that shows how people around the world tweeted happy new year messages as 2013 became 2014

New Year's Music Box

Create your own version of the New Year's song, Auld Lang Syne, by interacting with different instruments and their harmonies.

New Year Map - Year 2018

Watch in real-time as the New Year moves across the world map from east to west.

🎇

👉
Click
on any of these fireworks for different New Years interactive Fireworks Shows 👈

Jack Benny New Years, because why not..

New Year's Day, also called simply New Year's or New Year, is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar.

In pre-Christian Rome under the Julian calendar, the day was dedicated to Janus, god of gateways and beginnings, for whom January is also named. As a date in the Gregorian calendar of Christendom, New Year's Day liturgically marked the Feast of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus, which is still observed as such in the Anglican Church and Lutheran Church.

In present day, with most countries now using the Gregorian calendar as their de facto calendar, New Year's Day is probably the most celebrated public holiday, often observed with fireworks at the stroke of midnight as the new year starts in each time zone. Other global New Year's Day traditions include making New Year's resolutions and calling one's friends and family.

History

In Christendom, under which the Gregorian Calendar developed, New Year's Day traditionally marks the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, which is still observed as such by the Anglican Church and the Lutheran Church.

Mesopotamia (Iraq) instituted the concept of celebrating the new year in 2000 BC, celebrated new year around the time of the vernal equinox, in mid-March. The early Roman calendar designated March 1 as the new year. The calendar had just ten months, beginning with March. That the new year once began with the month of March is still reflected in some of the names of the months. September through December, our ninth through twelfth months, were originally positioned as the seventh through tenth months. (Septem is Latin for "seven"; octo, "eight"; novem, "nine"; and decem, "ten".) Roman legend usually credited their second king Numa with the establishment of the months of January and February. These were first placed at the end of the year, but at some point came to be considered the first two months instead.

The January Kalends (Latin: Kalendae Ianuariae) came to be celebrated as the new year at some point after it became the day for the inaugurating new consuls in 153 BC. Romans had long dated their years by these consulships, rather than sequentially, and making the kalends of January start the new year aligned this dating. Still, private and religious celebrations around the March new year continued for some time and there is no consensus on the question of the timing for January 1's new status. Once it became the new year, however, it became a time for family gatherings and celebrations. A series of disasters, notably including the failed rebellion of M. Aemilius Lepidus in 78 bc, established a superstition against allowing Rome's market days to fall on the kalends of January and the pontiffs employed intercalation to avoid its occurrence.

In AD 567, the Council of Tours formally abolished January 1 as the beginning of the year. At various times and in various places throughout medieval Christian Europe, the new year was celebrated on December 25 in honor of the birth of Jesus; March 1 in the old Roman style; March 25 in honor of Lady Day and the Feast of the Annunciation; and on the movable feast of Easter. These days were also astronomically and astrologically significant since, at the time of the Julian reform, March 25 had been understood as the spring equinox and December 25 as the winter solstice. (The Julian calendar's small disagreement with the solar year, however, shifted these days earlier before the Council of Nicaea which formed the basis of the calculations used during the Gregorian reform of the calendar.) Medieval calendars nonetheless often continued to display the months running from January to December, despite their readers reckoning the transition from one year to the next on a different day.

Among the 7th century pagans of Flanders and the Netherlands, it was the custom to exchange gifts on the first day of the new year. This custom was deplored by Saint Eligius (died 659 or 660), who warned the Flemish and Dutch: "(Do not) make vetulas, [little figures of the Old Woman], little deer or iotticos or set tables [for the house-elf, compare Puck] at night or exchange New Year gifts or supply superfluous drinks [another Yule custom]." However, on the date that European Christians celebrated the New Year, they exchanged Christmas presents because New Years' Day fell within the twelve days of the Christmas season in the Western Christian liturgical calendar; the custom of exchanging Christmas gifts in a Christian context is traced back to the Biblical Magi who gave gifts to the Child Jesus.

Because of the leap year error in the Julian calendar, the date of Easter had drifted backward since the First Council of Nicaea decided the computation of the date of Easter in 325. By the sixteenth century, the drift from the observed equinox had become unacceptable. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII declared the Gregorian calendar widely used today, correcting the error by a deletion of 10 days. The Gregorian calendar reform also (in effect) restored January 1 as New Year's Day. Although most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately, it was only gradually adopted among Protestant countries. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire – and its American colonies – still celebrated the new year on 25 March.

Most nations of Western Europe officially adopted 1 January as New Year's Day somewhat before they adopted the Gregorian Calendar. In Tudor England, New Years Day, along with Christmas Day and Twelfth Night, was celebrated as one of three main festivities among the twelve days of Christmastide. There, until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, the first day of the new year was the Western Christian Feast of the Annunciation, on 25 March, also called "Lady Day". Dates predicated on the year beginning on 25 March became known as Annunciation Style dates, while dates of the Gregorian Calendar commencing on 1 January were distinguished as Circumcision Style dates, because this was the date of the Feast of the Circumcision, the observed memorial of the eighth day of Jesus Christ's life after his birth, counted from the latter's observation on Christmas, 25 December. Pope Gregory acknowledged 1 January as the beginning of the new year according to his reform of the Catholic Liturgical Calendar.

Festivals and celebrations marking the beginning of the calendar have been around for thousands of years. While some festivities were simply a chance to drink and be merry, many other New Year celebrations were linked to agricultural or astronomical events. In Egypt, for instance, the year began with the annual flooding of the Nile, which coincided with the rising of the star Sirius. The Phoenicians and Persians began their new year with the spring equinox, and the Greeks celebrated it on the winter solstice. The first day of the Chinese New Year, meanwhile, occurred with the second new moon after the winter solstice.

The Celebration of Akitu in Babylon

The earliest recorded New Year’s festivity dates back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon, and was deeply intertwined with religion and mythology. For the Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia, the first new moon following the vernal equinox—the day in late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness—heralded the start of a new year and represented the rebirth of the natural world. They marked the occasion with a massive religious festival called Akitu (derived from the Sumerian word for barley, which was cut in the spring) that involved a different ritual on each of its 11 days. During the Akitu, statues of the gods were paraded through the city streets, and rites were enacted to symbolize their victory over the forces of chaos. Through these rituals the Babylonians believed the world was symbolically cleansed and recreated by the gods in preparation for the new year and the return of spring.

In addition to the new year, Atiku celebrated the mythical victory of the Babylonian sky god Marduk over the evil sea goddess Tiamat and served an important political purpose: it was during this time that a new king was crowned or that the current ruler’s divine mandate was renewed. One fascinating aspect of the Akitu involved a kind of ritual humiliation endured by the Babylonian king. This peculiar tradition saw the king brought before a statue of the god Marduk, stripped of his royal regalia, slapped and dragged by his ears in the hope of making him cry. If royal tears were shed, it was seen as a sign that Marduk was satisfied and had symbolically extended the king’s rule.

Ancient Roman Celebration of Janus

The Roman New Year also originally corresponded with the vernal equinox. The early Roman calendar consisted of 10 months and 304 days, with each new year beginning at the vernal equinox.

According to tradition, the calendar was created by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in the eighth century B.C.

However, over the centuries, the calendar fell out of sync with the sun, and in 46 B.C. the emperor Julius Caesar decided to solve the problem by consulting with the most prominent astronomers and mathematicians of his time. He introduced the Julian calendar, a solar-based calendar which closely resembles the more modern Gregorian calendar that most countries around the world use today.

As part of his reform, Caesar instituted January 1 as the first day of the year, partly to honour the month’s namesake: Janus, the Roman god of change and beginnings, whose two faces allowed him to look back into the past and forward into the future. This idea became tied to the concept of transition from one year to the next.

Romans would celebrate January 1st by offering sacrifices to Janus in the hope of gaining good fortune for the New Year, decorating their homes with laurel branches and attending raucous parties. This day was seen as setting the stage for the next twelve months, and it was common for friends and neighbours to make a positive start to the year by exchanging well wishes and gifts of figs and honey with one another.

Middle Ages: January 1st Abolished

In medieval Europe, however, the celebrations accompanying the New Year were considered pagan and unchristian-like, and in 567 AD the Council of Tours abolished January 1st as the beginning of the year, replacing it with days carrying more religious significance, such as December 25th or March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation, also called “Lady Day”.

The date of January 1st was also given Christian significance and became known as the Feast of the Circumcision, considered to be the eighth day of Christ's life counting from December 25th and following the Jewish tradition of circumcision eight days after birth on which the child is formally given his or her name. However, the date of December 25th for the birth of Jesus is debatable.

Gregorian Calendar: January 1st Restored

In 1582, after reform of the Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII re-established January 1st as New Year’s Day. Although most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar almost immediately, it was only gradually adopted among Protestant countries. The British, for example, did not adopt the reformed calendar until 1752. Until then, the British Empire, and their American colonies, still celebrated the New Year in March.

Short Films

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 20:09:00 +0000

For those who haven't heard, vidme decided to shut down and close their entire damn site, out-of-nowhere and permanently..

Which means I now have a ton of fuckin' video embeds and links all over the place to fix or delete, so for now here are some playlists from our youtube channel that are full of Short-Films (mainly horror).

I'm a fan of good short-films so I'll still be collecting the best of them all in one place, but they'll be posted on here now instead of having a dedicated channel or "tube" like our vidme account was,

If you're a fan of 'em too keep an eye out for more...

👁

If you've never seen it, "Kung Fury" is an epic short with a throwback '80s style:

"Who's There" film challenge from Bloody Cuts:

• Entrants were invited to create their scariest horror-short, the only rules were it had to be under 3 minutes long and use the theme of “Who’s There?” •

Ghosts, Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, Serial killers, Evil clowns, Psychos and Insane cultists, Giant killer lizard beasts from hell, Found footage, Horror-Comedies, Documentaries.. a little something for everybody..👇

Winners got $13,000 in prizes and a chance to have your work seen by industry top professionals.

*I put the winner of the challenge at the very bottom by itself*

*The "Who's There?" Challenge Winner*

Mother's Day Massacre (More Holiday Horror)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 May 2017 01:32:00 +0000

Short Films
Vidme shut down their whole site, until I can fix all the embeds you can see short-films here

Mother's Day History - Mother's Day Murder

Mother's Day Horror Movies
(Links below open the movie in new tab/window)

Mother's Day (2011)

Mother's Day (1980)

MAMA

Mother's Day Massacre

Pamela Voorhees Tribute

'Murders on Mother's Day'

Mother's day History

Presidential proclamations from The American Presidency Project:

Proclamation 2083 – Mother's Day Proclamation, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 3 May 1934.
Proclamation 3535 - Mother's Day, 1963, John F. Kennedy, 26 April 1963.
Proclamation 3583 – Mother's Day, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson, 23 April 1964
Proclamation 4437 – Mother's Day, 1976, Gerald Ford, 5 May 1976.
Proclamation 5801 – Mother's Day, 1988, Ronald Reagan, 26 April 1988.
Proclamation 6133 – Mother's Day, 1990, George Bush, 10 May 1990
Proclamation 6559 – Mother's Day, 1993, Bill Clinton, 7 May 1993.
Proclamation 8253 – Mother's Day, 2008, George W. Bush, 8 May 2008.

via chartsbin

Valentine's Day Horror Shorts and History

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 20:50:00 +0000

Click for Video Credits/Info and more Horror Shorts:

The Obscured Origins of Valentine's Day *Updated 2016
Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate romance and love, stupidity and consumerism. However, the origins of this weird candy-heart festival with flying naked baby-archers and overpriced plants wrapped in ribbon are actually pretty dark and bloody. - HEART SHAPED symbols. - According to some, the shape of the heart represents an Ivy Leaf,...

"On this day in 1929 in Chicago, gunmen in the suspected employment of organized-crime boss Al Capone murder seven members of the George "Bugs" Moran North Siders gang in a garage on North Clark Street. The so-called St. Valentine's Day Massacre stirred a media storm centered on Capone and his illegal Prohibition-era activities and motivated federal authorities to redouble their efforts to find evidence incriminating enough to take him off the streets. Alphonse Capone was born in Brooklyn in 1899, the son of Italian immigrants from Naples. In 1921 his old friend Johnny Torrio lured him to Chicago, where Torrio had built up an impressive crime syndicate and was beginning to make a fortune on the illicit commerce of alcohol. In 1925, Torrio was shot four times by Bugs Moran and Hymie Weiss, who were associates of a gangster slain by Torrio's men. Capone was in Florida in February 1929 when he gave the go-ahead for the assassination of Bugs Moran. On February 13, a bootlegger called Moran and offered to sell him a truckload of high quality whiskey at a low price. Moran took the bait and the next morning pulled up to the delivery location where he was to meet several associates and purchase the whisky. He was running a little late, and just as he was pulling up to the garage he saw what looked like two policemen and two detectives get out of an unmarked car and head to the door. Thinking he had nearly avoided being caught in a police raid, Moran drove off. The four men, however, were Capone's assassins. Wearing their stolen police uniforms and heavily armed, Capone's henchmen surprised Moran's men, who agreed to line up against the wall. Thinking they had fallen prey to a routine police raid, they allowed themselves to be disarmed. A moment later, they were gunned down in a hail of shotgun and submachine-gun fire. Six were killed instantly, and the seventh survived for less than an hour."

On February 14, around the year 278A.D., Valentine, a holy priest in Rome in the days of Emperor Claudius II, was executed.
Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.
To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.
When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270.
Legend also has it that while in jail, St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine.”
For his great service, Valentine was named a saint after his death.
In truth, the exact origins and identity of St. Valentine are unclear. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February.” One was a priest in Rome, the second one was a bishop of Interamna (now Terni, Italy) and the third St. Valentine was a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.
Legends vary on how the martyr’s name became connected with romance. The date of his death may have become mingled with the Feast of Lupercalia, a pagan festival of love. On these occasions, the names of young women were placed in a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius decided to put an end to the Feast of Lupercalia, and he declared that February 14 be celebrated as St Valentine’s Day.

Gradually, February 14 became a date for exchanging love messages, poems and simple gifts such as flowers

St Valentine’s Skull:

6 Surprising Facts About St. Valentine

A man named Valentinus was martyred on February 14 late in the third century A.D.—this much we know. But when it comes to details about the life of St. Valentine, legend often supersedes fact. As you celebrate this Valentine’s Day, find out the truth about the man for whom the day is named, as well as some other intriguing facts about history's most romantic holiday.
1. The St. Valentine who inspired the holiday may have been two different men. Officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, St. Valentine is known to be a real person who died around A.D. 270. However, his true identity was questioned as early as A.D. 496 by Pope Gelasius I, who referred to the martyr and his acts as “being known only to God.” One account from the 1400s describes Valentine as a temple priest who was beheaded near Rome by the emperor Claudius II for helping Christian couples wed. A different account claims Valentine was the Bishop of Terni, also martyred by Claudius II on the outskirts of Rome. Because of the similarities of these accounts, it’s thought they may refer to the same person. Enough confusion surrounds the true identity of St. Valentine that the Catholic Church discontinued liturgical veneration of him in 1969, though his name remains on its list of officially recognized saints.
2. In all, there are about a dozen St. Valentines, plus a pope. The saint we celebrate on Valentine’s Day is known officially as St. Valentine of Rome in order to differentiate him from the dozen or so other Valentines on the list. Because “Valentinus”—from the Latin word for worthy, strong or powerful—was a popular moniker between the second and eighth centuries A.D., several martyrs over the centuries have carried this name. The official Roman Catholic roster of saints shows about a dozen who were named Valentine or some variation thereof. The most recently beatified Valentine is St. Valentine Berrio-Ochoa, a Spaniard of the Dominican order who traveled to Vietnam, where he served as bishop until his beheading in 1861. Pope John Paul II canonized Berrio-Ochoa in 1988. There was even a Pope Valentine, though little is known about him except that he served a mere 40 days around A.D. 827.
3. Valentine is the patron saint of beekeepers and epilepsy, among many other things. Saints are certainly expected to keep busy in the afterlife. Their holy duties include interceding in earthly affairs and entertaining petitions from living souls. In this respect, St. Valentine has wide-ranging spiritual responsibilities. People call on him to watch over the lives of lovers, of course, but also for interventions regarding beekeeping and epilepsy, as well as the plague, fainting and traveling. As you might expect, he’s also the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriages.
4. You can find Valentine’s skull in Rome. The flower-adorned skull of St. Valentine is on display in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. In the early 1800s, the excavation of a catacomb near Rome yielded skeletal remains and other relics now associated with St. Valentine. As is customary, these bits and pieces of the late saint’s body have subsequently been distributed to reliquaries around the world. You’ll find other bits of St. Valentine’s skeleton on display in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Scotland, England and France.
5. Chaucer may have invented Valentine’s Day. The medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer often took liberties with history, placing his poetic characters into fictitious historical contexts that he represented as real. No record exists of romantic celebrations on Valentine’s Day prior to a poem Chaucer wrote around 1375. In his work “Parliament of Foules,” he links a tradition of courtly love with the celebration of St. Valentine’s feast day–an association that didn’t exist until after his poem received widespread attention. The poem refers to February 14 as the day birds (and humans) come together to find a mate. When Chaucer wrote, “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate,” he may have invented the holiday we know today.
6. You can celebrate Valentine’s Day several times a year. Because of the abundance of St. Valentines on the Roman Catholic roster, you can choose to celebrate the saint multiple times each year. Besides February 14, you might decide to celebrate St. Valentine of Viterbo on November 3. Or maybe you want to get a jump on the traditional Valentine celebration by feting St. Valentine of Raetia on January 7. Women might choose to honor the only female St. Valentine (Valentina), a virgin martyred in Palestine on July 25, A.D. 308. The Eastern Orthodox Church officially celebrates St. Valentine twice, once as an elder of the church on July 6 and once as a martyr on July 30.

Mr. Bungle- Pink Cigarette by mindspaceapocalypse

Charles Bukowski The Laughing Heart by mindspaceapocalypse

Maria Brink Remixed

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:40:00 +0000

MARIA BRINK by mindspaceapocalypse

Maria Brink - Blood (InsainMix #2) by mindspaceapocalypse

Insainment Music Magazine

In This Moment Live by mindspaceapocalypse

ITM LIVE 2 by mindspaceapocalypse

BLOOD TYPOGRAPHY VIDEO:

In This Moment - Blood by mindspaceapocalypse

Maria Brink / In This Moment - Mind Space Apocalypse
Art, Dark Art, Blogs, Magazines, Horror, News, Videos, Gifs, Your one stop for everything you need. Your Dark Light in the Shallow Depths of a Wonderland Nightmare.

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Foreign American-Horror Movie Posters

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 01:59:00 +0000

Insainment Horror Mix from MindSpaceApocalypse on Insainment Radio.

FOREIGN HORROR POSTERS

American films are distributed all over the world, just like foreign films are distributed here. A majority of the time the posters widely vary, foreign posters are created by each country to market it to their respective audience and sometimes don't even look like they're for the same movie.

I was curious if posters have ever determined whether or not you saw a movie in the theatres, got you excited for a movie that didn't do live up to the poster, or if (like these examples) they could possibly change your opinion or the way you experienced a film if you saw one of them before seeing the movie.For example, the giant Leprechaun or the way the Poltergeist and Rosemary's Baby posters emphasize the demon/evil instead of just a static tv in the dark or a simple shot of a stroller.

More Foreign Posters
Pretend you've never heard of these movies and based only on these posters, "Ticket? Or Skip it?"

Short Circuit (Czech Republic)

Star Wars: A New Hope (Japan)

Aliens (Poland)

The Birds (Czech Republic)

Slither (Guyana)

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Czech Republic)

An American Werewolf in London (Japan)

The Omen (Czech Republic)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (Poland)

To Kill A Mockingbird (Croatia)

Star Wars: A New Hope (Russia)

Christine (Poland)

Peter Pan (Lithuania)

Terms of Endearment (Poland)

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Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 08:18:00 +0000

MindSpaceApocalypse Halloween by the numbers Infographic (fullscreen)

Halloween Post 2: Interactive Insanity
Source: Halloween Post 2: Interactive Insanity Friday the 13th Post Number 1 and Number 2 Mind Space Apocalypse Free Full Movie As Long As It's Up: Bloody Pit of Horror - Based on the writing of Marquis de Sad

Halloween Post 2: Interactive Insanity
Happy Halloween. A few short-films, halloween horror quizzes, gif, pics, and some online games.

Halloween

FULLSCREEN

Halloween Documentary

FULLSCREEN

Halloween Infographic 3 (fullscreen)

Halloween game of walnut shells.

People would use milk to write their fortune on a plain white paper and after the paper had dried it was fooled and laid into walnut shells. Then the shell is warmed, and the writing that was once invisible on white paper would turn brown and be visible on the white paper. People also used to play the fortune teller game where different symbols were drawn and cut out and placed on a tray. Then one person would be asked to enter a dark room and place his hand on ice and then put the same hand on the plate with symbols. The cutout paper would stick on the hand hence show their fortune based on symbols. The symbols used to foretell wealth, poverty, marriage fame or good luck.

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Music, Gifs, and Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 10:51:00 +0000

No top 10 list, no particular order, just good shit

Insainment Music Magazine.

Horror Icons Campaign Posters and Deep Dreams

Horror Icons for President by MSA / Insainment

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Video and Art Albums from Uploadly before they shut down, plus Creepshow and more

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 06:08:00 +0000

This service, Uploadly, is shutting down their website for some odd reason on August 31st.

So here are some albums/galleries worth checkin' out before they're gone at the end of the month.

If you're not familiar with these albums/galleries, you can click through them with the buttons located on the bottom left corner of each one, or the square button that's between the 'previous' and 'next' buttons opens that particular album in a full page with all of its content showing at once, which you can scroll down through:

Creepshow Album 1 - Album 2 - Album 3

Horror Magazine.

Add to Flipboard Magazine.

- Short documentary on EC Comics, makers of the Creepshow comics, Tales from the Crypt, and more:

Creepshow from Mind Space Apocalypse

and you can watch the movies here:

Tweet to @Overkill_MSA

Follow Subscribe in a reader

*If you've never tried NetVibes, check it out:

MindSpaceApocalypse
I walk where the copperheads are, it's not too far.. From Cities and streets, but the oppressive heat. The crickets are singing, my body is wringing. Bare feet, walking in grass, the cornfield is empty. We're alone so far. I'll take you to where the copperheads are.

*And if you're seeing this post after August and the albums are gone, don't forget to check out the pages, links at top of screen, like our Video Page - or our Facebook Videos - or Insainment WebTV - or our YouTube Channel - and our other YouTube Channel

Tumblr #1 and Tumblr #2

MindSpaceApocalypse
While death and darkness girdle me I grope for immortality. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

*Last, but not least, if you like to read about anything from UFOs to Government Files, and Conspiracies, Occult, Witchcraft, and Classic Ghost Stories to Blavatsky, Lovecraft, The Necronomicon, and Clive Barker to Weird Tales, Pulp Magazines, and Horror Comics +more:

Mind Space Apocalypse Library - read Ebooks free online
The verifed documented account from a MKUltra - Project MONARCH - survivor Cathy O'Brien who escaped (and made the book) with help from Mark Phillips. In the beginng it starts with "soft mind-control" aka the control of information and misleading by use of wording and misinformation.

Witchcraft & Witches and Occult eBooks

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:15:00 +0000

WITCHCRAFT:

Full Documentaries and eBooks

(Browse books by clicking arrows on the sides, switch between sections by clicking 'Books of the Dead' or 'Books of the Damned' at the bottom or just keep clicking arrow)

Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft from Mind Space Apocalypse

Watch above doc. "Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages" on YouTube

Devils, Demons and Witchcraft from Mind Space Apocalypse

Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft from Mind Space Apocalypse

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Monarch Mind Control: Decoding the Shia Labeouf video and more

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 May 2016 23:41:00 +0000

#ProjectMakeBelieve

Click through the library section below⬇ for more on Project Monarch Mind Control (including the one refered to in the breakdown and
The TRANCEformation of America)

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The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Anneliese Michel

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 07:21:00 +0000

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

(Anneliese Michel)

Movie:

Actual Audio from the 'Exorcisms' of Anneliese Michel

(Emily Rose)
The house where this took place burned down a few years ago and supposedly spirits or ghosts were spotted.

More information on the true story:

More Tales of Terror and Creepy stories of the Unknown, Paranormal, and Unsolved
More of the supernatural, scary, strange, and shocking.

Tales of Terror: Demonic Possession including Anneliese Michel
Creepy and interesting.

Add to Flipboard Magazine.Tweet to @Overkill_MSA

Overkill_MSA's videos

MSA2-ShortFilms

Insainment's videos

Music Videos

St. Patrick’s Day

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 05:57:00 +0000

View The real story of St. Patrick full version on Tackk
MindSpaceApocalypse Tackk

Other Holidays

Mind Space Apocalypse
These rituals are usually older than you, so whether you believe or not just play with caution. If demons, evil entities, or ghosts are real do you want to be the one to find out the hard way?

Add to Flipboard Magazine.Tweet to @Overkill_MSA

Mind Space Apocalypse - @Overkill_MSA

Mind Space Apocalypse

Animated Horror, Fantasy, and Dark Comedy Short-Films

The Family Cult

Beyond the Night - 360° Horror Film and more 360 Horror

"Põrgu" / Hell

"Põrgu" or "Hell"

An Estonian grotesque animated film by Rein Raamat, Tallinnfilm, 1983. The animation brings three Eduard Viiralt (Wiiralt) engravings from the 1930's to life:

”The Preacher“ “Cabaret” and “Hell”

Chopper

House of Pain

The Golden Gate Bridge

*Street View 1 *Street View 2 *Street View 3 *Street View 4 *Satellite View *Map View

Short Films and Interactives

"Kitty"

"MELTDOWN"

"Blue Season"

Short-Films: Michael Cera, Megaball, and Monsters

POLAROID

GREGORY GO BOOM

YOUR LUCKY DAY

New Horror Film Hereditary Has Everyone Scared

Some Star-Studded Surreal and Scary Short-Films

Maybe I'm alone, but I didn't know that for the last few years NYT Magazine has teamed up with filmmakers and "actors-of-the-year" to make a series of short-short-films based on a subject.

Fright Club and Touch of Evil:

Cool 360 intro to Take Flight:

The Take Flight Series:

All of the rest:

Links to articles:

Russian Roulette

A "Russian Roulette" I threw together real quick. Pick a video, in any order, and see how long you'd last..

More Games Here, or:

New Years Countdowns, Interactives, and Live Streams

The Top 10 Google Searches of 2017:

👉 Click on any of these fireworks for different New Years interactive Fireworks Shows 👈

Short Films

"Who's There" film challenge from Bloody Cuts:

Mother's Day Massacre (More Holiday Horror)

'Murders on Mother's Day'

Valentine's Day Horror Shorts and History

6 Surprising Facts About St. Valentine

Maria Brink Remixed

Foreign American-Horror Movie Posters

Halloween

Halloween Documentary

Music, Gifs, and Videos

No top 10 list, no particular order, just good shit

Video and Art Albums from Uploadly before they shut down, plus Creepshow and more

Witchcraft & Witches and Occult eBooks

Monarch Mind Control: Decoding the Shia Labeouf video and more

The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Anneliese Michel

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

(Anneliese Michel)

Movie:

St. Patrick’s Day

”The Preacher“

“Cabaret”

and “Hell”

Street View 1

Street View 2

Street View 3

Street View 4

Satellite View

Map View

👉
Click
on any of these fireworks for different New Years interactive Fireworks Shows 👈