The Media Who Cried Flu

During the early stages of reporting about this new swine flu pandemic, I found myself not paying much attention. It seems that every few years now the media is trotting out stories about some new germ or virus that will destroy us all. Remember SARS? Recall the unease over the avian flu? You barely hear about them now. Heck, I rarely hear about AIDS anymore and that actually killed people I knew. Every time I checked the news online, multiple headlines were dealing with the swine flu (CNN had 3-4 swine flu headlines running at the same time at one point). There were news stories about how handshaking might become a thing of the past because now there is SWINE FLU! Swine flu was going to change the way we lived forever.

Even with two young kids to worry about, I found myself disinterested in the swine flu stories and unable to take them seriously. Our news media has cried wolf too many times for me to take them seriously about something like this. They are so quick to spread fearful stories before getting all the facts. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, news stories come out that the swine flu is no worse than (gasp) the regular plain old flu which kills 36,000 Americans a year. In other words... no need to panic. It's not a good thing, but your world isn't going to turn into Stephen King's The Stand either.

One last gasp of the swine flu story is that it might combine with the avian flu (see story here) I think that we should call the avian/swine flu offspring "flying pig flu." It will at least make it more entertaining when the media is trying to panic its audience.

Moved

Sorry about the long pause between blogs. Due to changes at Kristy's job, we are in the process of moving back home to Rochester, NY. Currently the kids and I are living at my mother's house, while Kristy ties up loose ends back in the Ithaca area (packing, getting the house ready for sale). It is great to be back home in Rochester. We just wish the move could have been more planned and less jarring.

I've already managed to secure part-time employment through former employers of mine here in Rochester. I'm still hunting for full-time employment. The change has been stressful for everyone, including my mother. We're grateful for the temporary place to stay while we get our family set-up out here. The first order of business for me was getting Kyra registered for Pre-K. I just barely made the deadline. So hopefully she's able to attend and the classes aren't full already.

It has gotten me thinking about how many films (including horror films) start with the same situation: Kids suddenly finding themselves moving into a relative's home. Luckily for my children, Rochester has fewer vampires than Santa Carla. However, it does have more were-sloths than any other city per capita. Hence the title of my new horror film, The Sloth Boys. With their current careers, I could probably afford to cast Corey Haim and Corey Feldman in it too.

Nightmares and Hallucinations

Kyra woke up just a bit ago from a nightmare. She had a bad dream in which she was being chased by Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. It is odd how most of her bad dreams seem to be caused by animation. She used to regularly have nightmares about Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go.

We recently discovered that, like her father, Kyra has sleep hallucinations. Early last week, she woke up shrieking because her bed was covered in insects only she could see. At least she isn't sleep-walking like my brother and I did when we were young. I've read up on night terrors, hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and sleep paralysis. None of them really seem to fit what my daughter and I experience. The experience is not always a frightening one. In all but one instance I've been able to move freely and talk while having the hallucinations. They also happen in the middle of my sleep cycle rather than at the beginning or end as with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. I've experienced both of those (mainly the former) and they really don't compare with the hallucinations I get in the middle of the night.

As a child, I would wake to find "ghosts" in my room. I could tell that I was no longer sleeping and felt awake, only there would be things in my room that shouldn't have been. An example: One night at age eight I woke up to see a man standing alongside my bed, staring out my window. The man, who didn't seem to notice me, was completely the same shad of white, from his hair to his skin to his clothes; the details of his appearance were black lines as if the man had been drawn on paper. He stood between my bed and my brother's crib. Frightened, I pulled the covers over my head so that he couldn't see me. I managed to fall back to sleep. Later, I awoke, suffocating under my blankets. I dared a peek out from under the bed clothes, only to see that the man had been replaced with a woman who was completely black with white lines, almost like a film negative. She was hanging by a noose in the same spot. As I stared in horror, she rotated on her creaking rope, so that she faced toward me. Her face was swollen and her tongue protruded from her mouth. I dove back under my covers and did not emerge until there was sunlight. It didn't help that I'd never heard of sleep hallucinations and was raised by a mother who was convinced that I was seeing actual ghosts... just like she did.

In my early 20s I terrified my ex-wife one night when I hallucinated a wraith in our bedroom that was trying to get her. She woke up to find me over her prone body, wrestling with something she could not see. The "wraith" evaporated in moments. It was the first time I began to get a clue about what was really happening. The wraith had been a dead ringer for the ones in Patrick Swayze flick Ghost that I'd watched earlier that week on cable. I was able to get back to sleep, but she spent the rest of the night awake and scared that something supernatural was coming to get her. It is the only instance where a nightmare I had caused someone else more fear than me.

Over time my hallucinations have changed to primarily be animals. I've woken up to a tarantula tickling my lip and to feel water dripping on my head, only to look up and see that the water was dripping from a dead rat that is now plunging toward my face. Those times caused me to throw back my blankets, startling our cats. Kristy has adjusted pretty well to it over the years, and carries on conversations with me while in this waking-sleep state. Once she woke to me telling her not to move, because I could see a cobra coiled between us, swaying its hooded head back and forth. She held a conversation with me during one of the few non-threatening hallucinations once. I was sitting up and staring over the edge of the bed at a glowing starfish that was crawling around the floor, playing with my sneakers and probing at the clothes laying next to the bed. I'd seen the movie Minority Report earlier that day. The star fish resembled one of the little robots that scurry about in that film.

I explained the hallucination thing to Kyra as best I could. She's still a bit too young to fully grasp the concept, but at least she's not going to spend decades thinking that a trick of the mind passed down through genetics is something supernatural and scary like I did for far too long.

The Ice Cream Horror

Eli had his second doctors appointment earlier this week. He'd gained two inches and more than two pounds since his appointment two weeks earlier. He's growing like the chicken heart from that old radio play.

We recently bought Kyra a novelty ice cream treat that she picked out for herself. It was supposed to look like Spongebob, but instead we revealed a monstrosity upon opening the ice cream wrapper. It is the first time ice cream has given me chills without eating it. Kyra was brave enough to eat it though. I took a picture first. Is it just me, or is this thing just evil looking?



Kyra didn't care for the gumball eyes. She chewed them briefly and then spat out a dark blue goo with tiny hard gum chunks into the bowl we had to catch the icecream drips.

And Now the Screaming Starts!

I found it humorously ironic that while Kristy was in labor with Eli our Tivo recorded a movie titled And Now the Screaming Starts!

I finally got around to watching it. The film was released in 1973. It stars both Peter Cushing and Patrick Magee. Magee is one of those underrated actors of yesteryear I love to see in the cast of old films. I was also initially excited to see that this was an Amicus film. One of my favorite Patrick Magee performances was in Amicus's Tales from the Crypt (1972). In that film he had deliciously creepy role as a vengeful blind man. This time around, both Magee and Cushing aren't given a lot to work with. Magee is in the first half of the film and is gone shortly after Cushing's character arrives in the second half.

And Now the Screaming Starts! isn't great but it is entertaining. The movie (which is set in the 19th Century) tells the tale of a young married couple suffering from an old curse placed on the groom's family. The Bride and the family's servants find themselves being assaulted by a spectral severed hand and an eyeless phantom with a bloody stump at the end of one arm. Some of the FX is pretty remarkable for the time period, and the remaining FX is charmingly cheap and cheesy. The makeup on the ghost was well done, but unfortunately the actor in the role kept his wrist on the stump arm flopped down while his arm is pointed up. Since the hand was supposed to be cut off below the wrist, apparently the ghost must have had an extra joint in his arm.

If the thought of ghostly severed hands, over-flowing bodices and screaming servants meeting unfortunate ends appeals to you, AMC will be airing the movie again in early May.

Heeere's Eli!

Elijah was born at 11:04 pm on Friday, March 27. He shares his birthday with his uncle Jason. Elijah was 21 inches long and weighed 8 lbs, 12 ozs at birth. He has big feet with long monkey-like toes that he can grasp fingers with. He's a pretty mellow little guy and loves to be held so much that the nurses nicknamed him "cuddlebug."

Everyone Out of the Pool

The baby is now six days overdue. We met with the midwife today and decided that if Kristy doesn't go into labor today or tonight, we'll be heading in to the hospital early tomorrow morning to begin inducing labor. Tomorrow also happens to be my brother-in-law Jason's birthday, so it appears that Elijah will be sharing his birthday with a relative.

For news on the birth tomorrow your best bet is to check the Dark Destinations blog. It is likely that Casey will be making a post there to let people know the news at some point tomorrow. Otherwise, I'll be posting details when we get back from the hospital and I find time to write again.

Wish us luck!