Being a collection of doggerel, verse, stories, politics, historical essays, satire, poetry, jokes, pictures and whatever else I damn well please on a variety of interesting (or otherwise) subjects.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

While we're on the subject of Twilight Zone


William Shatner is terrified by the monster
outside the window of his airliner in
The Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (1963)

Narrator: [opening Narration] "Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's travelling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone."


The Twilight Zone: "The Midnight Sun"



Those of us who are of a certain age will surely recall the classic TV series "The Twilight Zone." One episode, first aired in 1961, seems to bear a certain resemblance to this summer's heat wave. The episode is "The Midnight Sun" starring Lois Nettleton and Betty Garde. The story involves the Earth somehow falling out of its orbit and getting closer to the Sun. Two women try to cope with increasingly oppressive heat in their nearly abandoned city.



Things may not be quite that oppressive as yet, but one could be tempted to wonder if the script of this fantasy might have been simple prescience. I just saw an article on the web about a, once thriving, fishing lake in West Texas that has literally died and has turned blood red due to the thousands of dead fish. The article is here, if you're interested in more bad news.










Lois looks pretty uncomfortable, doesn't she.

Food for thought.