Atom Vampire

Watching this old movie called Atom Vampire, I think--I wasn't paying much attention at the beginning, and it's a little hard to follow now. As best I can figure, the vampire character dug too deeply into the bag of atomic secrets, and now the brave, handsome police captain will off him. Typical 1950s.

Still, better than Titanic, which I suffered through the other night. More realistic effects, too.

Out in the desert near the Trinity Site, a rock shop sells bits of rock that got slagged by the first nuclear blast. In Japan, one of my students lived over the mountains from Hiroshima (accent is on the second syllable, let's get that straight once and for all), and said she heard the blast.

My best friend in college once wrote a brilliant poem about her grandfather, who was supposed to watch the Trinity test, but was on sick call that day. So, the poem said, "he missed watching trees come at him at a million miles an hour," and so on. "So what I learned/was that you can avoid the end of the world if you stay home sick."

Where's the new frontier we were promised? Where's my flying car?

Nope. We're just all in duck and cover mode.

Three more of these, and then we're out of here.