25- Here’s Johnny!

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

Interior-
Stairs with yellow flower patterned wallpaper, white French double doors to the left at the top of the stairs, open white French doors to the right.
Man limps up the stairs, he is balding, wearing a maroon zip up jacket over a majority dark blue with yellow and green plaid shirt. He is caring an axe in his left hand. He seems to be intent on the open French doors at the top of the stairs. He is grimacing, bottom lip tucked under.
He glances into the room.

Exterior-
Half opened small window, a woman in a blue bathrobe with long dark hair is waving her arms as she frantically tries to squeeze through the very small opening onto the snow covered roof.
She struggles for a moment more and, realizing that she can’t squeeze through, slides back into the room.
A small boy, snow on his sweater gasps and watches as she disappears from the window
The frantic music is coming to a crescendo.

Interior-
Older style refrigerator on the left of the passageway leading past a bed toward a yellowish lit door. There is a small table and chair to the right and a small radiator to the right of the passageway.
Same man, still holding the axe now near the head, seen from behind,
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Interior-
Tiled bathroom, woman from before seen from behind frantically trying to get the window open wider. She glances back, mouth ajar, seemingly frightened and tries to squeeze through the window again.
The music (strings) gets louder

Exterior-
Same window as before, same woman trying frantically to get through the window.

Interior-
Same lighted door as the previous interior shot
Man is now seen in profile. He tries the door knob. It is locked.
He lifts his head, as if in thought, as if listening.
Man turns, tongue between teeth, and knocks on the door.

Exterior-
Woman reacts to hearing the knocking by gasping.

Exterior-
The bathroom window is on the slope of a large snow pile that is against the house. She is in the window, the boy is on the ground.
She whisper shouts to the boy on the ground “I can’t get out. Run! Run and hide!”
The boy turns to run.

Interior-
Same interior as before.
Man in ¾ profile is listening. He smiles and says “Little pigs, little pigs, let me in.”

Interior-
Woman in blue bathroom, long dark hair framing her face is now inside the bathroom. She looks around frantically and picks up a long 9“ knife from the sink. Holding the knife she goes to the door. She collapses to the wall next to the door.

Interior-
Man now turned fully toward the camera.
He says “Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin.”
The music is still frantic, still strings.
Man looks at the door, frowning, and turns slightly toward the door. “Then I’ll huff.”
He turns toward the door “And I’ll puff.”

He steps back and slides his right hand up the shaft of the axe to where he is holding it in both hands, he steps back, readying to strike. “And I’ll blow your house in!”

Action shot of man, striking the door with the axe.
A woman’s voice cries out “NO!”
The man strikes at the door again, as the woman screams.

The music is quieter now, nearly silent.

Interior-
The woman who is now clutching the knife is screaming as the door is battered by the axe.
The door splinters and she screams. She brandishes the knife toward where the axe is tearing at the door.
The axe blade is now visible.
Woman screams “Jack! Please!” as she slides down the wall slightly.
The axe hits the door again.
Woman screams “No!”
The axe hits the door again.
Woman screams “No!”
The axe head is driven completely through the door.

Woman looks at it in terror and screams.

The axe head twists and turns are the man tries to free it.
Woman screams.
The axe finally is pulled through the door.
Woman hides her face with her left hand, still clutching the knife with her right. A wedding ring is visible on her left hand.
Woman turns to where the door is still being battered, flexing as it is. She clutches the knife in her right hand and screams “No!”
The attack on the door continues.

The woman screams “Please”

The axe head is visible again.

Interior-
Shredded door.
Man on other side of door, readies the axe again to swing.
He swings again.
Woman shrieks.
His entire head is now visible. He swings again to make the hole bigger.

Interior-
Bedroom side of the door.
Man swings again to make the hole bigger.
Man drops the axe.
Man sticks his head in the opening in the door he has made.

Man “Here’s Johnny!”

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

______________________________________________

This is, of course, the “Here’s Johnny” scene from Stanly Kubrick’s amazingly terrifying movie The Shining. The woman is played by Shelly Duvall and the madman is played by Jack Nicholson.

I didn’t think of this movie as a parable for the ongoing (yeah fucking still!) covid pandemic.

But it fits so well.

We are being stalked by the covid virus. It is rising across the country.

Did you hear, there is a sneaker covid wave happening right now? Did you get boosted in the Spring when that crackpot RFK Jr. took control of DHHS? It might not be too late.

The states that it is definitely growing in are Texas, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas. The states that are likely increasing their number of cases are California, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, New York, Maine, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. That we know of. This information is from the news report on CBS news on July 21, 2025.

It hasn’t gone away. We can’t wish it away. We can’t hide our eyes under the covers and pretend like it isn’t happening.

No one at the switch means that more Americans are going to die. Currently the American Death Toll from covid is 1,225,181. This information is from the Kaiser Family Foundation and is current and easier to find.

This why the scene fits so well.

BTW, we are Shelly Duvall screaming.

Wear a fucking mask, wash your hands, don’t gather with a large group of people.

If you are sick STAY HOME!

Tuesday Top of Mind 5/20/25- Adriana Smith, a cautionary tale

Somewhere in a hospital in Georgia a woman lies dead. Her body is being illegally hijacked by the state’s abortion bill and is serving as a dead host to a parasite. Without her permission, against her family’s wishes and permission.

It does not matter that this parasite is a child to be.

It does not matter to the state that she was a nurse.

It does not matter to the state that she was a mother to a five year old little boy who is now confused and

It does not matter to the state that she was a daughter.

It does matter matter to the insurance company who will not pay this astronomical hospital bill because the policyholder has been declared brain dead 12 weeks ago.

It matters that her headaches were not treated appropriately.

It matters that her five year old son cannot conceive that his mother is dead and he thinks that she is sleeping.

It matters that the fetus has been without stimulation from the mother for 12 weeks. No one knows what that does to the fetus.

It matters to women everywhere because we knew this was coming and were unable to stop it.

This is medical experimentation of the worst kind. This smacks of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cancer cells.

Be mad for her.

But be mad at the crazy politician who wrote the abortion ban in such a way that allows for the state to deny this woman a peaceful passing.

Be mad at the mad scientist who just wants to see what they can do with the bill and how far they can push medical knowledge.

Be sorrowful for Adriana Smith’s family, especially the 5-year old, and the mother who has to watch her child be experimented on with no consent granted.

But be mad at the political machinery that has been put in place to prey upon this woman and her family and the child who may never be.

Most importantly, when this fails and this fetus dies a horrible death, stay mad.

Most importantly, when this fails and this fetus survives into a family that is shocked and appalled at this science fiction bullshit, stay mad.

I have written it before and often. This kind of chicanery is about control.

Only now they have added medical experimentation on top of it.

But stay mad.

Stay vocal.

Tell the mad scientists that there will be no more experimentation without consent. Tell the mad scientists that we are ashamed of them and their ancestors are ashamed of them.

Call this what it is, Handmaid’s Tale bullshit.

A nugget of information that I learned very recently is that Margaret Atwood was intentional about the scenes that she wrote. Nothing that happened to any of the women, to any of the Handmaids, was plucked from history.

Be careful out there.

School Me Saturday 6/15/24- Feed me, Seymour! AI and the student

A bit of a break from the Alice in Wonderland theme.

Today I am going to take inspiration from Little Shop of Horrors.

Fun fact, this was among Jack Nicholson’s first movies. This was 1960, far before it was turned into a musical.

It was a horror movie about a hapless florist clerk who finds and is bamboozled by a strange plant that demands blood as its source of energy. He goes to great lengths to feed the plant, including killing his boss and his crush’s abusive boyfriend.

There was a Broadway musical that spawned a movie musical that starred Rick Moranis as the hapless, helpless, murderous Seymour. And Steve Martin is the abusive boyfriend who is killed, not by Seymour, but by huffing nitrous oxide.

It remains one of my favorite movie musicals and I listen to the soundtrack while I do yardwork.

When ChatGPT ignited the AI craze in November 2022 everyone went nuts. It was AI this and AI that. In some aspects, it still is.

My classmates and I had discussions about the ethical use of AI in colleges and its applications for students. My professors had frank discussions with us about the possible use of AI and the definite downfalls of it. And rules that had to be rushed into being around the use of AI.

Here’s the thing about AI. I consider it a fancy search engine. Powered by many, many, many gigawatts. And many many internet searches and data that is already out there. Which is why we are feeding the AI. Like Seymour was feeding Audrey 2.

Is it an achievement? Yes.

Did they “teach” the AI by feeding it all the contents of the internet? Yes.

Did they “teach” the AI to be selective in what is used as the source material? No.

Like so many things, garbage in, garbage out.

It wasn’t long before there were reports of the AI “hallucinating” and having nonsense as its output. Which led to more places banning it, even while the mania was just getting underway.

Today the world is still manic for AI. With a large, large, large caveat. A caveat emptor, if you will.

Buyer beware.

There are some useful avenues of AI in the classroom and some programs are actively embracing it.

You just have to be careful of the output. You don’t really know if what AI wrote is nonsense. Sometimes it is. And the teachers know when you’ve used AI.

Especially if the output references something that doesn’t exist. It’s just the universe hallucinating.

But be careful.

And don’t let AI become so much of a crutch that the world ceases to think for itself.

Don’t let AI be the plant that devours creativity and humanity’s sense of self.

Or, like the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, society might end up being fed to the AI who is ALWAYS hungry.