When I was a teenager, I worked at the then-brand-new Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian Institution– we had bees, giant cockroaches, mummy lice, tarantulas and more.
Honestly, if I had a reasonable aptitude for the study of science, I’d probably want to be an entomologist. At the Smithsonian, we were exposed to the top scientists and explorers in that field…who usually were literally in the field, exploring.
But I loved the insect world long before this — and after.
I had a pet tarantula in college named Abraxas, and the really wonderful girl I dated at Vassar used to sometimes take the bus down to Lexington, Virginia — where I was in college — with a brown paper bag full of crickets for the tarantula.
Abraxas ended up as a guest at George Mason University in northern Virgina (after I graduated from Washington & Lee University), where he lived out his natural life.
But even now, I’m fond of spiders and bugs. Yes, I like odd things — although they’re not odd to me, since we’re surrounded by insects all the time, everywhere we go.
I loved this recent picture of a Giant Weta chowing down on a carrot, very much like one of our pet rabbits might.
Voltaire was born on this day (November 21st, for the calendar-challenged and those who read this long after I post it) in 1694 as Francois-Marie Arouet.
Not content to be a philosopher and historian, Voltaire was a caffeine-o-holic like no other: he often downed more than 50 little cups of espresso daily.
That’ll give you the urge to write, no doubt.
Happy Birthday, Voltaire! I raise my paltry second cup of morning coffee to you.
The history of over-the-counter and prescription drugs is a dangerous drunk drive into the past.
I’m always up for riding shotgun on such drives (figuratively, of course) — because as you might guess, I love tales of the strange, off-beat, unusual and downright creepy. And you’ll always find me exploring some of this in these Necropolitan Life features.
Just when you think the past might be some golden age of wisdom and style and virtuous living…here come the cocaine drops! I’ve got a bit of tooth pain right now — maybe I should just skip the dentist and try this old-fashioned, time-honored remedy.
Asthma cigarettes? Check!
Quaaludes for a great night’s rest? Check!
And don’t forget some meth to keep your spirits up.
One of my favorites is the Bayer Aspirin and Heroin ad. That’s a combo that knocks those coughs and headaches right out of your skull. And then some.
I’ve always been fascinated by how much of our genuine history remains buried.
When I was a kid, I got hooked on Heinrich Schliemann’s dream of Troy — and his discovery of it and other supposedly-mythical places. Archaeologists were often my heroes.
The summer after 5th grade, we went to Mexico, and between excavations in Mexico City, Teotihuacan, and Monte Alban — among others — my eyes opened about how much had been intentionally buried from one conquering nation to the next.
It was from this that I wrote my Vampyricon trilogy — and its notions of lost cities that might still contain civilizations of people and creatures (like vampires.)
So, whenever I see these kinds of articles, I’m a bit nuts thinking about what might be found here.
Briefly, this is in the Sahara, in Libya — fortified settlements of people called the Garamantes who vanished — as such — by or before 700 A.D.
From The National Geographic:
“…Archaeologists could have easily mistaken the well-planned, straight-line construction for Roman frontier forts of similar design, Mattingly observed.
‘But, actually, this is beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire—these sites are markers of a powerful native African kingdom,’ he said…”
Do you have a favorite lost, ancient world that’s been unearthed in the past several years? Ever visited an archaeological dig site (or a recently excavated area?)
You love the disturbing, vaguely nightmarish roadside attractions out there in the middle-of-nowhere hellholes of America, right?
I know I do. To me, it’s not a road trip if it doesn’t involve stopping in some godforsaken spot for some oddball site or bizarre experience. And one of the most memorable was running into THE THING.
Ever see THE THING?
Few roadside attractions are MORE bizarre than The Thing — that grand-daddy of southwestern gas station stopovers that blows away the rest in its sheer weirdness and twisty corridors.
When we drove with friends across the desert one Christmas holiday, we stopped at the nearly-unavoidable roadside attraction.
Now, the southwest is full of bizarre, unusual and downright messed-up little roadside attractions with snakes, scorpions, two-headed babies in jars…but The Thing was something more impressive than most — for all the right reasons.
The rule of a Roadside Attraction is:
The exhibit can never be as disturbing or creepy as imagining the person — and the deranged mind — that put the attraction together in the first place.
The Thing satisfies on oh so many levels.
First, the entry fee (back then — several years ago) was about 75 cents . Good price! I believe the price has only gone up very slightly in the intervening years.
Then, you have to walk down these hallways full of Tim Burtonesque desert driftwood — and it predates Tim Burton — until you come to the most bizarre exhibit I’ve ever seen in my life:
A torture chamber, with women being whipped and people being beheaded (or at least, that’s how I remember it) — all carved from tree stumps. Creepy! And yet compelling. And yet…creepy.
And then, like the cherry on this bizarro sundae — right next to the crushed nuts — there’s the Nazi car.
This vehicle is made all the more disturbing because someone put it in this collection with the wood-stump torture chamber and The Thing itself and those Tim Burtonesque mangly desert-wood creatures.
What old crazy desert rat spent a lifetime amassing this collection? It’s not the current owners. It was someone who had a dark imagination, and maybe the kind that spilled into daily life. The Nazi car did it for me. And I hadn’t even seen The Thing at that point.
And it’s disturbing to have gone through the corridors to that goal — that Thing — but when you get to the Thing, it’s not shocking as much as it is just another spoonful of “Danger, Will Robinson!”
Should I reveal what it is?
Naw.
You’ve got to see it for yourself.
After visits to The Thing and to some other roadside attractions, I decided to write a horror version of this kind of place when I wrote my story, The Attraction.
Which, coincidentally, has one of my least favorite covers on the paperback and digital edition.
Take the video tour:
The Thing is off that odd stretch of the 10 Freeway between Phoenix and Tucson — in an area of the desert with the strange name: Dragoon, Arizona. Plan your next vacation around it! It has earned its spot among the Places of Eternal Darnation.
Here’s the Book Trailer for The Attraction — made by COSProductions.com. Nice ‘n’ creepy. Be sure and turn up the sound, too.
