The Horror! The Horror!
Dec. 14th, 2004 06:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saint_monkeyOne of the more bizarre provisions of a proposed Nuclear Waste Containment facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is the provision that plans be made to warn passersby of the dangers within for 10,000 years. The idea is, if the citizens of Nevada can see that the government has planned for the safe containment of this material far, far, far into the distant future, then perhaps they won't play the "Not in My Backyard" card. So the facility planners have proceeded in all of their mandates and missives, to think and plan ten millenia down the road.
This gives rise to an interesting question. How does one talk to a future that is 10,000 years distant? What if there is a severing of technology and history? What do you do if people come across this place, have no knowledge of what it contains, and no ability to understand our language or its associated verbal imagery? How do you tell them that there is some seriously nasty stuff, (and not a million gallons of gasoline, water, hostess twinkies creme filling, etc.) buried in this hole?
The answer is to develop a series of markers (pdf file) designed to be impervious to weather and various other forces. Then you put a symbol on these markers that is SO terrifying that the futuristic twinkie-hound will have no desire to explore further into the musky depths of yon hole. "What?!" You may be saying, "would such an image look like?" We need wait no longer. Here is their idea, an "an image of a human face displaying the emotion of horror." Behold! The Horror!
Horrified yet? Look again. Still not horrified? I'm not impressed either. I wonder what this says about the future rental prospects for "Home Alone?"
Of course, that could have been the plan all along. I know that would stop me in my tracks. Perhaps this one film is the sole product of our collective output that is so awful that it will perservere as an icon for "horror" well into the future? I get the feeling that even 10,000 years distant, following the collapse of our society, in a future ruled by super-intelligent cockroaches, our cave-dwelling, hostess-munching, vaguely humanoid descendants will relay from generation to generation, via a carefully phrased oral history, a horror filled tale of warning that is Macauley Culkin in "Home Alone." The NRC is relying on the post-apocalyptic shaman's scribbled pics of young Mac slapping after shave on his face to relay the awfulness that was the 1990 release, to strike warning and horror into the hearts of our children's children's (etc times 105) children.
Edit: I'm pretty cheesed that Amazon.com noticed my bandwith theft right away and re-linked the image I stole from the imdb page to home alone, forcing me to save the tiny "home alone" image in my own precious webspace. Damn them and their web thrifty-ness! They probably post the pic from a cache server to begin with, to prevent such thievery. Smarty-pants!
This gives rise to an interesting question. How does one talk to a future that is 10,000 years distant? What if there is a severing of technology and history? What do you do if people come across this place, have no knowledge of what it contains, and no ability to understand our language or its associated verbal imagery? How do you tell them that there is some seriously nasty stuff, (and not a million gallons of gasoline, water, hostess twinkies creme filling, etc.) buried in this hole?
The answer is to develop a series of markers (pdf file) designed to be impervious to weather and various other forces. Then you put a symbol on these markers that is SO terrifying that the futuristic twinkie-hound will have no desire to explore further into the musky depths of yon hole. "What?!" You may be saying, "would such an image look like?" We need wait no longer. Here is their idea, an "an image of a human face displaying the emotion of horror." Behold! The Horror!
Horrified yet? Look again. Still not horrified? I'm not impressed either. I wonder what this says about the future rental prospects for "Home Alone?"
Of course, that could have been the plan all along. I know that would stop me in my tracks. Perhaps this one film is the sole product of our collective output that is so awful that it will perservere as an icon for "horror" well into the future? I get the feeling that even 10,000 years distant, following the collapse of our society, in a future ruled by super-intelligent cockroaches, our cave-dwelling, hostess-munching, vaguely humanoid descendants will relay from generation to generation, via a carefully phrased oral history, a horror filled tale of warning that is Macauley Culkin in "Home Alone." The NRC is relying on the post-apocalyptic shaman's scribbled pics of young Mac slapping after shave on his face to relay the awfulness that was the 1990 release, to strike warning and horror into the hearts of our children's children's (etc times 105) children.
Edit: I'm pretty cheesed that Amazon.com noticed my bandwith theft right away and re-linked the image I stole from the imdb page to home alone, forcing me to save the tiny "home alone" image in my own precious webspace. Damn them and their web thrifty-ness! They probably post the pic from a cache server to begin with, to prevent such thievery. Smarty-pants!
