Hypnosis in Media

Archive for February, 2011

Its Vam­pire Week in this install­ment of This Week in Comics!
⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “This Week in Comics — 2011/02/16”

Sev­er­al weeks ago, I post­ed an entry on the short sto­ry ‘Eight O’Clock in the Morn­ing’ by Ray Nel­son. The sto­ry was the ori­gin for the movie “They Live”.

Now, as part of main­tain­ing and mon­i­tor­ing the blog, I some­times check to see what search terms vis­i­tors are using to find the blog. Every so often, far too often to be coin­ci­den­tal, an entry for “ray nel­son” and “eight o’clock in the morn­ing” will come up. Its more than just once a week, its some­times even two or three times a day.

I checked Google, and the blog entry for the sto­ry appears in the first 10 entries (if I don’t count all of the par­al­lel or sub­sidiary Wiki entries) when search­ing for those terms. The first entries are for the Wikipedia entries for Ray Nel­son or the movie “They Live”, then anoth­er blog (which reprints the entire sto­ry) and Ray Nel­son’s own web­site appears before mine, so I guess that’s how peo­ple are find­ing my blog.

But that does­n’t answer the ques­tion of why. Why would so (rel­a­tive­ly) many peo­ple be inter­est­ed in a lit­tle-known author (I was­n’t real­ly aware of him until I researched “They Live”) and one of his short­er and less­er sto­ries, and why so con­tin­u­ous­ly? Is some­one teach­ing a class that ref­er­ences the author or sto­ry and stu­dents are doing a web search for infor­ma­tion? Is this some kind of strange web-search­ing ‘bot at work? Are the aliens mon­i­tor­ing the blog for signs of peo­ple awak­en­ing from their trance?

At least one inquir­ing mind wants to know.

The unique­ly Amer­i­can spec­ta­cle that is the Super­bowl has for decades attract­ed the most cut­ting-edge, the most inter­est­ing and some­times the most innane tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments ever shown. (The Apple Com­put­er “1984” ad, for instance.) This year was no dif­fer­ence, but for the first time in many years (if ever) the ads this year includ­ed two with promi­nent and bla­tant hyp­not­ic imagery.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “The Hyundai Super­bowl Ads”

“Batman — The Brave and the Bold #4”

“The Bride and the Bold”

Won­der Woman assists Bat­man by tak­ing on the supervil­lain­ess Gigan­ta while he deals with her part­ner Mouse Man. Watch­ing the whole com­bat from Mount Olym­pus are the chil­dren of Aphrodite (one of the Greek gods who are the patrons of the Ama­zon), Har­mo­nia and Eros. Because Eros is dis­gust­ed with the way Won­der Woman always fights, he decides to pro­vide a lit­tle love in her life, hit­ting both her and Bat­man with his Arrows of Love. Under their influ­ence they decide to get mar­ried, but Bat­man changes his mind about the arrange­ments as they are about to enter the Gotham City cour­t­house and decides for a large pub­lic wed­ding ceremony.

Such an occur­rence angers Talia, the daugh­ter of Ras al Ghul, who is infat­u­at­ed with mar­ry­ing Bat­man her­self. In her anger, she gath­ers togeth­er as many of their old foes as pos­si­ble to make an attack on the cer­e­mo­ny. The fight fea­tures a pletho­ra of old Won­der Woman and Bat­man foes, includ­ing stal­warts as the Jok­er, the Pen­guin and Two-Face on one hand, and the Angle Man and the Chee­tah on the oth­er, as well as a host of less­er-known foes. For­tu­nate­ly, the guests of the wed­ding include a num­ber of heroes as well as sev­er­al Ama­zons, all of whom are both annoyed at the inter­rup­tion and glad of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take out some villains.

All of which annoys Eros even more, until his moth­er Aphrodite her­self appears to chas­tise her son by explain­ing that every­thing Won­der Woman does, even fight­ing to pro­tect the inno­cent, inspires love. With that, she and her son return to Olym­pus, leav­ing Bat­man and Won­der Woman free to final­ly stop pre­tend­ing. Yes, nei­ther of them were under Eros’ spell, at least then. Bat­man freed him­self from the spell when they were at the Gotham City cour­t­house, where he saw the image of the woman he tru­ly loved, Jus­tice, and he used Won­der Wom­an’s mag­ic Las­so of Truth to free her, too. They still kept up the cha­rade in order to lure out the supervillains.

And, at the end, Super­man won­ders whether there ever will be anoth­er woman in Bat­man’s life. Sure enough, on the final page, as a wor­ried Mouse Man escapes and won­ders how all this got start­ed by his lit­tle caper with Gigan­tia, Cat­woman appears and says “Come here, Mousey. Let’s talk.”

Adden­da: The issue also fea­tures cameo appear­ances by the fol­low­ing: com­e­dy char­ac­ters Sug­ar and Spike as flower chil­dren; Rob­by Reed (of “Dial H for Hero”, as evi­denced by his sig­na­ture say­ing “Socka­m­agee!”); Ultra, the Mul­ti-Alien, as one of the heroes; and Vic­ki Vale, who has a long-time crush on Bat­man her­self. Oth­er minor vil­lains include Byr­na Bril­liant, the Blue Snow Man; the Human Eras­er; the Crim­son Cen­tipede; Paper­Man; Egg Fu; and Cat Man.

A stu­dent has a vio­lent argu­ment with his pro­fes­sor, storms out of class, then returns sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, bran­dish­ing a gun and shoots the pro­fes­sor before the entire class. Its a clas­sic open and shut case, except the stu­dent does­n’t remem­ber any­thing of the inci­dent. That’s what gets Petro­cel­li’s attention.

⇒ Con­tin­ue read­ing “‘The Sleep of Rea­son’ — “Petro­cel­li””