#dead heat 1988

[fanofspooky]

Scream King - Vincent Price

[lostcryptids]

[abs0luteb4stard]

☆ W A T C H I N G ☆

[alicedrawslesmis]

(sorry this is from a week ago but) Wait, what's going on right now that's complicated with Amazonian farmers' land rights?

Not farmers, indigenous people

See, recently they put a new law through congress that severely reduces indigenous land to the borders established during the late dictatorship, or immediately post-dictatorship, in 1988. An absolute joke of a border that was dreamed up by some military assholes. People in america may recognize this type of society from the times of westward expansion and think this is a thing of the past because for you guys it is. But here it is a reality. Murder is rampant. The reach of the law is incredibly limited. Government is just too weak and landowners basically run things. THAT'S WHY it's so important to donate directly to the native peoples instead of random NGOs because native people are fucking there and the more power they hold in the land the safer the land will be from agroindustrial expansion.

Well the law was vetoed by the the president and the Supremo Tribunal Federal, aka supreme federal court, labeled it as unconstitutional. Which it is, because our 1988 constitution describes native american land rights in some of its first articles. We thought this would be it for the law

But then the senate (that already overrepresents landowners in rural states) just went along and approved it anyway. I had no idea they could approve something unconstitutional. The progressives and particularly the socialists are fighting this in court. But it happens that for now the legal border is the severely reduced version.

Doesn't mean they'll just give up, because as it happens we don't have any stand your ground laws so even if you own a piece of land, you cannot legally speaking just shoot everyone there. Or attack or threaten them in any way. They'll just have long legal battles individually for the rights to occupy land based on use. Also the Xingu national park, the largest preserved land of the Amazon described as 'larger than Belgium', is being encroached by huge farms that are poisoning their water supply. The border is Visible. I'll try to find video of it but essentially you have a forest and a desert separated by a strict line.

Just last week in the south of Bahia (not the Amazon, let me explain more about the Amazon situation in a bit) Hãhãhãe leadership Nega Muniz Pataxó was shot and killed by an armed militia group that invaded and occupied the Caramuru territory.

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The situation in the Amazon, specifically the yanomami territory in Roraima our northernmost state, aka deep forest, is more dire than average given difficulty of access, sheer size, and government abandonment. It's a place that depends on government aid for medicine. It's land that is being systematically invaded by gold miners, pandemic, toxins from nearby farmlands, wood extraction etc. (wood extration is rampant everywhere tho). Early 2023 saw a massive federal government operation by now president Lula to empty the mines and try to look for where funding comes from. Yanomami land is still being invaded to this day, the struggle is ongoing.

The yanomamis need support right now more than any other. Last year saw a massive heat wave that (well, one, caused a girl named Ana Clara Machado to die during the Taylor Swift concert. This is unrelated but I feel like not enough foreign media covered this, Taylor even lied about it as well.) dried up a lot of rivers, killed a LOT of fresh water animals including an unprecedented amount of pink dolphins. Access that was already hard became damn near impossible without boats. I cannot overstate how many pink dolphins were found dead.

Another technique that landowners use to clear space for farms is to just set things on fire and then occupy the empty land, which they legally can do to land that was naturally burned in a forest fire. It happened that Pantanal, another national park of swampland, was massively devastated by fires last year too

this article is from 2020, the year that the worst fire happened, but in 2023 there was another one. It's been happening yearly now due to a) deliberate action and b) climate change aggravation.

And this is not nearly all. Just off the top of my head. If you speak portuguese I recommend following the APIB or the COIAB on instagram to keep up with the news. The FUNAI is the government branch of indigenous organization, but it's not generally that well liked. Still.

[georgeromeros]

Dead Heat (1988) dir. Mark Goldblatt

"Hi, Doug. Welcome to zombie land."

[babylon-crashing]

CGI memories:

1996. Memories. I'm laying curled, awake in the frozen dark of my Gyumri hut. Armenian brutal winter outside. No electricity. No heat. Going to bed each night blind drunk in my jacket, hat and mittens. Frost on the pillow each morning when I wake up. What you can't see, what a photo can't capture, are the voices coming up from under the floorboards in my hut, arguing, laughing. Occasionally I heard snatches of song. The dead, I'm told, don't talk, but that is a lie. Few of the bodies lost in the 1988 earthquake were ever recovered. My hut was built upon the ruins where the neighbors perished. The dead are always talking in a language that I've yet to translate.

[videoreligion]

Dead Heat (1988)

[theunderestimator-2]

Lux Interior performing in a striped suit during a Cramps gig on April 1st, 1978, for the re-opening of the short-lived CBGB 2nd Avenue Theatre, an event which obviously called for a formal attire, as captured by Pat Hefley (there’s another iconic shot from that gig by Stephanie Chernikowski on the back cover of ‘Gravest Hits’, with Lux climbing over the chairs mid-audience).

CBGB Theatre, aka CBGB Second Avenue Theatre and originally known as Public Theatre, Antillas Theatre & later as Anderson Theatre, was Hilly Kristal’s brilliant, yet poorly executed plan to expand operations with an additional show venue of a near-2,000-capacity venue which could host the crowds that were getting out of hand by late-’77 at CBGB OMFUG. Unfortunately the building he bought but never really checked out was in a shabby state of repair and cost a lot of money to meet the standards of safety and modernization.

According to various anecdotes from Roman Kozak's ‘This Ain't No Disco: The Story of CBGB’ (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988):

“...It opened on a Tuesday night, Dec. 27, 1977, with Talking Heads headlining, supported by the Shirts and the Tuff Darts. The next night it was the Dictators, the Dead Boys, and the Luna Band (formerly Orchestra Luna). Then Patti Smith headlined December 29, 30, and New Year's Eve. There were problems right from the beginning...

...[says] Bill Shumaker. "It was in December, it was bitter cold, but the heating system never really worked. I never went down into the basement, but you could look down and it honestly looked like one of the rings in Dante's Inferno. And down there was the boiler. Everybody got serious colds...

....[Sound engineer] Norman Dunn: "It was an exercise in how many things could go wrong. In twenty-seven degree temperature you don't spray soundproofing under the balcony. It doesn't dry. At the first note it started falling down. The boiler room was under eleven feet of water because the water mains broke. The generator outside was running the electricity for everything and it was driving the neighbors crazy...There were threats, the police were there; but it would have cost $15,000 and Con Edison would have had to rip up the street to make things right. And this thing was opened on a shoestring. So every time the lights would go full blast, the sound would die to a whisper...

...Joel Webber is even more graphic, though he does exaggerate for effect: "The place was disgusting. It made the CBGB club look like the Rainbow Room. We were talking about eighty years' worth of dirt. I mean there was popcorn left over from the last performance of the Yiddish theater in 1925...”

/streetsyoucrossed.blogspot.com/

After the Patti Smith dates, the Theater closed and was briefly used as a rock'n’roll flea market, re-opening for shows with the Jam and the Tuff Darts on March 31st & the Cramps, the Erasers and the Sic F*cks on April 1st 1978. It is believed that by mid-’78 the new enterprise had come to an end, costing Kristal a loss of about $160,000.

(via, via & via)

[mariacallous]

It’s been hard recently to think about anything other than the wars and humanitarian crises raging around the world. Climate change has left its mark in what was almost certainly the hottest year in human history—there were unprecedented heat waves, intensified forest fires, torrential rain, and floods like those in Libya that caused devastation after two dams burst.

But this has not stopped scientists, innovators, and decisionmakers from working on solutions to our biggest societal challenges—with success. Here is a collection of uplifting news to come out of 2023.

A powerful laser veered lightning strikes off their path

In an instant, millions of volts can damage buildings, spark fires, and harm people—unless the lightning can be redirected. An experiment with a laser beam suggests this is possible. The scientists behind it must now demonstrate that their multimillion-dollar laser would actually work better at critical sites such as airports and rocket launchpads than widely used, cheap lightning rods. Read more at Science.

Asteroid rocks and dust were brought to Earth

The first US mission to collect an asteroid sample, OSIRIS-REx, successfully returned a capsule containing granules and dust from the asteroid Bennu. Early analyses back at NASA’s lab suggest the sample is rich in carbon and water-laden minerals, the building blocks of life on Earth. Read more at WIRED.

Scientists grew mouse embryos for the first time ever in space

What would make humans a truly spacefaring species? If we could reproduce and grow outside of Earth’s atmosphere. It may be that this is possible, an experiment with mice suggests. Scientists managed to grow mouse embryos aboard the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth. Their initial growth appeared to be unaffected by the low gravity and high radiation. Read more at New Scientist.

A rare egg-laying mammal was rediscovered after decades

A species with the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole seems hard to miss. But the long-beaked echidna Zaglossus attenboroughi—named after British naturalist David Attenborough—had remained hidden until caught on camera for the first time since it was scientifically recorded in 1961. This egg-laying mammal is known to only live in the Cyclops Mountains in the Indonesian province of Papua. Read more at Mongabay.

Countries signed a landmark treaty to protect the high seas

After almost 20 years of negotiations, members of the United Nations agreed to protect marine life in international waters—the two-thirds of the world’s oceans that lie outside of national boundaries. This legal framework enables, for example, the creation of vast marine protected areas (MPAs). It also states that “genetic resources,” such as materials from animals and plants discovered for use in pharmaceuticals or foods, should benefit society as a whole. Read more at The Guardian.

California national park bounces back after wildfire

Two years after California’s largest single wildfire burned almost 70 percent of Lassen Volcanic National Park, the ecosystem remains viable. Shrubs and grasses are growing in burned areas while fungi and insects are decomposing dead tree trunks, leading to a slow recovery. Read more at The Guardian.

Brazil’s top court rules for Indigenous rights in landmark case

A powerful agribusiness lobby tried to place time limits on Indigenous peoples’ right to land. They would have to prove they lived on the land in 1988, when Brazil’s current constitution was ratified. But many Indigenous peoples were expelled from their ancestral lands during the country’s military dictatorship, which lasted from from the 1960s to the 1980s. The Supreme Court in Brazil squashed the proposed time limit for land claims. Read more at AP News.

There could be a large reserve of hydrogen deep beneath the French ground

Hydrogen could power factories, trucks, ships, and airplanes in the future—but producing it requires a lot of energy and is expensive. But the gas also occurs naturally deep in the Earth’s crust, and researchers in France have accidentally stumbled on a potentially large deposit. Next year they plan to begin drilling to collect gas samples from depths of up to 1.8 miles. Read more at the Conversation.

The world may have crossed a solar power tipping point

A new study suggests that solar is on track to become the main source of the world’s energy by 2050—even without more ambitious climate policies being introduced. Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels. But in the case of solar energy, obstacles such as integration into electricity grids and financing in developing countries still need to be overcome in order for it to continue to grow as it has in recent years. Read more at the Conversation.

A new type of geothermal power plant is making the internet a little greener

A pilot plant is now helping to power Google data centers in Nevada by harnessing the Earth’s heat deep beneath it. Engineers drilled two boreholes down 7,000 feet, and then connected them by fracking, a technique that’s conventionally used in the oil and gas industry. Water sent down one borehole moves through the fracked rocks below and returns to the surface heated up via the other drilled hole. Read more at WIRED.

World’s first container ship powered by methanol completed its maiden voyage

Laura Maersk, the world’s first methanol-fueled ship, arrived in England in September—a milestone for the shipping industry, which is responsible for about 3 percent of worldwide emissions and struggling to decarbonize. Methanol can be made from food waste at landfills. Read more at the BBC.

A cheap and effective vaccine against malaria got approval

There’s now a second malaria jab that could be produced even quicker than the first and rolled out to more children. It got the thumbs up from the World Health Organization in October, two years after the first one. Malaria is the leading cause of death among children in sub-Saharan Africa. Read more at Stat News.

The largest study of migraine sufferers promises new treatment pathways

In the largest genetic study of migraines to date, researchers have identified more than three times the number of genetic risk factors previously known. This will help to better understand the biological basis of migraines and their subtypes and could speed up the search for new treatments. Read more at Science Daily.

Scientists made breakthrough in cervical cancer treatment

In a UK trial of 500 women, half received existing, cheap drugs before standard radiotherapy. The results showed that with the combined therapy, women’s risk of death or relapse fell by 35 percent. According to the researchers, this is the biggest improvement in treating this disease in over 20 years. Read more in the Independent.

Gene therapy showed early promise for children

Scientists in China reported that some children who were born deaf could hear after a gene therapy trial. Meanwhile, experiments are underway in the USA and France aimed at children with a rare form of genetic deafness. Read more at WIRED.

An implant restored walking ability for Parkinson’s patient

A man with advanced Parkinson’s disease can walk several miles again thanks to a special implant. Positioned in the lumbar region of the spinal cord, the implant sends electrical signals to his leg muscles. The scientists behind the innovation plan to carry out further trials with other patients in the coming year. Read more at SWI swissinfo.ch.

DeepMind’s new AI can predict whether a genetic mutation is likely to cause disease

Researchers at DeepMind, Google's AI company, have trained an AI model to detect DNA mutations, which could speed up the diagnosis of rare diseases. Similar to language models like ChatGPT, this model knows the sequences of amino acids in proteins and can detect anomalies. Read more at WIRED.

AI-powered prediction helped Chileans evacuate from floods

A forecasting tool from Google can predict floods in South America and other regions using a little data on the water flow of rivers, with impressive accuracy. This August, many people in Chile were able to evacuate safely and with their belongings thanks to a warning sent out two days before the flooding. Read more at Fast Company.

The Hollywood actors’ and writers’ battle against AI ended—for now

Generative AI has made it to Hollywood, and after months of strikes, both the writers and actors unions managed to negotiate guardrails on how the technology can be used in film and TV projects. AI cannot, for example, be used to write or rewrite scripts, and studios are not allowed to use scripts to train AI models without the writers’ permission. Read more at WIRED.

Lego bricks are teaching kids Braille

The iconic studs on the Lego bricks allow them to be stacked on top of each other. And now you can learn a new language while you’re at it. The company has started selling bricks with modified amounts of studs that teach the Braille alphabet. The corresponding letter or number represented by a brick’s studs are printed on each brick so that children can learn the code. Read more at TechCrunch.

[contremineur]

1996. Memories. I'm laying curled, awake in the frozen dark of my Gyumri hut. Armenian brutal winter outside. No electricity. No heat. Going to bed each night blind drunk in my jacket, hat and mittens. Frost on the pillow each morning when I wake up. What you can't see, what a photo can't capture, are the voices coming up from under the floorboards in my hut, arguing, laughing. Occasionally I heard snatches of song. The dead, I'm told, don't talk, but that is a lie. Few of the bodies lost in the 1988 earthquake were ever recovered. My hut was built upon the ruins where the neighbours perished. The dead are always talking in a language that I've yet to translate.

by babylon-crashing

from here

[theactioneer]

Treat Williams, Dead Heat (1988)

[fanofspooky]

There’s something so special about 80s electricity 👌

• Frankenhooker

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

• Dead Heat

• Friday The 13th Jason Lives

• Predator

• Nightmare On Elm Street 2

• The Entity

• Brain Damage

• Chopping Mall

[lostcryptids]

Lesser known horror boyfriends

[alexlacquemanne]

2023 in 12 movies (1 per months)

January

The Horse Whisperer (1998) directed by Robert Redford with Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Neil, Chris Cooper and Cherry Jones

[First Time]

February

L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974) directed by Bertrand Tavernier with Philippe Noiret, Jean Rochefort, Jacques Denis, Yves Afonso, Julien Bertheau and Jacques Hilling

[First Time]

March

The Fabelmans (2022) directed by Steven Spielberg with Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Keeley Karsten, Julia Butters and Judd Hirsch

[First Time]

April

The Third Man (1949) directed by Carol Reed with Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee

[First Time]

May

The World, The Flesh and the Devil (1959) directed by Ranald MacDougall with Harry Belafonte, Inger Stevens and Mel Ferrer

[First Time]

June

La ciociara (1960) directed by Vittorio De Sica with Sophia Loren, Eleonora Brown, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Carlo Ninchi, Andrea Checchi and Pupella Maggio

[First Time]

July

Oppenheimer (2023) directed by Christopher Nolan with Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett and Casey Affleck

[First Time]

August

Heat (1995) directed by Michael Mann with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Dennis Haysbert, Donald Breedan and Ashley Judd

[First Time]

September

Catch Me If You Can (2002) directed by Steven Spielberg with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Nathalie Baye, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen, James Brolin and Brian Howe

[First Time]

October

Le Grand Bain (2018) directed by Gilles Lellouche with Mathieu Amalric, Guillaume Canet, Benoît Poelvoorde, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Philippe Katerine, Félix Moati, Alban Ivanov, Balasingham Thamilchelvan, Virginie Efira et Leïla Bekhti

[First Time]

November

Fools Rush In (1997) directed by Andy Tennant with Matthew Perry, Salma Hayek, Jon Tenney, Carlos Gómez, Tomás Milián, Siobhan Fallon et John Bennett Perry

[First Time]

December

The Great Race (1965) directed by Blake Edwards with Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn et Ross Martin

[First Time]

Honourable Mentions :

Airplane! (1980)

Duel (1972)

Les Sentiments (2003)

The Carpetbaggers (1964)

Scoop (2006)

Mon crime (2023)

To Have and Have Not (1944)

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

臥虎藏龍 (2000)

The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

Le Dernier Voyage (2020)

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)

L'ingorgo (1979)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Adieu Gary (2008)

Conflict (1945)

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

La Nuit américaine (1973)

Sorcerer (1977)

La Guerre des polices (1979)

Life of Pi (2012)

The Big Short (2015)

Le Hussard sur le toit (1995)

Excalibur (1981)

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

Le Procès Goldman (2023)

Enter the Dragon (1973)

Matrimonio all'italiana (1964)

Chaplin (1992)

La Vie de château (1966)

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Au-delà des grilles (1949)

Second Tour (2023)

Le Couteau dans la plaie (1962)

The Eiger Sanction (1975)

JFK (1991)

Le Fugitif (1993)

Chef (2014)

Quai des Orfèvres (1947)

Appointment with Death (1988)

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

River of No Return (1954)

L'Assassinat du père Noël (1941)

Dances with Wolves (1990)

Die Glasbläserin (2016)

The Lion in Winter (1968)

Les Mystères de Paris (1962)

[quaranmine]

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Eight)

July, fireworks, and some insight into someone we don’t actually know much about.

Chapter Eight: 5,436

<< Chapter Seven | Masterpost | Chapter Nine >>

HEY Y'ALL! Those of you who follow me on tumblr have been kept pretty well apprised of this chapter's progress, but it's good to be back. I've struggled with this chapter a lot, not out of any fault of its own, just because real life decided to beat me over the head in July and August.

Anyway, this chapter has a few content warnings.  CW for past injury, car accident, death, and as always…grief. Nothing graphic but it beat me over the head while I was writing it oof.

Finally, as a disclaimer—there is information in this chapter about wildfire survival. I’m not an expert, and some of these topics are quite literally life or death in real life. I’m an entry level environmental scientist whose only professional experience is in topics entirely unrelated to this. While I have done my research on this fic and done my best to always present accurate information, I am not a reliable source. This is a Hermitcraft AU fanfiction. Please do not take or substitute anything I say in place of information from actual professionals, lol.

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

»»———-　　———-««

July 1989

It’s July, and there’s a complete burn ban put in place for Shoshone and the other national parks and national forests that surround it. If you ask Scar, it should have been put into place two weeks ago. The scattered storms and rain in May and early June has done nothing for the landscape now, which is dry and still full of theoretical tinder from years of fire-suppression activities. 

It’s July, and it’s sweltering outside. The main radio chatter during the daily weather conditions report says the temperatures have been record-breaking in the region. This is unsurprising to Grian—his cabin feels like less of a lookout and more of a greenhouse these days, with the inescapable sun taking great advantage of all the windows. He’s not really cut out for the heat of the summer. It makes the days feel listless and blend together, but at least it cools off in the evenings.

The fire season starts to ramp up in other ways too. There’s a fire reported in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, located immediately to their southwest, and officials seem concerned it will grow quickly with the hot, dry temperatures and wind. Elsewhere around the country the picture seems just as bleak: fires in the 1989 season have already burned hundreds of thousands more acres than the same time period in 1988. 

Apparently, the Two Forks lookout had gone unstaffed for several years prior, before the Yellowstone fires last year caused the agency to consider hiring more staff. The fires last year also, coincidentally, increased the budget for this year’s activities.This seems to have been a prudent decision, because the season is shaping up to have a spark indeed. They’re keen to use Grian as much as possible. 

Grian can’t see the smoke column from the Bridger-Teton fire on the horizon; it’s too far away. Instead he starts to notice that his visibility on the horizon is worse now, as the haze in the sky slowly grows. Distant mountains that were once brown and green are now wispy tones of flat yellow and gray. The Trout Fire still burns steadily in the distance. It’s a stubborn nuisance to the Forest personnel, but not a big enough fire yet to garner any worry. There’s more than enough worry to be passed elsewhere.

All of this would be enough on its own, but another contender has just stepped into the ring: Independence Day. 

The 4th of July is on a Tuesday this year, which means Grian and Scar get the wonderful privilege of working overtime all weekend watching the mountains, and holiday pay for the day itself. In all likelihood, people will be just as likely to celebrate on Saturday or Sunday or Monday as on Tuesday. Mary, a lookout in a more northern section of the Forest, has already called in to report a few incidents in her sector. The extra pay is welcomed; the responsibility for idiots is not. 

Fireworks are strictly banned, of course. The acknowledgement of that, however, requires campers to actually care in the first place. They do not. 

And so the month begins. 

»»———-　　———-««

Fire is, both philosophically and literally, one of the most important things humanity has ever been able to harness. It can be the difference between life and death, and yet it is both life and death. Fire fosters warmth and light and power and life. Fire caresses life and leaves behind destruction. 

Shoshone National Forest exists as part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the largest mostly-intact temperate-zone ecosystems in the world. It’s part of a great chain of protected lands and wilderness spaces in the northern Rocky mountains. Shoshone is the second piece of that puzzle—just as Yellowstone National Park was the first national park to be established, the neighboring Shoshone National Forest was the first ever national forest to be designated in the United States.

It is also, like the other lands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, fire-dependent. Plants and animals living in such ecosystems are often adapted to their local fire regime, which is the expected pattern, frequency, and intensity of the fires in their area. 

Lodgepole pines dominate the middle elevations of the Shoshone National Forest, and are the poster child of a fire-dependent species. These trees produce cones that are sealed with a tight resin that relies on fire to melt it. Fire is, therefore, essential to the reproduction of the species. But fire is also essential to their life cycle in another way: just as fire is necessary for the baby trees to sprout, lodgepole pines are very easily killed by fire.

And if the fires kill the weaker Engelmann spruce found in Shoshone’s higher elevations, that’s okay too—it just leaves room for the much more tolerant whitebark pine trees to grow without being outcompeted. Fire similarly benefits wildlife in Shoshone by diversifying the forest understory, encouraging growth of new plants, and providing dead tree snags for shelter. 

It kills, but it also supports life. 

The history of Shoshone National Forest and fire has its bleak moments. In 1937, a lightning strike started the Blackwater Fire in the Absaroka Range, a range of mountains located predominantly in the national forest. Dry weather and high winds turned the fire into one of the deadliest wildland firefighting stories in American history, with 15 firefighters killed and 38 injured. 

Labor laws are written in blood. Safety rules and best management practices are, too. Although no fault was assigned for the tragedy—a rigorous investigation deemed the situation was out of anybody’s control—the Blackwater Fire would ultimately change the landscape of wildland firefighting. It is remembered in the Ten Standard Firefighting Orders, a set of systematic guidelines developed by the US Forest Service afterward to reduce danger for firefighters.

These orders are still in use today. 

So what is a lookout’s role in a wildfire, other than keeping watch for it? Historically fire lookouts were used as firefighters themselves—expected to hop on a horse and head straight to a fire after seeing it, tools in hard—but in modern times lookouts are primarily used for providing updates. A lookout’s job is not complete once a fire is spotted and reported. They are expected to provide constant updates on its size and location, as well as assist firefighters and smokejumpers from their position. This work is very important—so important that sometimes fire lookouts don’t evacuate the scene until a helicopter is required for their rescue. 

And what if you’re a hiker? What if you’re on the ground? The prospects aren't good: hikers should just avoid being caught around a wildfire at all costs. Survival odds are, unfortunately, low. 

But what if you can't avoid it?

Try to determine which way the wind is blowing and remain upwind of the fire. Fires also burn fastest uphill, so seek lower ground. Fires will burn cooler and slower downhill. Try to find a safe spot from the fire, something that would burn less easily such as a rock slide, a large meadow, or a lake. Crown fires burn tall and hot in the tops of trees, so even a meadow will be safer than a forest. Cover your nose and mouth with clothing to protect your airways. Huddle close to any large object that can buffer the ambient heat. Lay face down. Don’t attempt to outrun the fire. 

Sometimes, setting your own fire is an option. Burning out an area large enough for you to lie in can allow the wildfire to move around the already burned spot—but this attempt is best saved for a grassland. Forests take too long to burn. And if the fire is close, and if you can see a safe, already burned spot through it, and if the flames are less than five feet tall, the best option might be to just run through the fire. 

Jumping in water is an option, but that might not save you. Superheated air, smoke inhalation, and lack of oxygen in the area is a primary concern. Fires move faster than most people can imagine. Fires can create their own wind, their own weather.

Fire, above all, should always be respected.

»»———-　　———-««

“Draw something for me,” Scar says suddenly into the still blue air of the dusk. “And, dude, turn your light on already.”

“Huh?” Grian says. He frankly doesn’t mind sitting in the dark while there’s still a little light left in the sky to adjust to, but his hand reaches automatically for the lantern’s switch before he even really processes Scar’s words. With a soft click the cabin is bathed in warm tones. Really, the reflections on the windows only obscure their visibility now that it’s mostly dark, but it’s undeniably more cozy now. 

“Ah, it’s good to see your little light in the way over yonder,” Scar says. “You’re like my little firefly in the mountains!”

Grian rolls his eyes at that. “What did you mean by ‘draw for me’?” he asks, blocking any spontaneous attempts at poetry Scar can make. 

“I mean, I’m bored. And I know you’re bored. It’s been a long day.” He hums a little to himself. “Figured you might wanna do something to pass the time.”

Scar’s right, it has been a long day. It’s the 4th of July, and they’re in it for the long haul. Grian thinks they should have just been allowed to sleep and clock in later in the day—who sets off fireworks at 8 AM?—but the fire season doesn’t rest and neither do they. Now, it’s evening, and this is where the real monitoring begins: after dark. 

Unfortunately, it’s also when the morale to keep sitting at the desk is starting to dip precipitously. Firewatching after dark is difficult and typically something they aren’t required to do. As a lookout, he primarily looks for smoke, not fire. Fires themselves are often too small or too tucked away for their light to be seen, and at night the smoke blends into the dark sky. But fireworks, fortunately, tend to announce themselves gaudily. 

Mostly, it’s the sheer personal resolve to pay attention that takes the greatest hit. Scar’s idea isn’t a bad one, there’s just one significant snag:

“I don’t draw,” Grian reminds him gently.

“But you used to,” Scar persists. 

“I drew houses,” Grian corrects, even though he knows that his drafting is far from the only thing he’s practiced over the years. “For work. It’s not the same.”

“Well, then draw your lookout,” Scar says and then seems to almost cut off his own thought with a—”Ooh, maybe draw mine instead!”

“I can’t do that.”  It’s a black and white statement of fact, but Scar doesn’t agree. 

“C’mon,” he says. “You definitely brought your materials with you, I know it.”

“You don’t have any way of knowing that.”

“You have to have a pencil and a notebook, right? How do you take your notes for the morning reports?” Scar says this in the sort of way where he knows he’s right. He says it playfully, like it’s a silly mistake right under Grian’s nose. 

“Okay, fine,” Grian says, trying to imbue an eye-roll into his words. “I get it.”

He’s not really sure why he picks up the yellow legal pad from the corner of the table, or the pencil in the cup. He tears the top sheet off where he had, in fact, scribbled some notes earlier about temperature and wind speed.

The thing is, Scar can’t even see him. He could lie to Scar and say sure, of course, I’ll do it, and Scar would be none the wiser, miles away on the horizon. 

He picks up the pencil. The notebook stares back, blank except for the faint lines. 

He does try to draw his lookout first, from memory. He thinks of it the way he always does in memory—a snapshot, perfectly clear image his mind took one day. In his mind's eye, the lookout starts to rise over the horizon in the late afternoon sun while he hikes up the hill towards it. He doesn’t have a ruler in the tower, so he carefully uses the spine of one of the old paperbacks as a straight edge to run his pencil against. 

It just…doesn’t look right. First of all, angles are off. He’s messed up the two point perspective somehow and he doesn’t have his usual drafting materials with him anymore. But it’s more than that. The lookout, despite being bathed in golden light in his visual memory, just doesn’t feel inviting. It’s just intimidating. A place where, despite its natural beauty, Grian just sees his worst days play out over and over again. 

He crumbles the paper again and tosses it to the side. He grabs the radio again. 

“Scar, you paint don’t you?” Grian says. “You’re an artist.”

“Well, I guess if you say so,” says Scar slyly, “one could refer to me as a bit of an artist.” 

“Why?”

The bluntness throws Scar. “Huh?”

“Why do you do it?”

“Why am I an artist?”

“Yeah. What made you start?”

Scar is quiet for a long time. Not too long to be worrying, but enough to seem…contemplative. He finally replies, “You know, I always liked it. In school I’d always get recruited to help with posters and stuff ‘cause I was one of the better ones at art, which maybe said more about them than me because I wasn’t an artist then. I didn’t practice. I didn’t know anything.”

There’s another pause, but not as long. Grian doesn’t interrupt. 

“It wasn’t really until after my accident that I started pursuing it more. It was somethin’ to do! And one of the nurses told me it might be meditative. Help me out a little.”

“Did it?” Grian asks softly. 

“I think so,” Scar says, and then with a little bit of a chuckle he adds: “But I don’t think I have to tell you though that sometimes a drawing frustrates you so much you want to throw it across the room! It isn’t all meditation. But I think that’s the point.”

Grian flushes a little. Scar’s comment is truer than he knows; the crumpled evidence of his most recent drawing attempt still sits on the floor by his chair. He reaches for the pencil again, and looks at the page once more. Maybe he will try to draw Scar’s lookout. He won’t tell that to Scar, of course, because he’ll be insufferable about it, but maybe he’ll try. 

Grian doesn’t really know exactly what Scar’s lookout looks like. It’s far away, and he’s looked at it in the binoculars a few times, but the details are always fuzzy and hard to make out; each shake of his hand jolts the image at that level of magnification. And it’s far too dark for him to look again, so—so he improvises. Scar’s cabin is not on a tower like Grian’s is. It's situated on a large piece of rock at the top of a mountain. It doesn’t need to be on a tower, because there’s nothing around it tall enough to block the view, unlike the trees next to his tower. He fills in the details as he remembers, and creates new ones in the place of things he forgot. 

The soft scratch-scratch of the pencil is lost to the noise of the radio again. “I broke my arm pretty badly at the time—needed surgery on that—but it wasn’t my dominant hand so I still painted. I like doing landscapes, mostly,” Scar says. “Pretty things. I grew up in nature. My dad and I went camping a lot. I missed it. I…wanted to do that again. Didn’t know if I would do that again.”

“I would love to see one of your paintings,” Grian says. 

“I don’t really think they’re worth getting excited for,” Scar says, doing a bit of regrettably predictable artist’s humility. “But I’ll mail you one, if you want. Oh! Maybe you’ll even get a little surprise. Jellie likes to help me sign a few pieces, whether I want her to or not…”

The idea of a painting signed with a paw print is so utterly charming to Grian that he almost suggests that Scar should do it with all his paintings as some sort of signature flair. Then it occurs to him that it might be hard to wash a cat’s paws, and starts to ask Scar about what he does—in his cabin in the middle of nowhere with no running water—when a sparkle catches the corner of his eye. 

Grian whips his head around just in time to see the sparks die. “Ugh,” he radios. “I just saw a firework. Super far away though.”

“Well, I was surprised neither of us had seen anything yet. Go ahead and mark the general direction of it even if it’s out of your district. Hopefully if there’s a fire someone else closer will catch it, but you could always check on it in the morning.”

Grian wanders over to the firefinder in the center of the room. Conveniently reminding him of which direction it was, several more fireworks go off in quick succession—golden, blue, red. It’s too dark to take a real reading, so he just points the sight in the general vicinity of the celebrations and takes its azimuth. He’ll spend extra time tomorrow examining this direction. 

As he takes the measurements, a thought drifts into his mind. It’s something about the convergence of this specific job, a job nobody’s ever heard about in a Forest overlooked because of its more popular neighbors, and the wistful quality of Scar’s voice when he spoke about the subjects of his paintings. He found this job advertised in a newspaper. How did Scar find it? Who trained him to do this?

He sits back at the desk, and starts to sketch in the mountains around Scar’s lookout. This, he remembers well. He knows the familiar fold of the hills and peaks like the back of his hand, even after a little more than two months on the job. 

The question circles his mind. 

“Scar,” he says finally. “You know why I came here. To this job. To this National Forest. I’ve…made that really clear, whether I wanted to or not. But I don’t think you’ve ever said why you came.”

“Oh,” Scar says. His voice is quiet. “I guess I haven’t.” 

Grian lays the radio down on the table, giving Scar space to speak. There’s something about the way Scar acknowledged him that sounds like he’s been exposed. One thing Grian has come to learn about him is that he’s a smoothtalker, and an excellent actor. Scar has dramatic flair in spades, and if he really wanted to, he’d spin a captivating tale for Grian about the totally-true events leading up to his place in this forest. It’d be as truthful as his name. 

He doesn’t, though. 

“People come out here for a lot of reasons, but not every person can stick with it. It’s lonely, for sure. And, of course,” he chuckles, “the bugs are pretty bad. I’ll tell you right now, I’ve seen more than a few volunteers and new lookouts suddenly get afraid of the dark when it’s just them and no one else for miles,” Scar says. “But the people who stay tend to fall into two categories.”

“What are they?”

“People who are running from something and people who are looking for something.”

There’s no need to question which category Grian is in. Not when he’s already laid his whole soul open for Scar to pick through and deeply intertwined himself in this mystery. 

There’s only this: “Which one are you?”

“It’s hard to say,” Scar replies. “But I think I was running away.”

And Grian wants to say from what? but he doesn’t. And he wants to be sitting in Scar’s lookout right now, or anywhere but here, but he isn’t. 

He sets the pencil down, temporarily abandoning the drawing he’s been scratching this whole time. He looks straight ahead through the window, but the glare from the lamp on the glass just reflects his own face right back at him. In the shadow where his head is, he can pick out the faint outlines of the hills beyond. 

“You can’t run from yourself though,” Scar says. “‘Cause it just follows you. And being alone with yourself just makes you face it faster. I think my mom was right. She was worried about me. That’s why she made me take Jellie to keep me company.” 

“I think I need to meet this Jellie,” Grian says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Scar doesn’t typically sound so serious, and it’s a little jarring. “She sounds pretty fantastic.”

“She is, she’s—hey, what about meeting me?”

“Nah, I think I prefer the cat,” he says. Cheeky. 

“Well, I can’t say I don’t agree,” Scar says. He sighs. “I guess I should just talk about it, right? You can ask me whatever you want. ‘Cause the more I ramble, the less I talk about it, and the less I actually answer your question. Which is the fun of rambling! If you say enough words people forget about what you’re distracting them from. Oh, but I don’t know why I’m telling you that. A true salesman never gives up any secrets. I’m only a salesman in the winter, though. What am I selling now? I guess I’m selling myself. Wait—no, not like that, don’t you dare be laughing over there, G-man!”

Grian says nothing, and he isn’t laughing. He just lets Scar’s words fill the space. He doesn’t ask anything else. It feels hypocritical to do so. He’s dying to know everything, of course, but he also knows what it’s like—that looming weight on your neck from the pressure of well-meaning friends who just want to talk when all you want to do is be alone. If Scar has come all the way out here, then he must really have wanted to be alone. 

Scar seems to rattle himself out of it on his own. “I’m stalling again,” he says, voice like lead. “I’ll just start. It’s okay. It’s been 10 years. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Grian says. “I was just curious. You know all this about me but I didn’t know anything about you. But if it’s a…thing then you don’t have to.”

“No, no,” he says. “It’s fine. I already told you a lot of the story. I just left out some pieces.”

“It’s a slow night,” Grian says. “Only a few fireworks. Plenty of time to talk, if you want…or plenty of time to just watch.”

“I appreciate that,” Scar replies. He takes a deep breath. It’s a funny thing, that. Grian can’t see Scar’s face—he has no idea about anything, even what color hair he has—but he knows the sound of Scar’s breathing. 

“I told you about my accident,” Scar begins. “I told you about how it nearly killed me, about the hospital, about taking up painting. And I told you about the way I’m still in pain, even years later. I don’t think it’s ever going to fully go away. But that wasn’t really the whole truth, or the worst part. The worst part was that I wasn’t the only one in the accident.

“I should have been, though. I was the one driving. I was just running an errand, but I was living with my parents at the time so I asked my dad to come with me to help me pick something out. I don’t even remember what it was. And I don’t remember the accident, either. I only know what they told me. I read the accident report. But there’s a wall of glass between me and what happened. Apparently, we hit some black ice in the road and it spun the car into the other lane. We got hit by a truck. It happened so fast. He didn’t know what was coming either.”

Scar pauses there. Grian tries to take in the story. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That sounds terrifying.”

Scar’s voice breaks on the next line. “The doctor told me my dad was dead when the paramedics arrived. They think he probably died instantly. I don’t remember that, though. I don’t remember anything. I just—I just woke up a week later in the ICU. That’s what I remember. Everything was just so fuzzy and hurt so bad. I could tell something was up but I was too tired. I slept. They waited three days and made my mom break the news.”

“Oh, Scar,” Grian says. “I’m so sorry.” But everyone is sorry. They’re always sorry. It doesn’t do anything. So instead he adds, “You must have been so scared. It must have been confusing.”

“It was ten years ago. I’m fine,” Scar repeats, and Grian doesn’t comment on the way it sounds like a lie. Maybe it isn’t a lie on most days of the week, but it certainly is tonight. Scar continues to talk. “I don’t know why that’s what messes me up the most. That I caused it and I don’t remember it. That it’s my fault but I didn’t know for so long.”

“It’s not your fault,” Grian says gently. “It was an accident. That’s what accidents are, they’re not on purpose. So it can’t be your fault.”

“And you’re right, G-man,” Scar says. His voice wavers. “I already know that. It isn’t my fault. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I didn’t know about the ice. I know it’s not my fault but…it’s really hard to believe that, isn’t it?”

Grian swallows against a lump in his throat, and flicks his eyes down to the table. It’s the hardest thing in the world, just below staying alive. 

“I just think about everything I could have done differently. Why didn’t I just go alone? Why didn’t I wait until the next day? What if I was driving slower? Would the difference of one mile per hour, or five, or ten have been the difference between life and death? What if I had reacted faster, or better? What if I saved the car from spinning? If I had left just one minute earlier, or five seconds earlier, there might not have been traffic in the oncoming lane. If I had left three hours earlier, maybe the temperature would have still been high enough to keep the ice from refreezing.”

He stops to take a breath. “It doesn’t ever stop. And it doesn’t bring anyone back. The worst is thinking about the things you did and the things you didn’t. Like maybe I would have told him I loved him that morning if I’d known that was the last day I’d see him. Or maybe I wouldn’t have stolen $20 from him and then lied about it when I was 8 years old. Or maybe I would have asked him again to tell me about his funniest story from when he was a teenager. But that’s just how it is, I think. It all comes back to you.”

“How do you deal with it?” Grian whispers. 

“Badly,” Scar says, and for once he doesn’t sound like he’s on the brink of tears. “You go forward. And then backward. And then forward again. You live through it.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You’re already doing it.” 

“I’m not doing it very good.”

“That’s the only way you can do it.”

There hasn’t been any more fireworks since they started talking. The night outside is dark, with only the slightest sliver of a new moon. Millions of tiny stars glitter in the sky in nearly uninterrupted view. It’s a beautiful night out there, hot and still, but Grian stays in the four walls of his cabin. Enclosed.

Scar speaks. “One of my steps was coming back here. I think, in the end, it was a step forward. This place gives me comfort. I always liked this part of the state. My dad used to take me camping out here all the time, like once a summer. Sometimes we went to Yellowstone National Park. Sometimes we went to Grand Teton National Park. Sometimes we went to Bridger-Teton National Forest. And sometimes we went here. It’s the quietest here.”

“It sounds like you were close with your dad,” Grian says. “It sounds like fun.”

“It was,” Scar says. “My dad was cremated. It was a while before I was out of the hospital, and it was a while before traveling somewhere wasn’t an ordeal. We saved some of his ashes for closer to home, but we made a special trip out here and scattered a little in each spot.”

“That sounds nice…” Grian trails off.  “Like he’s still here, somewhere. In a place he loved. In a place with you.”

“I think I fell a little in love with this place then, in a way I didn’t when I was just a child. Or maybe I was just antsy. I wasn’t doing very good, I guess I can tell you that. There was too much guilt and familiarity at home. I wanted out. I wanted to be anywhere else but there. It took me two years after the accident to make it but I came here.”

“So,” Grian says. “Running from something. I see it.”

“Yeah,” Scar says with a huff of air. “Not that great at running these days though! I mean, I’m barely a hiker anymore without being wiped out for a few days! My mom thought this job was a terrible idea. She thought the last thing I needed was to be alone. I guess you know what that’s like.”

“I didn’t even tell my friends or my mum I was taking this job,” Grian admits. “They’d freak out. The reaction from people I knew back in Colorado was bad enough. So I just sent ‘em a letter the first week I was here. A ranger told me I had mail at the main office but I don’t want to check it.”

“They’ll give it to you at the end of the season if you don’t come pick it up,” Scar says. “You can read it then, after you’ve already done it.”

“Was it what you needed?” Grian asks abruptly. “Being alone.”

“I needed it. I think—sometimes everything in your head makes you want to avoid people. You feel like you need the silence of an empty room to just let it all fall out and fix itself. It helps. But only for a little while, because it never really fixes itself. After a while it just eats you up.”

And Grian wants to say, I think it’s eating me. And he wants to say, I think I am not alone enough, I still need more space, I still need more time. And he wants to say, Everything will be fine, I just need to find him. And he wants to say, I don’t think I would have lasted this summer without you.

“I didn’t have anyone to talk to my first summer as a lookout,” Scar admits. “But you have me. And I think—Grian, I know you think you’re alone, but you aren’t. And I know you think nobody understands, but I do. I’m trying to.”

“Oh,” he says. Oh.

There’s tears suddenly welling up in his eyes, and Grian rapidly tries to blink them away. He sees it in the incessant chatter that had annoyed him on the first week. He sees it in their radio channel, the one just for them to talk on, the secondary channel that ensures the main frequency is always open for real emergencies. Scar’s been cultivating the perfect landing spot for Grian to fall into, before he even knew Grian needed it.

“It’s not actually two different things, is it?” Grian finally responds. “Running away from something, and looking for something.”

And Scar says, “I don’t think it is, in the end.”

<< Chapter Seven | Masterpost | Chapter Nine >>

[philcollinsenjoyer]

hello auguste do u have movie recommendations.. just like any movies

helloooo how are you<3 i sure do i can give you a few based on genres if you want since you didn't specify! i don't really have any deep cuts i'm not a big enough cinephile yet💔 you'll forgive me if you've seen some:

romance and romcoms:

bringing up baby (1938) - some like it hot (1959) - when harry met sally (1989) (i know it's a tumblr classic but just in case i can't stress enough how much you need to see it) - 4 weddings and funeral (1994) - whisper of the heart (1995) - dirty dancing (1987) (again. but you need to see it.) - pride and prejudice (1995) (i insist on the date. watch all 5 hours.) - amélie (2001) - two weeks notice (2002) - saved! (2004) (wasn't sure where to put it exactly i guess i'll say romance but it's so much more) - rye lane (2023)

horror:

rebecca (1940) - the red shoes (1948) - rear window (1954) - psycho (1960) - rosemary's baby (1968) - suspiria (1977) - alien (1979) - the thing (1982) - child's play (1988) - final destination (2000) - saw (2004) - house of wax (2005) - black swan (2010) - the cabin in the woods (2011) - unfriended (2014) - train to busan (2016) - happy death day (2017) - nope (2022) & get out (2017)

thrillers dramas and action movies :

dial m for murder (1954) - donkey skin (1970) - dog day afternoon (1975) - ...and justice for all (1979) - amadeus (1984) - karate kid (1984) - the last temptation of christ (1988) - dead poets society (1989) - boyz n the hood (1991) - speed (1994) - la haine (1995) - heat (1995) - practical magic (1998) - velvet goldmine (1998) - fight club (1999) - 28 days (2000) - erin brockovich (2000) - billy elliot (2000) - panic room (2004) - kung fu hustle (2004) - mysterious skin (2004) (look up the triggers for this one) - brick (2005) - julie & julia (2009) - a single man (2009) - shutter island (2010) - inception (2010) - the girl with the dragon tattoo (2011) (look up triggers as well) - gone girl (2014) - the handmaiden (2016) - thoroughbreds (2017) - hustlers (2019) -

musicals (with the note that i generally don't like musicals that much so👍)

singin' in the rain (1952) - yellow submarine (1968) (💗) - jesus christ superstar (1973) - grease (1978) - a monster in paris (2011)

fuckass roadtrip movies :

it happened one night (1938) - the outsiders (1983) - my own private idaho (1991) - thelma & louise (1991) - my cousin vinny (1992) - little miss sunshine (2006) - stardust (2007) - the voyage of the dawn threader (2010) - the green knight (2021) (i'm putting this one in for the bit don't actually watch it it's bad)