EVERYDAY ELECTRONICS

 

012: Egg Timer

WHEN THEY TIE YOU UP

 

Remember...even a half inch slack in bonds can mean the chance of escape.

From The Book of Survival by Anthony Greenbank (1967).

HANS (JEAN) ARP / (JEAN) ARP

 

Schnurruhr / Moustache Watch (1923)

DON'T LOOK BACK 3

John Martin (1789-1854) was a hugely popular English painter of vast, often apocalyptic scenes. 

'The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah' dates from 1852 and is five feet high and nearly eight feet wide. In the foreground, Lot and his daughters hurriedly flee the swirling inferno of God's terrible wrath. Far behind them, still in poignantly recognisable human form, is the arrested and petrified figure of their fatally curious wife / mother.

In his short discussion paper 'The Chemical Death of Lot's Wife', published in the Royal Journal of Medicine in 1988, Professor Irving M. Klotz gives a detailed explanation of the environmental conditions that would led 'Mrs. Lot' to die instantly from rigor calcium carbonitis and turn into a rigid block of calcite, salted by moisture heavy crosswinds originating from the nearby Dead Sea. He includes chemical formulas and calculations, and clearly knows science stuff, so I am in no position to push back on any of it.

He concludes by writing 'Thus, once again, we see how modern science serves to corroborate and elucidate medical events described in the Bible', and, in this instance at least, I can't disagree with that either.  

Finally, just to make this about me again rather than Professor Klotz, one of my first conceptual art objects was a poorly made facsimile Airfix box purporting to contain this cataclysmic scene in model form. No great message, I just thought it was a nice idea.

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Landscape with the Destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah

Joachim Patinir, circa 1520

Two friendly angels lead Lot and his daughters to the safety of a nearby tent. In the background, the twin cities of Sodom & Gomorrah burn. In the foreground, a slightly bulbous pile of rocks are all that remains of Lot's nosey, disobedient wife.

Dutch master Patinir specialised in Biblical scenes, but this, with its elements of science fiction and horror, is perhaps his strangest work. There's something quite modern looking about it, despite it being painted over 500 years ago.

DON'T LOOK BACK

The Bible contains a lot of finger wagging, not surprisingly given that it is a control manual more than anything else. In it, we read that the people of Sodom were decadent and ungodly, so they needed to be destroyed (a common Old Testament theme - God makes an awful lot of mistakes for an omniscient, omnipotent being). 

Good old Lot and his family, being righteous and reverent, were spared, but only on the condition that they didn't watch the destruction of their former home. Lot's wife (Ado, Idit, or Ildith, according to your source) couldn't resist a last glance so, for her disobedience, was turned instantly into a pillar of salt. 

There is some evidence of a 'cosmic airburst event' in the southern Jordan Valley around 1650 BCE. This violent and sudden explosion devastated the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam and made that area largely uninhabitable for over 500 years. Theories include (in order of wackiness) the Tunguska-style airborne detonation of a meteoroid, a nuclear explosion following a spaceship crash, and alien invasion. Any of these could, apparently, have turned a human being into a column of minerals (I can't say I'm convinced, but this sort of extrapolation is interesting in what it says about the human obsession with sense making).

Whatever the cause, whatever the outcome, the Bible uses this garbled and unknowable story to reinforce its own underlying message, especially when it comes to wives: do what you are told. No wonder it's such a popular book with bigots. We'll come back to this tale, I have a thing for it.

Screenshots taken from John Huston's 1966 epic The Bible: In The Beginning, which takes three hours and a cast of thousands to recount the first 22 chapters of the good book to half-brilliant, half-boring effect. 

FAMILIAR STATES

'A new and unbiased study of vigilance, fear, shock, guilt, shame, depression and other familiar states of mind...'

Cover design by Patrick McCreeth.

WHERE SCIENCE & THE OCULT CLASH!

Nothing But The Night, d. Peter Sasdy (1973)

Nothing But The Night is a bit of a one off, which is wholly appropriate given that it was the sole product of Charlemagne Films, a company set up to make intelligent horror films but lost so much money that they folded before they could make a follow up.   

The narrative takes a while to come together but, ultimately, it turns out to be a curious mix of (to paraphrase the US poster) science and the occult, with some lovely Highlands and Islands scenery and a great cast, including Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Kathleen Byron, Keith Barron, Fulton Mackay and Cassandra out of ‘Only Fools & Horses’ as a kid who WILL-NOT-STOP-SCREAMING and, ultimately, will utter the greatest lines ever spoken on film by a child:

"You've destroyed my dreams. I curse your cruel God"

At its core is a rather disquieting tale of child abuse in a remote orphanage, but perhaps not in the way that you might immediately think. There’s also a marvellous sequence in which dear old Diana Dors (playing a crazy, shouty clairvoyant) goes feral, running around the countryside evading the authorities like a chocolate munching Ray Mears in a ginger wig and red leatherette rain coat.

Little seen, somewhat neglected, this film always reminds me of a pleasing mix of ‘The Damned’ and ‘Scream and Scream Again’, and although it’s no kind of masterpiece, it nevertheless has strange ideas and weird horror at its core, and that’s like Turkish Delight on Toast for me.