Friday, October 28, 2005

Take that, Pod casters!












What is it with this pod casting thing? I mean peas are nice. I like them as much as anybody, but why would you want to shoot them around like that?

I looked on Google to see what I could find about Pods and here are some things about Pod people. The first cool thing I found is there was apparently a totally ridiculous movie made in the 1980's featuring this bear-like monster with a vacuum cleaner-like hose for a nose. Were any of you lucky enough to watch Mr. Snuffle-Upagus on Sesame Street? Kind of reminds me of him, but not quite so cute, is he? This is a cover of a book featured for sale at Amazon.com.

Here is another cute Pod person. This is evidently an imagined world of Podlings, from Habidad.com/podlings.htm. There are less clear images of groups of Podlings in their little pods, but this is an adorable close-up showing the very mobile, dough-like features. These creatures evidently create spaces for themselves to live inside plants (I think I got that straight). You have to wonder about the people who create these complex webworlds. But geez, here I am making up this blog entry goofing about podcasting.

And here is a much more sinister, Halloween sort of Pod people image from members.aol.com/livingstonstreet/terror. These look as though they were humans taken and covered with webbing to be used as maybe targets for parasitical seeds to feed on and grow in. Yecch! There were some other images that made the bodies look like skeletons, so maybe they eventually use up the flesh. I don't think this website had much text. Or maybe I just didn't have the heart to read it. By now I am not sure I recall.

And last, the Pod People I thought I was going to find, the only ones I knew about, from a movie I saw once on TV. This is evidently Donald Sutherland portraying a Pod Person. I remember this scene. He points and makes a high, keening screech. The pods are like spores from space that make perfect copies of people (at least most of the time; once they got it messed up and they got a person head on a dog body). But the Pod People have no emotions, and that was how the movie heroes were supposed to be able to tell the terrible Pod People from the real people. All I could really tell was that the Pod People would point and screech at the real people. That seemed like a pretty good give-away to me. The other thing about this movie was a ship drifting into harbor in the night, with a bagpipe band on board playing Amazing Grace. Despite my name, and my maiden name, McDaniel, I am very willing to say that bagpipes are definitely an acquired taste. But this was a very beautiful and even haunting scene. Then, of course, all the bagpipers and everybody on this ship turn out to be Pod People. Arrgh!

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