Friday, September 26, 2014

Frightmare Manor 2014 Opens Tonight


Tonight in East Tennessee brings the opening of Frightmare Manor, one of the highest-rated haunted attractions in the country. Plenty of new and terrifying elements will be launched for another unforgettable season of fear and fun.

Night Harvest is their new adventure through the woods around Frightmare Manor - the description from their website gives a sneak peek of what to expect:

"Night Harvest – This authentic wooded environment casts you deep into the dark shadows of the once-forgotten, abandoned Lexer body farm. Lexer had a disturbing name for the process of removing the cold, lifeless corpses and disposing of them in such a way to remain undetected. He would violently drag them under the cloak of darkness to the back of the property to specific areas for disposal– he labeled this act in his manifesto as the “Night Harvest”. This thick-brushed, wooded area at the back of the plantation wreaks of decomposed flesh and marks where the majority of Lexer’s 31 dismembered victims were unearthed in July of 1902. ...

"New for 2014, victims will enter through the original cabin, where skins of animals and humans alike were hung by Lexer for drainage. Still standing today and guarding the entrance of Night Harvest, this original cabin is listed (along with the Manor) on the Hamblen County Historical Preservation List and even today smells of gut-wrenching death. No amount of nervous laughter can help you for you are walking on top of and amongst death at every turn. Enter this cabin and you will begin to see, feel, touch, smell and experience for yourself the Jeremiah Lexer Night Harvest."

And that's just one of five attractions this year!

This "Screampark" spans 20 acres, offers 3 independent, walk thru, Haunted Attractions on site, boasts a heart-pounding Free-Fall Attraction unlike anything you've ever seen in the "Lexer Jump", and features the Nationally Recognized Nightmare at Frightmare Challenge. If all 5 Attractions are successfully completed, you WILL get your money back

Tickets available online via their website.



Tuesday, September 23, 2014

How Many Web Sites Are There?



It's a guess, really, but trends and data available say that there is roughly one web site for every three people who use the web, according to this Washington Post report, which features the graphic shown above (via Internet Live Stats).

Meanwhile, the site WorldWideWebSize says there are 2.39 billion web pages as of today, estimated by the numbers of pages indexed by Google, Bing and Yahoo search. The Internet Live Stats estimates there were 1.5 million blog posts today - plus one, this one you are reading right now.

While these stats don't tell us just what is on all the pages (cats? porn? advertising?). 

Every day the visualizations of so many people on the planet are manifest on the Internet. I find it interesting that (according to the above) there are 1.5 billion searches on Google so far today - interesting because that makes it seem that half of the folks in the digital world are seeking something, some information, some photo (some cats, probably).

Email appears to be the most widely used aspect - I sent about 6 today, and likely will send out a dozen more before the day is done.

Capturing the attention of billions is no simple task, especially here on this humble blog, where I noodle about with words and images and ideas. I can usually grab a few hundred views here a day - sometimes more, sometimes less. Big numbers land here mostly when I link to an oddity or a bit of someone else's hostility or such. 

But I do perceive a few things in all these numbers - people have joyfully abandoned publishers and broadcasters to share every kind of thing imaginable. It has been and continues to be liberating - for the cost of obtaining Internet access and some device to access the Internet, anyone can reach global distribution. 

And still, after only 20 some years of such new technology, we are only at the edge of what is going to happen due to this massive shift in human interaction.

I often wonder what might happen if, as in some cheesy story, all that access was suddenly gone, never to return. 

I often wonder if over the next fifty years people will somehow master this wild and wooly digital world, or if such mastery is even possible (mastery meaning that the majority of users add something to this digital conversation that is beyond rude-boy antics and advertising).

I often wonder if the future will steadily erase ideas of borders and countries and race and state and tribe ... what then will follow?