The Goo
When the great villains of horror movies and literature are listed, goo does not often make the list. Vampires? Check. Zombies? Oh yeah. Werewolves? Aaaaooooooo. Hannibal Lecter? Hello, Clarice.
But goo goes unsung and unheralded, it's evilness unrecognized. I'm not sure why. There are plenty of examples of oozing evil when you think about it.
The granddaddy of course is The Blob from that one movie. I think it was called The Gel That Tried to Eat Steve McQueen. The Blob is slow but somehow unrelenting. It consumes all in its path, from small animals to unbelieving policeman to entire diners (or, more correctly, and one of the great examples of "We have no money" special fx, a photo of a diner.)
Then there's ooze, the very ooze that gave us the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While the turtles themselves are benevolent and not scary, the ooze also birthed pretty much every bad guy they ever fought on the cartoon. Also, the ooze is responsible for Splinter, and design of Splinter in the first movie is nightmare-inducing Seriously, that thing is horrifying.
The ooze isn't all bad, though. It gave us Tokka and Rahzar from the 2nd TMNT movie and if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have Shredder bellowing "Babies! They are babieeees!" to enjoy, and where we would be then.
Other oozes haven't been immortalized in film as yet, but are still just as important. Such as Bartholomew and The Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. In that book, the wish of an evil king causes the weather to be replaced by green globs.
The Oobleck causes all manner of problems in the Kingdom of Didd but Bartholomew puts on his thinking cap (500 of them) and is able to save the day.
I just glanced at the books Wikipedia page and saw that it has not been adapted. (Note to Ron Howard, Jim Carrey and Mike Myers: if you go near this book, I will cut you.)
So why is goo and it's pernicious evilness on my mind today.
Because, every day I fight goo. But it's hard to say who is winning.
For those of you who don't know, my body tried to kill me last month, with a one-two punch of infection and undiagnosed diabetes. As an experience, I can say with some authority that it's no fun. I'm doing much better, but after two operations to clear out the infection, I am left with a large - LARGE - wound across my abdomen.
I got out of AnMed last month, but complications with the wound vac (long story short) landed me at Regency for 7.5 days earlier this month so they could take better care of the wound that we could at home.
And it was there that I met the goo.
Oh, it's not called goo. It's called Pro-Stat Sugar Free.
See, when you have a gaping wound that run from mid-thigh to mid-thigh, your doctors and nurses would like it to heal as quickly as possible.
Protein makes it heal.
(I just pictured a doctor cackling that line in the same voice The Wicked Witch of the West uses when she says, "Poppies will make them sleep!")
Pro-Stat is made of protein. Protein from the depths of hell, but protein.
It's super-high in protein. So the doctors and nurses gave it to me.
Three times a day.
Starting at 5:30am.
The Goo (I think it's earned capitalization) is sweet. But not in a good way.
It's like honey. But not in a good way.
Picture a field full of beehives. Under power lines. Next to a leaking retention pond. Adjacent to a power plant that has fallen far behind on mandated safety protocols from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The bees in such a field would start out as normal bees. And they would produce normal honey. But eventually over time, breeding within the hive, as the environment worked its deadly magic, would produce angry mutant hillbilly bees, with a Queen like the one in a certain Sigourney Weaver movie.
And these bees would produce something that technically qualifies as honey. Honey that would send evening the most dedicated beekeepers fleeing in terror, but, still, honey.
Take that noxious product, bury it in an ancient Indian burial ground for a month, dig it up, wipe it off and you have Pro-Stat.
How bad is it? The first time the nurse brought it to me, she looked at me and said, "I'm really, really sorry."
They say you can lessen the awfulness by mixing it with a little water or some juice. I say that would only make me hate water and juice.
I have been taking Pro-Stat three times daily for nearly three weeks. And it makes me gag every time. Every time.
Sometimes the taste lingers in the back of my throat for hours, no matter if I eat something or brush my teeth. It's like an Everlasting Gobstopper of Sadness!
I take 30 ml of it three times a day. You know how much 30 ml is, when something tastes as bad as Pro-Stat? A WHOLE FREAKING LOT.
The stuff I take at home is a little different from what I was taking in the hospital. It's cherry-flavored. Made with cherries the same way Minute Maid lemonade is made with lemons, but I guess we can give them points for trying.
I'm nearly done with my first bottle of it. Sadly, I have three more bottles. Big bottles. Bottles that are sitting on the kitchen table of my parents' house, when they should be deeply buried in Yucca Mountain.
But they say that it's helping. That I'm healing. That my wound is doing excellently. That it looks exactly like it's supposed to.
So I grimace and bear it, in the early morning hours, at 2pm and before bedtime. I let it crawl down my throat, swallow it as it tries to come back up and out and bear it. I let it work its magic.
But I'd still rather have a big glass of Oobleck.
But goo goes unsung and unheralded, it's evilness unrecognized. I'm not sure why. There are plenty of examples of oozing evil when you think about it.
The granddaddy of course is The Blob from that one movie. I think it was called The Gel That Tried to Eat Steve McQueen. The Blob is slow but somehow unrelenting. It consumes all in its path, from small animals to unbelieving policeman to entire diners (or, more correctly, and one of the great examples of "We have no money" special fx, a photo of a diner.)
Then there's ooze, the very ooze that gave us the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While the turtles themselves are benevolent and not scary, the ooze also birthed pretty much every bad guy they ever fought on the cartoon. Also, the ooze is responsible for Splinter, and design of Splinter in the first movie is nightmare-inducing Seriously, that thing is horrifying.
The ooze isn't all bad, though. It gave us Tokka and Rahzar from the 2nd TMNT movie and if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have Shredder bellowing "Babies! They are babieeees!" to enjoy, and where we would be then.
Other oozes haven't been immortalized in film as yet, but are still just as important. Such as Bartholomew and The Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. In that book, the wish of an evil king causes the weather to be replaced by green globs.
The Oobleck causes all manner of problems in the Kingdom of Didd but Bartholomew puts on his thinking cap (500 of them) and is able to save the day.
I just glanced at the books Wikipedia page and saw that it has not been adapted. (Note to Ron Howard, Jim Carrey and Mike Myers: if you go near this book, I will cut you.)
So why is goo and it's pernicious evilness on my mind today.
Because, every day I fight goo. But it's hard to say who is winning.
For those of you who don't know, my body tried to kill me last month, with a one-two punch of infection and undiagnosed diabetes. As an experience, I can say with some authority that it's no fun. I'm doing much better, but after two operations to clear out the infection, I am left with a large - LARGE - wound across my abdomen.
I got out of AnMed last month, but complications with the wound vac (long story short) landed me at Regency for 7.5 days earlier this month so they could take better care of the wound that we could at home.
And it was there that I met the goo.
Oh, it's not called goo. It's called Pro-Stat Sugar Free.
See, when you have a gaping wound that run from mid-thigh to mid-thigh, your doctors and nurses would like it to heal as quickly as possible.
Protein makes it heal.
(I just pictured a doctor cackling that line in the same voice The Wicked Witch of the West uses when she says, "Poppies will make them sleep!")
Pro-Stat is made of protein. Protein from the depths of hell, but protein.
It's super-high in protein. So the doctors and nurses gave it to me.
Three times a day.
Starting at 5:30am.
The Goo (I think it's earned capitalization) is sweet. But not in a good way.
It's like honey. But not in a good way.
Picture a field full of beehives. Under power lines. Next to a leaking retention pond. Adjacent to a power plant that has fallen far behind on mandated safety protocols from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The bees in such a field would start out as normal bees. And they would produce normal honey. But eventually over time, breeding within the hive, as the environment worked its deadly magic, would produce angry mutant hillbilly bees, with a Queen like the one in a certain Sigourney Weaver movie.
And these bees would produce something that technically qualifies as honey. Honey that would send evening the most dedicated beekeepers fleeing in terror, but, still, honey.
Take that noxious product, bury it in an ancient Indian burial ground for a month, dig it up, wipe it off and you have Pro-Stat.
How bad is it? The first time the nurse brought it to me, she looked at me and said, "I'm really, really sorry."
They say you can lessen the awfulness by mixing it with a little water or some juice. I say that would only make me hate water and juice.
I have been taking Pro-Stat three times daily for nearly three weeks. And it makes me gag every time. Every time.
Sometimes the taste lingers in the back of my throat for hours, no matter if I eat something or brush my teeth. It's like an Everlasting Gobstopper of Sadness!
I take 30 ml of it three times a day. You know how much 30 ml is, when something tastes as bad as Pro-Stat? A WHOLE FREAKING LOT.
The stuff I take at home is a little different from what I was taking in the hospital. It's cherry-flavored. Made with cherries the same way Minute Maid lemonade is made with lemons, but I guess we can give them points for trying.
I'm nearly done with my first bottle of it. Sadly, I have three more bottles. Big bottles. Bottles that are sitting on the kitchen table of my parents' house, when they should be deeply buried in Yucca Mountain.
But they say that it's helping. That I'm healing. That my wound is doing excellently. That it looks exactly like it's supposed to.
So I grimace and bear it, in the early morning hours, at 2pm and before bedtime. I let it crawl down my throat, swallow it as it tries to come back up and out and bear it. I let it work its magic.
But I'd still rather have a big glass of Oobleck.