#Creal Monsters

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Saturday Morning TV Cartoon Stars

Art by Kyle Hotz

[lt9804-blog]

I AM NOT A MONSTER: SCHIZOPHRENIA

So, I had to watch TED Talks for one of my classes, and I chose this talk, because I found it really interesting. - I did not chose this, because I have schizophrenia, or anything like that. The talker is Cecilia Mcgough, and she also suffers from this mental illnes.

First of all, it’s important to know about most people’s misbelief about this. They think that having schizophrenia means that you dangerous to the others, but mostly it’s not true. They are dangerous for themselves.

One of ten people take their life through suicide.

Another four of ten people attemt suicide at least once. 

Having schizophrenia is quite common: 1.1% of the world’s population over the age of 18 has some form of schizoprenia. (it means 54 million people worldwide).

The way you can dignose schizophrenia:

In the viseo Cecilia talks about her illnes, and how she managed to learn to live with it. She claims that they are not so different from us, they just can’t turn off their nightmares, even when they are awake. In this part of the video I was thinking about that if I would be schizophrenia, then what would be my halluciation? Having this kind of hallucinations are like having a constantly returning nightmare, and I would be going crazy within a few weeks, and my dream is not that brutal as Cecilia’s. 

She has 3 hallucinations. The first one is about a Clown.

He looks like the clown of the movie “It”. She learnt how to not knowledge his presence, but she always can see him, even when she is not looking at him, because the bright colours of his face and hair. He is giggling, poking her, and sometimes even biting her. 

The second kind of hallucination is about spiders. Sometimes they look like normal spiders, and it’s really difficult for her to find out that it is real or not, because you can see spiders in real life too.

But often she is hallucinating about a giant spider. It’s large, has leatherly skin, black legs and yellow body. When it’s moves it’s legs, the crealing of the legs sounds like young children laughing.

But the most brutal hallucination is about a girl, who looks like this:

She is scarier for me than the clown, because we can see the clown’s mimic, and eyes, but you can’t see anything from this girl, expect for her hair. She always knows what to say and when to say it to chip away Cecilia’s insecurities. She also has a knife with her, and she ofter stabs Cecilia.

Cecilia started to have this hallucinations at the first year of college, and it was really difficult for her to concencrate on her tasks because she was hallucinating too much. So after a while she attemted suicide. It took for her 8 months to get medicine, because when she called her mother and said: “Mum, I am sick. I seeing thing that arent there, I need medicine. I need to talk with a doctor. “ Her mother refused, because according to her people would think about her like this:

She claimed that it was the best decision of her life to ask for medicine, because without it she wouldn’t be alive today. 

She was in hospitalization for 4 times already, but she began to speak about her illnes after the 2nd time. This time the police was involved. They dragged out her from her dormroom in front of her roommates, and took her to the police station with a car in front of her friends. When she came back everyone was curious what has happaned, so she opened up in  blogpost. She got many supporting messages, and even a few of her friends opened up for her as well that they are also suffering from this as well. 

Now, she is the founder of Students with Schizphrenia. They try to help to the students to how to deal with their illnes, and they can stay in college and be successful.

The whole message of this speech was that it’s ok to have mental illnes, it’s ok to ask for help, and it’s ok to speak about it.  

[ghostcarpress]

Lost Monster Cereals #15

Big Green Melon From Outer Space: Watermelon flavored cereal with vanilla flavored marshmallows. Introduced 1986, discontinued 1987. Briefly reintroduced in select markets 1991.

Big Green Melon From Outer Space comes from a run of Monster Cereals in the mid to late 1980s that were created to help promote horror/monster movies (this line included such cereals as Attack of the UnPOPable Bubble Yum and Cereal Killer). This move was seen as questionable since the films being promoted were either too mature for children or the movies ended up being huge box office flops. Big Green Melon was created to promote the now-cult-classic Little Shop of Horrors. 

Unfortunately the movie tanked at the box office, so the cereal was quickly phased out. Another reason for the cereal’s demise was the inclusion of the “Grow-Your-Own Audrey II” prize in the final production run of the cereal. While the idea was clever and played into a plot point from the movie, the execution was not well thought out. Some packets were not properly sealed so seeds would get into the creal. While the seeds were non-toxic and not a danger if eaten, many people were put off by this. So General Mills recalled all what remaining stock was still in stores, and just pulled the plug on the cereal altogether.

The cereal was briefly brought back in select test-markets to promote the very short lived Little Shop animated series on Fox Kids. This run replaced the original Big Green monster on the front of the box with the cartoon character from the show. This was the first, and only, time a non-original monster character was used as a Monster Cereal mascot. This move made some Monster Mouths declare this run of the cereal non-canonical. Plans were to roll the cereal out nationally again, but with the quick cancellation of the show, those plans were scrapped.

While Little Shop of Horrors didn’t do well in theaters, it has gained a huge cult since then. Because of this, interest in the cereal has also increased. Rumors on the cereal message boards were that General Mills was going to re-release Big Green Melon in 2016 for its 30th anniversary, but it never came to pass.

During the 2003 Broadway revival of the musical, set dressers put a box of Big Green Melon on the shelf of Seymour’s bedroom as a small easter egg.

See all the Lost Monster Cereals here Buy the Lost Monster Cereal originals here