The midsummer night’s nightmare

It’s our annual tradition.. the panic mode has set in. We are on the ‘other side’ of summer.. the day are slowly shortening *(for now) .. and soon the heat we complain about will be filled with the smell of bus fumes and autumn air… The summer of 2025: No secrets during this nightmare..

The Summer of No Secrets

There’s something about the middle of summer that feels like a mirage. It’s hot, humid, sun-drenched.. But then you look at the calendar and realize: We are already on the way down. The days are getting shorter. The lightning bugs have peaked.. If you were lucky enough to see them. The school supply aisle is back. Halloween decor is back–that one we are ok with.

It always happens fast, but this year feels different. More abrupt. More exposed. Maybe it’s because, like everything else, even the season feels under surveillance.

Take the pop culture moment of the week: A CEO from Astronomer was forced to resign after he was caught on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert snuggling with employee. Their spouses were undoubtedly as shocked as they were..

You’d think that would be the most wholesome thing to happen all year. But the clip went viral, and suddenly what may have been a private scandalous moment was up for public ridicule and attention.

And isn’t that the strange paradox of our time? Summer is supposed to be the season of lightness. Of youthful mistakes, of beach trips where no one cares what time it is. It’s the season of secrets. Of whispered confessions under fireworks. This is not a post to make excuses for them.. fate catches up. But in the ‘old days’ this was not a regular experience.

But now there are cameras. Everywhere. The joy is still there—just filtered through 4K resolution and comment sections. And sometimes the joy goes away when you realize others may be looking.

Beyond humans, it is fate itself that seems to view all. There’s a certain seemingly-paranormal eye that always watches, right?

Think about this: whenever you’ve done something in life that was a little mischievous or devious, you got caught. Maybe not at first.. it could take a few weeks. But something would happen where eventually the truth came out. Like Stephen King says—everything is eventual. Or it is just that there is really is no such thing as a secret that doesn’t eventually surface.

The CEO’s secret didn’t just come out, it became a meme. A supernova megatronic meme. You’ve probably already seen it, maybe even laughed at it. Your feed might be flooded right now with every possible variation of his shocked face photoshopped next to horror icons, sitcom stills, or surreal internet in-jokes. It’s funny. It’s wild and overexposed. And behind the laughter, there’s a real human moment—awkward, intimate, maybe painful—that’s now everyone’s punchline.

It feels like every summer now has its sacrificial billionaire. One year it’s a doomed submersible. Another, a PR disaster or a fall from grace. This year? A concert and a kiss. Comparatively tame, but just as culturally ravenous a feeding frenzy we have had in quite a while. If you’re rich in the summer of 2025, tread lightly. July heat won’t save you from the internet’s fire.

Since this is The Horror Report, we’d be remiss not to share one of the standout memes: Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ..

The truth hiding beneath the meme is darker: cameras are everywhere. Secrets are nowhere. The second you leave your house, you’re probably on film. And depending on how you feel about smart tech, you might not even be safe in your own living room.

So here we are…mid-July, drenched in sun and surveillance. Summer used to be a time for disappearing into the moment. Now it feels like we’re all starring in some strange documentary we never agreed to be in.

Here’s to the few moments that still belong just to us. If they exist.

For the sake of history, we will re-broadcast what we wrote in 2002 on the HORROR REPORT .. IT is strange, so many summers ago now, ancient history .. but I remember the feeling when I wrote this post. It was very late at night.. I think in that point in my youth I was drinking BUD ICE (remember that? ) .. and I was listening to classical music loudly when I wrote this stream of midsummer consciousness .. a rerun presented to you in 2025, the year of our lord:

March on, march on!
Triumphant.
Let the music roll
The bombs bursting in the air of the hateful
The tide running low and then high, bringing in pond of the ocean on the rivers of the barge
The maiden is singing through the window at her bride to be.
The widow is singing at the graveyard of her husband that was.
The music rolls on.
March on, March on!
Louder, louder!
Swiftly

Suddenly, the perils of the future become apparent.
Marching down the aisles of the school and college.
The grade school has no boundary, but the high school has pain.
The college has promise but the reality has no gain.


The music rolls on. Slower.
Triumphant none the less.
Chills running down the spines of parents in their seats and in their heavens and hells.
MORE.
Here they come.
Students and gang members and drunks and dug addicts.
Ready to march into the uncertainties of life. More and more.
MORE come down.
More music rolls.
They take their seats.
Surrounded by God and Satan all on one chair.
Chills moving through the bodies of those even without feelings.
A hush comes over the crowd….
Crack open a cold one. Light up a hot one.
The music says the days are numbered
The time is over.
It keeps playing. Rewind. Fast Forward, it doesn’t leave your head.
Blood flowing, grandmothers growing. All in the night. All at the drop of a hat.

The bottle gone empty. The blunt blunted. The police are here.
Students and young adults don’t know where they are because their parents never gave them
direction. Their parents never gave them direction because they lost the path.
The battles that raged were won by no one and fought by everyone. We are lost. We lost. They lost us, now we can’t even find a war to fight.
No one wants to fight a war that is un-winnable

But the march goes on. The beat continues. More and more walk down that aisle for their fateful visit with the hand of time. It gets no easier, does it? IT gets only more painful.
The hand extended, the face stony. The music greets them like a violent storm in the night.
They need to listen but they dread to hear it. The beat marches on with their feet. Platform and leather soled, their hats and tassels turn. They’re finished.

On with life! On with death!
On with hate! And on with crystal meth. It doesn’t get any better, does it? Civil marches and freedoms goodbye. Holy alliances oout the window.
Fear and loathing sense their home. Something has gotten into our blood. We are bloodless?

The music rolls on. Coming to a conclusion.; Wind blows and doors slam.
What the hell are we even doing this for?
We’re dreaming the impossible, nightmare visions of reality in our lives.
All this and the march keeps marching, the beat keeps beating.

All this in a midsummer night’s dream…

Horror-Report, July 25, 2002 9:00 pm EDT