I'll come up with something in a minute.

The Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Fifty)

2012-02-13T23:34:00.001-05:00

The Return of Jack Collier

A Jack Collier Story

By Brett N. Lashuay

Chapter Fifty: The Problem with the Check

I flew back to California on my own and only for the day. Alice is coming up this weekend, and I sort of know what that’s going to lead to. That doesn’t matter though, I’ll deal with that later. Right now I’m going to deal with this side trip, which will possibly allow you to understand one or two things. The thing is that I’m not sure anyone really understands the problem I have with the money.

I know Debbie doesn’t get it, I know Alice doesn’t get it, I know Jill doesn’t get it. Karen gets it, and for that I’m grateful, but Karen gets exasperated with me for complaining about it. It’s not just that everyone I’ve known who was rich was a shit, it’s that a lot of people who didn’t use to have money who got it later are the worst of them all. All the rich people I’ve wanted to shoot have all been the kind who gained fortunes. People who are born into it are annoying, but the people who gained it later are worse. They’re worse than the people who were born into it because the formerly poor have both a chip on their shoulder about having to have once been a pleb and no training in how to be a rich person. At least those born into it can actually pull off haughty, instead of trying to affect it in an attempt not to show that they’re still the scared little looser they were when they were poor.

The always rich just sort of toss their money around indiscriminately. They’ve always had someone to take care of things, whatever it is, so they think they can just toss a wad of bills and that’ll make everything all better. Once they pay for something they stop thinking about it, and then they get back to stealing every penny they can get because that’s how rich people stay rich. The poor become utter bastards because they’ve always been aware that money can buy power, but they never understand that there’s more to it than money. As a result, the people who pretend they earned money by stealing other people’s ideas, claiming credit for other people’s work and committing outright fraud that gets people killed are the sort you should just shoot on sight.

You see where I’m going with this? Give me money and I could become one of those fuckers. We lived in a trailer for five years after Dad got out of the army. A fucking single wide trailer! So I’ve been poor. Not really hungry, we always had food. Not ever barefoot, we always had shoes. Never on assistance, but we got close a couple of times. I heard a quite and desperate conversation one day because my sister was using one of the bathrooms and I had to use the one next to my parent’s room. When I got to the door of the bathroom, which was kitty corner to the door of my parent’s room, I heard a conversation that has haunted me my whole life.

People in movies argue loudly about money, they shout and yell and scream at each other. Real life, at least my real life, ain’t like that. My parents were standing next to their bed, muttering to each other. They were using soft voices so that my sister and I wouldn’t know about the problem. Dad was telling mom that they’d have to get rid of one of the cars. He said his Datsun was too expensive to keep fixing, paying for the insurance and all the other little things. Mom didn’t like the idea, but the fact evidently was that something had to go. So dad sold his blue Datsun and they shared the other car. We lived in a situation that almost no one I know can even begin to understand. No, Karen understands, but there are other issues there as I said.

When I was young and beautiful, people wanted me around. People with money think their money can buy anything.

Now, I’m the semi-sorta-owner of a business that this year has made something in the tune of twenty million dollars if you total up all the stock in Piper Foods along with the cash and bonds. And what was the first thing we did when we found out how rich we were? We decided to throw money at Dale’s family. I still flew out there to give Dale’s boyfriend the check myself, but I can’t help but feel like I was just trying to buy my way out of the guilt.

I got to the San Francisco office and got Shiri to take me to what had been Dale and Adam’s place, but was now just Adam’s alone. She introduced us and then more or less faded back when I came in to talk to him. He had a decent place, Ikea couch and chairs, probably the glass coffee table that separated us was from there too. I didn’t recognize it though, glass coffee tables are a tad ubiquitous looking even if they aren’t as common as they used to be.

“How are you holding up?” I asked him as I sat down.

“I’m holding.” He said, running his fingers through his fawn colored hair. “I got a check from an insurance company. They said something about the agency having a policy on him.”

“Yeah.” I said. “About that.”

“What about it?” He asked. “Is there a mistake?”

“Sort of.”

“I spent the money already.” He said, looking panicked and a little angry.

“That’s not the problem.” I said pulling the envelope out of my pocket and looking at it. “I’ve got another check that our client sort of requested we give you, but I want to talk to you about it before I give it to you.”

“What about?”

“I want you to understand something.” I held up the envelope. “I don’t mind giving you the check, but I don’t approve of it.”

“Why?” He looked like he wanted to get offended, but his eyes went to Shiri and I saw her make a motion out of the corner of my eye.

“Because it wasn’t my idea of how you do these things.” I said. “The boss lady, Debbie, her dad made a good living. They were never millionaires, but she’s always had money. The client, Jill Piper, her folks were millionaires. She’s never known a world without money. I never had two nickels of my very own to rub together until I was in my mid-twenties.”

“We were behind on this place.” Adam said. “They were going to foreclose. The money from… I used Dale’s money to pay off the mortgage.”

“So you not only have never had two nickels, you still don’t.” I said.

“I used to.” He said. “My parents just didn’t want anything to do with a gay son, so I was disowned. They thought if they took away the trust fund I’d de-gay myself.”

“Ah.” I said looking at the envelope. “So you know about people with money.”

“I know about people with money.” He nodded.

“I want to you know about a few things.” I said. “You know the guy who killed Dale escaped.”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“You know he got all the way to Michigan and was killed?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

“Do you know how he died?”

“The man who killed Dale?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Suffice to say I, ah, immolated the mother fucker.”

“Immolated?” He asked. “As in burned?”

“Yes.” I said. “That’s how someone on my level, my pay grade if you will, deals with an issue. I see something wrong and I do something about it. What he did to Dale was wrong, so I took corrective action and he understands his error now and won’t ever be doing anything like that again. That’s what you do at my level, you deal with the issue.”

“And the boss and client?”

“People at their pay grade just try to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “They do.”

“Well I don’t.” I tapped the envelope in my hand with the index finger. “I’m not saying you don’t deserve this. What I’m saying is I know you can’t just go down to the pet shop and pick out a new guy like some kind of puppy.”

I set the check down and slid it across the glass coffee table toward him. He picked it up and opened the envelope, having a look at the check. He then looked at the check again and raised his eye brows. He looked at me, holding the check up to show me the amount.

“Is this right?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Which is why the whole thing bothers me. No matter how much I’m trying to tell you that I’m not trying to buy my way out of the guilt, the number on that check call me a liar.”

“That’s what you think?”

“I do.” I told him. “No matter what I do, did or even what I say, that check says that I don’t think you’ll really understand unless I try to pay you off.”

“I could give it back.” He said.

“No.” I shook my head at that. “No, you deserve the money. Debbie’s paying off another two family members who were killed in Chicago.”

“You say paying off?” He asked.

“I doubt she’s having anything like this conversation with them.” I said. “Nothing like a talk on this level.”

“A ground level talk.” He suggested. “A talk at our paygrade.”

“Yeah.” I agreed.

“I know that you don’t expect that an amount of money will make it all better.” He said. “I appreciate that Dale’s killed was taken care of. And you’re right, knowing that is better than the money, but the money will help with things.”

“Okay.” I said standing.

“Thanks for coming.” He said.

“No problem.” I said.

“You did okay.” Shiri said as we drove back to the office.

“You doing okay with this?” I asked.

“I’m coping.” She said.

“I’ve got a smaller check in my pocket.” I told her. “I’m supposed to tell you that it’s for meritorious service, but it’s also a payoff. Debbie’s pretty unhappy about all you went through and she thinks that giving you a chunk of change will take her guilt away.”

“Will it?” She asked.

“Probably.” I said. “She probably will think that she’s done all she can and that you’ll appreciate an extra hundred grand in your pocket.”

“I will.” She said. “And you shouldn’t be so hard on her.”

“Why not?”

“It does help, you know.” She said. “I’ll feel a hell of a lot better with, what seventy K after taxes?”

“She took taxes into account, you’ll take home a hundred.”

“Pretty bitchin’ then.” She announced. “I can deal with that. Not everyone looks at things like you do. I work for her. I am in this for the money and I didn’t die, so I’ll take the bonus.”

“Yeah.” I said. “I’m probably just paranoid.”

“Probably.” She said. “When you go back, are you sticking with Debbie or that federal agent?”

“I’m supposed to be announcing the answer to that very question.” I said. “And if you want the truth there is also the teenage millionaire we saved, and a shrink in the running. And just to complicate matters, I’ve been told I can choose up to five of those four women on offer.”

“I see.” She said. “So they’re even willing to allow you an unknown late runner?”

“Yeah.” I said.

“So what are you going to choose Jack?” She asked. “Which one and what amount? One, two, three, all? Who?”

“Yeah.” I said, to say something. “That’s the sort of questions they’re asking.”

Project Watch 'Em All - Day Three

2012-02-13T12:47:00.001-05:00

I finished The Last Swordship yesterday, but it was a struggle. Hard to read subtitles and a story that was cliche as hell. I guessed who the mystery baddie was the first time I saw them on screen.

So today, before I leave for work, I'm watching the Hammer version of The Mummy. So far, it's much better.

Project Watch 'Em All - Day Two

2012-02-12T14:07:00.001-05:00

Today I watch The Lost Sword Ship.

I'm hoping the 93 minutes fil;m goes faster than Spartacus did. I'd sort of forgotten that Spartacus ends about 30 minutes before the movie stops running. Epics are always a problem though, and one day, when I get back to writing reviews, I'll explain why.

For now, I'll watch this thing.

I can already tell you, it's gonna be tough. Burned in subtitles and it looks like the edges have been cut off, loosing words on each side.

Project Watch 'Em All - Day One

2012-02-11T15:21:00.000-05:00

I have a lot of DVDS that I haven't watched. I have decided it's time to do something about that. I'll watch at least one disc a day, until I've got them all watched. More or less, I may skip special features and I'll stop watching if a movie or show sucks. I'll also skip stuff of Syd's that I have no interest in.

I'm going to start with The Criterion Collection DVD of Spartacus that I got like, a year and a half ago.

I don't know why I've never watched it, I just haven't. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Forty-Nine)

2012-02-10T17:42:00.001-05:00

The Return of Jack Collier

A Jack Collier Story

By Brett N. Lashuay

Chapter Forty-Nine: She Gave Her Angels

She gave her angels, that summer night

Prince

You ever have one of those days where you find you suddenly understand a character in a book? I mean a character that you previously didn’t empathize with, but then something happens to you and you find that you’re suddenly sitting there thinking that this must be exactly how The Badger must have felt when Toad stole that stupid motor car or whatever.

I found, as I opened the inner door that separated his office from mine that Jack made me understand a character. I understood Trillian in a way I never had before. In Life the Universe and Everything, she keeps trying to engage Zaphod, but he keeps being aloof and depressed. Eventually she walks out on him and I remember being sort of exasperated and I may have even shouted ‘Finally!’ when she just teleported herself the hell out of his life. I couldn’t understand standing by while the guy just let his depression eat him up. And there I was, watching my own version of Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting morose in the center of his greatest success and I wasn’t getting the hell out of there either. Oh Trillian, I misjudged you.

He was sitting at his desk, sunk low in his chair, which is never a good sign. He had that look on his face, like he was trying to bend a spoon in Hyde Park using the power of his mind. I’m not sure he’d left the day before, since he was wearing the same shirt that he’d had on the night before and was there when I’d gotten there. He looked like he wanted to bite something, and there I was, thinking of putting my head in his mouth.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked as I entered his office.

“What?” He asked, sharply but not angrily.

“Why does the money bother you so much?”

“You really want to know?” He sat up straight and half leaned across his desk.

“Yes.” I said. “Why does it do this to you?”

“People with money are fuckers.” He said.

“What?”

“Everyone I’ve ever known, who had anything like money, was a complete and total shit.” He almost snarled as he spoke. “They think their money will buy anything, they think they don’t have to be decent human beings, and most of them are so stupid that you actually feel yourself getting dumber by talking to them.”

“You never had a problem with Liberty.” I said, putting my hands on my hips and tilting my head at him.

“Yes, I did.” He said, leaning his head forward and glaring at me. “Liberty is beautiful, and clever, and selfish. She knows how to get things, giving away whatever seems like it’ll cause her the least trouble. She bought me and sold me when I was a kid. Then, years later, when she needed something again she came and decided to buy me again. You think that car was a thank you? It was a payoff. It was just a more complicated one than a check.”

“So why did you…?” I started, but how do you ask that question?

“Because she fucks like a wild minx.” He said, more bluntly than I wanted to hear really. “Men are not smart, or deep, or spiritual. When you women do your little tricks that excite us, we loose precious brain blood and can’t do no good thinkin’ ‘bout things. We get the idea of hot monkey sex in our heads and our tiny little brains refuse to process anything not connected to the acquisition of that sex.”

“And she has money.” I said. “And people want to be around money.”

“Maybe other people do.” He said. “I’m not smart to begin with, so making me stupid with the idea of sexual gratification takes me down to a level of grunts and growls.”

“What about Char?” I asked. “She’s not a shit is she?”

“Char is sort of a shit when it comes to the money.” He said. “She uses money to get what she wants. She buys her way out of obligations, pays off people when they become tiresome. Char is okay, if you keep her at the right distance, but I wouldn’t want to be twenty-four and in her sights again.”

“What about me then?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest, readying myself for the blow. “Am I a shit?”

“You can be a little selfish sometimes.” He said, raising a palm. “You can be a bit spoiled once in a while.”

“I see.” I’m not sure if I looked like I was about to burst into tears, but I felt like I was. “So I’m a shit too.”

“You aren’t a shit.” He announced.

“Just selfish and spoiled?” I asked.

“Sit down.” He said pointing at the red leather chair.

“I don’t feel like sitting.” I’m afraid something had come up from someplace and I was having a bit of a moment.

“Sit down!” He stood up and shouted so loud that my legs ignored whatever orders my brain was giving about steadfastness and sank into the blue chair. I couldn’t get them to listen, but I could at least disobey a little.

“I’m sitting now master.” I managed to snap at him, putting my feet flat, my knees together and my fists on the arm of the chair so I could avoid the classic position of supplication. “Do you want me to pant like a dog too?”

He walked around the desk, and I was positive that he was going to hit me. I stuck my chin out, because I was going to be damned if I would flinch from his blow. I did close my eyes though, because I didn’t want to see it coming. If I could see it coming, I might flinch. He stood in front of me, and I could hear his breathing as he stood there. His breath came out twice, each time sounding like a bull’s snort.

And then I felt the back of his hand.

However, it was not a well deserved smack that I got. He stroked at my cheek with his knuckles, and then started wiping the tears from my eyes with his thumbs. He held my face in both his hands while he worked, and I could hear a sort of resigned sigh come from him. I felt horrible then, thinking like I had that he intended to beat me.

“You are a little selfish sometimes.” He almost whispered the words to me. “You are a little spoiled once in a while. A little. Once in a while. These are flaws, but they’re your flaws and I love you for them. I am unreasonable and difficult to talk to because of my propensity towards sullen silences and my paranoid need to never tell anyone anything. These are flaws and they’re my flaws, but I can make you come so hard that you need to use your fingers to uncurl your toes so you forgive me for them.”

“That’s not why...” I started to say, and then he did slap me.

“Man is talking.” He didn’t slap hard, not excessive. It was the sort of open handed slap he’d learned to give as part of our play time, just like the phrase. I suppose if you don’t get that sort of play then there isn’t a good way to explain why it made me feel so good.

“Sorry. I just sometimes think…” I was cut off when he gave me an almost identical slap across the other cheek.

“When spoken to.” He told me and then leaned back.

I know he’s not really comfortable with this, but he knows I like it. If I didn’t explain to him my need for correction, he would never even raise his voice, he never did in the past. He’s only started since we started again, after I told him about my college level discoveries.

“Yes Jack.” I said, putting my hands in my lap like a good girl. “Sorry Jack. I deserve another one Jack.”

“I’ll decide when you need hit.” He told me, which is just mean. Getting me started like that and then saying that was enough.

“Yes Jack.” I tried not to sound disappointed, but I was just starting to enjoy that.

“What the hell am I going to do with you?”

“Put me over your knee and tan my hide, Jack?” I bit my lower lip and flashed my eyes at him. He likes that, it makes him open to suggestion. “Tie me to the bed post and flog me?”

“While it would pass the time, that’s not exactly what I was referring to.” He said.

“I know Jack.” I said.

“You want me to answer that dangling question, don’t you?” He asked.

“Not just me.” I said. “Jill and Alice deserve and answer to it, so does Karen for that matter. You should really have some kind of decision for them this weekend.”

“You’ve been arranging things, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.” I said, and felt an impish little smile crawling on my lips.

“You have an opinion?” He folded his arms across his manly chest and glared at me.

“I like Alice.” I said. “Jill is okay, but she’s got a lot of growing up to do. You know how I feel about Karen.”

“That ain’t no kind of answer and you know it.” He said.

“I can’t pick for you.” I said.

“Do you think we could do it?” He asked. “Could you manage it?”

“Can you?” I asked. “That’s really the important question.”

“I asked you first.”

“You know I can.” I said. “Now, can you?”

“I’m still thinking about it.” He said. “When have you arranged for Alice to get here?”

“She’ll get her Friday.” I told him. “Karen and Jill have cleared their schedules so we can all line up in front of you in silky lingerie, and try to entice you.”

“I see.” He said. “You know what?”

“What Jack?”

“I’m going to take your suggestion.”

“Which one Jack?” I asked, I couldn’t remember making one.

“When we get home, I am going to tie you to the bed post and we’re going to see how bright of a red your ass can get.”

“Are we Jack?”

“Yes.” He said. “I think you’ve got it coming.”

“Am I being punished or rewarded Jack?” I asked, leaning forward so he could look down my shirt.

“Well, we’ll see how you feel about it after it happens.” He said.

“You’re going to have to say something definite.” I told him.

“Fine, you’re being punished.” He said.

“Not just about that.”

“Yeah.” He said sitting down in the red leather chair and taking my hand in his.

“You really don’t have to choose between us you know.” I told him. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can pick everything and go with it.”

“Maybe.” He said. “Maybe.”

“You’re going to have to pick, why not just do it?” I asked.

“Just do it?” He mused.

“You can’t wait around forever,” I told him. “This requires action on your part.”

“You’re right.” He said and seized his hand around my wrist. He yanked me across to him and with a pretty quick motion had me across his knee with my fanny aimed in the air. I cried again, my mascara ran a lot, but it was just from the pain of being spanked. He made good on his word when we got home too. That’s why I’ve got to type this while standing. That’s a good pain though, I like this pain. It makes it hard to sit, but it makes me happy in my heart.

Assache I can handle, it’s heartache I can’t abide.

Picture Post #46

2012-02-09T07:32:00.001-05:00

This time, you get a small selection...

Fear and Loathing - A Dual Review

2012-02-07T12:46:00.002-05:00

So I got a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on BluRay a couple of weeks ago. And I decided to watch it, and it surprised me. What, at first glance, looks like a simple movie about two guys going on a drug fueled rampage through Sin City actually becomes a movie about the death of The American Dream. At least, the dream as far as the young people of the Sixties understood it. There is far more going on here for the characters than just abusing drugs and everyone around them. There is a reaction about what a world that looked like it was all about to go right going very, very wrong. This all comes together in The Wave Speech, which may be one of the only places where the whole thing is actually articulated.

I decided to get the book after watching the movie and give it a read. The book is like the movie, only more so in some places. The problem is, I got to a point in the book where it started to be work. It stopped being a story, or a novel, and became Literature and as such, was work to finish. Still, an interesting read. There are of course, two problems for someone of my age and generation.

Problem One: My generation has never known The American Dream as anything but a joke. We have always had the idea scoffed at, and we in turn scoff at it. Horatio Alger’s dream had long since become the Great American Fever Dream by the time we understood it and has since evolved into the Great American Nightmare. We don’t even understand Alger, we just know he’s dangerous and wrong.

Problem Two: Gonzo Journalism, while an interesting idea at first, became something incredibly dangerous. We might say it’s cool to say the fiction can tell more truth than the facts, but then we turn around and complain about Fox News and its loose interpretation of the word Accuracy. What are they doing if not forming a “truer” version of events? Well, truer for them anyway.

I think my generation grew up with the dark side of every bright shining dream. We’ve seen the potential, and we’ve seen what became of it. Any wonder why we’re so cynical?

Picture Post #45: Zebra Fight

2012-02-07T12:13:00.001-05:00

These zebra's aren't actually figthing. This is a father and son roughhousing.

Picture Post #44

2012-02-05T11:44:00.002-05:00

There are two seperate trips to the zoo here, but they're only 2 days apart.

Syd wanted this shot, she said that snow covered animals are always around, but that snow on bushes is ephemeral.

Reading – Part Four: The Fat Man

2012-02-04T19:10:00.002-05:00

It’s not that this series brought me back to reading or anything, but I want to talk about it and whose web space is this anyway? Yeah, so, you just sit there. You sit there and you read what I’ve written about a series of books that probably ended before you were even born.

Actually, let’s address this for a moment, most the books I read are by dead authors. I assume it’s because I have some sort of affection for an older style of writing, cheaper books, or for days gone by. Yeah, that’s probably it. It’s probably the days gone by thing. I dream of the days when people knew that “contact” was not a verb and hipsters hadn’t ruined everything by using the word “ironic” to mean… whatever the hell it is hipsters think it means. A simpler time, when being 300 pounds was extraordinary, when being OCD was merely called having “quirky” habits, having a Swiss chef wasn’t yet common place, and growing orchids on a rooftop in Manhattan was something you only did if you had lots and lots of money. Now, all those douchebag hipsters do it, ruining those simple pleasures forever. Damn hipsters.

So yeah, if you haven’t guessed yet, and I suspect only four of you have, I’m talking about Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. Now this links nicely to the bit I posted yesterday, because the A&E channel comes into it again. See, in 2000 they made a one off TV movie, that led to a show called A Nero Wolfe Mystery, which was based completely on Rex Stout’s writings. In fact, so complete was the transition that any little changes tend to jump out at you. Those changes tended to be small, and were generally put in for production reasons, so it’s no problem. It was a great show, but it only lasted two seasons. When it came out on DVD, I got interested in the series again and decided to get some of the books.

Now, there is a reason why this wasn’t higher on the list or really part of the original trilogy of posts. While I’ve got the entire series on audiobook, and indeed is the only series in all the ones so far mentioned where I’ve got them all, I’ve actually only read two of the books. And Four to Go & Too Many Cooks. I listened to the rest, getting them one set at a time from libraries and recording them myself onto the computer. I have downloaded very few books, opting to buy them or borrow from the library. Then I would record them digitally and listen to them first on a MiniDisc Walkman then an ipod and even later than that an ipod nano. Why did I tell you all that? Just so you’d get where I’m coming from. I just want it clearly understood that I haven’t listened to the radio since 1991 and I have no idea who that DJ you keep referencing is or what the wacky morning show guys did this time which is the same tired crap they’ve been doing since about 1924.

Point is, the Nero Wolfe series is probably my favorite book series of all time. I have actually read all of it, or at least listened to all of it, several times and I greatly enjoy it.

It’s a story in the Watson style, which is a name I invented for this style of work. The Watson Style is one in which a less intelligent character describes his or her adventures with a brilliant character. The Watson is usually competent, but less so than the genius. We see The Watson from Sherlock Holmes, to the Jeeves stories of PG Wodehouse, to the Philo Vance and into this series. It’s dropped off a bit the last few decades, but you still find it from time to time.

In this case, Archie Goodwin talks about his boss, Nero Wolfe. However, unlike many of the other stories, Archie is not worshipful of Wolfe. If anything, Archie is sort of contemptible of his boss, calling him a big fat bum and deriding him almost as much to his face as he does in the narration. Archie’s job in the books is to present a foil for Wolfe and as much as anything else, a tack for Wolfe. He prods Wolfe into motion, getting him to work on the problem at hand and not drift off into the sort of ADD lapses that affect all geniuses.

The stories are a bit different from a lot of the mystery you got at the time when they started. Stout was standing between two worlds, writing drawing room murders while they were being turned away by the hardboiled detective stories that were emerging from the pulps. If anything a nice contrast is struck between those two worlds with these two detectives. Archie would have been a rough and tumble hardboiled detective, if not for his association with drawing room style Wolfe.

As a result, the stories a strike a good and at the time anyway, popular balance between the two worlds. Stout’s books sold very well, and were made into movies and radio shows back in the 40s, as well as at least one other television series that I’ve never seen. The A&E series is probably the most popular though, or at least the one that is most well known to the current generation.

The books themselves are a little obscure these days though, most people haven’t ever read one. Like Wodehouse, another formerly popular writer that’s rarely read by kids these days. Probably, the lack of interest is because of a lack of purity about the books. They aren’t pure drawing room, they aren’t pure hardboiled. They’re not completely hetro-normal, but they’re not actually queer literature either. These are muddled books, standing firm at the crossroads of time, and as such must be read for enjoyment rather than actually used as examples of great popular literature from the early 20th century. Of course you can read the books academically if you want, you can read anything that way if you desire, but you’ll have more fun if you just sit back and let Archie think about shooting whatever book Wolfe is currently reading out of his hand. At this angle it would be a cinch and he wouldn’t risk hurting Wolfe at all.

Reading – Part Three: The Second Professor

2012-02-03T20:58:00.001-05:00

So we’ve established that I listen to audiobooks, right? Okay, have we established that I listen to mystery audiobooks? Have we further established that I have an easier time listening to mystery stories than I do reading them? It’s true, and I have no explanation for it beyond “It’s a thing that happens” which isn’t helpful for anyone. However, it is true that for a long time, I listened to tons and tons of mystery audiobooks. As a matter of fact, I listened to a lot of mystery short stories, but that’s not important right now.

In fact, the amount I listen to audiobooks is only sort of germane to this conversation and I’m really just using it to link to the last post where I talked about reading and I suppose to the first post as well. Got that? Good, because you will be tested on this later. Not normal tested. Not paper and pencil tested. I’m going to test you GLaDOS style! How learning about books I’ve read will help you survive those turrets (oh so many turrets) is still sort of… well, let’s just say I didn’t think too far beyond getting the turrets. Yeah, you’re probably going to die, but at least you’ll die listening to Cave Johnson rant about combustible lemons.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Mystery novels. So I like watching and listening to dramatizations of Agatha Christie’s work, but I hate reading it. No, she was never a professor, calm down. This story isn’t about Agatha Christie! Calm down, I’m going to get to who this is about. Christie’s writing style has always grated on my nerves. Partly it’s the Tab A into Slot B style she developed later in her career, partly it’s the convoluted murders, but mostly it’s the head descriptions. You can only take so many heart shaped faced and egg shaped heads before you start throwing the tablet shaped book at the slate shaped wall. Seriously, there is something just amazingly tedious about how she describes people.

I know, you want to know how this becomes relevant. Well, maybe it doesn’t. Did you ever think about that? The sad thing is, most of you probably said “Yeah, after years of reading your shit, we have.” and for that, you are all cordially invited to go to hell.

I do like watching adaptations of Christie’s work, and that is how I ended up watching Poirot on A&E. For those of you not from America, A&E is a station that used to show interesting things like British TV shows, documentaries, and the occasional original program before they devolved into another reality TV slot. They it was who got me hooked on Nero Wolfe, and were I still talking about audiobooks, we would probably be talking about Rex Stout’s work. However, we’re talking about actual reading and as such Rex needs to stay to one side for the moment.

While watching Poirot, I saw a commercial for an original movie that A&E was promoting for Robert B. Parker’s novel Small Vices. I’d never read any Spenser stories, but I knew it was a TV show in the 80s, and I was into mystery so I gave it a watch. My mind did not equal blown. It was an interesting story, and it was sort of funny watching them try to pretend that Toronto Canada was Boston, when it was so obviously Toronto. I mean, they have a scene shot in the ROM, in a room I’ve been in, in a place where I’ve stood. However, I just thought the movie was okay. Nothing mind blowing, but I might read one of his books.

Dad bought Small Vices, but he didn’t really get into it. I didn’t read it, for whatever reason. Instead, I listened to Sudden Mischief which Dad bought on sale because he knew I had an easier time with audio. Now, that book was really interesting, and it was the next book in the series after Small Vices, so that helped. I still wasn’t blown away though. Probably, because I was older and I knew books like this existed by now.

However, I found myself grabbing Small Vices and reading that, and after that going for the newest book which was Hugger Mugger, although I got that in audio first. In fact, at this point the story gets muddled. Again, I was grabbing the books in whatever format I could find them. Some in audio, some in physical books form, and I still haven’t read the whole series. I’ve never fell in deep with the Spenser series, but I’ve always found myself reading or listening to them. I’m perfectly happy with them, but I’ve never needed the next one right now. I’ve also never felt compelled to search out any of Parker’s other series.

However, through cross contamination, I got into Chandler via Parker. Parker ripped off Chandler to a degree that would boarder on criminal if he weren’t so naked about it. He lifted the voice, the manners, even some of the character names directly from Chandler. Hell, the last line in Farwell My Lovely turns up in two Spenser novels that I can think of. Not that it matters, not really, what starts as an homage to one author quickly spreads and expands to cover so many that it becomes dizzying after a while.

Parker was an incredibly skillful writer, one that mixed complexity into a simple detective story. The name of his detective is in itself a reference to Edmund Spenser the poet behind The Faerie Queene, which… I've tried to read... I really have. That, however, is some dense shit and feels like homework in about five words. However, things like that are just an undercurrent for what is really a hardboiled detective novel. But the undercurrent is what changes Parker from another shmoe to something worth talking about.

Reading – Part Two: The First Professor

2012-01-31T04:36:00.002-05:00

So I’ve mentioned that I listen to audiobooks, right? Well, let’s discuss that a bit. See, I’ve got ADD and dyslexia, which is a major reason for me not reading so much at all during any age. Actual sitting down and reading with my eyes is a laborious, time consuming task. I cannot speed read, and I will sometimes have to go over a sentence five or six times before seeing what the writer is trying to say. As a result, I am not big on reading in the traditional sense of the word. When not concentrating, I am a major skimmer. I scan around, picking bits and pieces from the text, looking for key words, which will often annoy people because I’ll sometimes miss things that way. Mostly it works though.

I can listen though, and often I’ll hear and record things without even appearing to pay attention to what’s going on or being said. Noticing this, my father came up with an idea. If I can’t read a book, maybe I could listen to one. This lead to the purchasing of several audiobooks, and me listening to them like other kids listened to rock albums. This was possible, in part, because back in the day audiobooks kind of sucked.

See, there used to be this thing called abridged audiobooks, and while their scourge has not been completely wiped clean from the face of the earth by the flaming paw of Fancy, they have dropped off as the popular method of production. However, quite often in the 80s and early 90s, there was no choice. Many companies would sell their tapes in a paper or plastic container designed to be about the size of a paperback book. Often, you’d have two 90 minute tapes, sometimes four. Depending on the company, they’d either come in a tape case, or just held in the cardboard by a sleeve or a plastic slot. Warner Brothers were the best because they actually printed a jacket for the tapes in their tape cases so that if you didn’t keep the paper container you could have the jacket art on each tape.

Yes I know this doesn’t seem to have any connection to me actually reading, just hang on, I’m getting to it. This part needs to be told so you’ll understand the rest later. You need to understand the thing with tapes first, so you’ll get the later bits. If not for understanding how audiobooks used to work, it’s hard to understand the whole story.

Now of course that’s mostly changed. Since you can buy audiobooks on CD, which are cheaper and easier to store, or get them digitally which is easier still, abridged books are far less common. What is also gone from the world is Audiobook Club, which was a mail order service akin to the Columbia Record club wherein if you didn’t send back a card once a month you’d automatically get sent a book. This is where we finally get to our author.

Once in a while, I would forget to send the card back, and I would get a book I didn’t want in the mail. This wasn’t actually a problem though, because I could just send it back and not get charged for it. I’d always look at what the book was though, just to make sure it wasn’t something interesting. I was struck by the design of the cover of the book, which was just a shot of the clock tower of Parliament and the words Drink With The Devil along with the author’s name Jack Higgins. The premise seemed interesting enough, a gold heist goes wrong and people have to get the gold back. Okay, I thought, we’ll give this a try.

What I got in the next three hours was an exciting, uncomplicated story about Irish terrorists stealing gold, getting double crossed, coming back some ten years later and trying to get the gold back again. Yes, this was something I enjoyed! I listened to several times, passing it on to my father who also admitted enjoying it. A few months later, the next bookfrom the same author came out and we grabbed that as well. That second book convinced me that we needed to find the first books from this guy. Now, one thing about audiobooks you need to understand is their short shelf life. Some books stay on the shelves at book stores for years and years, but audiobooks tended to get shoved aside very quickly. If there were earlier audiobooks, we had a devil of a time finding any and instead we started to look around for the actual books themselves. That is the important part of the story, I was interested enough to want to find the physical books and read them. This, as it turned out, was dead easy.

See, Higgins is not a writer whose work demands careful study. He writes potboilers, adventure stuff. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to have written any cold war thrillers, which is odd because many of his Sean Dillon Books feel like they’re written for the sort of people who couldn’t get over the fact that the Cold War ended. Anti-terrorist potboilers, that’s what he wrote. Books where the same thing tends to happen over and over again in slightly different situations. Dillon shoots some people, drinks some Krug non-vintage (it’s the grape mix), and then goes scuba diving in the last third of the book. What this meant was that hardcover versions of the books were very easy to come across. People would buy them, read them and then discard them a few months later to make room for the next book on their shelf. Poke your nose into a used book shop and you could usually find one or two. It only took us a couple of months looking to find them all. In the mean time I’d gotten my hands on a couple more of the audiobooks, but that was hardly important. We’d gotten the full collection of Sean Dillon books (up to that point) in hardcover and we started reading them all from the beginning.

That was how I found out how cut to the bone Drink With The Devil really was. The entire middle of the book was removed in the abridgement. Now, granted, you could argue that the section I’m thinking of is entirely superfluous to the story, but still. That is why we hate abridgements, I’d like to decide for myself when the author is simply faffing about.

This proved to be an interesting time for us. I read the books over a few months as we acquired them, then my dad read the books over a couple of weeks, and then Syd read the books in a week, knocking out one a day. The books spread like a virus in our household. Even my mother read one or two of them, though they weren’t really to her taste as she prefers John Saul. The point is, we spread this virus out a bit, until we hit people who weren’t interested in reading or in thrillers, and then it died down a bit.

Eventually, I started to loose interest in Higgins. When my interest waned, so did everyone else’s. I can’t say why exactly I lost interest. I think my tastes just changed, because I don’t go back and listen to or read his books now a days. I didn’t think much of his post 9-11 books, maybe that was it. No, I think it’s just that I grew out of them. They were interesting for a few years, and then they were less interesting and then I just wasn’t into them anymore. For a while though, they were great fun and just the sort of thing to excite the mind of a guy in his early 20s.

And it did get me reading, and trying to read. And it got me to learn a lot about the IRA and IRA and other groups like them. Any book that makes you want to know more has to be a good book, at least in my mind. Even if it only makes you want to know more to see if the writer is full of shit or if they knows what they’re talking about.

So where does the talk about him being a professor come from? He taught Liberal Studies at Leeds Poly before his writing income gave him the freedom to quit.

Five things (Current Events Have Presented a Need for These Statments Edition)

2012-01-30T14:31:00.002-05:00

1. Until yesterday, it never occurred to me just to what extent snow storms play merry hell with autofocus. Seriously, I was trying to get a picture and all I was getting was the whir of the motor as the lens tried to fix on every falling flake.

2. 8/5ths of the time, when this blog goes silent and merely presents photographs, it's not because I've got nothing to say, but rather I've got no energy to say it.

3. I seem to have lost my ammo pack with my SD and business cards in it at the zoo. I know this, because someone at the zoo e-mailed me to let me know he'd found it and would hold it for me. I'll have to go back there tomorrow. I had a feeling that might happen with my new map bag, because the little pocket has no secure buttons for it.

4. In related news, I need new cards, a card case, half a pack of cigarettes and sunglasses that I can wear when it gets dark.

5. Going to have to make marshmallows next week, and take photos of the process for a new project that I'll discuss later.

Snow covered geese also just don't care.

2012-01-30T11:05:00.001-05:00

Snow covered camels just don't care.

2012-01-29T23:41:00.002-05:00

Reading - Part One: The Drunk

2012-01-28T23:50:00.001-05:00

I’ve hinted before that a drunk and a pair of guys who taught college are greatly responsible for the fact that I read anything after high school. I’m not sure if this is absolutely true, but it’s good for a narrative. If we say it’s true to its narrative, that doesn’t make it a lie, but rather a formed truth. That’s all blogging is anyway, and I’ve spent the last week watching and then reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So take this for what it is. One part Gonzo Journalism, one part underground literature class, two parts gin, one part vermouth.

So let’s begin with the one you all worked out a long time ago, who is The Drunk? The drunk is one Dashiell Hammett, a man so intoxicated he needed a couple of drinks inside him before he could start drinking. Hammett may not have been much of a novelist, but rather the earliest Gonzo Journalist, since many of his stories have an autobiographical ring to them. Read any of the Continental Op stories and you quickly realize that it was merely because he’d put his name on the cover that the character’s name is never said inside the books. I’m not saying the books are embellished a bit, but I am saying that most of them ring so true that they could only be from experience. He only wrote a few books, although there are a wealth of short stories, but we’re going to focus on the book that made me step back from The Brink.

Now, this is where the tale gets a little muddled. See, I never really stopped reading exactly. I always sort of read, and I always listened to audiobooks. The audiobooks thing became a dual cure when it was discovered that both ADD and dyslexia were real things that hampering the fuck out of a young boy with a curious mind. And there comic books, but lets ignore those for the moment. Audiobooks will often come up because I have hundreds upon hundreds of them. I was a member of one of those Columbia Record Club style audiobook clubs. That will come up later, so let’s leave it to one side for right now.

Besides I didn’t read this book in audio format. I don’t remember how I got it into my head to read the book, but I did. All I can think is that I was getting tired of reading The Shadow novels, which I was starting to find irritating. Tolkien no longer appealed and I was probably going through my first period of having an issue with Stephen King. I had seen The Maltese Falcon and I recognized the name on the cover as the writer of that, even though it would be years before I read that book. No, instead I saw a title and decided to try and read the book for some reason. I have a feeling that I was sitting there, thinking that reading and me were going to give it one more try and if this book didn’t turn out like I wanted then I would bullshit my way through the rest of my life pretending I’d read stuff.

So I get started on The Dain Curse and… just wow. If anyone had told me that while I was being forced to read mind numbingly pointless shit like Gentlehands, that were books out there that had stuff like this in them, I would have slapped them in their lying mouths and told them to stop lying like the lying motherfuckers that they were. See, I had been forced to read such complete and utter shit in school that I was compeletly and utterly turned off the idea of trying to read anything that didn’t have elves, dragons, machine guns, zombies, or hot Victorian sex in it.

Now, The Dain Curse has a few juicy murders, but that is so not the point. Imagine if you, that you’re an impressionable young lad, maybe 17 or so. You’ve had boring, pointless shit like The Grapes of Wrath rammed down your throat for years, although to be honest you were a little distracted by the turtle in the first chapter and kept wondering when it would return before you worked out that the turtle couldn’t help you. Five points if you understood ANY of that btw.

So, you’re about 17 right? You’re male, right? And you’ve almost come to the conclusion that comics might be the only books you read from now on, right? The Old Man and The Sea has done nothing to inspire confidence in the world of the written word, you’re done with this whole reading thing, right? Okay, now imagine reading this story where a young girl is being held quasi-hostage by charlatans posing as religious figures and cult leaders. They’ve been shooting this girl up with morphine, they kill everyone around her, they’ve fucked this little girl’s head and the only person who can help her is a guy who might not give a fuck if the world ended tomorrow.

That, perhaps, more than anything else was the thing I really liked about the book. The main character isn’t classically likeable. Oh sure, you come to like and admire him, but not in the pandering way that most writers use to get you on their side. Most writers let you know who your hero is, and that he’s the hero right away. You’re sympathy is with them from the word go, unless you’re dealing with a tedious piece of “literature” and then the character is unlikeable from the word go. What I found interesting about Hammett, is how disinterested he is in what the hell you think. His characters aren’t likeable, unlikeable, or anywhere in between, they’re people. Granted, I would later find this trick used by dozens of hard boiled writers and of course most the good film noir characters are like this too, but this was my first. You always remember the one that popped your cherry, you know?

This is also a drug book, but without the tediousness of having to read about some asshole cramming everything he can get his hands on into every orifice they’ll fit in. Sorry Hunter, enjoying your book and all, but seriously. Most your drug books are tediously annoying because they’re written from the point of view of the junkie. I can’t even remember what that piece of shit our 11th grade teacher made us read was called, but it was a book about a boy all fucked up on smack. It was from his point of view and it was all “Drugs are bad M’Kay?” and it rang about a true as a bell made of marzipan. You want a drug book? How about a description of bringing someone down of a morphine addiction? From the point of view you’re most likely to be in? “Friends help friends come down off smack, and it kind of sucks.” You sort of feel like he’s been there, like he’s describing a situation he remembers exactly what the skin of a dope fiend looks like.

I remember the light bulb switching on over my head when I read this book, because it said that you didn’t need monsters to have an interesting book. There was nothing fantastic in this book, just a lot of stuff that could really happen in real life. No ghosts, no monsters, no pen names come back from the dead to avenge themselves on the writer who killed them, just drugs and sex and madness and money and murder.

I also remember sitting there and asking aloud, “Why the hell did no one tell me there were books like this out there?” I remember being fairly offended that we’re been given unreadable shit to try and wade through… and The Great Gatsby*, while there were books like this in existence? People who wrote like this were around and we were wasting our time and effort on the crap we’d been wasting our time on? I was now offended about how English class had treated me up until that point. I could begin to comprehend the reasons as to why no one had ever given me ~~glass of ilk~~
this book.

And why not? Hammett was a dead white guy, and he wrote books. He wrote books about the human condition, and about people being shitty to each other. All the things my English teachers seemed to love! Hell, there was even pretentious stuff in the narration once in a while. Why the hell didn’t we read him in class? Was it because they were afraid we might enjoy something and take up a lifelong joy of reading? That was the only answer I could come up with. Many, many mystery books, audiobooks, and movies would soon follow. I can’t say my life long addiction to mystery stories started here, because that germ got started way earlier, but it helped.

And for that, we have a drunk who wrote trash to thank.

*Forgot the foot note! I actually liked The Great Gatsby, although I maybe the only person I know who does.

Quick Robin! To the Equality Mobile!

2012-01-25T17:12:00.002-05:00

Some one recently said that being fat makes you public property. You're no longer a person, you're an object for ridicule and disdain. Now, there is a lot to say about that, like that person is right, but also that they don't go far enough. I would like to point out at this moment some fascinating research that has come to light that when you give two mice the exact same diet, but subject one to city air and one to country air, the city mouse gets fat while the country mouse doesn't. This about that for a second, just being around cars is making you fatter. So can we please agree that eating too much isn't the cause now?

Where was I? Ah yes, fat as public property. Men get it, women get it, women get it a hell of a lot more. I think being fat does do this, but so does simply being female.

I would like you to look at this cover for GQ magazine, where a photo of Michelle Williams features prominently. Tell me she is not being treated like a piece of public property. The headline alone comes to me as "How dare this bitch not show us her tits before?" and acts as if she should have posed in her underwear a long time ago.

I would like to blame our old foe in this one, and explain why I rarely mention it.

See... when every I read the words "The Patriarchy" I tend to think of Adam West saying it. Try it with me for a moment.

Best Batman Ever: Yes Robin... it's our old foe... The Patriarchy!

The Only Robin We'll Really Accept: Holy slut shaming! (punches own palm) You're right Batman, it's the only explanation!

Best Batman Ever: I wonder what... diabolical scheme that... enslaver of souls has planned this time.

You can hear him can't you? You know The Patriarchy is played by Peter Lorre or some shit, right?

I normally roll my eyes, since I've seriously heard someone claim the patriarchy as why their shoes didn't fit them right. That is as opposed to the real problem, she bought the wrong size. However, I think that actually probably is the problem here. I mean, you can't even make a music video that's supposed to celebrate geek girls without having all the girls in it conform to the 8% body fat rule. Also, they have to be naked and on their backs. Natch!

There is a massive feeling that women are just public property, from shaming one who gets fat, drooling over anyone who happens to conform to the momentary standard, to telling one that gets raped to be glad it happened, society acts like women are public property. So yeah, for all those reasons, I want people to leave Paula Deen the hell alone. Also, I want someone to bring back the old Batman crew for one last caper against The Patriarchy, because how cool would that be?

And he could make a pun after doing it too.

BIFF! POW!

Best Batman Ever: Your days of corseting humans into rigidly defined gender roles are over Patriarchy.

Photos of Orion

2012-01-24T23:19:00.002-05:00

This is the constellation of Orion. I played with a few different filters during a cold night.

Picture Post #43

2012-01-24T18:53:00.002-05:00

Picture Post #42

2012-01-24T13:08:00.001-05:00

Picture Post #41

2012-01-23T13:36:00.001-05:00

Picture Post #40

2012-01-22T12:08:00.001-05:00

The Great Emerald Partition Almond Conspiracy

2012-01-21T17:40:00.001-05:00

So some of you may know that I’m currently paying the bills by working at a pharmacy with a convenience store attached to it. I don’t want to say the name, but it’s a national chain, one of if not the largest, and it has an Emerald Partition in it. If you’ve got a punny mind, or a thesaurus handy, you might be able to guess where it is.

So, at the Emerald Partition, we’ve got our own nice store brand and one of the things we sell are almonds. We’ve got a bunch of different kinds, but they were on sale this week. Now, I don’t want to portray our customers as vultures or anything, but the fact is that when our brand of almond goes on sale, people scoop them up. They were 2/$5 this week, which means you get about 18 ounces for 5 bucks. Compare that to the price of Blue Diamond almonds, which are $4 for 6 ounces. Mind you, Blue Diamond goes on buy one get one free sale once a month or so. I like Blue Diamonds flavors better, but if you just want normal salted almonds, they’re about the same.

AAAANYWAY! Our sales start Sunday and end Saturday, so there were NO almonds left this morning. Ah, but this was Truck Day, which is held in reverence by the customers and contempt by the employees. I have neither contempt nor reverence. It’s just a day like any other. I neither feel fear, nor elation about it. It’s just another event to be endured. That however, is neither here, nor there.

What you must understand is that the almonds were on sale, this was the last day of the sale and we were out of almonds for the time being. I was standing idle, waiting in quiet anticipation for the moment when the truck would arrive, when I was approached by an old man.

The old man scowled at the place where the almonds were not, and then looked at me, continuing to scowl because I didn’t have the good grace to flinch from his steely gimleted gaze. I have a rule at work, the bigger the smile, the less I mean it. I was giving a rather wide smile, one that looks a little too pleased with the situation, but doesn’t actually show any teeth. When I show teeth with that grin, people claim I look like I’m about to go for their throats. You have to smile though, otherwise the bastards know they’re getting to you, and you can’t let the bastards know they’re getting to you.

“You got anymore of these sale almonds?” The old man barked, with a voice that wants you to believe he saw D-Day. The problem with that is, he couldn’t have been more than 75 or possibly a well preserved 80. Let’s say he was 80, which would have made him about 13 at the end of the war. So if anything, he was a drain on resources and working for the Nazis during WWII.

“We’re all out right now sir.” I said politely and airily, as if the subject mattered little more than a butterfly’s fart. “They tend to go fast when they’re on sale and…” I did not get to finish.

For you see my dears, my darlings, this fellow was going to instruct me on economics. He was going to tell me why we really didn’t have almonds. Strange to relate, supply and demand weren’t the mainstays of his lecture.

“It’s because they know people want ‘em!” This old Nazi collaborator snapped.

“Oh?” I asked, with an air that invited more. You see, I treat every interaction with a customer the way hostage negotiators treat the nut with the AK-47. Always friendly, never contradictory, keep them talking, keep them thinking your on their side. Right now, keeping him talking seemed the wisest choice of action.

“You see, they put them on sale because they know they won’t have ‘em.” The man explained. “They know people want ‘em, so they don’t send you any. See, they don’t want people to be able to buy almonds.”

Now, I try to be reasonable. I don’t just tell people they’re idiots when they rant about how Obama is a French Canadian Presbyterian terrorist. I listen with attention when someone explains that it’s okay for the pope to rape children because he’s infallible and as such what he’s doing to kids can’t be rape. I even try to follow along when someone tells me that Bachman-Turner Overdrive woman was right to say we should open our embassies in Iran that we closed them in 1980 just so we can close them again. This had me stymied for a moment, because you can’t show your obvious contempt for the terrorist according to the negotiator’s rules.

Oh, and he wasn’t done.

“It’s a conspiracy!” He claimed, and I deserve a medal for valor, strength and extreme sexiness for not busting out laughing. “They want to keep people from being able to buy these almonds at the low price, they’ll only send you almonds after they jack up the price. That’s how it works, they keep the almonds from the people, see?”

Because that’s how a store works. You know people want to buy something, so you don’t sell it to them, right? I swear to god, at any moment I thought he was going to bring the Jews into it. He was very much the type and I’m not giving anything like the full rant here because trying to follow that rabbit hole would be never coming back without the help of some serious mushrooms. I could just hear him though, telling me that the Jews were working hard to keep almonds out of the hands of decent Americans who only want a fair shake and could have one if that Obama wasn’t hiding his learner’s permit from the white man! He kept going on though, never quite getting to the point of insinuating exactly who they were or why they were so enamored of jerking the chain of those who just wanted a can of almonds. All I know is that Almonds = SRS BSNS!

I mulled over my options, including just going all John Rambo and doing the guy in with a glass bottle of planter’s sitting next to my hand. I could sully my blade, but it’s a small knife and I would have to really work at it to finish him off, and I like a quick kill. Instead of blood shed, I went with the most honest answer I could come up with that might mean everyone got to go home alive.

“Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “Our truck is going to arrive in a few minutes. If you come back this afternoon, I’m sure there will be more almonds on it.”

“We’ll see.” He screwed up his face and squinted one eye at me. “We’ll see at that.”

And so the old man left the store, deprived of his almonds because They were keeping them from him. The truck came, I went to help unload it, and what do you suppose was on the truck? What do you suppose was one of the first things I stocked? A boat load of ALMONDS! Because they knew we’d had them on sale and they knew we sell a lot of them and they knew we needed more of them. I raised my fist in solidarity with my brothers, the ones who had brought the almonds.

Almonds for The People!

But you have to hurry, sale ends tonight.

Five things (Posts I Want To Write Edition)

2012-01-20T17:32:00.002-05:00

1. How English class nearly snuffed out my desire to read anything, ever.

2. How a drunk, two college teachers and abridged audiobooks brought me back to reading.

3. My personal history of blade ownership, from knives to swords and beyond.

4. A how-to on making the best chili ever.

5. What I expect people to bring to a relationship besides just themselves.

To Build a Fire Syndrome

2012-01-19T21:03:00.001-05:00

So what is TBFS I hear you asking, which says something about my mental state. First you have to ask “What is ~~Vietnam~~ To Build a Fire?” and then wait for the profanity to die down a little. To Build a Fire is a story, by famed racist and plagerist Jack London, that makes me want to stab people in the face. I am not a Jack London Fan, and thus any discussion of his work is going to generate at least a few choice swear words and suggestions about where he can stick his collected scribbling. I also hate Hemingway for similar reasons, but we’ll get to that on another day.

Put simply, To Build a Fire is the story of a moron freezing to death. This isn’t even, as my English teacher claimed, a story of man against the elements and the elements won. No! This is death by stupid. On the man’s death certificate, the coroner just wrote “Cause of Death: Stupidity!” because that’s what killed this guy and it pissed me off to read about it. Thing is, I knew from the first few lines that this guy was a goner. I knew a bit about survival even at age 11, when this particular piece of dog shit first frustrated the hell out of me. I’d just got done hating Call of The Wild and hoping we’d be done with this Yukon bullshit when my English teacher pull this thing out and forced us to read it at gun point. I clearly remember the gun. It was a Drexel .32 with pearl handles and flaking chrome.

I would have liked to burn the book that contained the story, but was not allowed matches at that time for some inexplicable reason. I hated having to sit through the inevitability, because I knew this guy was a dead man. Maybe it was the way it was written, maybe the teacher spoiled it by hinting it might not all work out, maybe I had just read a London book and worked out the guy was going to die and it was just a question of would the cold get him or those dastardly Chinese that London was always ranting about. No, I knew it couldn’t be a Chinese person, because this man was going to die of stupid. You get that from the first page, this is a dumb motherfucker and he’s gonna freeze to death.

That’s what bugged me from the start, I could see every mistake he made, which is actually easy because he does everything wrong. There is not one step he puts right. Some might argue that this makes the story a good teaching tool, but those people are idiots and if you see one crossing the street in front of you, slam on the gas. To Build a Fire is a worthless on this front because it doesn’t tell you how to do anything right, it just tells you how to do things wrong. You can’t just give someone the bad example and say “Now don’t do that and you’ll be fine” because it fails to give the proper example. You cannot have Goofus without also having Gallant. Just saying “Don’t do this.” doesn’t make people feel like they know what they should do, it also doesn’t make people feel they know how to react if they find themselves In Alaska and hunted from a helicopter by a failure at life who quits everything halfway through.

When asked what problems I could possibly have with this wonderful story, I looked the teacher square in the face and declared “People this stupid don’t deserve to have fire!” That was it, right there, more or less. I’ve often changed a few words and found this phrase very useful. When having to watch an episode of Lost “People this stupid don’t deserve to have a raft.” when watching the doctor in Day of The Dead “People this stupid don’t deserve internal organs.” and so on. Putting it simply TBFS is when you have a character that is simply too stupid to live.

Having a story with a character that suffers from TBFS who isn’t treated like the waste of protoplasm that they are is one of the quickest ways to yank my interest from a story. I’m not saying every character has to be Nero Wolfe or even an Archie Goodwin. Hell, I’ll take a Bertie Wooster for the afternoon if I don’t have to keep him and you can promise me he’s house trained. However, I shouldn’t be sitting there thinking that the only reason your moronic character hasn’t swallowed their own tongue is that you can’t actually do that.

I like a flawed character as much as the next person, providing that the next person likes them within a reasonable limit set by my standards. However, when the flaw is stupidity, I loose patience. When I can see that someone is going to die because they’re not smart enough to walk away from a situation, or they’re too stupid not to stick their hand into a hornets nest, or whatever sort of reason that their death will be labeled a suicide via proxy by any reasonable thinking person, I am not a happy camper. When I see that a character probably isn’t going to make it because of tragic events that they have no control over, but try to control anyway, I’m a happier camper. Hamlet doesn’t suffer from TBFS, but Ned Stark does.

One of these days I’m going to write about how English class nearly snuffed out my desire to read anything of any kind ever. And then I’ll tell the tale about how a drunken ex-Pinkerton and two former college teachers, who both wrote trash, brought me back from the brink. Ten Points to anyone who can name all three authors from the scant information I just gave.

Welcome to my world

2012-01-19T17:06:00.000-05:00

Syd got a glimpse into my world this week. She's reading the first book in a series about dragons in the Napoleonic Era. Now, Syd doesn't know a huge amount about Napoleon, or his era, but she knows a few things. In short, she knows that dragons change everything. The problem is, this isn’t Changed Everything world, it’s The Napoleonic Era world… MIT DRAGONS!

One of the things she said bothered her was that there are women who are dragon riders, but they’re kept secret lest anyone know that women can ride dragons and they don’t even do it side saddle. Now… there have always been dragons in this world, and some dragon types will only let girls fly on them, presumably because being a dragon is the next best thing to being a bicycle seat. And there have always been dragons, but because we want this set in the Napoleonic Era (mit dragons) we only acquired them last week even thought WE’VE ALWAYS HAD THEM!

You see my point? Why would generations of women allow themselves to be silent so some men wouldn’t realize that girls are putting something far larger between their legs than the tiny tadgers of said men? The women’s movement is inexorably linked to women having power, money and status. Remember Scarface? First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women! And since there are more openly gay or bisexual women now than ever, they’re clearly following the pattern. The women’s movement more or less got going in a serious way when they started having jobs of their own and thus money of their own. If they had jobs, and fucking dragons, why would they keep quiet? How do you keep that secret? How do you force them not to tell? Particularly when the little slips of girls are MIT DRAGON! You can’t tell a girl mit dragon that she doesn’t need to worry her fluffy little head about things when she can have her dragon eat your face. Mit Dragon is like having money and power all at once, and as such they are only one step away from some really screwy dragony slashy fanfic that crosses over with George from Feed for some unknown reason.

She’s not bothered by these things enough to not enjoy the books, but she gets the problems I sometimes have. See, this is what every book, movie, comic, and finger painting project done by a 2 year old is like for me. I was very “Welcome to my world” about the whole thing.

This is one of the reasons fantasy movies, particularly one that have pretensions about being well researched, fail for me. I spend the whole time being distracted by problems that even a first year student should have pointed out. You can’t have that sword with that armor, that armor is useless against swords like the one you’re holding and you either know that or you’re dead. You can’t have that jacket and those cloaks, the stitch for that jacket made cloaks like that superfluous and besides those are peasant clothes and you’re supposed to be a nobleman… you jackasses. It’s worse when it’s a shitty movie/show about shitty people being shitty to each other. I loose interest when the only people I don’t completely hate for being assholes I hate for falling prey to To Build a Fire Syndrome.

I’ll talk about TBFS later though.

Five Things (Stuff I'll Never Do Edition)

2012-01-18T21:52:00.000-05:00

1. I'm just never gonna grow a Freddie Mercury Mustache

2. I'll never eat a dodo egg omelet.

3. I'll never go to bed with Marilyn Monroe.

4. I'll never ride a J X-7 Star Cruiser through the Horse Head Nebula (but who would, those things are death traps)

5. I'll never guest star on an episode of the original Star Trek.

Picture Post #39

2012-01-17T17:13:00.001-05:00

Picture Post #38

2012-01-16T12:35:00.001-05:00

So now we'll see how you like it if the preview image is small, but the rest are large...

Picture Post #37

2012-01-14T22:13:00.001-05:00

Do we like the smaller thumbnails? Are they working for everyone? Do you want bigger pics under the cut or keep these sizes?

Picture Post #36

2012-01-13T14:44:00.001-05:00

Picture Post #35

2012-01-12T19:11:00.001-05:00

Okay, so we're trying something a little different today. Suggestion from a friend. Today, we're going to post smaller versions of the pictures. You can still go to Flickr and see the bigger versions if you want. Don't know how long I'll keep postiong the big versions online though, might sequester them for sale. See how you feel about the new format...

Pictures #35

2012-01-10T17:00:00.001-05:00

Really? I'm posting photos? What an unforeseen event.

Although, I think selection might be my weak spot. I seem to keep and show everything* without trying to really weed out things that aren't interesting enough to display.

*Actually, I take about 1000 pictures a trip and only keep maybe 100 or less. Last trip to The Henry Ford yielded 42 pictures and my last trip to the zoo gave me 90. But then, that's got to take into account the fact that I let the shutter fly and end up with 20 almost identical shots of the same thing in any given attempt. Still, I need to work out what are the best 3% of my photos.

Pics #34

2012-01-10T02:41:00.001-05:00

Pics #33

2012-01-10T02:26:00.001-05:00

Pics #32

2012-01-09T12:51:00.001-05:00

#31

2012-01-08T11:15:00.002-05:00

PLaying around with my new lights

2012-01-07T14:34:00.003-05:00

#30

2012-01-06T13:08:00.001-05:00

#29

2012-01-06T12:42:00.001-05:00

When Syd's glasses go all misty, she looks like an anime character.

#28

2012-01-06T12:13:00.001-05:00

Don't kid a kidder

2012-01-06T02:11:00.002-05:00

Every time I hear "These days, kids have facebook and twitter! In my day we had coloring books and imagination!" I think two things together.

First: Stop pretending like you wouldn't have used twitter, facebook, and so on if it was available when you were a kid. Quite bullshitting us, please. Just... stop. You have no superiority in this situation. And if I may, you are one step away from some moronic statement like "In my day, we made our own fun." at which point I will throw a vintage NES at your head*. Besides, the coloring books you had were of licensed properties because you were marketed to within an inch of your life like everyone else raised after 1965.

But then, the second, more succinct thought rolls in...

It's a poor artist that blames their tools.

*Or a 2600 if you're slightly older.

#27

2012-01-05T17:20:00.001-05:00

#26

2012-01-03T12:27:00.001-05:00

#25

2012-01-02T16:27:00.001-05:00

#24

2012-01-01T23:33:00.001-05:00

#23

2011-12-27T22:46:00.001-05:00

#22

2011-12-26T07:15:00.001-05:00

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #25

2011-12-25T12:34:00.001-05:00

25th door has Hercules and the Captive Women? Huh, this thing must be defective. #retroflixadventcalendar

#21

2011-12-24T09:36:00.001-05:00

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #24

2011-12-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

Behind the 24th door is ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the review for which contains strong language.

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #23

2011-12-23T02:43:00.001-05:00

Twenty-Third Door and we get A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott version) #retroflixadventcalendar

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #22

2011-12-22T07:14:00.000-05:00

Door 22 has The 10 best things about A Christmas Story #retroflixadventcalendar http://retroflix.wordpress.com/2009/12/25/10-best-things-about-a-christmas-story/

This Again?

2011-12-21T21:38:00.001-05:00

Every time I see a list of worst movies, like say this one for VEWPRF movies, all I can think is "You haven't seen many movies, have you?"

Because let me tell you, all of those movies are GOLD! PURE F'n GOLD! Compared to some of the dreck I've been prepared to watch over the years, those movies they mentioned are high points of excellence. I mean all five of those are at least actual movies.

I notice, for example that they mention "Silent Night, Deadly Night" but not "Silent Night, Deadly Night II", which is a far, FAR worse movie. In fact, it's so bad that SNDN2 is barely a movie, more a collection of scenes barely connected by stock footage. Jingle All The Way might be a stupid movie, but it has a plot, a protagonist, an antagonist, and holds to a three act structure. And where the hell is Christmas Evil? Or the 1959 Mexican Santa Claus?

Herein lies the problem. I can name five movies, off the top of my head, that make Santa Claus Conquers the Martians seem like Citizen Kane. In that it makes it seem like a not-very-good movie that lots of people know about and most people haven’t seen. This all touches upon my old post "You think that movie is bad?" from a while ago. Why even bother going into worst movie territory? No matter how bad your list, someone can trump the supposed worst with something really bad. It just makes the writer look like they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. And if you do know what the hell you’re talking about, what exactly is the prize? I mean… I’ve watched Silent Night, Deadly Night II, and believe me there is no prize. No one wins when you watch that thing.

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #21

2011-12-21T01:31:00.001-05:00

We have arrived at the twenty-first door, which contains The Rugrats Chanukah Special #retroflixadventcalendar

5 things (Marshmallow Edition)

2011-12-20T12:41:00.001-05:00

1. Made some Rice Crispy Treats yesterday from my own marshmallows. They are better than yours, because of the home made marshmallowness.

2. Going to buy some agar and see how vegan marshmallows turn out. I want to make sure that vegans can have marshmallows too. The Internet claims that agar can be swapped for powdered gelatine on a one-to-one ratio. The only thing that gets me is WOW(!) agar is waaaay more expensive than gelatin. Not going to buy it today, that's for damn sure.

3. You can use pomegranate juice instead of water when you make marshmallows. I assume cranberry, grape, apple, and prune juice would also work.

4. If you boil too much liquid off your syrup, you can add some back during the mixing process, but this is dangerous as you'd need to know exactly what the mixture should look like while mixing or you could over do it. I actually under did it, so that batch was still kind of stiff, but as Syd is just going to put them in hot cocoa, it doesn't really matter. You can't add sugar if you didn't boil enough, you get gritty mallows. Perhaps if I try with powdered next time...

5. It still feels like I've performed a magic trick every time I pull one of these marshmallow out and munch one. I did this, I made this thing, I can produce candy! I can add pomegranate juice to the mix and feel like some sort of culinary god, because no one I know can even conceive of the idea of making a marshmallow in their own kitchen. At least know one I know IRL, some of you internet people probably know about it.

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #20

2011-12-20T00:42:00.003-05:00

20! We've got to door 20! A Garfield Christmas is behind door 20 #retroflixadventcalendar

#20

2011-12-19T23:30:00.001-05:00

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #19

2011-12-19T01:31:00.001-05:00

Behind the Nineteenth Door is the infamous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer review #retroflixadventcalendar

Riddle Me This, Internet

2011-12-18T19:56:00.001-05:00

When you make hot cocoa, like from a packet, do you make it with water or with milk?

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #18

2011-12-18T01:39:00.001-05:00

This is the Eighteenth Door. Behind it resides Tales from the Darkside “Seasons of Belief” #retroflixadventcalendar

I love this episode, but I don't love the review. I don't think the review does the episode justice. I tried hard, but I don't think it works as great as it could. Tomorrow I'll pick a better review.

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #17

2011-12-16T23:05:00.001-05:00

Door: SEVENTEEN! Rugrats: The Santa Experience #retroflixadventcalendar

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #16

2011-12-16T07:03:00.001-05:00

Behind the Sixteenth Door is Mickey’s Christmas Carol #retroflixadventcalendar

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #15

2011-12-15T06:21:00.001-05:00

Behind the Fifteenth Door is How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #14

2011-12-13T23:56:00.001-05:00

Behind the Fourteenth Door is... A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is the darkest, meanest, most mean spirited review I have ever done. You were warned. #retroflixadventcalendar

The Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Forty-Seven)

2011-12-13T08:28:00.001-05:00

The Return of Jack Collier

A Jack Collier Story

By Brett N. Lashuay

Chapter Forty-Eight: Changing Faces

Alice Liddell’s Diary

The strange thing about giving an interview to someone who writes books is that you’re not just done in a few hours. You’ve got to have meetings for days, and you’ve got to keep talking. You talk and talk and talk and when you run out of things to say, the guy prompts you with another question or two and you’re expected to then take up the story for another half an hour before the next question.

The TV interviews are easier, for the most part. Jack’s true crime buddy makes the interviews feel like we’re friends, like he’s on my side. He’s got three hundred pages to fill, he wants as much of the story as he can get his hands on. The TV people are trying to get a reaction for their viewing audience, they make things a little harder. I managed though, I must have done alright because they kept asking me to come and talk about things on some show or other.

Fortunately, Jack was right about gaining attention. It did help a lot when people started pestering the right people that maybe I was really a good girl who faced extraordinary circumstances. It didn’t make facing the review board anything like a walk in the park, but knowing that a fair few important people liked having a face for law and order that people might want to look at helped.

I’m glad to say that I was cleared of any wrong doing, was told that some of my methods were naughty but that was about all. I even got Jim to sign off on some of the more recent documents from the Thinkonomics/King file. I wish to point something out though, I’m not a national figure. I’ve been on CNN three times, total. I’ve been interviewed for Time and two small industry magazines. I’m not even the flavor of the month, I’m just a flavor for the day.

I’m actually being looked at for promotion now. Even when someone in the news decided to take what I still think of as an unnatural interest in my private life, it doesn’t seem to have hurt any. I’m still not happy to have to explain that I don’t feel possessive and what my boyfriend does is only between me, him and the other ladies involved, but it hasn’t done as much damage as I thought it might. If anything, I’ve got a few people who are more interested in getting me higher now. Being outted by some news paper twerp who wanted to try and make a scandal out of a polyamorus bisexual being considered for high position in the agency actually worked against him since it caused a lot of people who wouldn’t have cared one way or another decide that I was worth protecting and elevating.

And that’s, sort of the other problem. Two problems. The first is that I don’t want to be anyone’s poster child or test case. I’ve always wanted to just do my job and go home to whoever it was who was waiting for me to get home. And that is the second problem. The person I want to go home to is in Michigan, and he’s not going to leave Debbie to come here. I wouldn’t want him to either. Nothing has happened between us, but I think that I if I were going to buy Jack I would want to make sure Debbie came as part of the package. I’m pretty sure that Debbie doesn’t want to leave the area Karen is in, and I don’t want to make either of them move but I need to be here if I’m looking at promotion. So I can’t even be with the people I want to be with, except for trips and vacations.

And, I’m going to say it, Jack has got to decide what he thinks he wants to do. He’s still just sitting around, being indecisive and waiting for someone else to make the decision for him. I’m guessing one of us is going to have to tell him to make a decision or it’ll get made for him. Which brings me to the call I got this morning…

“Alice Liddell?” I said as I answered my phone.

“Hi Alice.” Debbie’s voice came across the line.

“Hi Debs.” I said, I think must have I caught that from Jack, because I would have never called a grown woman ‘Debs’ in the past. “What’s going on?”

“Can you come up for a week, or maybe just a weekend?”

“I think I can.” I said. “Why?”

“I think it’s time we have a talk with him.” She said. “I would rather all four of us confronted him at once and demanded some kind of word out of him.”

“Tell him he’s either got to say yes or no?” I asked.

“I think we’ve just got to tell him to say yes.” She said. “He wants to say yes, it’s in him to say yes, but he’s got some sort of mental block or something. He’s never been really comfortable with stability and this feels stable.”

“Maybe if we told him you and I were sleeping together he could mentally tell himself he was doing each of us behind the other’s back.”

She laughed at that. It was a nice laugh. I liked hearing her laugh. That’s a stupid path to start down. I shouldn’t be talking like that, I shouldn’t even be thinking it really. You start at the laugh, then you think about her lips, then the way her shoulders move when she walks, and it’s just nothing but trouble from there.

“That would be dishonest.” She said.

“Not if we started.” I said, which was sort of going into a little game we’d been playing with each other. It was the sort of game where you pretend that you’re not dead serious with what you’re saying.

“Oh, if only my darling.” She said, playing along with me. “But you’re too far and we’ve got this sulking penis carrier between us. I’m afraid he’d disapprove.”

“He can’t interfere.” I said, “If he gets in the way, we’ll just squeeze him between us and talk about shoes and cute skirts until he gets disgusted and leaves. Then you’ll be all mine.”

“When can you come?” She asked, and I wanted to say about ten minutes after we get him out of the way, but her tone had changed and we were being actually serious now.

“I’ll have to arrange a few things.” I said looking at my calendar. “A couple of days?”

“Okay.” She said.

“Are we going to have to make decisions?” I asked. “Because they’re really talking about that promotion for real.”

“I don’t think so.” She said. “Not yet, but we’re not the ones who are stalling and making everyone wait.”

“Okay.” I said. “Is he okay?”

“He’s very annoyed about the money.” She sighed.

“Why, aren’t you getting paid?”

“Yes.” She said. “But Jack’s got this… thing about money. He keeps thinking that he’s betraying his working class roots because he spent a summer working in an injection molding factory one year and a machine parts shop another year. The idea of financial security worries him more than the idea of being broke. I don’t understand it, but he’s always convinced that money causes more problems than it causes.”

“Strange.” I said, because almost nothing about that made any sense to me.

“I know.” She said. “So we’ll see you in a couple of days?”

“I’ll call you tonight.” I told her. “I’ll have to check some airfares and stuff.”

“I’ll take care of that.” She offered. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not fair to make you pay.”

“Oh.” I said. “Thanks.”

“Just call me tonight and tell me when you can get out here.” She said. “I’ll get everything else arranged from there.”

“Okay.”

“It’s going to be alright, you know that, right?” Debbie said. “He’s going to make the right choice, and he’ll work like hell to make it all work.”

“I know.” I said. “I just feel like he could run off again at any moment.”

“I don’t think he will.” She said. “I think he’ll stay this time.”

“I should hope so.” I said. “I don’t think I could take anymore abandonment without developing some serious issues.”

“I won’t let him do that to you.” She said.

“Thanks.” I gave a little laugh. “I’ve got a question though.”

“Yeah?”

“What happens if I get this promotion, and he does what we know he’s going to?”

She didn’t say anything for a while, and I almost wanted to ask if she was still there when I heard her take in a long breath. It was pretty clear that I’d asked the question she didn’t have the answer to yet, which is probably why we were all waiting for him to do something. Jack would have and answer if we asked him, he’s good at answers to tough questions.

“I think we’ll have to discuss that when it happens.” She said finally. “Jack’ll have an answer. Christ. How stupid does that sound? Like we’re just a bunch of silly girls who need rescuing and a man to lead us along and tell us how it’s going to be.”

“We could try to make up our own minds.” I said.

“No.” And I swear I could perfectly see the shake of her head and the little sardonic smile creeping across her lips. “If we did that, we couldn’t make this all his fault somehow.”

“Well that’s true.” I laughed, and it all seemed like it was going to be okay. “I’ll call you later tonight.”

“Okay.” She said. “We’ll see you in a few days.”

“Yeah.” I said. “Yeah you will.”

And they did.

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #13

2011-12-13T07:51:00.002-05:00

Behind the Thirteenth Door is Scrooge (the Alastair Sim version) #retroflixadventcalendar

Oh hipster tree, oh hipster tree...

2011-12-12T10:19:00.001-05:00

I decided it was a shame that out hipster tree from last year wouldn't go up since Syd got that bigger tree this year, so I put it up in my office.

Yeah, that's still a Godzilla figure on top.

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #12

2011-12-12T09:08:00.002-05:00

Door Twelve! Door Twelve! Morozko (AKA - Jack Frost) #retroflixadventcalendar

#19

2011-12-11T09:53:00.001-05:00

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #11

2011-12-11T03:46:00.001-05:00

Door Eleven contains a neat little Jack Benny Program (Christmas Shopping)

Why I love VEWPRF (Music)

2011-12-11T02:56:00.001-05:00

I’m not sure I’ve ever really talked about my heritage and how it affects my everyday life. My people, they come from everywhere. The two lines of my family really show what you get when you’ve been thrown out of every decent country in Europe and set up in the one shithole that will have you. To put simply though, there is Welsh, Irish, French and German within me. French tends to come off as the prominent feature because of the passion. Murder, rape, genocide, multi-level marketing, these are merely distractions. They’re just those petty annoyances that you get when your planet has an infestation of humans upon it. Art though? That shit’s important!

As you may remember, I know more than you do about the holiday called Christmas. In fact, I regularly claim that I know more than anyone else you know. Go ahead, ask me something about Christmas. 1843. Everyone always asks when Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” even though most people then say “Really? It was that long ago?” Leading me to ask them why they asked a question they don’t know the answer to and most they time I am told “Well, I didn’t think you knew the answer either.” Which I think revels a wonderful level of trust on their part vis my honesty. No one ever asks about Bracebridge Hall though. But you know what? None of this is important! I’m not even talking about trivia today, I’m talking about music.

No, this isn’t an angry bile and venom filled rant, this is about the good things.

There was a time though, when I hated Christmas Music. All of it, at least all I’d ever heard up until that point. I’d heard a lot of music, more than is probably healthy for it, but I hadn’t gone much beyond the mainstream and as such hadn’t had my ears opened. When I was about 14 or so though, my father bought a cassette tape. It was of a band I’d never heard of with a weird name. What exactly is a Mannheim Steamroller anyway? Glad you asked, it’s a take on the Mannheim roller technique, but with steam to make it more exciting. Now, as I said, I was not interested in Christmas Music at the time. I had come to the conclusion that it was all Burl Ives and Bing Crosby and other useless shit like that. For a young lad into Blues Traveler and Prince, Bing and Burl are like needles under the fingernails.

However, he played me a song and I can remember very clearly how the first song rolled into my head. It was their take on Deck The Halls (A Welsh Ayre as the track listing mentions) and… I’d suddenly realized that this stuff didn’t need to be a replacement for the sort of sleeping aids you can only get with a doctor’s note and serious insurance. That song exploded in a multi color orgasm in my brain that made me realize I had been wasting my life up until that point and that age 14 I was going to have to start over and begin again. No one had ever said music could sound like that, and they really never said Christmas Music could do this. It could be exciting, and interesting, and there was more to come.

That album is amazingly well put together, because right after a fairly rocking little number comes We Three Kings, which feels like something you might hear in the main hall of a castle circa 1341. I was realing, not just from the beauty of the music, but by the sudden shit in tone and style. And yet, it all fit. It came together and felt completely natural to follow the one song with the other. After that came Bring A Torch, Jeannette, Isabella and again, I had no idea that music itself could sound like this. This was like classical music, but it had strength and bass, which is something I still feel classical has problems with. Not the music itself, but the recordings. They’ve gotten better in the last 30 years, but classical used to have some really bad recordings that made it sound like it had no balls and castration is a terrible thing to do to Vivaldi. It is no exaggeration to say that my world suddenly exploded into fragments that still haven’t fully collected and I realized that MTV and I would soon be parting ways.

If We Three Kings felt like something from the 14th century, Coventry Carol felt even older. Since there is a harpsichord in there, it probably wasn’t, but that’s hardly important. It made my little head go back to ancient castles and old men by the fire telling stories and so on. Coventry Carol was one of the few songs I could always listen to at that time anyway, so that helped. And then, after such a sweet and nostalgic song, came their version of Good King Wenceslas which is full of synthesizers and polyrhythms and it would tear your head off if you weren’t careful. I was amazed, I was entranced, I had taken the first step into a larger world and could see the probe even with the blast shield down.

And that was it. That was all it took. One side of one tape and my world had changed forever. Yes, we listened to the other side, no I’m not going to relay my feelings about those songs. You can listen to most of them in this pair of videos (Part One and Part Two) which are interesting and fun. It’s not important anyway, by the time those other songs came along I was hooked and just wanted more. And I got it, and that’s not always a good thing. Yes, Fresh Aire Christmas was another mind blowing experience. If anything it cemented me to the idea that this was the thing for me to be listening to. Sadly, it started to go down hill from there. While Christmas in the Aire is a great album, you can feel routine starting to set in. You can almost hear the pencil ticking the boxes when a song that fits the mold is played. It’s still good, just not as good. We won’t talk about any of the other albums after that, let’s just say I’m not a fan and move on.

Which is a shame, since Mannheim Steamroller helped to bring Christmas Music out of the ghetto it had (and still does) reside in. See, it used to be that you’d only record Christmas songs for one of two reasons. Either A) You were tired of your contract and wanted to bang out a quick release without actually writing new songs or actually promoting the album or B) Your label is doing one of those company wide albums where the biggest stars each contribute a song. Chip Davis owns American Gramaphone though, and Mannheim Steamroller was its only act for sometime. So when he decided to make a Christmas album, he put the same effort and care he put into any other album, and the care and love really shows in the first two albums. I won’t say he didn’t work hard on the other albums, but I will say he pulled something of a George Lucas in the 90s in that he started to rely on digital reproduction too much and the music suffered for it.

Listen to Pat a Pan from Christmas in the Aire and then any track from Christmas Extraordinaire and the difference will be quite striking. It hardly matters which one you pick, that's the sad part. Say, The First Noel, which is one of the songs on that album I kind of like. Sadly, we can never get those old days back, but we still have the old albums and that is what matters. And that’s not the point anyway. I didn’t start this to complain, I started this to express joy.

See, after I realized that “Hey, Christmas music doesn’t have to suck!” I went looking for other examples of good music, and boy did I find them. Yule Struttin was the first, but not the last Jazz Christmas album I would get. The Narada Christmas Collection would come next and soon would flow a torrent (not in that sense) of music. Celtic albums, Rock albums, Winter's Solstice, Country, Rockabilly, and even The Star Wars Christmas Album! According to I-Tunes I have 180 albums, but one or two of those are individual songs, of which I have 2258. That's about 5.3 days in case you're wondering. Not all of these are winners, not all of these are even something I can stand to listen to, but they’re all something that I would never have even looked for if it hadn’t been for Mannheim Steamroller and that first electric shock. If not for side one of Mannheim Steamroller’s Christmas, and the return success of Fresh Aire Christmas I would probably have never have gone as deep down the rabbit hole as I have gone. Now you get to decide if Chip Davis deserves a cookie or a lump of coal.

#18

2011-12-10T12:57:00.001-05:00

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #10

2011-12-10T11:25:00.001-05:00

Behind the Tenth Door lies The History of Christmas #retroflixadventcalendar

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #9

2011-12-09T21:28:00.001-05:00

NINTH DOOR! Blackadder’s Christmas Carol

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #8

2011-12-08T16:46:00.001-05:00

Behind the Eighth Door is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (Pain Box)

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #7

2011-12-07T06:29:00.001-05:00

Behind the Seventh Door is The Year Without a Santa Claus

Fuck Christmas - Part One: Making Yuppies Feel Better By Being Poor

2011-12-06T12:22:00.001-05:00

If you've been here more than a year, you know that instead of Christmas I've been pushing for a Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festival, or VEWPRF for short. Yes the phrase is unwieldy, but at least it’s both accurate and inclusive. The other thing you might know about me though, is that I know more about Christmas and other Mid-Winter holidays than anyone else you know, unless you know a professor of folklore or a Doctor of Christmas or something. I didn’t get here without research and that research led to me creating the VEWPRF because once you start looking, they’re all the same.

One thing that Christmas has though, that other holidays seem to lack, is things like what I’m going to talk about today. Today, we’re going to examine the Christmas Shoes Story. I’m calling it the Christmas Shoes Story because it’s a good short hand and almost everyone knows the song. If you don’t, go watch this and learn. Basically, it’s making a middle class person feel good about themselves by having a poor person come along and teach them a lesson, but have them only react to it in a solipsistic way. In the telling of these stories, you can tell they never actually realize that there are people out there hurting, or try to do anything about the injustice of the world. Oh no, that would take effort. Besides, these “people” aren’t “Real People” or anything, they’re just little object lessons flown in on the wings of angels to teach you a lesson. These motherfuckers just congratulate themselves for noticing one of these poor bastards for three fucking seconds. And that leads me to saying Fuck Christmas! You don’t get to tell me how awesome you are for helping a kid buy shoes and then claim God killed this kid’s mom, impoverished his dad, broke his tiny little spirit, drove him mad enough to think Jesus cares about footwear, and then inserted him in a line without enough money so YOU can learn about love and the true meaning of Christmas and aren’t you just so fucking special?

I could talk about Christmas Shoes, or I could talk about Tiny Tim which is another egregious example, or any number because this particular sub-genre is quite large. Instead of all the known things I could talk about, I’m going to talk about something obscure that you probably never even knew existed. We’re going for the Casey, Crime Photographer Christmas episode The Santa Claus of Bums' Boulevard, which is a perfect example even if you know nothing about it. You can listen along by clicking that link, if you think you can stomach it.

I’ll admit, until I… acquired a huge pack of files in a legal and honest manner, I had never heard of this particular radio show. It’s not really important though, you get the gist of the show in the first minute or so. Casey works on a newspaper as a photographer that never seems to take pictures, and he’s aided and abetted by his sometimes girlfriend Annie Williams. That’s about all you need to know. At least as far as this episode is concerned, maybe you need to know more on other days, but I doubt it. What you have is a fairly standard detective show. A boy detective and his girlfriend/sidekick solve crimes.

So the story starts with everyone bitching about the fact that they have jobs, which pisses me right off. It took me months to find the job I have, and these motherfuckers are complaining. I only get Christmas Day off because I worked on Thanksgiving! And I still have to work on Solstice and Buddha Day! So you know what? QUIT YER BITCHIN’! Okay, they have to work on Christmas, but none of them have families, or at least none that are local. I don’t want to shout “First World Problems” at these people because I hate that fucking phrase, but if I didn’t, I totally would so shout. Anyway, they’ve got to cover a story in the slum area called Bums Boulevard, because a decent human being is out there being human and decent and these fucktards are going to cover it because they’ve clearly never even heard of such a thing.

There’s this guy who shows up on the corner and hands out new one dollar bills to all the people who live on that street. He’s done this two years in a row and on the third year they want to get a story about him. Now, here’s the thing. They guy shows up, hands out his cash and vanishes without ever telling anyone about who he is or why he does this. So what’s Casey’s first guess on why the guy does it? “Probably a publicity hound.” Because people who want publicity show up unannounced, hand out money and then vanish before anyone can photograph him or get his name or ask him what brand of margarine he’s advertising with this stunt. Stupid! Fucking! Rat! Creature! The characters then engage in a tirade of abuse about how everyone who lives on the block. Seems they’re all just drunks and work-shy hippies who brought their problems upon themselves by taking out those student loans and mortgages that they couldn’t pay back without any thought for those poor bankers who can now only console themselves by snorting their cocaine cut with gold off the backs of silver plated hookers. Before the crash they were snorting pure platinum off the penises of gold leafed war orphans, but we all have to make sacrifices during these hard times.

So they get to the slum after bitching about not having anyone to be with for Christmas, but they get interrupted with their hatred for everyone who makes under $100k and that’s in 1947 dollars. They find that the man with the cash never showed up, and they do some investigating, discovering a former Broadway star. It’s the first time that Casey thinks these people might be real people. He’s then hit up for a dime by a guy who could fill for the position of Jesus if that slot weren’t already filled in this episode. He goes on about how he doesn’t drink, doesn’t steal, and doesn’t forget to worship Jesus because he knows he’d be killed in the streets by proper Christians with bricks if he didn’t.

So let’s get on with it, they find that someone mugged Santa. Going to skip a lot of bullshit and get to the meat of the problem. They find the Santa and he turns out to be the Jesus fill-in for this episode, and I mean that. His name is Mister Shepherd, which I find too goddamn cute and I wrote a novella where Christmas is a woman and she used to be married to a thug named Church before she struck out on her own and now works for a corporate minded fat man. I mean FUUUUCK! He’s not angry about being robbed, and he’s sure that the thief will return the money. He talks in that extremely calm manner of Jesus clones everywhere. He kind of gets on my nerves.

Shepherd goes on about how man needs to remember the simplicity of childhood, that everyone forgets that all of humanity is one big family. Meanwhile, Casey threatens to send the guy to Guantanamo Bay for not being a proper Christian and hating everyone he comes across. Finally, they find someone they think is the thief and a local tough guy holds up the whole group and pulls a gun to prove he’s serious. The local though claims he’s going to kill five people to keep it quite that he stole $300 dollars (in 1947 though, that was worth half a million or so) because that’s how stupid this guy is. Shepherd talks down the tough guy, and gets him to give up the game. He does so by healing the sick, turning water into wine and walking on water. They all then decide they don’t want the money because they’ve all discovered the true meaning of Buddha Day or some bullshit. They then all give the money to the old man who they met earlier, but they do it off screen as it were so you have no idea what his reaction is, so what should be the emotional highpoint isn’t shown and all we get is a moment where everyone admits what a piece of shit they are and says they don’t deserve the money. Then in the bar Casey and Annie talk to the bartender about how the old man gave the money away like the first guy with the money had planned to all along, making the last half our or your life entirely pointless and leaving you to examine your life choices that got you here. Think about that a moment, now think about me. I listened to this fucking thing TWICE! I think it all went wrong in the 2nd grade, in case you’re wondering. I should have killed that kid with my metal compass and gotten my life of crime started early. Why did I ever wait until the 4th grade to go on a murder spree?

And so the heroes relate the story, and point out that they had forgotten that all the world is just one big family and that Christmastime is magic and that God sent them to Bum’s Boulevard to learn a lesson and that it never was such a bad little tree, it just needs a little love and a Red Ryder 200 shot range model air rifles with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time and OH FUCK YOU!!!!!!! You want to know the worst part? You want to know the one thing they found out about Mister Shepherd? They found out his former job, he used to be… a carpenter! *GASP!* Yeah, he’s not a Jeebus stand in, he’s the lord Jeebus himself! How’s that for a twist you saw coming nearly 20 minutes ago?

So yeah, it really is that God came down and showed them that even the bottom levels of humanity are still human and gave them pause for a moment to reflect on how they’d been treating people and blah, blah, blah, fucking blah! Man these stories are bullshit! Nothing good comes from this story, the heroes don’t actually do anything for anyone, and yet they decide that they want patted on the back because for one brief moment they didn’t stomp on a piece of human detritus, even though they’ll go right back to stepping on them come December 26th. Do they really understand the troubles of others? No. Do they do anything to combat the ills of the world? No. Do they face the pain and suffering of the world? No. They help buy a fucking pair of shoes and then claim that God did all of this just to help them be a slightly better person for five fucking minutes because no one else in the world matters but them and everything else is just so much background noise that occasionally pokes through their self-satisfied fog and reminds them not to be quite such an asshole all the time and they want a fucking Nobel prize and a cookie for that.

And that is why I say, FUCK CHRISTMAS!

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #6

2011-12-06T03:05:00.001-05:00

Behind the Sixth Door is Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

#retroflixadventcalendar

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #5

2011-12-05T12:48:00.001-05:00

Behind the Fifth Door is Scrooge (Seymour Hicks version) #retroflixadventcalendar

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #4

2011-12-04T09:31:00.001-05:00

Behind the Fourth Door is A Nero Wolfe Mystery: Christmas Party

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #3

2011-12-03T02:09:00.001-05:00

Behind the Third Door is He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #2

2011-12-02T07:26:00.001-05:00

Behind the Second Door is The Burns and Allen Show which is one from the Pain Box

Retroflix Advent Calendar Door #1

2011-12-01T05:58:00.001-05:00

Behind the first door is The Avengers: Too Many Christmas Trees

The Return of Jack Collier (Chapter Forty-Seven)

2011-11-30T20:35:00.001-05:00

The Return of Jack Collier

A Jack Collier Story

By Brett N. Lashuay

Chapter Forty-Seven: How You’ve Grown

Because we can't make up for the time that we've lost, I must let these memories provide.

10,000 Maniacs

This shouldn’t be so hard.

“Come on Karen.” Debbie said. “You should at least write one.”

I’ve tried a few times, but it’s not going well. Normally I just sit and listen to other people pour out. After an “hour” of that I make an obvious suggestion and we go from there. What I’m not supposed to do is give my opinions. I’m not supposed to talk about other people or how I feel about them.

Still though, Debbie can do this and Jack can do this, so I should be able to do it. I’ve read enough of these, I should be able to provide at least one entry. It’s not easy though. I’ve found that out just trying to make notes about what I wanted to say and what I wanted to write. I’ve gone through the whole event a dozen times and I think I’m still a little shell shocked to be honest.

Let’s break down the last year? Shall be? Angela had her gall bladder removed after discovering her stones at three in the morning, and that was a fun trip let me tell you. The next three or four weeks after that were no picnic either. She didn’t get really sick, but there was an illness that swept through the house right after her surgery. After that, I found out that Jack had come out of the coma he’d spent almost two years in.

That was… problematic to say the least. I know Debbie doesn’t know about everything. Even if Jack and she talked about it, there are things he didn’t talk to her about. Things I said and things he said, things we both did. It doesn’t matter now, but it goes a long way to explaining why it was tough for me.

However, Debbie came to me and said I should see him. I think it was that memoir thing she’d written, it got her thinking about a lot of things. I won’t say that I was against the idea, but there were things between Jack and I. We worked it out though, mostly because we agreed that mutual forgiveness and satisfaction was better than mutual stubbornness and resentment.

And that worked for a while, and then he went back to work and I didn’t really see him for a couple of weeks. I came over once, but for the most part he was out of town for that time. And then I was kidnapped, along with Debbie, the day after Jack caused so much trouble out in California. Debbie called, telling me she was sick, and they grabbed me when I went to see her.

Once it was explained that they’d kill Debbie if I did anything stupid, I decided not to do anything stupid. I stayed with Debbie while our kidnappers let us go to work and act like everything was normal. I should have slipped someone a note or something, it’s so stupid to wait around for the male lead to rescue the weak and feeble womenfolk. I didn’t write a note though, I waited for him to come save us. I could have told Pete or Angela what was going on when I called them each night instead of pretending I was staying with Debbie while she had flu, but I didn’t.

I’ll admit to being scared, but most people would have been scared in that situation. People like to think they wouldn’t be scared in those situations. They’d like to think they’d be tough and strong, but evidence shows they’re not. Most people get scared when offered violence and intimidation tactics. We fear the violent man because we fear pain for ourselves and for others.

Jack wasn’t scared, but Jack isn’t healthy. He’s got a self destructive streak that comes off him like a smell and any intelligent woman can smell it a mile off. However, the chief problem is that his self-destructive streak smells like sex. Not just sex either, but the sort of sex you don’t tell your friends about because it’s too good to share with them. The sort of sex that you’d deliberately not talk about when you’re an old woman and your granddaughter finds a flower pressed in a book. The sort of sex that still makes you go weak at the knees days later just thinking about it. He’s not healthy, but neither is a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and I’m not good at resisting that either. The point is that Jack didn’t get scared, not for an instant. He just hit the guys who were watching over me and took me away.

He came and rescued me as if I was sitting in a tower and he had ridden up on a white charger instead of a gray Skylark. He came, and he saved me so I could go home to my husband and wife and children. Because eventually you have to go home. Jack’s nice to be around, and you’d want to be around him, but you can’t keep him. He’s like one of those guys you maybe knew in college. The kind that you’d see at parties, and he’d be fun to hang out with, but you’d never actually give him your number or let him know what dorm you lived in. It’s not that you were afraid of him or anything, but you’d only want him around when you wanted him. You know what I mean? Like, you’d only go to some parties because he was going to be there? And you’d always go to his place? You know? Yeah. He’s like one of those guys. I know how that sounds, but there are at least a few women out there who know the kind of guy I’m talking about.

Part of the problem is that I see guys who are like him all the time. They don’t have his charm, or his abilities, but I see them. Young men who have to struggle with the simplest expressions of their feelings. Trying to get a suicidaly depressed young man to open up, even a little bit, is quite a task. It can be even harder when you see the first man you ever really loved in each of their faces. Men repress too much. Jack represses too much, it makes him difficult to deal with sometimes. Debbie never talks to anyone else about the long stretches where he won’t do anything besides sit at his desk and scowl at things for days on end, but she tells me about it. Of course neither of them will admit the problem exists, and that makes it all the more frustrating.

And that’s why I have trouble dealing with him. I know what he is, he’s an undiagnosed depressive. Of course I can’t tell them that, because it will sound like a diagnosis and I can’t diagnose someone I’ve had that close a relationship with.

The other problem of course is that he manages to attract so many women. I’m fully aware that if one is going to be even remotely successful in the poly lifestyle, one must abandon jealousy, or at least deal with it better, but god damn! I mean God Damn! It’s not even that I want to feel jealous so much as I’d like to feel he has some sort of selection process. I’d like to know I’m more than a warm hole to him. He tells me I am, but he might tell them all that. How can one really believe him when he probably really does say these things to all the girls? He probably means it with all of them too.

I’m not sure about the millionaire’s daughter actually. We had some time to talk, a lot of time before Jack got back and every single person within the tri-county area with a badge showed up. He didn’t tell her he loved her, in fact he’d told her he didn’t because they hadn’t had enough time for that sort of feeling to emerge. She said that he’d told her that love’s bloom hadn’t blossomed yet and they would have to wait to see what color the bud was, but that was just her talking because I know he wouldn’t use those words like that.

Maybe he didn’t tell her, maybe he doesn’t tell all the girls. Maybe I shouldn’t be feeling jealous, after all I was the one who cut off communication after that big fight we had. I didn’t wait for him, I developed along certain lines. He then developed along certain other lines, and I shouldn’t fault him. I just can’t help but wonder what would have happened if we’d all be a little more mature. I wouldn’t have found the two people who are best for me in all the world, that’s what would have happened.

That’s probably where all this is going though, I don’t think Jack and I are going to be very close again. We will see each other, we’ll keep in touch now, we might even go out alone on occasion, but we’re not going to be close like we were in that summer. I’d like to be close with him though, closer than I am now.

I’m going to have to work on that, getting close to him, making sure those fences are mended. I’ll work on it, and hopefully he’ll meet me half way. I do love him, and I want to be with him, just within certain terms and boundaries. I shall have to work on this a little more, see how he feels, we’ll have to have a discussion at some point.

#17

2011-11-30T06:14:00.001-05:00