You know, I was brought up to believe that keeping up with the news is a person’s responsibility, because you can’t be a good citizen if you aren’t an informed citizen. And I do believe that.
However (bet you knew there was going to be a “however” coming up), it has gotten to the point where I can hardly stand to read or watch the news these days.
Part of that has to do with what passes for news in the 21st century. Half of it seems to consist of items about so-called celebrities, half of whom I’ve never heard of and all of which is none of my damn business, or the scare story of the day over either terrorism or how unhealthy this or that thing is for me. And another part of it has to do with the fact that most political “news” consists of partisan pundits (on all sides) trying to pass off their own beliefs as actual truth.
I must be getting old, because I remember when personal opinion used to be labeled as such in broadcast news. I used to hate George Putnam’s right wing commentaries on the old channel 11 news in Los Angeles when I was growing up. But at least he kept it out of hard news stories he was reading and called his op-ed pieces “One Reporter’s Opinion”.
It irritates the crap out of me that news readers, especially, seem to think their audience needs to be told how to feel about each story, and I’ve nearly given up on television news. I really don’t need to be told that every traffic accident and other mishap is “tragic”. I’m thinking we need to ban that word from hard news for awhile. That, and the chat between news stories, where the news readers share how they feel about a story. I don’t care that Nancy Newsgirl thinks that Paris Hilton (for example) is a slut or that Rob Reporter thinks that the husband did it or that Steve Sportscaster seems to need to share with me that he believes the reports of this or that athlete’s misbehavior.
What I want to know is, whatever happened to “who, what, when, where, why, and how”. Back when I was taking journalism classes and working on the student newspaper in college, we were taught that the lead of any news story, be it in print or broadcast media, needed to include what happened to whom, when and where, and why and how it happened. I hardly ever see that in broadcast news any more, and less and less often in written news stories. It seems like nearly every story, even hard news items, have been turned into feature stories that go through some long, supposedly artistic introduction before we find out what actually happened.
In my work now, writing finance news for several internet outlets, I really try to stick to the facts and to put the essential information in the lead. I probably don’t always succeed, but at least I make the attempt. It seems like fewer and fewer news writers even try any more.
I don’t suppose I will ever completely give up reading the news. It would be too much against my nature and upbringing. But I don’t have to like the state of reporting, and it is likely that I will continue to complain about how sloppy and unprofessional journalism has become in the twenty-first century.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Strange doings...and I don't just mean that I actually posted
Weird things happen sometimes.
That doesn’t mean that they mean anything. It just means that we live in a universe where the odd sometimes occurs.
One of those odd things happened to me today. I assign it no special importance, other than the fact that the coincidences involved got my attention, probably because I’ve always been interested in coincidence. Part of that is probably that I am a writer, and constantly aware when working on anything fictional that readers will only accept so much coincidence. Beyond that, they’ll laugh at the novel or story, or maybe throw the book across the room. Certainly, I’ve done both in my many years as a reader.
Anyway, today’s coincidences happened because I was waiting for some information to become available so that I could do my work for the day. Because I work on the internet, when I have down time in the middle of my work day, I tend to sit and surf the ‘net. Today, specifically, the adventure started when I decided to go over and take a look at Paul Cornell’s blog. I recommend his blog highly, by the way. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cornell briefly earlier this year at Gallifrey One (that’s a Doctor Who convention, for the uninitiated). He seems a very nice man, and he is a very, very good writer.
One of the things I read on Mr. Cornell’s blog today was that he will be attending the Fortean Times Unconvention next month in London. This spurred what was to be a quick visit to the Fortean Times website, which I had not visited in years. The site is dedicated to the sorts of unusual things that Charles Fort studied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all sorts of mysteries and anomalous phenomenon and conspiracies. Things that I have had more than a passing interest in ever since I was a child; things I don’t necessarily believe or believe in, but that I am hesitant to always dismiss out of hand, either.
I looked through the site quickly, clicking on a couple of short items that were of minor interest before seeing a feature headline, “Hollywood Hitmen”, that piqued my interest mostly because I grew up in Southern California. I didn’t mean to spend much time with it; I had to get back to work.
It was a mildly interesting story about a screenwriter who disappeared while driving across the Southern California desert late one night in 1997. The authorities called it an accident, but his family and friends weren’t so sure, and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of his car and skeletal remains about a year later did nothing to contradict their feeling that he had been murdered.
None of the this, however, is really relevant to the experience I had with the story today. What is relevant is that as I scanned the story and the photos that accompanied it, two things jumped out at me. First, one of the photos, of a Denny’s restaurant, looked awfully familiar to me. This turned out to be because it is the Denny’s in Mojave, California, a regular stop when I’m taking the “back way” to and from Southern California rather than putting up with all the traffic on I-5.
The second thing that jumped out at me was a reference to Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, also in Southern California, and to the partial nuclear meltdown that occurred there in 1959. I grew up in sight of the field lab, where among other things tests were made on the rocket engines that took the Apollo rockets, and the astronauts, to the moon.. I was also at home, at the age of nearly three, the night in July of 1959, when an experimental nuclear reactor melted down and released many times more radiation than the meltdown at Three Mile Island a couple of decades later. My house was in the direct line of sight of the facility, and just a couple of miles away as the crow flies. I’ve written about that incident before in this blog, on October 5, 2006 to be precise.
Here is where the whole coincidence thing comes in. What are the odds that I would visit a website for the first time in several years, and find that the one headline story that I chose to click on to read, without there being any indication that there could possibly be anything that I could so directly relate to might be there, happened to contain two separate references to places and/or events that I have personal experience with?
As I said at the beginning of this post, I don’t assign any cosmic significance to any of this. I just find it curious that events unfolded as they did, and even more curious that the story that contained the two coincidental references appeared on a website devoted to the strange and the unusual. Certainly, curious enough to write about it after not having written anything here for months.
Like I said, no cosmic importance at all.
Except that I really wanted to tell someone about this, and maybe the universe was giving me a kick in the pants to get my butt over here and start posting again.
That doesn’t mean that they mean anything. It just means that we live in a universe where the odd sometimes occurs.
One of those odd things happened to me today. I assign it no special importance, other than the fact that the coincidences involved got my attention, probably because I’ve always been interested in coincidence. Part of that is probably that I am a writer, and constantly aware when working on anything fictional that readers will only accept so much coincidence. Beyond that, they’ll laugh at the novel or story, or maybe throw the book across the room. Certainly, I’ve done both in my many years as a reader.
Anyway, today’s coincidences happened because I was waiting for some information to become available so that I could do my work for the day. Because I work on the internet, when I have down time in the middle of my work day, I tend to sit and surf the ‘net. Today, specifically, the adventure started when I decided to go over and take a look at Paul Cornell’s blog. I recommend his blog highly, by the way. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cornell briefly earlier this year at Gallifrey One (that’s a Doctor Who convention, for the uninitiated). He seems a very nice man, and he is a very, very good writer.
One of the things I read on Mr. Cornell’s blog today was that he will be attending the Fortean Times Unconvention next month in London. This spurred what was to be a quick visit to the Fortean Times website, which I had not visited in years. The site is dedicated to the sorts of unusual things that Charles Fort studied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all sorts of mysteries and anomalous phenomenon and conspiracies. Things that I have had more than a passing interest in ever since I was a child; things I don’t necessarily believe or believe in, but that I am hesitant to always dismiss out of hand, either.
I looked through the site quickly, clicking on a couple of short items that were of minor interest before seeing a feature headline, “Hollywood Hitmen”, that piqued my interest mostly because I grew up in Southern California. I didn’t mean to spend much time with it; I had to get back to work.
It was a mildly interesting story about a screenwriter who disappeared while driving across the Southern California desert late one night in 1997. The authorities called it an accident, but his family and friends weren’t so sure, and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of his car and skeletal remains about a year later did nothing to contradict their feeling that he had been murdered.
None of the this, however, is really relevant to the experience I had with the story today. What is relevant is that as I scanned the story and the photos that accompanied it, two things jumped out at me. First, one of the photos, of a Denny’s restaurant, looked awfully familiar to me. This turned out to be because it is the Denny’s in Mojave, California, a regular stop when I’m taking the “back way” to and from Southern California rather than putting up with all the traffic on I-5.
The second thing that jumped out at me was a reference to Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, also in Southern California, and to the partial nuclear meltdown that occurred there in 1959. I grew up in sight of the field lab, where among other things tests were made on the rocket engines that took the Apollo rockets, and the astronauts, to the moon.. I was also at home, at the age of nearly three, the night in July of 1959, when an experimental nuclear reactor melted down and released many times more radiation than the meltdown at Three Mile Island a couple of decades later. My house was in the direct line of sight of the facility, and just a couple of miles away as the crow flies. I’ve written about that incident before in this blog, on October 5, 2006 to be precise.
Here is where the whole coincidence thing comes in. What are the odds that I would visit a website for the first time in several years, and find that the one headline story that I chose to click on to read, without there being any indication that there could possibly be anything that I could so directly relate to might be there, happened to contain two separate references to places and/or events that I have personal experience with?
As I said at the beginning of this post, I don’t assign any cosmic significance to any of this. I just find it curious that events unfolded as they did, and even more curious that the story that contained the two coincidental references appeared on a website devoted to the strange and the unusual. Certainly, curious enough to write about it after not having written anything here for months.
Like I said, no cosmic importance at all.
Except that I really wanted to tell someone about this, and maybe the universe was giving me a kick in the pants to get my butt over here and start posting again.
Monday, April 12, 2010
New species' skull could have remnant brain tissue inside...
Yes, I am an anthropology geek. Why do you ask?
I found this story, and just had to pass it along.
EDITED TO ADD: The Yahoo link at the beginning of this post will take you to an index page, not the article in question, but it will get you to the article eventually so I'll leave it in the post. The Livescience link at the end of this post will get you directly to the original article.
A skull belonging to a newly-announced possible ancestor to humans, Australopithecus sediba, which was just revealed last week, could have a shrunken remnant of its brain inside, according to this story on Yahoo! News.
Still inside most if its stone matrix, the skull was X-rayed at a facility in France, using a machine called a synchroton that generates much more detailed images than those of conventional X-ray machines. The scans indicated that the skull might contain a remnant of its brain as well as something that could be fossilzed insect eggs. However, even if the object seen is a brain fragment, those studying the brain say they would not likely be able to determine its original structure.
Scientists studying the skull hope to also use its teeth to determine its chronological age. If they can do that, they can compare it to the remains' developmental level, which is about that of a modern 13-year-old, to tell whether the species was still developing like other australopithecines did, or if it had started to trend toward developmental rates of members of the genus Homo.
Besides the skull, fragments amounting to about 40 percent of a body were found, which will help determine how the species got around.
The skull containing the possible brain remains is a male, but another skull of the species has been identified as that of an adult female.
These kinds of finds fascinate me. Each skull or fragment of bone found by paleoanthropologists...or by the children of these scientists, which was the case with this skull, according to the article...presents the possibility of being able to learn just a little bit more about how we developed as a species and about who our ancestors really were. It is a complicated story, but every little piece of the puzzle adds more knowledge to build on to make it more complete.
You can find the original article on Livescience.
I found this story, and just had to pass it along.
EDITED TO ADD: The Yahoo link at the beginning of this post will take you to an index page, not the article in question, but it will get you to the article eventually so I'll leave it in the post. The Livescience link at the end of this post will get you directly to the original article.
A skull belonging to a newly-announced possible ancestor to humans, Australopithecus sediba, which was just revealed last week, could have a shrunken remnant of its brain inside, according to this story on Yahoo! News.
Still inside most if its stone matrix, the skull was X-rayed at a facility in France, using a machine called a synchroton that generates much more detailed images than those of conventional X-ray machines. The scans indicated that the skull might contain a remnant of its brain as well as something that could be fossilzed insect eggs. However, even if the object seen is a brain fragment, those studying the brain say they would not likely be able to determine its original structure.
Scientists studying the skull hope to also use its teeth to determine its chronological age. If they can do that, they can compare it to the remains' developmental level, which is about that of a modern 13-year-old, to tell whether the species was still developing like other australopithecines did, or if it had started to trend toward developmental rates of members of the genus Homo.
Besides the skull, fragments amounting to about 40 percent of a body were found, which will help determine how the species got around.
The skull containing the possible brain remains is a male, but another skull of the species has been identified as that of an adult female.
These kinds of finds fascinate me. Each skull or fragment of bone found by paleoanthropologists...or by the children of these scientists, which was the case with this skull, according to the article...presents the possibility of being able to learn just a little bit more about how we developed as a species and about who our ancestors really were. It is a complicated story, but every little piece of the puzzle adds more knowledge to build on to make it more complete.
You can find the original article on Livescience.
I'm writing...just not here that often right now...
I just thought I'd drop by to say that, no, I haven't abandoned writing since John's creativity experiment wrapped up.
But I have been working on a novel that I'd been think about and playing around with for years but never actually got around to working on more than sporadically. I've hooked up with a writing group on Ravelry and this month there's a challenge going on. I committed to writing 25,000 words this month and am already at 16,765 words. Maybe I set my goal a little low, but I think it's more about getting in the habit of working every day, whether I feel like it or not. Whether I feel inspired or not. From that perspective, the whole thing is working out marvelously.
At any rate, I'm around, I'm writing regularly, and I'm feeling good about that.
But I have been working on a novel that I'd been think about and playing around with for years but never actually got around to working on more than sporadically. I've hooked up with a writing group on Ravelry and this month there's a challenge going on. I committed to writing 25,000 words this month and am already at 16,765 words. Maybe I set my goal a little low, but I think it's more about getting in the habit of working every day, whether I feel like it or not. Whether I feel inspired or not. From that perspective, the whole thing is working out marvelously.
At any rate, I'm around, I'm writing regularly, and I'm feeling good about that.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Creativity Experiment, Day Seven: Haiku
Today is the seventh and last day is the of John Remy's creativity experiment, which he has been hosting over at Mind on Fire.
The card of the day, this time chosen by John's daugheter, Catgirl, is the Six of Pentacles. I don't ususally write haiku; the form has driven me to distraction ever since I was introduced to it in elementary school. However, after considering the Six of Pentacles and its attributes, this came to mind almost immediately. Probably has something to do with some of the events in my own life over the past few years.
And so, my very small contribution on the final day of an amazing learning and creative experience:
Knowing when to give
or admit the need to take
is art of balance.
And finally, thanks to you, John, for imagining that we all could do this.
The card of the day, this time chosen by John's daugheter, Catgirl, is the Six of Pentacles. I don't ususally write haiku; the form has driven me to distraction ever since I was introduced to it in elementary school. However, after considering the Six of Pentacles and its attributes, this came to mind almost immediately. Probably has something to do with some of the events in my own life over the past few years.
And so, my very small contribution on the final day of an amazing learning and creative experience:
Knowing when to give
or admit the need to take
is art of balance.
And finally, thanks to you, John, for imagining that we all could do this.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Creativity Experiment, Day Six: Commonalities
Today is the next to the last day of John Remy's Creativity Experiment. If this is your first exposure to it, pop on over to Mind on Fire and see what's going on.
Today's Tarot card is the Two of Cups, and after thinking about some of the possible implications of this card, some lyrics from Sting's first solo recording, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", drifted into my mind.
The result is this essay:
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Russians love their children too
----Sting, “Russians” 1985
These lyrics from the song “Russians” might seem anachronistic listeners who were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
On the contrary, the sentiment they carry are just as essential today as they were when they were written in 1985, back before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
To someone like me, who remembers the Russian Missile Crisis, in 1962, who remembers the “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, and who lived with the fear that “the Russkies” could up and decide to drop the bomb at any time well into adolescence, and who now looks at today’s world from not-so-comfortable middle age, they couldn’t be more applicable today.
Oh, you’d have to change the lyrics a little. You’d want to sing about Moslems, or Christians. You’d want to mention Republicans, or Democrats. You might even name theists and atheists, evolutionists or creationists, pro-lifers or pro-choicers, depending on which political, religious or social issue is getting the most acrimonious press on any particular day.
But the point the song would make is the same, no matter who is named in the lyrics…we have to assume that our neighbors are more like us than different from us, or we are in deep, deep trouble.
On the face of it, I’m sure many people would say, “But we know that Christians love their children,” that Moslems do; that atheists love their children, that creationists do, that evolutionists do. But, truthfully, to hear some of the rhetoric that gets mainstream media time these days, I wonder if it really registers with the most vocal segments of many of those advocating on different sides of the arguments that those who oppose them really do love their children. That they really are human just like them.
There is no question, at least from where I’m sitting, that there is some major-league demonizing going on out there today, just as there was during the Cold War. I’ve heard, and not just on television or on the radio or the internet, suggest that saying Muslims and Christians, or Iranians and Americans, or atheists and Christians or Muslims have things in common and are not natural enemies is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorism. This is an incredibly dangerous position to take, just as it was incredibly dangerous during the cold war when the assumption of many was that the only thing in the minds of all Russians was the destruction the West.
If we could all just generally admit that our neighbors, locally and globally, no matter any of our differences, are much more like us than different from us, I would feel much more positive about the direction our global culture is going.
Today's Tarot card is the Two of Cups, and after thinking about some of the possible implications of this card, some lyrics from Sting's first solo recording, "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", drifted into my mind.
The result is this essay:
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Russians love their children too
----Sting, “Russians” 1985
These lyrics from the song “Russians” might seem anachronistic listeners who were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
On the contrary, the sentiment they carry are just as essential today as they were when they were written in 1985, back before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
To someone like me, who remembers the Russian Missile Crisis, in 1962, who remembers the “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, and who lived with the fear that “the Russkies” could up and decide to drop the bomb at any time well into adolescence, and who now looks at today’s world from not-so-comfortable middle age, they couldn’t be more applicable today.
Oh, you’d have to change the lyrics a little. You’d want to sing about Moslems, or Christians. You’d want to mention Republicans, or Democrats. You might even name theists and atheists, evolutionists or creationists, pro-lifers or pro-choicers, depending on which political, religious or social issue is getting the most acrimonious press on any particular day.
But the point the song would make is the same, no matter who is named in the lyrics…we have to assume that our neighbors are more like us than different from us, or we are in deep, deep trouble.
On the face of it, I’m sure many people would say, “But we know that Christians love their children,” that Moslems do; that atheists love their children, that creationists do, that evolutionists do. But, truthfully, to hear some of the rhetoric that gets mainstream media time these days, I wonder if it really registers with the most vocal segments of many of those advocating on different sides of the arguments that those who oppose them really do love their children. That they really are human just like them.
There is no question, at least from where I’m sitting, that there is some major-league demonizing going on out there today, just as there was during the Cold War. I’ve heard, and not just on television or on the radio or the internet, suggest that saying Muslims and Christians, or Iranians and Americans, or atheists and Christians or Muslims have things in common and are not natural enemies is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorism. This is an incredibly dangerous position to take, just as it was incredibly dangerous during the cold war when the assumption of many was that the only thing in the minds of all Russians was the destruction the West.
If we could all just generally admit that our neighbors, locally and globally, no matter any of our differences, are much more like us than different from us, I would feel much more positive about the direction our global culture is going.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Creativity Experiment, Day Five: Anxiety
Today's Tarot card in John Remy's creativity experiment is the Nine of Swords.
It isn't a happy card, in contrast to the nice day I've had. On the other hand, some of the less-than-positive aspects of the day's card have manifested themselves in my day precisely because I haven't been able to participate in today's installment of the experiment as fully as I would have liked.
And so, just a little reflection on how even a good day can hold anxiety and guilt:
It’s amazing, the things that make me anxious.
Today, it has been not having the time to get around to doing something really creative for today’s installment of John's creativity experiment.
It was a nice day, which I spent helping a friend move and and then, with my roommate, having guests for dinner. Still, all day long, chittering at the back of my mind was anxiety surrounding the possibility that I wouldn’t have the time or energy to properly fulfill the commitment I've made to participating in the experiment this week.
And sure enough, here I am at the end of the day, friend moved and guests on their way home, trying to think through some of the ideas that I thought about in considering the card of the day while I was guarding cars while they were being loaded to move Jen's belongings from her old place to her new apartment and while I was helping sort her yarn into storage bins once we got everything moved in at the new place.
I had some interesting thoughts and some interesting ideas about how to write about them, especially about the aspect of the Nine of Swords that touch on worrying and anxiety. Goodness knows, with my OCD, I've got plenty of first-hand expereience obsessing on things and working myself up into anxiety attacks over them. But none of the things I’ve tried to put together this evening around those ideas has worked out.
I probably shouldn’t feel badly about it at all. I fulfilled a commitment to a friend, I had fun during the day, and I’m tired enough that I’ll probably sleep very well tonight. But what I really feel, deep down, is that I’ve let myself down by not rising to the challenge of John’s experiment today, and that I’ve let the other participants down by not participating fully myself today.
I should feel relaxed after the nice day I’ve had, and instead I’m sitting here feeling that I could have and should have done better, and feeling guilty and anxious because I didn't.
Which is, perhaps appropriately enough, entirely in the spirit of the Nine of Swords.
It isn't a happy card, in contrast to the nice day I've had. On the other hand, some of the less-than-positive aspects of the day's card have manifested themselves in my day precisely because I haven't been able to participate in today's installment of the experiment as fully as I would have liked.
And so, just a little reflection on how even a good day can hold anxiety and guilt:
It’s amazing, the things that make me anxious.
Today, it has been not having the time to get around to doing something really creative for today’s installment of John's creativity experiment.
It was a nice day, which I spent helping a friend move and and then, with my roommate, having guests for dinner. Still, all day long, chittering at the back of my mind was anxiety surrounding the possibility that I wouldn’t have the time or energy to properly fulfill the commitment I've made to participating in the experiment this week.
And sure enough, here I am at the end of the day, friend moved and guests on their way home, trying to think through some of the ideas that I thought about in considering the card of the day while I was guarding cars while they were being loaded to move Jen's belongings from her old place to her new apartment and while I was helping sort her yarn into storage bins once we got everything moved in at the new place.
I had some interesting thoughts and some interesting ideas about how to write about them, especially about the aspect of the Nine of Swords that touch on worrying and anxiety. Goodness knows, with my OCD, I've got plenty of first-hand expereience obsessing on things and working myself up into anxiety attacks over them. But none of the things I’ve tried to put together this evening around those ideas has worked out.
I probably shouldn’t feel badly about it at all. I fulfilled a commitment to a friend, I had fun during the day, and I’m tired enough that I’ll probably sleep very well tonight. But what I really feel, deep down, is that I’ve let myself down by not rising to the challenge of John’s experiment today, and that I’ve let the other participants down by not participating fully myself today.
I should feel relaxed after the nice day I’ve had, and instead I’m sitting here feeling that I could have and should have done better, and feeling guilty and anxious because I didn't.
Which is, perhaps appropriately enough, entirely in the spirit of the Nine of Swords.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Creativity Experiment, Day 4: "The Devil Drives at Night"
Okay, it's day number four of John Remy's Creativity Experiment over at Mind on Fire, and today's Tarot card is The Devil.
I don't know why it seemed so difficult to come up with something for today's card. Maybe it was just that it was Saturday and I was out of my regular weekday routine. Anyway, I finally did find inspiration and wrote the short story that follows.
I'll call it "The Devil Drives at Night".
It was one of those weird late-night conversations you can only find when you’re twenty and living in a dorm and it’s Friday night and there’s been too much drinking going on.
We all thought we were being so deep and philosophical and daring, talking about how we didn’t believe in God and how nothing really means anything, and what would it matter if it did, since we were all destined to be tiny little cogs in the capitalist machine.
I suppose we all meant it, although I was more agnostic than atheist even then, and I was beginning to come to the realization that even if there was no God, that didn’t necessarily mean that there was no meaning. I figured that I could make up my own and that would be as good as meaning being imposed on me.
Regular little rebel, I was.
As the night wore on and more wine and beer were consumed, we seemed to become more serious and more somber, and the talk turned from the cosmic to the personal. One talked about seeing another girl walk out in front of a car and get thrown fifty feet in traffic when they were both eight years old. Another said he’d been abused by his mother all his life until he was taken away from her when he was ten.
Yet another told about being stranded with his family in the snow in Oregon for several days when they’d taken a wrong turn and gotten stuck by the side of a road. His dad had tried to walk for help, but come back with frostbitten feet and hands. The searchers finally found them, only about an hour before the authorities were planning on calling off the search. If they’d been left out there for another night, they all probably would have died, and as it was, his father had lost both feet and several fingers.
The stories went on like this for most of an hour, getting more and more elaborate, before one girl, slight, shy, with long brown hair and a slight lisp made worse by the beers she‘d had, cleared her throat and said: “You all make me feel so guilty. I’ve never seen anyone die, I was never abused when I was a kid, and my family all gets along really well.
“And I know all of you said you don’t believe in God. Truth is, I don’t think I do, either. But I do believe in the Devil.”
A couple of the others started giggling at that, but others hushed them. I might have been because they wanted to let the girl have her say, but it also might have been because they were sure that she was going to give them something better than just that statement to laugh at.
“I’m sorry, I do,” she continued.
“And you have evidence of this?” That was Randall, who earlier had been explaining that he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, touch, feel and smell.”
“Well…Kind of,” the girl, whose name no one could remember, stammered. “I saw him once.”
That brought another laugh, but it was a little more nervous than the first one had been.
“All that is,” Randall said, becoming louder as he saw a chance to humiliate the girl, “is anecdotal evidence. Unless, of course, you have a photo of him, with the negative, so that it can be tested for tinkering in the lab.”
The girl’s voice became a little louder as well, and the expression on her face shifted from timidity to determination.
“I know it’s anecdotal. I know I can’t prove to you that I saw him. But Shelley can’t prove she saw her friend get hit by the car, either, but none of you have questioned that.”
“It hardly the same thing,” Randall said. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We know people get hit by cars sometimes; it isn’t out of the question that,” he hesitated as he tried to recall the name. “That Shelley might have seen one of those instances. But when you claim that you saw the Devil, which is a fictional construct, you have to produce concrete evidence or no one is going to believe you.”
The girl said, “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’m just saying, I saw the devil, and I believe he exists because of that experience.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Sarah said. Sarah winked at Randall as she said it. “How did you happen to see the Devil, and where were you, and what was he doing?”
The girl sighed and shook her head. She looked like she knew she was walking into a trap but couldn’t quite help herself or bring herself to backpedal from her statements.
“It was on my twelfth birthday,” she said. “My parents had taken me to San Diego to the zoo, and we were headed back home. It was late, probably close to midnight, and we were on the freeway, the 405, northbound in Sepulveda Pass. My sister, who was in the back seat with me, and my mom in the front seat, were both asleep. My dad was driving. I was still wide awake, watching the cars around us.
“Traffic was heavy even though it was so late because there had been a huge wreck on the transition to the Ventura Freeway. Cars were backed up for miles. One lane would be able to go ahead a little, then it would stop and another lane would progress.
“At one point, a car pulled up beside us, and the driver’s window was right next to mine…”
“Did he have horns and a pointy goatee?” someone said.
“No, he was clean-shaven,” the girl said. “But his eyes glowed red. His whole face had a red cast to it. He turned and looked at me and I felt like he could see right through me. And he didn’t have horns, exactly, but where you might expect them to be, there were little scars.”
“And you could see this in the dark?” Another skeptical voice.
“Well, it wasn’t dark in his car. The interior kind of glowed red, like it had neon lights on inside or something. He had this look on his face, too, like he was thinking at me that I knew who he was and that I should be afraid of him.”
“And so what happened?” Sarah said. “Were there flames and car wrecks all around and general destruction?”
The girl telling the story rolled her eyes. “The lane he was in started moving again and he got ahead of us.”
“That’s all?” Randall said. “You have to come up with a better story than that.”
The girl shrugged. “That’s what happened. You don’t believe me, and that’s okay. But that’s exactly what happened.”
The conversation continued. There were more stories told, some of them pretty horrific.
I noticed that the girl who had claimed to have seen the devil got up and started to wander off a little while after she had told her story. I got up and followed her up the stairs.
When I caught up with her, I asked her, “Why did you do that?”
“What?” she said. “Talk about seeing the Devil?
I nodded.
“I don’t know. Nobody ever believes me. But it happened. I could take you out there right now and show you exactly where on the freeway it happened. If I ever saw him again, I could point him out. And I really believe he was the Devil. But I don’t know why I ever bother to say anything. Even my dad didn’t believe me when I told him, that night after we got home.”
She stopped and thought for a minute. “Maybe I just hope that someday I’ll find someone else who has seen him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe. Well, good luck with that.”
And I walked away, feeling kind of sorry for her. Because I was fairly sure she wouldn’t ever find anyone willing to believe her.
Or at least willing to admit to anyone, even to her, that they’d seen him, too.
How did I know?
I knew because I knew her for the rest of college. Became good friends with her, in fact. But I never, ever told her that I’d seen the same man, also late one night and also in the car with my parents. Only I had been six years old, and it had been on the Hollywood Freeway, just as we were passing the Capital Records Building.
I have never told anyone. Not even my dad, who was also driving the night I saw the Devil.
I don't know why it seemed so difficult to come up with something for today's card. Maybe it was just that it was Saturday and I was out of my regular weekday routine. Anyway, I finally did find inspiration and wrote the short story that follows.
I'll call it "The Devil Drives at Night".
It was one of those weird late-night conversations you can only find when you’re twenty and living in a dorm and it’s Friday night and there’s been too much drinking going on.
We all thought we were being so deep and philosophical and daring, talking about how we didn’t believe in God and how nothing really means anything, and what would it matter if it did, since we were all destined to be tiny little cogs in the capitalist machine.
I suppose we all meant it, although I was more agnostic than atheist even then, and I was beginning to come to the realization that even if there was no God, that didn’t necessarily mean that there was no meaning. I figured that I could make up my own and that would be as good as meaning being imposed on me.
Regular little rebel, I was.
As the night wore on and more wine and beer were consumed, we seemed to become more serious and more somber, and the talk turned from the cosmic to the personal. One talked about seeing another girl walk out in front of a car and get thrown fifty feet in traffic when they were both eight years old. Another said he’d been abused by his mother all his life until he was taken away from her when he was ten.
Yet another told about being stranded with his family in the snow in Oregon for several days when they’d taken a wrong turn and gotten stuck by the side of a road. His dad had tried to walk for help, but come back with frostbitten feet and hands. The searchers finally found them, only about an hour before the authorities were planning on calling off the search. If they’d been left out there for another night, they all probably would have died, and as it was, his father had lost both feet and several fingers.
The stories went on like this for most of an hour, getting more and more elaborate, before one girl, slight, shy, with long brown hair and a slight lisp made worse by the beers she‘d had, cleared her throat and said: “You all make me feel so guilty. I’ve never seen anyone die, I was never abused when I was a kid, and my family all gets along really well.
“And I know all of you said you don’t believe in God. Truth is, I don’t think I do, either. But I do believe in the Devil.”
A couple of the others started giggling at that, but others hushed them. I might have been because they wanted to let the girl have her say, but it also might have been because they were sure that she was going to give them something better than just that statement to laugh at.
“I’m sorry, I do,” she continued.
“And you have evidence of this?” That was Randall, who earlier had been explaining that he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, touch, feel and smell.”
“Well…Kind of,” the girl, whose name no one could remember, stammered. “I saw him once.”
That brought another laugh, but it was a little more nervous than the first one had been.
“All that is,” Randall said, becoming louder as he saw a chance to humiliate the girl, “is anecdotal evidence. Unless, of course, you have a photo of him, with the negative, so that it can be tested for tinkering in the lab.”
The girl’s voice became a little louder as well, and the expression on her face shifted from timidity to determination.
“I know it’s anecdotal. I know I can’t prove to you that I saw him. But Shelley can’t prove she saw her friend get hit by the car, either, but none of you have questioned that.”
“It hardly the same thing,” Randall said. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We know people get hit by cars sometimes; it isn’t out of the question that,” he hesitated as he tried to recall the name. “That Shelley might have seen one of those instances. But when you claim that you saw the Devil, which is a fictional construct, you have to produce concrete evidence or no one is going to believe you.”
The girl said, “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’m just saying, I saw the devil, and I believe he exists because of that experience.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Sarah said. Sarah winked at Randall as she said it. “How did you happen to see the Devil, and where were you, and what was he doing?”
The girl sighed and shook her head. She looked like she knew she was walking into a trap but couldn’t quite help herself or bring herself to backpedal from her statements.
“It was on my twelfth birthday,” she said. “My parents had taken me to San Diego to the zoo, and we were headed back home. It was late, probably close to midnight, and we were on the freeway, the 405, northbound in Sepulveda Pass. My sister, who was in the back seat with me, and my mom in the front seat, were both asleep. My dad was driving. I was still wide awake, watching the cars around us.
“Traffic was heavy even though it was so late because there had been a huge wreck on the transition to the Ventura Freeway. Cars were backed up for miles. One lane would be able to go ahead a little, then it would stop and another lane would progress.
“At one point, a car pulled up beside us, and the driver’s window was right next to mine…”
“Did he have horns and a pointy goatee?” someone said.
“No, he was clean-shaven,” the girl said. “But his eyes glowed red. His whole face had a red cast to it. He turned and looked at me and I felt like he could see right through me. And he didn’t have horns, exactly, but where you might expect them to be, there were little scars.”
“And you could see this in the dark?” Another skeptical voice.
“Well, it wasn’t dark in his car. The interior kind of glowed red, like it had neon lights on inside or something. He had this look on his face, too, like he was thinking at me that I knew who he was and that I should be afraid of him.”
“And so what happened?” Sarah said. “Were there flames and car wrecks all around and general destruction?”
The girl telling the story rolled her eyes. “The lane he was in started moving again and he got ahead of us.”
“That’s all?” Randall said. “You have to come up with a better story than that.”
The girl shrugged. “That’s what happened. You don’t believe me, and that’s okay. But that’s exactly what happened.”
The conversation continued. There were more stories told, some of them pretty horrific.
I noticed that the girl who had claimed to have seen the devil got up and started to wander off a little while after she had told her story. I got up and followed her up the stairs.
When I caught up with her, I asked her, “Why did you do that?”
“What?” she said. “Talk about seeing the Devil?
I nodded.
“I don’t know. Nobody ever believes me. But it happened. I could take you out there right now and show you exactly where on the freeway it happened. If I ever saw him again, I could point him out. And I really believe he was the Devil. But I don’t know why I ever bother to say anything. Even my dad didn’t believe me when I told him, that night after we got home.”
She stopped and thought for a minute. “Maybe I just hope that someday I’ll find someone else who has seen him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe. Well, good luck with that.”
And I walked away, feeling kind of sorry for her. Because I was fairly sure she wouldn’t ever find anyone willing to believe her.
Or at least willing to admit to anyone, even to her, that they’d seen him, too.
How did I know?
I knew because I knew her for the rest of college. Became good friends with her, in fact. But I never, ever told her that I’d seen the same man, also late one night and also in the car with my parents. Only I had been six years old, and it had been on the Hollywood Freeway, just as we were passing the Capital Records Building.
I have never told anyone. Not even my dad, who was also driving the night I saw the Devil.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Creativity Experiiment, Day 3: "The Multitasker"
It's day three of John Remy's creativity experiment over at Mind on Fire.
Today's choice from the Tarot deck is the Two of Pentacles. An interesting prompt. I didn't flash on anything immediately from the image (which you can see at John's blog; I'm still a bit technology impaired when it comes to things like images), but when I clicked over to read the summary of meanings that can attach to the card, it hit me immediately.
And so, "The Multitasker":
Chaos abounds
Chores must be done
Challenges ruin a plan
Crises hit the fan
(with accompanying shit)
Hair is torn
Garments are rent
Lunches are lost
Cookies are tossed
(in panic and in fear)
A typical day in the office
But amid the maelstrom
A calm and steady hand
Fends off the boss
Sometimes with a cross
(and garlic…oh! the gossip)
Answers questions
Massages egos
Juggles tasks
Sometimes hides flasks
(so something gets accomplished)
Some hate her
Some love her
But she is called by all
In the boardroom and in the hall
(The Multitasker)
Today's choice from the Tarot deck is the Two of Pentacles. An interesting prompt. I didn't flash on anything immediately from the image (which you can see at John's blog; I'm still a bit technology impaired when it comes to things like images), but when I clicked over to read the summary of meanings that can attach to the card, it hit me immediately.
And so, "The Multitasker":
Chaos abounds
Chores must be done
Challenges ruin a plan
Crises hit the fan
(with accompanying shit)
Hair is torn
Garments are rent
Lunches are lost
Cookies are tossed
(in panic and in fear)
A typical day in the office
But amid the maelstrom
A calm and steady hand
Fends off the boss
Sometimes with a cross
(and garlic…oh! the gossip)
Answers questions
Massages egos
Juggles tasks
Sometimes hides flasks
(so something gets accomplished)
Some hate her
Some love her
But she is called by all
In the boardroom and in the hall
(The Multitasker)
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Creativity Experiment, Day 2: A Reflection
Today's Tarot card is The Hermit. You can click over to Mind on Fire to see John picking the card of the day, and for an explanation of just what we're doing this week as part of his experiment in creativity.
This is my day's contribution to the experiment:
What’s so wrong with being alone?
I enjoyed being alone when I was a child. Was it a function of having been an only child? I don’t know.
Sometimes, with half the neighborhood kids playing on my front lawn, I would sneak off inside for the solitude of my room and a book.
No reflection on the kids I knew (or, maybe it is), I really preferred being alone. I spent a lot of time plotting and planning how I could manage to live my adult life without having anyone else around. Ever.
Some people thought I was a strange child. Maybe I was.
Then I became the adult I’d wondered about when I was growing up.
I still preferred being alone.
But, I found, it is a lot more difficult to be alone when you’re an adult. You’ve got to earn a living. You’re expected to have “relationships” (yes, the quotation marks indicate that I still find that concept rather fraught at times), intimate and otherwise.
Additionally, if you’re alone too much others start to be, well, suspicious.
How many people comment about the serial killer next door, “He was always so quiet. Kept himself to himself.”
I did grow to enjoy the company of others. I spent less and less time alone, and mostly didn’t regret it. There was school and work and nights out with friends. But there were still those times when I Just. Needed. To. Be. Alone.
When my mother’s health began to decline and I had to take care of her, there was no such thing as being alone anymore. Going to the mailbox or walking out to the laundry room for five minutes was as close as I got to solitude.
That went on for close to five years.
And then Mom was gone, first into care and then into wherever we go when this life is over.
I discovered that I had forgotten how to be alone.
For awhile, I spent most of my time trying to be with others. With friends. Knitting at the local shop. If nothing else, sitting in a restaurant, writing or reading a book. Just so there were other people around.
Slowly, I’m learning how to be alone again, rediscovering the joys of quiet. Solitude. Time to just sit and think.
To just be.
I still greatly enjoy time with my friends. But, on the other hand, what’s so wrong with being alone?
This is my day's contribution to the experiment:
What’s so wrong with being alone?
I enjoyed being alone when I was a child. Was it a function of having been an only child? I don’t know.
Sometimes, with half the neighborhood kids playing on my front lawn, I would sneak off inside for the solitude of my room and a book.
No reflection on the kids I knew (or, maybe it is), I really preferred being alone. I spent a lot of time plotting and planning how I could manage to live my adult life without having anyone else around. Ever.
Some people thought I was a strange child. Maybe I was.
Then I became the adult I’d wondered about when I was growing up.
I still preferred being alone.
But, I found, it is a lot more difficult to be alone when you’re an adult. You’ve got to earn a living. You’re expected to have “relationships” (yes, the quotation marks indicate that I still find that concept rather fraught at times), intimate and otherwise.
Additionally, if you’re alone too much others start to be, well, suspicious.
How many people comment about the serial killer next door, “He was always so quiet. Kept himself to himself.”
I did grow to enjoy the company of others. I spent less and less time alone, and mostly didn’t regret it. There was school and work and nights out with friends. But there were still those times when I Just. Needed. To. Be. Alone.
When my mother’s health began to decline and I had to take care of her, there was no such thing as being alone anymore. Going to the mailbox or walking out to the laundry room for five minutes was as close as I got to solitude.
That went on for close to five years.
And then Mom was gone, first into care and then into wherever we go when this life is over.
I discovered that I had forgotten how to be alone.
For awhile, I spent most of my time trying to be with others. With friends. Knitting at the local shop. If nothing else, sitting in a restaurant, writing or reading a book. Just so there were other people around.
Slowly, I’m learning how to be alone again, rediscovering the joys of quiet. Solitude. Time to just sit and think.
To just be.
I still greatly enjoy time with my friends. But, on the other hand, what’s so wrong with being alone?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Creativity Experiment, Day 1: "The Knights in the Park"
I'm participating in John Remy's latest experiment in creativity, over at his blog, Mind on Fire.
Every day for the next week, he will pick a Tarot card at random, and everyone who is participating will create something spurred by that card, and post it.
Today's card is the Knight of Swords, and this is what jumped out of my mind in response to that imagery, a short story, just a couple of scenes, really, that has nothing to do with Tarot at all, but was nevertheless the first thing I thought of on seeing the day's prompt. It is a first draft, but that seems appropriate for this sort of on-the-run experiment.
So, without further comment: "The Knights in the Park":
“Mom!” Katie came tearing through the house, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Mom! I just came by the park, and there’s a bunch of guys out there in armor.”
“Yes, dear,” Mom said as Katie flew by her and into the kitchen. She was used to Katie’s flights of fantasy, and had long since started ignoring them. “It’s probably those knuckleheads in the SCA, practicing. You know how they like to beat each other with sticks.”
“No, Mom,” Katie said, banging shut the refrigerator door, water bottle in hand. “They didn’t have sticks. They had real swords. And spears.”
Mom sighed. “The SCA doesn’t use real swords, Katherine Marie. You’ve seen Mr. Smith’s swords. They’re made out of rattan.”
Katie sighed back, much more dramatically than her mother had.
“I told you, they’re real swords. I know, ‘cause one of them had stabbed another one, and the one that was stabbed was bleeding all over the place. It was gross.”
Back in the living room, Katie paused to drink.
“I asked if they needed me to call an ambulance, but they acted like they didn’t understand me. They were speaking some other language.”
“You need to stay away from Mr. Smith and his friends when they’re practicing,” Mom said. “Those helmets they wear restrict their vision, and one of them might hit you accidentally.”
“But the guy was bleeding, Mom. And moaning, and cussing I think. I couldn’t understand him, but it sounded like Dad does when he cusses.”
Mom looked up at her daughter for the first time since she had come inside.
“You’re a mess, Katie. Go wash up and change clothes. I’ve got to go to the grocery store when I finish folding this laundry, and I want you to go with me.”
“I hate going to the store, Mom,” Katie whined.
“Katie….”, Mom said, a warning tone in her voice.
Katie turned to go, and as she went down the hall she called back, “And there were horses too, Mom. And the horses had armor on, too.”
Mom stopped folding for a minute. Horses? The group that practices in the park never had horses. She shook her head, then went back to her folding.
Twenty minutes later, Katie and her mom were in the car, backing out of the driveway.
“Go the other way,” Katie said when her mom started to turn the car left out of the driveway. “I want to drive by the park and see if they knights and the horses are still there.”
“There are no knights in the part. And there are no horses. Horses are not allowed in the park.”
Mom was about to say no, when she decided that showing Katie that there were no knights, and no horses, in the park might make her daughter think twice before making up these stories. So, she drove back into the driveway and then backed out the other direction and headed toward the park.
Just as Mom suspected, there was no one in the park except for a few kids in the skateboard park.
Except, as the turned the corner and could see past the concrete of the skateboard area, there was a glint of sunlight off metal. As she drove further and could see more, there was a group of men in armor, some with helmets on and some with helmets dangling from gloved hands.
And there were two horses, held by the reins by a boy in a tunic, just beyond the knot of men, who seemed to be gathered around something, or someone, on the ground.
Maybe I should go take a look, see if someone needs help, Mom thought as she pulled up to the curb. She shut off the car, told Katie to stay put, and started across the street.
But, as Katie’s mom stepped up onto the sidewalk on the park side of the street, the gathering of men and the younger man and horses seemed to just dissolve away. One moment they seemed as solid as the sidewalks she was standing on. The next moment they were all transparent; she could see them, but she could see the lawn and trees beyond them, as well. And then, in another moment, they were just…gone.
Katie’s mom stopped still, looked all around her, to see where the group had gone. But they were nowhere in sight.
After a moment, she turned and went back to the car.
“Did you see that, Mom?” Katie said. “They were there, and then they just vanished. That was so cool.”
“Things…people…do not just vanish, Katie,” Mom said. “That’s impossible. It violates every known law of physics.”
Mom paused, sighed yet again. “Yes. I saw that.”
And then she turned and looked at Kate. “And if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you will be grounded until you are ninety years old. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie said.
“And I mean no one. Not Dad, not your teachers. Nobody.”
Katie caught the slight edge of hysteria in her mother’s voice and knew that this was one thing she really shouldn’t talk about.
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie repeated. “But we really did see it, didn’t we?”
Mom nodded her head, started the car, and continued to the grocery store.
Every day for the next week, he will pick a Tarot card at random, and everyone who is participating will create something spurred by that card, and post it.
Today's card is the Knight of Swords, and this is what jumped out of my mind in response to that imagery, a short story, just a couple of scenes, really, that has nothing to do with Tarot at all, but was nevertheless the first thing I thought of on seeing the day's prompt. It is a first draft, but that seems appropriate for this sort of on-the-run experiment.
So, without further comment: "The Knights in the Park":
“Mom!” Katie came tearing through the house, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Mom! I just came by the park, and there’s a bunch of guys out there in armor.”
“Yes, dear,” Mom said as Katie flew by her and into the kitchen. She was used to Katie’s flights of fantasy, and had long since started ignoring them. “It’s probably those knuckleheads in the SCA, practicing. You know how they like to beat each other with sticks.”
“No, Mom,” Katie said, banging shut the refrigerator door, water bottle in hand. “They didn’t have sticks. They had real swords. And spears.”
Mom sighed. “The SCA doesn’t use real swords, Katherine Marie. You’ve seen Mr. Smith’s swords. They’re made out of rattan.”
Katie sighed back, much more dramatically than her mother had.
“I told you, they’re real swords. I know, ‘cause one of them had stabbed another one, and the one that was stabbed was bleeding all over the place. It was gross.”
Back in the living room, Katie paused to drink.
“I asked if they needed me to call an ambulance, but they acted like they didn’t understand me. They were speaking some other language.”
“You need to stay away from Mr. Smith and his friends when they’re practicing,” Mom said. “Those helmets they wear restrict their vision, and one of them might hit you accidentally.”
“But the guy was bleeding, Mom. And moaning, and cussing I think. I couldn’t understand him, but it sounded like Dad does when he cusses.”
Mom looked up at her daughter for the first time since she had come inside.
“You’re a mess, Katie. Go wash up and change clothes. I’ve got to go to the grocery store when I finish folding this laundry, and I want you to go with me.”
“I hate going to the store, Mom,” Katie whined.
“Katie….”, Mom said, a warning tone in her voice.
Katie turned to go, and as she went down the hall she called back, “And there were horses too, Mom. And the horses had armor on, too.”
Mom stopped folding for a minute. Horses? The group that practices in the park never had horses. She shook her head, then went back to her folding.
Twenty minutes later, Katie and her mom were in the car, backing out of the driveway.
“Go the other way,” Katie said when her mom started to turn the car left out of the driveway. “I want to drive by the park and see if they knights and the horses are still there.”
“There are no knights in the part. And there are no horses. Horses are not allowed in the park.”
Mom was about to say no, when she decided that showing Katie that there were no knights, and no horses, in the park might make her daughter think twice before making up these stories. So, she drove back into the driveway and then backed out the other direction and headed toward the park.
Just as Mom suspected, there was no one in the park except for a few kids in the skateboard park.
Except, as the turned the corner and could see past the concrete of the skateboard area, there was a glint of sunlight off metal. As she drove further and could see more, there was a group of men in armor, some with helmets on and some with helmets dangling from gloved hands.
And there were two horses, held by the reins by a boy in a tunic, just beyond the knot of men, who seemed to be gathered around something, or someone, on the ground.
Maybe I should go take a look, see if someone needs help, Mom thought as she pulled up to the curb. She shut off the car, told Katie to stay put, and started across the street.
But, as Katie’s mom stepped up onto the sidewalk on the park side of the street, the gathering of men and the younger man and horses seemed to just dissolve away. One moment they seemed as solid as the sidewalks she was standing on. The next moment they were all transparent; she could see them, but she could see the lawn and trees beyond them, as well. And then, in another moment, they were just…gone.
Katie’s mom stopped still, looked all around her, to see where the group had gone. But they were nowhere in sight.
After a moment, she turned and went back to the car.
“Did you see that, Mom?” Katie said. “They were there, and then they just vanished. That was so cool.”
“Things…people…do not just vanish, Katie,” Mom said. “That’s impossible. It violates every known law of physics.”
Mom paused, sighed yet again. “Yes. I saw that.”
And then she turned and looked at Kate. “And if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you will be grounded until you are ninety years old. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie said.
“And I mean no one. Not Dad, not your teachers. Nobody.”
Katie caught the slight edge of hysteria in her mother’s voice and knew that this was one thing she really shouldn’t talk about.
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie repeated. “But we really did see it, didn’t we?”
Mom nodded her head, started the car, and continued to the grocery store.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
I really hate spring...
Yes, I know. Spring isn't here yet. But Daylight Savings Time is, and that's enough for me.
In truth, I was glad to see DST come this year. Usually, I like it when it gets dark early, but for some reason it started bothering me this year. So, I'm okay with it getting dark an hour later all of a sudden. I probably won't still like it when it isn't full dark until nine o'clock at night, but this is now.
No, my problem with Spring is that there are plants and trees blossoming. For me, that means that allergy season has shifted into high gear. It means sinus pressure and post-nasal drip, sore throats and sneezing. It's bad enough that people look at me like I've got the plague; sometimes it gets so bad that I feel like I've got the plague.
Like today. My sinuses were bothering me before I ever went outside. Then, after I was finished working, I had to go out to the grocery store to get a few things. Now I'm back, and I feel very much like someone is dragging a piece of barbed wire back and forth inside my sinuses.
Which is probably too much information for most of you. Sorry. We tell the truth here.
Anyway, I'd love to just go back to bed and take a long nap. Like maybe through tomorrow morning. But I won't. It's knit night. I'll go commiserate with my knitting friends who have allergies even worse than I do. It won't make the allergies better. But sometimes, a little bitch and moan time is good for the psyche.
Which brings me to the key question: Why am I allergic to so many things now? I never had any allergies until I moved to this valley. None. Nada. I could eat anything I wanted. With the exception of maybe once a year, for a day or two, my sinuses never caused me any trouble.
Now...well, that's a different story. Here in the most productive agricultural county in the entire nation, I'm allergic to at least half the things grown here. I just don't understand how that works.
In truth, I was glad to see DST come this year. Usually, I like it when it gets dark early, but for some reason it started bothering me this year. So, I'm okay with it getting dark an hour later all of a sudden. I probably won't still like it when it isn't full dark until nine o'clock at night, but this is now.
No, my problem with Spring is that there are plants and trees blossoming. For me, that means that allergy season has shifted into high gear. It means sinus pressure and post-nasal drip, sore throats and sneezing. It's bad enough that people look at me like I've got the plague; sometimes it gets so bad that I feel like I've got the plague.
Like today. My sinuses were bothering me before I ever went outside. Then, after I was finished working, I had to go out to the grocery store to get a few things. Now I'm back, and I feel very much like someone is dragging a piece of barbed wire back and forth inside my sinuses.
Which is probably too much information for most of you. Sorry. We tell the truth here.
Anyway, I'd love to just go back to bed and take a long nap. Like maybe through tomorrow morning. But I won't. It's knit night. I'll go commiserate with my knitting friends who have allergies even worse than I do. It won't make the allergies better. But sometimes, a little bitch and moan time is good for the psyche.
Which brings me to the key question: Why am I allergic to so many things now? I never had any allergies until I moved to this valley. None. Nada. I could eat anything I wanted. With the exception of maybe once a year, for a day or two, my sinuses never caused me any trouble.
Now...well, that's a different story. Here in the most productive agricultural county in the entire nation, I'm allergic to at least half the things grown here. I just don't understand how that works.
Monday, March 08, 2010
What qualified this man to say this?
According to an article on Huffington Post yesterday, Tom Delay thinks that giving people unemployment benefits makes them lazy, no-accounts who just sit home and collect government money, not bothering to look for a job until just before their benefits run out.
Delay’s remarks came on one of the talking-heads Sunday shows on CNN, in defense of Senator Jim Bunning (Republican, of Kentucky) and his fillibuster blocking a vote on extended benefits for the jobless. Answering a question from the host of the show, Candy Crowley, in which she asked, “People are unemployed because they want to be?”, Delay said, “Well, it’s the truth, and people in the real world know it.”
Um. By what stretch of the imagination does Delay think he knows anything about the real world? Does he not know that most people who are unemployed do not qualify for benefits anyway. Those who were working part-time, in temporary jobs, or who are self-employed (that would include me) are not eligible. Additionally, you can’t just quit your job and receive jobless benefits; you have to be unemployed through no fault of your own.
Well, I guess you have to consider the source. Delay is, after all, under indictment on felony conspiracy charges involving campaign contributions, had to resign from his Senate seat due to the indictment, was tangled up with lobbyists for most of his political career, has promoted “birther” conspiracy beliefs which hold that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is thus not legally eligible to be president, and believes that evolution should not be taught in the nation’s public schools because doing so leads to events like the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999.
I don’t even know what else to say. Delay has given every appearance of being a crooked politician with some fairly out-there views (not necessarily on the evolution issue, as lots of people believe pretty much the same thing he does; but the “birthers” are just plain loony). But he feels qualified to go around saying that people are unemployed because they want to be, and he expects us to all just accept his word on that.
Sorry. I don’t think so.
Delay’s remarks came on one of the talking-heads Sunday shows on CNN, in defense of Senator Jim Bunning (Republican, of Kentucky) and his fillibuster blocking a vote on extended benefits for the jobless. Answering a question from the host of the show, Candy Crowley, in which she asked, “People are unemployed because they want to be?”, Delay said, “Well, it’s the truth, and people in the real world know it.”
Um. By what stretch of the imagination does Delay think he knows anything about the real world? Does he not know that most people who are unemployed do not qualify for benefits anyway. Those who were working part-time, in temporary jobs, or who are self-employed (that would include me) are not eligible. Additionally, you can’t just quit your job and receive jobless benefits; you have to be unemployed through no fault of your own.
Well, I guess you have to consider the source. Delay is, after all, under indictment on felony conspiracy charges involving campaign contributions, had to resign from his Senate seat due to the indictment, was tangled up with lobbyists for most of his political career, has promoted “birther” conspiracy beliefs which hold that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is thus not legally eligible to be president, and believes that evolution should not be taught in the nation’s public schools because doing so leads to events like the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999.
I don’t even know what else to say. Delay has given every appearance of being a crooked politician with some fairly out-there views (not necessarily on the evolution issue, as lots of people believe pretty much the same thing he does; but the “birthers” are just plain loony). But he feels qualified to go around saying that people are unemployed because they want to be, and he expects us to all just accept his word on that.
Sorry. I don’t think so.
Yet another sabbatical from posting...
Um-hum. Yeah. It has been a long time since I've posted here.
But, no, you haven't gotten rid of me yet. It's just that I spent most of January worrying about various issues, while most of February was spent in the process of moving house (well, apartment).
I could not believe the amount of crap that one can accumulate in a one-bedroom apartment and that you don't even see until you start packing to move. I think I threw out as much or more junk than I acutally moved. And the time spent shredding old mail so as to avoid identity-theft. Can someone please tell me why places have to print account numbers on every single page of mailings? It is absolutely insane.
Also, I celebrated the move by going to Gallifrey One in Los Angeles. For those of you who don't know, Gally is a Doctor Who convention...yes, we've established before that I'm a geek...held annually at the airport Marriott in L.A. Lots of fun, loads of insanity, and a good way to get rid of a lot of stress.
Now, I'm just concentrating on work and finding more work. The former is going as well as can be expected in a time of recession (no, it isn't over yet, no matter what the talking heads on the news stations say), and the latter is, well, dismal.
I guess we will see how much more time I have to post here. Maybe if I'd start reading the news again (I've been avoiding it; too depressing), I'd find stuff that riles me up enough to post.
But, no, you haven't gotten rid of me yet. It's just that I spent most of January worrying about various issues, while most of February was spent in the process of moving house (well, apartment).
I could not believe the amount of crap that one can accumulate in a one-bedroom apartment and that you don't even see until you start packing to move. I think I threw out as much or more junk than I acutally moved. And the time spent shredding old mail so as to avoid identity-theft. Can someone please tell me why places have to print account numbers on every single page of mailings? It is absolutely insane.
Also, I celebrated the move by going to Gallifrey One in Los Angeles. For those of you who don't know, Gally is a Doctor Who convention...yes, we've established before that I'm a geek...held annually at the airport Marriott in L.A. Lots of fun, loads of insanity, and a good way to get rid of a lot of stress.
Now, I'm just concentrating on work and finding more work. The former is going as well as can be expected in a time of recession (no, it isn't over yet, no matter what the talking heads on the news stations say), and the latter is, well, dismal.
I guess we will see how much more time I have to post here. Maybe if I'd start reading the news again (I've been avoiding it; too depressing), I'd find stuff that riles me up enough to post.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Neener, neener, neener...or, another archaeological paradigm bites the dust...
I have to say that this news made me do a little happy dance, sitting here in my office chair.
Sphere is reporting that the British archaeological journal Antiquity has published a paper outlining evidence showing that a large-scale, monument-building pre-Columbian civilization did indeed exist in the Amazon basin, possibly dating back to around AD 800. This directly contradicts the prevailing paradigm that the Amazon basin was never capable of supporting more than small bands of people and certainly not a settlement that housed upwards of 60,000 people, which is what the authors of the Antiquity paper claim, adding that they have so far uncovered only around 10 percent of the existing remains of the city.
The find vindicates the beliefs of Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who vanished in the area of the find in 1925, along with one of his sons and another gentleman while searching for the remains of the "lost city" he thought he had evidence for.
Last year, I read The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, which tells about Fawcett's obsession, the obsession of later explorers to find out what happened to the disappeared Englishman and his party, and the search by a few archaeologists to overturn the reigning paradigm and find evidence that the Amazon was, indeed, the home of a large-scale vanished civilization. The news of this new find only makes me more enthusiastic about my recommendation of this very good book, as well as of a book I reviewed in this blog back in 2007, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann, which also spent some time looking at the existing paradigm and newer ideas of who might have lived in the Amazon basin in the past and how large their settlements might have been.
If I haven't said it before, or haven't said it emphatically enough, go find Brann's book, and Mann's, and read them.
Unfortunately, part of this story is not good. The road to this new discovery was opened only because of extensive clear-cutting of the Amazon forest. Nothing is perfect, I suppose, but I really wish that these new remains could have been found without so much destruction having been done to the enviroment of the Amazon basin.
Sphere is reporting that the British archaeological journal Antiquity has published a paper outlining evidence showing that a large-scale, monument-building pre-Columbian civilization did indeed exist in the Amazon basin, possibly dating back to around AD 800. This directly contradicts the prevailing paradigm that the Amazon basin was never capable of supporting more than small bands of people and certainly not a settlement that housed upwards of 60,000 people, which is what the authors of the Antiquity paper claim, adding that they have so far uncovered only around 10 percent of the existing remains of the city.
The find vindicates the beliefs of Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who vanished in the area of the find in 1925, along with one of his sons and another gentleman while searching for the remains of the "lost city" he thought he had evidence for.
Last year, I read The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann, which tells about Fawcett's obsession, the obsession of later explorers to find out what happened to the disappeared Englishman and his party, and the search by a few archaeologists to overturn the reigning paradigm and find evidence that the Amazon was, indeed, the home of a large-scale vanished civilization. The news of this new find only makes me more enthusiastic about my recommendation of this very good book, as well as of a book I reviewed in this blog back in 2007, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann, which also spent some time looking at the existing paradigm and newer ideas of who might have lived in the Amazon basin in the past and how large their settlements might have been.
If I haven't said it before, or haven't said it emphatically enough, go find Brann's book, and Mann's, and read them.
Unfortunately, part of this story is not good. The road to this new discovery was opened only because of extensive clear-cutting of the Amazon forest. Nothing is perfect, I suppose, but I really wish that these new remains could have been found without so much destruction having been done to the enviroment of the Amazon basin.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
A year of reading...
I thought I'd post the list of books I read in 2009.
I'm not especially happy with it. I had hoped to read 52 books during the year, one a week. As you will see, I didn't even make quite half that.
It isn't that I didn't read a lot last year, but more that most of what I read was not in the form of books. I read a lot for work; none of that made it onto the list. I also read quite a bit of other stuff on the internet...reviews, articles, even some fan fiction (some of it horrendous, but some of it very good). Again, there is no place on the list for any of those.
But...I did manage to read 24 books. Sitting in the restaurant tonight, reading after I finished eating, I got into a conversation with one of the waitstaff. She seemed to think that 24 books in a year is a lot. But one year, quite a few years ago, I read 100 books in a year. I know people who regularly read even more than that.
The list:
Finished, January:
1 *Censoring Science, by Mark Bowen
2 Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay
3 *The Longest Cave, by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson (re-read)
4 Dearly Devoted Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay (warning: the "ick factor" very high in this book)
5 Wives and Sisters, by Natalie R. Collins
6 The Twilight Streets, by Gary Russell
7 Torchwood: SkyPoint, by Phil Ford
8 Slow Decay, by Andy Lane
9 Something in the Water, by Trevor Baxendale
10 The Aztec Heresy, by Paul Christopher
11 Rainbow Drive, by Roderick Thorp
12 Trace Memory, by David Llewellyn
13 The Last Colony, by John Scalzi
14 Joplin’s Ghost, by Tananarive Due
15 *From Housewife to Heretic, by Sonia Johnson (re-read)
16 *History as Mystery, by Michael Parenti
17 *West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, by Mark Arax
18 Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs
19 Amazon Ink, by Lori Devoti
20 CSI: Sin City, by Max Allan Collins
21 *Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, by Matt McCarthy
22 *A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, by Michael Barkun
23 *The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann
24 The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly
The starred titles are non-fiction. I'm a little disappointed that there are only eight of those out of the 24 books I read, just a third of the total. Especially since, of the others, nine books have some relation to television shows, another third plus one. Not that those were all bad, trashy novels; some of them were quite good.
One out of those nine books related to series television, I should note, is only related to it's show ("Bones") because the lead character of both have the same name and the show is "based on" the series of mysteries. In another case, the "Dexter" books, one is the basis of the show's first season, which stuck very close to the novel, while the other is the basis of the second season, but the two diverge greatly. Another five are related to the British science-fiction series "Torchwood". Those are actually my favorites in this category, despite a slight variation in quality, simply because I like the show so much.
The books I read this year that I would recommend most highly are, among the non-fiction, West of the West, by Mark Arax and The Lost City of Z by David Grann. Both were fascinating, spectacular books.
And, of course, The Longest Cave, by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson, simply because it is my favorite book in the world. I've read it more times than I can count; it's my go-to book when I'm not happy with the world and want to be cheered up. That the book is about cave exploration may well say something about me, but I'm not sure what that might be.
Among the fiction, I would most recommend The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly. Then again, I would recommend anything of his that I've read. Also, Joplin's Ghost, by Tannarive Due, is a remarkable book that blends two different cultural movements from two different generations which might not really be all that different at all. Rainbow Drive, by Roderick Thorp, is also a good mystery, enhanced by the fact that it was written before the advent of a cell phone in every pocket, providing a pocket lesson in how much that one technological advance has changed our culture.
Other than that, I'm not going to tell you too much about any of these books. I've written about a few of them here before, but aside from that I want you to go out and seek them out for yourselves, and I don't want you to think you know enough abaout them that you'll say that you might not be interested in them. I want them to be surprises to you.
I think some of them will be good surprises.
My goal for this year, by the way, is to read 40 books. I really, secretly, hope I can reach the book a week goal I set last year, but I thought it might be a good idea to scale back expectations just a bit.
I'm not especially happy with it. I had hoped to read 52 books during the year, one a week. As you will see, I didn't even make quite half that.
It isn't that I didn't read a lot last year, but more that most of what I read was not in the form of books. I read a lot for work; none of that made it onto the list. I also read quite a bit of other stuff on the internet...reviews, articles, even some fan fiction (some of it horrendous, but some of it very good). Again, there is no place on the list for any of those.
But...I did manage to read 24 books. Sitting in the restaurant tonight, reading after I finished eating, I got into a conversation with one of the waitstaff. She seemed to think that 24 books in a year is a lot. But one year, quite a few years ago, I read 100 books in a year. I know people who regularly read even more than that.
The list:
Finished, January:
1 *Censoring Science, by Mark Bowen
2 Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay
3 *The Longest Cave, by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson (re-read)
4 Dearly Devoted Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay (warning: the "ick factor" very high in this book)
5 Wives and Sisters, by Natalie R. Collins
6 The Twilight Streets, by Gary Russell
7 Torchwood: SkyPoint, by Phil Ford
8 Slow Decay, by Andy Lane
9 Something in the Water, by Trevor Baxendale
10 The Aztec Heresy, by Paul Christopher
11 Rainbow Drive, by Roderick Thorp
12 Trace Memory, by David Llewellyn
13 The Last Colony, by John Scalzi
14 Joplin’s Ghost, by Tananarive Due
15 *From Housewife to Heretic, by Sonia Johnson (re-read)
16 *History as Mystery, by Michael Parenti
17 *West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State, by Mark Arax
18 Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs
19 Amazon Ink, by Lori Devoti
20 CSI: Sin City, by Max Allan Collins
21 *Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, by Matt McCarthy
22 *A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, by Michael Barkun
23 *The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann
24 The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly
The starred titles are non-fiction. I'm a little disappointed that there are only eight of those out of the 24 books I read, just a third of the total. Especially since, of the others, nine books have some relation to television shows, another third plus one. Not that those were all bad, trashy novels; some of them were quite good.
One out of those nine books related to series television, I should note, is only related to it's show ("Bones") because the lead character of both have the same name and the show is "based on" the series of mysteries. In another case, the "Dexter" books, one is the basis of the show's first season, which stuck very close to the novel, while the other is the basis of the second season, but the two diverge greatly. Another five are related to the British science-fiction series "Torchwood". Those are actually my favorites in this category, despite a slight variation in quality, simply because I like the show so much.
The books I read this year that I would recommend most highly are, among the non-fiction, West of the West, by Mark Arax and The Lost City of Z by David Grann. Both were fascinating, spectacular books.
And, of course, The Longest Cave, by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson, simply because it is my favorite book in the world. I've read it more times than I can count; it's my go-to book when I'm not happy with the world and want to be cheered up. That the book is about cave exploration may well say something about me, but I'm not sure what that might be.
Among the fiction, I would most recommend The Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly. Then again, I would recommend anything of his that I've read. Also, Joplin's Ghost, by Tannarive Due, is a remarkable book that blends two different cultural movements from two different generations which might not really be all that different at all. Rainbow Drive, by Roderick Thorp, is also a good mystery, enhanced by the fact that it was written before the advent of a cell phone in every pocket, providing a pocket lesson in how much that one technological advance has changed our culture.
Other than that, I'm not going to tell you too much about any of these books. I've written about a few of them here before, but aside from that I want you to go out and seek them out for yourselves, and I don't want you to think you know enough abaout them that you'll say that you might not be interested in them. I want them to be surprises to you.
I think some of them will be good surprises.
My goal for this year, by the way, is to read 40 books. I really, secretly, hope I can reach the book a week goal I set last year, but I thought it might be a good idea to scale back expectations just a bit.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Happy New Year's Eve...
Happy New Year to those of you who have already made it into 2010, and for those of you who are still on this side of midnight, Happy New Year's Eve, and I hope you have a fun but safe celebr ation.
Me? I'm staying home and hiding from all the madness. It's a tradition that I like just fine, thanks. I'll make dinner, watch some TV, maybe some DVDs, possibly watch the ball drop in New York when they televise that (if I think of it), and perhaps get some writing done. I've got a new internet project that I hope will go live within the next week or so, and I need to do some preparation for that.
I did have to share something I saw earlier today as I was on the bus on the way home after spending the day knitting with friends.
There was a guy standing on the median at one of the busiest intersections in town, one of the places where people usually stand with signs asking for work, for money or for something to eat.
None of that for this guy. His sign read, in big block letters: "WON'T LIE. NEED BEER."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I guess my worse nature came out, because I settled on laughing. But, you know...I think he at least deserves points for honesty.
Me? I'm staying home and hiding from all the madness. It's a tradition that I like just fine, thanks. I'll make dinner, watch some TV, maybe some DVDs, possibly watch the ball drop in New York when they televise that (if I think of it), and perhaps get some writing done. I've got a new internet project that I hope will go live within the next week or so, and I need to do some preparation for that.
I did have to share something I saw earlier today as I was on the bus on the way home after spending the day knitting with friends.
There was a guy standing on the median at one of the busiest intersections in town, one of the places where people usually stand with signs asking for work, for money or for something to eat.
None of that for this guy. His sign read, in big block letters: "WON'T LIE. NEED BEER."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I guess my worse nature came out, because I settled on laughing. But, you know...I think he at least deserves points for honesty.
Monday, December 21, 2009
That was just...amazing
Every once in awhile, you see and/or hear something that just has to be shared.
I'm watching "Spectacle", Elvis Costello's show on the Sundance Channel. It isn't a regular stop for me, but every once in awhile I tune in. And, boy am I glad I did this evening.
To open the show, Costello sang the most amazing version of "If I Only Had A Brain", (from "The Wizard of Oz), that I've ever heard. It was sweet, quiet, very much in the spirit of the movie, accompanied by just a guitar. There are almost no words for me to describe how lovely it was. So I won't even try.
But, if you get the chance to see a re-showing of the episode - it's the one on which his guest is Rufus Wainright - tune in early, it's the very first thing on the episode. I think you'll like it.
I'm watching "Spectacle", Elvis Costello's show on the Sundance Channel. It isn't a regular stop for me, but every once in awhile I tune in. And, boy am I glad I did this evening.
To open the show, Costello sang the most amazing version of "If I Only Had A Brain", (from "The Wizard of Oz), that I've ever heard. It was sweet, quiet, very much in the spirit of the movie, accompanied by just a guitar. There are almost no words for me to describe how lovely it was. So I won't even try.
But, if you get the chance to see a re-showing of the episode - it's the one on which his guest is Rufus Wainright - tune in early, it's the very first thing on the episode. I think you'll like it.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
I told you I recognized that rock...
It is amazing, some of the things you find when you channel-surf late at night.
Amazing, and occasionally frightening.
A couple of nights ago, I had just finished watching “Capote” (fabulous film, by the way…you should see it if you haven’t), and wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet, so I started flipping through the channels, looking for something interesting.
I landed on a secondary cable version of one of our local TV stations, where there was a movie that looked oldish and like something that used to show up on Creature Features, which I loved when I was growing up. Because my father taught me from a young age to appreciate truly bad movies, I decided to watch for awhile.
It took a few minutes to find out that it was a little thing from 1966 called “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein”.
Yeah. I know. Still, with a line like, “You should have stayed in Europe and given pink pills to little old ladies”, I just couldn’t resist spending a little time with it.
But, it was getting late and I was getting cold, so I went to bed instead of watching to the end.
When I got up the next morning, however, I was still curious about the film. This was mostly because I thought I recognized the rocks I saw in several scenes. Well, not the exact rocks, but they looked like the rocks in the hills around where I grew up. That was in Southern California, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I did know those rocks.
So, I clicked over to IMDb and looked the film up, half expecting that I had heard the title of the film wrong.
But there it was, so I checked the list of filming locations and, sure enough, the movie had been filmed at Corriganville, a movie ranch a few miles from where I grew up.
Discovering that piqued my interest further, and I did a little more research.
I found out that the movie had been made in 8 days (which is six days longer than Hollywood legend claims it took to make the original, Roger Corman-directed production of “Little Shop of Horrors”). Based on the general quality of the acting, among other things. I also discovered that the lab equipment in the film was the same equipment used in the original Frankenstein films, made years earlier by Universal. The equipment was also used later on, in “Young Frankenstein”. Which almost gives “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” a little legitimacy. A little.
The acting was so bad…really stinky, in fact…I looked to see if any of the cast ever worked again.
Well, yes, as it turned out. The marshal was played by Jim Davis, who became better known for his portrayal of the Ewing family patriarch, Jock, in the prime-time soap opera “Dallas”. And the title role of Jesse James was played by John Lupton, a name that was familiar but that I couldn’t quite place.
Lupton, it turns out, might possibly have been in every TV series ever made. Well, maybe not every one, but the list of shows he did parts on was quite long. And before this movie, he had been in, among other productions, the 1953 version of “Julius Caesar”, the one in which Marlon Brando played Mark Antony and James Mason played Brutus. Lupton only had a small part in that, but he had been in it. One of the interesting things (to me) was that “Julius Caesar” was partly filmed at the Iversosn Ranch, another movie ranch that was at the other end of Santa Susana Pass Road from Corriganville.
Lupton is also an August 23rd person, which means nothing to any of you. But my birthday is also August 23rd, so I get to add him to the list of people who share my birthday, something I’ve been putting together for a long time and is probably far more interesting to me than it should be.
And then there was Narda Onyx, who played Frankenstein’s daughter, Dr. Maria Frankenstein, who was looking to recreate her father’s experiments in the Old West. According to IMDb, this was her last film.
And so you see how easily amused I am, that I can write over 700 words about a B-movie (well, maybe a D-movie, when you get down to it) after actually taking the time to do research on it.
All because I recognized those rocks.
Amazing, and occasionally frightening.
A couple of nights ago, I had just finished watching “Capote” (fabulous film, by the way…you should see it if you haven’t), and wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet, so I started flipping through the channels, looking for something interesting.
I landed on a secondary cable version of one of our local TV stations, where there was a movie that looked oldish and like something that used to show up on Creature Features, which I loved when I was growing up. Because my father taught me from a young age to appreciate truly bad movies, I decided to watch for awhile.
It took a few minutes to find out that it was a little thing from 1966 called “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein”.
Yeah. I know. Still, with a line like, “You should have stayed in Europe and given pink pills to little old ladies”, I just couldn’t resist spending a little time with it.
But, it was getting late and I was getting cold, so I went to bed instead of watching to the end.
When I got up the next morning, however, I was still curious about the film. This was mostly because I thought I recognized the rocks I saw in several scenes. Well, not the exact rocks, but they looked like the rocks in the hills around where I grew up. That was in Southern California, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I did know those rocks.
So, I clicked over to IMDb and looked the film up, half expecting that I had heard the title of the film wrong.
But there it was, so I checked the list of filming locations and, sure enough, the movie had been filmed at Corriganville, a movie ranch a few miles from where I grew up.
Discovering that piqued my interest further, and I did a little more research.
I found out that the movie had been made in 8 days (which is six days longer than Hollywood legend claims it took to make the original, Roger Corman-directed production of “Little Shop of Horrors”). Based on the general quality of the acting, among other things. I also discovered that the lab equipment in the film was the same equipment used in the original Frankenstein films, made years earlier by Universal. The equipment was also used later on, in “Young Frankenstein”. Which almost gives “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter” a little legitimacy. A little.
The acting was so bad…really stinky, in fact…I looked to see if any of the cast ever worked again.
Well, yes, as it turned out. The marshal was played by Jim Davis, who became better known for his portrayal of the Ewing family patriarch, Jock, in the prime-time soap opera “Dallas”. And the title role of Jesse James was played by John Lupton, a name that was familiar but that I couldn’t quite place.
Lupton, it turns out, might possibly have been in every TV series ever made. Well, maybe not every one, but the list of shows he did parts on was quite long. And before this movie, he had been in, among other productions, the 1953 version of “Julius Caesar”, the one in which Marlon Brando played Mark Antony and James Mason played Brutus. Lupton only had a small part in that, but he had been in it. One of the interesting things (to me) was that “Julius Caesar” was partly filmed at the Iversosn Ranch, another movie ranch that was at the other end of Santa Susana Pass Road from Corriganville.
Lupton is also an August 23rd person, which means nothing to any of you. But my birthday is also August 23rd, so I get to add him to the list of people who share my birthday, something I’ve been putting together for a long time and is probably far more interesting to me than it should be.
And then there was Narda Onyx, who played Frankenstein’s daughter, Dr. Maria Frankenstein, who was looking to recreate her father’s experiments in the Old West. According to IMDb, this was her last film.
And so you see how easily amused I am, that I can write over 700 words about a B-movie (well, maybe a D-movie, when you get down to it) after actually taking the time to do research on it.
All because I recognized those rocks.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
A little less "drama", a little more emphasis on the "docu", please...
So, I'm sitting here watching a so-called "docudrama" on History. It's called "Manson" and is, of course, about the murders of Sharon Tate and others by followers of Charles Manson.
It's a new take on the whole mess and includes an extensive interview with Linda Kasabian, the hippie girl who lived with Charlie and his "family" for all of a month, was taken along on both nights of carnage but never entered either house, then turned state's witness and was one of the main reasons (I think) that Charlie and the others were convicted.
I know the theory behind docudramas and all, that sometimes characters are composites and small details might be changed. But this is more like a documentary with re-creations of the events being examined. The re-creations are interspersed with interviews with some of the individuals involved, including not only Ms. Kasabian, but also prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and other surviors of Manson's group. Under these circumstances, I sort of expected that the filmmakers (the film is a joint UK/Canadian production) to be able to get the details correct.
Right.
Near the beginning of the film, a title is shown to indicate that the location being shown was the Spahn Ranch. Well, it had to be a re-creation of the ranch; the buildings at the actual location were burned in a brush fire in, I think, 1970 or so. But that doesn't mean that it's okay that the title identified the ranch and then gave it's location as "Benedict Canyon".
The Spahn Ranch was not in Benedict Canyon. Benedict Canyon is in the Santa Monica Mountains. Spahn was in Chatsworth, in the Santa Susana Mountains, a whole different location, miles north of Benedict Canyon. I know this to be so, because I lived not more than 8 miles or so from Spahn during the time the events portrayed in the film were happening. I passed by there on a fairly regular basis. I knew people who hung out there on occasion.
Which is, perhaps, why I'm just a little disappointed that the filmmakers couldn't manage to get such an easy-to-check detail correct.
Other than that, it's a fairly interesting film, even to someone who is farily familiar with the whole story. It really is notable that Linda Kasabian finally consented to tell her story, 40 years on. Apparently, she has been living under an assumed name and had only spoken for the record about her experience once or twice before, which is remarkable considering the enduring fascination Manson and his exploits seem to hold for so many people.
It's also interesting to read some of the reasons why prosecutor Bugliosi thinks the story still holds such interest, which he spoke about in an article for The Guardian at the time, in August, that the film was first shown on television in the UK. Click here to read that article.
It's a new take on the whole mess and includes an extensive interview with Linda Kasabian, the hippie girl who lived with Charlie and his "family" for all of a month, was taken along on both nights of carnage but never entered either house, then turned state's witness and was one of the main reasons (I think) that Charlie and the others were convicted.
I know the theory behind docudramas and all, that sometimes characters are composites and small details might be changed. But this is more like a documentary with re-creations of the events being examined. The re-creations are interspersed with interviews with some of the individuals involved, including not only Ms. Kasabian, but also prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and other surviors of Manson's group. Under these circumstances, I sort of expected that the filmmakers (the film is a joint UK/Canadian production) to be able to get the details correct.
Right.
Near the beginning of the film, a title is shown to indicate that the location being shown was the Spahn Ranch. Well, it had to be a re-creation of the ranch; the buildings at the actual location were burned in a brush fire in, I think, 1970 or so. But that doesn't mean that it's okay that the title identified the ranch and then gave it's location as "Benedict Canyon".
The Spahn Ranch was not in Benedict Canyon. Benedict Canyon is in the Santa Monica Mountains. Spahn was in Chatsworth, in the Santa Susana Mountains, a whole different location, miles north of Benedict Canyon. I know this to be so, because I lived not more than 8 miles or so from Spahn during the time the events portrayed in the film were happening. I passed by there on a fairly regular basis. I knew people who hung out there on occasion.
Which is, perhaps, why I'm just a little disappointed that the filmmakers couldn't manage to get such an easy-to-check detail correct.
Other than that, it's a fairly interesting film, even to someone who is farily familiar with the whole story. It really is notable that Linda Kasabian finally consented to tell her story, 40 years on. Apparently, she has been living under an assumed name and had only spoken for the record about her experience once or twice before, which is remarkable considering the enduring fascination Manson and his exploits seem to hold for so many people.
It's also interesting to read some of the reasons why prosecutor Bugliosi thinks the story still holds such interest, which he spoke about in an article for The Guardian at the time, in August, that the film was first shown on television in the UK. Click here to read that article.
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