Just a heads-up, for those of you into the genre…
Ignorance and mass media.
My ignorance, to be clear. That title sounded a lot less snippy in my head.
Rather quick, rather flip notes, as I down coffee before work…
First; There are movies I haven’t seen. Quite a lot of them. Two that came up this morning were Scarface and Johnny Got His Gun (because the morning drive music included “Jack Sparrow” and “One”).
What else am I missing? What movies are really worth seeing (and trust me, the expectation that I’ve already seen it is not to be trusted)?
Second; So I’m on goodreads (as that widget in the lower right-hand corner may have indicated). It allows for a five-star rating system, and for me that basically seems to boil down to (1) I’m rating this because I want to establish I thought it was terrible, not that I just didn’t bother to rate it; (2) pretty bad to not-great, but with redeeming moments; (3) decent way to spend some time; (4) everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this; (5) everyone should try reading this.
There’s a whole lot of things falling into the three-star category, including some things that I’m feeling a little bad about, because they’d be four-star books if five-star ratings weren’t reserved for truly amazing things. And I’m wondering if I should reorganize, give everyone-should-try-this books their own shelf and stretch my ratings out so that there was a middle ground between “decent” and “everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this”.
I may be putting a bit too much thought into this, but I wondered.
Memories, all alone in the moonlight…
On my way home on the bus yesterday, I was flipping through my copy of American Supernatural Tales, looking to find the excellent “The Events at Poroth Farm”, when a fragment of text caught my attention:
…not an “animal of some kind,” as he put it. Something with a dragging tail, with scales, with great clawed feet–
And in the back of my head, a little voice is going wait, wait, I remember this…
–and I knew it had no face.
Yes.
“The Lonesome Place”, by August Derleth.
It’s been so long since I read that that I have no idea, now, where I first saw it. It’s been printed in a ton of places, but none of them ring any bells. I was surprised to discover it was by Derleth; I always thought of it as a children’s story, the kind of thing you’d find sitting on a shelf with A Touch of Chill and Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Witches. It’s got a sort of calm tone to the horror, nothing giddily overbearing. Puts me in mind of Bradbury:
“See, baby? Something bright… something pretty!”
A scalpel.
(It occurs to me, as I write this, that I might have a mildly elastic definition of “children’s story.” Might. I’m just tossing that out there for consideration.)
But yeah; I just thought I’d make a note of recognizing an old acquaintance, is all, one I didn’t expect to see there.
Quick thoughts.
Two things have been rattling around my head today:
A man said to the universe: ‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe, ‘That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.’
— Stephen Crane
and
“It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.”
— Sholem Asch
I thought I had something to say. I’m just having a little trouble placing it, right now.
Carrying on.
I occasionally wish there was someplace I could file a complaint for matters related to real life – not anything that is anyone’s fault, you understand, more little hiccups that just need to be rectified.
For example, the way stress makes you hungry without actually seeking to burn up anything in the way of fat our calories. Come on, seriously? It would just make so much more sense if the two were linked. And then I could go out after a week of trying to do three people’s jobs in the time allotted to one person, and not feel bad about the fact that I want a hamburger. I really want a hamburger.
In the meantime, however, there is a drink:
Bless the weekend.
Terrible horrible no-good very-bad day.
We have had flooding. Not that bad, as floods go, but the nine hours since we woke up to hear the sound of running water have been very stressful.
I am not going to be catching up on my posting today. Read more Terrible horrible no-good very-bad day.
I thought I was somewhere different, but everything felt the same.
The work week so far has felt like I am scrambling to put one foot in front of the other so that I actually keep doing something that could charitably be called “hurrying forward” rather than “falling and rolling downhill”. Between the person I was replacing coming back and the person replacing someone else moving offices, it’s been a bit hectic.
I went out of town over the weekend, on a day trip, which was odd; I don’t travel much on my own, and I always enjoy it. Wandered a little, met a friend for tea and geekery (knitting, moving, books, Cthulhu, gaming, horror, gaming) in a lovely little tea shop, and headed home. It felt weirdly not like leaving town, and I am trying to figure out why. I’ve had a stronger “oh I am away” reaction when going down to visit one of the tiny yarn stores that you need a car to get to. Possibly a combination of going to a place I know (in passing) and being sure I could get home even if there was a problem with the planned return.[1]
—
[1] I checked. If I’d missed the bus, I could’ve gotten a train, and then a local bus and a walk to get home. Not pleasant, rather expensive, but still a definite option.
Thoughts on a recent movie.
Holy class warfare, Batman. (Spoilers follow.)
Oddly content
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Came up, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the context of Game of Thrones. Martin’s ability to make characters that do frankly reprehensible things into people you actually start to like is unlike pretty much anything I’ve ever seen (although, you know, suggestions for similar writers to check out is welcome).
It actually got to the point where I was deeply uncomfortable with someone’s pointing out exactly how objectionable the behaviour of one of my favourite characters was. That’s fairly unusual for me, although probably it has to do with the fact that people who commit murders aren’t usually portrayed as sympathetic characters. It’s not as if I am in a position to stand back and say “well, usually I have no problem with the criticism of characters I like which do bad things, but something about the way GRRM writes them makes it different.”
(Note that I said “people who commit murders” instead of “murderers”. On the one hand, this illustrates how much focus gets put on other aspects of the character. On the other, I picked those words, and they are words that minimize the murders in question.)
========
I’m putting off being annoyed at something. I mean, possibly I won’t have reason to be annoyed, but I might, and the possibility is sort of trying to squinch up my spine. It’s annoying, and between watching The Newsroom and pausing it to discuss Game of Thrones and getting the occasional news squib from the real world (mostly cheerful) I think I am mostly overcoming it. Which is nice.
Sidetracked by palimpsests.
If that is in fact the plural.
We’re watching In the Name of the Rose, and the text is in German, and the credit is something like “a palimpsest from Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose“. I don’t assume that it means exactly the same thing as in English, but I can see where a similar meaning could be useful.
A palimpsest, for the record, is a document or part of it–a manuscript page–that has been scraped clean and reused. Wax that was melted or pressed smooth again, vellum that had the top layer (and the ink) scraped off. The idea that there’s a specific word for this always sort of intrigued me. A bit difficult to articulate, but it’s a word for something that once had a characteristic which no longer exists; which is defined by being itself made over again.
There are very few terms for things like that. “Recycled” or “upcycled” focuses on what it is now; “reused” is close, but it’s about what happened to it, not what it was/is.
I don’t think I’m being particularly persuasive; I’m seriously distracted by the movie. It’s a deeply lovely film. Not pretty, it is very good at not being pretty, but it has a lovely depth to the faces and architecture and light and framing.
(I was going to write something about how I’d lost touch with people and how I was okay with that, but I can save that for later. Now I am going to focus properly on the movie.)