Grown Up, Level 2

     The wife and I spend at least half of our weekends working on the house or the yard. Between normal maintenance chores like gardening and house-cleaning and big projects like painting and patio-rebuilding¹, there’s almost always something “in process.”

     That’s not the point of this post, though. I might be willing to write about some boring crap, but going on about yardwork is even beyond my ability to alienate readers. No, what struck me most about today is that I was looking forward to it. I’m one of those people who likes to accomplish things, and getting a lot of things in one day makes me feel like I can slack off a bit more the rest of the week². There’s nothing quite like checking something off a to-do list.

     Which is such a classic thing for a boring adult like myself to say. And I wonder when that changed. In high school and college I was clearly not interested in getting much done. I skated by on the bare minimum of school work, so there wasn’t a lot of extra time being spent there. I didn’t work much; in high school I only worked during break, and in college I worked a grand total of ten hours a week. I look back now and I wonder what the hell I spent my time on. Obviously, a lot of video games were played and a lot of TV was watched. Sadly, I was also able to get a lot more reading done than I am nowadays. But was that really it? And if I grew up living such a leisurely life, why do I now get excited about the idea of working on one of my days off?

     Well, if Fitocracy has taught me anything, it’s that we gamers will be willing to do almost anything if you give us an achievement to unlock or a quest to complete³. And that’s all a to-do list really is. Gaming also plays a role in motivating me to keep the house clean, since I have guests coming over every week and I need to keep things in a presentable state. And, if I want to get sappy for a minute, I also like our “chore day” because I can spend it with my wife. Often we have projects that we can work on together, and that always makes even the hardest task more tolerable.

     I guess everybody’s priorities shift some when they get older. I just hope that I don’t continue down this road and become one of those old guys who don’t know how to do anything but work. I mean, I like the idea of being old, but mainly it’s just the part about yelling at kids to get off my lawn. But when I retire, I hope to be able to adjust to get back to spending my days not doing anything.

¹ The house we bought was built in the eighties, which means it is old enough to need some care to keep running properly. Additionally, the previous owners were about as competent at DIY home-projects as a thumbless orangutan with ADD.

² After my 9-hour workday, that is.

³ And also that the definition of “gamer” has changed in ways that make me a little unsettled, but that’s a post for another day.

My Cabin Fever

     Every horror fan and their creepy uncle has been writing about The Cabin in the Woods, and rightly so. It is easily the most important movie the produced in the genre in the last decade or so. Far be it for me to buck the trend, so here is my post.

AS IF IT IS NOT OBVIOUS, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. ALL OF THEM. SERIOUSLY, DON’T READ BELOW THE PICTURE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE.

     Now, let me clarify that this isn’t going to be some kind of review, or even an in-depth analysis. Right now, all I can manage is recount the thoughts that have been jammed into the crevices of my mind by this flick.

     What keeps me obsessing about this movie is the premise and the way it is handled. A shady organization is tasked with sacrificing youngsters in ritualistic fashion; a ritual that just happens to be the standard horror movie formula. Bigger lampshades have rarely been hung on anything.

     For sake of ease, let me present what I love about this in list format.

     1) Inclusiveness. Everybody’s favorite horror-movie staple is included, at least nominally. The idea that the basement is filled with items that each correspond to a different monster is brilliant. Fans will be studying stills from those scenes for years to come, trying to identify and analyze what object would bring what monster. We know diary = zombie redneck torture family, conch shell = merman, music box = tooth-faced ballerina, and Hellraiser-esque puzzle box = Hellraiser-esque demon¹. But what about the necklace Jules almost puts on? Or the film reels Marty started investigating (despite his misgivings about being in the basement)? In the same way, I can’t wait to start going frame-by-frame to see all the monsters as we get the zoom-out on the “cells” they are kept in, or the carnage when they are “purged.”

     What really revs my motor about this aspect of the film is I love it when somebody comes up with a smart reason to cross-over monsters. One of my favorite comics/horror books of all time is The Lords of Misrule, and it does a similar thing where it gives a reason why various (seemingly) unrelated urban legends and horror stories might be connected. See, when it comes to paranormal matters, there are definitely some things that do not mesh. UFOlogy suggest aliens and ships and science-fictiony things, whereas ghosts suggest magic and psychics and other types of fantasy-ish spiritualism. Often, as a writer, I find myself wanting to find ways to include all possibilities as one. A string theory of horror and the paranormal, if you will. It doesn’t work in reality, but Cabin presents a great way to fit them all together in the same fictional piece.

     2) The Ancients. Okay, what fan of Lovecraft isn’t going to see the connections with this theme? Evil old gods that once ruled the world and now reside underground, waiting to be released onto the Earth again? Cthulhu’s been there and eaten the T-shirt, gang. Not that I’m faulting this aspect of the movie’s plot. Far from it. Rather, this is one of the parts that has given me the most to think about after the movie. Because, like any good piece of literature, Cabin just gets better with discussion and contemplation.

     According to the movie, the Ancients once ruled the world, and now the ritual sacrifice is needed to keep them locked away. But the Ancients must accept the sacrifice, which is why you can’t “just chuck a girl into a volcano,” as Hadley bemoans. You have to keep them entertained with the sacrifice; there must be pain and fear, along with blood. Perfect reason why these horror tropes exist.

     But my brain immediately asks the question: what happened to the Ancients in the first place? How did they get locked under the earth? If they ruled the planet, what changed? Surely this wasn’t a voluntary move. They didn’t just decide to go chill in Hell and only accept sacrifices every once in a while. If you rule the world, you can get all the damn ritualistic slaughter you want, anytime and anywhere. The dialogue in the movie makes it seem like the Ancients could come back and end the world again anytime they wanted—if, for instance, they are displeased with our sacrifice—but that just doesn’t compute. Why would the Ancients sit below and watch to see if we do it right? Why would they wait to be given what they could just as easily reach up and take?

     No, my immediate thought is that they’re trapped.  This isn’t a sacrifice to appease an evil god, but a blood ritual to maintain some kind of spell that keeps them down and away. Which means somebody, at some point, was able to lock them up in the first place. And that just opens up a whole new slew of questions.

     I understand that this isn’t important in the context of the movie, but it is important to me for the mythos. When the end of the movie comes and the characters have effectively doomed mankind, I can’t help but think: “Or have they?” Because clearly the Ancients were subdued at one time, so it could happen again. And, sappy as it may be to admit, I feel a lot better about the end thinking that it might not be all doom and gloom².

     3) Humor. Or, should I say, “humor that doesn’t rely on a comedic relief character.” Yes, you could claim that stoner Marty was the comedic relief, but I don’t. To me, that type of character is only ever used in the negative. Jar Jar Binks was comedic relief, in the sense that he ruined the movie by trying to inject humor where it had no business. Marty, on the other hand, provides not pointless antics, but the only “clear” perspective on what is happening. It also helps that his lines are actually funny. Not to mention some of the best lines aren’t even his, as far as I’m concerned. They come out of the control room with the guys who are running the ritual. From Mordecai’s “Wait, am I on speaker phone?” to Hadley’s comment about singing “What a Friend We Have in Shinto,” it is this juxtaposition of smartassery with blood and guts that really makes this movie as much about chuckles as it is scares.

     That’s more than enough for now. Doubtless I will keep obsessing over details as the weeks go on. So there’s a good chance I might have to revisit this when I have the chance to watch the movie again.

¹ Who, according to IMDB, is called Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain.

² Even if doom and gloom are Joss Whedon’s bread and butter.

Lovecraft Country Double Feature

Another two-fer comic day, just to move things along. 

In retrospect, a lot of my troubles with the humor level of these comics is that I have a hard time with punchlines. Some of my more "successful" comedic endeavors were more entertaining and amusing because they were offbeat and strange in the long run. I don't do well writing a series of punchlines, I don't think, but rather have a comedic style that depends upon unusual characters and situations and subtle running gags. I used to think this made me more mature in my comedy, but the continued prevalence of poop jokes and crude innuendo really counters that thought.


P.S. I love how easy it is to convey emotion in a comic with a simple tweak of the eyebrow.

Mastering the Game of GMing

     I’m the GM¹; it says so on the beads hanging from my rearview mirror, so it must be true. My wife claims that this is true away from the gaming table as well, so that it is a term the seems appropriate to encapsulate the totality of my personality. Although I’m not sure I like what she’s implying there…

     The point is, I love being the GM. The writer in me thrills at the chance to create worlds and characters on a weekly basis. It is the type of creativity that, in some ways, novel-writing lacks. Because it’s interactive, a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story that a handful of your best friends get to run through with you². Sure, there’s a fair amount of ego to the position of GM—playing God, in some sense—but really it’s about telling the story. For me, there are also bonuses if I can link things to my writing. For example, my D&D³ campaigns take place in the same world as my fantasy novel. Although, to be honest, the D&D world came first, and was just adapted for my novel.

     The problem I always run into as a GM is that I also want to play. For instance, we are right now hip-deep into a Shadowrun campaign that I am GMing, but I can help but think about the next character I’m going to play when I sucker convince somebody else to run the game for a bit. And you know what’s going to happen after about three weeks of playing in somebody else’s game? I’m going to be itching to get back behind the screen.

     Not that I don’t like playing, or that I don’t like the way other people GM. The last game I got to play in was pretty spectacular, really, and it created some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of. But I have a hard time turning off the GM, and when I watch other people run games, all I can think about is how I would do it. Or what ideas I’m going to steal from them the next time I’m in charge.

     I need to find some other GMs and see if this is a common scenario, or if it’s just me.

¹ That stands for Game Master, although if I really have to explain that to you, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

² On the rare occasion that I have to explain tabletop roleplaying to somebody, this is usually the first analogy I use.

³ That stands for…wait, really? Just…never mind…

Genre Nonspecific

     Lately I've been having trouble with genre. Specifically, the lines between them. I like to think of geek-related stuff as "speculative fiction," which I then further delineate into science fiction, fantasy, and horror. But that really doesn't cover it all, as I'm coming to learn.
     This comes to mind mostly because I'm working on getting one of my novels, Reign of Rezal, ready to publish in e-book format. Which means I've been thinking about various ways to market it, but I run into an impasse because I don't know how to describe it.
     I've had this problem for years, of course. People ask me what my novel is about, and the best I can do without delving into a lot of plot summary is say "alien invasion." There are also genetically-modified super soldiers in a pseudo-dystopian futuristic America, which I originally thought made it fall very solidly within the science fiction category. Of course, there are also psychics and people who can tap into the energy of the Earth to produce magical effects. So there are fantasy elements. And, like most things I write, there are darker elements (zombies, apocalypse, that kind of thing) that reek of horror.
     The more I think about it, though, the less I think this is particularly unique. Here's an example everybody should be familiar with: Star Wars. At first glance, it's science fiction. There are spaceships and aliens and lasers and other such tropes. On the other hand, there are the Jedi and Sith, who access a mystical field of "life force" to produce magical effects. If that's not fantasy, I don't know what is. Similarly, I ran into this problem for the brief period in which I tried to organize my shelves by genre and it came to my X-Men comics. I'm starting to think they have more in common with urban fantasy than anything else (despite that unfortunate storyline with the Starjammers and all that crap).
     For a lot of people, it means creating more and more genres. Superhero, paranormal (or urban fantasy, if you prefer), even steampunk--although I don't know how much that counts since there are barely any books or movies or anything more than guys in costumes that constitute that genre. And, of course, making anything "comedic" just creates more offshoots. 
     I guess there's nothing wrong with this, although my neat little mental organization method gets shot all to hell. But then again, nothing is that simple when you really analyze it, huh?

Dammit, Now I Want Pretzels

Should "heads-up" be hyphenated? This is one of those crucial moments where my English major training has failed me.



Additional question: did anybody else go through a phase where they thought it was hilarious to answer the phone "yellow"?

Paranormally Bad

     I’m going to become a professional paranormal investigator, since there are clearly no actual qualifications necessary to do so. I’m pretty sure that I could conduct a much more scientifically rigorous investigation than many of these “ghost hunter” shows, even with absolutely no scientific experience whatsoever.

     The show I’ve been watching lately that inspires this is Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files. Now, I am entertained by many aspects of this show. I appreciate that they are combining aspects of Mythbusters with the traditional aspects of a paranormal investigation show. Of course, the problem is that in trying to combine the two, we really just get a half-assed version of both.

     Usually I get annoyed by these shows’ immense bias and utter lack of “control” of their experiments. Regardless of what lip service they pay to the idea of impartiality, most of these ghost hunters are going in looking for the paranormal. This is why they get all excited about things like orbs and EVPs, despite the fact that these “phenomena” are obviously pure and utter bull¹. This is also why they put so much stock in testimonials, even though even the crappiest lawyer or first-year psychology student will tell you how hard it is to trust eye-witness accounts.

     See, I’m a skeptic at heart². I want to believe, and I want to see some proof, but my logical brain won’t shut down long enough to let me. Worse yet, I’m also something of a Doubting Thomas: I would need to experience it for myself to believe it. In my mind, any photo or video can be faked, and any witness could be lying.

     On the other hand, sometimes these shows get my hackles up³ for entirely different reasons. Sometimes they don’t do enough to satisfy the criteria that it is legit. Sure, I might not really think there’s a ghost in the house, but if you’re going to bother to investigate it, spend more than one freakin’ night there. In my younger days as a Cub Scout, I’ve spent a few afternoons fishing, but I’ve never caught anything. Do I assume there’s no fish in the lake, or the more real possibility that I’m just a lousy fisherman? There are also episodes of Fact or Faked where they try to recreate a photo and declare “this is how it was done” even though the pictures look nothing alike⁴. Finally, you can argue that even though you could fake it a certain way, it doesn’t mean it was faked.

     The problem with Forteana—like most of our society—is that people don’t want shades of gray. They want black or white, real or hoax, skeptic or believer. We need more people who are skeptical enough to do the rigorous testing that needs to be done, but who are also open-minded enough to accept the possibility that something might be real. Skeptics need to stop thinking that they’ve got everything figured out. Hell, nobody believed gorillas existed before the mid 19^th century⁵. At the same time, believers need to admit that just because they heard a noise they can’t immediately identify, it doesn’t make it a ghost.

     Finally, to those of you who still believe in the Loch Ness Monster: Really? How many people have to come forward and admit to the hoax before you let it go? You have to understand how much damage you're doing the rest of us with your nonsense. A giant dinosaur has not survived in Scotland since prehistoric time, unless he also reproduces by budding. For comparison, I'm more likely to believe that a technologically superior alien race has traveled thousands of light years for the soul purpose of rooting around in the anuses of hillbillies.

     I'm probably going to get some hate-mail for that one...

¹ For those readers who are not familiar with the terms: “orbs” are little glowing balls of light that tend to appear on video and film, and EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon, when “ghostly” voices show up on recordings. The problem, of course, is that every stray dust particle and bug looks like an orb in a camera flash, and EVPs are usually so distorted and full of static that you can project whatever you want to hear into the white noise.

² Even though, in the Fortean community, “skeptic” is a dirty word.

³ If your hackles stay up for more than four hours, consult a physician.

⁴ For those interested enough to look it up, check out Season 1, Episode 10: Ghostly Guardian. They decided that the ghostly images were probably just the camera strap, even though the example they show doesn’t even have the same colors involved.

⁵ Which is an argument used by many cryptid believers. Of course, we’ve explored a lot more of the world since then, and there are a lot less places to hide the large populations necessary to support Bigfoot as a species. I’m pretty sure if there were thousands of them in Oregon, we’d notice. There’d be at least a few dozen of them in Portland, although we might not be able to tell them apart from the hipsters.

The Mighty Max Gambit

     I’m sure that everyone has things from their childhood that helped define aspects of their personality. For us geeks, usually that involves some kind of game, movie, or television show. These things stick with us long into adulthood¹, usually providing happy memories and surprising moments of synchronicity when you find somebody else who used to love the same things you did.

     These kinds of cherished institutions should never be revisited.

     For those of you who have lived all of your lives under rocks or without access to human contact, let me briefly explain the concept of rose-tinted glasses. It is when you romanticize the past, remembering all the good parts of something and forgetting the bad parts. It’s the reason people will get back together with their exes², and the reason elderly folks are convinced that life was much better in the good ol’ days. It is why I made the mistake of watching the X-Men cartoon again.

     I don’t think I have to go into a lot of detail about what happened here. This has happened to us all. Not long ago I found that the X-Men cartoon was on Netflix. I said to myself: “Self, this show was highly influential in your development as a geek. You would be a fool not to bask in the glory days of Saturday morning cartoons.”

     Ah, but I was a fool after all, and the harsh reality of the X-Men animated series slapped me in the face like a wet fish³. For starters, the animation was choppy and inconsistent. I remember one scene where Rogue’s breathing (to indicate that she was merely unconscious, not dead) was indicated by the expansion and deflation of her breasts. Speaking of Rogue, even more injustice was done by the over-the-top Southern accent they saddled her with. The phrase “nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs” haunts me to this day. And if ever I try to remember Gambit’s “Cajun” accent, my brain shuts down and I wake up an hour later curled into a fetal position in a puddle of my own drool.

     I bring this up because today I had the misfortune of remembering the show Mighty Max. Now, this is apparently was not a commonly watched show, as there are few people even my age who ever saw it. I myself have barely ever seen all of an episode. For reasons I can no longer recall, I always had to leave for school before the last ten minutes of the show. While I could probably relate the plot of at least a dozen episodes to you, I couldn’t tell you how any of them end.

     And I realize now that this might be the best thing that could have happened in regards to that show. Maybe I like Mighty Max the way I like X-Men and Star Wars: I love the world and the premise, but I wish better writers would take the helm and take them to their full potential. Maybe not seeing the end allowed my fevered brain to invent my own endings, which could be infinitely cooler than what actually happened. The sad thing is that I don’t know if I dare actually look the old shows up and watch them again. Because what if I’m wrong? What if Mighty Max isn’t friggin’ awesome? What if it’s all jumpy cell animation and terrible voice acting?

     On the other hand, it could be like Zombies Ate My Neighbors, which was a surprisingly influential video game for me as a child, and is still an awesome time as an adult. That game has maintained its ranking even to my grown-up standards. Or what about things like Calvin & Hobbes which I actually enjoy more now that I’m old enough to read between the lines a bit.

     So, what do I do? In one hand there is crushing disappointment, and in the other there is glorious revival. Is it worth the risk?

                                    

                                                             

¹ I.e. long past the time they are age-appropriate.

² That and angry, hate-fueled sex.

³ Meaning stinky, and possibly still gasping for life.

Wgah'nagl fhtagn!

I guess I don’t have too much to say on this week’s comic. Just moving the story along…

Also, not to blow my own horn¹, but I’m actually rather impressed with my meager MS Paint skills. I mean, I made that phone from scratch. While it looks clip-art horrible, at least you can tell what it is.

¹ Which just sounds filthy.

Collegiate Dilemma

     It's going to be difficult in the future for me to encourage my kid to go to college. Yes, I understand that life two decades in the future might be vastly different than it is now¹. But the way things are right now in the current American job market, a college degree is not all it’s cracked up to be.

     I wish that somebody had sat me down and explained some things to me. First, a college degree by itself is not the magic key to a better life. My wife has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and an Associate’s degree in culinary arts. Guess which one has ever landed her any job, ever? I have the oft-sited and even-ofter-maligned English degree²…although in all fairness, that did land me a job for about five years. A job that only ever hired me as a temp for—at best—nine months out of the year. A job that subsequently closed the site in my state and laid us all off. So, yeah, I guess I’m not counting that one right now.

     Nobody should be really surprised to hear that getting a college degree doesn’t instantly get you a pertinent job. What many people are surprised to hear is that there are many occasions in which having a degree will keep you from getting hired. I’ve had more than one prospective employer tell me that my degree makes me “overqualified,” that they won’t hire me because I’ll think I’m too good for the job and will just quit as soon as my “real” job comes around. I try to explain to them that I have an English degree, and cleaning bathrooms is actually right about my level of qualifications, but to no avail.

     Secondly, I wish I knew that there is no shame in going to a trade school and learning how to do something useful. In the school system where I went to high school, there was a Career Center where kids could opt to go to learn trades. It was a pretty standard assortment of things: cosmetology, machining, landscaping, etc. In our school system, people turned their noses up at the Career Center kids. These were viewed as the blue-collar workers, the ones who aren’t smart enough to go to college and make something of their lives. The teachers and the guidance councilor only perpetuated this bias. Well, I was “smart enough” to get through college with relative ease, and now I make less than $10 an hour. My step-brother-in-law learned a trade and was making twice that right out of high school. And, again, I will mention that my wife is a chef, and working in that field has made her happier and more satisfied than anything she ever did with psychology.

     Now, calm down, I know what you’re thinking. It depends on what kind of degree you have. And you’re absolutely correct. Degrees in the sciences are very important and are definitely a worthwhile endeavor. If you want to be a scientist of any flavor, college is most assuredly for you. Or if you plan to keep going to get a Master’s or Doctorate, that’s good too³.

     This is what I’m going to have to talk to my kid about, though. This is the talk I was missing as a teenager: what do you actually intend to do to make money? Note that I am specifically talking about making money. If you would have asked me then what I wanted to do with my life, my answer has not changed: write. And write I do and forever will. But, let’s face it, it’s not the kind of job you can really rely on. If—God willing—my kid is also creative and artistic, I want to make sure they understand that they are going to need to have a plan for a day job.

     It hurts to say it, though. I still have this ingrained reaction saying: “Of course you have to go to college or else you won’t amount to anything!” I don’t want to act like college isn’t an option, and I definitely don’t want to be that guy who stomps all over people’s dreams and tells them they’ll never make it as an artist. Certainly if anybody had told me that as a teenager, it would have just driven me even harder to write in that lovely contrarian way of ours⁴. But I don’t think a healthy dose of reality is going to do anybody any harm. I don’t think my writing would have suffered if I hadn’t spent those four years and tens of thousands of dollars (that I’m still paying) on my degree. The hard truth is you’re going to need a job that actually pays the bills while you wait for your career as an artist to take off.

     All I’m really arguing is that teenagers should put a little more forethought into their post-high school plans other than “go to college.” Because they can drink cheap beer and have unprotected sex with complete strangers without having to worry about waking up and getting to class in the morning.

¹ What with all the jetpack death-matches the robot overlords hold amongst the flooded coastal cities.

² Which means I’m allowed to make up words like “ofter.”

³ Unless you’re getting a PhD in the humanities, in which case you are qualified to do nothing but teach other misguided students and perpetuate the cycle.

⁴ By which I mean all creative types. Let’s face it, you have to be a little rebellious and nonconformist to really be artistic.

Logic vs. Horror vs. Scares

     I am an associate editor for Dark Moon Digest, which is a great experience all around. But it has been making me think a lot lately about the nature of the horror genre. Not too long ago there was a discussion amongst some of us about what our favorite horror novels are. It was good mix of things, and it really highlighted the fact that horror, like humor, is a very individual thing.

     For example, I’m not really scared by slashers, monsters, ghosts, or things of that ilk. Perhaps it’s because my love of the paranormal and Fortean matters means I find cryptids and hauntings fascinating, not frightening. I also have the problem where the logical part of my brain kicks in¹ and starts debunking things before I have a chance to really get lost in the scary atmosphere. Like, what happens in The Ring if you don’t watch the video all the way through? What if you get a few seconds in, decide “I don’t like this arthouse crap,” and switch it off? Or what if you just don’t answer the phone when the creepy girl-ghost calls to tell you you’re going to die in seven days? Is the clock still running, or does the curse have to wait until you check your voicemail? And what if you don’t have a TV? What does she crawl out of? See, stupid crap like that kills any scariness that might have been in the movie.

     On the other hand, I am freaked right the hell out by things that don’t really phase a lot of people². Like this anti-meth commercial. It ran a lot in here in the South, and it is pure nightmare fuel as far as I’m concerned. I find doppelgangers are scary as anything. Likewise, Danielewski’s House of Leaves gives me the willies, whereas a lot of people don’t get what’s scary about it.

     The best way I can describe it is to say it’s a matter of wrongness. I look at a situation where some kind of freaky ghost-clone of yourself shows up and I know that something is fundamentally messed up with the universe as I know it. My logic is useless. Give me a regular ol’ ghost and I think, “Well, let’s find out what’s pissed this spirit off so we can knock off all this haunting nonsense. Get the shovel, Jim-Bob³, we’ve got us a murder-victim’s body to find.” But what the hell is going on with the doppelganger? What does that have to do with anything, anywhere? The old legends say that they were a harbinger of doom, and I agree, because if I ever saw one I’d throw myself off a cliff to get away from it.

     Anyone who has read House of Leaves can probably see why that also constitutes a deceptively simply wrongness of the world. When rooms and corridors just appear in a house and defy physics, it’s time for sanity to pack up shop and move out of town.

     So, I guess you could say I have an irrational fear of irrational things. And that’s good, because I think that’s the kind of thing that is possible to capture in story form. See, many people were also talking in the aforementioned discussion about how books “aren’t scary.” I think these folks are mistaken by the meaning of the term. They have been conditioned to think that things that jump on the screen in time to a sudden blurt of music is scary, when anyone who knows anything knows that this is just startling. Just because you jump in your seat doesn’t mean you’re scared, it just means you have appropriate reflexes.

     No, something that is actually “horror” should leave a mark long after the brief jolt of adrenaline at the theater. It’s the kind of thing that should make you rig your closet door for years to come because you want to make sure you can hear it when the Boogeyman comes out⁴. When I get around to writing my horror novel, I hope that people say it was disturbing or unsettling. Scares are cheap thrills; horror is something that changes and inspires you.

     P.S. I’d love to hear what you guys find frightening (in terms of books/movies), just to go along with my informal survey about what kinds of things people are afraid of.

¹ My near-Vulcan level of devotion to logic is my downfall in more areas than just suspension-of-disbelief. My wife will often win arguments by appealing to my sense of logic. For instance, the toilet-seat dilemma was solved when it was pointed out to me that she sits 100% of the time and I only sit 50% of the time. Therefore, between the two of us, 75% of all toilet-encounter involves sitting. So, logically, I should keep the seat down, since that is the position it is needed for the majority of the time.

² And no, I’m not talking about dolls and mannequins. A lot of people are scared of those soulless mockeries of human life.

³ Jim-Bob’s pretty good at manual labor.

⁴ Thanks a lot, Stephen King.

Double Your Pleasure?

     There was another comic that went between the last one and these two. I decided not to include it for two reasons. First, the formatting got messed up somehow and it only exists as a quarter-sized JPEG that is virtually unreadable. Second, it wasn’t funny¹, and only was written because I felt like I needed to alternate between humans and Great Old Ones. Also to help make sure people recognized the GOOs and had names attached to the sprites. Here, it’s easy: the red one with the tongue-head is Nyarlathotep, and the bubbly one is Yog-Sothoth².

     Also, I am putting two down because I’m anxious to get to some of the later ones that are actually worth a chuckle or two. Although, I still laugh at the whole "call of Cthulhu" thing happening on an actual phone, which is almost sad enough to warrant a whole new post.

¹ And you know how low my standards are for that kind of thing, so you can only imagine…

² My spellcheck weeps for mercy.

Re: To Brit or Not to Brit

     In response to my earlier Britsploitation post, my wife sent me this:

     A) It is NOT because of Doctor Who¹ and Torchwood, that just fanned the flames. It started w./ Susan Cooper, and you damn well know it. I forced you to read a YA series against your will because of it. That lead to being obsessed w./ King Arthur and therefore Wales, Cornwall, Tristram and Isoulde, etc, etc, etc.
     B) I am also recently embracing it because I only recently found out I was Welsh. My father always described that half of the family as "something from the British Isles" and didn't understand my frustration at that lack of specificity. There are a dozen or more different subcultures crammed into those gray and dreary² little islands! Which one's mine?!
     C) BRITISH blood? How very dare you! YOU have British blood. Welsh and British are not the same. Just like you arrogant English wankers to try and strip us of our heritage.

¹ DOCTOR Who. I cannot even BELIEVE you wrote it Dr. Who. Go and sit in the corner! Time out!
² and wonderful³

³ You aren't the only one that can abuse footnotes.

     I must admit, my initial reaction was: "Wow, she put a footnote on a footnote. How ballsy." My second thought was: "Wait, she sent me this as a Facebook message? She couldn't just tell me this? We live in the same house, for God's sake!" And there have been times when she has called my cell phone if I'm upstairs and she's downstairs. But, in her defense, I'm trying to break her of the habit of just hollering across the house whenever she wants to get my attention. So, baby steps.

     Also, I feel I should defend myself by saying that I think I have some English blood in me, but all I know for sure is the German and the Italian. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to just stick with "European" the next time somebody asks about my lineage. Either that or "honky."

     With that, I should go. She's going to be pissed when she finds out I snuck out of my corner.