Big Bother Is Watching

I keep thinking what'll happen with Facebook and/or Twitter, what it means for us. I know a few people who aren't on these social networking sites, but most people I know are. There is an insidious virtual fishbowl kind of thing in place with it, where people know what you're doing (at least if you tell them) and you know what they're up to. What's more, not posting anything for awhile often has people wondering where you are, what happened. The global village in place, akin to walking down the street of a small town and having the locals look you over. I remember that happening to me in SW Ohio, on a long bike ride. I rode into this three-street town (First Street, Main Street, and Church Street), and everybody in the town stopped what they were doing and watched me bike on by. It was creepy. Sometimes the Net today feels like that. It's preventable, of course -- you can just unplug and disappear, but the voyeuristic and exhibitionistic quality of the medium is enticing. It's like a primate trap -- like at a musuem, the surest way to get people to look at something is to put it under a little door you have to open, because the ape in us is just dying to know what's behind that little door. They've tested that on apes, and on us, and it works. The FB is like that, in so many ways. "What are you up to? What are you doing?" The Surveillance Society, except a home-grown, local type.

I wonder what'll happen when people move on from FB. Where will they go? In the old days, we had three television networks, and broadcasting was truly broad -- there was a shared cultural tapestry we drew from. Cable changed that forever, and narrowcasting became the norm. In a way, FB (and, to a lesser extent, Twitter) operates like that -- it is the broadcast medium of the Net. But, sooner or later, the "audience" will migrate to something else, one way or another, and then everybody won't be on the same (web)page, anymore. Will it be to something even more potentially intrusive? I don't know. We'll see, I guess.

Yawn Pong and the Snowstorm

I was stuck playing Yawn Pong on a crowded bus last night after work. Even writing the word "yawn" makes me yawn (yawn). I am the most yawn-susceptible person out there (yawn). Anyway, this gal across from me kept yawning, and I kept seeing that (yawn), even out of the corner of my eye, and it would make me yawn (yawn). And she'd see me yawn and would try to fight it, and then she'd yawn, too. Back and forth, down the Mag Mile -- Yawn Pong. See? I just yawned again! Damn. Anyway, it was a slow ride downtown, so the Yawn Pong match was like 120 to 115 by the time I got off the bus. Not really, but it (yawn) sure felt like that.

Moving on, for the sake of (yawn) sanity: we're getting another snowstorm. Yippee! It's really coming down. Supposedly we're due for 6-14 inches, or that's what they're saying. I'll have to take the boys out sledding after work. I'm sure they'll love that. It's really coming down something fierce. I need to find my boots. I am wearing sneakers today. Whoopsie!

Reviews, Aegis

"Aegis" got another review. I don't think this quite gets the story, but at least the reviewer appeared to ultimately like the tale...

D.T. Neal's story 'Aegis' starts off interestingly enough as a young artist meets a legendary sculptor in the hope of learning something from her. Just as I was wondering where the story was going there was a sudden shift. First, briefly, a scene of unnecessary titillation that I thought was going to go downhill into seediness. This was averted by another change from the mundane to the fantastical that initially left me dissatisfied. D.T Neal skilfully ties the whole story up at the end, though, sculpting a story that is ultimately both intriguing and pleasing.

This one is far cattier, and seems to miss the point of the story almost entirely...

Aegis by D.T. Neal

Julian Stein, a young artist, falls in love with the work of famous sculptress Renee Euryale. Unfortunately, any reader with a classical education will at once understand what her secret is and how this story will likely end. Unfortunately for the protagonist, his education was lacking in these details.

It is too bad, as this story offers some insights into the nature of art and creation, but either the readers are supposed to be screaming at the characters as if they were watching a B horror movie—"No! Don't go into the mansion!"—or they are supposed to be shocked at the final revelation, which just falls flat. The editorial blurb declares that it was the 2nd place winner of the 2008 Aeon award, which makes me wonder if the judges had the benefit of a classical education. O tempore!

It was, of course, intended for Euryale to be exactly who she was. I mean, good lord, the title alone should be a nice tipoff for anybody paying attention, which is, in itself, a key point of the story. I liked the idea of Euryale not having to truly hide who she was because the nature of the world today allows for it, where everybody looks and nobody sees what's right in front of them. What is a Gorgon in this world except a relic to an almost charmingly simple past? Had she named herself Renee Smith, would it have made any difference whatsoever? If anything, there would have been diminishment in doing that. I liked keeping her surname "Euryale" precisely because it pointed to her being exactly who (and what) she was, and people not even getting who she was. I think she meant to write "O tempora!" but why quibble, right?

Who's Who?

I cringed when I saw the 50% Who play the Superbowl halftime show. They should have packed it in over 30 years ago, rather than grinding on. If any band is forcefully diminished by the loss of its members, it's The Who. Few bands fused into a more powerful gestalt, where each member added something critical to their alchemy. I've written about it at length in a few places over the years, and the Superbowl performance only cements that perception. And I love The Who; the problem is that Daltrey and Townshend can't really pretend to be The Who by themselves. Not possible. And they know that, in truth. They know. I saw the 75% Who play in '89, and it was good enough, but it still wasn't The Who.

THIS was The Who...



One irony I did take from the Superbowl performance, however: no band was more English than The Who. They literally wore their Englishness on their shirtsleeves. There was even a nod to that in the setup last night, with the drummer with his RAF "target" cymbals and his cockeyed Union Jack shirt, and the LED stage lights playing at that a little. But it's an odd feature for such an American spectacle as the Superbowl, to have a band as quintessentially English as The Who play the halftime show. I don't know what, if anything, it means. Maybe they were willing to play for cheap or something. Not sure. But it was odd.

Comfortable Strangeness

I'm working on a new book, a SF novel that I've had in my head for about a year. I suppose "SF" is not quite right -- it probably is more Slipstream than SF, although we'll see. Maybe Literary SF, if not Slipstream. It's unlike anything I've written before, and I'm enjoying the ride. The world is "comfortably strange" -- very familiar and yet laced with unfamiliar and unsettling things I throw out like little bon-bons for the reader.

I started it yesterday, got 2500 words done, about five pages, and it is going just fine. I can't wait to dive into it again, although likely not until tomorrow, owing to scheduling difficulties at home. We'll see. Hopefully I'll get it done this winter and have it ready for revision by spring.

Meantime, the ABNA is closed. Fingers crossed on my submission. I should find out if it made first cut by the end of this month. We'll see.

The CTA service reductions have Chicagoans pissy, crowded on the buses and trains. A lot of pissed-off people, going nowhere fast! Hopefully the city will sort out its transit funding woes, and things'll return to normal.

Scene: Thulsa Doom?

Getting on the bus later than my usual time is like walking into an alternate dimension. Different people, different schedules, different everything. I'm used to a particular demographic wedge when I get on my usual time. Today it was very odd. For one thing, it seems that a lot of brunettes board around 8:00 a.m. CST. At most of the stops, it would be a parade of them, brunette woman after brunette, and no common ethnicity between them, but a mixed bag, with the lone commonality being that they are all brunettes. I need to study that and see how it shakes out at other times. But I've noticed this before. And all of them rather strikingly unattractive -- not even a matter of taste, here -- they were all odd-looking. If it wasn't an unconscionable invasion of privacy, I'd have filmed it, so you could see, but it was true. Older men (some of them possibly drunk), and unattractive young and middle-aged brunette women, bound for jobs. Even the lone blonde on board wasn't attractive, looked like LiLo after a bender. Who were these people? Where were they going? No idea.

A black woman sat across from me, talking quietly in her cell phone. She looked like James Earl Jones. Like she could've been his baby sister. I don't know if he has any relatives, but the resemblance was uncanny. I was riding the bus with Thulsa Doom!



Nothing else fancy happened on the trip, except the driver got lost in Hyde Park, ended up cutting off a large portion of her route, but nothing that would affect me directly (except getting me to work a bit later.)

Salacious Salinger?

I think the absence of sex in Salinger's work was because he was a pedophile.

http://www.slate.com/id/2243564

Something about the character of Seymour always made me think that, although it's been so long since I read any of Salinger's work, I can't fully recall, and am perhaps too lazy to go back and lay it all out, but at the time, I remember reading him and thinking "Huh. WTF?" I think Seymour was a projection of Salinger himself, more than even most characters are with writers, and I think that might account for why Salinger was so reclusive and paranoiac, and why the only interview he granted was to those high school students in the early 70s. I think Salinger liked kids. Maybe REALLY liked'em. His estate is surely keen to control the legacy of his work (whatever that precisely is), so, like Jacko, it'll be something that's camouflaged, explained away, and/or concealed. But still, it makes me wonder.

Wow

A childhood friend of mine read "Aegis," and he offered a very thorough commentary on it, which I had to post, because it was pretty amazing...

I finally got a chance to read your story yesterday, and I'm very glad I did. I'm sure others have gnawed over Aegis' characters, dialogue, plot, etc. the way wolves do with visceral matter still recalicitrantly adhering to a shoulder; so, I'm taking an alternative approach. I really enjoyed the way you described Euryale's home. It encapsulated her.

Many other writers utilize the setting as an enlarged prop which, at times allegorically, queered the lines of subjectivity and objectivity along with the character herself. The semiotic effect between her home and herself seems to oscillate to the point that, in spite of her secrecy, it exposes her personality. From Julian's initial encounter with her home until his final confrontation, you reveal Euryale's character in the same way one tours an historical manor, converted into a museum. Reading it in that perspective, I see her not as a tragic heroine, but a waste of life and an intended blight upon humanity, as she saw herself through her gods' perspective: "'the ... curses they bestow upon us, the less fortunate.'" Her property presents itself as an oxymoron: wild yet conservative, no trespassing yet enter if you must. Both she and it weigh visitors with a scale for earnest sincerity (or ... do you really wanna' go there).

The garden grants Julian a first impression of Euryale's persona. After bypassing the reclusive compound's "impassible" fence, that contradictorily was "not entirely adequate to the task," he observes the "well-tended" wild roses all pink and white, with nary a red one. While Julian recognizes the maintained order, he fails to regard the significance of color. I believe that you reveal that their owner has a strong degree of control without passion, as evident with the absence of red blossoms. The wild variant of roses might imply that she does not inherently align with our laws and culture, a bit more than marching to the beat of her own drummer. From the wild roses wrapped around one of her victims (the statue of a trespasser), I infer that she enthralls her victims, regardless of their entry, until it's too late for them. The flowers (and their stems) ensnare her prisoner, granting no quarter, and obliging a permanent suffering. She even explains that "'no one enters my garden without invitation.'" Euryale knows exactly who walks her grounds, or rather, interacts with her; how intimate they familiarize themselves with her, is entirely up to her. She weighs their desire and determines the degree of wanting.

Her home's interior allegorically mirrors her mind. Throughout the hallways and front rooms, paintings of landscapes and portraits of those she knew are displayed; "every inch of the walls was taken up with paintings." These paintings show her age and travels - the teleological significances. Yet, they hang dispassionately, with more affection to the frames or imposed prisons containing them. She brings him into the cold living room which presents a culturally modern look to make visitors suppose she's image conscious. But, it's the coldness Julian feels about the room which informs the reader that Euryale cares little for it or the occupants frequenting it. She even frankly admits to Julian that her talent for painting is "adequate" at best. He completely misses her dispassionate take on life, as if it now bores her. Later on in the story, she hints about the artwork in her other rooms, paintings of others that knew her more intimately, but these memories share the same apathetic feel as they hang on her walls and consume space in her immortal memory. Julian recognizes upon his entrance on the grounds that, "the house felt lonely, and he felt sympathy with that." As his interaction with her continues, he fails to understand that Euryale, too, experiences those pangs, and that the house mirrors it.

Only when he arrives at her inner sanctum does he begin to realize Euryale's banality and lack of panache. For her, this room is her inner sanctum - where she conducts her work and where she reveals her identity. It's spartan minimalism denies any interpretation; its blank white walls, mundane track lighting and glass block windows (which eliminate any inspiration from the reality outside) present an uninspiring studio, and Julian calls it like he sees it: "'You're not a sculptor, you're a fraud' ... " She may have relocated some of her work or other memorabilia around to other rooms, like Clive's to her bedroom, but this studio is where the magic (or lack thereof) happens in her existence. Her bland studio explains much about her thoughts and life, along with the mirror - capturing her true being and revealing something as devoid of vivacity as the statues she damns.

"'You're not even an artist, you're a monster.'" Yep, even the house with its snake-like Gothic slate tiles and cold iron gate hint at her nature: taloned hands, snakes for hair, controlled wild garden flowers imply a subtle mythical creature who desires to "'remind people that nightmares still walk the world.'" This self admission confirms what her guest Julian felt all along. Moreover, her distaste for the word monster reinforces her earlier self description as one of the cursed less fortunate. Yet it's the subtlety that I cannot shake. Julian wanted to see her. He repeatedly ignores all the warnings she offers and pays attention to her seductive mystery to the point that he exposes himself as he truly is, through his artwork. She weighs his earnest sincerity and finds it not wanting but appealing. Just like the house, it gauges visitors (desired or undesired) and determines whether its facade keeps people away or grants the more determined access to its interior. Once inside, the walls and rooms subtly show nothing more than the disdain for life and her history, until one reaches her studio and observes the absence of everything - a living being devoid of a soul.

Crush: Ginormica

I watched "Monsters V. Aliens" with the boys last night, and found that I kinda liked Ginormica. She seemed fun. White-haired, lithe giantess? Hmmm. Not bad, not bad. And that's coming from somebody who hates (HATES) the word "ginormous," so that's testament to Ginormica's appeal.

Networking

This is a great scene, and speaks to our future from the past...



Chayefsky's sermonizing in "Network" may be dated in some ways, but when you think about cybernetics marching onward, the concept of "dehumanization" takes on an entirely different context. Depending on where we end up in this century, it could be an upward and evolutionary process, or a downward spiral into final oblivion.

The Mummy

Saw a mummified squirrel on the way to the bus stop this morning. Must've died in a snowbank or something, and when the snow went away, there was the squirrel mummy -- I thought it was a rat at first, because it was black, but then realized it was a squirrel. A ghoulish memento of the winter.

Sort of weird running across that, after watching "Zodiac" on DVD last night. I think it's a good David Fincher movie -- his excesses are reined in by the demands of being rooted in time and place. Anyway, since there is a scene with squirrels in it, seeing that this morning made me shudder anew.

It's weird to think about the Zodiac killings, because so much of it depended on police departments not communicating with each other, over-reliance on particular experts, and other assorted missteps that perhaps might not have been so much of a factor these days. I'm sure investigative botches occur all the time, but theories around serial killing weren't as well-developed in the early 70s as they are now, and plenty of the warning signs of a suspect or two were likely glossed over, whereas today, they would point to particular suspects straightaway.

I'm sleepy today. A bit sleep-indebted from the weekend.

Salinger and LitFic

This piece talks about Salinger being credited with the creation of the literary short story. Perhaps "blame" would be a better word?

Dream: Bundy? No, Danson

I woke up too early, then went back to sleep, had a bad dream/nightmare for my troubles! Thanks, Brain! I dreamed I was in a house I used to own, and was talking to my folks on the phone, when I became aware of this presence, this sense of somebody in the house who ought not to be. This while I was in the basement. So, I'm hunting around for something to use as a weapon, and keep finding useless toy weapons -- green Colt .45 squirtgun? No good. Black Smith & Wesson .45 Peacemaker cap gun? No good. A starter pistol? No good. Colt Navy replica revolver? No good. I peek at the stairs and see this guy's feet, moving very quietly, realllll sneaky-like. So, I hang up on my folks (not wanting them to worry and/or give away my position) and I draw back the hammer on the replica pistol, which makes a nice authentic-seeming click, even though I'm desperate to find an actual weapon. The guy doesn't hear it, keeps going down the steps. He has a rifle. He's a middle-aged guy with a kind of hair helmet ala Ted Danson. He doesn't see me, as I'm crouched behind some boxes. I find a machete. Finally! A weapon. I have the cap pistol in one hand, and the machete in the other, am bracing for this psycho to find me.

He sees me at last, once he's down in the room, and I brandish the cap pistol and blaze away at him, which startles him, and he ducks, firing his rifle, which thankfully misses me. Then I throw the pistol at him, and charge him with the machete. I go to swing at him but the rifle deflects the blow, and the guy runs back upstairs, leaving me in the basement.

Then I woke up.