Planet

This news about Gliese 581g is cool, although I wouldn't bank on anything in the constellation Libra. Still, pretty cool.

Fleetwood Mac Attack

You know how some people react(ed) to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, or Slayer? Like that fear and loathing of them as somehow Satanic and/or Evil? Well, I have that kind of reaction to Fleetwood Mac!

They're a band that has always struck me as ineffably eerie and creepy -- not Stevie Nicks or Lindsey Buckingham so much -- they seem mostly just along for the ride (although Stevie Nicks's dark-eyed gypsy princess stage persona was, in itself, both compelling and haunting). But Mick Fleetwood always seemed like this ghoulish, creepy figure. Maybe it's his scarecrowlike 6'6" beanpole self, or his (and most of the band's) rampant fucking each other, but if any band was a bunch of vampires sidling through society and the pop culture, it'd be Fleetwood Mac. I would be unsurprised. And the cocaine-cool mid-70s sound of the band at their commercial apogee is just creepy, too -- it's hard to really classify them. A Rock band? A Soft Rock band? A band to snort coke to? I don't know, but that combination just always raises the hackles on my neck, makes me wary and faintly alarmed by them. And I'm sure it centers around Mick Fleetwood, who is like a stand-in for Satan. He just seems sinister to me.

Without him in the mix, Fleetwood Mac would likely only be vaguely off-putting, but put him in there, and they just arc into sublime spookiness. And throw their massive success in the 70s into it, and makes them even more creepy to me, somehow. Like everything falling into place, and this band of Anglo-American vampires sank their teeth into the pop culture and took a long drink from it. They are, perhaps, the PERFECT Baby Boomer band, one of those zeitgeist bands that reached the Boomers at the perfect age to dig their icy grooves...

"Dreams"
"Oh Daddy"
"Rhiannon"


I just get creeped out by them. Maybe it's the keys they choose for their tunes, or the tightly produced, compressed and generally quiet sound. I mean, songs like "Don't Stop" were somewhat more reassuring, since they kind of hit along more conventional Pop-Rock lines, but I always factored tunes like that (and the Buckingham tunes) as a kind of reaction against the slithering evil-seemingness of Mick Fleetwood. It also bothered me that a drummer in a band should be so prominent -- I know that violated my sense of Pop Culture Propriety. Drummers just shouldn't lead bands (even if creepily, from the behind the scenes). Especially diabolical ones like Mick Fleetwood. Now that he's an old man, some of that sinister Rasputin/Fagin kind of vibe he carried with him has dissipated, but in his heyday, he was one creepy-looking chap.

Dis & Dat

Wow, today really felt like Fall -- blustery and cool, a mix of sun and overcast skies, leaves starting to fall, swirling. The city's nature changes with Fall, as people gear up for the inevitably long winter.

I ran out and snagged a new computer, since I'm letting Exene have the iMac, and didn't want to have to default to Shitbox (as I refer to the old Dell we've had for years -- I still use it for my fiction-writing, but that's about it, although I've got all of my music on that computer, so until I get that stuff migrated to the new machine, Shitbox'll still have a place on my computer desk.

The boys were really sweet today, just lil' angels. B2 kept wanting to be with me, any time I ran my errands. He'd run and climb onto me and hold on, would say he wanted to stay with me, to go with me. That was sweet and heartbreaking, of course. B1 was sweet, too. He's getting so big. Amazing to think that B2 will be five soon, and B1 will be nine soon, as well.

Saw a woman who could've passed for Wonder Woman -- tall, and taller still with her knee boots. Just at the grocery store, getting whatever. But with her boots (themselves with at least three-inch heels, maybe four-inch heels), she was taller than me! Amazonian!

I put B2 in an Avengers t-shirt (baby blue with the original Avengers printed on the front -- Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Giant-Man, and Was). He looks super-cute in it, especially with the camo pants I put on him, too.

The boys are trying to figure out what their Halloween costumes will be. I think B2 wants to be Bumblebee from the TRANSFORMERS; B1 hasn't decided, yet. B2 will make a cute Bumblebee, for sure.

Chimpanic

I was talking with a coworker yesterday,  and we got on the topic of chimpanzees, how scary-violent they can be, which led to much chuckling and laughing about just how horrible that is, like When Chimps Go Bad. I said that I could handle fighting zombies, but if a chimp ran at me, I'd take a swan-dive out the nearest window, because chimps do things like tear your face off and rip your limbs apart and beat you with them like you're a bongo drum. Victims of man v. chimp never, ever come out of it without horrible injuries. The combination of aggression and the biomechanics that make them terribly strong make them downright scary.

Of course, looking up "chimp violence" on YouTube gets me this...

Ricky Gervais on Chimp Violence

But seriously, chimps will fuck you up -- or, at the very least, are totally capable of doing so. I joked to my coworker "Any belief in a just, sane, and orderly universe goes immediately out the window when you've got a chimp literally ripping your face off -- one minute you're thinking 'I should get pizza for dinner tonight, maybe' and the next minute you're like 'AUUUGH! You tore off my face!!'" And chimps really WILL rip your face off. It makes a shark bite seem almost genteel and courtly by comparison.

I think it's kind of a variation on the "Uncanny Valley" that comes up with AI -- a shark bite you can relate to, because it's this big maw taking a hunk out of you, sufficiently monstrous and alien to be terrifying, but at least contextually logical; but a chimp tearing your face off is perhaps more unnerving, because it's using hands that are similar to yours, only much, much stronger and worse; and also, you might actually be unfortunate enough to survive it. And further, if a shark takes a bite out of you, odds are it thought you were a fish or a seal or a sea lion -- a case of mistaken identity. But lord knows what the chimp is thinking when it decides to rip off your face. Maybe it didn't like the shirt you were wearing, or the color, or you had a mustache (or didn't have a mustache), or you ate an English muffin for breakfast, and that pissed it off. There are any number of ineffable, incomprehensible reasons why a chimp might go off on you.

So, if you have a friend who has a "pet chimp" -- word to the wise: LOSE that friend. Find another friend. Then you won't even have to worry about getting a face and limb transplant.

Trunk Monkey

Really, Trunk Ape, but, you know....

Generation Why?

It's irritating that there's a show targeted to Generation Y...


http://www.slate.com/id/2268225/

As ever, Gen X gets screwed. Just because there are more Y than X, it's show-worthy. Demographics is destiny.

Never Let Me Go (2010)

I'm kind of intrigued by the movie, "Never Let Me Go." It looks like it might be a downer, but I might catch it, anyway. After the heart-rending "The Road," I don't know how many retro-dystopic quasi-SF tragedies I can bear, but it does seem intriguing to me.

Digitus impudicus

I was talking with a coworker about flipping the bird yesterday, which, of course, led to the sharing of this clip...

Flight of the Conchords, "The Bird"

He and I were talking about it, and we realized there was definitely an aesthetic preference where flipping the bird was concerned, and a handedness preference, too.

When's the last time you flipped somebody off, Gentle Reader? Which hand did you use? Did you opt for closed fist, open hand, or other? Did you flip somebody off "gangstah-style" (like a sideways flip-off), or a "flyin' the flag" (vertical, classic) kind of flip-off? Do you opt for a classic All-American bird-flipping (as in the video above), or a regional/ethnic flip-off?

One thing about the above picture that bugs me is that I think the kid is an English football fan; I think the sourcing of it is English (hence the red and white facepaint still evident, there) -- however, why is it flipping the bird? Why's he not doing the English "V" bollocks flip-off? A mystery maybe he can answer one day.

I love the long history of the Bird. Also, what an exemplary middle finger is included in the Wikipedia entry! That gal's finger is LONG, and so the Bird she's flipping is a grand gesture! Gotta love this, the first known photographed flip-off (back row, extreme left), circa 1886...

I love stuff like that -- silly pop culture apocrypha. I love the idea of a scholar poring through old pictures and determining "THERE! This is THE FIRST photographed 'giving of the finger'." And then writing a paper on it!

Hmph

I am still not getting why "Ghost Story" had received so many plaudits. I'm just not dazzled by it. Not the writing, not the story, nothing. I've got about 200 pages to go, and I'm still not floored or scared by it. I'm really hoping Straub delivers, but I don't think he has, yet. It's like when people would rave about Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" -- I remember listening to it and thinking "WTF??" Whatever it's about, I'm not getting. And I try to be open-minded, to approach it without judgment or reservation. It's like the movie, "Inception." That movie was a grave disappointment to me, and I thought "How can people be thinking this is such a great movie?"

Strobe

The bus ride home had a strobe light thing going -- one of the lights in the back was flashing, made me think I was playing "Half-Life" on my commute home. Fortunately, I missed the first bout of stormage that hit.

I'm going to whip up some dinner in a few. Hungry!

Got free chocolate this morning -- some reps were giving away Dove Chocolates to passersby. It made for an ironic image, like assorted pedestrians with handfuls of chocolate, and derelicts eating Dove Chocolates from corners, down the path from the reps.

Telegraphy

*pant pant* I'm on page 300 of "Ghost Story," still soldiering on. He's doing it yet again, over the span of two pages...

"...craziness..."
"...saw the fractured light in his eyes..."
"...that underneath the 'stayin' sane' kind of craziness there was another, real craziness."
"...saw his eyes gleaming between the lashes..."
"...and his eyes gleamed..." (same paragraph as the first gleaming-eyed bit)
"...grinning maniacally..."

Book Report Voice: I think this character is going crazy.

(cue telegraph operator, dot dash dot dash dot dot dash)

Jumper v. Thumper

I had a scare this morning -- I thought I'd lost my 4GB jump drive, where I put all of my fiction (actually, it's only one of three places I vault it, but still, it's my mobile drive, obviously). I had thought it was lost, but it turns out, it was at home. I'd like to blame "Thumper," my nickname for the "ghost" in our place, who has a fondness for making things disappear (and reappear in places where you've already looked).

Many a story about Thumper, and not just from me -- Exene has her own share of tales. My favorite is her hearing a spoon clatter in the kitchen, and her, for a moment, thinking that it was me or the boys who did it, and then remembering that we were out of town. Then, in the morning, she checked in there, and saw a spoon sitting on the floor in the center of the kitchen floor. Anyway, the jump drive was okay, which was a big relief to me.

I call Thumper "Thumper" because of "her" tendency to knock things over. One of my own encounters had me wake up to hear "thud-a-thud" in the kitchen, and to think, at first, that it was maybe the cat. But then I saw him laying in his favorite spot. So, I thought "What the hell is Exene doing up at this hour?" and I went in there to look, but nobody was in there. Good times. Nothing like waking up to that!

Mmmmmonica Bellucci

I wonder what Monica Bellucci's been up to these days? Yeah, another Libra celebrity. What can I say? At least I'm consistent....

Stormy Weathers

Took B2 to the soccer match, but a thunderstorm came and soaked us before too very long. We had to retreat homeward, since the thunder and lightning was looming.