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.

The Magic Number

Hey, this is my 666th post on this blog. Seems only fitting...

Slayer, "Raining Blood"

3 : )

a/c

I keep reading "Ghost Story" because there is some bleakness to it that is intriguing, even if the mechanics of the writing claw at me still. I'm giving him the benefit of a doubt, that the trip'll be worth the destination.

Got the a/c on tonight, as it's a bit warm this evening.

B1 cuted me out -- he said of someone he knows, "She's very reactive; she's just like magnesium!" That made me smile. He also said his name was "like an ocean." I loved that, too.

Ghostwriter

So, I keep soldiering through "Ghost Story." I have a problem with Peter Straub's writing, which feels sort of clunky to me, almost stodgy. And it doesn't have to do with the geriatric characters in the book -- it's his manner of writing.

One thing he does (repeatedly) that drives me bananas is his tendency to restate something. For example, in one chapter, he refers to a particularly character's passivity about seven times -- it keeps popping up while referring to the character, and it makes me want to say YES, I GET IT. SHE IS FUCKING PASSIVE. Same chapter, he mentions that character's "ironic smile" -- over and over again, maybe five times.

It wasn't just that one chapter -- it happens throughout. Now, this could've been fixed with better editing -- had I edited the book, I'd have queried the author and said as much: "Au: You mention her 'passivity' and 'ironic' smile 5-7 times in this chapter; is there another way to put this?" Or something like that.

Similarly, there was a point where he mentioned a group of characters drinking whiskey, neat. And less than a page later, one of the characters is drinking "another cognac" -- I'm like "Buh? ANOTHER? He was drinking WHISKEY." Again, it's an editorial complaint, although, had I written that scene, I sure as hell would've gotten that right.

But he has this elliptically leaden way of writing that goes something like this...

"Martin put his hands into his pockets and found nothing but bits of shredded paper that had been through the laundry, so they were more like paper pills. A car drove past him, splashing oily water in a pothole as it went. An old Lincoln. Martin gazed at the bits of shredded paper and wondered what he'd put on them. Laundry lists? Old receipts?

Martin looked at the old Lincoln at the stoplight, waiting for red to go to green. The pothole water stilled, oily-brown. Then he looked back at the paper pills in his hands, and wondered what he'd put on them, and how he'd forgotten to take them out of his pockets when he'd done the laundry. Because he was usually rather fastidious. The light turned to green, and the old Lincoln drove away, leaving Martin wondering what he'd written on those paper pills in his pockets that he'd laundered."

Now, I'm just winging that, but just imagine hundreds of pages of that, sort of looping and backtracking and looping, almost like Straub was trying to remember where he was going while writing it. Again, a better editor would've queried it and tightened up the prose. Given that the book was written in 1979, when fiction editing was still a credible profession, I'm sort of surprised by it.

Had to run through that one chapter, since I wanted to take a highlighter to it (but, it being a library book, I abstained, naturally, Gentle Reader)...

"Her mouth was bracketed by two faint lines of irony."
"...the faint lines beside her mouth twitched as if at a private joke."
"...to mark an intense passivity."
"...like a princess in a tower."
"...the ironic, tactful passivity of the beautiful..."
"...her passive self-sufficiency."
"...a soft, almost invisible irony..."
"...the princess locked in the tower of her own self-regard."
"...the veneer of disinterested irony."
"...essentially passive."
"...an androgynous quality to her passivity..."

And so on (and it does go on).

Now, Straub is writing as another writer in the scene above, so one might think he's adopting a "style" by inhabiting the novelist character, but the problem is that this kind of backtracking occurs throughout the book, where the reader is bludgeoned into submission by the repetition of those details.

I prefer not to force-feed the reader with literary foie gras. I think that everything in a scene should matter, every detail, and if you're forced to backtrack, it's a problem of the original setup of the scene. The above is like telling a joke repeatedly to the same audience member -- each successive pass of that same "joke" offers diminishing returns, until the audience gets frustrated and annoyed.

But the above is really an editing problem; the fiction editor should've noticed this tendency and queried it, tried to get him to get his point across without using the same words over and over again.

And, no, I'm NOT going to tell you what Martin put on those shredded bits of paper. ; )

Stripes

Had a trippy moment this morning, while waiting for the bus. From every direction, people wearing striped shirts and/or dresses, going their respective ways -- a hipster chick in a purple dress with diagonal white stripes, a guy with shirt with acid green and gray horizontal stripes, a pregnant woman in a black and white striped tunic. Several other people in stripes, all converging, passing one another. And I'm watching, waiting for my bus, and they're crossing the crosswalk, which is, itself, striped. Loved it! A moment of crazy stripes, and then they were all gone.

Hungry

You know, I was thinking of my whole Libra analysis, and I forgot to include two key ones, who share billing in Tony Scott's "The Hunger" (1983) -- the stylish-yet-vacuous and almost interminably empty vampire movie -- Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve. In many ways, "The Hunger" is the ultimate Libra movie, with so much emphasis on form, and so little on substance. Keep in mind that Catherine Deneuve is definitely one of my Libra celebrity crushes, but watching these two Libra actresses court one another's characters, it's just terribly amusing. Look at the flat gazes, the studied shallowness, and so on...

"The Hunger"

As a student of Librans, it just amuses me to see them interact in this movie (and, really, this movie will make you want to claw your eyes out, because it just drags and drags and drags -- imagine, a BORING vampire movie? Yep. The only thing "The Hunger" makes you hunger for is plot, pacing, characterization). There are people who love "The Hunger," but I will contend that the fans of that movie are Librans, themselves. A movie of Librans, by Librans, for Librans: "The Hunger." Try watching it, you'll see. Long fucking movie.

Catherine Deneuve. Stunning, an almost iconic feminine beauty. And doll's eyes.

And Susan Sarandon, liberal Libra. I just included her for the cleavage! Bahah! She puts the "bra" in "Libra!"

Falling

I can't believe Fall is nearly here; I'm really fairly floored by that -- summer came and went so quickly.

I was pleased to renew some library books online -- I love that, the march of progress. Yet it's weird to see the library, now -- the books, largely unread, endless rows and floors, and one floor a corner of the floor, filled with computers with Internet hookups, packed with people. Like a hive. Books are old media. I love books, but it's so apparent how retro they are, more so in the library. At the rate our country's going, public libraries themselves may be gone in a generation -- combination of lack of funding and literacy, a toxic brew. I love books, but it did make me sad to see the unattended shelves full of books. Lost monuments. Ten years ago, there would have been a flurry of activity, but now, silent rows, a wealth of untouched ideas, lost worlds. Books are becoming a boutique industry.

I'm not melancholy at the moment; just reflective, thinking about things.

It's quiet tonight, and cooling off. The city seems quiet -- the battening down of the hatches, the passing of summer into our brief Autumn. Chicago's Fall is not a long one, compared with other places I've lived. The leaves all but leap off the trees.

B2 wants to be Bumblebee for Halloween -- the original TRANSFORMERS Bumblebee, which he loves. I think it's cute how much he loves that. B1 hasn't decided, yet.

B2 played soccer Saturday, in driving rain (they didn't cancel practice!) English coaches, great accents, loved that. B2 did a great job -- it's early, yet, and he's young, but his natural athleticism is remarkable: quick, strong, dextrous, competitive. I can already tell he's going to be one of those kids who'll be able to compete in anything he tries out for. He's a natural.

B1 never was -- not for T-ball, not for soccer. Oh, he gamely got out there and did it, but he's not a natural athlete by any means, and the intricacies of competition leave him sort of spinning his wheels a bit. I empathize with that -- I'll encourage him to be active in what he has a knack for, and what he enjoys. I don't have any conceptions of what he should be except happy and loved and accepted.

All the same, it's still remarkable that his baby brother is the natural, except in one area: rhythm. B1 has a natural sense of rhythm that pops up in unexpected moments. It's almost like because he doesn't have to think about it, he attains that measure of grace in movement that is lost to him in other activities. While B2 would be a natural musician in the sense of having dexterity and a diva-like sense of himself, I think B1 might have a knack at the deeper game, if I can encourage him to challenge himself and apply himself to things.

Failing that, martial arts and/or swimming would be good for B1 -- active, but not quite so team-based. Where his natural inclinations can come into play and he can excel in his own way.

Both boys are so smart, they crackle with intelligence. It makes me happy to see that, because they're going to need it in this world they'll eventually inherit.

The Abyss Also Gazes Into You

And talking about eyes, celebrities, and zodiacal silliness, I totally have to bring up Scorpios. Because Scorpios also stand out -- I can detect female Scorpio celebrities with uncanny accuracy. I'll say "I bet she's a damned Scorpio" and I'll be right. Scorpio guys are harder to detect, and I don't know why that is; I think a general fucked-upness is in play with Scorpio guys that has them maybe at odds with themselves.

And lord help the world when a Scorpio gets a bee in their bonnet, because it's never coming out. The Scorpio Gaze is different from the Libra Gaze in that there's a hardness to it (regardless of how girly and pretty the woman is, Scorpio Eyes are HARD), and the second sterling quality of the Scorpio Gaze is that it bores into you. Whereas a Libra's just gazing at you flatly, a Scorpio is bringing their searchlight eyes to bear on you, seeing through you -- I have likened it to gazing in a dark pool of water, and you know there's a sea monster in there looking back at you; you can't quite see the monster, but you know it's there, and it's looking back at you, and it will kill you, if you're not careful. Let's look at some examples...

First, let me start with an exemplar. Vivien Leigh. She masterfully put her Scorpio Eyes to work to secure all sorts of roles, and she put those headlamps to bear in shot after shot. Very memorable (and, amusingly, she channeled the archetypal Libra with Blanche DuBois, but she still had Scorpio eyes in that role).

Grace Kelly is likely one that would fool most people -- they'd think "Oh, she's a Libra, right?" Because she has those elements. Except the eyes. Grace Kelly's eyes are the "tell" with her. A "Scorpio Test" I like to do is to cover the rest of the face, revealing only the eyes. If they're the eyes of a killer, then odds are very, very good that you're dealing with a Scorpio. Try it, you'll see. Monster in the water, gazing up at you from the depths. Wanting to eat you.

And who can forget Sean Young, in her fleeting star turn in "Bladerunner?" Exemplary Scorpio Eyes (and Scorpio lifestyle, if history is any indication). Again, the eyes aren't flat; rather, they are boring into you, across space and time, and are devoid of compassion. Pretty face, killer's eyes.

What about sweet, bosomy, goofy-faced Anne Hathaway? Such a nice young woman, masterfully suited for particular roles? Mmm hmm. The eyes. Mind those deadly eyes -- they will drown you.

Kelly Osbourne? Not that plump little child of celebrity. Not her, too, surely? God, yes. Deadly eyes. Scorpio Eyes.

Jenny McCarthy, the Joan of Arc of anti-vaccination? Yep. She might be mistaken for a Libra in the above one, if you weren't paying attention, but those eyes are boring into you, saying "Hey, don't you realize that vaccination is the greatest threat to humanity since fluoridation?" Sure, Jenny. Just try convincing a Scorpio that they're wrong. Seriously. Try it sometime.

Callista Flockhart is another exemplar. The Scorpio Gaze gives away nothing, while seeks to plumb your depths (if there). I imagine Scorpios could be good poker players, just because they'd sit across the table and freak out the other players with their killer's eyes.

Let's not forget Winon Ryder. She based a whole career on those sea monster eyes of hers. I imagine she thought she could shoplift with those eyes, like just stunning the clerks into submission.

Another 80s icon of sorts, Demi Moore. She epitomizes the Scorpio Gaze in a postmodern world. Determined, ruthless, deadly. The "tell" with Scorpio eyes is that they stand out from the face that surrounds them, and they bore into you.

Rachel McAdams is one who might fool the unwary, because of her "America's Sweetheart" kind of bearing, and her big, cartoonish smile. But she's a Scorpio, and the eyes are the Tell. She will fucking kill you, if you're not careful.