What Are Words For?

Oooh, I liked this piece on SLATE, it made me snicker.

St. Kilda

Islands always fascinate me. The more remote and isolated, the better. One that currently has my attention is St. Kilda, Scotland. I am fascinated by how long people inhabited this island, which only in the last near-century became effectively depopulated. A small, lonely place. Fascinating!

The evacuation of it, in particular, is enticing...

Numerous factors led to the evacuation. The islands had existed for centuries in relative isolation until tourism and the presence of the military in World War I induced the islanders to seek alternatives to privations they routinely suffered. The changes made to the island by visitors in the nineteenth century disconnected the islanders from the way of life that had allowed their forebears to survive in this unique environment.^[87] Despite construction of a small jetty in 1902, the islands remained at the weather's mercy.^[88]

After World War I most of the young men left the island, and the population fell from 73 in 1920 to 37 in 1928.^[34] After the death of four men from influenza in 1926 there was a succession of crop failures in the 1920s. Investigations by Aberdeen University into the soil where crops had been grown have shown that there had been contamination by lead and other pollutants, caused by the use of seabird carcasses and peat ash in the manure used on the village fields. This occurred over a lengthy period of time as manuring practices became more intensive and may have been a factor in the evacuation.^[89][90] The last straw came with the death from appendicitis of a young woman, Mary Gillies, in January 1930. On 29 August 1930, the remaining 36 inhabitants were removed to Morvern on the Scottish mainland at their own request.

The morning of the evacuation promised a perfect day. The sun rose out of a calm and sparkling sea and warmed the impressive cliffs of Oiseval.... Observing tradition the islanders left an open Bible and a small pile of oats in each house, locked all the doors and at 7 a.m. boarded the Harebell... They were reported to have stayed cheerful throughout the operation. But as the long antler of Dun fell back onto the horizon and the familiar outline of the island grew faint, the severing of an ancient tie became a reality and the St Kildans gave way to tears.^[91]

The islands were purchased in 1931 by Lord Dumfries (later 5th Marquess of Bute), from Sir Reginald MacLeod. For the next 26 years the island experienced quietude, save for the occasional summer visit from tourists or a returning St Kildan family.

Running, Man

I read in one of B1's science magazines about running, how humans appear to be evolutionarily-disposed to run (including the presence of the Achilles' Tendon, which is integral to the process), and glutes -- having buns helps one run! Something about how it counterbalances the forward momentum of the chest when propelling oneself forward -- that if we didn't have buns, we'd lose that vital ability to propel ourselves while remaining upright. There's a clear biomechanical edge glutes provide with running, and it's not simply about energy storage.

What I found most interesting was discussion about sweating and the nature of human running, which favored distance-running, and how it appears to have been used by early humans to run down prey animals. Herd animals like antelopes and what-not rely on sprinting to escape danger, and are capable of great bursts of speed, but, like most (all?) animals, they rely on their mouths to cool off, basically panting themselves cool. So, what that means is that, in the (literal) short run, they can escape people, but what people (particularly early human hunters) could do is simply jog after the animals, maintaining enough of a distance from the animals to force them to sprint/rest, sprint/rest, sprint/rest until they ran themselves out. All animals, no matter how fast, simply overheat after having run (or being made to run) a certain distance, and they will just collapse, exhausted. Something like when their body temperature reaches 105 degrees F.

So, early humans would basically jog animals to death, and, surprisingly, it didn't take that great a distance -- usually around six (6) miles of running would do it, if you were able to keep after the animals. That's apparently how early humans would do it, and why we evolved the muscle/tendon and pulmonary combination we have that lets us run distances. If you were able to run, you could (eventually) eat. Six miles isn't even that much running, in the larger scheme of things. Of course, early humans had to be even more hardcore, when you figure they were running barefoot across the African plains for prey! Ouch!

One down

The novella didn't make it into the anthology, although the comments from the reader/judge were very good, and were in accord with what I felt needed to be done with the story, anyway, so that heartened me. He's clearly a good, sharp reader. I'm fine with rejections so long as people actually read my stuff and offer good feedback, so while it's somewhat disappointing not to get into the anthology, the points he made were valid. I think he liked the story very much, but understand why he passed. And, in truth, I am fine with it, because the story really wanted to be a novel, anyway, and I think I shoehorned a lot into the novella for the sake of not exceeding the word count limit.

Hopefully, the two short stories I have out and the novel will bring me better outcomes! I need to get some more short stories out there, have to find homes for'em. Always such a PITA.

Bahahah

Old-time propaganda and/or public health posters always make me laugh. This one is great:

"You can't beat the Axis if you get VD."

Bahaha! Watch out for those "Good Time" Girls, fellas! That tomato at the dime-a-dance joint may have one fine set of gams, but watch out!

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.