No Account

Am I alone in thinking that the shadow on Santa Claus in this Wyeth painting looks a whole hell of a lot like Oogie Boogie?

The Kingdom was Lost

Guess what I found in my tire this morning.



GIGANTIC FUCKING DEATH-SPIKE!

Chestnuts You Will Roast

The B A Start estate has been decked out in holiday fashion. Where one finds dead twigs during ordinary time, one now finds dead twigs with dead berries on them. We've got a spindly, skellington-looking tree the branches of which can barely withstand the weight of our ornaments. The presents are uniformly wrapped and stacked for maximum photo-opportunitousity. A few miniature santa hats, positively garish by comparison are relegated to the distant bedroom, far from the eyes of house-guests and mail-carriers.

And then there's Yoda Claus.

The Clipper

People keep telling me I look like Clip Smith. Like just like him.



Aside from the ugly tie, I don't really see it. And the bad hair.

Rebels Don't Always Win

On-line cataloging tool and Web 2.0 darling Library Thing recently started an Early Reviewers program, playing match-maker between publishers looking for reader reviews and book-worms looking for another fix. My friendly neighborhood mail-carrier delivered a hastily-packaged paperback to my home, which I dutifully reviewed.

The title in question is Hunting Gideon, a Mormon (self-declared) cyberpunk adventure. The publisher describes itself as releasing "provocative, unconventional, yet ultimately faith-affirming stories that yield new insights into Mormon culture and humanity". Upon reading the back cover of this book, several alert lights went off in my head, including the ones marked "Crazy Christians" and "Bad Literature".

I decided to give it a go regardless. They did send it to me gratis, after all, and a gentleman must try to live up to his end of a bargain.

The book turned out to be pretty bland, but that's not today's topic. I want to know why those alert lights went off. Why did I assume that something written with the stated goal of lionizing a particular faith would be bad? Why do we make a distinction between propagandist art and "real" art?

When's the last time you listened to a Christian rock album? Did you try that Left Behind video game? I didn't. I'm normally the first to netflix a movie about airplanes, but when I heard Behind Enemy Lines was financed by the military, I lost all interest.

And yet our classics were in large part created as proselytism if not flagrant evangelism. We consider Michelangelo an artist, not a Christian painter. Beethoven dedicated Eroica to Napoleon, and we don't call it genre music. Shakespeare's histories? At what point did we stop accepting propaganda as art?

Certainly examples exist of modern voices sneaking past our anti-establishment filters and attaining some note (Jars of Clay and Creed did well, as I remember) and pre-modern artists touting a more humanist viewpoint, but the concept of the truest art as being strictly artist-centered and institution-hating stands. At our cocktail parties and in our book reviews, around the pub table and on our blogs, any artist aligned with a mainstream political or religious group is considered inherently lesser than the more bohemian.

This prejudice in and of itself creates a type of propaganda in modern works, inculcating a belief that the only valid subject matter is the individual's experience and emotion and culling any pieces which may say otherwise out of the body of respected art and literature.

The trouble is, Christian rock actually isn't as good. The literati are right -- propagandist works in the modern age normally can't compete with the rest. But who knows? Maybe they're out there, excellent art, literature, and music which we just ignore because the artist is a Such-and-such and makes only Such-and-such stuff.

Whether or not a strictly humanist mindset actually makes a person a better artist could certainly be debated, but for now let's just say that we should not automatically assume that works made with an organization's ideals in mind are inferior by definition; we should at least give them a chance to prove it.

And This One's Wet

In lieu of having anything legitimately interesting to say, I offer you this:

The Saddle

As you remember, yesterday I said it was unlikely I would hit the nanowrimo 50,000 word goal. This remains the case.

Yet, as if response, today I received nano's weekly pep-talk email. This latest iteration was penned by Neil Gaiman. There are notably few people out there of whom I would describe myself as a "fan", and spooky Neil hovers near the top of that list.

Oh Neil. Why couldn't you just let me be? Let me accept and even enjoy missing the goal? Why must you infuse me with pep?

More like ten

Well, I suppose I better post before Garv's mom rebukes me.

Unless I have some elves-and-shoemaker-style experience, it doesn't look like I'm going to reach 50,000 words this November. Trouble is, I actually like the story too much to just punch through it.

I'm trying something new this time. I don't have any clear ideas about exactly where the narrative is headed. Last time, I had the plot all outlined like a good do-bee, and ended up with pale characters hung from a thin string of events. I'm spending much more time on character stuff this time around, so here's hoping.

In my ready room

I assume I'm not the only one who finds this disturbing.

Question is, why stop there? Why not a carbonite coffin? Have your ashes dispersed over the sands by a Maker?

Go!

Everything is funnier with seventies-style music.




There's a single synapse in my head which insists there's some pac-man glitch that allows for the kind of switcheroo the protagonist in this video pulls in the alley. That synapse, I fear, is wrong.

On The Way

"So, what was your day at work like, Alex?"

I'll tell you. It was a lot like Andy Kaufman singing the Mighty Mouse theme.

On Cloud Nine

Man attacked on Bidwell Parkway

Apparently 7:40 PM on a Sunday is no time to be walking through one of Buffalo's best-lit, most well-appointed and most frequently traveled areas. Good to know.

So, Greg gets robbed. Jess sees skeevy dude of the day. There's some hoodie-sweatshirted sexual offender running around Chapin. My brother gets robbed. Greg finds one of his windows has been tampered with. Dave gets robbed.

I've been banging the "live in the city, it's awesome" drum for a long time. Now my neighborhood has apparently become a hot-bed of violent crime and burglary. I must confess to feeling more than a little frustrated. Much of the reason I have spent so much of my life behind a desk is to be able to afford a place in a safe neighborhood. This time seems to have been wasted.

Mumble mumble

New Radiohead album. inrainbows.com. Pay whatever you want and download. Sounds like Yo La Tengo. Also sounds like awesome.

As Close As I Get

On my travels, I acquired a new watch. My grandmother gave it to me. It was my grandfather's watch.

I know this seems like the sort of thing that should tug at a young man's heartstrings, but it really wasn't any big deal. Me: "Hey, this watch still works". Grandma: "You want it?". No symbolic passing-down gestures, no wistful tales of how he wore that watch through the Korean War and countless several-alarm fires in the hamlets surrounding Burlington. None of that.

My co-workers notice the smallest changes in my wardrobe (a statement of A- how desperate these kind souls are to find something to talk with me about and B- how rarely I shop for clothes), and I am concerned someone will notice the watch. "It was my grandfather's" is sure to give the impression that I have ponderous and beautiful feelings regarding this watch, and when it turns out I don't have them, the legend of my jerkitude will simply expand to include this new anecdote.

Yet, every time I wind it and hear its ticking, I think about my grandfather listening to the exact same thing.

Here we No again

Quick note: for those of you interested in cranking out a 50,000 word bit of prose in a single month, Nanowrimo sign-ups have begun.

Judge that way after all

Yes, I know that the following statement further confirms me as a weirdo.

One of the bonuses of having internet access while on vacation is the ability to update your Librarything account with your latest purchases.

It's true, though. It's like a travel diary. "Ah, yes. Durham, North Carolina. I bought that Verne collection there."

Speaking of travelogues, Penguin's Great Journeys series caught my eye, but mainly because the covers are cool.

IFComp Walkthrough

This game has multiple endings.  In order to get the blessed ending, be sure to make the following choices:

• Accept the offer, and learn from them. "I am honored to join you."
  
•  Keep at it. This mission must be completed.

Weirdo.

The idiosyncrasies have started to take over.

I've become something of an oddball at work. An insistence on aligning my pens with each other. An incapacity to endure a buzzing sound. Pulling up socks in the middle of conversations.

These sorts of things combined with my insistent reserve make for an eccentric fellow about whom no one knows anything. The quirks replace character and personality, indeed become them in the eyes of many.

I have to confess, it's kinda fun.

Yahar...

As the autumnal breezes blow, my mind has turned near fully to the open seas. I have nearly reached the final page of Master and Commander, despite being utterly lost in the jargon much of the time. Been playing Puzzle Pirates, of all things -- but only because I couldn't get my hands on a copy of Sid Meier's Pirates Exclamation Point. (I must confess, though, it is fun.)

Just got back from New Orleans, and while there found myself growing awfully naval. On a self-made bookstore tour of the French Quarter, I picked up the dramatically-named and hideously-covered Men, Ships, and the Sea for some steamjournally research. Also bought a few old prints of (what else?) Boston Harbor circa 1800.

After a few days I even began to look like a seaman. My skin burned, my stubble grew. I wore my shirt far more open than is my normal Northeastern habit, and pale drawstring shorts which may just as well have been made of sailcloth. I even went barefoot at times, heels scraping on the sun-bleached deck.

This is all well and good, as International Talk Like a Pirate Day grows large on the horizon, large as a great Spanish brigantine heavy with booty and ripe for the takin', me hearties.

Bloggeur

Been plugging my way through the recommended readings in the Harvard Classics. Yesterday's fifteen minutes was a bit o' Voltaire. The man, it seems, was a blogger.

Tongue-in-cheek sarcastic humor? Check.
Disdain for some or all establishments and authorities? Check.
Penchant for short rants? Check.