Outside the box (maybe)

I just took a look at these lateral thinking exercises. Some of them I got, some I didn't, and one is so hoary it wouldn't even be fair to score myself on it. But on a couple I didn't get I did come up with plausible alternatives, which seems like it should count. That's a criticism I've heard of these exercises in general: that they don't really encourage individual problem solving, but just guide you to a predetermined outcome. Which, who knows, maybe is just an inherent limitation on the form.

Not present

One of my downstairs neighbors hasn't been home in a while. I know this because there's been a package leaning against her door for well over a week. Which sounds nosy on my part, but I'd rather know there's nothing to worry about. I might be able to confirm this with my other downstairs neighbor, but I haven't seen her either, although with her I think it's a question of schedules.

I've looked it up out of curiosity, and it seems almost impossible for non-family members to file a missing persons report.

4-color conflicts

It's been a while since I read comic books on any kind of regular basis. (Newspaper comics are another story, and The Comics Curmudgeon is a big reason.) Still, I saw Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story on the shelves of my local library, and couldn't resist checking it out in both senses of the phrase.

When I was a kid I wouldn't have been very interested in the office politics that went into the creations of Marvel titles. I would have been wrong, because there's a lot of good material there. One edge that Marvel had over DC was the appearance of a cohesive creative team, the famed and largely mythical "Marvel Bullpen." It is true that at one point editor/writer/mascot Stan Lee and veteran artist Jack Kirby were responsible for the company's most popular characters and stories, along with prickly Steve Ditko. But that was more a product of the severely limited budget they had in the beginning than anything else. And it was never a happy marriage. Each of them saw themselves as the more important partner, and despite Lee's brother-in-law Martin Goodman being publisher, neither was ultimately happy with the deal he got. The pattern of clashing egos and hurt feeling would repeat itself in later years, the X-Men behind-the-scenes team of Chris Claremont and John Byrne being a somewhat surprising example.

Also a revelation is how many of the creators from the seventies were getting high for inspiration, albeit mostly on soft drugs. One exception is Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber, drug free and by the sound of it mostly a homebody in general. Given the troubled humor and low-budget surrealism of his writing, this is both surprising and not.

Cherry season's been over for a while now

On a night like this it's comical that at the beginning of the month it was still the kind of weather where you sleep on top of the sheets at night with all the windows open. Not doing any of that tonight, and in fact switched to a heavier jacket tonight. It's still a little too warm for the radiator to have kicked on, but it hasn't been too warm to check.

Everybody drink!

Do I recommend The Addiction? Yes, but with trepidation. Or at least with qualifications. If ever there were a movie where you'd say it's not for everyone, this is it.

It's a vampire movie centered on a philosophy grad student (Lili Taylor, demonstrating why she should have been huge and probably never will be.) So a certain amount of making subtext text is to be expected. Your mileage may vary on it.

It's got a very interesting look. Shot entirely in black and white, it's also in a narrower aspect ratio than most movies made after the fifties. But it doesn't look like an old Universal or Val Lewton horror movie. The camera takes everything in with the detachment of a Warhol screen test.

An unusual casting tidbit: The guru vampire Peina was written as a woman, but when Christopher Walken read the script he fixated on that role and Abel Ferrara agreed to cast him. Balancing the gender switch, Annabella Sciorra wound up playing the part Walken was supposed to get. She makes an impression, and not just with her teeth.

Aye-aye, cap'n

Lemurs are primates, and have the prime primate traits in terms of hands and placement of eyes. They're related to us, but more distantly than monkeys and of course apes are. They're an interesting peak into earlier mammal evolution, being limited, at least in the wild, to the off-Africa island of Madagascar.

Relatedly the Denver Zoo has just seen the birth of a new aye-aye, which is a species of lemur. And a birth in captivity is still better than none. The parents are named Smeagol and Bellatrix, which is delightful. The baby is named Tonks, which is weird because Nymphadora Tonks was sorted into Hufflepuff House, even though she's Draco's cousin.

Beach scene

Stevie Smith reads her immortal poem inspired by a newspaper story of a man who drowned because  Phil Collins wouldn't save him.

Smith, it turns out, had a great voice, literally as well as figuratively. This musical lilt carries her through even when she's just explaining herself.

composition & decomposition

I've been working on a short story. Never mind what it's about. (Well, at some point I may talk about it.) But my trouble, as happens so often, is that I tend to psych myself out. Put so much pressure on every little decision that it's easier to just avoid the whole subject and do something else. So I'm trying to un-psych myself. And who knows? I might even wind up with something presentable.

chirp chirp

Part of the environmental sound, along with the hum of the refrigerator, is the humming of crickets. You associate them with the country, but they're urban, too. The sound is soothing from a distance. Once, I think when I was in college, I came home and saw a big cricket in my room. That freaked me out. Probably because I'm always trying to keep my conscience at bay.

What's your beef?

MINOTAUR from Karlis Vitols on Vimeo.

Not sure exactly what medium was used on this short film, but it's pleasing to the eye. Reminiscent of watercolors, or even fingerpaint.

Then there's the content, which presents the Minotaur figure in perhaps a more sympathetic light than usual. And shows Sysiphus pushing a briefcase uphill. Natch.

Prepared

A lady on the bus today was asking around if anyone had any ibuprofen, because she had a toothache. She didn't ask me, but as it happened I had some acetaminophen. She was happy to take it but surprised. It was usually women who have things like that on them.

Which is true and I've noticed. It's just that sometimes without much warning I get headaches. It doesn't happen that often, but in those cases I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. So anyway it worked out for her.

Nasal displacement

In one of those transitions that come a couple of times per year, it's allergy season again. The symptoms came upon me around dusk and haven't proven very amenable to medication. The one thing that does seem to work is lying down, so I'm about to take the hint.

Wonder if the frustration of waiting for a bus that skipped a whole route affected things. I could have gotten home quicker by walking, but I didn't know that at the time.

Any port

We had a storm tonight. I could tell a little bit ahead of time. I was in the library a little after five and saw that it was dark out. Darker than it should have been at the juncture of afternoon and evening, unless we're talking about late fall when the clocks have been sent forward.

There were a few minutes of intense rain, then it trailed off into something mild to moderate. There was a fair amount of thunder and lightning, though. And here's where I'm going with this. I talked to a guy who said he liked thunder, liked the way it shook everything. It might have looked to him like I was just gawking at him. But I get it. Sometimes other people think you're judging them, or at least mocking them, when that isn't the case at all.

Understood

Shakespeare and Chaucer are both, by consensus, geniuses. And both of them lived in times now distant from us. Chaucer more so, but in human terms neither is recent. Shakespeare's language is much easier for us to parse, though, despite some words and usages that have fallen out of use. I think part of that is that while The Canterbury Tales is a lengthy work you have to read on your own, Shakespeare is best known for plays you can act in with other people, or see socially. But make no mistake, language is always changing.

Seen in that light, this list of new entries in Webster's dictionary is fairly tame. Heavy on abbreviations, most are pretty easy to grasp even on first contact. Although I might have guessed that "ribbie" was something ribbed for her pleasure. And "zoodles" baffle me, as to me zucchini is just a squash cruelly masquerading as a nice tangy cucumber.

Please don't you be very long

As she says, blue jays do get a bad rap for being aggressive. Which, I mean, I guess is how they've evolved. I like the case she makes for them, though. Enough to look forward to seeing them again
.

I also like the way this lady talks. Seems pretty proudly Canadian.