Your goose isn't cooked

So tonight I'm making dinner. I put a couple of things in the oven and wait awhile, figuring when the time comes I'll open it up and they'll be done. But before I do open the oven I look at the dial. I never turned it on. Then on a whim I google "forgot to start oven." Some subreddit has used it as an archetypical example of stupidity. Thanks, guys.

Dinner was fine, by the way. Just late.

Tales of the Market

Sometimes I post here about books I've finished reading. Other times I share my thoughts early in the reading. This is one of those second times, so keep in mind we're talking about first impressions.

I've started reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, set in an undefined but seemingly very near future. It concerns a series of video clips, known as "the footage", which attracts an obsessive following.

Gibson adapted one of his stories into a movie back in the 1990's, although it wasn't successful. He also, I believe, wrote an unused script for Alien Resurrection. Point is, this feels like a book that wants to be a movie. The narration is present tense throughout, some characters are described as variations on celebrities, and products are all brand new and chic in ways that don't add much to the story but would look cool onscreen. Maybe it's the subject matter. He and Bruce Sterling were more literary in The Difference Engine, albeit not Victorian.

There are interesting ideas, though. Cayce, the protagonist, is a "coolhunter." In real life this tends to mean "market researcher who's rebranded themselves after extensive market research." For her it's a negative, allergy-like reaction. In a smaller detail, there's a Vietnamese restaurant called Charlie Don't Surf, which specializes less in Vietnamese food than in a theme park version of the Vietnam War experience. Little things like that keep me going.

+

I'm resistant/hostile to motivational speakers, which could be the INTP in me or my upbringing. Probably a combination. But I have no objection to a positive outlook. This song seems to be a good one to keep in your head as the day gets underway. Good on Peggy.

What a card

This is, of course, an old Arsenio clip featuring sleight-of-hand man Ricky Jay, who just recently passed. Fascinating look at his personal style. The way he seems to teeter on the edge of bumbling before striking home with the trick is reminiscent of the wilier pool hustlers. As for how he tosses one card in the air and catches another, ???

I feel like I need to track down the book he's talking about too.

Massive cold front

We've had a November cold snap in these parts. That essentially means that winter came a month or more early. More than that, we've seen arctic temperatures and windows that seem to shake the siding on your house. There's a good chance it's because a chunk of the Arctic in the form of its ice shield was set loose as a result of climate change.

As weather goes it might be less than ideal. I doubt many would choose it. Still, after you've been through this part the actual winter isn't intimidating. You know you can get through it.

Meta

This is something I swear is true. A couple of nights ago I had a dream wherein I had a bad dream. The contents of the dream within a dream aren't really clear to me right now. Some combination of possession and mistaken identity perhaps?

The thing is, I remember in the dream waking up and telling people about it and everyone being bored and disinterested. Seems my subconscious is having fun with me.

Things you may or may not want to know

If you spit on the sidewalk it's a $50 fine. Vomiting is free.~George Carlin

Notes on getting violently ill on the sidewalk as a result of dehydration possibly combined with mild food poisoning:

• People are understanding about it, and even kind. This might vary a little depending on the neighborhood, but there's not as much harsh judgment as you might fear.
• You feel really good afterwards. Or just good, but good is better than usual. As forms of euphoria go, relief after nausea that's just definitively passed is up there.
• Still wouldn't recommend doing it more than a couple of times a year. Save up. Treat yourself.

Inimitable

Lee Israel was a real person. She was a freelance writer who landed an interview with Katherine Hepburn in 1967 and spun from that into a career as a biographer. Sic transit gloria, though. Her books stopped selling, and in 1992 she embarked on another career as a forger of literary letters. Whether bold enough or desperate enough, she also stole letters from archives, hoping to substitute her own copies while selling the originals. A cunning and original plan, but not one she could carry off very long, as she was arrested and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property in 1993.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a film based on Israel's autobiography. It's a kind of caper movie, where the tools of the heist are typewriters and Israel's oven, which she uses to artificially age her forged documents. A caper with no physical violence and very little action. Really, though, it's a depiction of loneliness, desperation, self-destructiveness. As portrayed by Melissa McCarthy, Israel is a solitary alcoholic with a secondary addiction of burning bridges. Her forgery scheme is a necessary confidence booster as well as a moneymaker, but she can't completely suppress the suspicion she might be doing something wrong.

It's far from unrelieved misery, though. McCarthy is best known for comedy, and she's frequently funny here. So is Richard E. Grant as her petty criminal best friend, although his story turns tragic as well. Also among the movie's pleasures are a jazz-inflected score and a lived-in New York atmosphere, pre-gentrification.

If you're a cat lover, prepare for some sadness, though.

chop chop

Anil Ananthaswamy's The Man Who Wasn't There has nothing to do with the Coen brothers movie. It's a book on neuroscience, a topic that interests me. And the second chapter is interesting. It's just kind of hard to get through. The subject is body identity integrity disorder (BIID), and if you're curious about what that is, here, that should tie you over.

So there are descriptions of self-harm and some borderline surgical procedures. Nothing too graphic, but it still made me woozy.

Now I know transgender people. There's a Starbucks around here where at one time you might walk in and most of the staff on duty seemed to be trans. So is thinking you're an amputee wrongly placed in a body with all its limbs comparable? I would think it's different, but who knows? Maybe in a few years I'll be desperately denying ever having written this blog post.

Drowse

Regret to inform you that I am very sleepy now, as the hypnotist would say. Ergo, my blogging capabilities are limited right now.

But thinking about sleep leads to thinking about dreams. Literal dreams. But a lot of the time they seem to be assembled by the waking mind, which is more comfortable with narrative. A few disconnected images come, maybe accompanied by a feeling. Then we interpret, either to diminish its effect or to enhance it.

In the aisles

Observations from a recent trip to the supermarket:

* The annual marketing of eggnog started, I think, a little before Halloween. There are now several brands gracing the shelves. This includes Southern Comfort. Now it's not an insane market move for them. Eggnog is best served cool but not ice cold (I've tried eggnog flavored ice cream and it leaves something to be desired) and many like to put a little nip of something in it. Brandy might be best but whiskey-flavored liqueur is workable. Still, that means there are SoCo dairy farms out there, which just seems weird.

* One of the potato companies—McCain, I think—is marketing fries shaped like emoji. Ah well, you knew it was inevitable. From the packaging it's mostly just happy faces and surprised faces. No vomiting face. And the ever popular "swirl of shit with a manic grin" has been left out, for some reason.

Hours

Tomorrow I'll be otherwise occupied during the morning and early afternoon. After that, though, I have at least one thing to return to the library and a couple to pick up. This I have to do tomorrow because Monday is Veteran's Day (which I remember Howard Campbell, Jr. in Mother Night lamenting was no longer Armistice Day.) I usually pick things up on Saturday but with a lot of Monday holidays, this one included, they close Saturday to make it a three day weekend.

This is one of those things that used to confound me but now I just shrug off. As long as I can remind myself and not get caught up short, well, enjoy your day off.

AM

One thing I like about this time of year is that Standard Time comes back. I hear a lot of people say that they look forward to Daylight Savings Time, even that they want it to be DST year-round, so I'm probably weird on this one. So be it. We got an extra hour of sleep this past weekend, and now when I get up in the morning the sun's out even though it's still early. It's refreshing.

New friend

Craven from Brianna McArthur on Vimeo.

Brief but sweet. This one may or may not be inspired by the recently passed Halloween season. Very definitely autumnal in its palette.

Yes, this is an unlikely seeming friendship, but one I can get behind.

I'm driving in my car

Before 1980 or so, the idea of a doorstopper horror novel—something longer than 500 pages or so—would barely even be thought about, much less attempted. The one who changed this, of course, was Stephen King. The Stand and IT were the vanguard. Others followed, but the whole phenomenon has a family resemblance.

Speaking of family, Joe Hill is the author of the nearly 700-page NOS4A2, and his full name is Joseph Hilstrom King. He was the kid with the voodoo doll in Creepshow. He's good at balancing things, with a scaled-up everydayness reminiscent of his father and a slithery Rolls-driving villain who has some Thomas Ligotti qualities.

The author photograph in back shows Hill posed on a motorbike, kind of like a young David Hasselhoff. A poster of Hasselhoff during his Knight Rider days is a recurring element in the heroine's life, so this could be a deliberate effect. Or Hill just has a dorky idea of what's badass. So, funny either way.