Odd tales

Right now I'm reading Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, the first collection―of two, so far―by Ben Loory.

Loory's a new writer to me. I read a story by him in a horror anthology recently and was intrigued by it, so I figured I'd check out more. So is he a horror writer? Some of his stories go in that direction, but a lot don't. The book's cover features a tentacle holding a sign on which the latter half of the title is printed. An indicator of eldritch Lovecraftian terrors? No, the story it refers to is about an octopus―it's called "The Octopus"―but it's rather sweet. 

In this vein the stories vary from scary to funny to sentimental to just weird. Loory follows where the ideas take him. He's enviably unblocked.

Paws to reflect

Downtown today I saw a lady walking a cat on a leash. Nice looking grey cat. Not something you see every day. And obviously I wasn't the only one who noticed. The woman holding the leash let two others pet the cat. The cat's look could best be described as "grudging." I get it. 

My educated guess is that dog parks don't have a feline equivalent, though.

Rumblings

At breakfast today I sat near this group. Three tables pulled together to make one long Wayne Manor-ish table, filled with five nuclear families. The parents were millennials, and it may have been the first time in some time that they had all gotten together.

I didn't track all their conversations, of course, but I did notice when they started talking about school. One woman asked why, at this point, her kids have to wear masks in school when the teachers don't. It's a good question. If I were a teacher―and I have friends who teach at both elementary and secondary levels―I'd want to get in front of this question.

I'd also take from this exchange and a few others I've noticed that women aren't necessarily that taken in by safetyism. That may be women's role in institutions, but on their own they're just as likely to seek balance between safety and other values.

Issues

My local library keeps Rolling Stone in stock. I tend not to bother with it, though. Whatever glories lay in its past are truly past. 

One thing I noticed a couple of years ago. Turn to the record review section. There's the lead review, longish, but not out of control like when they had Lester Bangs writing for them. Then there's a second, shorter review. And that's it. Two reviews, the second rather perfunctory. But that's symptomatic. While as recently as ten years ago, culture was king, now it's a sideshow to politics. Which itself has been folded into the entertainment industry. "Show business for ugly people" indeed.

But man, at least The New Yorker still runs cartoons.

Faith misplaced

I'll be brief here, but this piece is fairly on-target about the deference afforded Black Lives Matter. BLM in the main acts as a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for corporations, which seems to be a very lucrative business. Ali is also right that the policies they support in many cases harm the people they're (allegedly) supposed to help.

The writer River Page has referred to poor whites in America as "political dalits," and it's true that the establishment's hostility to low-status whites is so open as to lack plausible deniability. In the case of poor and working class blacks, things get weirder and more passive-aggressive. Black lives are so important that after George Floyd millions of Instagram influencers left black squares on their accounts for the day. (If you don't understand the previous sentence, count your blessings.) And yet look at something like the Pritzker-approved bail reform in Illinois. Running up the number of serious felonies for which the authorities have to let you go with just a wink and a promise you won't run, it only benefits black people if you equate them with felons. It's people in poor neighborhoods, yes a huge number of them non-white, who are going to suffer from decisions like this. And yes, they know.

Musing in four colors

I've read/heard a few famous men saying that they read a lot of comics as kids but stopped when they hit their teens and discovered girls. This is probably a dated concept now. Maybe in the 50s and early 60s reading comics hurt your chances with the opposite sex, but I doubt it's much of a factor now.

After weaving in and out a few times, I did pretty much give up on mainstream comic books. It wasn't because of girls. It was because comic companies by and large weren't producing work that really grabbed me. There are always talented people working in the field, but the companies―and if you need reminding, the two biggest companies are subdivisions of much larger conglomerates―set editorial policy. Since comic stories and big budget movie stories have merged, the emphasis is always on scale rather than doing anything interesting with plot and character. And the art winds up looking rushed and anonymous a lot of the time too.

At some point it's better to imagine from the next room.

今、私たちは料理をしています！

(tr: Now we're cooking!)

I watched Tampopo tonight. Not real heavy on plot, or at least the simple plot isn't the main attraction. There are some great setups, though. Like, the hero fights a bully, so the bully reforms and agrees to do interior decorating for the heroine. You don't see that in every movie.

Also a reminder on how in Japan ramen is treated as a real food. I know there are Asian restaurants here that do the same thing, but my experience of ramen is as 40-plastic-wrapped noodles that tasted good enough going down but which I often regretted around 2AM. 

There is a turtle snuff scene in the movie. If you have a pet turtle, proceed with caution on both your behalf.