Origin story

This interview with noted author and accordionist Daniel Handler is well worth reading all the way through, but I thought I'd highlight this part.

Wired: Speaking of politics, the name Lemony Snicket actually came out of politics, in a way. Can you tell us about that?

Handler: [laughs] I don’t know if that counts as coming out of politics, but I was researching my first novel for adults, which is called The Basic Eight, which is about a girl in high school who kills a boy in high school, and part of it is about the media uproar that follows, and I was interested in cultural commentary, and I began to contact groups that like to appear on TV and state their opinion on things they don’t know about. A lot of those groups are conservative, and I was on the phone with a conservative organization and I wanted their materials sent to me, but I had a sudden thought that I shouldn’t be on their mailing list permanently, and so the woman on the phone asked me my name and I just said the first thing that came into my head, which was “Lemony Snicket,” which was not a name that I’d ever heard before or ever thought of before.

And I thought to myself — during the pause that followed on the phone — I thought, “That was a really terrible name to say. Out of all the fake names you could have given, that’s the least believable one.” And then she just said, “Is that spelled how it sounds?” And I said, “Yes,” and I said, “Read that back to me,” because I had no idea how it sounded like it was spelled. And that was the first time that the name Lemony Snicket existed, and I began to use it for various pseudonymous, prankish things.

I was in my early 20s, and a friend of mine made me some Lemony Snicket business cards for my birthday, and I used to give them out at bars, and I used to write long, rambling letters to the editors of newspapers and sign them “Lemony Snicket.” And so then years later when I started writing for children, it occurred to me that it would be fun to write them and publish them under the name of the narrator rather than the name of the author. And then I had this name lying around gathering dust. So I guess it had its roots in politics, slightly. I don’t know if making fun of right-wingers when you’re in your early 20s really can count as a political movement. [laughs]

The instinct to not get tons of junk mail from angry conservatives is a good one, perhaps part of a larger survival instinct. I never had any idea that it could give rise to something like Lemony Snicket, though.

EDITED so that the paragraphs don't all smoosh together.

A Halloween Carroll

If most people were asked to name a poem apt for this holiday it would probably be something by Poe. "The Raven", most likely. So would I, but these kids do make something moody out of "Jabberwocky."

Wet life

Sandy was a bad time to be in the Mid-Atlantic region, obviously. In New England? Not so horrible. High wind in spots, scattered rain, but the heaviest rains came the day after the big storm, when the winds had died down. As with Iris last year, I taped up windows on the off chance of something trying to knock them in. My other precaution was not putting up a "whew" blog post while it could still be a jinx. Through all this, I pretty much finished up my pest control project. And now, time to chill.

Enjoy the show

It's been a while since I put any poetry up here, so what better time?  This is from a 2011 collection by Tracy K. Smith called Life on Mars.  Yeah, Bowie will be happy that he has black female fans beyond his wife and daughter.  Beyond that, though, she's just really good.  Like most contemporary poets, she's not beholden to rhyme and meter.  She stands out in her willingness to use them, though, and in her recognition of poetry as a sound medium you can play with.  And she is playful.

Anyway, without further ado.

The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
The first track still almost swings.  High hat and snare, even
A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe out soon enough.

Synthesized strings.  Then something like cellophane
Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe.  Crinkle and drag.  White noise,

Black noise.  What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings
In molasses.  So much for us.  So much for the flags we bored

Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire
And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame.  Listen:

The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,
Marbled with static like gristly meat.  A chorus of engines churns.

Silence taunts: a dare.  Everything that disappears
Disappears as if returning somewhere.

What have we here? It's the Friday Random Ten!

There's nothing like going home to find the air in your small apartment thick with house flies. I'm left wondering which one of God's little creatures will declare war on me next. Toads? Well, at least this is an impetus to bitch the landlord out about not having screen windows.

In better news, I had a chance to put one of these lists together today. For your reading pleasure.

1. Patsy Cline - Strange
2. Soul Coughing - Janine
3. Sonic Youth - Unmade Bed
4. Lou Rawls - Bring It On Home
5. Kat Edmonson - Hopelessly Blue
6, Brian Eno & David Byrne - The River
7. Neko Case - Magpie to the Morning
8. Joni Mitchell - Electricity
9. Simon & Garfunkel - Leaves That Are Green
10. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - May This Be Love

Small packages

Apparently these two had a syndicated TV show in the mid fifties. Five minutes long, used by stations to fill holes in their programming. If you could keep static under control for those five minutes, you were in for a treat.

Bad bossing

Just a brief thought on the question of whether employers can tell their employers whom to vote for. Which apparently they can in a lot of states. There are conditions and caveats, but since so many states have "employment at will" laws, bosses have wide discretion about when and why they can threaten termination, and for that matter carry it out.

So employers in much of the country can do this. It doesn't really seem like something they should want to do, though. That kind of coercion is bad business and bad management. You can't actually control how your employees vote, and you certainly don't have much say in whom if anyone they support in their heart of hearts. In essence if you order your employees to support (for example) Romney, you're telling liberals in your employ to lie to you. Which would seem to be a bad precedent to me. It's a short jump from "I promise to vote Republican" to "I promise not to rent out the keys to your office."