...But someone on Kijiji is selling a 2004 Gretsch Tennessee Rose for $1350.

Ahem. I do not need another guitar, particularly not an electric. Mighty pretty, though.

Praying Mantis

That praying mantis over there
Is really not engaged in prayer.
That praying mantis that you see
Is really preying (with an “e”).
It preys upon the garter snake.
It preys upon the bumblebee.
It preys upon the cabbage worm,
The wasp, the fly, the moth, the flea.
(And sometimes, if its need is great,
It even preys upon its mate.)

With prey and preying both so endless,
It tends to end up rather friendless
And seldom is commended much
Except by gardeners and such.

Mary Ann Hoberman

Friday was a holiday at my university (to commemorate the guy who saved us from fiscal disaster a hundred years ago--literally a hundred years ago. I always think it's cool that he's commemorated with his own holiday, so even today's students and faculty who don't know exactly who he is continue to be grateful for the day off. Thanks, Mr. Munro!) I took Monday as a vacation day because I still have a ton to use up. My sister was in the region from Calgary, and after visiting my folks she went to see in-laws and friend in the southern part of New Brunswick and my brother and I met her at the hotel where she was staying.

It was a really nice visit, although obviously we spent a lot of it scampering around to visit people I don't know very well. Luckily, my sister has nice friends. She didn't bring a camera so I took a bunch and need to email them today. This may take a while!

The drive back was about as long as it would be from my folks' place, and there was slush/freezing drizzle (not a fan of that)/sprinkling rain most of the way. At one point I thought my rear window defogger was on the blink but it was only dirty from flying slush. I had a couple of white-knuckle moments passing trucks on hills and having to go into the less-used (and therefore not entirely clear) passing lanes, but that was more my brain than anything actually happening. (Also, it snowed on Sunday so I was awake much of the night worrying about the drive back on Monday. Catastrophic thinking, that's me.)

I got into the Halifax region in the early afternoon, paid a flying visit to Mitzi, went home and got slurped by Spike, who apparently played with the cat sitter this time but was very glad to see me.

And then I messed up setting my alarm clock but fortunately woke up in time that I wasn't late for work, I was just not quite as early as usual.

And here we are. Hope my sis had a good flight home. My brother (who travelled separately) called me just before he got to Halifax and has updated his Facebook status this morning, so he's fine. Not that I fuss or anything.

A seventy-minute video breakdown of why The Phantom Menace sucked.

Okay, it's a little ironic that he quotes "brevity is the soul of wit" in a review that goes on for seventy minutes, and the weirdo loner/serial killer character he plays as the narrator doesn't add anything to the review. But he makes a lot of good points about why the original movie was so good, and Phantom Menace and the others were so bad. (I watched part of the Clone Wars one on TV one night and I actually kept flipping back to it out of sheer horrified fascination. And every time I went back it had gotten worse.)

It's chunked up into several parts and I noticed myself fast-forwarding a fair bit. And it was always through the scenes from Phantom Menace, all of which were incoherent and dull. I get that a clip taken from a movie is presented out of context, but generally when you see an individual scene from a half-decent movie, you know what is going on in that scene, and the weird thing about these excerpts is, most of the time I didn't.

I haven't watched it all, but the first clip, in which he talks about the characters, points out that Phantom Menace has no protagonist, and contrasts viewers' memories of the original series characters' personalities with those of the Phantom Menace characters, is spot-on and really good.

And my GOD, the rambling, incoherent, flailing, what-the-fuck-does-this-have-to-do-with-anything Phantom Menace clips are a warning to any writer of anything.

Over the weekend I tried to get started on chapter two of the second Kowalski mystery. I've gotten a couple of pages in and bogged down pretty badly. It took me a day or two to decide the problem is, I'm trying to get this one underway pretty quickly, so I wanted a dead body by the end of chapter three. In the first story the first body turns up at the end of chapter four, and the chapters are pretty long. My writing group thought that was a little too long to wait, although it's possible their impressions may have been affected by the amount of time between meetings and thus chapters. I still tried to cut and tighten that story, and I wanted to get things moving faster in this one as well.

I think I've actually fallen victim to trying to move too fast out of the gate, because obviously the rest of Kowalski has to meet Vet Guy (and anyone who read the excerpt I posted a week or two ago will already have noticed, *sigh*, I've gone ahead and called him Jamie. I'll try to think of a different name--if for no other reason than two Js and at least three "ends in -ie sound" names--but it will have to be sticky, you know?)

Anyway--the point is, Kowalski has just met the vet character, and there's only so much I can condense that new relationship into offscreen narrative, which is what I have probably been trying to do. Also, because Kowalski is a band, there are several people who need to at least be identified, even though most of them won't be major characters in this story. Not to mention Jordy's girlfriend Vanessa.

Now, chapter one of this story is considerably shorter than chapter one of the first story was, which means I was really trying to do too much in too little space. I am trying not to use that realization to rationalize taking far too much space "getting to know" the characters or anything like that, but there is particular stuff that needs to happen where the reader can see it, or the story won't work.

I am also trying to write the first draft directly to word processing, which is a departure for me. I'm trying to be alert to the possibility that my fingers might get away from me and cause me to ramble on like Led Zeppelin. I've decided, for now, to identify blocks of events and write them as chapters, with the option to merge some of them later. So the "Jordy meets Vet Guy" and "Vet Guy meets Kowalski" parts may end up as chapter one, and then "Vet Guy's old band mates show up" might be chapter four or five now, but could end up being chapter two once I figure out what I need and what I don't.

Reviewing the existing first chapter, though, I will make a note to myself that I don't need any more scenes specifically to reveal Jordy's character to the reader. Which is good, since scenes which exist solely to reveal the personality of the character tend to be one of the big problems that have dragged out previous drafts of mine. That opening scene between Jordy, the vet, and the injured horse tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Jordy's personality, and probably most of the vet's as well. For that reason if no other I should probably try to keep that as the opening.

No, I don't read Ralph Waldo Emerson as a regular thing--not since my American lit course as an undergraduate, and frankly he and Thoreau were the low points of the course for me ("Less Thoreau! More Poe!" was my cry.) (I told you I have unsophisticated tastes.)

Where was I? Oh, right. Well, Emerson was correct in the quote that gives this post its title. Either that or I'm fickle, since despite my protests I find myself with a vampire novel in my purse for bus-reading purposes.

Only it's really not as inconsistent as all that, since I'm pretty sure it's not really about a vampire at all. Not even a 1950s British fighter jet, which I may have mentioned is one Vampire I unconditionally dig.

No, this book is about Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin.I used to love The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which was on TV on Thursday nights, in reruns, when I was in junior high in the very early 1980s. I must have caught an episode sometime when there was no school on Friday because as I recall it was on CTV after the late news, which would have put it on at midnight. My dad and I had a deal that I would go to bed at my normal bedtime, which was probably around ten, and he'd wake me after the news to watch the show. (Obviously, this was before widespread programmable VCRs, or possibly before we got one and figured out what to do with it. Actually, it still escapes me.)

Anyway. I know the show is available on DVD, although I've never done anything about acquiring any of them. There are some shows that should not be revisited, but my recollections of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. are that a lot of it was pretty spoofy, which I find often ages better than supposedly serious stuff from the same era. (I still like The Avengers, for instance.)

I used to own several Man From U.N.C.L.E. (man, that gets annoying to type VERY quickly!) novels, but most of them got left behind in various moves. I have what seems to be a very early one, which I think wants to be a straight-up spy novel and must have been written before the show found its funky groove. The Vampire Affair is number six, and just based on the preview page and the table of contents I think it's going to be fun. (I don't remember anything about it, so I may have found it someplace and just never read it. ??)

( Pics of the cover, preview page, and table of contents. I do love the chapter titles of the goofy books in this series. )

[I was talking to someone, probably sagitare, about the fact that Napoleon and Illya would be fantastic names for a pair of kittens. (Probably Abyssinian kittens.) If I did it in a story I would have to restrain myself from a long explanation about the names. It would be a lot more fun to just name the cats and let readers get it or not.]

Anyway. When my bus is stuck in traffic, I have something to read. And I really should start collecting the DVDs as well...

Our novels get longa and longa
Their language gets stronga and stronga
There’s much to be said
For a life that is led
In illiterate places like Bonga*.
H. G. Wells
_______________________________________

(*My apologies for the vile libel on Bonga. I'm sure it's at least as literate as Miramichi.)

There was a small boy of Quebec
Who was buried in snow to his neck
When they said, "Are you friz?"
He replied, "Yes, I is —
But we don't call this cold in Quebec!"
Rudyard Kipling

(Actually, we do call this cold in Nova Scotia. And I hope it breaks soon!)

Inspired by a post on my friends-list:

Has anyone got a suggestions for kids' books involving dogs that won't make you cry over the ending? sagitare and I have talked about this one before--it's gotten so we're afraid to read any kids' book with a dog in it, because so often the author uses the death of the dog to Teach A Valuable Life Lesson or whatever. (Dogs in stories are often treated like a proxy for the death of a friend, say. Guess what? A dog IS your friend! Having a pet die is not PRACTICE, it's the actual loss of an actual friend, okay??)

Ahem. I may be oversensitive about this because I was once bushwhacked by a TV movie of Where the Red Fern Grows. It's a beautiful story, but my parents had never heard of it either and they let me stay up late to watch the nice movie about a boy and his Redbone coonhounds (yes, I knew they were Redbones. All small children are weird.) We ALL went to bed traumatized that night. And I was at least thirty before I could even explain the plot to someone without bursting into tears.

Ahem.

So: any suggestions out there for happy-ending dog stories? I believe Shiloh, the one about the stray beagle, ends happily. I thought of Lassie Come-Home, and then remembered what happened to the gypsy's little terrier...

(It's not just for the friend's youngster, incidentally. I'll read 'em, too.)

Edited to add: Jean Little has written several dog books. I know Mine For Keeps is a safe choice, although it's about a girl (with cerebral palsy, making friends in a new town). I may have to investigate some of her others. To the library!

I've mentioned before that I've been trying to finish The Dark Reign Of Gothic Rock, and have been distracted by guitars and my efforts to write some of my own stuff. I finally just buzzed through the last couple of chapters last night. Had I been more knowledgeable about the genre and the bands, I would have gotten more out of it, but it was pretty interesting.

With that said, based on the descriptions of the most exciting and groundbreaking bands of the genre, I rather suspect I would sooner punch myself repeatedly in the face than listen to some of them. I am a person of extremely unsophisticated tastes, which I am not bragging about because it's just as obnoxious for someone to be precious about their lack of sophistication as otherwise, but it does appear to be working for me so I see no reason to change. Yeah, I know--Sonic Temple stripped the last shred of Gothic/indie cred from The Cult. It was still a pretty rockin' album. (And I'm sorry Ian Astbury has such unhappy memories about the sessions--although I can only imagine what the rest of the band was thinking.)

Regarding overstating the case, though--like many people writing about their enthusiasms, the author of the book goes a little overboard sometimes. Describing Siouxie and the Banshees' version of "Helter Skelter," Thompson remarks their version "made the [Manson] Family's creepy-crawl antics look like an end of term hippy school panto."

Right, except for the fact the Manson Family killed a couple of dozen people. Not that this is a competition or anything, but really, there is a limit to how threatening a bunch of rock musicians in makeup are when compared to actual serial killers. This is not a knock on the Banshees. Not killing people is a good thing.

Which reminds me, when reviewing the bands playing at the metal event at Gus's over the weekend, thallid reported that one was called "Hate Division." I am assuming they are not a hybrid of Joy Division and Billy Duffy's old band Theatre Of Hate, but I do wonder whether the metal band thought they were coming up with a more disturbing variant on the name Joy Division.

Which would certainly indicate the metal band had done no research on the origins of the name Joy Division. Maybe they wanted to be ironically less disturbing?

Anyway. A mostly-interesting read, and I learned some stuff. Possibly the best part was the bit where the author pointed out that, radio being what it was in the late seventies, some of the second-wave bands had read about the first-wave bands, but had never heard them, so they came up with a sound that echoed what they thought those other bands must sound like. I actually really loved that idea.

I just joined a new community: baaaaabyanimals. All entries must contain an (lj-cut protected) image of some sort of baaaaaaby animal. The community has a number of rules, all of which appear to be common sense, as well as the warning:

Violators will be fed to baaaaaaaaby lions, which is a cute but unpleasant way to die.

I mean, it's hard not to like that.

I may never get anything accomplished ever again.

As pretty well everyone knows by now, JD Salinger died yesterday. I read The Catcher In the Rye as an adult (albeit a young one, I think I was in my twenties), mostly because my dad, an English teacher, kept recommending it.

The funny thing about Dad's recommendation was this: he wasn't trying to get me to read Great Literature. He just adored Holden Caulfield. For years he carried around a newspaper column written in defense of the character. Rebel? Bad influence? No, no, my dad would argue. Mixed-up, angsty, but basically-good kid. Dad, like the columnist, would point out details like Holden trying to clean swear words off the sidewalk before little kids saw them, or giving money to a nun he thought might be collecting for... something.

As far as Dad could tell, Holden wasn't going to hurt anyone except possibly Holden. And Dad figured eventually he'd get over being sixteen and confused but continue to be a pretty good person.

This post is obviously not about JD Salinger.

One of Dad's strengths as an English teacher was probably his ability to talk about a well-drawn character like Holden Caulfield or Anne Shirley or Colin Smith (Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) as though they're real people.

Dad doesn't read mysteries and is reluctant to read anything by someone he knows anyway, so he doesn't read my stuff. But it's possible that when I write, I am unconsciously writing, not for Dad, but for an imaginary reader who's a lot like him.

You would like him.

My office mate is a self-described total Apple geek, so she was all over the launch of the iPad yesterday. It's not so much that she MUST HAVE the newest Apple device, but that she MUST KNOW about it. (My office mate, you may have deduced, is a librarian like myself.)

She kept apologizing for her excitement, and I kept reminding her that the day Flashpoint Season One came out on DVD, the only reason I wasn't at HMV when the doors opened was I figured the staff needed time to get the DVD out of the boxes and onto the shelves.

Now, I have also had a look at some stories and such about the iPad, and it strikes me that for what I personally want, it's too big to be a nicely portable reader or music player, and I cannot even imagine trying to type a significant document on a flat device, so I'd need to add a keyboard, which would reduce it's portability. So, Asus EEE (aka Junior, the Shetland Laptop), iPod Nano, and a paperback it is!

However, a lot of people are much savvier than I am, so now I'm wondering if anybody out there paid closer attention to the launch than I did and are now thinking, "That's perfect!" with regard to a particular task? If this device really is a game-changer, what game are we talking about?

Merlin, Season One, is finally available for pre-order on Amazon,com.

Not on Amazon.ca, however. So I pre-ordered the hell out of it on the .com site.

For delivery in April, but I figure I've waited this long...

I know. Silly, silly TV show. But they're young and cute with early-Beatles haircuts, and frankly, that's all I ask.

After Love, the Cult went back into the studio to work on an album that was supposed to be called Peace. They were trying to move away from the Love sound, but they weren't yet sure how.

Witness:

( Love Removal Machine, 1986 version. )

So they scrapped those sessions and tried again with Rick Rubin producing, resulting in the album Electric.

( Love Removal Machine, 1987 version. )

[1] What a difference a producer makes.

[2] I always think of stuff like this as different drafts of a song. So yeah, I can relate almost anything to writing.

[3] Ian Astbury sounds pretty good live in these videos (he can be very erratic live) but I understand he did not draw a sober breath during the recording of and tour for Electric. So I'm not sure this whole process was an unmixed blessing.

Sorry, you know how I get.

( Previously on Lost... )

That explains everything. Except why the girls want to make out with these two guys.

Okay, aside from the fact I would need a lot of patience and would have to be much more invested than I probably am.

The major problem with my trying to watch anything on TV, or read anything (I still haven't read The Dark Reign Of Gothic Rock from cover to cover, although I admit I have paged through it to find the bits about The Cult)--

Sorry. The problem I've been having lately is, I sit down and start to read, or make notes, or watch TV, and then I start thinking, "I should be practicing, shouldn't I?" And then I do, although that makes it hard to concentrate on anything else and of course reading is right out.

I'm not complaining, mind you. Last night during Republic Of Doyle and a rerun of Flashpoint ("Last Dance," which I had not seen before and which naturally made me weep) I compromised by trying to figure out how to make the fingerpicking pattern for "Blowin' In the Wind" work for me. I got to the point where we were at least getting to the next chord on what felt like the proper beat. I might also try picking the strings in that same pattern and seeing if it sounds right--at the moment anything I do with my fingers, especially with Blue, is almost inaudible. Which, considering how awkward I am, is not necessarily a bad thing.

I certainly can't strum and watch TV at the same time, not because I get overly confused, just because I can't hear anything. You know how they say a solid-top guitar will develop a bigger sound as it's played? Well, I've had Blue for about ten months and I can't believe how much louder she is now, not to mention how long a note will ring. I realize this is a pure newbie "eureka" moment. It's still fun to have them.

Paul the parlour is already loud as hell, so I can't wait to hear what he's going to sound like in a year's time. Also, it's kind of cool to feel the instrument vibrate.

Anyway--all this is a major barrier to trying to follow episode after episode of a really complex show. I think I can live with that, however.

Okay--so this is the final season of Lost, right? Which means that it will soon be safe for me to think about watching it on DVD.

Seriously--I was initially looking forward to the show, but the first episode was so confusing I thought, "If I miss a single episode of this show I will simply never catch up." So I left it, thinking I might check it out on DVD some day.

Which I might, or maybe not (I'm in no hurry and I'm not hinting to anyone to lend me their DVDs!) but for some reason I decided if I did I would wait until the final season was over, just so I didn't have to worry about waiting a long time for a conclusion and then getting all confused in the meantime.

Will probably be confused anyway, which I have to consider before I decide anything.

However--I sure hope people who have been watching all along end up knowing what happened!