Apologies if my post is a little scattered today. Philadelphia went from sunny and 60 all week to chill and rainy today, and wild changes in weather always give me a migraine. I think it’s something to do with pressure; I’d ask a doctor about it if I could afford to see a doctor. So, maybe one day soon, right! Yay.
Anyway: the topic of today’s discussion will be the provenance of the Literature of the Fantastic.
Hello, everyone! I am beginning a new project, now. I am going to write a play over the next…err…two months or so, about this person, Aphra Behn:
The first woman in history to make her living as a playwright!
(Or, “SHUT UP, OLD MAN, I’ll use a damn adverb if I want!”)
After watching the premiere of “Justified” on FX* – spoiler alert, it was pretty badass and I recommend you catch it one of the 20 other times it will air in the next week – I remembered to track down and link to an article Elmore Leonard wrote a while back, his “10 Rules for Writing.”
I love Elmore Leonard. Read a Leonard book, and you know that at the least you’ll be amused, and at the most you’ll probably have a new favorite book to add to your list. There’s something about everything he writes that immediately assures the reader, “Don’t worry – I know exactly what I’m doing.” So, if the man wants to lay down some basic ground rules, chances are they’re going to be practical and useful.
And indeed they are. Except for two that just drive me nuts, not least of which because I’m a little guilty of them myself.
As a concept, Lady Gaga is like something out of a William Gibson novel. A story-idea you might spot in a near-future sci-fi novel or movie that, if it were just a little more down-to-earth, you could totally see existing in the real world. Like, if you cartoonized Madonna, added a little more caffeine and Technicolor, and made the music just a little more generically infectious, you’d have something close to a fictional concept like Lady Gaga.
Even the name is so ridiculous and outsized. It’s something that could only be concocted by a writer unconcerned with verisimilitude. It is a perfect combination of royalty and gibberish – a statement so on the nose that you’d never expect to find it outside of fiction.
(Does anybody remember Phantom 2040? The Peter Chung-designed update of the old pulp hero, where the electro-graphics-spewing pop-star of the future was called, simply, Vainglorious? This is the only more obvious thing I can think of.)
And yet Lady Gaga – exactly as I have described her above – exists, in our present-day pop-culture landscape.
Doesn’t the 21st century just blow your damn mind some days? Read more »
*sigh*
Okay, let me get this part out of the way first. “Jabberwocky” is the title of a poem about a Jabberwock. The “-y” suffix is a way of indicating, “Jabberwock[being about it]“, see?
Now, I don’t want you to think that the problems that I had with this movie are little nitpicky things like that, because it’s not the case. Rather, something like that is symptomatic of what I perceive as being the real problem with Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland — namely, did you even read these books at all, Tim Burton? Or did you just appropriate whatever was nearby and convenient to make an ode to your own aesthetic?
After this io9 article about a woman that sold two souls for nearly $2000, I made a fairly lengthy comment about what, precisely, you might do with the captured spiritual essences of your two dead neighbors. A few people were surprised that I had that much to say on the subject! Peculiar, I think. But, anyway, it got me thinking, and because I’m up late and sick with fever, I’ve decided to treat you all to a discourse on the nature of souls.
I thought all of this was common knowledge, but maybe it’s not, so here we go.
Has denied my graduate application YET AGAIN. This time, they didn’t even e-mail me. They sent me an e-mail demanding that I log into their online application system so that I could find out what the decision was.
They could have e-mailed me, obviously; they sent me an e-mail letting me know they’d made a decision.
I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.
(Written at midnight)
I am having what has turned into a very strange day.
It started normally enough – actually, no. It started quite well, when I learned that my bonus this year would be much higher than I had assumed. High enough that I decided I could probably afford a Big Mac meal at McDonalds.
That’s about where it started, I think.
I sat, eating my Big Mac and reading M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman. As I read the line, “His flesh gave an involuntary shiver,” the overhead radio piped in “You’re the One that I Want” from the Grease soundtrack – “I got chills, all down my body.”
Ah. Strange. But, that kind of thing happens, and reading too much into coincidence is a fool’s game. Then, as I packed my things to return to the office, I heard the ching-ching-ching that one might reasonably assume were spurs, except…in what universe does one hear spurs at a McDonalds?
I looked around, and sure enough, a grizzled-looking man in a duster and an odd hat strolled into the restaurant. (Okay, “restaurant.”) “Huh. Guy thinks he’s a cowboy,” I grinned to myself, and headed out to the parking lot.
When I started the car, I looked out and saw this. This, being the EXACT reason I bring my camera with me at all times: Read more »
I know that I’ve said before that I don’t like it when we get really involved in politics here at TQP, because I’m displeased with the number of crazies that appear from the woodwork. This is true; I have trepidation even as I’m writing this. However, I’ve been puzzling over something for a while, and I want to try and address it using the secret weapon of the Writer: Language (the thing that means stuff).
Is health insurance a fundamental right?
