This Was Originally Something Else

We're on our fourth straight day of rain.  The ground can't take any more water, it pools above the grass line forming shallow pools Jack has made his mission to splash about in.  It's the kind of gray, cold weather that only comes in early Spring, leaving you feeling tired and cold, not necessarily in a way that's bad, if that makes sense.

In the past month I've started and stopped three different posts.  This one was originally titled "Unconvinced" and was an attempt to write through my feelings about religion.  Specifically what I believe, and what I want to pass down to my son.  For the past few years I've been - I can't find the correct word, so let's use "distressed" - over my inability to explicitly state my faith.  I've been reading books tackling various viewpoints (the latest of which is Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great) and if I've discovered anything, it's that as much as I agree about the danger, wickedness and ignorance that permeates much of organized religion, I can't wholly commit to an Atheist viewpoint, and from what I've read Atheists can spit just as much bile as hate as anyone.

I've tried before to work through my beliefs (here and here), but I'm always hesitant; cognizant of the danger I find in others: that they want to influence or convince me that their belief is the right one.  My hackles immediately rise whenever I find myself in a conversation where I can sense I'm trying to be converted - whether it's concerning a political view or something as mundane and trite as the merits (or lack thereof) of TRANSFORMERS 2.  It's that thinking, that one-way thinking leads to so many of the issues we see: not just in religion, but in politics and every other aspect of our lives.  I generally subscribe to the old Dutch proverb "live and let live" sprinkled with some of the tenets of Zen Buddhism: focus on compassion, that sort of thing which sounds fine, but I don't know if I follow these things because, from an Atheist perspective it makes sense, as in "do nice things because in the end other people will do nice things and if we all do nice things it will generally be, well, nice" or because those are the values that were installed in me both by my parents and my Catholic upbringing.  It's not something I think I can just decide one way or the other, as in" I hereby do consciously state that I act the way I do because of ________." 

Can you simply decide to be something else?  I don't know, and I think if I can answer that question I might be able to effect some real lasting change in my life, rather than the start/stop cycle I'm currently in.

This Sunday is Easter, and I'm planning to celebrate with my family.  I'd like to think that there's no hypocrisy in celebrating something I don't believe actually happened, and that it's enough to share the day with family, hunt for eggs, eat chocolate and let my son have a ball.  But I know that sooner or later I'll have to explain why we celebrate the days we do, and right now I don't know what I'm going to say.

Funny. Sad. But Mainly Funny. Oh, and True.

Marketing's a funny thing.  See enough movies, particularly movie trailers, and you'll start to see patterns.  Familiar beats to the editing, the music....even the fonts.  The concept of "Oscar Bait" has been around as long as I can remember, but I've never seen it skewered with such biting glee as the wonderful trailer parody below.  I came across this from the always great Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, who in turn found it from the consistently brilliant Scanners: 

On another note, I know I've been lax updating here lately.  That's something I mean to change as soon as I get some work/life stuff out of the way.  Enjoy the clip, and have a great weekend.

Horns | Joe Hill

Have you ever read a book and after the first 15 pages say to yourself, "Well, he's pretty much done everything I can think you can do with this idea. What's he gonna do now?" and then you read and read and you're not sure if anything else is really going on but you're enjoying anyway?

That's Horns in a nutshell. For me, anyway.

I really enjoyed Joe Hill's first novel, a twisted slice of New England horror called Heart-Shaped Box (reviewed here, as a matter of fact) that may have tread the familiar territory of his famous father's past, but did so in a fresh and current voice that managed to trump Dad's last of couple of books. So when Horns was released in a flurry of publicity (the movie rights sold for a bundle before the book was finished, let alone released) I dove in, excited by the simple high concept: one morning after a vicious drunk Ig Perrish wakes up to find he has grown a pair of horns on his head.

So right there I'm in. When Ig talks to people, they're compelled to tell him their darkest thoughts and desires, desires he finds he's able to "push" just a tiny bit, with a expectant thrumming pleasure that travels up and down his horns. To say more spoils the book - as I said, within the first 20-30 pages you know the basic setup, the conflict, and even the adversary. The rest of Horns deals with Ig's childhood, his relationship with Merrin, brutally murdered the year before the horns appear, and how Ig slowly starts to change as he deals with the knowledge of how Merrin died, by whose hands, and what he's going to do about it.

There's some great ideas - Ig is our hero, but how do you root for someone who's slowly turning into the Devil? - and the nature of evil, of the concept of God, and our quests to be good, even when we know we won't. Things tend to wander a bit, and I think a little tightening would have helped Horns be a bullet instead of some fine quality buckshot, but it's a solid second effort, and proof that Joe Hill's got a lot of skill around words.

Here's to the next one: may it burrow under our skin sooner rather than later.

The City, By Way of Spider

"...one of those little pauses in the conversation of the City, then; a sudden unexpected quiet as everyone stopped to take a breath, and I get one of those little heart-leaps as a girl moves my way, I fall in love for ten seconds the way you do when you see one of those faces, those eyes..."

- Spider Jerusalem, via Warren Ellis (TRANSMETROPOLITAN)

The rule is, Saturday mornings my wife wakes up with Boy.  When I get up, about an hour later, I make some loud stamps on the floor indicating my return to the land of the Living, and a few minutes later my wife appears with a steaming cup of coffee, which I get to sip at my leisure for another 45 minutes or so before heading downstairs.  Right now it's that time, and I'm here reading the sixth volume of Transmetropolitan, marvelling at the way Ellis can put words together.  But it's never enough time, and I know I have to put on the "Dad" face and go downstairs to join the maddening early morning sounds of chaos and disorder.

Every Saturday morning, I offer a silent prayer to suspend time.

"...Held breath for a moment of eye contact that burns into memory - a face I could look at for the rest of my life - and then she's walked by, the City resumes, fade up chatter and music - "

- Spider Jerusalem, unable to suspend time any longer than I can

London Macabre Review @ Un:Bound

I had my first chance to read a book that not only isn't published yet, it isn't even bought yet.  But that's one of the perks of being a reviewer over at Un:Bound, so head on over and see what I thought about Steven Savile's London Macabre, the start of a Victorian horror/pulp adventure series.

Excerpt below:

...this book is fresh. So fresh it was almost dripping wet from birth (ewww) when I downloaded the file and loaded it up on my nook. It hasn't been published yet, and truth be told I'd be very surprised if London Macabre isn't at least tweaked and given a another slap of finish before it sees the light of day. But I have to admit, that was a large part of the excitement of reading it, feeling the passion of ideas still wriggling around on the page, the exuberance that comes with throwing something down on paper and watching it come to life, working with and against the other words it comes into contact with. The gift of creation, there before your eyes in a way that reading something picked off the shelf in the local super-store just can't imitate.

Full review over at Un:Bound