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Holiday o' the day: Static Electricity Day
Friday, 9 January 2015 06:53 pmHonestly, I'm not sure if people are supposed to celebrate this, or if this is the day we all sigh and commiserate over prickly winter hair and doorknob shocks.
Holiday o' the day: ELVISDAY
Thursday, 8 January 2015 03:45 pmJanuary is full of kings - Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and the birthday of the King, Elvis Presley.
(And, of course, the Goblin King, but I try to celebrate David Bowie every day.)
(And, of course, the Goblin King, but I try to celebrate David Bowie every day.)
Holiday o' the day - er, month: hot tea and soup!
Tuesday, 6 January 2015 04:40 amMERRY CHRISTMAS! In Armenia, at least.
Here in the West, it's Epiphany/Twelfth Night/Three Kings Day, celebrating the day the three wise men visited the newborn Jesus, the official final night of Christmas celebrations, the night on which some poor sod got a drumline as a present, and the start of Carnival.
Or as most people call it, "What?" The times, oh, how they change.
So I'll embrace a couple of holidays that are closer to home for me: the coldest month of the year is also - what a coincidence! - National Hot Tea Month and National Soup Month.
Here in the West, it's Epiphany/Twelfth Night/Three Kings Day, celebrating the day the three wise men visited the newborn Jesus, the official final night of Christmas celebrations, the night on which some poor sod got a drumline as a present, and the start of Carnival.
Or as most people call it, "What?" The times, oh, how they change.
So I'll embrace a couple of holidays that are closer to home for me: the coldest month of the year is also - what a coincidence! - National Hot Tea Month and National Soup Month.
Holiday o' the day: Grimmsday
Sunday, 4 January 2015 12:55 pmHappy 230th birthday to Jakob Grimm, an influential linguist better known for his tales of fantasy.
Hang on, why does that sound familiar? Oh, right, yesterday's birthday boy.
Attention aspiring fantasy writers: be born in early January.
Hang on, why does that sound familiar? Oh, right, yesterday's birthday boy.
Attention aspiring fantasy writers: be born in early January.
Holiday o' the day: New Year's Day
Thursday, 1 January 2015 02:35 pmMy family always started the new year off with a Southern tradition by way of Africa - a meal of black-eyed peas and greens (cabbage, in our house), symbolizing wealth in the year ahead. It was a fartstravaganza, guaranteed to chase home any lingering relatives.
Alas, this year I'm down with the flu, which is not conducive to cooking, or focusing, or staying awake.* Maybe I can fudge it, and count six days after the Greek Orthodox Christmas...
* Or posting publicly: this post has been post-dated for quality assurance purposes.
Alas, this year I'm down with the flu, which is not conducive to cooking, or focusing, or staying awake.* Maybe I can fudge it, and count six days after the Greek Orthodox Christmas...
* Or posting publicly: this post has been post-dated for quality assurance purposes.
They're fluent in Google Translate
Thursday, 16 May 2013 07:10 pmThe old joke is that Livejournal users hate Livejournal.
Most of it isn't really a Livejournal thing, but an Internet thing: once a website reaches a certain size, long-time users begin to reject all change to it. Not just the big stupid changes to functionality that break the way they've always used the site, either--even small, trivial changes get blown out of proportion. Every foaming-mad comment is really the user saying, "This is to please those new people, isn't it? What about me? I was here first!" It's not so much a rejection of change as it is a rejection of that loss of insider status.
But anyway.
What about this phenomenon at LJ makes it seem so silly?
How about a comment thread where an admin essentially reassures a Russian-speaking user that they can ask questions in their native tongue and be understood, and the English-speaking users wig out and accuse the admin of attacking the user for not asking questions in Russian?
Most of it isn't really a Livejournal thing, but an Internet thing: once a website reaches a certain size, long-time users begin to reject all change to it. Not just the big stupid changes to functionality that break the way they've always used the site, either--even small, trivial changes get blown out of proportion. Every foaming-mad comment is really the user saying, "This is to please those new people, isn't it? What about me? I was here first!" It's not so much a rejection of change as it is a rejection of that loss of insider status.
But anyway.
What about this phenomenon at LJ makes it seem so silly?
How about a comment thread where an admin essentially reassures a Russian-speaking user that they can ask questions in their native tongue and be understood, and the English-speaking users wig out and accuse the admin of attacking the user for not asking questions in Russian?
[Tea Review] Plum Good for good plumbing
Saturday, 26 January 2013 06:36 amIs there anything more fun than being slammed with a cold/sinus infection and still having work to do? Besides being dangled from a tree like a piñata full of phlegm and hit with sticks by small children, that is. Being sick sends me back to my comfort teas, one of which is Eastern Shore Tea Company's Plum Good, which can be ordered from Baltimore Coffee & Tea Company.
In the Bag:
This tea also sends me back to that problem of unlisted ingredients. The site describes Plum Good as, "Deep, rich, satisfying flavor, highlighted with soft cinnamon, for an intriguing aroma. Flavored black tea. Contains caffeine. Loose tea in 1 lb. (454 g.) bag." It mentions nothing of cloves, which are plain to see, or finely red shredded petals that a recent Steepster review called hibiscus. [ETA: the company confirmed the ingredients by email as black tea, soft cinnamon, clove, hibiscus and plum extract.] Both are ingredients that make people wary--hibiscus is my mortal enemy, for example--and neither is present here in significant amounts, so I can see leaving them out of the tea's sales blurb. Omitting mention of them entirely is a different story.
(Curiously enough, I knew there were cloves in it when I went to order, and was surprised that they weren't listed. It makes me wonder if the 3oz 'ribbon bags' I used to buy locally do/did have a full ingredient list.)
When I open the bag, the scent is a burst of bubblegum. Bubblegum flavor itself is a blend of wintergreen, vanilla and cinnamon (or cassia), so I wouldn't be surprised by a bit of vanilla in the ingredients/flavoring, too, though it may just be the fruity plum and cinnamon scent playing off my mental scent pre-sets.
The Steepening:
For the first cup, a teaspoon (eyeballed) in a mug with a mesh basket infuser, boiling water straight from the kettle, steeped about 2 minutes, and topped with a small dollop of mixed local and orange blossom honey for my sore throat. (Because I hate having 2 tall jars each with a half-inch of honey left, when I can have one smaller jar with plenty. Also, local honey is clover-heavy, and clover honey is an affront to all that is good and teaful.) For the second cup, the tea resteeped, no honey and untimed because I'm easily distracted. The scent is warm and fruity, all cinnamon and plum, as advertised.
The Verdict:
Not as deep and rich as you'd expect from the description, nor as complex or spicy as you might expect with cinnamon and cloves in the mix, but very satisfying nonetheless--not unlike a tea-incarnation of the Doors' "The End" perhaps. (Sorry, Boomers.) Sure, it's got a little bass and depth, and isn't the high and bright one-note tea many fruit blends are. Its spicy side is nicely warm and mellow and supports that fruity depth like a wonderbra or a really mixed metaphor, where many spicy blends are just heat, or just spice for the sake of being spicy. It plays well with both milk and sweeteners, but has a natural sweetness if you want to forgo the extras.
But it isn't all that deep or complicated, and that's a good thing, because sometimes you just want the tea equivalent of a warm blanket. A warm, bubblegum-scented, 10-minute groovin' Space Coyote blanket. Okay, maybe that last bit's the decongestant talking.
If the red petals are hibiscus, I'm impressed that I don't taste it. I'm used to companies overusing it as filler, and letting it overwhelm the taste of their blends, but if it's hibiscus, it seems to be only accentuating the fruitiness of the plum in this blend. For those suspicious of cloves, they're not a supervillain here either: SeriousEats suggests that clove boosts fruity flavors, adds a little heat and plays well with cinnamon, and it just seems to be doing just that and only that. And adding a little Christmas vibe, but I don't think it can help that.
It's the perfect cup for waking up from an 11-hour nap and considering going back to bed.
In the Bag:
This tea also sends me back to that problem of unlisted ingredients. The site describes Plum Good as, "Deep, rich, satisfying flavor, highlighted with soft cinnamon, for an intriguing aroma. Flavored black tea. Contains caffeine. Loose tea in 1 lb. (454 g.) bag." It mentions nothing of cloves, which are plain to see, or finely red shredded petals that a recent Steepster review called hibiscus. [ETA: the company confirmed the ingredients by email as black tea, soft cinnamon, clove, hibiscus and plum extract.] Both are ingredients that make people wary--hibiscus is my mortal enemy, for example--and neither is present here in significant amounts, so I can see leaving them out of the tea's sales blurb. Omitting mention of them entirely is a different story.
(Curiously enough, I knew there were cloves in it when I went to order, and was surprised that they weren't listed. It makes me wonder if the 3oz 'ribbon bags' I used to buy locally do/did have a full ingredient list.)
When I open the bag, the scent is a burst of bubblegum. Bubblegum flavor itself is a blend of wintergreen, vanilla and cinnamon (or cassia), so I wouldn't be surprised by a bit of vanilla in the ingredients/flavoring, too, though it may just be the fruity plum and cinnamon scent playing off my mental scent pre-sets.
The Steepening:
For the first cup, a teaspoon (eyeballed) in a mug with a mesh basket infuser, boiling water straight from the kettle, steeped about 2 minutes, and topped with a small dollop of mixed local and orange blossom honey for my sore throat. (Because I hate having 2 tall jars each with a half-inch of honey left, when I can have one smaller jar with plenty. Also, local honey is clover-heavy, and clover honey is an affront to all that is good and teaful.) For the second cup, the tea resteeped, no honey and untimed because I'm easily distracted. The scent is warm and fruity, all cinnamon and plum, as advertised.
The Verdict:
Not as deep and rich as you'd expect from the description, nor as complex or spicy as you might expect with cinnamon and cloves in the mix, but very satisfying nonetheless--not unlike a tea-incarnation of the Doors' "The End" perhaps. (Sorry, Boomers.) Sure, it's got a little bass and depth, and isn't the high and bright one-note tea many fruit blends are. Its spicy side is nicely warm and mellow and supports that fruity depth like a wonderbra or a really mixed metaphor, where many spicy blends are just heat, or just spice for the sake of being spicy. It plays well with both milk and sweeteners, but has a natural sweetness if you want to forgo the extras.
But it isn't all that deep or complicated, and that's a good thing, because sometimes you just want the tea equivalent of a warm blanket. A warm, bubblegum-scented, 10-minute groovin' Space Coyote blanket. Okay, maybe that last bit's the decongestant talking.
If the red petals are hibiscus, I'm impressed that I don't taste it. I'm used to companies overusing it as filler, and letting it overwhelm the taste of their blends, but if it's hibiscus, it seems to be only accentuating the fruitiness of the plum in this blend. For those suspicious of cloves, they're not a supervillain here either: SeriousEats suggests that clove boosts fruity flavors, adds a little heat and plays well with cinnamon, and it just seems to be doing just that and only that. And adding a little Christmas vibe, but I don't think it can help that.
It's the perfect cup for waking up from an 11-hour nap and considering going back to bed.
[Tea Review] Battle of the blackcurrants
Tuesday, 18 December 2012 12:20 pmEarlier this year, I imposed a tea moratorium: not another box, pouch, brick or bag would I buy until my drinking was under control. Until my stash no longer took up its own kitchen cabinet. Until I no longer had more varieties than the grocery store. Until I could look at my supply and reasonably say, "Uh-oh, better buy more tea before I run out."
It wasn't easy. I ran out of my favorite blends one by one. I used up my runners-up. I forced myself to pitch the try-it-outs that didn't work out. But finally, in November, my stash was down to one basket on the kitchen counter. Sure, it was holding about a pound of tea, but seven or eight varieties, and most of those green, andshut up, I don't have a problem, you have a problem! with cold weather coming, I decided some black teas were in order.
Long story short: I've got new sippage, so you get new tea reviews!
One of my new regular vendors is the English Tea Store, purveyors of bulk tea and snackage from the UK. One of the teas I ordered was 4 oz of blackcurrant 'naturally flavored' loose leaf black tea, to see how it stacked up to my custom currant-y blend from Adagio Teas. I love the custom blend, but Adagio botched it twice in a row and their customer service leaves one wishing for the care and attention of, say, Charter or AT&T.
I also regularly order from Baltimore Coffee & Tea Company, because they own the Eastern Shore Tea Company, seller of loose leaf tea in white paper pouches with nifty labels and reusable muslin bags. I don't remember where Eastern Shore and I first met, but after a long dry spell, they turned up again sporadically in the shop at the Missouri Botanical Garden, tucked behind items on random shelves likethey'd been stocked by someone who's never worked proper retail before little surprises. Though it's been a few years since I had their blackcurrant tea, named Black Raven in honor of Poe, I purchased a pound because I remembered it fondly.
In the Bag:
- The English Tea Store's blackcurrant contains blue and yellow petals--cornflower and sunflower, probably, since they're popular fillers these days. (I guess hibiscus has been retired.) The petals aren't in the sample photo and the ingredients only list black tea and 'natural flavor' (i.e. flavoring sprayed on the tea leaves), so either the site is outdated or you only get uncut tea in larger amounts.
The bag smells like perfume with a whiff of berry behind it, and the reviewers describe it as 'smooth and fruity', much like you'd expect from people who've never tasted blackcurrant-flavored anything before. Put the two together and it doesn't bode well.
- Eastern Shore Tea Co.'s blackcurrant is just flavor-spritzed tea with no petals or mystery bits, so it's already a step ahead. It smells like malty black tea and Ribena. Taste buds puckered, I had a brief flashback and wondered what
Mark's up to these days. Good signs!
The Steepening:
Plain cold tap water boiled in the electric kettle and a little hot tap water in the pots to swish off any dust from the tea--a general hazard of dried plant matter rubbing against itself in packaging. Each tea steeped long enough for me to put on coffee for the non-tea drinkers, and each poured mug was sniffed and sipped hot before cream and sugar, for thorough comparisons.
- The English Tea Store's blackcurrant is ridiculously floral, almost like a berry chamomile, with a strange oily mouthfeel. Maybe the base tea is too bright--it's all perfume and no fruit, especially as it cools down. The effect is less a nice blackcurrant tea than it is sipping regular tea out of your great-grandmother's powdered cleavage.
- Eastern Shore's blackcurrant is already gone. I finished the cup before I could write anything down. Dark, malty and tart and perfect for cold mornings and long novels.
The Verdict:
Oh, Black Raven, I'll never let you go again.
Meanwhile, a quick trip to Google [turned up a now-defunct link that] confirms that it's not me: the English Tea Store's blackcurrant tea is all wrong. Not just cornflower and sunflower petals, but blackberry (not blackcurrant!) leaves, which are the special ingredient that gives Celestial Seasoning teas its gritty "How do you fuck up herbal?" astringency, and mallow flowers, which Google proclaims floral and earthy, and which is on the list of ragweed relatives (along with chamomile) for allergy sufferers to avoid--which explains why I had to suck down ibuprofen and sinus meds after breakfast.
And, again, none of these are listed as ingredients on the packaging or the website, but now I've got an inkling why their Earl Grey left me sick as a dog...
Update: The now-defunct link was to a blogger who had requested a full list of ingredients for the tea. The blog's MIA, but the English Tea Store itself now lists ingredients, so that's good.
It wasn't easy. I ran out of my favorite blends one by one. I used up my runners-up. I forced myself to pitch the try-it-outs that didn't work out. But finally, in November, my stash was down to one basket on the kitchen counter. Sure, it was holding about a pound of tea, but seven or eight varieties, and most of those green, and
Long story short: I've got new sippage, so you get new tea reviews!
One of my new regular vendors is the English Tea Store, purveyors of bulk tea and snackage from the UK. One of the teas I ordered was 4 oz of blackcurrant 'naturally flavored' loose leaf black tea, to see how it stacked up to my custom currant-y blend from Adagio Teas. I love the custom blend, but Adagio botched it twice in a row and their customer service leaves one wishing for the care and attention of, say, Charter or AT&T.
I also regularly order from Baltimore Coffee & Tea Company, because they own the Eastern Shore Tea Company, seller of loose leaf tea in white paper pouches with nifty labels and reusable muslin bags. I don't remember where Eastern Shore and I first met, but after a long dry spell, they turned up again sporadically in the shop at the Missouri Botanical Garden, tucked behind items on random shelves like
In the Bag:
- The English Tea Store's blackcurrant contains blue and yellow petals--cornflower and sunflower, probably, since they're popular fillers these days. (I guess hibiscus has been retired.) The petals aren't in the sample photo and the ingredients only list black tea and 'natural flavor' (i.e. flavoring sprayed on the tea leaves), so either the site is outdated or you only get uncut tea in larger amounts.
The bag smells like perfume with a whiff of berry behind it, and the reviewers describe it as 'smooth and fruity', much like you'd expect from people who've never tasted blackcurrant-flavored anything before. Put the two together and it doesn't bode well.
- Eastern Shore Tea Co.'s blackcurrant is just flavor-spritzed tea with no petals or mystery bits, so it's already a step ahead. It smells like malty black tea and Ribena. Taste buds puckered, I had a brief flashback and wondered what
Mark's up to these days. Good signs!The Steepening:
Plain cold tap water boiled in the electric kettle and a little hot tap water in the pots to swish off any dust from the tea--a general hazard of dried plant matter rubbing against itself in packaging. Each tea steeped long enough for me to put on coffee for the non-tea drinkers, and each poured mug was sniffed and sipped hot before cream and sugar, for thorough comparisons.
- The English Tea Store's blackcurrant is ridiculously floral, almost like a berry chamomile, with a strange oily mouthfeel. Maybe the base tea is too bright--it's all perfume and no fruit, especially as it cools down. The effect is less a nice blackcurrant tea than it is sipping regular tea out of your great-grandmother's powdered cleavage.
- Eastern Shore's blackcurrant is already gone. I finished the cup before I could write anything down. Dark, malty and tart and perfect for cold mornings and long novels.
The Verdict:
Oh, Black Raven, I'll never let you go again.
Meanwhile, a quick trip to Google [turned up a now-defunct link that] confirms that it's not me: the English Tea Store's blackcurrant tea is all wrong. Not just cornflower and sunflower petals, but blackberry (not blackcurrant!) leaves, which are the special ingredient that gives Celestial Seasoning teas its gritty "How do you fuck up herbal?" astringency, and mallow flowers, which Google proclaims floral and earthy, and which is on the list of ragweed relatives (along with chamomile) for allergy sufferers to avoid--which explains why I had to suck down ibuprofen and sinus meds after breakfast.
And, again, none of these are listed as ingredients on the packaging or the website, but now I've got an inkling why their Earl Grey left me sick as a dog...
Update: The now-defunct link was to a blogger who had requested a full list of ingredients for the tea. The blog's MIA, but the English Tea Store itself now lists ingredients, so that's good.
In which I inflict my distaste for 'genres' on the world, again.
Saturday, 15 December 2012 12:17 pmFirst I flood you with dream entries, then my social ineptness, and now nitpickity book talk. I bet this isn't the exciting chronicle of chronic excitement you thought it would be.
For those who believe there's nothing as boring as hearing someone else's dreams, let me reassure you that I don't usually remember and record them this often, and this recent burst of dream entries probably won't last. For those uninterested in my social ineptness, you and my mother both. For those who don't care what I'm reading, take solace in the fact that I at least cut the spoilers. Unless you're reading by RSS, which I hear ignores cuts, in which case...oops?
Now, onto the nitpickity book talk!
I've made no secret of the fact that I'm twitchy about genres. There are genres for settings (westerns), genres for audience (young adult), genres about types of relationships (romance), genres that include unreal elements (fantasy), genres that include unreal elements that could be real maybe (science fiction), genres about types of relationships that include unreal elements (paranormal romance, though arguably chick lit would fit here too), genres within genres, genres overlapping genres, an entire wide swath of fiction dismissively dubbed 'genre'. It's chaos!
It irks me.
I look upon my shelves of science fiction/fantasy and sigh with relief at the convenient compromise that is 'speculative fiction'. I glance at the horror shelves and wince at the idea of a genre based not on the book, but on how the reader reacts to the book. I organize my nonfiction shelves by the Dewey Decimal System because it makes sense.
So I was happy to stumble on The King of Elfland's Second Cousin's entry "Ephemeral Horror and the Diffusion of Genre Markers" even if it wasn't about ephemeral horror, as I thought, but about horror as an ephemeral genre, which is something of an ephemeral horror. This will start making sense any minute now, I promise.
The following points made my inner M&M sorter very happy:
#1. "[W]e categorize stories based on the conventions they employ and the devices that show up within their texts. Spaceships, time travel, aliens? Let’s call it science fiction. Magic and knights? Let’s go with fantasy. [...] These devices, the objects and tropes of most genres, can easily be slapped on a cover to communicate the story’s category to booksellers and readers."
Sometimes, in my flailing about order and chaos and systems for big cohesive pictures, I lose sight of the tiny common sense trees--namely, that 'genre' is just a fancy French word for 'kind', and is not, never was, and never will be some high and mighty literary infrastructure. It's just a big mental box into which vaguely similar stories are tossed so that the stuff you like is near the other stuff you like, so you can find more stuff you like.
#2. "Horror lacks the constraints that more solidified genre conventions impose. We can write a horror story – like Shirley Jackson’s classic 'Flower Garden' – without a single element of the supernatural or the inexplicable. [...] This freedom means that – in order to be effective – horror must sneak past the reader’s natural defenses, must directly speak to the reader’s perceptions, values, and fears. This is the kind of deep-seated, emotional and perceptual communication that the literary fiction genre has traditionally claimed for itself. But where literary fiction uses such emotional and philosophical intimacy to explore comfortably distanced morality, horror uses a highly sensitized point-of-view to get as close to the nerve as possible, to map even the most painful experiences from the inside."
It's a fantastic parallel: like a good horror story, the horror genre is about wandering into the dark and unfamiliar room to check out that bump you just heard.
I've argued the merits of horror with haters before, and pointed out that like fancy pants literary fiction, good horror says something about the viewer and society (and not just "We watch movies with naked co-eds taking a hatchet to the face"). To play on our fears, horror has to be able to get into our heads and push the buttons it finds there.
#3. No quote here, because it's a bit too spread out, but the point is brilliant: there are (of course) horror tropes, except when we become too used to them, they stop being horror tropes.
When horror begins relying on tropes to define it, those tropes cease to be scary, and in a fundamental way, the works that feature them stop being horror. Once the tropes are no longer new and unsettling--once we know them by heart--we begin to redefine and re-imagine them. We turn vampires into moody romantic leads, disfigured undead serial killers into comedians, and the lonely werewolf from an alienated loner into a member of a highly organized underground society of walking AIDS metaphors.
It won't make me change how I organize my reviews, but it does have me rethinking the horror movies of my youth.
For those who believe there's nothing as boring as hearing someone else's dreams, let me reassure you that I don't usually remember and record them this often, and this recent burst of dream entries probably won't last. For those uninterested in my social ineptness, you and my mother both. For those who don't care what I'm reading, take solace in the fact that I at least cut the spoilers. Unless you're reading by RSS, which I hear ignores cuts, in which case...oops?
Now, onto the nitpickity book talk!
I've made no secret of the fact that I'm twitchy about genres. There are genres for settings (westerns), genres for audience (young adult), genres about types of relationships (romance), genres that include unreal elements (fantasy), genres that include unreal elements that could be real maybe (science fiction), genres about types of relationships that include unreal elements (paranormal romance, though arguably chick lit would fit here too), genres within genres, genres overlapping genres, an entire wide swath of fiction dismissively dubbed 'genre'. It's chaos!
It irks me.
I look upon my shelves of science fiction/fantasy and sigh with relief at the convenient compromise that is 'speculative fiction'. I glance at the horror shelves and wince at the idea of a genre based not on the book, but on how the reader reacts to the book. I organize my nonfiction shelves by the Dewey Decimal System because it makes sense.
So I was happy to stumble on The King of Elfland's Second Cousin's entry "Ephemeral Horror and the Diffusion of Genre Markers" even if it wasn't about ephemeral horror, as I thought, but about horror as an ephemeral genre, which is something of an ephemeral horror. This will start making sense any minute now, I promise.
The following points made my inner M&M sorter very happy:
#1. "[W]e categorize stories based on the conventions they employ and the devices that show up within their texts. Spaceships, time travel, aliens? Let’s call it science fiction. Magic and knights? Let’s go with fantasy. [...] These devices, the objects and tropes of most genres, can easily be slapped on a cover to communicate the story’s category to booksellers and readers."
Sometimes, in my flailing about order and chaos and systems for big cohesive pictures, I lose sight of the tiny common sense trees--namely, that 'genre' is just a fancy French word for 'kind', and is not, never was, and never will be some high and mighty literary infrastructure. It's just a big mental box into which vaguely similar stories are tossed so that the stuff you like is near the other stuff you like, so you can find more stuff you like.
#2. "Horror lacks the constraints that more solidified genre conventions impose. We can write a horror story – like Shirley Jackson’s classic 'Flower Garden' – without a single element of the supernatural or the inexplicable. [...] This freedom means that – in order to be effective – horror must sneak past the reader’s natural defenses, must directly speak to the reader’s perceptions, values, and fears. This is the kind of deep-seated, emotional and perceptual communication that the literary fiction genre has traditionally claimed for itself. But where literary fiction uses such emotional and philosophical intimacy to explore comfortably distanced morality, horror uses a highly sensitized point-of-view to get as close to the nerve as possible, to map even the most painful experiences from the inside."
It's a fantastic parallel: like a good horror story, the horror genre is about wandering into the dark and unfamiliar room to check out that bump you just heard.
I've argued the merits of horror with haters before, and pointed out that like fancy pants literary fiction, good horror says something about the viewer and society (and not just "We watch movies with naked co-eds taking a hatchet to the face"). To play on our fears, horror has to be able to get into our heads and push the buttons it finds there.
#3. No quote here, because it's a bit too spread out, but the point is brilliant: there are (of course) horror tropes, except when we become too used to them, they stop being horror tropes.
When horror begins relying on tropes to define it, those tropes cease to be scary, and in a fundamental way, the works that feature them stop being horror. Once the tropes are no longer new and unsettling--once we know them by heart--we begin to redefine and re-imagine them. We turn vampires into moody romantic leads, disfigured undead serial killers into comedians, and the lonely werewolf from an alienated loner into a member of a highly organized underground society of walking AIDS metaphors.
It won't make me change how I organize my reviews, but it does have me rethinking the horror movies of my youth.
Gateway to Jesusland!
Monday, 12 November 2012 11:09 pmCourtesy of The Riverfront Times: Missourians File Petition With White House to Secede From Union (Leah Greenbaum, 12 November 2012).
Well, not quite: "The Missouri petition was filed on Saturday and currently has 2,231 signatures (a great number of them from out of state)." (Emphasis mine.) I'm going to cry foul though, not because lol, rednecks!, but because Get in line! St. Louis has been trying to secede from Missouri for a while now (and regain control of its police force from the state government), and I think that should be settled before the red bits of the state decide to go gallivanting off.
Though I think we're in line behind Puerto Rico, so this may take a while...
Well, not quite: "The Missouri petition was filed on Saturday and currently has 2,231 signatures (a great number of them from out of state)." (Emphasis mine.) I'm going to cry foul though, not because lol, rednecks!, but because Get in line! St. Louis has been trying to secede from Missouri for a while now (and regain control of its police force from the state government), and I think that should be settled before the red bits of the state decide to go gallivanting off.
Though I think we're in line behind Puerto Rico, so this may take a while...
And no more ice for our Starbucks shakes!
Monday, 12 November 2012 05:35 pmThe climate is changing, and the important issue isn't whether this change has been caused by man or is merely influenced by human activities.
No, friends. The issue is how do we save the coffee?
Or the Rage virus pandemic, because I will surely beat someone to death without coffee.
No, friends. The issue is how do we save the coffee?
Running Arabica’s chances against three emission scenarios, over three timescales (2020, 2050 and 2080), and with a geographical resolution of 1 Km for the plant’s Ethiopian homeland, the models “showed a profoundly negative influence on the number and extent of wild Arabica populations”, Kew says. (Richard Chirgwin, "Coffee next on climate chopping-block: The looming ARABICA APOCALYPSE," The Register 10 November 2012)This is how the zombie apocalypse starts.
Or the Rage virus pandemic, because I will surely beat someone to death without coffee.
Apropos of props...
Monday, 8 October 2012 07:50 amI take a kind of sick pleasure in entries having more tags than they do words.
Guns for Gays!
Saturday, 31 March 2012 12:09 pmYou can make a lot of jokes about Missouri...
No, really. Go ahead. With my blessing, even.
Earlier this month, St. Louis Public Radio (which still exists, despite this being a red state!) reported that the state's House voted in favor of making gun owners with a concealed carry permit a protected group that "cannot be fired, denied benefits, or otherwise discriminated against"--a protection that the state's gays currently do not have.
But I see a convenient work-around, my fellow Missourians...
No, really. Go ahead. With my blessing, even.
Earlier this month, St. Louis Public Radio (which still exists, despite this being a red state!) reported that the state's House voted in favor of making gun owners with a concealed carry permit a protected group that "cannot be fired, denied benefits, or otherwise discriminated against"--a protection that the state's gays currently do not have.
But I see a convenient work-around, my fellow Missourians...
Hipster racism (sexism, homophobia...) is still racism.
Monday, 30 January 2012 01:39 pmA little while back, South Park did a whole episode dedicated to reclaiming the word 'faggot' as an all-purpose insult because the young men who make up its target audience really, really like that word. The show argued that the word has other meanings and is not in and of itself a homophobic slur, and it shouldn't automatically be assumed to be a homophobic slur. I mean, it's not like their young male viewers also use 'gay' as an insult or say stupid shit like 'no homo', right?
Except yes, they do.
Now when is South Park going to get around to a certain racial epithet that the young white men want to use? Where's the argument that 'nigger' isn't racist and has other meanings? For example, according to two local DJs in the '90s, it's used to call someone ignorant in parts of the South, and that's not racist, right?
Except yes, it is.
Does anyone really have to explain why?
Except yes, they do.
Now when is South Park going to get around to a certain racial epithet that the young white men want to use? Where's the argument that 'nigger' isn't racist and has other meanings? For example, according to two local DJs in the '90s, it's used to call someone ignorant in parts of the South, and that's not racist, right?
Except yes, it is.
Does anyone really have to explain why?
Dear Cat: it's going to be a long day...
Wednesday, 3 August 2011 05:13 pmDear Cat:
It's rabbit poop, not a toy. Leave it in the litter box.
Yours Truly,
Tired of Sweeping.
Dear Cat:
I saw you knock over the dustpan and wallow--yes, wallow--in the rabbit poop. You want to act like a dog, you're going to be bathed like a dog.
Sincerely,
Grossed Out
Dear Cat:
Know that thing where you fill three litterboxes in two days, including the Jumbo? What the hell are you eating when I'm not watching you? You're not even a year old! Are you half bear or something?
Seriously,
Researching Toilet Training for Cats
Ming may be walking proof that the Devil invented cats, but Murphy is a dog in a cat's body.
It's rabbit poop, not a toy. Leave it in the litter box.
Yours Truly,
Tired of Sweeping.
Dear Cat:
I saw you knock over the dustpan and wallow--yes, wallow--in the rabbit poop. You want to act like a dog, you're going to be bathed like a dog.
Sincerely,
Grossed Out
Dear Cat:
Know that thing where you fill three litterboxes in two days, including the Jumbo? What the hell are you eating when I'm not watching you? You're not even a year old! Are you half bear or something?
Seriously,
Researching Toilet Training for Cats
Ming may be walking proof that the Devil invented cats, but Murphy is a dog in a cat's body.
Oh mainstream media, you've found the Internet again.
Sunday, 10 July 2011 03:33 pmTime Magazine has published a serious article on fan fiction.
As with all things Internetty and/or geeky, that's either a sign that it's finally big enough to be recognized by the non-nerdly press, like lolcats and rickrolling, or a sign that it's hit oversaturation, like lolcats and rickrolling.
As with all things Internetty and/or geeky, that's either a sign that it's finally big enough to be recognized by the non-nerdly press, like lolcats and rickrolling, or a sign that it's hit oversaturation, like lolcats and rickrolling.
Both shows also had a crappy crossover episode.
Thursday, 7 July 2011 11:27 pmThey finally did an American remake of Absolutely Fabulous.
There were a few changes. Like Patsy's now a glutton rather than a lush, Saffy's a boy, everyone's under 18, and they call it iCarly.
I haven't been this disturbed since I realized I'm the DJ...
There were a few changes. Like Patsy's now a glutton rather than a lush, Saffy's a boy, everyone's under 18, and they call it iCarly.
I haven't been this disturbed since I realized I'm the DJ...
Note to self: do not sneak up on Tina Turner.
Monday, 4 July 2011 01:08 amRandy Jackson (Five, not Idol) tweeted that Tina Turner once accidentally shot him when he showed up at her house unannounced, says NYMag.com.
Having seen What's Love Got to Do with It, I figure he's lucky she didn't go full ninja on him.
Having seen What's Love Got to Do with It, I figure he's lucky she didn't go full ninja on him.
Do not fuck with Linda Hamilton.
Saturday, 2 July 2011 04:34 amFrom the Terminator 2: Judgment Day trivia page:
She beat him right out of the movies!
The "forced medication" scene (Special Edition only) had to be re-shot several times because actor Ken Gibbel wouldn't hit Linda Hamilton properly with his nightstick. The scene was very physically demanding and Hamilton was furious with Gibbel because he repeatedly botched it. She got her revenge in a later scene where she beats Gibbel with a broken-off broom handle - the blows are for real.If you check Gibbel's IMDb page, you'll notice T2 is his last acting role.
She beat him right out of the movies!
