Coffee House Poetry

After breakfast this morning, Jim, Jazz, and I went for a walk at the Saddle, a set up trails through the hills near town. We were out for about an hour. It’s a gorgeous day, mostly sunny, 45 – 50 degrees, so great weather for a hike. Beautiful scenery, too — very wet, so everything is covered in ferns, moss, and water. I’m not used to seeing so much green during February! There are a few other pictures in there, too, like Jazz with a couple of her toys, and pictures of me in the blanket fort Jim and I built one night for shits n’ giggles. Enjoy!

1. Can we stop referring to it as “global warming“, please? It’s not global warming, it’s not global cooling, it’s climate change. Calling it “global warming” is a disservice to the problem. When the 90% of the American population who are unread goobers hear the words “global warming”, they think it means that we won’t get any more winters, and that every snowstorm proves global warming false. I know climate change is a complicated topic to understand, because I read about it all the time and still only ever catch about half the particulars, but what it is not is a lack of winters. “Global warming” is about catastrophic climate change. All kinds of climates. Changing for the worse. This does, in fact, mean that the east coast can look forward to some really nasty winters.
2. Republican Senator Richard Shelby is blocking all Obama appointees until he gets billions of dollars for Alabama. He’s holding the presidential nominees hostage. This kind of crap is why we’re calling the Republicans “the Party of No”. The Republicans insistence on blocking every single piece of legislation they can, for no other reason than that they can, is doing serious harm to the future of America, and is directly responsible for the continuing polarization of American politics. I get why Obama is banging the bipartisan drum so hard. He is trying with all his heart and soul to heal this incredible division of ideals. But ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you, that ship has sailed. It is now literally pointless to attempt to reconcile anything with the current form of the Republican party. I mean, we’re talking about senators who voted “no” on Al Franken’s anti-rape bill, for fucksake! You can’t reason with that kind of people. Stop pandering to them, and let’s get on with fixing America.
3. Okay, this is a Fox News poll, so take it with a salt block, but this poll says most Americans are unhappy with the current health care bill. Well, duh. It’s crap! Look, the health care problem in America just isn’t that complicated. People need health care. Private health insurance is a fucking scam, and we all know it. These insurance companies are taking us to the cleaners, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a horrifying state of affairs for a country that wants to bill itself as superior in every way to every other country out there. We have several options for fixing the problem. We could do like we did with mandatory car insurance — everyone has to have health insurance, and in return, we regulate the hell out of the health insurance companies and force them to make their product affordable and efficient. I mean, I have full coverage on my car, and it only costs me about sixty bucks a month. We could do the same to private health insurance. We could go single-payer, IE, a socialist medical system like Canada and everyone else with a modicum of sense does. We could go regulation plus a public option. We could even, as Jim suggested to me the other night, try reform from a different angle, and just criminalize the shit out of current health care practices. But what we can’t do is continue to ignore the problem, or provide a half-assed, half-hearted solution that in practice will accomplish nothing, if not actually make the problem worse.

The last season of Lost premiered Tuesday, and I was there with bells on to watch it. I’m late to the game on Lost, so I’ve been playing catch-up this last month, watching seasons 1 through 5 in one long marathon burst. I think the show actually suffers some in my opinion for this, because watched in large chunks, it becomes a very tedious little show.

With the exception of a few, the characters are largely unlikeable, which makes it difficult for me to have any real sympathy for them. The main characters are whiny, stupid, and ineffectual. They don’t stop to think, consider the consequences, plan anything, ponder over the information they already have in their possession, or utilize their resources — in short, they don’t do anything but react to events. They rarely, if ever, set their own events into motion, and when they do, it’s because of an overly-emotional outburst of rage and doesn’t result in anything but more trouble for them.

Another problem I have with these characters is that, again with the exception of a few, these people balls-out refuse to learn from their mistakes and exhibit some character growth. Right up to season five, Jack never once learned that emotional outbursts don’t solve problems. In the first half of season five, he was much calmer, but only because he’d completely given up and gone all fatalist and self-hating on us. Then, once back on the island, he “discovers his purpose”, IE, decides to blow up the damn island with a hydrogen bomb, and turns back into the loud-mouthed, self-righteous, overly-emotional prick he’d been the whole time.

I could complain about these characters for hours, y’all, but on with the reviewing, already. Actually, less blow-by-blow reviewing of the episodes, since I’m going to assume anyone who’s reading this has already seen them, and more a discussion of the maelstrom of new theories these episodes have provoked.

So, LA X 1 picks up with the bomb going off in a bright white flash, and suddenly, we appear to be dealing with alternate realities. Down one leg of the Trousers of Time (thank-you, Terry Pratchett), we have the Losties on the island, apparently back in their proper timezone, dealing with the consequences of their bombsplodey. Down the other leg, we have the Losties back on what appears to be Flight 815, only the plane doesn’t crash, and our heroes land safely in LAX.

Over at the Lostpedia, there are two competing theories over what we’re seeing in the show. One faction holds that the LAX scenes are an alternate universe created by the bombsplodey. The other claims that the LAX scenes are actually an epilogue to the show. What I don’t understand is why these seem to be mutually exclusive theories. I’d posit that the bombsplodey created the alternate timeline, scenes of which are indeed an epilogue of sorts, and the season will deal with how the Losties achieve that epilogue. (Just, please, writers of Lost, can we avoid the whole “merging of alternate realities” cliche? It’s a bit worn out.)

The premiere was also kind enough to answer a few questions. The impostor Locke, revealed last season to be the mysterious Man in Black, does in fact seem to be the smoke monster. I’d suspected as much, but it does beggar the question of what, exactly, Jacob might be. Some folks over at Lostpedia claim to have noticed a white smoke in several scenes, and are wondering if Jacob, too, has an alternate, smokey form. Or possibly a “light” form, as a lot is being made of real Locke’s description of meeting the monster and it being made of white light.

Another thing I noticed is that, apparently, the Swan was never built. When our Losties were in 1977, the Dharma Initiative were in the process of building the Swan. Then the Losties show up and blow up the hydrogen bomb. There’s a flash of white light, and suddenly, the Losties are — presumably — in the future. (It seems likely they’re in the future, as out on the beach by the foot of the Statue, fake Locke and the beach crowd, whom we know are residing in 2007ish, see the flare that was set off at the Temple, where our heroes are hanging out after taking Sayid there.) Our heroes come to at the crater site, which is very clearly not the same crater Desmond caused when he set off the failsafe. That crater was a deep hole with steep, rimless sides that appeared to have melted and solidified. This crater has a sizable rim, and a deep, drill-style hole still filled with all that metal/drill wreckage from when the pocket of magnetism was sucking everything down the drill hole. So, obviously, the Swan was never built. Also, the site was apparently never cleaned up after, either. Makes one wonder what exactly happened in the aftermath of the magnetism/bombsplodey incident. The island was in the process of being evacuated, so maybe the remaining Dharma Initiative folks died in the blast? Curiouser and curiouser. If I were a Lostie, I’d be taking a moment to quiz the Others at the Temple about the last thirty years of history. It might prove enlightening.

I doubt the Losties will think to do that, though. If they were bright enough to put that much thought into something, they wouldn’t be in the fix they were in. Just sayin’.

So, impostor Locke is Jacob’s mysterious island buddy is the smoke monster. We have yet to determine who the good guys and bad guys are in this equation. We have no real proof yet that Jacob is a good guy. (Although, I rather suspect it’ll go that way. No proof, just a hunch.) It also seems likely that impostor Lock/beach buddy/smoke monster has also been appearing as Christian, and I don’t give a damn what color shoes everyone’s been wearing. (It’s JJ Abrams, people. The man lives on Surprise Buses of Doom and red herrings.) In fact, I’d be willing to bet that every appearance of a ghost/vision/horse/Walt/etc, with the possible exception of Claire, who may be just a prisoner for some reason and not dead, has been the smoke monster. There’s no real proof that Jacob has been impersonating anyone. I also find it very unlikely that Jacob was ever in the Weird Mystery Cabin. It seems much more likely that the Man in Black (and I don’t mean Johnny Cash) has been using it the whole time.

So, all in all, the season premiere managed to answer a few — very few — nagging questions, while simultaneously introducing an entirely new can of worms for us to explore. That’s about what I expected. It seems to just kill these writers to actually answer a damn question. Still, I’m looking forward to this season, and having this mess tidied up and put away.

First, let there be a spoiler warning: OMGSPOILERS, y’all! There. You’ve been warned. Continue at your own risk.

Okay, so, first up, since it’ll be quick, I snagged the newest Anita Blake: Vampire Fucker novella by Laurell K. Hamilton, Flirt, last night, and read the whole thing. It’s pretty short, just under 200 pages. And … I think I love this story, people. Okay, truth in advertising, it was the same tedious, angsty, Mary Sue crap that an Anita novel always is, but … there was necromancy in this one! Squee! Zombtacular mayhem! That’s totally worth the ten bucks for the Kindle edition, right there.

The story is pretty basic. Anita meets with a customer who wants his wife’s corpse raised, and came to Anita because he wants the corpse to look human, and not know that it’s dead, which Anita can do. It’s insinuated that the ludicrously rich client may want his wife’s corpse for icky necrophiliac purposes. Bleh. Anita is also appropriately squicked out, because apparently banging the undead corpse of a vampire is acceptable, but not the undead corpse of a zombie that is at least as human-looking and self-aware as a vampire. Yeah, I know. I was all, “Pot, meet Kettle” with that one, too.

Said client doesn’t like being told no, so he hires a mercenary team of werelions to abduct Anita, and hold her harem of menfolk hostage via sniper team. (Sniper werelions, folks. I know, right?) The deal is this: raise the wife, and they’ll turn Anita and the harem loose unharmed. There’s some fighting between Anita and the werelions, resulting in Anita being too metaphysically weak to actually raise any dead — good job, guys — to the mercenary team — no, get this, it’s great — decides to let Anita nail one of their team members so she can feed, and then do the zombie raising thing.

At this point, I’m all like, “Oh, awesome, I’ll bet the rest of this book is all Anita angsting about Anita using her metaphysical hoochie powers to totally roll this gimp and make him her slave, and then use him against his team mates.” But no! I was amazed! There was, like, two paragraphs of Anita thinking, “Well, this is wrong, but oh fucking well,” and then she turned the werelion into her lil’ bitch with the might of her vaginamancy. Awesome! Then, then, Anita raises the wife, gets the goonsquad called off her boyfriends, and — this is the part that’s worth the bucks, y’all — raises the whole fucking cemetery and has her zombie hordes eat the fucking bad guys. Ate them. Bones and all. Zom nom nom.

It. Was. Awesome.

I’m reading this, propped up in bed while Jim is asleep next to me, and I’m fist-punching the air going, “Yes! Necromancy! Finally!” Jim’s all like, “Not now, love, I have to be up early.” Okay, I’m kidding about that. I didn’t actually wake him up, and if I had, he probably would have been totally down with necromancy.

There’s even a neat little bit where Anita — finally — looks around at her undead hordes of minions and thinks, “Man, I could be Zombie Queen of the Universe, and turn the world into a smoking crater crawling with flesh-eating hordes under my sole command.” And I’m all like, “YES! DO EEEEET!” And Anita’s all like, “But that would be wrong and bad.” And I’m all like, “God damn it!” So that was a bit of a let-down.

But, all told, not a bad story. Also, the book comes with a little “How I Write” essay at the end and some cute cartoons by some webcomic gal I’ve never heard of. You do get the cartoons with the Kindle edition, by the way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve (finally) posted the “finished” version of Chapter One. It was a struggle, but we’ve finally got something that does everything we need it to, and that we’re happy with. Let us know what you think!

Half past six on a gray and darkening Friday evening, and the bell over my shop door chimed. I’d made the bell myself, and it always chimed a little early. I appreciate some advance warning. I shooed Randall toward the corner, pushing his bag into his hands and whispering “Quiet, now. Business.” My shadow flitted up toward the ceiling, so thin and wispy as to be almost invisible, and I willed her to drink. Through her, I felt a tingle of heat and the hot dusty taste of the light bulbs as she absorbed the light, causing the room to dim into darkness. A few candles on the counter, and in wall sconces, provided an eerie, not quite right illumination as the shadow swelled, filling the darkness with her own essence.

A young man stepped timidly into the shop. Through the frosted glass, I could see a few of his friends lingering outside, and urging him in. He huddled in his FUBU hoodie, gang color do-rag and discount bling, and tried to look tough and fearless. He walked with a swagger that looked a little silly in his baggy-ass pants, and attempted an insolent pout, but he was showing whites all around his eyes. “Well, hello,” I said, and he jumped a little, squinting and trying to find where my voice had come from while he looked around the dim shop.

I run a small jewelry store, though I do sell other items. I suppose it might better be called a curio shop. A dozen enclosed glass display cases show off the assorted baubles and sparklies that I’ve made or modified. Rings, necklaces, pendants and suchlike, in precious metals and stones. But I also sell gloves and hats, mirrors and small wooden boxes. A harp sits under a spotlight on a marble pedestal near the door, and in the long pause that follows the youth’s entrance, we could hear its strings humming softly to itself. Stairway to Heaven, sadly. On the counter near my elbow was a wolf’s skull, with brass and silver clockworks turning silently in the eye sockets. A coil of coaxial cable hangs on a hook on one wall, with a small, wet, beady eye bulging out of one end. An astrolabe several feet tall stood on a copper disc, tracking and measuring, oh, things. An onyx paperweight in the shape of a stallion floated just a little bit above a shelf. There are cabinets here and there that contained and kept out of sight other, even more esoteric goods. There’s a handwritten sign on my antique cash register that warns Beware of Owner: Shoplifters will be eaten.

I leaned forward, propping my elbows next to one of the candles and, if practice counts for anything anymore, seeming to melt out of the darkness. He swallowed, and crossed his arms. “I’m looking for Black Alice.”

Read More …