The Rolling Stones have started a summer tour, promising to play classic hits.
Their collective age is 300. Keith Richards alone is 200. He learned to play on a coal-fired guitar. Just kidding. He learned on a Stratocaster.
And he’s only 75.
I have to admire The Stones for heading out when they clearly don’t need the money—though they will make truckloads of it. Jagger just had heart surgery three months ago and yet there he was on opening night, prancing about the stage like he was only 50. Which is the new 30, I think.
He’s also 75.
I hope to be prancing about on a stage or at least somewhere that isn’t a retirement home when I’m 75.
Truckloads of money would be nice, too, though optional.
This was better than expected. Going in, I was unfamiliar with Peter Laws, apart from the blurb for the book mentioning that he is a reverend and perhaps a seemingly unlikely choice to author a book about why we are delighted by things that scare us (he devotes an entire chapter on this near the end, and also addresses it at the beginning). A writer when not conducting church services, Laws has authored novels about a professor aiding in the solving of religious crimes, and also reviews horror and similarly themed movies for The Fortean Times, the delightfully wacky magazine devoted to the weird and out there. This is relevant, because Laws demonstrates wit and verve throughout The Frighteners.
Laws has done his research on why we seek out to be frightened by various things, but this is not a carefully considered study and analysis, it is very much Laws providing expert testimony and studies, while adding in a lot of his own personal take on the various spooky subjects, neatly divided into their own chapters. There are fictional frights—scary movies and TV shows, but also could-be-real frights like ghosts, werewolves, cryptids and more. Then there are the sadly real, like serial killers, their “murderabilia” and crush videos (don’t look up the latter if you are at work or anywhere else on the planet. Trust me on this.)
Laws doesn’t defend the more dubious aspects that some people seem to crave, but he does attempt to understand motivations. And he highlights that most of us—even people into murderabilia (mementos from famous crimes or killers) have our limits. For example, a couple that run a curio shop in York sells things like strands of Charles Manson’s hair, among other ghoulish “delights”, but the American half of the couple admits she turned down the chance to sell bricks from Sandy Hook, because she lived nearby and had no emotional distance from the killings.
A lot of the fare Laws covers is lighter, and even silly. Zombie-themed escape rooms are a big thing now, and Laws partakes not as research for the book, but because he just loves them so much (he went to Transylvania for his 40th birthday), going out of his way to squeeze every last bit of drama from them, like the hero of a horror film.
In the end I was carried along by Laws’ enthusiasm for the macabre and frightening, and his gleeful delight in the same. He provides enough research, expert interviews and other material to elevate the book well above “I like scary stuff, let me talk about it”, so if you find the subject matter interesting, this is an easy recommendation.
Run 610Average pace: 5:58/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 10:29 am
Distance: 5:04 km
Time: 30:04
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 14ºC
Humidity: 77%
Wind: light
BPM: 177
Weight: 167.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4630 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 2, iPhone 8
Back on my weekly schedule, I headed out today under very different conditions, with cloudy skies, a high of 14ºC and humidity high enough to eliminate dreaded dry mouth syndrome or DMS as the imaginary experts in my head call it. I also chose to run clockwise for a change of pace.
The results were unexpected.
On the expected front, I thought my pace would be better–the clockwise run tends to be a little easier to navigate, with more inclines heading down instead of up and generally just being a wee bit less technical. I was correct on this part, my pace was better.
What I didn’t expect was that it would be what is likely the best back to back improvement in pace ever–a full 30 second improvement. This is the average pace, so my actual time to complete the run today was 2:26 minutes faster. That is an astonishing difference. I went from a plodding 6:28/km last week to 5:58/km today, the first time I’ve managed to crack the six minute mark in awhile. I am delighted by this.
I am also delighted by having no issues, despite pushing myself harder, save for two: a minor twinge in my right ankle that sorted itself out quickly, and an elevated heart rate–an uncomfortably high 177. Not unexpected given the dramatically faster pace and my general lack of fitness. Curiously the Apple Watch was unable to record the full hear rate chart, claiming there were not heart rate measurements. Maybe this is the first sign that Apple thinks I need to move on from the now lowly Series 2 to something newer and shinier and also by total coincidence way more expensive.
One other less delightful aspects was getting gravel in my shoe less than 10 meters into the run. At least it was small enough to not be annoying (I have provisionally picked out new shoes and will be looking at them this week). Also, weirdly, there was a racoon on the trail right at the start, too. I encountered it twice, actually, the first time walking the trail to the Jiffy John® and the second time when I retraced my steps back to the 0K marker to begin my run. Each time it quickly trundled into the bush and waited for me to pass, which is fine by me. Raccoons are kind of cute but also kind of scary. I tend to think all of them have rabies for some reason. I probably watched some bad TV movie about it when I was younger.
Despite the cool and cloudy conditions–which were delightful for running–it was busier than expected, though no great traffic jams happened. A lot of fellow runners apparently also found the weather to their liking.
I am planning to run Tuesday after work, totally for real this time. The current forecast is pleasant, so I shouldn’t have rain mixed in to further dampen (ho ho) my enthusiasm for running more than once a week. Jeff is onboard for holding back dinner until my run is over. We shall see.
Overall, this run was unexpected in terms of performance, and while I don’t expect to match the pace again right away, it’s nice to know I can still do sub-6:00 minute runs.
Awhile back I was having some issues with the site and it turned out the fancy newer version of PHP was causing some problems. I’m still not sure why, because WordPress supports the latest version. But whatever, I’m not a webologist. It was rolled back to version 5 and the issue went away.
Then a plugin update became available and said it couldn’t update because it needed PHP 7. Well. I investigated and found out I can switch the site from versions 5 and 7 through the control panel. I did this, updated the plugin (the real impetus was to clear that update notification badge) and all is well.
But not quite!
Because now the site is acting up (or down) again. This means that sometimes you’ll hit the site and see this:
When you see the above appears to be arbitrary. You may never see it. You may see it every time. It’s like my own site’s version of a lootbox, the costs measured in how many times you need to refresh the page (which fixes the issue).
Because most people/bots are just going to move on rather than refresh to see what happens, I suspect the trickle of visitors to the site basically stopped for June 21 and 22. (For added fun, I sometimes see similar errors when loading the admin dashboard. Fortunately a refresh fixes this, too.)
I am too lazy to put a lot of time into further investigation into fixing this and suspect my hosting service wouldn’t have much to offer, either, so I’ll just live with it until it either goes away on its own or I get fed up and rollback to version 5 of PHP.
Anyway, that’s my theory for why my site got two days of absolutely no visits, proving such a thing can happen on today’s internet. I will never become a social media influencer if this keeps happening. 🙁
Bonus annoyance: I went to choose the category and tags for this post, but sometimes these fail to load, too. Maybe I will roll back after all…
UPDATE: I rolled back to PHP 5. At least now people should be able to reliably see my carefully curated selection of amusing cat images.
Recently YouTube announced that it was updating a lot of classic or alleged classic music videos to HD versions. Better picture, better sound! What’s not to like?
I am an unapologetic fan of Lady Gaga’s video for the song “Bad Romance” (this is not exactly an exclusive club, the video has over one billion views). I think the director, Francis Lawrence, and Gaga did a fantastic job in fusing the music and imagery together, something so seemingly fundamental for a music video, yet so often eludes others. The action and camera move sleekly to the music and vocals, and somehow the abrupt shifts in style work. The choreography is quirky, fluid and occasionally a bit predictable (Gaga is fond of the “jack off” gesture).
The lyrics are not spectacular, though a lot of people probably miss the three Hitchcock references tucked into one verse, but there is a verse that goes like this:
Walk, walk fashion baby, work it move that bitch crazy Walk-walk fashion baby, work it move that bitch crazy Walk-walk fashion baby, work it move that bitch crazy Walk-walk passion baby, work it I'm a free bitch baby
As you can see, the word “bitch” is used four times. Edgy! But that was 2011. In 2019 the word is not used in polite company anymore. It seems even ironic, self-claimed usage has fallen from favor. Gay men cannot say, “Bitch, please.” Women can not call each other by this term. It is, as a word, passe.
The HD version of the video has removed “bitch.” Or to be more accurate, it’s removed the last two letters. That’s right, the video now has Gaga very clearly saying “bit”:
Walk, walk fashion baby, work it move that bit crazy Walk-walk fashion baby, work it move that bit crazy Walk-walk fashion baby, work it move that bit crazy Walk-walk passion baby, work it I'm a free bit baby
What does “I’m a free bit baby” even mean? Is Gaga now saying we are all machine-made designs, composed of nothing but bits and bytes, living our seemingly real lives in a perpetual virtual reality? And that she has, Neo-like, broken from the virtual chains, claiming her independence as a free bit?
Or could they just not come up with something that rhymed with “bitch”, still worked and decided “bit” was close enough. It is an exercise left to the viewer.
It’s also kind of silly, like Spielberg changing the guns the government agents had to walkie talkies in the 20th anniversary release of E.T. (this version of the film has been dropped in subsequent releases, with Spielberg regretting the change). I can see the argument to improve the visual presentation of a piece of work, whether it’s a film or a music video. For example, some of the special effects and exterior shots of the Enterprise and planets were either redone or made from scratch for a new version of the original Star Trek series, for a 2006 re-release. The effects were deliberately toned down, to keep them in line with the aesthetic of the original show. There are purists who would object to any changes, but in general most would see these changes as refinements on the original. The artists were not adding or removing content, nor were they changing it other than to simply improve the look of the admittedly cheaply-made visual effects of the time.
The Gaga lyrics change is a lot more like Spielberg’s walkie talkies, trying to take back an artistic choice and to that I say, just live with it and move on. Altering the video won’t change–or remove–the original. Either make a statement on the remastered HD version (“I would not use the same language today and regret the wording”) or provide two versions, the original and the altered (which Spielberg did in 2002 with E.T. before dropping the altered version entirely).
It’s a small thing and I mostly call it out because “bit” is a nonsensical substitution. Yet it calls to me, somehow, and so I claim that I am also a free bit, baby.
It is currently 16C, a little cooler than would be seasonal. It’s partly cloudy, but no serious threat of precipitation yet–that is saved for the weekend, according to the forecast.
The last few months have been a time of certain small triumphs and a lot of ennui. My writing has withered and I’m trying to decide how much I care. I’m not taking part in July’s Camp NaNoWriMo because part of the month I will be on vacation, when my writing is meant to wither. As I type this, the sun is angling to poke through the clouds and I think of how spring has been pretty decent overall, weather-wise. So that’s good, if you ignore the thawing permafrost up north and the steady march onward of climate doom. It doesn’t help that Canadians keep electing not only conservative governments, but breathtakingly ignorant ones in particular.
Anyway, here’s to summer–officially starting tomorrow–being better. It’s my favorite season and I look forward to soaking up some rays and reveling in the warm days ahead. Which are currently not in the long range forecast. But still.
Run 609Average pace: 6:28/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 12:26 pm
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 32:30
Weather: Sunny with high cloud
Temp: 22ºC
Humidity: 54%
Wind: light
BPM: 164
Weight: 167.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 4625 km
Devices: Apple Watch Series 2, iPhone 8
Last weekend I didn’t run and it wasn’t because I was just too lazy (mostly). I stayed up way too late Friday and Saturday, slept horribly and felt like simply walking around without bumping into the furniture was a big enough goal, never mind a proper run.
Today I was braced for the results to be worse due to the extended absence. And they were!
But not by much.
My pace was 6:28/km, five seconds off the last run’s pace–but still better than the run before that. BPM and other stats were very similar, so the run was not really all that different than the one two weeks ago. I found a comfortable pace early on and stuck to it, experiencing no issues along the way.
I caught a fleeting glimpse of a healthy-looking coyote ducking into the bushes ahead of me on the main trail, probably waiting for some snack-sized off-leash dog to wander along. There was also the remains of a water station from an event earlier in the morning at Piper spit. It’s 2 km into the run, I was half-tempted to grab some water because it was a little dry, though not as much as the previous run. I still need to find some solution for hydration that doesn’t involve some gigantic water bottle.
Speaking of dry, I was walking along the Avalon Trail post-run and a parks putt-putt car came up, leaving a tick cloud of dust that hung over the trail for a surprisingly long time. My shoes were similarly dust-covered, something I’m not really accustomed to seeing in mid-June. Ah, climate change!
Anyway, the run was totally acceptable and the slower time was no surprise. I swear I will start running more often any day now.
The other day Jeff and I were returning from Save On Foods, carrying bags of groceries and walking along the mind of awful Brunette Avenue, where people drive at highway speeds (it is not a highway). I happened to notice one of the vehicles that blew past (actually, it was probably doing the speed limit) was an Apple Maps car. I’ve never seen one out in the wild before.
Now, I never use the Apple Maps app on my iPhone. It had a disastrous launch and I’ve never had a reason to go back and check the improved version, since Google Maps still works fine. But now I am officially part of an Apple Map. My face will be blurred out, but every time I check out a map of my neighborhood, there I will be. I’ll be internet famous!
The shiny new version of Apple Maps isn’t out yet, though. It’s coming in the next release of iOS, macOS, iPadOS and WhateverElseOS Apple comes out with. This should happen in September. I’l check back then, as that is when their version of Google’s Street View, called “Look around” (Apple is very bad at names) debuts. I’ll report back then and will sign autographs shortly after.
American Nightmare is a themed horror story collection, with every story taking place in 1950s America. Ultimately the theme doesn’t add much to the stories, serving mostly as window dressing (everyone smokes, for example), and the stories themselves are a mixed bag, typical of most horror collections. This is not a bad read, but you might want to wait for a sale price to grab it.
Also in the tradition of horror collections, a lot of American Nightmare is Men Behaving Badly, with abusive husbands figuring prominently. The real monster is us. And also the tentacled horror in the lake.
Story by story:
Grandma Elspeth’s Culinary Enchiridion for Domestic Harmony. An abusive husband gets his just desserts (or dinner, rather) while the son watches with horror and wonder. But mostly horror. A decent intro to the book and is the first (but not last) to feature tentacles.
CHIAROSCURO. A weird tale that swaps between first person POV for scenes of a soldier in WWII and second person for the then-present day of 1958, as the former soldier and now-detective with an odd affliction that prevents him from recognizing faces, goes after a murdering couple that dresses as Raggedy Ann and Andy.
The author repeatedly references famous paintings to literally illustrate scenes, lending an odd sort of whimsy to the story, but it’s bloody and violent and ends with a lot of gunplay. It almost feels like it would work better as a longer piece, but it’s an interesting and surreal bit of mayhem.
Bow Creek: Kids living in a bucolic small town discover All Is Not What It Seems and those who see the ark underbelly either join or die. The End. Really. Slight, perfunctory and did not really do much for me. It tries to create a 50s horror movie vibe (and references the same), but it only partly succeeds.
Glow: Frustrated teen finds space rock that seems to have something to do with Cthulhu. Screaming (of others) follows. Not bad, but given the potential it seems to fall short.
Lucy’s Lips: Misunderstood high school girl leaves town, comes back with the circus, may have some ties to Cthulhu. Sort of features tentacles and might be trying to make a statement (not a nice one) about promiscuity, whether by accident or design. Did not grab me.
Pear People from Planet 13. As you might guess from the title, this is a comedic piece that riffs on the monster movies of the 50s. Weirdly gory and a little too on the nose, maybe.
Ghost Girl, Zombie Boy and The Count. A self-loathing killer meets some very interesting kids trick or treating. Another just desserts story, but written with some verve and wraps up appropriately.
The Two Monsters of Levittown. A clumsy attempt to address Nazis, racism, medical experimentation and just who are the real monsters, anyway? This could have worked better, but the writing is just too unsubtle, bludgeoning all of its points like a mallet to the skull.
Double Feature: What seems like a charming story about a teen couple watching a double feature at the drive-in descends into horror at the very end. It’s not quite a twist ending, but I was almost disappointed by it. This is one where I felt the journey was more interesting than the destination.
In the Blood: Totally Cthulhu, complete with the tentacles. Military experiments on soldiers prove disruptive to a nuclear family. Violent, gory, with that air of hopelessness one expects from a good Old Ones story. Despite this playing directly into expectations, it was just okay. The 1950s/Cold War setting could have been exploited better.
The Black Pharaoh of Hollywood. An ancient pharaoh (are there other kinds, really?) uses a desperate screen writer to return to the living. This was is well-written, but is undermined by an ending that feels forced, not earned, particularly in how the protagonist makes his decisions. Good, but could have been better.
The King. An old woman/witch mails seeds that grow weird black oak trees that make people commit literal blood sacrifices. This one pays lip service to the book’s theme and is just weird. Nothing is really explained and sometimes in a horror story that’s for the best. There’s some characters-doing-things-to-advance-the-plot business here, which I hate more than weird black oaks that prompt blood sacrifices.
A Night to Remember. A cancer-ridden man in a dinner encounters a strange, possibly Lovecraftian fellow who has a message. The Titanic does not figure at all, sorry. This one goes for ominous and mostly works.
All the Marilyns. An unconvincing look at a smart young man who years to move beyond his small town and somehow turns into a murderous psycho. Maybe I missed the subtle transition, but it felt jarring and off-putting.
Looking back, it seems I didn’t care much for most of these stories. The majority are decent, but flawed in some way. You could probably do worse for a horror collection, but you can also do much better.
After posting the cat to inspire my writing on June 7th, here is how much writing I have done (excluding forum posts):
None!
That’s right, Inspiration Cat™, as I am now officially calling him/her, has achieved the opposite. I have written no blog posts, no fiction, nothing at all except stuff required for work and a few errant words to accompany photos on Facebook, which I feel bad for doing every time because I believe Facebook is actively making the world a more terrible place.
Also, why isn’t there a competitor to FB that just provides a place to hang out with friends and family and nothing more? Come on, Silicon Valley billionaires, throw a few dump trucks of money at this while the world burns.
Anyway, I should be writing more. I’ve read books about writing more. I know all the techniques. There are no secrets. It’s about discipline and making the time, making the commitment. I can do all of these things right now, instead of watching people rant on the internet about the $999 stand for the new $4999 monitor Apple just announced at this year’s WWDC. By the way, I’ll have my own thoughts on this in an upcoming blog post.
So here it is, another blog post about how I’m not writing. If I put all of these posts together, I bet they would stretch to the moon. Or at least to the end of the condo.
I’m past making promises now. No more promises. If I write, I write. If I don’t, you can find me ranting about $999 monitor stands or searching for funny cat videos, or sometimes going outside and stuff.
