Learned Behaviors

In order to avoid writing a full post when I feel like poo (flu) I will pose a question, or rather an unfinished sentence, and see how people answer it:



Because of horror movies...

I'll start off with a few examples.

... I always look in the backseat when I open my car at night.

... when I go for walks I unconsciously scout the area for zombie/werewolf proof escape routes. Rooftops are good.

... I never repeat anything in front of a mirror.

In Honor of the premiere episode of "Dollhouse," AFATC presents: Joss Whedon Pitches a TV Show.

Joss: Ok, so here's the story. There's this girl, who grows up fairly normal. But then one day she's given these amazing powers and uses them to fight evil, though she really just wants to be a normal girl and have a normal life.

Exec: Have you developed any other characters?

Joss: I was thinking there would be this kind of dorky but lovable guy whose always joking around. He'll get a lot of the good lines. And there be another girl whose cute but kind of mousy who'll be her friend. And then maybe an older guy who's kind of a scholar and will be the voice of reason and the conscience for the other characters. Oh, and there'll be this one guy who appears at first to be the antagonist, but who ends up being a good guy. She'll have some sort of close relationship with him.

Exec: And these character's will what? fight crime or something?

Joss: Well, sort of. They basically do good, but they kind of operate under the radar because if the authorities knew what they were doing they'd get in big trouble. Oh, and one last thing. We need to make sure that only like, 25% of the actors have careers after the show is cancelled.


Exec: Consider it done.

*

And do we want him to stop? Of course not. The man's a genius with a formula. Nobody said to Michelangelo, "Hey, instead of all the Madonna's and naked flying babies, why don't you paint a volcano erupting, or a rocket powered bear or something?" No, because they didn't have rockets. Or bears I think. But nobody would have said that anyway, and Michael N' Jello wouldn't have listened if they had, because he knew he had a good thing going.

These kind of things don't happen in real life.

So, the other day the girls went outside to play and accidentally let the dog out. He immediately took off down the street, and when Lindsay went after him he ran into a neighbor's house. They had left the front door open. The husband was doing yard work out front. Unfortunately, he didn't speak English. He was able to indicate with many gestures and foreign phrases that she should just go inside and get the dog. Inside the house, the wife was washing dishes and completely ignoring the dog playing in the kitchen with their goat. They had a house goat. Jack and the goat were playing in the kitchen, while this woman was washing dishes and ignoring some stranger who came into her kitchen to catch a dog who was playing with a goat. What I'm trying to get across here was that my dog ran into someone else's house and found a goat, and Lindsay (the only one who knew what was going on) was the only one who didn't just shrug the whole thing off. I really don''t have anywhere to go with this.

Glimm Frairy Tares

At Barnes and Noble tonight I picked up a book of Grimm's Fairy Tales done as newspaper style comics. These were the original tales, mind you, the ones where Cinderella's evil stepsisters cut their toes and heels off with a knife in order to fit in the shoes, and where Red Riding Hood got eaten by the wolf along with Granny. Some of those stories are so random that I can only imagine them being told by a slurring drunkard. Take, for instance, the story of One Eye, Two Eyes and Three Eyes, presented here as it was no doubt originally told:

Ok, ok, ok. So... ok. So there's this girl. No! There's this three girls an' they've got eyes, right? Only see, they... um... ok, so one of the girls has one eye... and not another one... and one of the girls has two eyes, and oneofthegirlshasthreeeyes. *Burp* Ok, ok, so... right... so the girl with two eyes is made fun of because she's got two eyes, and not one or three. And... um... they don't feed her. Or they feed her scraps. Right, they feed her scraps. And um... OH! There's a GOAT! And there's an old lady... and when the girl sings to the goat... it... um... makes... food. Anhersistersdonlikeit. So... um... they kill it. The goat. They kill the goat, right? Only she buries the heart. The girl. The one with the two eyes. She buries the goats heart. The old lady told her to, and um... it turns into... a tree. A goat tree. NO! A GOLD tree! *Hic* Only the tree don't like the sisters. Cuz they been mean an killedthegoat. An... OH! A Knight says, I want a stick from the tree... an if someone gives me one I'll marry them. If it's a girl. If a girl gives me a stick I'll marry her. An she'll be my... um... girl knight. Right. An she does, an they get married, and she flips the sisters the V.

The various Princes and Knights and Kings and such in these stories crack me up. Marriage is just something they offer up to anyone that does them a favor, or even happens to be sprawled unconscious in their path. They must have rooms full of wives.

"I'll marry you if you give me a golden apple."
"I'll marry you if you wear this shoe I found in the gutter."
"Are you going to finish that waffle? I'll marry you if you give me half."

When did girls get the idea that marrying a prince was something to aspire to. As far as I can tell, you don't need charm and grace and beauty. You need something shiny and maybe a piece of candy.

Fwah

My house is a house of plague this week. Disease and runny bottoms stalk the house like stinky, drippy lions. The boy was particularly affected this morning. When he is sick his diapers have a... quality to them. It's almost non-biological, like he's been drinking too much paint stripper. It is an odor Lovecraftian in character. It makes me want to use words like,"eldritch." Like, a lot. Practically in every sentence, till it begins to mean nothing. (I did not actually say "eldritch" while changing him, though at one point I did say "gorf.")

Ok, see, here's the thing about Lovecraft. He did present a lot of horrifying and disturbing ideas in his works. The universe is a chaotic meaningless mess of energies, and concepts such as morality, order, and even logic are drivel. That one bothers me. Or that God (or gods) are so alien that they would tear apart the universe; not because they are malevolent, but simply because they don't know any better. That one is disturbing. A lot of writers have Mr. Hewlett-Packard as a major influence on their work, because he had a good grasp of not just what was horrifying, but what was disturbing on a fundamental lever.

However,

The guy was not a good storyteller. With a few exceptions, his stories are actually much better if you have someone else tell them to you. I think he had an overinflated sense of his own mysteriousness. Or perhaps he underestimated his audience's ability to put one and one together to make two. Here is an outline of a typical offering:

The protagonist was always a little strange (He looks/acts like an ape/frog)
The protagonist uncovers information that brings to light strange and disturbing information about his ancestors (They were half ape/frog)
The protagonist travels to the town of his birth to discover more about his family (The half ape/frog side of his family.)
Everyone in the town shows similar strange traits (being that they are all half ape/frog)
Protagonist has strange encounter with indescribable otherworldly being. (Described as being indescribable. Probably has tentacles. Ape/frog people are in attendance)
Protagonist uncovers further clues (ape/frog related)
Protagonist begins to suspect the truth, but refuses to believe it. (by "it", I mean that he's half ape/frog)
After final encounter with amorphous otherworldly being (whose name is revealed to be Aqltrypbnghs) protagonist discovers the awful truth (the whole ape/frogman thing) The revelation drives him insane and he kills himself.

The real problem with the story is that the reader worked out everything that would happen within the first 10 sentences. The suspense and horror you should be feeling is replaced by impatience. You can't help but wonder why the protagonist still isn't putting the pieces together. It might have to do with the fact that he's a half ape/frog, but he seems fairly intelligent in every other way. Plus, lovecraftian monstrosities are always completely indescribable (unless they are octopoid). To make up for the fact that he cannot describe them without contradicting himself, he resorts to over-using uncommon overly-erudite words which basically mean things like "strange" and "wibbly" and "just kind of, you know, odd." In order to truly be horrifying, a monster needs a better description than "thingy."

Anyway, I had to give him a bath because the wipes weren't up to the task.

Third place

Here

I think the biggest edge the other stories had over mine was that they were polished. It's a thing I need to work on. I tend not to sand and polish my work after I finish it. The story is out of my head, and that's me finished. In this case, there wasn't even a second draft. Definitely something I need to work on.

Also, they changed the formatting. The original manuscript was set up to make it obvious when the scene was changing. That formatting got lost, so it's a bit more confusing. Oh well.

Huzzah!

The Shine Journal

If you click the above link, you will notice that the site mentions a contest called "Let's See Your Shorts," and lists the three winning stories. Who has two thumbs and wrote one of those stories? This guy!

'Cept you can't see my thumbs. Or me either.

I meant me. I wrote one of them. "In the Empty Ward." I guess they'll be publishing them later this month.

Huzzah!