I’m currently reading Casting the Runes by M.R. James in preparation for my first steampunk project–making a hollow book to house my mp3 player. Montague Rhodes James (Montague is a fantastic name) was a Victorian ghost story writer. I do love the Oxford World’s Classics mini hardbacks but this is the second one I’ve read that  had spoilers in the introduction. Dear Introduction Writers, I would like some background on the author, please, not your favourite bit in the book. Thank you, Someone Who Has Not, As Yet, Read the Book.

James could certainly write a blinding ghost story. ‘The Mezzotint’ is well-known and  appears in many collections, but I haven’t come across a weak story in the collection. Malevolent spirits and objects that characters should have left well alone are the chief spooks of choice.

As for the project, I’m following the guidelines on this very helpful site and cutting out an extra hole for the earphone jack. I know some people will have a fit about destroying a book, but you can blame OUP because their Oxford World’s Classics Hardcovers are just the right size, 6.6″ x 4.6″/16.8 cm x 11.7 cm. I’m going to make a Victorian-style cover for it with a mad title like ‘Little Victoria and the Ghastly Motorized Velocipede of Darkmoor Manor’. Right now I’m trying to find an illustration to use as a template for the front cover. I’d like a black and white drawing of a little girl in Victorian garb, holding a magnifying glass. My husband’s looked all over and can’t find one… it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request, though, so I’m going to keep looking.

[This is a post from a now-defunct blog. Original post date: August 17, 2007. The book turned out well for a first effort, though we couldn't find the right sort of image, so it sits on a shelf with the other, intact, mini hardbacks.]

Bette Midler has taught a very important thing.

I never want to be famous.

I wanted to be a STAR!! from the time I was 12. I felt this was the best way to meet celebrities and they were the people I wanted to be with/like. They were always perfect, looked great, were worshiped by millions and had loads of money. Then I talked my mother into paying for VIP tickets to a party Madame Midler was attending so I could meet her. We were not wealthy and those tickets were expensive. I’ve only very recently realized what my mother sacrificed to buy those tickets so I could meet my hero of many years.

Anyway, we went to the party and there she was. She treated me like garbage. I was nineteen, I had adored her for many years and she looked at me like I was muck on her shoe. This was at a function she was being paid to be at to meet her fans. I was within touching distance of her at Disneyworld a few years prior and didn’t say a world to her because she was on vacation and I didn’t want to bother her, but I felt I was justified this time. This time two thousand dollar tickets to be at the party were involved.

She came into the room thronged by paparazzi (and this was when her career was in a slump). Once she was finally by herself I tried to tell her what a fan I was–that I had come from North Carolina to New York just to see her, but she treated me like scum. I was stunned. It was inconceivable to me that a person I so admired could be such a jerk.

Once my mother and I were back at our crummy hotel I fell apart, crying and so on. I told my mother I couldn’t wait to be famous so I could treat people like crap, too. My mothers’ response: “Most people didn’t even get to touch her coat.” Yes, I got to touch her coat. That was supposed to be worth the two thousand dollars my mother paid.

Once I’d recovered I realized that I didn’t ever want that to be my life. I never wanted to have a life that wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere without being surrounded by the flashing of cameras. I have much more sympathy for celebrities (and am completely baffled by the people who’d court that insanity) and I’m grateful to have seen what being famous entailed before I sacrificed my life in the name of infamy.

I do hope she got what she wanted and I’m grateful for what she taught me.

And I haven’t bought an album or seen a film of hers since that evening–I simply can’t support a person who has so lost touch with her sense of humanity.

This is the first time I’ve written/spoken about that event, which was ten years ago, because it’s still so painful to me. I usually don’t think I’m worth a whole lot, but being treated as garbage by one’s idol is difficult to admit/look at, even a decade on.

Still, I’m grateful for it. I could have spent my life straining to be like her, only to either fail or get what I wanted and be a total bitch. And I can be a bitch without killing myself, thankyouverymuch.

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 8 October, 2007]

I’m hitting up my fav bookshop Saturday week and then I’m stopping by the used bookshop a couple blocks over. It has 35,000 books. I’m making a preparatory list. This is war, people. Because when I go into a bookshop I turn into a stereotypical man–I refuse to ask for directions. I can find my own goddamn books, thank you. My two X chromosomes give me the ability to find a book in a bookshop no matter the size. (I kid you not–I have never been in a book store where, after much searching and finally asking for assistance, has the desired book been located. If I can’t find it, it’s not there.) I will walk into that bookshop with my Miquelrius note-book and find something to bring home. Where I’ll put them is anyone’s guess. See next paragraph

Part of my massive cleaning effort this weekend involved getting rid of several books I’ll never read and rearranging some shelves, which means my bookcases are now tidier than they’ve been in ages. It also means my books fit their shelves perfectly and there’s no room for more. So I must obtain new books to make everything uneven again, of course. It’s as if I have some kind of constitutional aversion total order. I need just a little disorder.

mmmm disorder

[This is a post from a previous blog. Original post date: 9 September 2007]

1866

Originally posted on Le Marche Morte .

…the shrieking beholder…

(If you know the artist of the comic, please leave a comment.)

This page from the A.V. Club talks about films too painful to watch twice. Some should probably be too painful to watch once, really.

The title of the piece made me think of, in order: The Magdalene Sisters, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Caligula, The Piano Teacher, and Requiem for a Dream.

The only one of those on the list is the last one. The two others on the list I’ve seen are Safe and Boys Don’t Cry. I can definitely understand Boys Don’t Cry, but Safe? I found that to be an interesting and not at all painful film to watch.

What would you add to the list?

[This is a repost from a previous blog. Original post date: 4 October, 2007]

A site of arty and fun badges. Prickie.com

I don’t know why, but I’ve always liked buttons. My first one was yellow with red confetti on that said, ‘Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.’ It was on a gift when I was twelve, I believe.

When I get a new bag, I always have to put a couple badges on. My current hold-all has two: a red and white one from The Strand in New York, and a small one the logo for this site on.

As a younger teen I preferred badges with witty sayings on. ‘How far can you open your mind before your brains fall out?’ At thirteen, I thought that terribly clever.

Mid-to-late teens was deep sayings. ‘Everyone talks about changing the world but no one talks about changing themselves. –Tolstoy’ Oh, but I was so serious.

Now I’m more into art on badges. Asymmetrical, abstract art that I could just look at for ages. It’s less about what the badges would reflect on me if viewed by a stranger and more about what I find pleasing to look at.

I *do* love some of the Prickie badges–check them out.

Besides being based in Yanar Dag , my lair will be protected by my Hordes of Darkness, which will have an entire fire-unit.

This is their emblem (created by Robertas Pėžas ):

Led by this guy and his Monks of Flame:

The mortals in the HoD would need a bit more protection, obviously:

Then:

People like being bummed. It’s the only guess I have for why my really depressing posts get the most traffic. That can’t be right, though…

Anyway, I’ve been reading more of the Cerebus series by Dave Sim. I’ve done Church and State I & II , Melmoth , and Flights . I’ve also given myself something of a coronary in reading he’s diatribe about feminism, homosexuality and race tangents

Well, the first two parts of it. I had to take a break there. If you get through all of it, let me know what you think.

I’m enjoying Cerebus on the whole and I agree with Sim on some of his assertions about certain portions of feminism (I just wish he wouldn’t paint all women with the same brush). And I find that RS Stephen sums up how I feel much better than I do in her essay “Masculinity’s Last Hope, or, Creepily Paranoid Misogynist”. This bit in particular: “Despite the fact that you champion reason, your writing lacks the factual and intellectual rigor required by even an undergrad English essay, and your arguments aren’t all that logical.”

Melmoth is in interlude about Oscar Wilde, of all people, and is incredibly well-rendered.

As the storyline of Cerebus goes along it gets more complex and interesting, which is only to be expected, and even knowing that he and I wouldn’t be able to have an intellectual discussion over dinner doesn’t ruin that, though it does alter my reading of the text somewhat. It’s a train wreck situation. Where you wish you didn’t know it existed, but once you do, you just have to look. I simply had to know how he felt about women. So I read Tangents. And it altered the way I read his work.

This brings me to something else that’s in the literary news lately–J.K. Rowling commenting off-handedly that Dumbledore is gay. (If you don’t know who J.K. Rowling or Dumbledore are, please return to your rock for the rest of this post.)

Since she outed him there’s been several sides to the conversation. The two most predictable are: ‘What a big pedo! That’s why he liked Harry so much!’ and ‘She should have said it explicitly, Dumbledore was in the closet!!!’

Does knowing he was always gay change the way a person would read the books now? It shouldn’t, as it has no bearing on the majority of the books. But it will to some people. The people who only see the word ‘gay’, no matter if it’s in front of “the gay man who cured cancer”. In The Celluloid Closet Quentin Crisp said, “When you say heterosexual, people focus on the ‘hetero’ but when you say, ‘homosexual’, people focus on the sex.”

I’m a lesbian and a writer and I fully understand why Rowling handled the character as she did. A writer knows all sorts of things about her characters that she doesn’t tell the audience because it’s not pertinent to the story. It wouldn’t have made one bit of difference if Albus (I can call him that because we ride the same bus) had been explicitly gay or not. Who he loved didn’t matter much in terms of the story. And in a kids’ book, what is he supposed to say? If Rowling wanted to be sure everyone knew, at what point was Albus supposed to say he wanted to make the buttsecks with Grindelwald? You don’t address sex in kids’ books in that way. He said he loved Grindelwald. How much more do you want?

At the same time, she handled it beautifully. She said (when the revelation occurred in Carnagie Hall in New York) that if she’d known it would’ve made everyone so happy she would have told them sooner. The way to de-demonize homosexuality is to let people like the gay person first and then say, “Ta-da! I was a big ol’ queer the whole time!” It’s like Suzanne Westenhoefer, a marginally known but always out, lesbian comedienne and Ellen DeGeneres, a closeted until popular comedienne. Now she’s everywhere with her partner and people are cool with it. Sometimes you have to sneak under the radar before you can throw off the invisibility cloak.

[This post is from a previous blog. Original post date: 24 October 2007]