A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

The beginning of what, we are portentously told via omniscient narration, is later known as the Events in Brandling is that England has a change in weather to very hot in the day and rainy at night, causing plants to grow lushly. In Brandling, a tiny village in Somerset, a guy named Charlie grows a huge squash.

The hump of the squash loomed in the darkness.

The squash continues to grow after he picks it, alarming some of the villagers.

They were men too close to the soil to remain unaffected by the squash and its size and the reactions it was beginning to cause.

They were beginning to feel its presence like fear.

Particularly Charlie:

"What'd you pick on me for?" he suddenly said aloud.

The squash was silent in the dark.

Other villagers scoff. They argue.

"That squash's real," Ted said.

A plant expert has been consulted, and his opinion is that plants don't like us cross pollinating them and messing with their genes, and they're going to rebel. He asks, perhaps rhetorically, "What would you say if I told you I believe the plant kingdom morally disapproves of what man is doing to the world?"

The dude he's talking to does not have a reply to that, but asks, "Is it possible they could control the weather?"

The plant expert is experimenting on trays of bean sprouts to see if plants have memory. He notices that the plants are responding faster, which means...

"They would not only be able to remember, but see into the future as well."

What.

In the gentle hum emerging from the air conditioning he failed to hear the tiny rustling sound from the rows of bean sprouts, nor did he detect the small, whispery note of menace it contained.

He dies mysteriously off-page surrounded by his bean sprouts, the author presumably having failed to come up with a plausible way the bean sprouts could have killed him and so deciding to leave it to our imagination. Usually this is a good technique in horror, but in this case my imagination fails.

What are used bookshops for if not for discovering utterly batshit, extremely earnest first novels by geologists turned advertising executives who want to convey their Very Important message about respecting the environment and particularly plants, via the medium of... this:



This message would probably be more effective if the author knew anything about... anything, really, but basic geography would help. A tragic backstory involving a prophetic villager finding an oil-slicked penguin falls utterly flat given that he says he found it while on a trip to the coast.

THERE ARE NO WILD PENGUINS IN ENGLAND.

Back to the squash, Charlie freaks out and chops it up, then buries it like a murder victim. This prompts the plants to rustle scarily to make him run, then stick out a root so he trips and hits his head against a rock.

The prophetic dude muses, "I wonder what you did to that squash, Charlie. I wonder how you offended it."

In more menacing behavior - this is described in the most ominous terms - a rose bush pricks a woman's finger. Twice.

( Then the plants REALLY get mad! )

I paid $3.00 for this and it was well worth it.

I am browsing a book on accidents in the Grand Canyon, blurbed by Tony Hillerman. It combines apparently solid reporting with extraordinarily melodramatic asides. I just now hit the section on incidents involving venomous creatures (very rare) which says people's fears of them are overblown and they shouldn't think of them as "death-slaves of the Grim Reaper."

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon

Sometimes I worry that I am a jaded reader who has lost the capacity to be boggled by a book. Then something like Lover Revealed comes along, and I realize that no, I can TOTALLY still be boggled. I am sincerely amazed that this series was published by a traditional publisher. Not because it’s terrible. (It is, sort of, but it definitely has its virtues as well.) But because it’s so utterly cracktastic and bizarre.

How do I even describe the whacked-out id-fest that is this book…?

It’s about a brotherhood of ginormously muscular vampires. Like these guys: http://www.kinseyinstitutegallery.com/data/photos/189_1r2002_29_32.jpg. (NOT WORKSAFE.) A lot of scenes in the book would look basically like that if drawn, in fact.

They are manly, manly, manly vampires. Who do man things. They are possessive and alpha. Manly! Muscular! Into brand names! When they bond, their sweat smells like Old Spice. And they wear very, very expensive brand-name clothes. And use manly slang.

Best of all, they have manly, manly names. ACTUAL NAMES: Vishous. Phury. Rhage. Rehvenge. Xhex (the lone manly female vampire. I presume this is pronounced Sex.) Tehrror. Hhurt. Tohrture. Ahgony. Zsadist.

ZSADIST.

They spend their time male-bonding, fucking, angsting, ogling each other’s beautiful yet manly bodies (and faces, and clothes, and hair), and hunting vampire-killers who are wusses who smell like baby powder. You’d think their manly, manly, manliness would be shown to better effect if they had opponents who weren’t ludicrously overmatched.

The worldbuilding consists of the letter h. A truly cool vampire does not avenge a loved one's death - he ahvenges it. They don't have contests like mere mortals - they have cohntehsts. And only a plebe would go into seclusion when she could experience the far more special sehclusion. And so forth. An especially manly man is phearsom.

This book has more homoeroticism than many novels I’ve read in which men were fucking each other on-page. The Brotherhood vampires are constantly touching each other, sprawled naked on a bed with each other, discussing each other's sex loves, popping giant boners around each other, and admiring each other’s swelling muscles.

Except for two of them (who get a canon romance later, good for you, J. R. Ward), they are canonically straight. Straight, I tell you! These are heterosexual romances. In theory. Here is an actual excerpt from Butch’s totally heterosexual POV.

"My flesh," he whispered.

He seemed to hesitate before turning to Butch. Then he pivoted and their eyes met. As candlelight flickered over V’s hard face and got caught in his diamond irises, Butch felt his breath get tight: At that moment, his roommate looked as powerful as a god… and maybe even as beautiful.

Vishous stepped in close and slid his hand from Butch’s shoulder to the back of his neck. “Your flesh,” V breathed. Then he paused, as if asking for something.

Without thinking, Butch tilted his chin up, aware that he was offering himself, aware that he… oh, fuck. He stopped his thoughts, completely weirded out by the vibe that had sprung up from God only knew where.

In slow motion Vishous’s dark head dropped down and there was a silken brush as his goatee moved against Butch’s throat.

With delicious precision, V’s fangs pressed against the vein that ran up from Butch’s heart, then slowly, inexorably, punched through skin. Their chests merged.

Butch closed his eyes and absorbed the feel of it all, the warmth of their bodies so close, the way V’s hair felt soft on his jaw, the slide of a powerful male arm as it slipped around his waist. On their own accord, Butch’s hands left the pegs and came to rest on V’s hips, squeezing that hard flesh, bringing them together from head to foot. A tremor went through one of them. Or maybe… shit, it was more like they both shuddered.

This is part of a climactic initiation scene in which all of the Black Dagger Brotherhood fondle and then punch Butch, then tell him to turn around and face the wall. Honest to God, I had to go back and re-read several paragraphs to figure out what Ward meant to have going on next if it wasn’t a gangbang. It sounded exactly like a slightly euphemistic description of an orgy.

My best guess on how the Black Dagger Brotherhood came to be is that the author took as her inspirations Tom of Finland, gangsta rap videos circa MTV, and the Gucci men’s wear catalogue, then smoked a giant doobie and wrote a vampire novel.

The result is completely rhidiculous, yet strangely rheadable. I read the whole thing in a day and am now halfway through Lover Awakened, the bhook about Zsadist. Send help. And an h-remover.

Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 4)

I figured out why my cornmeal cake turned into a blunt instrument. I glanced at the recipe and apparently noted the proportions but misread the amounts of the two types of flour, so instead of using one cup of flour and half a cup of cornmeal, I used two cups of flour and one cup of cornmeal. Oops.

Definitely worse than Yoon's apple crumble disaster, in which she forgot to put in the sugar in the crumble topping, but I salvaged it, or at least made it edible, by adding more sugar and butter and putting it back in the oven. The cornmeal cannonball had to be flung into the dumpster, where it landed with an echoing boom.

Tell me about your worst cooking disasters.

I just discovered, via comments in my last post, why everyone was so confused in Japan when they asked what I did for a living, and I said I was a writer. Due to a pronunciation subtlety, I probably was actually saying, "I am a hill." (Sakka vs. saka.)

On other trips, I told people that my Japan rail pass allowed me to ride anything but a rat ("Nozomi," the super-fast train, vs. "nezumi," rodent) and that I was terrified of a lady's tiny, fluffy, pink-ribboned Pomeranian puppy ("kawaii," cute, vs. "kowai," scared.)

My college Japanese teacher told the class that she had worked as a waitress when she'd first come to America, and was baffled for quite some time by her customers' reactions when she asked them if they'd like a side order of lice.

Have any of you had similarly comical misadventures in language?

I am doubling a cake recipe. I just added baking powder to the flour. I now can't remember if I remembered to double the baking powder or not. It is now, of course, inseparable to all the flour.

HELP! What do I do? If I double it again and I already doubled it, what happens? If I fail to double it and it turns out I baked a cake with half the required baking powder, what happens? Which would be worse?

Doubled quantities were supposed to be four cups flour, 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powders.

ETA: I could also just dump out everything, but that seems so wasteful. Is there anything one could do to four cups of flour with an unknown quantity of baking powder in them?

ETA II: I hadn't mixed anything yet, so I scooped out the top layer and threw that out, then re-measured the flour and added correct amount of baking powder. I think.

I was on several panels, including a rather intellectually elevated one on writing academic papers on anime, during which the panel of professors frequently name-dropped Foucault and Derrida, and one on writing manga, which thank God I dragged telophase to because otherwise I would have been the only person on the panel.

But the Panel That Will Live In Infamy was the one on Saiyuki, which consisted of me (presumably to discuss the manga) and American dub actors Greg Ayres (Goku) and Monica Rial (lots of minor characters.) I showed up on time. The room was packed with bright-eyed Greg Ayres fans, several of them armed with video cameras. (This whole panel might be on YouTube, for all I know.)

Greg and Monica didn't show up. And didn't show up. I finally said, "I know you're all here to see Greg Ayres; I'm sure he'll be here in a moment; let's just wait a bit."

Ten or fifteen minutes past the time the panel should have started, I said, "I'm sure Greg will get here eventually, but since this is a panel about Saiyuki, I'll start talking about it, and Greg can jump in when he arrives."

Crazed fangirls: Collective groan.

Me: "Let's have a show of fake enthusiasm!"

Crazed fangirls, who thankfully had a sense of humor: "Woo-hoo! Yay!"

I introduced myself and began to discuss the manga. Just as I was starting to get warmed up, Greg Ayres walked in. He looked about my age (32) or a bit older, a short guy with a pink face and wispy blue and green hair.

Crazed fangirls: Genuine hysteria.

Greg Ayres and I begin to discuss Saiyuki (both of us) and tell amusing anecdotes about the life of a voice actor (him.) This went fine until I attempted to agree with him that the relationship of Goku and Sanzo was not sexual in nature by referring to Saiyuki Gaiden, a prequel series which is licensed and scheduled, but not yet available in English.

Me: "Let me just tell you what Gaiden is, for those of you who haven't read it in scans--"

Greg Ayres (breathing smoke): "Hold it right there. Scans are totally wrong! How dare you mention scanlations! You should never read them! They're stealing, they're evil, they're--"

Me: "Um, let me clarify. I'm not talking about reading scans instead of buying the official release. I buy the English releases of everything I read in scans. I'm just talking about reading ahead."

Greg Ayres (shooting flames from his nostrils): "It makes no difference! It's still stealing! I never do that! You should never do that! It's totally immoral! And illegal! And unethical! It destroys the livelihoods of manga creators! It's like breaking into their houses and stealing! I know of many mangaka who cannot ever be licensed in English because their work had been scanned!"

Note: I wish I'd asked him who he was talking about. It's not that I think he was lying; I just wonder if there's more to the story, as an awful lot of manga that has been scanned gets licensed anyway.

Me: "I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this. By the way, I am a manga creator, and there's more than one side to this issue. I know of some mangaka whose work was licensed because it had an online fanbase."

Greg Ayres: (Head explodes.)

Me: "Um... do you mind if I refer to Gaiden? I do actually read Japanese, so I theoretically could have read it in Japanese. It's just that it's difficult and I'm lazy... Oh, wait, I forgot, it's in the anime too! We can just say we're talking about the anime!"

Greg Ayres (pointing to crazed fangirl): "You!"

Crazed fangirl: "Can I hug you?"

Greg Ayres: "Uh... after the panel."

Crazed fangirl: (Hand pops up again.)

Greg Ayres: "Yes?"

Crazed fangirl: "Can you say, 'I love you, Sanzo?' In your Goku voice?"

Greg Ayres: "I love you, Sanzo."

Entire room: "SQUEEEEE!"

The panel then continued in a less awkward manner, except for a slight hiccup when Greg Ayres mentioned watching a series that has not yet been released in English. "I don't own this!" he added hastily. "I saw it at a friend's house! And it was a legal version! We watched it in the original Japanese! Without subtitles!"

Later that day, I spotted Greg Ayres walking by, as I sat behind telophase's table piled high with unauthorized fanart.

"Hi, Greg!" I said.

He stared at me like he had no idea who I was. As it had not occurred to me that he was seriously angry at me-- I thought we'd just had a disagreement, as reasonable people may do-- I assumed that, like I often do, he had merely failed to recognize me.

"I'm Rachel Brown!" I explained. "From the panel this morning."

A large, blinking neon sign reading, "I HATE YOU" materialized over his forehead. Shooting me a look of utter loathing, he seemed to struggle with words for a moment. Then he spat out, "You and I have very different opinions!" And turned his back, and stomped away.

If any of you ever meet Greg Ayres, I've got some good links to illegal download sites you can pass on with my compliments.

I went to Brentano's to look for Saiyuki # 8, which they didn't have, and then became transfixed by Toni Bentley's butt-fuck memoir, The Surrender, about how she found God up her ass. I'm serious.

"I came to know God experientially, from being fucked in the ass—over and over and over again."

"I want to die with him in my ass"

It's... well... a pretty good read, I have to say, although I wish I knew exactly how much of the humor was intentional. A lot of it reads like Mad Libs entries where all the inserted words and phrases involve ass: "True happiness can be found... in the ass." "Love is... taking it up the ass." "The last taboo is... ass." "I never got over my childhood until I explored the joy of... ass" "My training as a ballerina prepared me for... ass."

Then I heard the sound of clapping. I went to see what was going on, and saw an author standing by a table of books, with a small audience. I went closer to see who it was, thinking that if it wasn't anyone I'd heard of, I'd check her out anyway because hey, she's on tour and some day that'll be me and maybe her book would be really cool and something I'd want to read and then I'd buy it and make her happy and justify this leg of her tour.

When I got close enough to read the sign, which advertised "Barbara DeAngelis: author of How Did I Get Here? : Finding Your Way to Renewed Hope and Happiness When Life and Love Take Unexpected Turns and
Are You the One for Me?: Knowing Who's Right and Avoiding Who's Wrong," three things happened:

1. I realized that I knew who the author was, and that I'd flipped through some of her books before, and that I'd found them insipid, cliched, and unquestioning of defunct gender roles.

2. A woman in the audience said, quite loudly, "There's a seat here in the front!"

3. Barbara DeAngelis said, "Come on in, there's a seat right here."

Since, after all, some day it would be me up there... I pretended that I had intended to attend the thing, and obediently sat down.

Barbara DeAngelis proceeded to talk for forty minutes without break. She used words like "authenticity," "healing," "wholeness," and "transformative." She referred to Native American vision quests. She asked all of us who had had an experience we didn't expect to have happen to us occur in the last year to raise our hands. She said that we thought we'd had a good day when things like our job, our family, and our friends were all doing well, and a bad day when bad things happened to those things that we cared about, but we should have a good day because of what's inside of us, not because of outside events-- that if we were dying, we'd say it was a good day just because we were alive, so we should always say it's a good day because we're alive. She said that we don't have mid-life crises, we have mid-life opportunities for change.

I didn't want to be horribly rude and walk out, especially from my first row seat, so I amused myself by imagining how Toni Bentley would have written DeAngelis' books: How Did I Get Up Your Ass? : Finding Your Way to Renewed Hope and Happiness in the Ass When Life and Love Take Unexpected Turns into Ass and Are You the One for My Ass?: Knowing Who's Right for Your Ass and Avoiding Who's Wrong for Your Ass.

Barbara DeAngelis informed us that she had built a career out of total honesty and straightforwardness, and yet she realized that there were parts of herself that she had been hiding from the world, and so she decided that in order to be a truly authentic person, she would have to come out of the closet and reveal those significant aspects of herself that she'd been holding back out of fear.

Ass, I thought. Ass, ass, ass! Please tell us that authenticity lies in ass!.

"My psychic talents," she said. "My great work as a spiritual healer and counselor. I have helped so many people, I have so much compassion, and I wish to share that... Now... With all of you."

She looked into all our eyes, dramatically, one by one. I sat there until it went to question and answers, then I ostentatiously checked my watch, mimed "Eeek, it's late!" and fled. Even so, I'm sure she thought I was an ass.

I'm not sure if the disclaimer here should be that I adore a lot of Simon and Garfunkel's music, which is why I bought the deluxe complete set on CD (albeit used), or that I am aware of their besetting sin of wussiness, and I like them anyway.

1. Art Garfunkel does not sound like the sort of person who would ever, ever rob a liquor store, and so the two songs in which his first-person narrator does just that sound a bit goofy. Also, was Paul Simon aware that there are other criminal possibilities?

Oh baby, you don't know what I've done,
I've committed a crime, I've broken the law.
While you were here sleeping and just dreaming of me,
I went and embezzled a thousand dollars.

See, isn't that more plausible?

2. I know these were all written in the sixties and maybe things were different then, but who writes graffiti in crayon?

3. The word "groovy" has not worn well.