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Latest Humorous T-shirt Slogan: Stop looking at my tits! -This one was funny because it was printed in such an ornate font that it took me a good ten seconds to decipher what it said. Of course by that point the woman was saying, "My eyes are up here."
It's fun to hate:
When Shadowtwin reigns supreme:
Music lost to history: Alice Cooper: Roses on White Lace
Alice Cooper is basically what Marilyn Manson has become. He sang about really taboo subjects at a time
when taboo actually was taboo. This particular tune is one that I began listening to after being dumped by the girl that I was supposed to marry
back in the early nineties. It is actually one of three songs that play back to back on most albums. Those three songs are, if memory serves,
"chop, chop, chop", "Gail" and "Roses on White Lace". I never really appreciated the other two quite as much as this one, but then I have
never hacked anyone to death, so check back later... This song stands alone as being pretty cool just because it states the anger that I was having at the time (back in the '90s). At the same time, it illustrates that Marilyn Manson is following the course of another very successful rocker. While Cooper's songs were not earth-shaking, they were provocative. That single fact is what has led to Manson's success. I have never heard or read Marilyn Manson say that Alice Cooper was an actual influence on his music, but here is an example of it from twenty years ago. Is It Porn? The last entry, Was.com was not porn. Now for a tough one. Breast.com. What do you think, is it porn? No, it is not porn.
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I awoke this morning at about 6:30, which is far earlier than I really wanted to get up on my one day off, but was not able to get back to sleep. We recently
put up a thick curtain over the south-facing window in the bedroom, which a street light was shining through to keep us awake, but have only a blind over the west facing
window. Long story short it was bright as noontime in the bedroom by then, I find it difficult to sleep when it is light out. Thus I am groggy and feel like crap in general. I did manage to finish the book that
I was reading, however I am not sure if it is a contributing factor in my current mood.
John Saul's Black Creek Crossing was the book that I finished
reading this morning. For me to criticize an author's writing is much like being the one legged man in an ass kicking contest, but I am not going to let that stop me this time. There will be some spoilers in this, keep that in mind if you
ever plan to read it.
I have read a lot of Saul's work, mostly in my late teens/early twenties, and one thing that I can say for them is that they read
pretty well. The flow is usually pretty good, due in part to the fact that you know what is going to happen long before it ever does. His descriptions of places and people work pretty well also; quick enough to not bore you but complete
enough that you can recognize places or characters by name. The prose itself is straigt forward and not cluttered with a lot big words for the sole purpose of showing off his vocabulary. With the exception of the overly dramatic
prologue, and other such examples littered throughout the book, there is not a lot to complain about in the writing. Saul certainly isn't Dickens, but he can get the story across in a pretty fluid way, in my opinion anyway.
Now just to note a few of the major problems with the book. The story about the teenager being picked on and getting revenge on
his/her tormentors is certainly in at least half of all of Saul's books. The "horrible things happened in the house in the past, and they happen to the new family that moves in also" premise has
been done to death, by Saul. Most all of his books start with a family moving into a house, then something within the house or the community making the new occupants relive the old horror. The family that moves at the beginning of this book at least includes both
a mother and a father, often in his books it is just the mother and a single child. Of course the father in this story is an abusive, incestuous alcoholic, so not much
of a stretch to not consider him a father.
I am not going to go into any more of the similarities between this book and others that he has written, if you have read any of
his other work you already know, if you haven't it would take only the first chapter of any of his work to see it. He writes what sells, more power to him.
one of the issues that I really had with the book was with the demeanor the main character (Angel)'s parents. The father (Marty) was being portrayed as a very abusive and controlling
man. There were at least a couple of occasion where you were led to believe that he was being physically abusive to his wife, albeit offscreen. This physical abuse, as well as most of the verbal
abuse, was happening while he was drunk, which was most of the time. In one scene he actually raised a beer bottle with the intent to hit his wife with it. Yet, for some reason, there are several times when the wife (Myra) yells at him and
he cowers like a little puppy. That is not the behavior of any of the abusive alcoholics I have ever known, it also made me certain that the father was no threat for the duration of the book (which was bad since he was the only variable I hadn't explained within the first twenty-five pages).
Now, just to nit-pick. The novel is 358 pages long, that is including the prologue and epilogue. There are 47 chapters, that means that the average chapter (including the prologe and epilogue) is just about seven
pages long. Many of the chapters are less than four pages long, and one would have been less than one page were it not for the white space for the chapter heading and the blank space at the end. Throwing all copyright and fair use laws to the wind, I will quote
chapter 46 for you right here:
But there was nowhere else to go.
Not after what had happened in his house.
As he approached the front door, the awful sense of foreboding grew stronger, and he paused at the door, which was standing wide open, and listened.
A silence seemed to emanate from the house, a silence that felt as if it was about to swallow him up. Once again he wanted nothing more than to turn away, to leave whatever was inside the house undiscovered, and again he knew he could not. Steeling himself, he stepped over the threshold into the living room.
The television was still on, but somehow even its droning didn't dispel the strange sense of silence that imbued the house.
Knowing he didn't want to see whatever it was that lay beyond the living room, but knowing there was no alternative, he moved deeper into the house.
He found Angel at the bottom of the stairs, staring at the bodies of her parents, who were lying on the floor-her father on top of her mother-in a pool of their own blood. Myra Sullivan's eyes were open, and as he looked down at her, Seth had the uneasy feeling that she was looking back at him. Turning away, he looked at Angel. "It happened at my house too," he said softly.
Angel gazed at him, and for a second Seth wasn't sure she even saw him. A moment later, though, she spoke, her voice hollow:
"I know what we have to do."
Seth said nothing and when she led him out of the house, he silently followed.
They crossed the lawn to the road, and instead of turning right, toward the trail that would lead them to the cabin hidden in the cliff, Angel turned left.
Once again, Seth followed....
The little passage here does illustrate the overly dramatic thing I was talking about though. The fact that he separates a couple of lines into their
own paragraphs, most notably "But there was nowhere else to go." and "Not after what had happened in his house."
It kind of puts me in mind of the writing
I did while I was in my teens, of course the lines set that way gave me goosebumps when I read them back to myself, in reality they don't seem to have that effect
at all, or perhaps they do but only for a much younger reader.
To end this before (hopefully) the friend who bought the book for me and got it autographed takes me off of his christmas list, I will just say that it is a John Saul novel.
If you have never read anything by Saul, Black Creek Crossing is a pretty good example of his writing. It has been a long time since I have read the other books that he wrote, and they honestly blend
together in your mind since they are all so similar, but I do believe that you should read at least one of his novels. Saul doesn't seem to posess the unlimited imagination of someone
like Stephen King, but the one story that he has been telling (over and over again) over the course of his career is worth a look.
Were I to pick one of Saul's novels to recommend, this one probably wouldn't be it. If pressed I would probably recommend Black Lightning even though
the reader reviews just shred it. Black Lightning is a serial killer story though, and I think a lot of the reviewers were serial killer buffs. At any rate, Black Lightning was one of only a couple of Saul's works that I didn't know the ending of within the first
twenty-five pages, in fact I recall still being guessing until near the end.
• Nothing else of note to speak of today. Tune in next time to see if I am indeed removed from my friend's christmas card list.
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