Random Personal Tales of Weirdity

Did I ever see a ghost?

No. But I had a friend who had a friend who lived with a friendly one.

Did I ever see anything inexplicable?

Well, I saw some strange lights in the sky when I was twelve years old. Once I saw Bigfoot walk past my window and completely froze up, overdosing on adrenaline. But seconds later I realized it was only my mother taking out the trash.

Did I ever hear anything unexplainable?

Another time, laying in the dark of my room, pretending to be asleep, I heard one of my dresser drawers being pulled out. A few times there were frightening night-time bangings on the window of the small bedroom me and my brother shared. But that turned out to only be my father sadistically pretending to be Santa checking up on us.

Any recurring weirdities?

Yes. I usually wake up within a few minutes of 3:15 am every night. Remember The Amityville Horror? George Lutz would always wake up at that time in the morning to go outside to check the boathouse. There’s tradition (or urban myth) that 3 am is the devil’s hour, being completely opposite of the time of the day Christ was crucified, redeeming us all. How that quarter-past-the-hour came to be, I don’t know. But I’ll usually wake up between 3:10 and 3:20 every night. Must have something to do with those 90-minute REM cycles.

Did I ever feel anything otherworldly?

Yes. This one’s serious. One night I was sleeping downstairs on the couch (my pregnant wife commandeered the upstairs bed) and I woke at 3:15 (natch). I went to the bathroom but as I rounded the bend I sensed something … not exactly demonic, not exactly a presence, even … but something in the corner of my children’s playroom. Hard to put into words, but I do believe I felt something that night. Haven’t since, which is a good sign. Possibly I was still partially asleep.

What were some of the Halloween urban legends of my youth?

We lived a block away from “the Woods”. There were lots of strange, wonderful, and spooky things in those woods. I can immediately recall a story – don’t know if there’s any truth in it – that circulated a lot when I was in grammar school. Seems there was this big cardboard box found in the woods, and whaddya think was in it? … Body parts! Dismembered limbs and such, part of a torso … but no head! I heard that delightful tale every year, year after year, more so during late October.

Any brushes with disaster?

On vacation with the family at Lake George, li’l ol’ ten-year-old me was playing on the dock by the boathouse. Oh look! I remember thinking, someone’s left a big black hairy rubber spider right there on the deck! I think I’ll go over, reach down and pick it up! Ahhhhh! It moves! … I’ve been scarred ever since.

Any encounters with bats?

No.

Black cats?

I like cats.

Witches?

Maybe. I think, based on hints dropped over a two-year period, that mother of one of my ex-girlfriends may have been a witch. I may have been under a spell for a four-year period, too, but that’s pure speculation.


H A P P Y

H A L L O W E E N

E V E R Y B O D Y !

Costumes

Little One is being Tinkerbell this year, wings and green slippers and all. She’s been, so far, a Pumpkin, an Oatmeal Bear, Cinderella, Minnie Mouse, and the Little Mermaid. Patch, who’s a little taller and a whole lot bigger than her older sister was at age two, is skipping a costume and jumping to the Cinderella hand-me-down.

Which got me thinking about what I used to dress up as, oh so many years ago.

My most creative costume? The invisible man. Bandages, shades, gloves, scarf, and a great big black overcoat. Good thing it was a cool Halloween that year. Must’ve been ten or eleven that year.

Lamest costume? I don’t remember those ones that you’d wear as a real young kid, with the painful plastic mask attached by a rubber band and a picture of the monster you’re supposed to be on your chest. But I do recall being in eighth grade or so, too-cool-for-trick-or-treating, when my brother and I suddenly decided to go out on a whim to score some candy. We went into our uncle’s closet and found a Yankees baseball cap and a cowboy hat. And those were our costumes: a fan and a rustler. Believe it or, we got a lot of candy.

Most ubiquitous costume, c. 1975 – 1980? That’s easy. Bum. Hobo. It seemed every year there was about a half-dozen of us who dressed up as bums. They even have bum kits in the stores for our parents to buy for us. I was a bum maybe two or three years. Now, not so much. I don’t know if it’s a case of political correctness or Christian compassion (probably something in between), but you don’t see many bums today. Or maybe that’s because I have a six-year-old daughter. I’ll get back to you once she gets to the fifth grade.

Best costume for those hard-drinkin’ adult Halloween parties? That’s easy, too: Angus Young. I was a huge AC/DC fan back in those days, and being a guitarist, I played a 1969 Gibson SG. I was Angus I think three times in my early twenties. Have a couple of pictures, so I’ll see if I can figger out how to post them here. There’s one of me as Angus and my singer as Jimi Hendrix that’s just loaded with memories for me, and not all of them stupid.

Last costume? Gee, this is embarrassing. The wife and our best friends, a couple, decided to throw a big Halloween party in 2003. We all went to a local party shop to buy some authentic, well-done costumes. The wife was a 50s bobby-soxer, for example. So I searched in vain for a Catholic priest costume – hey, no jokes now! I was going to be an honest man of the cloth. But, no, none was to be found, and to make matters worse, they all decided I should dress up in a bathrobe, pipe, and yachtsman’s cap … yes, paragon of virtue, Hugh Hefner. Sigh. I was embarrassed during the whole party. Good thing there’s no surviving pictures from that night.

What would I wear if I was going to a Halloween party this year? What does the father of two young girls who’s in his early forties go out as? Hands down:




DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba!

Year of the Cloud

© 1970 by Ted Thomas and Kate Wilhelm


[minor spoilers]

Perhaps the most simple yet utterly terrifying doomsday scenario I’ve ever read. That being said, overall the book was a rare disappointment for me.

That’s a towering high and a piteous low for a simple two-sentence paragraph. Let me explain with a bit of background first.

Over the years, the only thing I remembered about this book was its premise: all the water on the Earth slowly thickens into a gel-like substance incompatible with life. That and a bunch of scientists on a boat in the Caribbean doing science stuff.

I even forgot the title of the book for the longest time. Only recently it came back to me, and I wondered why I couldn’t recall the rest of the tale. So I went to an online used book store and purchased it.

Almost immediately I noted a few problems with the novel. Character motivations and the specific vignettes of conflict the authors chose to highlight come to mind. But after some thought, I realized the story focuses more on the symptoms of the premise than the reasons behind the premise, which would be far, far more interesting.

So what’s it about?

A near-translucent cloud five days out from Earth is discovered by the Palomar Observatory. Approximately three Earths wide, it appears to be composed of simple polymers and hydrocarbons. * Though the governments of the world declare little to be worried about – “enjoy the vivid sunsets!” – within a few weeks there are noticeable changes in the water.

The polymer from the cloud adheres to water molecules, thickening the liquid. Viscosity readings in the sea rise through the roof. Fish cannot swim, hunt, or breed in this new water rapidly spreading over the globe. Not only that, but rain falling on crops takes the form of a rubbery slush. Even more dreadful, it’s determined that the polymer can pass through membranes, such as those found within the human body. Our blood will thicken, too, over time, leading to sluggishness and cardiac problems for mankind and animals who have higher heart rates.

The standard apocalyptic end-times scenario plays out. Panic, rationing, martial law, every-man-for-himself-itis, the astonishingly quick breakdown of society. I’ve never enjoyed stories of this type, since my nervous personality fearfully realizes how fragile our society really is, how every little thing influences every other little thing, and how hard-wired the domino effect is in our world.

Anyway, that’s the backdrop while our intrepid playboy scientist, our standard-issue-egghead oceanographer, the woman they both love, a New York Times reporter, and a tough-as-nails failed actress struggle to find a way to survive and, possible, overcome this global threat.

The characters felt one-dimensional to me, with the possible exception of Carl Loudermilch (love that name!), the Times reporter. I envisioned him as the rumpled seeker of truth, a la Carl Kolchak from The Night Stalker teevee series. But then he’s hooking up with the butch actress, who’s fallen madly in love with him after a dangerous cross-country drive. Then, out of the blue, the oceanographer declares – with no clues whatsoever telegraphed to the reader – undying love for the playboy’s girlfriend, jeopardizing the search for a way to defeat the polymer. All this left me scratching my head.

Defeat the polymer! I’ve never read a story that had a chemical compound as its main antagonist. Admittedly it’s an ingenious mechanism for planetary annihilation, but throughout the novel I felt adrift, not having a specific sentient foe to root against. Reminds me of The Magnetic Monster, one of those cheapo 50s sci-fi flicks where the threat is a newly-discovered radioactive element. Remember the first Superman flick with Christopher Reeve? It’s like Superman spends the whole movie tracking down and disarming those two stolen nuclear missiles and doesn’t even bat an eyebrow at Lex Luthor. But I guess the best vibe Cloud produces would be that of one of those Irwin Allen disaster flicks of the 70s: Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Meteor, et al.

So what I’m saying is that, as a reader, I wanted to know more about the Cloud, not the polymer. Who put it there? Surely its placement, its size, and its effects on the planet lead one to believe it was not a coincidence. Such a question is alluded to but never followed up on in the novel. Is it an act of war, or a long-view nudge to evolve? Maybe if a sequel were to come, had the book been more successful, we’d discover the answer to that question. Maybe we’d encounter another Cloud with a different effect. Maybe there would be vengeance war of Heinleinian magnitude (think Puppet Masters meets Starship Troopers). But that would be quite a different novel from Year of the Cloud.

Ted Thomas and Kate Wilhelm (both alive and in their 80s at the time of this review) are legends in the SF community. Though I was disappointed with this one, I might seek out their other collaboration, The Clone, an expansion of a Thomas short story. And I may seek out another Wilhelm SF work after a bit of research and get back to you.



* I am not a chemist by profession or passion and am recalling most of this from memory.