Return to Koontzville

 

So last month I re-read a bunch of Dean R. Koontz novels – or Dean Koontz, as he goes by since I was actively reading him. More like I just read them, minus the “re”, as something like 90-95 percent of the plot, characters, and specific scenes seemed new and fresh to me, since they’ve been long misfiled in my memory. Four novels I burned through, all originally read between 1989 and 1993 – the last over 31 years ago, when I was but a young innocent lad. Since that ’93 Koontz I’ve put away around 980 more books by my reckoning, but who’s counting?

 

It was an experiment in the same spirit as my Tom Clancy re-reads earlier this year. Those nine monstrous doorstops of Jack Ryan took me five months to slog through, but, truth be told, that slog was an extremely enjoyable ride down nostalgia lane. Would the Koontz experiment have the same result?

Yes and no.

 

I put away four novels in 32 days. Each was around 360 pages, so I averaged 45 pages a day, so, yes, they were page-turners. One took about 12 days and the other three took less than a week. As usual, the closer I got to the end of a novel, the faster those pages burned through my hands.

 

Here’re the synopses, in reading order:

(minor spoilers)

 

Midnight (1989) … My first foray into Koontzville. My buddy, the horror aficionado who got me into Stephen King in high school, recommended this to me and I remember reading it while still living at home with my parents – and being floored by it. Couldn’t put it down, and was utterly fascinated with the main twist(s). What appears to be werewolves haunting a quiet, cozy seaside town turns out to be some evil nanotechnology run amok, and Koontz pushes it to its ultimate regression. A sinister and warped genius of a bad guy versus an FBI agent and the sister of the first victim isolated in the town and being hunted. First novel I think I read where computers really come into play.

 

The Bad Place (1990) … Again read at my parents’ house. This was a crazy one about an insanely psychotic family of psychics with teleportation ability versus a husband-and-wife private eye team. Gory, weird and surreal. How do you fight something with godlike powers? (more on that down below). A nasty journey through the past provides a plausible explanation for how the psychos were bred. A lot of colorful side characters, too many of whom meet brutal ends. Great ending. This was my favorite Koontz back then, and after the re-read still remains my favorite.

 

Cold Fire (1992) … This was read in my apartment before I returned to college. Didn’t remember much of it, save for that it was a much occluded mystery. A man seems to be called by God to be here or there at a moment’s notice to save the life of an insignificant person. During one such seemingly random event, a (naturally unattached attractive) female reporter sees this happen and begins hunting around into the man’s past. They meet on an ill-fated plane and fall in love, and fall into the mission of continuing these rescues and trying to find out why they happen. Especially since something evil has entered both their dreams and is slowly making inroads into waking reality. A mystery involving a windmill, a few misdirections, and before we know it we’re questioning whether there are aliens or demons or who-knows-what puppeteering the man for unknown purposes. (Though I guessed the true reason rather quickly – rare for a Koontz novel.)

 

Dragon Tears (1993) … Didn’t remember much of this, including whether or not I liked it – but it turned out to be the gem of this re-read session. Two cops (male and female, naturally, and attracted to each other, check) stop a random shooter at a burger joint and find themselves … ready for it … sit down … they find themselves inexplicably being stalked by a god-like entity who can not only stop time but wants to end the cops lives in the most brutal fashion imaginable, as the male cop finds out when he checks on a friend later that day. The entity is called “Tick Tock”, since he gives an ultimatum to his victims in hours, and the clock begins ticking immediately. This had the best surprise as to the origin of Tick Tock – I literally slapped my forehead and grinned at the sneakiness of Koontz’s writing ability.

 

My grades:

   Midnight – B+

   The Bad Place – A+

   Cold Fire – B

   Dragon Tears – A+

 

Bottom line is I enjoyed the Koontz re-reads, but noticeably less than the Clancy re-reads. Could be ’cuz horror is not really my thing anymore (but, then again, neither are techno thrillers) save once-a-year at Halloween. Could be ’cuz my memory skewed overly positive on the first-time reads, so no re-read could ever match up. I dunno. But, like Clancy, I don’t think I will revisit Koontz again. (Man, the finality of that statement kinda hits me weird, no?)

 

Would I recommend? Yes! If you are into old-school horror and want an alternative to Stephen King, check him out. He can be gross, he can be gory, he can be formulaic, but he is always highly imaginative and always surprising. I think the sweet spot for reading Koontz is the late teens. Maybe a senior in high school. I read him in my early to mid-twenties, and it worked just as well. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about 21st-century Dean R., but just about anything he wrote between 1980 and 1993 is worth your investment in time, especially since they’re all page-turners of varying degree.

 

Remember,

 

Koontz : King :: Beatles : Rolling Stones

 

A Nightmare

 

Had a creepy nightmare last night. May I tell you? Okay!

 

My wife and I were on the boardwalk one evening and found ourselves in front of an old-timey movie house. We entered and discovered that a participatory play type of thing was scheduled – except, we learned, a play more like the Squid Game than any dinner theater. There was a huge group vying to get in, something like a hundred people, so the rewards definitely seemed worth it. We agreed to sign up and were ushered in.

 

The premise was simple and B-movie-ish: You had to keep your eyes closed no matter what. If you opened them, there very well could be the chance you’d be staring eye-to-eye with a demonic being. A black shadowy entity with glowing red eyes. And once you glanced into those eyes, even for a split second, you could not look away – and something very, very bad would happen, something involving a lot of gore.

 

The next building we entered turned out not to be that old-timey movie theater but a Catholic church. People were shuffling in but urgently taking up positions. The ideal position seemed to be as far up from the floor as possible, hence men and women of all ages standing on pews, on tables at the end of each pew, and in stained-glass window frames. My first instinct was to go up on the altar, but I was hesitant, but soon discovered others weren’t. So I raced up to the altar, the sanctuary as its called (giving my nightmare much spiritual and religious significance), passed the empty priest’s chair, and stood on a table (not the tabernacle) at the rear of the sanctuary, and forcibly closed my eyes as the “game” started.

 

We all began to hear surprised shrieks and short screams vaguely in the distance, but definitely approaching. Then it was quiet for a long time, and then I felt a dark presence come over me. Blanket me. Dark, oppressive, menacing, evil, touching but not-quite-touching me, moving over my head, from one ear to the other. Whispering to me with its rancid breath, daring me to be curious, open my eyes and take a look. Even to open them just to look down on the floor. Though severely frightened, I did not yield to the voice and kept my eyes forcibly shut, though my head was definitely aimed downward. After what seemed an eternity, the presence moved on.

 

Then a whistle blew and we were told we had a break. Our eyes could be opened safely and we could move around. I did so, and noticed people were talking about everything but what we’d just been through. Weirdly, I began practicing a golfing exercise I hadn’t done since my 20s, which I learned in the only golf lesson I took. This impressed a few people nearby for some reason, and I felt a large degree of hubris. I’m sure this has a deeper symbolic meaning, but it escapes me now as I struggle to get this all down before the dream fades.

 

An unexpected signal alerted us that the “game” would begin again. I dashed back to the altar and saw my prior spot was taken, so I had to rush to find a new one – this off to the right of the sanctuary. I sat on a table, and in grim expectation of being visited again, I noticed something unpleasant in my mouth. I fished around with a finger and realized that there was some debris of some sort between my cheeks and gums. I withdrew my finger and it was covered in what looked like chopped up tomato parts, but was warm and sickening to the touch. I wiped it on the side of the table, and pulled more and more of it out of my mouth.

 

Quickly the scene morphed into a third trial of the “game.” The break was uneventful and my dream did not linger on it. Instead, I sat in the open priest’s chair, directly behind the altar. That dark evil entity again descended upon me, but was much weaker this time. In fact, I was not scared at all, and it quickly passed by.

 

Then, I awoke. The house felt cold and it seemed pitch black outside, so it must’ve been four or five in the morning. Was it 3:15, the bane of my overnights? I don’t think so, but I can’t confirm, because I would not open my eyes. Turning over, I went back to sleep, and my cell phone alarm went off in what seemed a few short minutes later. Light crept in through the blinds. I threw the covers off, put on my socks, and got up to clock in to do some remote work, and get this down on paper before I forget.

 

Some Thoughts on the UHC Crime

 

1) Yes, we do live in a multi-tiered society as far as the justice system is concerned. Were I or one of my family members gunned down in NYC in a similar style, it is doubtful the entire local, state, and federal law enforcement industrial complex would move heaven and earth to apprehend the perpetrator.

 

2) I am appalled at the love the perp is receiving. As of last night a casual stroll of X (Twitter) showed about a 50/50 split between praise for the murder / murderer, and conspiracy theorizing (more on that below). No matter who the victim is or what the victim does, murder is always wrong and never justified. There are several conditions to this, however. Self-defense being the first that springs to mind. But our (admittedly multi-tiered) legal system is based on trial by jury, and no one has the right to be judge, jury, and executioner.

 

3) We live in a dumbed down world that is getting dumber by the minute. I say this in reference to the knee-jerk “everything is a conspiracy” mindset that washes over just about every major event that happens nowadays. As one who recognizes that conspiracies have existed in the past and can theoretically still occur, and groups can and did hide in the shadows, not everything that happens is part of someone’s Grand Scheme. The fact that the percentage of seemingly intelligent people believe the moon landing to be a hoax has been growing every year convinces me of this unchecked plague of dumbth.

 

4a) All the points above need to be taken with large amounts of NaCl crystals. Grains of salt, that is. The Internet is a weird place. Being anonymous, it’s a playground for the Societal Id, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s like the movie Purge but for keyboard warriors. So I don’t believe its entirely true. I don’t think that if one questions a group of 20 people all face-to-face that 10 will praise this sick weirdo and 10 will say the oligarchy planted another Oswald. I think a lot of the Internet is spiteful, contradictory, ideological, drunk-uncle-ish, and/or just plain uninformed. A lot is feelings over reason. So it’s not an accurate barometer of a culture. 

4b) Yet I don’t deny people generally speak more truthfully in a setting of anonymity. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say the aggregate Internet response to any global event is likely to be around 60-70% truthful but with an intrinsic (as opposed to apparent) intensity of only 20-25%.

 

(And as I’ve always said around here, only 85% of what I type is full-on truth. The other 10% is stretched out a little bit here and there. The other 5%, however …)

T-Day '24

 

Ah, perhaps my favorite holiday of the year! Thanksgiving, a time for not only giving thanks for what we’ve been blessed with, but also a time of relaxation, reflection, refreshment, and an overall pause from the hectic busyness of life.

 

Thanksgiving and Easter are, hands-down, my favorite holidays of the year. Christmas is a far distant third, as I often find it one of the more stressful stretches of the year (“Spendmas,” endless socializing). But this year, however, I was extremely proactive, and over these past couple of days off for the Thanksgiving holiday I was able to get my Christmas shopping done save for a stocking stuffer or two.

 

Anyway, we had an enjoyable, peaceful couple of days down here in Texas. The weather finally turned brisk, with most days hovering in the high 50s / low 60s with nights dropping down below 40. Little One was home from college since the Saturday before, and Patch was off from school all week too. I worked a full crunch day on Monday with two hours Tuesday morning to get all my November accounting done. After 10 am on Tuesday, I’ve been in holiday mode.

 

The girls spent time with their mom thrifting, holiday shopping, and at the grocery store(s) for our big meal on Thursday. They all caught up on their baking shows and their SVU criminal shows while I listened to my records and read. One afternoon we all watched a corny Hallmark flick and in the evenings put away a couple of episodes of our newest season of 24. Little One and I watched half of Donnie Darko. Patch and I watched some Regular Show episodes. And among all this laying around in front of the tube we all pitched in to clean the house, run last-minute errands, walk the dog, and all the other ephemera a household needs to run. I actually lifted weights and walked a few miles a couple of days.

 

The Mrs. baked a pumpkin pie Wednesday evening, while my girls alternated on dinner duty during the weekdays leading up to Thanksgiving. Me, I don’t cook. I’m the cleaner. I must’ve washed a hundred dishes, glasses and utensils and loaded/unloaded the dishwasher a half-dozen times. But the ladies outdid themselves cuisine-wise. They started early Thursday cooking the turkey (my wife), stuffing, cranberry and carrots (Little One), and sweet potato casserole (Patch). And it was all mouth-watering-ly perfect.

 

Around 2 in the afternoon I made up a charcuterie board – sliced cheddar cheese, soppressata, and crackers. The Mrs. heated up some brie to go along. We had our “appetizers” in the living room along with Margaritas (the ladies) and my favorite fake beer, Run Wild by Athletic Brewing Company. We chatted and relaxed for about an hour, then they all descended upon the kitchen for the last-minute push while I put on the Giants-Cowboys game.

 

Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment; but I haven’t seen the Giants play all year but I have followed them and am rooting for The Tanking. More so that the front office and coaching departments can get shown the door. But they fought valiantly against Dallas, and though they did not win, as expected, they weren’t blow out, which was unexpected. But I got to witness firsthand the sloppy, undisciplined, uninspired, unathletic play of the New York Giants.

 

We still had a few minutes of daylight left before dinner, so the girls and I went outside and tossed around a football. Both my girls can throw a wicked spiral with some mph on it, usually better than I can. It was a fun little callback to their youth when we’d do the same, only in snow. Then we went back in and had one of the best Thanksgiving meals the Mrs. put out ever.

 

 

 

Once the table was cleared we took Charlie the dog on a short car ride to the ponds by my house, where we could walk through brightly-lit life-size Christmas ornaments along the walkway. Upon returning we watched Christmas Vacation and had some pumpkin pie. After that, Little One had to get to bed early as she’d be working in the mall for Black Friday and whatever color Saturday is. The Mrs. was wiped out and she too went to bed early. Patch retired to the “apartment” upstairs to text friends. I let the dog out and crated him for the night, then reclined in my reading chair with my fourth Koontz book, Dragon Tears. Read 80 pages until I, too, could no longer fend off the turkey tryptophan, and hit the hay.

 

A great Thanksgiving. Simple, fun, and just the immediate family. True, we do miss our extended family and our friends throughout the US and feel a little guilty about being so far away, but Facetime is a wonderful thing.

 

Now to gather the strength for Christmas, less than four weeks away …

Prayer Request

 

All kidding aside, I’ve been hamster wheelin’ these past ten days, struggling with work to get November closed early so I can use my use-or-lose PTO time for the end of this month. I am now off for the next five days, including yesterday, and don’t restart the monthly merry-go-round until Monday, December 2. That being said, I now have glorious time to read my Koontz, start a Civil War historical atlas, watch some Hallmark, horror and SF movies with my girls, and write some blog posts.

The usual year-end ones are on the horizon: the 2024 Best-Ofs; some thoughts on what should be the Picture of the Year, as well as my own Picture of the Year; a review of all these Dean R. Koontz novels I’ve been re-reading; and a 2025 Reading Plan, for those keeping track at home. Also a recap of Thanksgiving, celebrated tomorrow, and anything else I find newsworthy in the remaining five weeks of the year.

Sigh

 

Seems like it’s open season on my wallet this month …

 

Synchronicity or Syzygy?

 

“God teaches the soul by pains and obstacles, not by ideas.” – Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence

 

“What stands in the way becomes the way.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

 

S = ∫ (t1 to t2) L dt

 

Measured in joules / second, or accomplishments per unit of life.

 

Guitar Strap Height Guide

 

A very true and illuminating peek for non-musicians into the mind of the guitarist:

 

I played seriously in hard rock bands from 1986 to 1996, and my guitar strap journey started at the far right of the diagram, moved quickly to the left, then slowly rose again returning rightward. (Though I always referred to it as guitar strap length.)

 

For reference, Jimmy Page hovers at the far left, Robert Fripp of King Crimson at the far right, and someone like Alex Lifeson occupies the middle of the diagram, with Angus near Jimmy and Steve Howe near Fripp.

 

Gave me a chuckle this morning.

 

Dean Koontz

 

So I decided to end my year re-reading some of the novels of Dean R. Koontz.

 

I had such a great time re-reading Tom Clancy’s books earlier this year, from March to August. I wrote a couple of posts here detailing the experience. The re-reading was filled with nostalgia and the books still packed a punch, be it through shock or can’t-put-it-down suspense. I graded them all A’s, and threw plusses or double-plusses on the ones I really enjoyed. Most importantly, re-reading these books became a little oasis from the daily grind, the never-ending duel with issues and problems and curve-balls that work- and family- and personal-life consistently throw at me.

 

When I finished, I started seeking a new oasis. And I found it.

 

Way way way back in the 20th century I was hooked on Dean R. Koontz. This was even before I heard of Tom Clancy. I wasn’t keeping any records back then, but I think it must have been from 1989 to 1993 that I read through about 15 of his books. I have a hard time remembering which ones I read because a) it was a lifetime ago and b) his books tend to have generic titles.

 

I do remember the first book of his I read, 1989’s Midnight.  I was 22 and still living at home with my parents. A buddy, a fellow-reader, the guy who got me addicted to Stephen King in high school, recommended it to me one summer day. And soon enough I read through something like 15 more Koontz novels, most in the span of a busy four years. Busy because I was working full time, attending night school, managing a girlfriend, renting a house with two other guys then getting my own apartment, all while trying to launch a successful rock band. Yeah, even with all the partying I did back then I had so much energy I still shake my head in wonder. How I found time to read anything at all amazes me, but I did. It was an oasis back then.

 

Fortunately, the local library here stocks about 20 of his novels, all in hardcover. On Halloween I borrowed Midnight and burned through it in a week. (I am still reading the massive One Thousand Days narrative of the JFK presidency and am about 2/3rds done with that.) Later tonight I’ll take Patch out for dinner and stop at the same library for the next Koontz on my list, The Bad Place (1991).

 

Most of the Koontz books yield few specific memories save for a character or two, one or two shocking scenes, and a bare bones outline of the plot. For my re-reading list I’m using how I recall my gut feeling about the book. Midnight and The Bad Place give good vibes. I plan on reading four more to the end of 2024, for similar recollection of good vibes: Cold Fire (1992), Dragon Tears (1993), Twilight Eyes (1985), and Lightning (1988).

 

Two other Koontz’s I read and enjoyed back then, Whispers (1980) and Phantoms (1983) I would put on my re-read list then had I not re-read them in the early 2000s. I’d recommend either one to a reader interested in Koontz for the first time. They even made a movie of Phantoms in 1998 starring Ben Affleck (!) and Peter O’Toole (!!!). It was terrible, please avoid.

 

The last book of his I originally read up until last week was Intensity (1995), and it was the only Koontz I hated. I remember it as standard serial-killer cat-and-mouse humdrum, with a stretch of 40 pages describing a woman trying to free herself while tied in a chair. After reading that I moved on from horror in general, though I’m aware he started writing several series of interconnected novels, including an updated version of the Frankenstein saga.

 

Koontz is a prodigious and prolific writer, publishing something like 145 novels, if my counting of his Wikipedia bibliography is accurate, dating back to the late 1960s, under a variety of pen names. At least two other novels were made into movies, Hideaway (1992) with Jeff Goldblum (I liked the story but the special effects were atrocious) and the very-well received Demon Seed (1973), about a computer which forcibly imprisons and later impregnates a woman. That movie, from 1977, gave me many unsettling nightmares from my youth sneak-watching it in the early days of cable TV.

 

I’ll do a re-evaluation at the end of the year, similar to what I did for Clancy, on how the books held up over 30 years. Or perhaps how my memory held up. Regardless, it will be seven weeks of fun reading, a cool oasis from the hustle-and-bustle of Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, obligations, and work for the remainder of 2024.

 

Happy Halloween!

 

Imajica

 

 

© 1991 by Clive Barker

 

When I was a young lad I devoured a lot of horror literature.

 

In high school I mostly read Stephen King. I had a friend who had all of King’s books in paperback, and he’d feed them to me one by one. By the time I graduated I read every one from Carrie to the Bachman books, including his short story anthologies. The following year I read It, and the year after that, The Tommyknockers. I stopped reading Stephen King around the year 2001. I think Dreamcatcher was the last one of his I read.

 

In the late 80s I shifted to Dean R. Koontz. Within three or four years I put away something like 18 of his novels. Though somewhat formulaic, they all were quick, fun reads, always with a dash of horror, a lot of suspense, and usually a happy ending. The thing I liked best about his stories was the fact that you could never predict what the solution to the existential threat was. If Koontz wrote Dracula instead of Bram Stoker, the monster would be revealed at the end not to be a vampire of the traditional sort but a secret government black ops scientific experiment mixing human, bat, and alien DNA gone terribly awry. With some form of time or interdimensional travel tossed in. That kinda thing.

 

A few years ago I read on a message board that, broadly speaking, King could be regarded as the Rolling Stones of horror and Koontz, the Beatles. I agree.

 

I also read a smattering of other horror writers in my teens and twenties. Peter Straub, John Saul, Whitley Strieber, William Peter Blatty, Peter Benchley, Thomas Harris. And, of course, Clive Barker.

 

I moved on to Clive Barker roughly after reading through most of Koontz: Cabal, Weaveworld, The Hellbound Heart, The Damnation Game, The Thief of Always, The Great and Secret Show, Everville, and, lastly, Imajica. Barker is quite different from the aforementioned horror writers. His stories are more fantastical, more occult-ish, populated by various forms of magic and myriads of strange, grotesque creatures, both good and evil. There is a sexual amorality (“anti-morality” I initially wrote) that is quite in vogue now but wasn’t so much 30, 35 years ago. While not on the same equivalence of, say, the writings of the Marquis de Sade, Barker seems to be well acquainted or aspires to such dark things.

 

Anyway, my Halloween reading back in 2019 was a re-read of Weaveworld. The next year, during the Summer of Wu Flu, I re-read The Great and Secret Show. The first took me 12 days but I burned through the latter in 5. In other words, both fun reads. The stories were weird and out there – in Weaveworld, a magic carpet that unfurls in our world and grows to enormous dimensions releasing warring factions that includes an all-powerful but psychotic angel and a salesman who’s jacket can cause anyone to do anything, and in The Great and Secret Show the inter-generational struggle of two men trying to master a form of sorcery known as “The Art” and control a mythical dream sea and the evil beings that inhabit it. Whew. Heavy and heady stuff. I read most of Barker’s works originally at my parents’ weekend house at Lake George in upstate New York, so a lot of that imagery was mixed in with Barker’s. I enjoyed the re-reads.

 

So it was with anticipation I cracked open Imajica on October 1. If I kept to a brisk schedule, I could finish the 827-page novel on Halloween night.

 

Alas, I set it aside three weeks in. I couldn’t finish it.

 

Now, I remember having difficulties wading through Imagica way back in the early 90s when I last wrestled with it. Recall a giant push for the last 150 or 200 pages to finish it. The memory’s very hazy. It seems, however, that the same thing happened to me this time around, thirty years later. Now I’m much, much more careful with how I spend my time as I’m getting up there a bit in years, and I just didn’t think a 150 or 200 page push to get the novel done was worth it.

 

Now, YMMV, as they used to say here on the internet a few decades back.

 

I don’t feel like rehashing the plot; perhaps a quick summary like the ones above might suffice. “Imajica” consists the five dominions, of which Earth is the fifth. The main characters meet other characters who know how to travel between the dominions. There are your typical Barkian malformed monsters and semi-human sub-species, there’s magic, there’s war between the forces of magic and those that want to eradicate it. There is an evil sorcerer Autarch who rules the four dominions (not Earth, the fifth, though that’s on his plate) from his palace in the first dominion. There are shapeshifters, dopplegangers, and lots of Catholic piety twisted slightly askew in that Barkish way.

 

 

I may not have enjoyed Imajica, but Charlie wants to give it a go

 

On paper this seemed to be an enjoyable read. A whole new worldview is developed for the novel with its accompanying landscapes, much more so than his prior works, even Weaveworld. I originally compared it to a warped version of Middle-earth. But it didn’t work for me, and I think, having ten days or so to reflect on it, I think its because the main goal and the main threat of the novel wasn’t fully developed or communicated to me, the reader. I didn’t feel the “ticking time bomb”, though there is one. The stakes didn’t keep me turning the pages. The characters kept having emotional crises and there are loads of indecisions and 180-degree turns that motivations did not seem to make sense to me. The main twist in the plot, which I saw early on during the first read and never forgot this second read, didn’t glue me to the pages in anticipation but just felt like another dreary task I had to wade through to get to the last page. And there was also one scene which, as a father of daughters, truly turned my stomach, a scene I did not remember first time around.

 

I dunno. Mixed feelings are still washing over me. I wanted to like it, truly. But I’m a different man than that young lad of 30 years ago. Horror is no longer an upfront interest for me, and Catholic piety is much more so in my daily life (or at least the struggle to attain it). I do seek out new literary worlds, but I need something more enlightening, more expansive, something I can take with me, possibly, beyond the grave. Not sure if this makes any sense, to you or to me. But these are my mixed feelings over Clive Barker’s Imajica.

 

What is the Midway Point?

 

Here’s a neat mathematical riddle to use on your friends to prove your genius bona fides. It sounds unsolvable until, well, you hear the solution.

 

Question:

 

What is the exact middle point between zero and infinity?

 

In other words, on this number line from negative infinity to positive infinity, what is the halfway point between zero and positive infinity on the right?

 

Any guesses?

 

Hmm?

 

Seems kinda impossible to figure out, right? At first I thought so, because infinity, that sideways-number-eight, is not really a number, like 3, 17/50, or π^cubed is a number. Yeah, 3 and 17/50 have exact locations on the number line, and even though π^cubed, like pi itself, is not an exactly defined number (it is an irrational number whose decimal expression goes on, it has been proven, forever), it pretty much has an exact location on the number line. But infinity is not a specific number but an idea. A mathematical concept. So it really doesn’t have a location on the number line, except a vague neighborhood that lives ever, ever, ever rightward as you heading that way down the number line.

 

Hint #1 (minor):

 

So the trick is not to think of the question spatially. Not as in the case of 18 inches being the midway point of a yard, or 500 meters the halfway point of a kilometer.

 

Think of numbers themselves, as in types of numbers.

 

Any guesses?

 

Hmm?

 

Hint #2 (major):

 

Every number on the number line can be expressed as a reciprocal. A reciprocal of a number is one-over-that-number. The reciprocal of x is 1/x. The reciprocal of 3 is 1/3. The reciprocal of 17/50 is 50/17. The reciprocal of π^cubed is 1/π^cubed.

 

So what’s the halfway point between zero and infinity?

 

Answer: 1

 

The reciprocal of 1 is 1/1, or 1. 1 is its own reciprocal. But for every single number greater than 1, from 1.0000000000000001 to a googolplex (10 raised to the power of 1 with 100 zeros following it), there is a corresponding reciprocal. Every single one. And that reciprocal is LESS than 1. Every number greater than 1 has a reciprocal less than 1. Therefore, 1 is the midway point between zero and infinity. Not physically, as in a spatial distance sense, but in the number of actual numbers that occupy the intellectual space between 0 and 1 and 1 and infinity.

 

Q.E.D., as they say.

 

Now go and riddle your most intelligent friend.

Fall Comes to Texas

 

With a week of 70-degree day weather – dropping down to the low 50s at night! 

 

But that was last week. Now we’re back in the mid-to-upper 80s. True, that’s about 10 degrees above average for this time of year down here. Still, the leaves are starting to color, and some are even falling. The sky’s dark at 7:30 and the nights are longer, colder, windier. The grass has stopped growing as nature seems to be rummaging through her closet looking for some heavier, more comfortable, clothes to wear.

 

Me, I’m still in the thick of my Kennedy book. I decided to set Clive Barker aside (and that’s a post for later in the week) and have moved on into more existential horror for the season. For music, I’m currently enjoying the tone poems of Richard Strauss on vinyl, an area I’ve always been aware of but never really dug until now. Timing is everything, even in music, I guess.

 

More posts on the horizon …

 

Pagetrotting

 

 

October thus far has been quite the busy month. Aside from the usual ephemera, otherwise known as the daily grind, and other interesting but not blog-appropriate adventures, I have been delving into two thick, hefty worlds of literature, each reminiscent of the adobe bricks found in the Chama Valley of New Mexico. Both laid on a scale would rival the poundage of a newborn.

 

It’s not just the physicality of the two books that are thick, hefty, and brick-like. The subject matter is just as impressive. The word “worlds” used above is not just a metaphor, as each conjures an entire sociosphere and a globe-sized universe of culture, character, and plot. One is of a time now long past, the early 1960s; the other is of a time that’s never been save for within the mind of the author himself.

 

The first book is A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, a 1964-biography-of-sort by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a liberal historian who served as a Special Assistant to the President during the 1961-1963 Kennedy administration. A darling of and expert in the history of the American left, Schlesinger won a second Pulitzer Prize for this work. Taken with a grain of salt (i.e., one must wear hagiography-repellant glasses when reading), this is a deep immersion into those hectic, heady days of the ’60s prior to what you thought were the hectic, heady days of the ’60s. Back door politicking, the Cold War, Cuba, Khruschev, and a changing culture pushed in large part by the sainted Massachusetts president.

 

The second is Imajica, which I can best describe, for better or worse, as horror maestro Clive Barker’s go at a Lord of the Rings. He conjures up his particular brand of gory, somewhat-occultic fantasy, a journey through five worlds or “dominions” to set free the lands from an evil sorcerer Autarch. There are macabre and freakish races of creatures as a substitute to the well-worn tropes of Elves and Dwarves etc. There’s magic, dreams, societies, and a half-dozen detailed plot lines racing with the characters to the Autarch’s palace. Plus heavy doses of Barker’s subversive sexually-tinged horror.

 

Each has its strong points and weak points. I plan on writing reviews on both upon completion. Each is an investment in time.  A Thousand Days is 1,031 pages and Imajica is 827. With a par of 20 pages a day I should finish the Kennedy book just before the 61st anniversary of his assassination in Dallas. In the past I always read something JFK-related in November, so this is a throwback to that. The pace is doable and I am on schedule. Imajica, however, is more a challenge. It’s this year’s “Halloween” reading, and in order to finish that I need to reach 26.7 pages a day. I am slightly behind schedule at page 390. But I’m up for the challenge.

 

After these two books I think I’m going to spend the last two months of the year deep-diving into Dean R. Koontz. I so enjoyed my retro-reading of Tom Clancy this past March to August that a return to Koontz strikes me as a fun way to end these twelve months. Back from, say, 1989 to 1991, I believe I read 15 of his books. There are five which I’m interested in checking out again: Midnight, The Bad Place, Twilight Eyes, Cold Fire, and Dragon Tears. This might be a bit much for two months, especially with Christmas festivities and all, so it might extend into early 2025. We’ll see. I’m up for the challenge.

 

Anyway, happy readings, all!

Neil Floyd or Pink Young

 

Forgive me a cliché, but –

 

I was today years old when I found out –

 

The song “Breathe,” the first sung song on Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, has the exact same chordal structure as Neil Young’s song “Down by the River,” the side one closing tune on his 1969 record, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

 

Well, almost exactly.

 

Down by the River:

   Em7 to A (four times)

   Cmaj7 to Bm (four times, ending with a D on the fourth)

   G to D to A (three times for the chorus)

 

Breathe:

   Em to A7 (four times)

   Cmaj7 to Bm to Fmaj7 to D9

 

Well, it sounds more similar on my guitar than it looks like on the electronic page here.

 

Man, I wish I knew this back in the day. I was familiar with both songs, but just never made the connection. The guys I hung out with way back then were more into Neil Young than Pink Floyd, though we did manage to see both live the summer of 1988:

 

   Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium, June 4, 1988

   Neil Young and the Blue Notes at Pier 84 in NYC, August 30, 1988

 

As a side note, that was a great summer for concerts. I also saw AC/DC that May at the Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands and the famous Guns N’ Roses / Deep Purple / Aerosmith concert at Giants Stadium two weeks before Neil Young at the Pier. That was the concert where they filmed the video for “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Though I was probably already sick of the omnipresent overrepresentation of GNR on the radio by then, let me tell you, the vast majority of the crowd was there to see them, not the two dinosaurs of 70s rock.

 

Oh well. Let’s see … what else can I play on my guitar …

 

UWTB

 

Salo, Rumfoord’s crony on Titan, was a messenger from another galaxy who was forced down on Titan by the failure of a part in his space ship’s power plant. He was waiting for a replacement part.

 

He had been waiting patiently for two hundred thousand years.

 

His ship was powered, and the Martian war effort was powered, by a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness – that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.

 

Many Earthlings are glad that Earth does not have UWTB.

 

As the popular doggerel has it:

 

Will found some Universal Will to Become,

Mixed it with his bubble gum.

Cosmic piddling seldom pays:

Poor Willy’s six new Milky Ways.

 

   - The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (page 138 of my Dell paperback)

 

I am enjoying Vonnegut, as I have the couple of times I’ve read him in the past. However, with this novel I’m detecting a small but significant undercurrent of creeping leftism. Now, I’m not a Vonnegutian scholar or anything like that, not even a proper fan, having only read a couple of his books. But there’s this vague odor of condescension or derision in his work, particularly when addressing religion. I don’t recall sensing it previously, though the last time I read him was in the late 90s and my radar wasn’t attuned to that frequency.

 

But it does subtract a little bit from the pleasure of reading his prose. He’s a genuinely funny guy, a brilliant writer, an excellent storyteller than keeps the reader consistently guessing what will happen when the page turns. Despite his leftish pet peeves, I’ll still give The Sirens of Titan an A-minus. The book I read prior to this one, Slaughterhouse-Five, I like a little better, so I’ll grant that full A status. And I’ll still seek out his novels in the future, shall my paths cross with theirs.

 

The best image that comes to mind is that the novels of Kurt Vonnegut (at least Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus, Slaughterhouse-Five and The Sirens of Titan) are kinda like a more high-brow Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Though “high-brow” might not be the best adjective. Think of the comparison with Vonnegut and Hitchhiker more like Obama-era SNL versus Clinton-era SNL. I think that might be a more accurate analogy.

 

Anyway, I have a very ambitious and exciting reading project for October which I’ll post about later this week.

 

Oh, and September – you were an OK month. No, better than average. But, please, can you tell October to lower the thermostat down here? Thanks.

Average or Awesome?

 

So I got this from management where I work:

  

It’s a candle. I must admit when I first took it out of the bag I thought it read, “Thank You For Being Average”!

 

😊

 

If I really was “awesome,” though, wouldn’t they give me a raise, like a two-percent increase? Or maybe a one-time $500 bonus? Or even a $25 gift card, maybe every now and then when I do something “awesome”?

 

Not to be bitter, though, the company does give us a lot of perks. Wednesday they catered for the entire Finance Department (about 200 of us), and I feasted on barbecue brisket, turkey, cheese macs, and a couple of chocolate chip cookies. They also raffled off a ton of swag, but I didn’t win anything. I did win a fleece hoodie two years ago that I gave to Little One. Last year they gave us all t-shirts that, honestly, are pretty decent. I still wear mine 2-3 times a month.

 

A little work humor to end the week …

 

Vonnegutia

 

“Also, Barbara and her husband were having to look after Billy’s business interests, which were considerable, since Billy didn’t seem to give a damn for business any more. All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet … “Don’t lie to me, Father,” said Barbara. “I know perfectly well you heard me when I called.” This was a fairly pretty girl, except that she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano.

   - Slaughterhouse Five, pages 28-29 of my Dell paperback

 

Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarified, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes – “with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,” says Billy Pilgrim.

   - same, page 87.

 

Forgot how much I enjoy reading Kurt Vonnegut. Read two of his books in the 80s as a high schooler and two others in the 90s as a single lad in a bachelor pad. Always an interesting read, and, as the excerpts above point out (at least to me), every paragraph a small gem of something quite humorous or something that makes me nod and pet my beard saying, “Wow … that’s unexpectedly deep.”

Currently reading Slaughterhouse Five with The Sirens of Titan in the On-Deck Circle.

 

Another Trip Round the Sun

 

 

Is done.

 

My birthday was this past Tuesday, but we celebrated on Saturday night. And it was everything I wanted at this stage in my life: Family, doing family things together. I find myself desiring that more and more as my wife and children get involved more and more in their own lives separate from the family, sometimes in separate locations as Little One, living 45 minutes away at school.

 

The girls custom-make me a big birthday dinner every year. Since we alternate and last year was homemade lasagna, this year was the old juicy steak, potatoes and asparagus combo. Three of my favorites, and each lady handled a different part of the meal. And it was delicious. I washed it all down with my favorite N/A craft beer, Free Wave by Athletic Brewing Company and was pleasantly stuffed.

 

Afterwards we sat down together and watched a heartwarming family film, A Quiet Place: Day One. Just kidding. It was suspenseful and violent with a touch of gore, but Little One and Patch are big fans of the Quiet Place franchise. I thought the movie was okay after the first watch, but on reflection a lot of it doesn’t work and it’s probably the weakest of the trilogy by far. We took a break midway through for a dessert of fruit tarts.

 

I opened my gifts, embarrassed as always by the profusion of love and good will. Little One bought me a spiced pumpkin Yankee candle (my favorite fall scent if it ever decides to drop below 90 degrees down here). She also got me a book that hadn’t arrived yet; she said she thought it was titled “What did you do Dad” or something like that. Each page has a prompt for me to write something about, er, me. Kinda like this blog, I suppose, but handwritten.

 

Patch bought me a giant sombrero that I can wear while mowing the lawn. Yes, we all laughed, but yes, also, men do wear them down here while doing yardwork. Texas sun is strong. Sometime over the summer Patch and I were driving somewhere and I noticed a sombrero-clad mowerman, and loudly announced “that’s exactly what I need!” And lo and behold, she made a note of it on her phone and now I have a sombrero to wear. Pics to follow, maybe.

 

She also picked up two albums for me – Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in Dm and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 in Dm. I dunno, must’ve been a D-minor day at the record store. Anyway, both worthy editions to my growing collection, both compositions by composers who I do not have. My collection is now up to 41 albums in just under two years, and Patch alone has gifted me 11 of them.

 

The Mrs. bought me three books on the Next Step in My Career. Rather, the Next Step in Finding a New Career. They say (don’t remember who “they” are) that the average American wage slave has seven career changes in his life. By my count I’ve had three. But I’ve been doing payroll accounting for 22 years now and my God is it ever time for a change. Hopefully these three books can help me un-stick myself from my stuckness in figuring out what the heck to do next.

 

She also bought me a box of “high-end chocolates” – a dozen truffles of dark chocolate from the Swiss company Laderach. Which is kind of funny, if you combine this with those three books. I’ve been joking for a while that I’m ready to chuck the spreadsheets and calculators and go after my dream of becoming a revolutionary chocalatier.

 

Who knows? Maybe this time next year, after yet another trip ’round the sun, I’ll be trading in that sombrero for a chef’s hat …