Dark & Twisty

I had hoped to blog several more entries about The Dark Decent and the stories therein, but I was not able to.  So I thought I just type some thoughts about short stories in general.

I really like the short story form, not only to work in but to also read. When reading, I consider them to be light snacks in the middle of the hefty meals of novels that I digest.  I have tons of longer works to endure and read. I get tired of them occasionally so I always have a short story collection around to cleanse the pallette.

The interesting thing is that short stories come in bite size pieces.  They don't require hours to read, usually, and they are done in that one brief reading.  Novels can last multiple hours or days, and in some cases weeks.  I've never read a short story longer than an hour.  (I'm not counting novellas in this category). 

Many times I'll read a short story to go to sleep instead of delving into one of the novels that I might be reading.  Unlike a novel, a short story ends and you don't want to push on to the next chapter.  That is a danger trying to read novels before bed.  You get the desire to see what rests over that page break.

Now as for writing them.  I like to write short stories for the reasons like to read them.  They are short and compact.  Long narratives have a tendency to bore me, even when i'm writing it.  I get lost in it and overwhelmed and wish that I was just writing a short story. 

This form keeps us (writers) concise and  brief.  A short story doesn't allow for long winded ramblings, except for Faulkner but he was known for that.  It keeps us on our toes and making sure every single word counts (because of word count). 

I also found that when writing a longer work, the  short story helps to cleanse the pallette as well.  It clears it of some things that might be floating around in the imagination but not right for the longer work.  It also gives a break to let the longer work work on its own issues away from the keyboard.

 So in conclusion, I think the short story is the breakfast of champions, and swing of water that we need to keep on keeping on.

Posted by Jared at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a very personal entry.  It's the obituary for my father who died at 2:30 am on April 22, 2009.

Lacy Vickery was my father.  He was born on October 1, 1951 in Alabama.  He lived the majority of his life there.  He was raised in rural Marion County which is near the Mississippi border.  He went to elementary school in a small town called Brillant before he moved to Parrish, where he lived the remainder of his life.

My father worked most of his life in the coal mines.  Most of that time was spent underground.  He helped build airshafts early on before actually mining the coal.  He finished out his career as a variety of former first a section forman then as an assistant mine former.  This was a good job for people around this area.  They made lots of money but the work was hard, and as most of the miners I know that worked with my father would tell you, no one worked harder than him.  My father only went through high school, but was well read.  He knew a little bit about everything.  He knew a lot about history, especially American.  He knew about electricity, and had fun with it when he could.  He was a fisherman who spent many days on the river catching bass and got really good at it.  He loved his family and did everything he could for them. 

All sons write things like this about their fathers, but this is true.  This is as true as what every son writes about his father after he is gone.  We do this because we cannot in life tell them how special they have been and what kind of heroes they were while living.  It makes us wusses.

My father battled colon cancer for 7 long years.  At times he seemed like he would beat it down and be as good as new, but at other times, he seemed on deaths door. This waffled back and forth many times until earlier this year.  At the beginning of 2009, it became evident that my father would not make it out of this year.  As the months rolled passed faster than I would like, he got worse and worse faster than any of us liked.  Finally he spent his last few weeks coming in and out of delirium, thinner than he had been since high school and unable to walk without assitance.  When I helped my father changed shirts, his chest sunk in and his muscle drooped.  My father never had drooping arm muscles.  He had hard biceps, viened and scarred from years of hard labor.  Cancer, the most evil of all villians, stripped him of everything.  Everything but his love for his family and his stubborn will to live as long as he could.  Even the villanous cancer took away that will at last.  My father struggled through his last day, laboring to breath and doped on morphine.  He final ceased his breathing at 2:30 am.  I had dozed and awoke to my mothers pitiful and agnozied sobs. 

I regret nothing.  I had a wonderful father who spent the last 7 years in and out of pain.  I spent as much quality time with him as I could and absorbed all I could from him.  The last good memory I have is sitting while he needed help up and down but was too himself and watching old Clint Eastwood westerns.  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  We couldn't decide why Clint, Lee Van Cleeve and Eli Wallach weren't all the ugly.

But now, he's gone and at 29, I'm fatherless and feeling a little bit like an orphan.  But I had a daddy once and he was a good one.  I thanked him in his last hours, and when the time came I gave him his dignity by dressing him in clothes like a man wears not the PJ's of man stripped of his manhood by horrible disease.

Posted by Jared at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is PS to my entry on Harlan Ellison's short story.  In that entry I discussed how the horror of the story was that of becoming part of a city.  I talked about the fear that rural dwellers have that city will eat us alive.  I left off one thing that was important to that entry, but I think is something to say anyway.

Southerns have a similar fear about areas that are not Southern (ie Northern).  We have Yankee fear if you will.  Remember that as a true Southerner, anything north of Tennesee, Virginia (which is questionable itself), Arkansas and Texas (again questionable) is Yankee. 

When I travel North or West or anywhere out of the old Confederacy, I have a fear that something is going to happen to me.  We are told (we being Southerners) that Yankees are rude and very mean.  We get told urban legends about gangs of people who will kill you if they hear you have an accent.  And you never ever tell them you're from Alabama.  (I suppose other Southern states have similar issues.)  We fear the rudeness of the Yankee.  It is because we are a vanquished people who were occupied. 

I jst though maybe Harlan Ellison could write a story about Southern fear of Yankees.

Posted by Jared at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Harlan Ellison's story "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" took me by surprise.  This was not a horror story I expected it to be.  It started out as a loose retelling of the Kitty Genovese case from the point of view of one of the witnesses.  Then it turned around and became something different. 

Although the character in the story experiences many horrors,  (She witnesses the murder but does nothing, she's pretty much raped by her date, and she's mugged and almost killed herself with the witness  watching just like Kitty Genovese.) the real horror is that she becomes the same as most everyone else in New York.  She becomes part of the great unsympathetic, bitter, cynical tribe of New York, or in a more general term the city. 

This story has a bit more umpf with me because I'm a country boy.  I've lived, except for about a five year stint, in rural Alabama.  Even when I lived in the city, they were small unassuming cities (the college town of Tuscaloosa [Roll Tide] and the port city of Mobile).  One of the things the main character of this story has is the sensiblity of having lived in Vermont a rather rural state, much like Alabama with small cities.  She is not prepared for the harshness of living in a metropolis.  The horror of the story is she becomes the city.  The city itself is the monster.  It carries on like a vampire in the night devouring those innocents either by killing them off or making them one of its own.

Growing up in a rural setting, even though I technically grew up in the Birmingham census area and problably could be considered metro area by influence, I was raised to fear the city.  We fear the crime that seems so random.  We fear the nonchalance of the people in concerns over issues that face us.  We fear the city with its hordes of people and traffic.  It's smells like desiel dragons roaring street noise.  When we go to the city, we're told to "keep your doors locked and eye open."  That is why this story spoke to me.  It told the story of what we ruralites think the city will do.

I've been many different places in many cities.  I always do the same thing.  I keep my doors locked and my eyes opened.  I don't go out after dark if I can avoid it.  It's all because of that rural fear that the city will consume me. 

Posted by Jared at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Biopsychosocial, bitches!" --- Betty Jones circa 2001.

Posted by Jared at 07:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's talk about this fool.  I remember when Lil Wayne came out.  He had this God-awful song called The Block is Hot.  This fool is what is wrong with music not just rap all music.  He is a talentless hack who scares people into buying his music. I've never heard a song of his I liked. 

Ladies is this guy sexy?  Really answer me.  He is a scary freak of a man.

Posted by Jared at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, I've achieved alot in my 30 years.  My wife likes to say that my resume includes such highlights as climbing Mount Everest in high school, and winning the noble prize.  (I've done neither of these, however).  I have done alot.  This leads to being able to brag about a lot of accomplishments.  I'm going to brag for just a moment.

I graduated from grad school at 23 and started my career for which I've been at for nearly 6 years now.

I'm a published story writer (not a novelist yet, but working on it.)

I've travelled.

I teach adjunct at a junior college.

I own my own home and car.

But I still get the biggest boost of accomplishment when I finish reading a book.  This is the strangest feeling to me, but when I read the last word on the last page of a book (novel or whatnot) I feel like a million dollars.  Why?  What is it about finishing a book that is so fulfilling.  I get this feeling even with small novels like Dawn by Elie Weisel.  I don't get the same feeling when I finish writing a story.  I think it comes from my nonreading culture.  I'm not talk about my Southern heritage; I'm talking about my family culture.  We've always been more TV folks than readers.  I finished a book yesterday.  This was just a week after finishing another book.  I've read like eight just for class, not to mention the random other ones I read. 

I wish I could add that to my resume.  IT would make up for the lack climbing Everest or winning the nobel.

Posted by Jared at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I was totally blown away.  I was sitting today with my father, a biweekly activity.  I finished reading Jack Ketchem's Offspring.  It wasn't on my school approved reading list but it had similar themes to my thesis.  Anyway I'm doing a review later.  That's not what blew me away.

My mother arrived home and as we sat down to eat she asked me where the book was I left lying on the end table.  I told her I had just finished reading it.  She stated that my father's friend who has been sitting with him half days to help out had nearly finished it on Wednesday and wanted to take it home with him to finish.  This blew me away.  Firstly, I didn't know that this guy read.  Secondly, I had no idea he enjoyed such gory stories.  HE even admitted he liked it because of its intensity. 

This is a coal miner, who has never heard of Jack Ketchum nor of most of the  author's I've read but still enjoyed the story.  I'm blown away because, we (horror writers with really nasty ideas) have audiences.

I am shocked and amazed and happy.

Posted by Jared at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Can they make a good musical?  You know a musical that a man doesn't mind watching, well you know a Southern man.  Yankees are a whole different sort.  Unless they make a musical called, "Full Frontal Barely Legal Nudity Review", then the only answer is Sweeny Todd.

I have to admit I have seen film versions of this story that were not musicals and liked them.  But the Musical version from Tim Burton (always known for making pretty movies creepy or not) is a man's musical.  This is a horror movie that I can get my wife to watch because she knows all the songs and sings along with it.

Anytime that you can have singing and dancing and of course throat slitting you've got a musical.  The movie goes along the lines of the story.  Todd was framed and his wife stolen.  Todd comes back to have his revenge.  Then, he and his landlady make meat pies from corpses left from his bloody swath of seriel murder.

The song about what each person seen on the street would taste like in a pie is wonderful.  "Try a little priest."  "This one is thicker; it must be vicar."  Come on; this beats "Time Warp" anytime.

The only thing that they could do to make this movie better is to morph, the Rocky Horror Picture Show with Sweeny Todd.  They could have all the sweet transvestites being slaughtered by the demon barber of Fleet Street.

Posted by Jared at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not a horror movie, and that makes it an unusual review for my site. But before there were horror movies in my life there was Casablanca.  I may have seen this movie more times than some film critics.  I love it. 

It isn't the patriotism of the story that I like so much.  It is the humor.  My wife put it in for me last night because I had a bad day. As I watched, I remembered why I liked it so much.  Sure there is the overwhelming positivism of the the Allies.  The characters seem to have no doubt that good will win the war, but a strange thing occurred to me.  When the movie was made (1942), we had no idea who would win.  That would make viewing this movie a lot different. 

I like the arogance of the movie.  Every character has his or her own swagger.  Rick is assured of himself until Ilsa comes back.  Victor Laslo has evaded the Nazis more times than not.  Renault is his own snivling master.  Major Strasse has that Nazi quality that so many did.

Then there is the end.  I've never figured it out.  Does Ilsa really love Rick?  Does he really believe that she does love him?  Was he always planning on letting Laslo escape, at least once he learns who is wife is.  That is why I love this movie.  It is great in it's own vagueness.  We never know what happens to the characters.  What happens to Sam after Rick leaves.  Does he still play "As Time Goes By"?  Is that the beginning of a beautiful friendship?  Do Isla and Victor make it to America?

I leave you with two of my favorite lines from the movie.

"What nationality are you?"

Rick: "I'm a drunkard."

and of course.

"Major there are certain parts of New York I suggest you not invade."

Play it Sam.  Play as time goes by.

Posted by Jared at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What makes a classic? That question gets asked everytime AMC or TCM gets turned on.  But what does make a classic?  Is it that people always think about that certain thing as the epitome or prototype of the institution that is supposed to be classic?

When talk about old cars, the machine must be 25 years old to get classic status.  That's great, that means that a 1984 Buick Skylark is a classic automobile, but you don't see many of those sitting around at carshows.  Everyday I drive to and from work I get to see another great "classic" car, a lime green AMC pacer.  Now that's classic.

With the 25 year earmark, New Coke would be a classic, but what would that make Coca-Cola Classic?   What about classic albums that came out on vinyl?  Do we have to enjoy them on that antiquated mode of communication?

Does quality have anything to do with the making of a classic?  Obiviously with Coca-Cola it does.  New Coke (now old coke or if you will classic new coke) didn't have the same Coke quality.  It was fine for Pepsi quality.  Does the vinyl make an album classic?  Of course not, think of all the crap on vinyl.  What about television?  Why is it that something like Family Matters is classic but Small Wonder is forgotten by all but a few.

Classics.  I want to be forgotten.  I don't want to be the instant classic.  If you are, you have nothing else to shoot for.  When you hit hte top, the only place to go is down.  Think about Coke and of course classic New Coke, the chose of a forgotten generation of classic stuff that ain't so classic.

Posted by Jared at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I did it again.  I dodged another April Fool's Day.  I have had the good fortune of only working one April 1.  This is a good thing.  I pull pranks all year long and so people gun for me on that day.  They are vicious when they come for me too.  I'm just that good of a target.  The only day I worked April 1 the only person who got one over on me was a client. 

I remeber that day well.  We had a patient get out of the hospital.  I pulled into the parking lot of the mental health center and the staff told me to get ready to commit that patient. I asked them if it was an April Fool's joke.  it wasn't, but later that day before I went to the hearing, I was in the day treatment.  A client looked at me and said, "You've got a hole in your shirt."  I believed him.  I had a hearing to go to and didn't need to go with a hole in my shirt.

That's my story.

Posted by Jared at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)