GLOSSARY 4

ambages, circuitous, roundabout ways

atrementous, black as ink

bait, to stop for rest and refreshment

boutade, a sudden motion,  like a kick from a horse's hind legs

butter weight, good measure, 18 or more ounces to the pound

cockle, the weed corn cockle, whose seeds had to be sifted out of the seed corn; the task gave rise to several proverbs

cully, a simpleton, gull

ends, shoemakers' threads pointed with bristles

exploded, clapped or hissed off the stage

garnish, money extracted from a gaoler for better treatment, particularly allowing light manacles, or freedom of movement within the prison

gossips, the women friends invited to be present at a birth

hic multa desiderantur, a great deal is missing here

horsed for discipline, placed piggy-back to be flogged on the posteriors by a school master

jordan. chamber-pot

kennel, the open drain or gutter in a street, usually in the middle

mopus, a stupid or moping person

pinner, coif (q.v.) with two long hanging strips pinned on each side, worn by ladies of rank

pure bite, completely successful hoax

put, (country) bumpkin, 'buffer'

rubs, disagreeable experiences

sack-posset, a drink made of hot curdled milk, white wine, and perhaps spices

smock, fornicate

stews, brothels

tentiginous humour, an inclination to lust (from the L tentigo, an erection)

truckling, subservient, obsequious

vapours, hysterics

Selected from the glossary to

Jonathan Swift. Major Works,  

ed. by Angus  Ross and David Woolery

Oxford University Press

MONDAY MORNING

MANGA MANIA: THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM Vol 8 by Kazua Umezu

By the 8th volume it should come as no surprise that these kids just can't get a break. The maniacal cafeteria worker is back and taking charge. He sends Sho and his friends into the desert to dig a well -- yeah, sure. He abandons them in the pit. But they find a crack in the wall that leads them into the ruins of the Tokyo subway system. There they learn, through a convenient, ritual showing of an educational film for the mutant insect creatures who populate the underground, that Japan in the the late 20th century -- Umezu wrote these stories in the 1970's -- had so despoiled the land that women began giving birth to mutant babies, hence the insect creatures, and massive earthquakes buried their civilization. This is another lesson in eco-awareness from the country that gave us Godzilla Vs. the Smog Monster.

In a typical twist for Umezu, at the end of the installment the enormous spring of fresh water the kids discovers turns into an active volcano. Damn! Only two more installments to wind this thing up.

IN WHICH I CONFRONT FEAR

Depending upon which survey you read, somewhere between 30% and 50% of Americans believe in ghosts.

That number seems high to me, and I would like to know how each survey phrased the question. If some one hated to be rude to the lingering dead and deny their existence entirely, did they waffle and say, "Well, maybe," and then get classified with the yea sayers? Were they merely ghost agnostics, wanting to leave at least a tiny rent in the veil that separates the living from the dead? After all, how can you really know?

I realize that I am about to lose potentially between a third and one half of my already scant readership here, but I have to say that on this one point at least, people who believe in ghosts simply are not very bright. Now all those same people are saying that I'm not very open-minded to shut the door on the very possibility of a spirit lingering after the body's death, but you know, fuck that. Grow up. Ghosts answer a variety of needs in peoples' lives, from comfort to punishment, but they are not real. There are many creepy aspects to deserted houses, lonely country roads, bad parts of town, and abandoned mental hospitals, but they have nothing to do with ghosts. The night you saw your grandmother, a week after her death, sitting at the foot of your bead may have seemed very real -- I know it did in my case -- but she was not a ghost.

Having said all this, I admit that the only thing that really scares me, in movies or stories, is a ghost or a haunted house. Vampires, werewolves, serial killers, monsters large and small are there for my entertainment. If one leaps out from behind a closed door I may jump out of my seat with the rest of the audience, but I would do the same thing if a CPA jumped out from behind a closed door. That is nothing more than being startled. But ghosts are uncanny. They worm their way into that part of my brain that knows better but cannot fight back the reflex reaction that raises goosebumps or makes you wish the wife would just stay in her room and not check out those noises downstairs.

I blame my parents. When I was in seventh grade they gave me the Modern Library Giant Edition Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. The stories terrified and delighted me. They were almost all of either Victorian or Edwardian vintage, and that specific diction in a story, the sound of the Oxford Don hesitant to tell his tale for fear of being thought mad, still does it for me. Films and modern writers that attempt that exact atmosphere tend to be creaky and ineffectual. But there are endless modern variations. I find modern vampire stories silly and serial killers tedious if sometimes disgusting, but a film like Paranormal Activity can have me squirming in my seat. (At least the first one did. I just saw Paranormal Activity 3 and felt like I was hearing the same joke for the third time. Although it had its moments.)

Recently I have begun reading horror novels. The Horror Writers Association has published a list of 40 must reads in the genre, many of which I must have read in Junior High and High School. I have also taken a look at the annual Bram Stoker Award winners. It's an interesting list with some surprises. Joyce Carol Oates, no doubt, was delighted to win in 1996 for a book I've never heard of called Zombie, but how must a writer the quality of Stuart O'Nan have felt about first being nominated and then losing out to a novel by Peter Straub in 2005?

I have misgivings about the length of most of these books. How can anything be scary for 400 pages? But I am approaching this with an open mind, hoping for entertainment and the occasional creepy moment. And yes, they will find their way onto Potato Weather. I hope to use the word putrescent a great deal.

MONDAY MORNING

BOOK REVIEW: COMEBACK, by Richard Stark

This was my first Parker novel and I am a convert. Never a fan of police procedurals, I was seduced in the first pages by this "crime procedural."

Parker is a good criminal -- in this instance a thief. I am not sure what additional talents he may exhibit in other novels. He is not an anti-hero along the lines of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley or TV's Dexter. I did not watch Parker with the mix of disbelief, horror, and pleasure I do those other characters. Parker is simply a criminal who gets away with things because he is smarter and when necessary more brutal than those around him. Those around him are often sleazy, but that doesn't mean "they have it coming to them." Some are pathetically naive, and some a downright stupid. Parker is intelligent and anything but naive. Sleazy? Is there not something inherently sleazy about stealing $400,000 from a traveling evangelist, knowing all along that your inside man on the job will be killed or at the very least never see his share of the money?

If Parker took a bullet and died in one of these stories, I suppose the world would be an infinitesimally better place. But we, the citizens, would be denied the pleasure of watching Richard Stark, one of the late Donald Westlake's several pseudonyms, practice his impeccable craft.


As Billy Preston would say


I got a story ain't got no moral
Let the bad guy win every once and awhile

BOOK REVIEW: SANDMAN SLIM by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

How could I not read this book? William Gibson called it a "...deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece." The bits I read promised a hard-boiled, noirish novel about a living human who escapes from Hell and returns to Los Angeles to kill the men who not only sent him there but murdered his girlfriend. The bastards. Jack Stark, the narrator, is a magician, as are all those he is sworn to kill. There are also angels, alchemists, a vampire-like creature who's trying to reform, men from the Department of Homeland Security, and some particularly unpleasant demons called Kissi.

I really loved this book for the first fifty pages or so, then I thought, "So what?" If everything is supernatural, nothing really matters. The pleasure in noir fiction and film lies in experiencing the lives of desperate people, on both sides of the law, trapped by the systems that will crush them. In Sandman Slim the fate of the world hangs in the balance, but big deal. The novel is a very clever, carnival spook house. But maybe that's what Gibson meant when he called is a "..deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece."

Kadrey is very funny and he keeps the pace swift. Catching all his pop culture references will make you feel in with the in crowd. I was batting a hundred until I was wrong about Lawrence Tierney. Kadrey does fall prey in the extended denouement to the common fault of superhero movies -- he spends twenty pages setting up the basis for a franchise. The second book is already available.


View all my reviews