I’m a zombie. One of the more articulate ones and one who may, in time, return to life. Unfortunately, I’m not so good at writing these days. So instead of posting thoughts and opinions and tales of ordinary mundaneness I’ll be putting up links to various Oz related goodness.

Today’s link was found by running LSD and Wizard of Oz through Google.

“Just as you can read between the gory lines in the newspaper on any day and discover clues issued by the Powers That Be – if you look hard enough – as to what is actually going on, such notice can also be found in the lighter fare, like the movies. Such a movie was The Wizard of Oz, an allegory for the new state of affairs in America in the 1930’s following the stock market crash and factual bankruptcy of the US Government immediately thereafter.”

Read on.

Evil animals. Or perhaps just misguided. Lots of corrupt squirrels and chipmunks.

Archeological anomalies. Giant bones. Misplaced technologies. “Modern heiroglyphs.

Look around the Worth1000 site. Lots more where these came from.

Found at Snopes. Click and watch.

Darkness Falls: Relies primarily on jump scares. The biggest thing missing for me was any sort of mystery. I like a little mystery in my horror stories. The movie starts with a prologue telling us what our monster is and what she does and that she’s been doing it for 150 years. Automatically we know everything we need to about the threat and it’s annoying that it takes our heroes so long to catch up. It was also pretty clear what was to be the fate of every other character that our heroes interacted with.

The Core: Fairly fun if somewhat implausible movie. (It’s not the main idea that I find implausible – it’s those moments when the characters have to do anything outside the protection of their ship. Their protective suits don’t seem even half adequate.) I can’t comment on the science behind the story. It sounds right from what little I know. An interview with one of screenwriters indicates that he was really trying to be accurate. Interesting to note a line change between the preview we’d been seeing on other videos and the line that plays in the movie. In the previews the supernerd is asking for unlimited Star Trek tapes. In the movie he asks for unlimited Xena tapes.

New image accepted at Epilogue.net – the first of my preview pieces from Oz Squad. This is Brother Lustig.

This evening the Bombshell will bring Scary home. Scary is a cat Nizzibet found licking catsup off woodchips in a park in Lynnwood. Scary had been declawed and was skinny enough to have been on her own for a while. Nizzibet brought the cat back to our apartment in Lynnwood – an apartment that already had a couple of cats lurking in it. No surprise that Scary didn’t get along with Paliki or Chainsaw.

Scary earned her name for the hideous yowl she made anytime one of the other cats got close to her. Having no claws her best defense was to make as evil a sound as possible and scare off any possible attackers. Sometimes it worked.

When we moved into our current digs the cats spread out and took separate territories, only occasionally squabbling. Scary spent a lot of time sleeping in the Bombshell’s room. And when the Bombshell moved out Scary went with her.

Sometime in the last few weeks Scary developed a painful disease. I don’t remember the details. I’m horrible at details these days. Suffice to say that whatever it is, it’s made the cat’s life too miserable to continue.

So tonight I help my friend dig a grave out back. Shitty way to end the day.

I’ve been rereading the Baum Oz books. I skipped the first three (Wonderful Wizard, Marvelous Land and Ozma) and started with Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Chris Reilly (Steve Ahlquist’s writing partner for the relaunch of Oz Squad) says that’s his favorite Oz book. In that one the Wizard gets pyro on a few of the uncivil critters that stand between him and getting back to Oz. Not that the Wizard is trying to get back to Oz – he and Dorothy are stuck in the fairy underground and are just trying to get out again.

I’m just finished The Scarecrow of Oz. By this book Baum had decided that no one (at least, no one ever born in Oz) ever died in Oz. That actually doesn’t make Oz any safer of a place. In this book, a couple of the kings of Jinxland got offed prior to the events of the book. One got sunk in a bog and the other fell into a bottomless pit. So they didn’t die, they’re just spending eternity not being dead. And no one bothers rescuing them. The idea isn’t even brought up.

Oz is a cruel place when you think about it. Ozma has the Magic Picture which allows her to see anyone anywhere in the world anytime she wants. Glinda has the Book of Records that writes down everything that happens everywhere in the world while it’s happening. Ozma has the Magic Belt which can move transport thousands of people across great distances, move tons of earth and transform matter. Glinda and the Wizard can do just about anything if they set their minds to it.

But …

Ozma regularly observes her friends in mortal peril and does nothing. Glinda must be able to view the future because she certainly doesn’t respond to crises very practically. It’s a good thing most of the people in Oz are so good natured.

Heh.

The Oz books were written in a less sophisticated time for less sophisticated readers. Unlike so many other “Children’s Classics” they were actually written for children. At the moment I can’t think of another contemporaneous children’s book series that remains in print. Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Gulliver’s Travels, Oliver Twist – all had adult audiences in mind. Now they are foisted upon the young to ruin their love of reading.

I notice the plot holes (and lack of plot) and uncivilized behavior because I’ve absorbed the rules of plot and logic and characterization – late twentieth century issues that, really, most authors still don’t have a grasp on. Yesterday the Nizz and I watched Hellboy. I loved the movie. And it had plot holes the size of Cleveland. (It was an improvement on the source material – Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comic – which I love and adore. The last movie I can think of that improved on its source was The Crow. Shame about all those sequels. And the dead guy.)

At the moment, the Oz books are just my speed. I can read them in moments between duties. I’ve got a few other books that I’m saving until after Aged Mother passes on. Books that I think will have complex plots and writing that (possibly) attempts to sing.

That might sound as if I’m dissing the Oz but that ain’t it. I grew up in Oz. I come back to it every day as I work on Oz Squad. Baum’s Oz and Oz Squad are different critters, built for different times. You can’t complain that a Model-T doesn’t go zero to sixty in a minute. L. Frank Baum wasn’t writing for the Children of the Revolution (or the Apocalypse). He didn’t actually want to write all those books. He kept trying to end the series. The damned children wouldn’t let him succeed at anything else.

Just found out, via JML, that Jeremy is back. Yay dead kids!

The head is full of little lizardy thoughts. Thoughts of catching and crunching and swallowing. Of laying in sunshine and only blinking when I absolutely have to.

It’s too cold outside for this sort of behavior. The sunshine is a trick. The temperature is low enough to give challenge to the warm blooded. The cold blooded must hide under warm socks.

Art on acid.