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Creepy Dolls and Rosaries

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 25 January 2017

Hits: 2301

• Dolls,
• Rosaries,
• Religious,
• Kitsch,

And days, wander around Nelson, there are 5 good bookstores here. By good I mean every bookstore has something you'd want to read, something good you haven't read, 5 good bookstores, in a city the size of Nelson, Calgary hasn't that many good bookstores, not by a longshot. It speaks well of the populace.

I pop into one store, looking, for nothing in particular, the girl working: "Everyone here is on Kootenay Time. Everybody has their own agenda. Things get done..."...I'd asked her about antique watches, not that I'm looking, but she's talking me out of watches. No one here wears a watch.

She refers me to a shop on Baker Street, maybe they have, go to the back, past all the new stuff for sale, and maybe I'll find what I'm looking for...

No, but easily just as good. Creepy dolls and Rosaries...

There's lots more here, religious kitsch, icons, rosaries, candlesticks, it's right up my alley, another discovery behind an innocuous Kootenay Shop.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 25 January 2017

Hits: 1972

• Edgar Rice Burroughs,
• Tarzan,
• John Carter,

I found him after the "Hardy Boys", terrible books but as a 7 or 8 year old I loved them. 52 books in the series (at that time), I devoured them all, I remember saving up $5.00 from my paper route to buy the next one at the local hobby store, $5.00, then, was a lot of money.

And after the "Hardy Boys" I cast around looking for the next big thing, reading all manner of books, some bad - I don't remember, some good - "The Four Story Mistake".

And then there was Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan, who didn't much interest me, I knew all about him (I thought), had seen a bad movie about him at the Capitol Theatre when I was younger...and I was put off by the lurid covers, clearly trash books, pulp fiction of the worst sort, but there were the ones about Aliens - the Moon Maiden, John Carter on Mars, and these piqued my interest...I was running out of alternatives...

And so I picked them up and read them and loved them, maybe I was 12, probably younger, read through all the John Carter on Mars, then the Moon Maiden and the rest of them, all of them I thought, he was prolific, even read the Tarzan ones, Tarzan in Pellucidar, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, everything. I loved it. It was complete and utter shit.

...well, not entirely. He was a better author than those working under the Pseudonym of "Franklin W. Dixon", he wasn't patronizing you, wasn't dumbing it down, it was pretty dumb across the board...but pretty well written, pot-boilers, things happened and quickly, he wasn't talking down to you, wasn't an adult writing for kids, this was an adult writing for other adults...

At 20 I tried them again, after reading Nabokov, Miller, others, they didn't cut it, were painful, poorly written, shit...

When I next found them again, about 15 years ago, I picked up the entire series for the boy, as well as "The Hardy Boys", he wasn't into them at all, didn't give them a chance, "I can see why you'd like them, dad..." he'd tell me...ouch!

...and so, at the thrift shop, I find "John Carter of Mars" and "The People That Time Forgot", I pick them up. Revisit my childhood. And my tastes flip again. He's good - comparatively, not to Nabokov or Miller or any of the countless other literary heavyweights, but he paints a good picture, gives a good description, advances the plot, and like any antique author his vocabulary is infinitely richer than any number of the literary 'heavyweights' of today. 

...and his language, the symbolism, read it not for the absurd adventure, but for the map of the unconscious, he wasn't trying but he laid it bare, these books, Pellucidar, the People that Time Forgot, they're road maps to the soul, understand these and you can build carefully upon his foundation. Yeah, it was pulp-shit-dross, but it was honest, there was no pretension, and all the symbols of the unconscious and the labyrinthine underworld are laid bare...Freud would have loved him.

"_Kazor_!" cried the girl, and at the same moment the Alus came jabbering
toward us.  They made strange growling, barking noises, as with much
baring of fangs they advanced upon us.  They were armed only with
nature's weapons--powerful muscles and giant fangs; yet I knew that
these were quite sufficient to overcome us had we nothing better to
offer in defense, and so I drew my pistol and fired at the leader.  He
dropped like a stone, and the others turned and fled.  Once again the
girl smiled her slow smile and stepping closer, caressed the barrel of
my automatic.  As she did so, her fingers came in contact with mine,
and a sudden thrill ran through me, which I attributed to the fact that
it had been so long since I had seen a woman of any sort or kind.

 

Couch surfing

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 25 January 2017

Hits: 2319

• TV,
• Movies,
• romantic,
• Feeloading,

A few nights, at the end of the tour, couch surfing. It's got it's advantages, you're not paying rent, it's warmer (when it's -26 outside) than sleeping in the jeep, but it's got it's drawbacks as well. 

The first of which is that most people's couches are positioned directly in front of their TV, and you have to wait until their day is done before you can go to bed. And most people seem to watch TV until midnight...or so. And so your night grows long with the idiocy of others that you'd never think to subscribe to but are victimized by nonetheless.

The TV here, it's always on. Choose whatever you want to watch, just don't shut it off...there's nothing on, it's the local networks, there's no cable here. Bad bible themed channels and Canadian dramas like "Murdoch Mysteries" and "Michael: Every Day" and "City TV" that make you nostalgic for the golden years of Canadian TV-Shows like "The Littlest Hobo" and "The Beachcombers".

But she's got Netflix, and the nephew warned me that I wouldn't believe the shit they watch and sure enough, I'm here, on the couch, I'm watching everything that they watch. And yeah, truly it's unbelievable. It's like they don't understand how the rating system works: "How to make an American Quilt" - the first movie I've seen that I can honestly say was worse than the Titanic. "Under a Tuscan Sun", not bad, but we've kinda killed that, haven't we?. And when I'm given the controls, choose a film, I have to stay within the prescribed limits of romance or comedy, preferably both, thrillers, suspense, action, intelligence, drama, they're all out, and so i end up selecting the "Ridiculous Six", with Adam Sandler, damn that Adam Sandler, it's exactly what I should have expected. Only they're pleased at my good taste...

Now I get recommendations - things like "5 to 7", which is so low budget that you can see bystanders in the background ducking and getting out of the frame, they're not actors, didn't intend on being in this , if they knew what a load of shit this was they'd move a lot quicker, let me tell you, and I'm expected to rave favorably about it, things like "so romantic" and "so true" and "why can't we be more like Americans imagine French people to be like" and all I can think is that this is bloody nonsense and somebody should be held accountable for setting the bar sooo low...