Day: February 26, 2010

Everybody always talks about the weather

I don’t know about you, but I had a snow day today.

I woke up a little early this morning, and when I noticed the snow that had started to fall in the middle of the night — it was still mostly just half-frozen rain when I went to bed — I debated calling (or rather e-mailing) in to work and taking the day off. It was tough to tell from my bedroom window just how much snow had fallen, much less how bad it would get later in the day, but I really didn’t feel like risking it. I just didn’t want to be the first person in my group to take the day off. But twenty minutes or so went by and nothing seemed to be happening, either by e-mail or on the company’s emergency telephone line. And the office is officially open at 7 AM. I was going to have to commit to either taking a shower, or taking the day and going back to sleep.

In the end, I guess I did a little of both. I took a shower, but no sooner had I finished then an e-mail informing us that the office would be closed for the day was sent out. Had it been sent only ten or fifteen minutes earlier, I could have just gone back to bed, but, hey, a snow day is a snow day. It was pretty unexpected, but I was happy to take it.

I spent a good chunk of the day shoveling and snow-blowing out the driveway, and in trekking out into the backyard with the dog, who seems mystified every time we go out to discover there’s still snow everywhere. I also watched the really terrific Passing Strange, which I have out from Netflix — and which, I’ve got to say, beats venturing into Manhattan to reformat PowerPoint files all day. Which is probably what my day would have entailed, had our office been open.

Right now, I’m thinking about watching this week’s episode of Burn Notice or maybe a little late-night capping. I’m really just enjoying this unexpected three-day weekend.

A horny devil

I think I may have to finally cave on my (admittedly foolish) no-new-books-for-2010 policy, if only to buy a copy of Joe Hill‘s new novel, Horns. I’ve been a big fan of Hill’s writing since his debut short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and while I didn’t think his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, quite lived up to those stories, it showed a whole lot of promise and was a really fun read. The new book sounds like it will be, too.

I particularly liked this recent interview with Hill at the AV Club:

AVC: Horror fiction tends to operate on a strict, E.C. Comics-style morality. In your stories, bad people still get punished, but there’s more sympathy toward people who make mistakes.

JH: There’s two things to say about that. First of all, I was talking to someone the other day who was talking about a line in the new Peter Straub novel [A Dark Matter], which I haven’t read. A character in the book’s saying, “What am I feeling here, horror or terror? I think it’s horror.” There is a difference. Terror is the desire to save your own ass, but horror is rooted in sympathy. It’s really rooted in this notion of imagining what it might be like for someone else to suffer the worst. On that level, I suspect that horror fiction is very humanizing.

Though he goes on to acknowledge that

Okay, one of the great flaws of genre fiction is, characters understand each other. They talk about a situation, they trade information in a way that makes perfect sense to both of them. I almost never have conversations like that in real life. I think that one of the things you see in literary fiction is a much more honest and daring approach about character, where characters have a tendency to talk past each other. They’re each talking… This is something I learned from watching John Sayles movies. A couple who are in love will sit down at a table and tell each other about the day, and neither one is really hearing a word the other person says. They’re talking, the conversations are existing on two different planes. I kind of love that. Because real connection is rare.

Yeah, I think I’m going to have to read this book. Maybe Straub’s new novel, too, come to think of it.

Random 10 2/26

Last week. This week:

  1. “Downtown Train” by Tom Waits
    They have nothing that will ever capture your heart
  2. “Undun” by the Guess Who, guessed by Eric B.
    She didn’t know what she was headed for
  3. “California” by Gina Villalobos
    Let’s get dirty and make us some drinks
  4. “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” by Frank Sinatra, guessed by Clayton
    Put another nickel in the machine
  5. “High Fidelity” by Elvis Costello, guessed by Eric B.
    Maybe you’re only changing channel
  6. “Uncle Pen” by Ricky Skaggs & Friends (orig. Bill Monroe), guessed by Clayton
    He played an old tune they called the “Soldier’s Joy”
  7. “As Cool as I Am” by Dar Williams
    You have a word for every woman you can lay your eyes on
  8. “War” by the Cardigans
    Hear the dust roll over the floor
  9. “Today” by Smashing Pumpkins, guessed by Eric B.
    I wanted more than life could ever grant me
  10. “Broken Ship” by Immaculate Machine, guessed by Kim
    If it never really started how can it be over?

Guess the lyric, win no prize. Same as it ever was. Good luck!