{"id":11092,"date":"2014-02-09T21:16:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T02:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=11092"},"modified":"2014-02-11T21:39:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T02:39:06","slug":"saturday-and-sunday-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=11092","title":{"rendered":"Saturday and Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Last night, I watched a couple of movies. <\/p>\n

First there was Escape Plan<\/i> with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/i>, which turned out to be surprisingly entertaining despite — or probably because<\/i> — it was so ridiculous. I felt like Stallone was fighting the silliness a little bit, but Schwarzenegger was embracing it wholeheartedly, and as such was really good in the movie. I wouldn’t call it good<\/i>, but it was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

After that, it was a real change of pace with Dallas Buyers Club<\/i>. The movie wasn’t exactly remarkable, but it told its story well, and Matthew McConaughey was very good. So was Jared Leto, who I didn’t recognize until the movie was almost over, and both he and McConaughey deserve the Oscar nominations they got for the movie.<\/p>\n

In between the films, I discovered a cat living in the garage. I’d been hearing noises off and on for the past couple of nights and discovered the blinds on a couple of the windows mussed up. But I chalked the former up to the wind, and the latter up to imagination…or more wind. (Well, the rational part of my brain did, anyway.) But I heard the noise again last night and although it was only for a second, I saw a cat creep into the far back corner. The garage is full of stuff, including furniture and boxes I moved back from Pennsylvania a decade ago with, so there are lots of places a small cat like that could hide. I gave up on trying to find it last night, partly because I didn’t want to chase it out into the cold, but I saw it again this evening. I tried leaving the garage door open, coaxing the cat out with soft words and tuna fish, scaring it out with loud noises, and the most I seemed to do was to chase it from one inaccessible corner to another.<\/p>\n

It’s not so much that I mind there being a cat in the garage. I got a better glimpse at it tonight, and I think it’s a stray, so I want it to be warm. I just don’t want it to set up shop out there, think it’s a good place to go to the bathroom or have kittens, or get stuck in one of those inaccessible corners with no food to be had. I think I might have chased it out this evening — into what’s unfortunately become a snowy night — but I also thought I’d maybe done that last night.<\/p>\n

So hopefully I chased it away and it will find a better place to hole up. Or if it’s still out there, I’ll be able to find and catch it, so that I can somehow take it to the vet. (I say somehow because we don’t own any cat carriers anymore.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, that was most of my weekend. Today, after a prolonged absence, I joined my writing group again and wrote this:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are no ghosts here,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jimmy said. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know which one of us he was trying to convince.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sure, there are stories,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jimmy said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The old house, the caretakers murdered.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He walked over to the shelf behind his desk and pulled down a book. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That was in 1908, three years after the house was first built. Then there was a fire in the barn, that family who rented the place and went missing in the \u00e2\u20ac\u212270s.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He handed me the book, which was older than the paperback I knew he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen me tuck into my backpack, and was probably a first edition if I knew anything about Jimmy Bell.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all in Trevor Burnam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s novel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if you can get past the lousy prose. And some of it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s corroborated by press clippings — of which,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t for that time and this area. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a far cry from saying the house is haunted.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Then why aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you living there?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I asked. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Your family owns the house, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been living in town for six months, and yet you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still renting here, in this place.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t escaped my attention that there had been a fold-away cot stored in the closet, or that Jimmy had shut the closet door when he noticed me snooping.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done your homework,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell if he was pleased. Looking at him from across the desk, I thought maybe he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell either.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I just want to know what happened there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u2122They drank the milk and ate the butter,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first line of Burnam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He nodded at it in my hands, and although I pretty much knew the thing by heart I flipped to the start of Chapter 1. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153’Miss Abigail returned to the kitchen that cold October morning to discover the pantry door unlatched, the fire in the hearth gone out, and the little dead girl waiting for her at the top of the cellar stairs.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not great writing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jimmy said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but sure, I can see why people liked it at the time. After the Wilson family ran off in \u00e2\u20ac\u212276 –\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Disappeared,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There were five of them, and they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever found.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I handed him back the book. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are<\/i> press clippings about that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153And about Ken Wilson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drinking problem, too,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jimmy said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look, I like you, Clara, and we went to school together, which is the only reason I agreed to meet. But you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re seeing this from a distance and missing the details. And the details say there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no such thing as ghosts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you believe that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I took the writing prompts from this magazine cover<\/a>. Imagine if I’d gone with the picture!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, I watched a couple of movies. First there was Escape Plan with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which turned out to be surprisingly entertaining despite — or probably because — it was so ridiculous. I felt like Stallone was fighting the silliness a little bit, but Schwarzenegger was embracing it wholeheartedly, and as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,14,28,12],"class_list":["post-11092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cats","tag-movies","tag-personal","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11094,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092\/revisions\/11094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}