Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 73

She could’ve killed someone with a pencil.

17. Night World: Huntress – L.J. Smith

You know how sometimes you have to like rejoin the gang of vampires you used to lead for the good of the universe even though you were like doing really well paying more attention to your human half? Keep up. Jez Redfern, like John Wick much later, has to return to her old ways for some serious action in order to keep evil from winning the apocalypse at the millennium/taking revenge a network of evil dudes/co-workers and stupid-Russian-Theon for stealing your car and murdering a very important dog. Maybe, just maybe, my analogy is not totally sound, but if there’s ever a movie version of Huntress and Jez Redfern says “Whoah,” I’ll know it’s meant for me.

A special hardcover collector’s edition of each of the Night World books is being released this year, if only this year was also actually going to see the release of the final Night World book… There is a rather hilarious Amazon page for “Strange Fate,” the tenth book – in theory – filled with the kind of frustrated commentary George R.R. Martin is surely used to dealing with, it’s been over 20 years of waiting for L.J. Smith’s fans. I’m waiting on her too, I’ve got to say Night World is a great series. A little melodramatic, but they’re for teenagers and everything is life and death. EVERYTHING. Maybe you don’t understand. Maybe you should go slam your bedroom door.

Mixtape –

1. Tread Lightly – Mastodon

2. White Light Suicide – Witchcraft

3. Raise A Paw – Melvins

4. Things Present, Things Past – Blood Ceremony

5. Dendrofil for Yggdrasil – Kvelertak

6. For Blood – Bass Drum of Death

7. Skin Traps – Electric Six

8. Never Let You Down – Greenskeepers

9. I Hear Voices – Kasabian

10. Reload – Ministry

11. The Needy – Logan 5

12. Feral Love – Chelsea Wolfe

13. By Your Definition – Witchcraft

14. I’d Kill for Her – The Black Angels

15. The Way of Vikings – Amon Amarth

[image error]

Peregrine and Ozma are waiting here until someone tells them they have to take vengeance for their old names: “Pippa” (I adopted Peregrine and Merricat as a pair formerly known as “Paris” and “Pippa,” so I’m assuming there based on the order of their appearance in their adoption photo) and “Mitzi.” Seriously. Mitzi. That’s a dog name. Pippa is a dog name too.

She got Swayzed.

35. The Secret Bedroom – R.L. Stine

Every time I switch towns I eventually run into the same old story – there’s that creepy house where somebody got murdered. And you know, in Mississippi, it was my house. It was drugs. No unfinished business. Lea of The Secret Bedroom is not so lucky. I mean, it could’ve been drugs, but, it wasn’t mentioned specifically if drugs were involved in the 100 years ago murderage, so… Lea is not so lucky in many ways. She falls victim to the many tropes – she’s a new kid who spills on the prime bitch at school, then gets asked out as a joke but she doesn’t know until she gets stood up, in her wallowing she hears footsteps upstairs in the boarded up bedroom, the girls she ends up being friends with are either too popular to keep up getting to know her or they found a boyfriend and no longer cared (Friends!), AND her parents keep leaving her alone in their haunted house (Thanks, Lea’s parents.) and she would be okay with it – if it was being haunted by Patrick Swayze. Patrick Swayze, gateway ghost.

Mixtape –

1. School – Nirvana

2. Misery Keeper – Electric Citizen

3. Zero – Smashing Pumpkins

4. Phone Call – The Faint

5. Mother Father – Swans

6. Sick, Sick, Sick – Queens of the Stone Age

7. My Dreams – Electric Six

8. I Only Said – My Bloody Valentine

9. Lost Boys and Girls Club – Dum Dum Girls

10. Your Sins Will Find You Out – Eli “Paperboy” Reed

11. Everybody Dies – Those Poor Bastards

12. I Dreamt – The Black Angels

13. Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now – The Smiths

14. Love Can Destroy Everything – The Raveonettes

15. Noorus – Chelsea Wolfe

16. Ripe – Nine Inch Nails

[image error]

Pammy and Thaddeus chomp down parsley in an attic bedroom. There’s no corpses in there or anything. Also no Swayze or Swayze-related materials. They’re like the wind.

It could’ve just been The Cretins.

Welcome to year four of YA Megamix Summer! This year’s theme is “Class of Soon to be Nuked High” in honor of the the world teetering on the brink of destruction based on the whims of a moldy orange madman. Good luck having a future, enjoy these glib reviews and mixtapes for the next three months and if the country is still here at the end of August, we’ll resume our mental health/horror programming.

 

24. The Night Walkers – Otto Coontz

Way to not end the story, man. Maxine is cured, no one else is, and there’s no resolution beyond blaming the guy who runs the dump for the pollution. Writing is about making choices. When you bring things up, like “the soul” a few times and have Nora the Cassandra thinking that’s the “leg up” they have and then never resolving anything… At 163 pages, you could have added another chapter or two and resolved the story. I expect more of an author that admits to being the puppet and mask maker for the San Francisco Mime Troupe AND being concerned about environmental protection in his bio.

 

Mixtape –

1. A Forest – The Cure

2. The Number of the Beast – Electric Six

3. Home Sick Home – Faith No More

4. Damned If She Do – The Kills

5. Time for Death – GWAR

6. Under My Chin – Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster

7. Infected Girls – Electric Six

8. Burning in Hell – Electric Citizen

9. Iron Moon – Chelsea Wolfe

10. The Angry River – The Hat

11. If Wishes Were Horses – Witchcraft

12. My Mule – Abner Jay

13. Sore Eyes – Widowspeak

14. Old Pine Box – Those Poor Bastards

15. Forest Clouds – Windhand

[image error]

Duncan was in charge of emotional support while I wrote the outline for Day of the Robots. She didn’t even put that in her bio because it took second fiddle to seeing works from the Louvre at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in 2009 and almost auditioning for a season of So You Think You Can Dance? in the same day.

“I learned it by watching YOU!”

9. Feast – Graham Masterton

Having spent a very, very, very small fraction of my childhood inside restaurants I didn’t like with my father, I can relate to some elements of Feast. I never stormed off to speak to a mysterious dwarf when he would ask me about school even though I only ever saw him over Fourth of July weekend, but I certainly rolled my eyes super hard and reminded myself I’d be going home to my own things soon enough. Being able to relate to any aspect of Feast probably seems terrible if you’ve read the book, but, whatever. It’s probably better that I didn’t get kidnap-inducted into a flesh-eating cult during one of those Fourth of July weekends. It’s not like I was doing anything fun instead. Mostly I was sneezing. Stupid summer.

I could also relate to seeing one’s father as selfishly involved in their own shit instead of interested in me, so, thanks for all the non-vulgar relatability for once, Graham. Thanks. Charles McLean, restaurant critic, and his son Martin are using their quality time as a vehicle for Charles to do work and Martin to be bored while eating in Connecticut. Charles finds out about and begins trying to get an invitation to a super underground restaurant that turns out to be a bit of a front…for a cannibal cult. A self-cannibalizing cult. See, eating yourself prepares you for meeting God, because cult-logic is the most solid kind.

It must be said that Feast was not as gross as I expected it to be. And I expected a lot because all the other Graham Masterton books I’ve read have at least one specifically disgusting or vulgar scene that just sticks in my head and will not leave (olive oil, dog in a pool, fishnets *shudder*); but Feast didn’t have one of those for me. Guess I got too caught up in the relatively ancient hype this time.

[image error]

Sure, Horace will join your cult. After he finishes napping on his froggy. You’re not his real dad.

 

 

It is happening again. (YAY!/I hope it’s good.)

We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a message about painting and excitement for the Twin Peaks new season premiering this Sunday and of course, guinea pigs.

This year I’ve been working on some more paintings that inject my sweet little guineas into glorious television shows. I started this series last year with my Danger Dixon parody, Danger Who number 10 and Danger Who number 11 , iPiggie , and now I give you the ladypigs of Twin Peegs.

But first, because Laura always comes first, I did a little photoshoot of Ozma acting as Laura being menaced by BOB in Fire Walk With Me:

[image error]

I’m sure you can all tell this is an exact and painstaking recreation. I didn’t have to convince Ozma to walk in that direction and be menaced several times.

[image error]

Funko Bob is super intimidating.

[image error]

There we go. Fully menaced Ozma-Laura, running away…

In the actual paintings I decided to cast Merricat as Audrey Horne (my favorite Twin Peaks high schooler):

[image error]

Ozma as Shelly Johnson:

[image error]

[image error]

Here’s Ozma not even really looking at herself as Shelly.

And Miss Peregrine herself as the Log Lady (my favorite Twin Peaks adult lady. I have a log pillow and vaguely debated trying to get my mom to buy me a real log when visiting the Twin Peaks section of a gift shop in Snoqualmie Falls as a teenager):

[image error]

[image error]

Peregrine’s log saw something that night.

Peregrine also got some time with a small toy version of her character:

[image error]

In the White Lodge – which is clearly not my bedroom -, they allow attempted hair cuts the same way I get them – guinea pig teeth.

[image error]

Peregrine starts to take this whole thing a little more seriously.

Each of the full paintings is available on a variety of objects/in several fashions (posters, coffee mugs you can fill with fish coffee or damn fine coffee, either way, phone cases, my favorite the throw pillow, etc.) on my Redbubble page.

[image error]

Guinea pigs love art work. And posing for pictures. And pie. And Special Agent Dale Cooper most of all, but also Albert.

“What do you MEAN ‘YOU DON’T AGREE WITH ME!?’ DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH!!!!?”

49. Dog Blood – David Moody

The second book in the Hater trilogy follows main character and thinking-man’s Hater Danny McCoyne as he searches for his daughter, who has also become a Hater aka not superhuman, not undead, but not interested in anything other than brutally killing or changing over anyone who isn’t currently a Hater.

Along the way there are also threads that the thinking man who generally hated many things is not entirely gone, was not entirely consumed by the Hate and has the possibility of something more moderately hatey… I can’t see any overtones of this book happening in current society today, no sir, I cannot.

[image error]

Let Belvedere teach you the way. Feel the urge to sneef and chuckle in the face of your enemies wash over you.

Fighting my internal grammar.

4. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened – Allie Brosh

Much has already been said about this book, much. “ALL THE THINGS” have already been said. I too enjoyed Allie Brosh’s blog once it was pointed out to me by my friend David and I very much enjoyed reading the book and of course, as I also have depression that gets pretty serious on occasion (like lately, whee! By the way, “SPRING BREAK!” is my new shorthand cry for help/asking that you please understand that I do not feel good and I would like assistance with potentially slight cheering so I know I should stick around) this book means a lot to me. I’ve found that one of the things I consistently heard about it and the blog posts is that it helps people who don’t have depression understand how depressed people feel – and that’s true. It’s not like one of those miracle “As Seen on TV” things, it really does do that. So if you want someone to understand your depression better, it is a good idea to read the depression parts (make sure you relate, it’s possible you won’t) and hand the book to the person you want to understand and ask them to read the part about the corn nibblet under the fridge. (Side note, why is Word trying to underline “nibblet” like I don’t know how to spell corn words? Suck it, Word. Oh, that’s a fragment, huh? Whatever.)

I would like to entrust all you gentle and not-so-gentle readers with my own recent version of the corn under the fridge story, it’s going to be less skillfully told and it involves a clown and Sean O’Neal. I am a writer and people have purchased my works, I’m sure you can tell based on how well I am telling the story I told you I was going to tell you. Moving on, I am regularly on my own, a solitary woman who does like Neil Diamond, so, it’s easy for me to stay in my depressive states when they suddenly smack me in the head and say, “Don’t enjoy anything. … Keep not enjoying anything. … No one’s coming to ask you if you’d like to enjoy anything ever again, so, holding pattern.” Sometimes though, sometimes, I can find something to break me back out on my own instead of having to rely entirely upon my guinea pigs. On more than one occasion, that something has been an article by Sean O’Neal of The A.V. Club, who apparently also has depression. Ugh, I’m still doing a terrible job getting to the part that matters… Anyway, one time in the recent past, I guess it was July now that I looked up the article , it was a dark and stormy night in the middle of the afternoon and I was looking for reasons to keep my chin up on the internet. Normally a terrible idea. I stumbled across a Newswire article about the new version of Stephen King’s It with a droll title. I started reading, unphased even by the prospect of a scary clown picture and just past multiple paragraphs of graciously deployed O’Neal snark and a terrifying clown illustration was this sentence: “Plump, kissable clown lips—oh so kissable.” and I could not stop laughing. I nearly fell off my couch and found the will to live again. Anti-climactic. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Allie. Thank you for putting up with that, Gentle Reader. Goodbye, most of my ability to tell a decent story using words.

[image error]

Merricat, poised for a dramatic escape. Peregrine, poised for a dramatic nap. Spring break! Fight or flight or..sleep.

This time, it’s corporate intrigue.

4. Symbiont – Mira Grant

Problematically, in the second book of this trilogy, Sal does not magically become more interesting. Damn it. Grant also gives Sal a blank-as-hell brother character and a Harley Quinn-type that pops up to be confused, crazy, beloved by the other characters, and cause some trouble. I am honestly quite annoyed at how closely Tansy of the Parasitology trilogy, a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse… resembles Foxy of the Newsflesh trilogy, a fresh take on the zombie apocalypse. It just makes it seem like not enough time was taken in between writing these trilogies. Parasitology should not be Newsflesh take two, now with less incest and corporate instead of political intrigue. Barely anything happens in Symbiont, it feels like 499 pages of stalling when we could be on our way to a breakneck finish of someone helping Sal learn something while not driving too fast.

Grant’s books are very easy to read and involve some pop science and that’s how I will probably end up reading the last of the trilogy. I’ll be hoping for some of the characters to become realistic or fully fleshed out – three four hundred plus page books are enough space to flesh out characters, right? Right? This is probably another losing battle for me. Why do I expect fully fleshed out characters when I’m 1009 pages into a trilogy? WHY?

[image error]

Murderface, displaying her level of plot-twist vigilance.

“Now I have you with me, under my power”

58. Heart Shaped Box – Joe Hill

I have a friend reminiscent of Judas Coyne in Heart Shaped Box, although his tastes run a little on the less expensive side in terms of collectibles, he thinks he’s too old to do certain things (in his case, he isn’t, I told him he has to have a late period – mostly so I can say I told him to while he was in his bitchy-giving up period), he likes the attention, the attention of the ladies, and doesn’t seem to particularly care how old they are…a little bit cliché, yes…but it’s probably possible to count on one hand how many straight men got into playing guitar, especially guitar, for the craft. No offense to all three of you who did that. He also has been through a long period of ditching those aforementioned ladies through extremely callous means. So, it’s a wonder we haven’t dated. There’s reasons. Some of us are trying to make better choices. Both of us, technically, but who knows how long it will last. Probably until we’re in the same place while “N.I.B.” is playing.

Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if he told me that he bought a ghost on the internet, it wouldn’t surprise me if he told me he regretted purchasing said ghost because it was haunting him like a displeased ex-girlfriend. After reading Heart Shaped Box, I’m actually waiting for that to happen. Maybe after his next tour and the release of his “just before he got to the bitchy-giving up period” box set. Maybe, not unlike Heart Shaped Box, there will be parts of the haunting that I find supremely unsettling.

[image error]

Ozma is in love with him, I call her his “inhuman concubine.” It’s so cute. It’s terrible. She’s almost three.

The album is called Reign in Blood, the song is “Raining Blood.” You’re welcome.

33. Darkest Heart – Nancy A. Collins

It’s recently come to my attention that I still know every single sound in the movie Interview with the Vampire by heart. It was on HBO the other night, presumably in anticipation of that Vampire Chronicles TV series I’ve heard minimal amounts of things about and so I watched it for the first time in ages with Finny, and Peregrine, when Finny got tired of me telling him when a noise I didn’t like was about to come on – like when Louis first dies and when that one prostitute is making that snapping noise at Lestat, and there’s more…there’s always more. I believe the main reason I know it by heart is that I used to listen to it when it was on Pay per View and I couldn’t see it (scrambled), but the sound was perfect. Apparently that’s not what other people were “watching” on scrambled Pay per View but that’s fine.

Anyway, vampires have been of interest to me for a long time, and my mom found Darkest Heart at a library sale and got it for me. It turns out it’s the last in the Sonja Blue series, and I read it first. It did make a little bit of a difference. I wasn’t entirely invested in the character as a vampire who also happened to be a “badass vampire hunter,” perhaps I’ve been tainted by Blade. But I did see a certain familiar conflict between vampiricism and humanity (“Oh, Louis, Louis, still WHINING, Louis!” – best part of the whole movie, unexpectedly) and the plot and action were fast paced (Sonja is not as mopey as Louis, even though I’ve always loved Louis, [named one of my own characters after him – a broody, angry poet werewolf] Sonja is like the Slayer to Louis’ Neutral Milk Hotel) and made it clear that there’s a toothsome quality to the series. I’ve since read more Sonja Blue books and enjoyed them, but I haven’t stumbled across the first one just yet.

[image error]

“Yes, please, tell me more about all those noises I don’t even understand in this movie.” – Peregrine