Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 78

This is my design.

As I have been preparing mercilessly for my Artist Alley table at the Madison iteration of Wizard World ( my profile on the Wizard World site ), I haven’t been posting as much and now I’m posting without very many words…unusual for me. Anyway, the guinea pigs are making their public debuts in a couple of series I’ve painted and I’ve done some prints, and the end of my Squirrelpocalypse Trilogy will be coming out soon, and I’m going to share some painting pictures and some dear god what did I do to my living room printing pictures throughout the month of April, and let’s face it, probably also May because my hands and brain are tired. First up, The Thing-part of my John Carpenter’s Guinea Pigs series. All these paintings will be available at Wizard World Madison – April 8-9-10 at the Alliant Energy Center.

 

Danger Crumples has always been from another world, his role in my guinea pig version of The Thing just confirms it.

 

Peregrine gets to be Kurt Russell by virtue of having the middle name “Plissken.” Here she is wearing the wrong jacket for the MacReady character adorably.

 

And here’s Peregrine as MacReady with the head monster, which ended up looking a mite Trumpish, not sure how I feel about that. I blame yellow ochre.

 

Blood test! Horace, Ozma, and an unhappy Danger Crumples await the sizzle noise in their sweaters.

 

This is dedicated to “Corey Stoll’s wig”

44. The Strain – Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

 

So, I like Guillermo Del Toro, quite a bit. Details like the Hellboy II elf prince guy’s blood looking exactly like McDonald’s barbecue sauce not withstanding- even though I was fond of that and consider it to be a clever observation regardless of whether or not it really is clever- I feel like I can usually trust his world building and storytelling for the most part. I really enjoyed Pan’s Labyrinth. Anyway, The Strain had some serious-level clunkiness and suffered a bit from the “this is a novel, but we’d prefer it to be a screenplay of some sort” syndrome.

I do not care for Ephraim. That is not helpful when reading the book. I also do not care for his family. Whatever, Kelly. My lack of concern was not helped by the television show, at all. In fact, it made me totally hate Zack. There is no award for not doing what you’ve been asked to do for your own safety, kid, and if there was, Carl is, was, and always will be the winner…emeritus. Get in the house, Carl! Where’s Carl? Carl is not in the house. Moving on yet again, I also feel bad for the actress who plays Kelly because she keeps playing characters who end up in relationships with supernatural creatures – or are trying to, like she was on Bitten. She’s got a really good “concerned” tone in her voice, but I hope she someday gets into a better supernatural relationship, one that doesn’t kill her like on Being Human or turn her into a bald vampire like on The Strain. I haven’t really moved on, have I? My favorite things about this first of the trilogy is that it spawned a really disgusting advertising campaign for the TV show, that the Abraham Sertrakian character is played quite nicely by David Bradley, and the A.V. Club comments section for the TV show recaps wherein the discussion of Corey Stoll’s wig in the episodes is delightful – I agree, the wig’s state of disarray really does convey the majority of the emotion Ephraim the annoying is feeling.

“The wig is not that bad!” – Belvedere
“Yes it is! You know it is.” – Pickles

Every corner abandoned too soon.

29. The Red Tree – Caitlin R. Kiernan

Atmosphere…atmosphere…atmosphere… “Don’t walk away, in silence.” No, that’s not it. It’s atmosphere…atmosphere…atmosphere… I can’t show you what’s happening because I have to spend a lot of the text telling you that what happened is too disturbing for me to show you. Tree. Cave. Wait! I’ve got it. Cigarette…cigarette…cigarette… Coffee…coffee…coffee… Space madness? Nature madness? End. No. Fin.

Gentle reader/viewer, Mortemer is napping in this picture. I’m both telling and showing here. Ha.

This one time, I got to my anthropology class before the previous class was done and got to see a slide of a very burnt body that reminded me of Pillsbury crescent rolls when you pop the packaging.

10. Spirit – Graham Masterton

Oh, Graham. Jeebus. I am a big fan of the Snow Queen fairytale, especially Kelly Link’s version “Travels with the Snow Queen” from Stranger Things Happen (no one will ever regret reading this short story collection, so, I unabashedly recommend it); and this was the second Graham “master of the vulgar description that gets stuck in your head and makes you basically forget most of the plot” Masterton book I’ve read, so I feel like I was prepared when I read this, but I was quite taken aback by the olive oil scene. Totally prepared for the frostbitten to a crisp man scene [insert Pillsbury Doughboy giggle], not the olive oil. Why was that even in there? Anyway, it was an interesting take on the Snow Queen, and the perils of regret and losing a child, and ghosts, and girls named Peggy and a primer on things that should not happen with cooking oils… Hard frown.

“They did what with olive oil?” Belvedere, perpetually too young to read Graham Masterton books. I wouldn’t even let his mother Murderface read a Graham Masterton book and she was a very advanced pig.

12 – Poor Condition

51. The Uninvited – Dorothy Macardle

Dinner parties! Ghosts! A painting model named Caramel! Endless weeping! Play writing! Dramatic gestures! These are the things people heard me complaining about while I tried to finish reading this book on a variety of lunch breaks at work. I requested it from a university in the same system as the one I work for and my first clue that my experience with it wouldn’t be great was that it came in a manila folded box. That means it’s fragile and no one wants to have it bound. I, usually, do not circulate items like that, even if I know they’re coming to librarians like me, who respect the books, because it’s hard not to damage items like that further, no matter what you do with them – especially if you drop them in irritation, which, I did not do. Not once. Not even on accident. The cover was completely loose, which made for a complicated and delicate reading experience, almost as complicated and delicate as everyone in the story seemed to think Stella the teenager was. She’s lost her mother, and she won’t stop showing up at her old house – she should probably lie down, and oh, p.s. since I, narrator and a grown man playwright, have moved to the country with my sister, I think I should date this hapless teenager who has lost her mother (that part happens later on, but still, I squinted in displeasure at it). The séance scenes were pretty amusing though, I will give Macardle that.

The Uninvited is also a movie and I saw some comparisons with The Haunting somewhere that made me interested in reading this book, but, it just wasn’t for me. It’s nowhere near as foreboding as The Haunting of Hill House. I hope that if I ever get around to seeing the movie it’s more like The Haunting, which is good, and that the comparison wasn’t based around there being ghosts in a house with ladies in both stories.

Oh, and I could not help but want someone to scream “STELLLLAAA!” ala Stanley Kowalski every time someone called for the hapless teenager as she wandered into dangerous situations looking for her ghost-mom.

“Is there a ghost up there?” – Danger Crumples
“The only ghosts here are us.” – Ozymandias
“For the love of anything please haunt me, my little piggies.” – Me

Full moon’s coming.

13. The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group – Catherine Jinks

The previous novel in this series was excellent – except for the eating of guinea pigs…I’ve tried to make it clear to people that guinea pigs, based on their gestation period alone, are not the best choice for vampires – or the stupid hospital people on The Walking Dead (All the guinea pigs would have been dead already unless there were already some in the constantly air conditioned hospital and no one stressed them out during the initial stages of the zombie apocalypse…unlikely. Rabbits and rats already have wilderness experience, breed way faster, and rabbits are bigger! Ahhh! I will never get over these bad choices!) – partly because of how it altered the perception that vampires are so strong and full of stolen vigor. Jinks’ vampires are creaky and full of sloth, probably because they eat relatively inactive domesticated animals (see photographic evidence provided by Pammy and Twiglet below).

The werewolf sequel does not suffer from a lack of action, and thankfully some of the vampires do show up to slow it down a touch. It’s much more of a kidnapping story than a werewolf story. I’m not entirely sure that it was a good choice to speed the sequel up so much and throw it completely into action-territory as I ended up feeling like I didn’t really know the major characters. I was just following along to see what happened without any real stake in the outcome.

Pammy and Twiglet being relatively inactive. They were champion synchronized nappers and loungers. Eyes on the prize, ladies.

“Lying causes cat piss smell.”

36. Riding the Rap – Elmore Leonard

A Deadwood movie has been green lit! Yay! Don’t suddenly back out! I started this year quite ill, the result of a long situation with some two inch thick ice and my trusty meat cleaver… and while I was ill I finally finished watching all of Deadwood. I’ve mentioned how much I love Justified on here before, so, basically I needed to catch up on the earlier incarnation of Timothy Olyphant, lawman. And since HBO DVDs do that evil thing where they force you to click on each episode individually and then each episode has its own menu and you have to click again in order to watch each episode and I have to have a continuous stream of something on my TV in order to sleep, I switched to Justified when I needed to pass out. So, lots of Timothy Olyphant, lawman, lots, all of it great. I do prefer Raylan to Seth Bullock, but it’s mostly because Raylan says a lot more…thanks to Elmore Leonard’s gifted dialogue. I’m hoping that in the Deadwood movie Seth says a lot more. I mean, I love Al and he did need to say the most, but, maybe Seth could say some more things while he’s grimly setting that jaw? A few more? I like hearing him talk.

The plot of Riding the Rap was adapted for Justified, and Raylan doesn’t quite have the major role that I wanted him to have in the book. The criminals in this story are definitely some serious hoopleheads, as usual, including but almost excluding Reverend Dawn, and it has all the Elmore Leonard hallmarks that make his crime novels worth reading, again I mention dialogue – it’s really important to me and he is truly the best -, so it’s good.

Boyd and Raylan, Swearengen and Bullock, Ozymandias and Danger Crumples.

Start with a Queen, End with all the Queens

Thus ends the specified “Year of the Ladies.” Although next year starts tomorrow, I’m not clear on whether or not I want to have a theme.

The main thing I know about next year is that I have a lot of art to finish before April.  Another thing I know is that I am both petrified and anxiously awaiting the edited version of the final book in my Squirrelpocalypse trilogy – Night of the Squirrels. I will then revisit it, stare at it wondering what I was thinking, re-write some chunks, probably cry about said chunk re-writing, ask the guinea pigs if they have any ideas about why it turned out so differently than what I planned for the story in 1998 and not get ANY useful answers, and then accept it and rearrange all the semicolons before I format it and put it up with the other two. I finished it this year, on December 5th at 11:53 PM, and immediately wasn’t sure if I liked it. That probably means it’s all right because every single time I finish a book – and I’ve finished two this year, personal best, probably never to be repeated – I’m not sure if I like it. So, I await my cognitive distance and since I like to end with pictures, here are all the sweet little lady pigs that I’ve owned since 2008. Snippiest, most gratuitously disagreeable bunch of cavies ever to exist and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Miss Murderface and Pickles the Drummer (yes, that Pickles, and her full name is the entire line from the opening credits – that’s a behind the scenes secret you couldn’t get from very many sources).

Sepia toned teddy bear ladies Twiglet and Pammy. So fuzzy. So domineering. But so fuzzy and so good at napping.

Murderface and the lovely Duncan Hills. I only got to have Duncan for eleven months, but she had the softest ears and the sassiest disposition. She also helped me quite a bit with the planning of Day of the Robots.

Merricat and Peregrine, my first non-Mississippi or Iowa born lady pigs. Merricat was frighteningly special and my first lady Abyssinian. She was very small in size, but had a very large bite.

Peregrine and Ozma having a mild moment. Peregrine has not been the most friendly of new friends to Ozma, but Ozma’s willingness to explore is slowly, very slowly seeping in to Pere.

Misadventures in Memorial Library

72. Shoot the Damn Dog – Sally Brampton

I was hunting down a book that most likely was mis-shelved some time in the mid-1990s when this title gave me pause. In many academic libraries, the dust jackets do not make it to the shelves, the budget for mylar is very low… anyway, without their dust jackets, there’s no blurb to read and no illustration that could have told me that, hey, she didn’t mean just any dog and the book wasn’t about being very insensitive to pets. It took me a bit to realize that the dog referenced by the title is Winston Churchill’s black dog, the one that symbolizes his depression. That’s the long way round of explaining that this snappy title came back with me, unfortunately, the book I was hunting did not – and that is kind of rare. Technically. Book hunting is one of my best skills. I have learned from reading Shoot the Damn Dog that nicknaming my own depression or choosing a symbol for it, does not fall under any of my best skills.

Sally Brampton lives in London, bonus for her, and relates her very strenuous struggle with depression, and then alcoholism to treat the depression, and then depression again plus the knowledge that alcohol is very ineffective at treating depression, and what actually helped in her case. Hers manifested itself in her throat and so she called it her “throat monster.” I’m actually very disappointed in my depression for not even bothering to manifest in a specific area or take on a recognizable animal personality. I’ve always thought it was just part of my personality- any dogs or monsters would have a hard time convincing me otherwise, and I’ve recently done some reading about the connections between chronic respiratory illnesses and depressive symptoms and that makes more sense in relation to how my depression ebbs and flows than any specific manifestation. I can say that although the lack of animal personality disappoints me, reading about how others have survived their depression and how they experience their symptoms is very helpful. And when you have depression, seeking help is the main thing you should do. Especially if you can give yours a nickname, that’s significant.

Duncan was blacker than the blackest black times infinity, plus a giraffe nose and a couple of dark red rings, but she’s a symbol of cuteness and snippy guinea pig kind. Snippy guinea pigs help me find reasons to keep living through my depressive periods.

Gary also reviewed the coffee at a Jiffy Lube… also four stars.

45. Drawn to the Grave – Mary Ann Mitchell

I have a tradition of starting a new horror mass market paperback while waiting for my oil to be changed. There’s something about knowing that I’m going to be sitting there for a while, maybe longer than I expect because I waited till the last possible moment the weekend before a lengthy trip like I always do, that helps me cope with the things I find annoying about mass market paperbacks, like how I always end up creasing their spines, how easy it is to lose my place when I get surprised by someone asking to show me my air filter’s dirtiness level, and the paper texture – some of them are printed on just rough enough paper that I hate it! Anyway, Drawn to the Grave was one of the Jiffy Lube paperbacks. While reading it, I kept getting distracted by the re-run of the Casey Kasem Top 40 on the radio and the smell of car fluids that kept winding its way into the waiting room, hyacinths it was not. The story is both engaging and very strange so I kept having to give sarcastic looks at the vinyl cushioned chairs around me as well. None of the chairs had read it, they couldn’t relate. The book felt weirdly like a Lifetime movie mixed with something they would have shown on Cinemax at ten PM in the 1990s. It’s a clever premise; it just struck me in a very off-putting way and I cannot entirely blame the fumes or the interruptions. It might have something to do with how I refuse to ever go on backpacking trips alone or rely on the kindness of strangers if at all possible. I also promise to never choose my lawyer based off of Yelp reviews, Kyle.

Drawing Mortemer has the opposite effect of all the drawing in Drawn to the Grave, well, sort of, I remember him better but I still get older.