Book Reviews: My Work Is Not Yet Done

My Work Is Not Yet Done
by Thomas Ligotti

I hadn't read anything by this Detroit born author though I heard good things about him. So I decided to read the 2002 titular short story/novella. It also comes packaged with two other short stories. This is probably a horror story but that's just an easy surface description. This is weird fiction. This work owes some debts to people like Poe, Dunsany, and Lovecraft but is not a pastiche or homage. 

Ligotti is a singular voice. I will read the story again to fully understand events and their meaning. The writing is very atmospheric. There is a very dream like aspect to the descriptions. Even before the obvious supernatural elements intrude upon the reader, the reader might wonder about what is real and what is in the protagonist's head.

The protagonist, one Frank Dominio, opens the story by saying he has always been afraid. This turns out to be integral to the story because Frank is a very unreliable narrator, whether from fear or other failings. Frank is not entirely a schmuck but he's close. I think that many people may recognize themselves and/or their co-workers in Ligotti's description of Frank and his work associates.

In my own experiences, I didn't immediately realize that in work environments, rivals and enemies don't often reveal their hand and attack you openly and honestly. Some do, but that is rare. More often it's the "accidental" exclusion from business lunches or after hours conclaves, supposed jokes that are always at your expense, the damming with faint praise, a grudging meets expectations review, or an assignment to a task or path that gets little respect and no upper management visibility that limit someone's rise on the corporate totem pole.

Twerking at True Kitchen Restaurant

Let's say you invite a guest to your home. The guest puts her bare feet on your couch, throws her chewed meat bones on your carpet, and writes her name in permanent marker on your walls. When you politely ask the guest to stop this behavior she ignores you. 

She continues to disrespect you and deface your home. Upset, you eject the guest from your home, using some harsh language in doing so. This is not really news. It becomes news when other people who have the same warped values as the ejected guest blame you instead of the guest for the situation.

Kevin Kelley, owner of True Kitchen + Kocktails, tells TMZ that his anti-twerking speech has had a positive impact on his eatery. The Grio previously reported Kelley was filmed yelling at Black female patrons who were twerking and dancing on the furniture. In the clip, he makes clear that he is running a restaurant, not a club.
‘We’ve received an outpouring of support that we did not anticipate online and in person.’The Dallas restaurant owner who went viral for cursing out his customers over a twerking incident says business is booming.

Movie Reviews: Five Against The House

Five Against The House
directed by Phil Karlson

Although some consider this a film noir, I don't. It looks like one but it's just a heist movie and not one that's very engaging, with the exception of Kim Novak. It has some comedic asides about college life. It has some muddled thoughts about post traumatic stress disorder and what society owes to those veterans suffering from it. 

Five Against The House has Novak for the va-va voom factor. She definitely brought that element but had little else to do. There's no real conflict in her character or in her interactions with any of the other actors. She was no femme fatale. Not every noir movie has a femme fatale of course but they are common enough in the genre to be noticeable when absent. 

The film's other failing was that except for Novak the actors were simply too old to be believable as college students. The film addresses this problem by making the older looking characters law students instead of regular underclassmen but I still thought the other would be college students looked too old. 

There are some actors and actresses who can get away with playing 18-22 year olds well into their late twenties or early thirties but I didn't think any of these guys did that here. Four college students from Arizona take a weekend trip to a Reno casino. They have fun but obviously lose money. That is after all the point of a casino.

Movie Reviews: Unhinged

Unhinged
directed by Derrick Borte

I know some people who have the patience of saints. These people never get upset while they are driving. They constantly defer to other drivers, never flip anyone off, and calmly brush off angry grimaces or foul hand signals that they may see from other people on the road. I envy those folks. I am not one of those people though I have become calmer as I have aged. Previously though, if you were doing something stupid that was hindering me, I was going to let you know about it. With age comes wisdom though. 

You never know what the other people on the road are going through to make them behave as they do. You also never know what acts they may be capable of committing. Their state of anger may be far more dangerous than your state of anger. It's worthwhile considering that before you get into a back and forth with someone on the road. Being inside a vehicle, particularly a large one can give a driver an unwarranted sense of safety and sometimes aggression. 

This is a lesson which Unhinged is determined to share with its viewers. Sometimes chance can combine with bad decisions to just ruin your day. We all have bad days. Some people are salivating at the opportunity to share their pain with others. Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is a struggling hairdresser(?).  Separated, Rachel is going thru a divorce which is on the verge of turning nasty.  Rachel is letting her somewhat fey and definitely lazy brother Fred (Austin McKenzie) and his girlfriend (Juliene Joyner) live with her rent free until Fred finds a job, something Fred doesn't seem to be too interested in doing. 

Police: Shut Up And Submit!!!

It's a source of cynical amusement, frustration, and anger to me how some Americans think that THOSE people should always immediately and cravenly submit to any and all police demands no matter how unreasonable, humiliating, unconstitutional or criminal while reserving for themselves the right to question, debate, defy, reject or resist police orders, whether legal or not. I am not overly fond of the police but it remains prudent advice that unless you are ready, willing and able to take things to that other level with the police and ultimately the state, you won't win most physical confrontations with police officers. 

Most people are quick to point that out when police employ violence against Black men or women. Police bootlickers smugly point out that if the Black person had just slavishly complied from the beginning they wouldn't have been shot, tased, assaulted, pepper-sprayed, beaten senseless, or curb stomped. Somehow though this critical insight seems to leave them when they are the ones being bullied or harassed by police officers on a power trip.

A Staten Island man says he’s proud of his family’s support for the NYPD — but that all changed after a rowdy caught-on-camera clash with cops outside his family’s bagel shop. Both Awadeh Nemer, 30, and police agree the Nov. 5 melee erupted about 12:30 a.m. outside Diddle Dee Bagels on Richmond Road in Dongan Hills after two officers on traffic enforcement asked to see Nemer’s ID. He refused, and was arrested. Who was being disorderly is where they disagree. 

Movie Reviews: The Color Out Of Space

The Color Out Of Space
directed by Richard Stanley

This sci-fi/horror movie is an adaptation of the 1927  H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name (color is spelled "colour").  It was one of Lovecraft's finest works. A Lovecraft weakness was to use florid, antediluvian adjectives to describe his settings while being paradoxically unable or unwilling to describe the monsters themselves. In the short story however, and fortunately enough in this film adaptation an alleged shortcoming was turned into a strength. 

The protagonists struggle to describe something that is beyond human experience and perception. That seems impossible. If something falls into our visible spectrum we can see and describe it. So in that aspect there is no such thing as a color we haven't seen before--a description used by many people in this story. 

But what if something has the ability to move in and out of the human visible spectrum or perhaps its very presence temporarily or permanently alters the human visible spectrum?

Would we lack the vocabulary to detail what we saw? Hmm. In this story Lovecraft anticipated radiation poisoning and described it quite vividly. Lovecraft may have been influenced by the Radium Girls scandal, which occurred during his lifetime.

Human Steak??!!!

Want to get your Jeffrey Dahmer on but are turned off by the work needed, the resulting mess, and those pesky police officers bothering you about missing vagrants? Don't worry. New advances in science have got you covered. Now you can eat liver and fava beans with a nice Chianti without any pain in the a$$ detectives demanding DNA samples from you, arresting you at your job, or having your false friends start calling you hurtful nasty names like cannibal and savage.

Advancements in science and technology have done great things for the world, but as the world continues to change, some things are better left untouched. A “DIY meal kit” for growing steak made from human cells was recently nominated for the “design of the year” by the London-based Design Museum, and while it could dramatically change how food is made, the makers are now assuring people eating their food is not “technically” cannibalism.