Knights of the Cornerstone

Books, Speculative Fiction, ,

Every so often I think I ought to start writing about the books I read, just to keep my brain in shape. I never seem to keep up with this. I’m going to try it again, but given how long it took me to finish this rather badly written review maybe I shouldn’t get my hopes up.

The Knights of the Cornerstone is about learning to engage with the world. Cal, James Blaylock’s hero, is a thirtysomething guy who lives alone, collects books, draws cartoons, and spends his time standing aside and watching life. As a thirtysomething cartoonist who lives alone, accumulates books—it doesn’t rise to the level of “collecting,” I fear—and doesn’t get out much, I may or may not be this book’s ideal reader. I was distracted by the subconcious expectation that, at any moment, the characters would turn to the reader and ask “Are you getting all this?”

Beyond that, for anyone who’s read Blaylock before this book is not particularly striking. It’s not bad. It’s like… have you seen Spellbound? The Alfred Hitchcock movie? Spellbound is worth seeing. More than once, even. It’s not a great movie; Hitchcock was not pushing himself. It says something that the best part of Spellbound was the work of Salvador Dali. But it is a Hitchcock movie, and it does the things Hitchcock movies do.

Knights of the Cornerstone is a James Blaylock novel, and it does the things James Blaylock novels do. Continue reading Knights of the Cornerstone →

Emergency

News and Politics

One of the odder unintended consequences of the mortgage crisis: noise pollution.

Firefighters in Arizona have found themselves answering hundreds of false alarms at foreclosed and abandoned houses… and, unless they see smoke or have the owner’s permission, they can’t legally enter the houses to shut the damn things off.

At first they tried to track down the mortgage holders. Many were out of state banks. In the labyrinthine world of the modern mortgage industry it was impossible to find anyone to take responsibility–the same problem that allows some people to stay in their foreclosed homes by challenging the foreclosing bank to “produce the note.”

Until the alarms’ batteries die, days later, the neighbors are stuck listening to the shrieking of empty houses.

(via BLDGBLOG)

They May Be Slightly Too Late

Weirdness

Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based non-profit corporation, wants local courts to allow it to disinter a Burlington man so he can be preserved in a cryonic process.

—The Burlington Hawk Eye, June 6, 2009

Unfortunately for the deceased, his family didn’t bother to tell Alcor he’d died until he’d been in the ground for months. Not that this would have mattered to him: according to his will, he wanted his remains frozen “regardless of the severity of the damage from such causes as fire, decomposition, autopsy, embalming.”

Correct Your Nose!

Books, Speculative Fiction

Project Gutenberg has posted the February 1930 issue of Astounding Stories of Super-Science. The best things in it are the ads.

CORRECT your NOSE!

CORRECT Your NOSE!

Thousands have used the Anita Nose Adjuster to improve their appearance. Shapes flesh and cartilage of the nose—safely, painlessly, while you sleep. Results are lasting. Doctors approve it. Money back guarantee. Gold Medal
winner. Write for 30-Day TRIAL OFFER and FREE BOOKLET.

ANITA INSTITUTE, 242 Anita Building, Newark, N.J.

“Anybody notice Carl today?”

“Why? What’s up?”

“The flesh and cartilage of his nose look like he’s been wrapping his head in linguine.”

“Pardon me, gentlemen!”

Business men gargle daily to check colds and sore throat

Why is Listerine to be found in the offices of a majority of American business men? Why do they use it at the noon hour? Why do they sometimes halt important meetings, to gargle with it?

A damn good question, actually.

Stop that Pain

By Relieving the Cause with
Violet Ray—Vibration
Ozone—Medical Electricity
The Four Greatest Curative Powers Generated by This

Great New Invention!

Elco Health Generators at last are ready for you! If you want more health—greater power to enjoy the pleasures and delights about you, or if more beauty is your desire—write! Ask for the book on these inventions which has just been prepared. It will be sent to you without cost. It tells you how Elco Health Generators aid you in leaving the lethargy and hopelessness of bad health and weakness behind forever. Re-vitalize yourself. Bring back energy. Be wholly alive. Write today!…

These great new inventions generate Violet Ray, Vibration, Electricity and Ozone—combined or separate. They operate on the electric light in your home or on their own motive power at less than 50 cents per year. Elco Health Generators are positively the only instruments which can give you in one outfit Electricity, Violet Ray—Vibration and Ozone—the four greatest curative agents. Send the coupon below. Get the Free Book NOW!

Or you could just hang around Frankenstein’s lab for a while, and get the four greatest curative agents plus zombies!

The man frowned as his stomach turned gray.

10 Inches Off
Waistline In
35 Days

“I reduced from 48 inches to 38 inches in 35 days,” says R. E. Johnson, of Akron, O., “just by wearing a Director Belt. Stomach now firm, doesn’t sag and I feel fine.”

The Director Belt gets at the cause of fat and quickly removes it by its gentle, kneading, massaging action on the abdomen, which causes the fat to be dissolved and absorbed. Thousands have proved it and doctors recommend it as the natural way to reduce. Stop drugs, exercises and dieting. Try this easy way.

Our nations’s epidemic of obesity apparently came about because Americans failed to gently knead and massage their abdomens.

Despite the testimonial, the guy in the picture looks very unhappy about his Director Belt. What, exactly, is it directing? Has it ordered him to commit some crime?

It was the belt that made him do it! The damned belt!

Why the Comics Take So Long

Also at Super Doomed Planet, Art, Comics

I’ve got a webcomic. Lately I’ve been averaging one comics page a week, if that. That’s because creating each page is like dragging myself uphill.

Longer stories–like the one I’ve got going now–start with a pile of scribbled notes from three or four different sketchbooks, which may or may not originally have had anything to do with each other. Eventually I seek them out–or at least the ones I remember–and piece them together chronologically.

This is why I usually have no idea where a story is going until I’m halfway through. (Further details, and illustrations, past the link.) Continue reading Why the Comics Take So Long →