Cleolinda everywhere

A thought that welled up in my feverish brain sometime last night while I couldn't sleep due to repeated doses of Tylenol Sinus: What, exactly, is a podcast? And what makes it a podcast rather than just, you know, something with people talking that you downloaded online? Urban Dictionary to the rescue. Sort of. ("Trend whore for 'streaming audio,'" "An online audio blog, made by people who typically sound like slightly camp nerds who most likely have no lives," "Another example of Apple trying to brand everything with their name. It's a fucking MP3. Nothing more." So I shouldn't do one, is what you're saying?)

(I'm kidding. If I'm not doing one--right now, at least--it's because I'm drowning in phlegm. Although I did notice that the Zen Nano apparently has recorder capabilities.)

Anyway, I spent all night reading because I couldn't sleep at all. Like, at all. Like, "I finally dozed off at six this morning and slept like a dead thing until noon." At which point I woke up with a fever. Yay. Finished Queen Isabella, which posits not only that Isabella and Mortimer didn't have Edward II killed up the ass with a red-hot poker (I am being totally serious, y'all. This is how most people assume he died), but that they didn't have him killed at all, because he didn't die. Alison Weir makes a pretty good case for the theory that Edward escaped from captivity, and the porter he killed on his way out was buried in his name to cover up that he was on the loose (therefore making sure no one started a new revolution around him), and that Edward himself was so broken by the whole revolt/abdication experience that he went into hiding as a hermit, and may have met with his son Edward III one last time before dying quietly in obscurity. The one thing I would call Weir on is a late, offhand declaration that "Edward [II] wasn't interested in women anyway," after she spent the beginning of the book establishing that he was very likely bisexual, since he did, after all, manage to have not just an heir, or even an heir and a spare, but four children by Isabella.

Anyhoo. I likes me some royal biographies. The next one I started in on was David Starkey's Six Wives, because apparently I am incapable of getting my fill of Tudors. I think my fascination with the Tudors is more about medieval/renaissance court culture than anything; it's just that there's a lot more documentation still extant on the Tudor period as opposed to, say, the court of Aquitaine, as you see when Weir's Eleanor bio devolves into a history of her sons' reigns for lack of information about Eleanor herself. But after Six Wives I'm probably moving on to the Sin City collection, or try to take a stab at the piles of Pratchett and Gregory Maguire I got for Christmas as well.

More fragmented thoughts:

An electric kettle! That's what I want! (Thank you to the umpteen thousand people who responded, particularly those in Britain who let me know that to be without one is like being naked in the wilderness, to which I can only say that I am used to drinking "the house wine of the South"--unsweetened, ironically.)

Another "Year in Pictures" feature, this time from the NY Times.

sigma7: "Slate on how "Lazy Sunday" might save rap. Double true!" (Heh: "If you haven't seen Saturday Night Live's Chronicles of Narnia rap, then you don't have any friends.")

A little about-the-author footnote to that article: "Josh Levin explained why bloggers are like rappers and wrote a guide to managing your entourage." (I'm going to have to take deep exception to his claim, no matter how tongue-in-cheek, in that first article that "women can't win an audience in either profession without raunching it up like Lil' Kim or Wonkette." If you don't know good female bloggers who don't have to wallow in "lewdness and vulgarity," to take an assist from the American Heritage, maybe you don't have friends either you're not really looking for anything but raunch in the first place.

Calling-card shorts now mostly a long shot. Summary: Blah blah my Star Wars fan film didn't make me a famous director wah. Interesting, though, for one sentence tucked inside: "Peter Cornwell, an Australian sound man, spent years crafting 'Ward 13,' a 14-minute short about a man waking up in an insane asylum, trying to break free, facing all sorts of bad guys. With the idea of crafting a calling card, Cornwell began constructing the figurines and sets in his bedroom, and when the project expanded, he started moving pieces and construction into his friends' homes. His hard work paid off when, in November, he was hired to direct 'The Dionaea House,' a horror thriller that Harry Potter producer David Heyman is producing for Warner Bros. Pictures." The door is open, y'all.

Turns out my poor dog has arthritis and/or bursitis in his shoulder... and a bit of gravel wedged between the pads of his paw. The doctor's advice for the aches brought on by cold weather? "Get him a sweater." I am totally going to ask the Lovely Emily to knit him a giant muffler that I can wrap all around his neck and front legs (because God knows I'd never get sleeves on the boy).

Those messages from yesterday? Farsi.

More seasonal reading!

"The Dionaea House," from last year. (Note: "An online Halloween story was based on the 'dionaea' concept. It was called the "Dionaea House", and the writer has reported the concept has been optioned for a movie.")

If you want more (and are prepared for an extremely intellectual, multimedia/print book approach), check out Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, which seemed to inspire the Dionaea story, and his sister Poe's (Ann Danielewski) album Haunted. (The Idiot's Guide to House of Leaves. Be prepared to spoiler-swipe the entire page, because the white text blocks aren't marked very clearly, and you may miss a lot.)

Algernon Blackwood: "The Man Whom the Trees Loved," "The Willows," and "The Empty House."

F. Marion Crawford: "The Screaming Skull." I seem to remember another story of his, "The Upper Berth," that was in an oversized picture-book anthology called Mostly Ghostly. Mostly a showcase for the illustrations, but fun nonetheless.

E.F. Benson: "The Room in the Tower." I really like this one for some reason.

Louisa May Alcott: "Behind a Mask." I love the stuff she wrote for adults--neither "Gothic" nor "thriller" really cover it. Maybe "scheming and intrigue" is the best way to put it, although some of the stories do have a supernatural bent. Not this one, though--the Jean Muir character just completely pwns, is all.

From the site where I got the Alcott story: Gothic Tales from the Past. and Some Weird & Horror Tales. Seriously, I'm just bookmarking this here because if I start reading I'll be here all week.

The works of H.P. Lovecraft. I promised to post links to a few of his, ahem, less-tentacled works, so... well, okay, there are some tentacles. But I wanted to put up stories that didn't depend on the Cthulhu Mythos per se--a scary story about a wax museum is, at the end of the day, just that.

"The Picture in the House." " I thought of the rain and of a leaky roof, but rain is not red."

"The Rats in the Walls." Try to ignore the cat's name if you can. It bothered me like hell, but it was published in 1924. Sigh.

"The Strange High House in the Mist." It makes me think a little of a Lovecraftian Tom Bombadil.

"The Thing on the Doorstep." One of my favorites.

"The Shunned House." This is one of the stories that reminds me of Bierce--only a lot wordier, a lot more baroque, and with more ooze.

"Herbert West: Reanimator." Yes, that Reanimator.

"The Whisperer in Darkness." BPAL fans will get a kick out of this one--to say why would give the twist away, but you'll know it when you see it.

Y'all have to read this. I can't say if it's real or not--I think I admire it more as a work of fiction, actually. But it's just right for Halloween: the search for a man who disappeared while investigating an old friend who went crazy. Make sure you read the "updates" page once you've finished with the main site--a really interesting LJ is involved. (The LJ is another reason I think it's a work of fiction--it's nicely done, but it's rather convenient that the girl would start the LJ right before the creepy stuff started happening, and it would end within ten entries. A real journal would be--well, it would be someone like you or me, with several months of entries, probably a good number of friends commenting, and then the weird shit starting. But that's way, way involved for someone to just create.) You'll notice that the updates page has updated regularly and it was last updated... yesterday. I have hopes that we might get another update this weekend.


ETA: I've just gotten word that it will be updated soon. Let's not say anything more about that. ;)