Marble Hornets -- YouTube

A friend at work first introduced me to Marble Hornets, a periodic YouTube series centered around a group of amateur movie makers who stumble upon a paranormal entity known as the Slenderman. There are currently 64 episodes with a handful of updates (".5" entries) and retorts by a commentator known as totheark.

The story centers on Jay, who inherited the raw footage of Marble Hornets from its creator, Alex. Alex, who started acting very paranoid, left him the tapes and declared that they should be burned.  Jay, not listening to Alex, decided to watch them and, to his dismay, was pulled into a harrowing, and oftentimes quite dangerous, world of supernatural stalkers and encounters with the Slenderman.

I watched the entire series, to date, in a single day, which I don't actually recommend, as it can be quite overwhelming. That said, though, I do recommend that anyone interested in urban legend mythos give it a try.  I found it to be quite intriguing both from the storyline aspect and from the modern conveyance of story. It takes the reality show approach and meshes it with the epistolary style of 19th century story telling to create something quite remarkable.

At this point it is impossible to give a complete review on the series because it is still in progress.  Once the project is completed, I'll post some comments on the overall scope of the project. In the meantime, watch and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets

Monocyte -- Menton3 and Kasra Ghanbari

Title: Monocyte: In the Land of the Blind the One-Eyed is King (hardbound comic collection)

Author: Menton3 and Kasra Ghanbari

Publishing Information: IDW Publishing 2012

Source: My Library

Short Bio:

Menton3 (Menton John Matthews III) was born in 1976 in Mississippi, USA, and now lives in Chicago, IL, USA. Per his blurb, blog and website, he began the study of alchemy and the occult at an early age. As he matured, his interests branched into iconography, symbolism, and investigations of the psyche. He now uses his accumulated knowledge, and meditation, to inspire his paintings. He is the artist and co-writer of Monocyte. You can view selections of his works on his website: menton3.com. 

Kasra Ghanbari lives in Chicago, IL, USA, just across the street from Menton3, per an interview with the two men on Bleeding Cool.  Kasra has a diverse resume ranging from being a co-founder of Panacea Pharmaceuticals, which researches genetic cures for conditions such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease, to being the art representative of such names as Clive Barker, Ted McKeever and Richard A. Kirk, as well as Menton3. He is the co-writer of Monocyte.

Comments on Story:

I first ran across Monocyte while looking for the latest edition of the Lock and Key series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez on the Science Fiction Book Club (SFBC) website. I was struck by the cover art and decided to give it a try. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t do any further research on it before purchasing it, so boy was I in for a surprise when it arrived a week or so later.

First of all, the book itself is an impressive 9 inches by 13 inches in size and is printed on heavy cardstock, so it has some serious weight to it.  I had to rearrange a few shelves just to find room for it in my bookcase. Second of all the artwork throughout is incredible.  Usually, I don’t expect the art of the actual comic to stand up to the quality of the cover, but in this case, they were just the same, each page a standalone piece worthy of framing.  To give you an example of what I’m talking about, let’s take a look at the cover.  As I’d seen in the preview on SFBC, the front of the book consists of a woman’s head, tilted to the side, apparently floating in space. All you can see of her face is her square chin and full lips, then the color fades to black beginning at her cheekbones, extending up and up into the spire of a church.  Within the spire is printed the title of the book. As you continue to examine the cover, you realize that the picture wraps from front to back with the woman’s throat on the spine and her torso down to her thighs on the back. Overall, it gives the impression of both decapitation and of an immense structure that has collapsed, both of which I realized, after reading the story, were delicious precursors.

As I read the book for the first time, I was somewhat disappointed, as it seemed very two-dimensional with several scenes seemingly going nowhere or altogether out of place, such as a two page discourse on the history of the Welsh longbowmen.  I still don’t understand how that section applies to the rest of the story.  In any case, I set the book aside, assuming it was just another one of those “mistakes” that  I purchased on the off chance it might be good.  Then a few days later I picked it up again simply to look at the pictures, which was, to be honest, why I’d bought the book in the first place.  It was then I realized that, unlike your average comic where the art is, at most, of secondary importance to the words, in Monocyte, it was the words that were secondary to the art. They were embellishments, mere subtitles, to the colors and motion and symbols of the pictures. To someone familiar with Menton3’s work, this would probably not be surprising, but being a novice myself, it was a wonderful twist to explore.

Now I don’t know about you, but the last time I was truly able to decipher symbols was when I was a Lit. student in college. So I summoned my inner Joseph Campbell, dusted off some old cerebral pathways, and sat down to reinvestigate what I’d so quickly dismissed before. Following are excerpts of what I found, however, since symbolism, by its very nature, is both highly personal and subject to interpretation, take what I say with a grain of salt.  To you, it may be completely different.

The story consists of two groups of warring immortals, the Antedeluvians who are older than mankind, steeped in tradition and ancient lore, the keepers of knowledge since the beginning of time, and the Olignostics who were created by an MIT scientist, more machine than living, ones and zeros, the pursuers  of greed and power. Together they are the embodiments of Nature and Man’s worst qualities, locked in an eternal battle with no end, stalemated because neither side can ever die. The Antedeluvians are led by the Greenman, whose role is that of rebirth, but he has forgotten his path and now remains stoic and aloof, allowing his right-hand man, Moses, of Biblical lore, to oversee the day to day, and more importantly, the battles.  Moses is equally lost in the minutia of time, unable to see his way to change.  The Olignostics are ruled by the Conduit, a man (most likely the MIT scientist) who is linked to all of his creations through some sort of cerebral connection. They are a hive-like race, having numbers instead of names, their society feudal, where status is based on the number of humans each enslaves.  Both groups depend on humans in their own way: the Antedeluvians feeding on spirit and the Olignostics on flesh.

Enter the scene, Death.  He perceives the imbalance created by the endless war between the Antedeluvians and the Olignostics, and strikes a bargain with another immortal, who is separate from both, to destroy them all. This champion is called Monocyte, and in return for his services, all he asks is that Death allow him to die, a gift he has been denied since his creation. Monocyte is half man and half spirit and as such fulfills the role of the hero -- able to perform deeds impossible to beings born into either side alone.  

In addition to his links to the hero-myth, Monocyte also has distinct Odinesque qualities, the most obvious being the use of only one eye. Monocyte was the first immortal and was created when a man, Augustus, battled with his own spirit (sort of a trickster type being) while seeking his lost twin brother, Lapis. In the end, Augustus found that his spirit and Lapis were one and the same, but by then they were joined, flesh and spirit, and he was cursed with immortality, and the loss of one eye. In a loose sense this scene reminded me of Odin sacrificing one eye for a single drink from Mimir’s well so he could gain wisdom and foresight.

Another reference to the god of Norse myth plays out in a series of two scenes spread between separate issues of the floppy comic release.  At the end of one comic, Moses, in an attempt to save the Antedeluvian city, uses Monocyte’s human name, Augustus, to summon  forth a gigantic creature called Life to defend the city gates.  With a single blow, Life seemingly destroys Monocyte, separating his human side from his spirit side.  In the opening of the next comic, deep within the caves of the Olignostic city, a man lies on the floor, close to death, but he notices something on the wall, an etched character in the stone. He reaches up to touch it and light begins to grow within the room.  As more and more people see it, childlike crayon drawings of flowers appear in their thought bubbles and they begin to remember the beauty of life. These two scenes bring to mind the sacrifice of Odin on the world tree, Yggdrasil, where he hung himself upside down till near death to bring forth the written language of the runes to the Norse people.

There are many more trips into the mythological and symbolic within the pages of Monocyte, but I don’t want to give them all away in hopes that you will decide to discover them for yourselves. However, one more comment can’t hurt, right?  It has to do with the name of the main character -- Monocyte.  I found this to be a clever homophone meaning both single sight (mono sight) and a white blood cell responsible for destroying foreign material in a body (monocyte).  As for the former, it is obvious -- he only has one eye. And for the latter, he engages in an epic battle to cleanse the world of two warring groups who have devolved through time into a plague. Or does he?  You’ll have to read the book to find out.  

One final note – after reading and then reinterpreting through the pictures, I found that the words, though still secondary to the art, acted as an incantation, a recitation of knowledge, sort of like the chorus in a Greek play. They mimic and chatter like echoes, which is particularly effective given the immensity of the landscape, both physical and psychological, within the story. That said, if you choose to read this book, I suggest you first go through it slowly looking at the pictures and then go back and read the words.  How ever you decide to approach it, enjoy.  It is an interesting ride.

Upset with Blogger

I just spent the past 2 days creating a blog to upload.  When I uploaded it, none of the text would appear.  It was there, just hidden.  When I tried to edit it, the entire post disappeared except for the title and I was unable to recover it. This is unacceptable. From now on, all posts will be created in MSWord, a much more stable platform, and then uploaded to Blogger.  If this occurs one more time, I'm going to shut down this site and go to WordPress.

UPDATE 9/30/2012

Okay, after spending about 3 hours researching it, being able to recover the post seems hopeless. I have to harken back to something my grandmother always told me, "You get what you pay for." And since I don't pay to use Blogger, I guess I should expect nothing in return.

Anyway, in case you ever have this problem, here are a few of the things I tried. May you have more luck than I did:

1) Search your history for a cached version of the site when the post was still available.

2) In your browser, search for "site:" with the web address of your blog after the colon (no space). This will take you to a full listing of just the cached pages of your site. Search through them for a version that included the post. This only works if the search engine swept your blog at just the right moment to catch your post.

3) Use the Wayback Machine to see if it captured your post.

4) If you use Firefox, type in "about:cache" in the address bar. This will take you to a database of cached information that Firefox stores. There will be a number of cache categories. In each one, click on "List Cache Entries". This will take you to a full list of the cached entries under that category. Hit Control+F and type in the name of the post, then search for entries that contain this. This is where it gets complex, so I'll turn it over to the capable hands of the people at RLM where I found the info on how to do this: http://www.rlmseo.com/blog/recover-deleted-posts-using-firefox-cache/

5) Subscribe to a your blog as a Post Feed in a Feed Reader (such as Google Reader). If the post was ever uploaded, it will feed to this and you may be able to recover it even if it is deleted from the main blog.

6) Do all your posts in MSWord, save them on your computer and any other back-up device you choose, and then upload them to Blogger....my personal favorite.

The Dead Valley -- Ralph Adams Cram

Title: "The Dead Valley" (short story in a compilation entitled Black Spirits & White)
Author: Ralph Adams Cram
Publishing Information: Stone & Kimball, 1895, Chicago
Source: Project Gutenberg EBook released September 22, 2008 (#26687)

Short Bio: 

Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was an American architect best known for a style called Collegiate Gothic, examples of which can be seen at Princeton University and various other colleges and churches throughout the Northeast USA. In addition to his design work, he also wrote numerous books on architecture, and, as is applicable to this post, a handful of ghost stories collected into a volume entitled Black Spirits & White.

Comments on the Story:

The compilation begins with, and takes its title from, the following quotation by Thomas Middleton, an early 17th century English playwright: "Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray,/ Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may!" It is an apropos opening for this little collection of short stories based on traditional European supernatural tales, which, as the author explains in a postscript, served as the inspiration for his writings.  Most of the tales center around a brave (or more likely naive) soul (usually American) who, quite often against adamant warnings from the locals, journeys to a haunted or cursed place seeking adventure. Though not unique in literary style, Cram's detailed settings, garnered most likely from his many visits to the continent to study architecture, give the reader an intense sense of place and could easily double for a travelogue.  The tales themselves have a satisfying chill about them but, for the most part, have no more of a lasting effect on the reader than the "boo" factor garnered at the end of a campfire yarn.  All that is except for "The Dead Valley".

Whether by design or not, "The Dead Valley"  is strategically placed as the last installment in a set of six. By the time the reader gets to it, they feel they are comfortable with Cram's style and are ready to dig into yet another vignette told by a traveler to a foreign land -- a snippet of place and time with no apparent relation to the rest of the narrator's life. Instead, they are presented with a tale within a tale, in which the narrator, an American, relates a story told to him by a friend, Olof Ehrenvärd, a Swedish immigrant to the USA, who had taken to the sea as a way to escape the horrors he'd experienced in his homeland.  The story begins with a short description of Olof by the narrator ("...the tall yellow-bearded man with the sad eyes and the voice that gives itself perfectly to plaintive little Swedish songs remembered out of childhood."), of their fierce battles of chess, and particularly of the tales Olof weaves as the night grows darker.  One in particular about a dead valley strikes the narrator so profoundly, he feels he must write it down.  Thus begins the story.

Twelve year old Olof and his friend Nils Sjöberg are best friends.  One day they travel to the market in Engelholm (Ängelholm) where they fall in love with a puppy they find for sale.  Having not brought enough money, they ask that the merchant hold the dog until the next week when they will return with enough money to purchase him. However, a few days later, fearing that the merchant will not keep his promise, they beg their parents to allow them to travel to the merchant's home in Hallsberg to purchase the puppy immediately.  Permission is granted and they make the journey.  If you look at a map, the distance between Hallsberg and Ängelholm is an amazing 250 miles (410 km), so Olof and Nills must have lived somewhere in between, but still it is a long trek by foot, so it is not surprising that on their return trip home the next day, after spending much time playing with the puppy, they find themselves still in the middle of the woods as the sun is setting.

As is the case in the other stories within the collection, just as it draws upon the dead of night, the boys find themselves in an unusual and foreboding setting, however, unlike the other stories, the menace they encounter is not of man but of nature. This in and of itself lends a deeper creepiness to the story in that no matter what, the source of the danger will always be unknown.  It will never be explained or the originating source discovered, as is the case in a number of the previous "ghost" stories.  It has a deeper, primeval feeling of myth about it, something that twinges the seat of primitive fear within us all. And the brave little Olof experiences it not only once, by chance, but a second time when he goes back weeks later to investigate the source, almost losing his life for the effort.

As a collection, I consider Cram's book to be a good read, pleasant and well paced. But "The Dead Valley" -- well, ever since I first read it years ago, it it has stuck with me -- is at the back of my mind whenever I look out of the window into the woods as the sky grows dark, wondering what I'd find if I entered them.  Would I ever come back?  That is a great story.

Suggested Reading

Use this post to add comments about any unusual, weird, or odd stories that you would like to recommend. Or, for that matter, anything else -- as long as you think it is a good read.

Suggestions thus far:
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

The Great Google Book Scan

On my way into work today, I heard a segment on NPR about the court case of Google vs. the publishers and authors whose books are under an active copyright. This case is many years old (10+), but in the recap, the journalist was outlining the basics of the case, specifically Google's stance that their intention is to make all knowledge available to everyone, and the publishers/authors stances that Google is infringing on copyright law.  This got me to thinking about a number of issues surrounding this case (Note that I have not fully researched it, so these are simply questions that sprung to mind as I was listening).

1) How are the plaintiffs presenting the case?  Of course nothing is simple, but I would have to think that it would at minimum be two fold: a cease and desist order and a claim against lost revenue.

2) How do the plaintiffs quantify lost revenue?  Without seeing Google's records of the number of downloads of a specific copy of  work with an active copyright, how does the plaintiff quantify revenue lost?  So maybe there is an order to release those records

3) Even if on the surface, revenue is lost initially, how does the plaintiff quantify how many people have downloaded a book from Google and then, after reading it, actually bought a hard copy (or a legitimate eBook)?

Add to all of the above the inaccurate content of the scans provided by Google.  They place a disclaimer at the beginning of each eBook paraphrased something like this: Google uses an algorithm to capture the words within the scan and as such errors will occur.  However, the small number of errors is acceptable in their opinion given the greater benefit of having ready access to the book.  This is a point on which I have to differ, having downloaded a number of Google's eBooks myself (all copyright free, I might add). In each, the number of "typos" was at the very least distracting, but quite often confusing or misleading.  Some words were translated by Google's software as a jumble of letters which spelled nothing and I had to guess at what the author intended based on context.  This might be acceptable to a novice reader, or someone who really doesn't cultivate a high level of reading comprehension, but to me it took me out of the story.  I actually had to think about what I was reading -- not because of the content, but instead because of the actual mechanics of the delivery system.

I understand, and in some respects applaud, Google for their concept of making books available to everyone, but as a reader who cherishes words and the twist of a phrase, I have to question the depth of the intent.  If the entire project is to provide books for general use, then the actual books, as originally written, need to be what is made available.  In short, they need to grasp the concept that some things just can't be done by a machine.  They need an editor.

Alternatively, one could simply go to Project Guttenberg and get the books instead.  They proof read everything that they scan (they have a large staff of volunteers who do this) which, even though it is not perfectly edited, still  provides a very enjoyable reading experience.  And per a disclaimer on their website, all of the books they scan are in the public domain in the US (copyright has expired).

Introduction

It all began with my mother reading fairy tales to me before bed time. I can still picture the line drawn image of Sleeping Beauty amongst roses and thorns on the cover page to the story. Then came, to my poor mother's dismay, the endless recitations of Dr. Suess' Green Eggs and Ham, which to this day, unlike the poor unnamed character berated by Sam I Am, if the ham and eggs are green, I pass them by (yuck!).  But it wasn't until I was twelve years old when I purchased my very first book with my very own money that I entered that realm of imagination that only a story read with your own eyes can engender.  That wonderful book was Casey's Shadow by Burton Whol. I long ago lost my copy of Mr. Whol's story of courage and perseverance, but to this day it holds a special place in my heart as the door that opened my budding mind to the magic of story.

Since then, I have read hundreds of novels, short stories, poetry and plays -- each one written in a unique voice, but all stemming from the same trials of the human condition. I am by no means a learned scholar of any particular period or genre, nor do I subscribe to any set philosophical doctrine.  To me, no matter what the conveyance, if the story sparks my imagination, it is a worthy read.

With that love of story in mind, I now endeavor with this blog to set to writing some of my observations. My purpose is three fold: 1) to keep a record of what I have read for my own future reference,  2) to possibly spark an interest in others to dig deeper into what they read, and 3) to commune with fellow bibliophiles through any comments they are kind enough to post.

Regardless of all of the above, for anyone who reads this blog, may the magic of story be always with you no matter what the source.