I feel crippled

I’ve misplaced the chord to hook my camera up to my computer and can’t download any pictures- plus we haven’t done much hiking due to an ongoing health issue (long story). And I have so many pretty pictures of Autumns past that I've never touched up (my camera really isn’t capable of capturing the glories of a fall day without a little help) that I thought I might do a bit of that now.

This is a picture of a Cooper’s Hawk that was hunting small birds in an area I was walking one day a few years back. I was shocked to be as close as I was as it was a heavily populated area and there were quite a few people just a few feet away, but it seems that he was on the immature side and hadn’t learned the finer points of discretion.  

What I should have done is make a video of his behavior because the Cooper’s Hawk is really quite amazing to watch. But we’ll just enjoy his pose for today.

scariest books for halloween

Flavorwire put out their 50 scariest books of all time list. It by Stephen King; Piercing by Ryu Murakami; The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty; Ghost Story, Peter Straub; American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; Hell House, Richard Matheson; Bram Stoker’s Dracula; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; H.P. Lovecraft’s The Best of H.P. Lovecraft; The Turn of the Screw by Henry James are the top ten! 

I have to admit that I haven’t read any of the top 10- I loved Poe (he is 22) in high school and I think all his stories are pretty scary: Tale Tell Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado.

I also read The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski but don’t remember it being THAT scary and it came in 25. Maybe I need to reread it? I also read #45 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I found it more gory than scary which is often the case for me where American “horror” is concerned. 

The scariest thing I ever read was the first scary adult book I remember. It was called Stories that Scared Even Me, ed. Alfred Hitchcock; the first among many of Hitchcock’s works (love his movies!) that I would come to love. Stories selected by Mr. Hitchcock include: Casablanca by Thomas M. Disch, Fishhead by Irvin S. Cobb, Camera Obscura by Basil Copper, A Death in the Family by Miriam Allen deFord, Men Without Bones by Gerald Kersh, Not With a Bang by Damon Knight, Party Games by John Burke, X Marks the Pedwalk by Fritz Leiber, Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond by Nugent Barker, Two Spinsters by E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Knife by Robert Arthur, The Cage by Ray Russell, It by Theodore Sturgeon, The Road to Mictlantecutli by Adobe James, Guide to Doom by Ellis Peters, The Estuary by Margaret St. Clair, Tough Town by William Sambrot, The Troll by T. H. White, Evening at the Black House by Robert Somerlott, One of the Dead by William Wood, The Real Thing by Robert Specht, Journey to Death by Donald E. Westlake, Master of the Hounds by Algis Budrys, The Candidate by Henry Slesar, and Out of the Deeps by John Wyndham.

All I remember is that I was up at night, staring into the dark, hoping no murderers were lurking behind closed doors.

What scary books are still lurking in your memory?

excitement at the library!

A young woman ran into the library today asking me to call 9-1-1. She’d run behind the desk I work behind and my initial reaction was to ask her to get out from our workspace until it registered what she was saying. I was about to ask why when another young(er) woman ran into the library shouting something about “beatin’ yo ass…”

what Circulation normally look like

Sheesh! A little decorum here! You’re in a library for god’s sake. I told her to leave and then picked up the phone and quickly dialed (what was that number again???). She said something about not giving a damn then went on to threaten the woman behind me. Meanwhile her friends had run in and were trying to get her to leave. After a few moments of cajoling they finally pulled her out of the library. I assumed they didn’t want to deal with the police and were leaving for good but continued talking to the operator.

The woman who’d asked for our help went to the door to see what was going on outside, suddenly ran back to the desk as the door burst open again and the petite persecutor ran back in determined to get at her prey. I told her she needed to leave but she would have none of it and told me to “shut up, bitch… “ and more, then went on dramatically with well her name & age but I was talking to the operator at this point and trying to multi-task with both conversations was getting a bit difficult. Then she started toward the desk. Cara (the circulation clerk who was working alongside me) and I moved over in front of the woman she was threatening in a semi-circle. I was determined she was not going to hurt anyone but I have a hurt shoulder and I am not quite sure exactly what I could have done in the event she really came at us- but it was instinctive I guess. Fortunately, her friends moved in again and pulled her back just as things got fairly tense.

At this point it’s pretty- well, strained would be an understatement. One silly lady started complaining that there were people yelling in the library and said we should tell them not to yell (she complained to Cara). You have to wonder what she was thinking? I’m not sure we’re really worried about the yelling ma’am… So we’re gathering more information about what the girl is wearing for the Emergency Operator when the, what I have determined to be, sixteenish looking girl really comes bursting back in. I tell her to leave- again. Her friends grab her again and pull her out one last time. I don’t know what has convinced them this time, but they do leave at last, getting into a SUV and drive with two adults off of library property. The young (but quite a bit older than the one who’s been causing the trouble which is why she said she didn’t want to fight- dind’t want to get charged with beating up a minor) woman we’ve been helping says the women in the vehicle and the friends who were pulling her out were all going to jump her but it seems they were waiting outside until the time was right but the one hotheaded girl couldn’t wait, she kept coming in to intimidate and harass.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Or not.

what's your favorite paranormal creature?

As for me… I would love to believe that an alien came down to visit of a raw winter’s eve but I do find it hard to believe the stories that are told by abductees. I do believe that it’s likely there is life Out There that we may be able to communicate with one day.  I love the idea of time travel and think that may explain Nessie (hey, maybe an Elasmosaurus found a time portal- anyone see Primeval? Maybe it explains Bigfoot too!).  

Elasmosaurus: from wikipedia

 

Paranormal, in a nutshell refers to encounters that lie outside the spectrum of normal experience or scientific explanation or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure. Most commonly this will refer to ghosts, UFOs/ETs, Bigfoot, the Lochness, Werewolves or Vampires, etc. 

As writers, it’s the events that lie beyond the scientific explanation, mathematical equation or simple account that fires up the imagination. When I think about what I want to write, I don’t need to write about the paranormal event I believe in (or don’t) but the ability to allow the mind to invent a world outside the tangible and explainable allows one to write a love story that tears the world apart or move through time barriers, etc. So what about you? Is there a ghost in your closet?

Bela Lugosi Dracula (Wikipedia)

We just finished the last season of the BBC version (and the original one. The SyFy version was D.U.M.B.) of 'Being Human' and I really enjoyed the characters in it. I particularly enjoyed the werewolf.Tom was more likeable than George (found him a bit whiny after while). And now we’re getting ready for Walking Dead (have to stream it after it airs). 

‘Tis the season!