Being Secret Santa Sux--But I Can Help

We've all been there--the dreaded "Secret Santa" or "Pollyanna" drawing, where you have a set dollar amount to give something not-awful to a co-worker or family member. I have some coping strategies beyond the gift-certificate that might make you look like you did good. Real good, even.

The thing to do is take a good look--

Is her manicure game up to the minute?  If you have a giftee who always looks polished, right down to the fingernails, something like a multi-pack of nail top-coats, especially one that includes a nice on-trend version like a matte finish, might be neutral enough to be useful and appreciated (OPI has a nice set). You can probably rest assured that your giftee already has a manicure set with all the fixin's.  This is a nice step up.

Does he have a favorite color? Because seriously--you could not help but notice all the blue sweaters, blue ties, the blue parka, the blue swim trunks. Think inside the crayon box, and get a nice accessory that matches the favorite color of your giftee--scarves and gloves are appreciated for certain climes--but a color-conscious watch might be just in time.  (Although if you know someone who just likes color and always likes to match--there's nothing wrong with a gift that covers the rainbow.)

Sometimes you might find someone who isn't material at all--surely they have a great charity that you can donate to on their behalf! Maybe the giftee fosters animals, or cares for the environment. There are many ways to show your love by gifting worthy organizations, and that might give both of you a glow. You might want to consider giving to your local animal shelter, or maybe giving through Greatergood.org (which partners with some sites which are pretty good shopping.)

Is your giftee organized and then some? My experience of the ultra-organized and very-planned is that they don't reject a new device to plan with--and coupon organizers, dayplanners, and really awesome totes to put their important stuff in will get used. (You've missed peak Thirty-one season, but keep them in mind for next year. Or check out office supply stores and stationary shops for excellent organizer swag.)

If your someone has a pet, sometimes a good gift for their baby is as good as a gift for them. Think a really kicky collar and lead for a dogchild, or a topnotch catnip treat for that catperson.

If your person is artistic, they might love a fun form of expression like a great calligraphy set or sketch set,  or maybe just a great sketchbook or folio.  Or if you find you have a knitter or crocheter, there is no reason not to gift supplies (yarn can be pricey! even needles! a bag of big skeins isn't an awful plan for someone whose fingers are always busy--and you might get slippers out of the deal!)

You get the idea--ask, listen, see, and make sure you gift them something they will like and use. And always keep in mind gift wrap is just incidental, but it is always nice to put a pretty bow or tasteful card on a gift to show thoughtfulness.  And that is how you make Secret Santa less sucky.

All Wormholes Are Probably Connected

Okay, this is probably me watching waaaaayyyy too much genre tv, but when I read this story this week, all I could think was, well no duh, they're a network of stargates.

Because the Blight Has a Thousand Eyes (A Short Story)

We found our missing ones underground in not-so-shallow graves, breathing, and covered in what seemed like eyes.

Let me wind that back. The last six or seven years were like a blur, and things are so different now. You have to understand that at the time, people sometimes did go missing. Everyone didn't know all their neighbors.  We didn't live underground. We didn't expect to find these holes, and we never saw those eyes before.

We were very shocked that they were underground, and breathing, and covered in what looked like eyes. It wasn't normal, and it was happening very quickly, you see. It even took a while before we knew they weren't really eyes.

Not long. Maybe it was recklessness when the utility worker ran a gloved hand over those blisters before calling emergency services. (Utilities were once great systems that kept the lights on. We had specialized people who responded to medical emergencies. ) His foreman told him not to touch them, but sometimes...curiosity, you understand. Wanting to know. The way you ask about what the time was like before. He had to reach in.

The skin moved with the dense fluid under the skin, but rippled like a living thing, and shining a flashlight on them, he could see they looked so much more like eggs. Like clear little eggs under the skin, and if he looked closer?

The "pupils" of the eyes had tails. Or tentacles. Or little fins, and that was enough. And that cleared out the tunnel where the first few infected were found. The CDC shut down the site, but didn't quite shut down the rumor.

Eyes. That were not eyes. That looked like other things.

The Vampire Riviera

I dreamed about something called the Vampire Riviera the other night, so I figured I might blog about it. The area was near the waterfront, like Penns Landing. There were restaurants, open 24 hours, but they didn't seem like places meant for buying food. There were cobwebs strewn with fruit flies decorating them. The area was by no means luxe. The Vampire Riviera was an area along the waterfront where vampires gathered, no more, no less. Young vampires who accosted passersby were a lot like panhandlers. There was nothing romantic about being a vampire, unlike most novels. Talking to a vampire was like talking to a junkie--except more terrifing, in the sense that you might be bit by them. On the whole, I do not think anything called the "Vampire Riviera" should be considered a good thing. It was not a bad dream, only one that cancelled out how modern fiction treats the undead.

Thor: The Dark World. A Review

I have to give it up to the people who are masterminding the order of these Marvel franchise films--they get the comics, they get movies, they've done brilliant casting, and they've managed to make me a raging fangirl, which, admittedly, isn't impossible. But let me just express my feels about Thor: The Dark World a minute before I make some minor admissions and give away a secret that isn't one--

Okay, the elves are kind of stereotypical elves aren't they? I mean, Peter Jackson and them made elves that aren't those kind of elves for the LOTR series, but the elves in T:TDW are more of those Moorcockian/Hellboy 2 kind of elves, a bit, no? With their pseudo-latinate tongue (well, maybe that's a bit Tolkein) and the being weirdly all about elves and fuck everybody else? Yeah. Also, the movie is kind of wasting Christopher Eccleston a bit. Not like GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra kind of wasting of an actor, by simply not being a very good movie, but in the more general "isn't he mostly buried in latex and speaking elvish?" sort of way.

Also, while I like Natalie Portman and I think the two movies she been in have really made Jane Foster a pretty kick-ass smart and vital character, is it just me or does her chemistry with Chris Hemsworth's Thor never seem quite on?  I don't know why it doesn't work for me. It's like an intangible thing. Maybe I'm just projecting my feeling that their long-distance romance is always tinged with a bit of doom.

But you know what I love, right? Exactly. I love the relationship between the heroic, noble, awfully good Thor, and his seriously messed-up little bro, Loki.  The chemistry between Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as the sniping and fighting brothers who reluctantly team up to avenge their mother (Rene Russo's) death, remove the Aether (an interdimensional MacGuffin that is attracting unwanted Elvish attention) from Jane Foster before she dies from all the bad energy, and probably save the 9 realms.  That works and is worth the price of admission.

After catching Thor 2 Saturday, I rewatched the original and realized the evolution of Loki as a character. He was not quite as compelling as simply the angry young man Loki Silvertongue of the first movie, who discovered that his whole life was a bit of a lie, and that not only was he not Odinson, he was not even really an Asgardian, but a frost giant, and not even a regular frost giant, but an abandoned and unwanted runt that was left to die. The Loki who fell through space at the end of Thor 1 into the Avengers movie became a cocky badass, but here, captive, he continues to work out his pathologies, transforming the illusion his life was into becoming a master of illusions. He fronts that he simply does not understand why everyone is so angry at him. The reality is that he's a wrecked personality doing awful things on purpose. He isn't self-destuctive--he isn't capable of remorse. He just survives and schemes. He isn't good or even necessarily well-intentioned--but he can be likeable for minutes at a time. He's more developed than your average psychopath. (Or maybe I am an unrelenting Hiddleston fangirl. Also a possibility.)

I couldn't not like this one, myself. I recommed it if you've been enjoying the Marvel universe unfolding cinamtically before you of late--like I surely have. Also, saw the trailer from "Days of Future Past" and now I am so having to see that. I love that these movies borrow so much from the comics, but work so well in 3 dimensions.

Lou Reed RIP

It's odd. The moment I was most happy to hear Lou Reed's voice was at my old school, which was kind of particularly Christian and white and heard "Walk on the Wild Side" and I was still conflicted--neat enough that the song that mentioned Candy Darling and those colored girls singing was playing just before a kind of karaoke night thing the school held, and also feeling a little bittersweet that a song made the same year I was born was still radical enough if you listened, but familiar enough that its radicalism didn't, like, filter through to make some nun turn it off.

I like Lou Reed and I liked Velvet Underground--but I admit I like the Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane" better. I've liked a handful of covers of "Perfect Day" more than most any version of Lou Reed.



Because his voice always seems to remind it's like, the last day. Doesn't it?

(Anyone hear echoes of it in Radiohead's Creep--just askin'?)

But he fucking wrote Candy Says and oh. He was a poet of people and pain and things that aren't cute but real. That mattered a lot. It always should.

The Uncanny Valley of the Dolls

When I was just about old enough to actually watch tv and get stories and understand that there was no boogeyman and that there was a difference between fiction and reality, I think the thing that still unnerved me the most was the idea of the thing that should be inanimate--souless!--that wasn't. So it was that I found the trailer for "Magic" with Anthony Hopkins and a twisted-sounding dummy especially unnerving. How close is a dummy, after all, to dolls?  And being a girl, how many dolls did I have? All those smooth plastic faces, some with eyes that closed as their weirdly hollow but weighty bodies were laid horizontally--

There was a reason that stuffed animals could stay on my bed, but dolls had to be placed in the toy chest. I played with my dolls, but I could never love them. They were not "people" even if they looked like people. And perhaps the understanding--the recognition I had--of my rejection of these not quite human things made me wonder how they...saw me.

The internet is littered with images of scary dolls.  Some of them just are terribly bad fascimiles made by an inartful hand. Some are broken, reproachful, like baby zombies. And some are fashioned to be deliberately grotesque, preying upon the lurid fascinations of the unheathfully-centered mind. Their nearness to human features plays upon the sympathy we have for our fellow sentient--we inbue them with a terrifying inner life, even though they are hollow. And yet, we know there are people among us who are most alive--but are, in fact, hollow inside, as far from our understanding as what we imagine in the highly-suggestable imputed psyche of a doll.

We human beings are artificers. We capitulate our likenesses in various media, in the hopes of capturing whatever it is we think of as the human essence, from cave paintings to selfies.  One of the most unnerving of our enduring fables is the idea of the actually "made" man--the golem, the corpse-pastiche of Frankenstein, the waxwork or clockwork man. The deadly robot. The killer doll.

It's pretty kinky of us that it is the monster we create nearest to our own likeness, that has such horrors, isn't it? What does it say about us?