Josh is Five. Josh is Always Five.

Jeffty is Five, the Locus-winning classic short tale by Harlan Ellison, has long held a melancholy spell over me. (It is on page 71, and the book takes a little while to load).

It traces long lines into my own sense of the memorable (and malleable) past, touches on the eternal and the transient, and places nostalgia and reality on parallel tracks which intersect at tragedy. The beautfully-written story of the friendship between a five-year old boy who never ages and his normally-aging pal got its title from a misheard bit of conversation.

At a party, Ellison overheard actor Jack Danon * saying something like "Jeff is fine. He's always fine!" but thought he said "Jeff is five. Jeff is always five." The man who said it was a guest at a party hosted by Walter Koenig, Star Trek's "Chekov."

I had no idea, until today, that the character inspiration for "Jeffty" was another person at the party: a five-year old Joshua Andrew Koenig.

In the words of the author: "Writers take tours in other people's lives. Jeffty is me; he is also you. This is a short, memory-filled trip through your own life."

*Danon, incidentally, started his career in radio shows, like Fibber McGee and Molly, which casts an interesting, if wholly unrelated, light on the strange transoms of inspiration that helped carry this particular story to its fullness.

Which Zombie Will You Be? [Personality Test]

Every zombie movie has a set number of zombie types - a horde, a random guy, the first one to get shot.

But these zombies were once people, you know, with lives and dreams and ambitions.

Like you.

Which one will you be? Take the quiz and find out.

The Man With Hammered Nails for the Pupils of His Eyes

I'd been chopping most of the day. Chips of granite spread at my feet, dusted my sweaty shirt, clouded my spectacles. But I'd made progress. The boulder had scars on it: closer, certainly, to the monument I wanted than it had been that morning.

A man walked out of the Infinity building, grey suit, red tie, briefcase in hand. He stumbled against my rock, and staggered to his knees. I put the axe down and helped him up. It was there, his uncertain hand on my tricep, elbow in my palm, that I looked into his face and saw the pupils of his eyes: they were the heads of nails, and his eyes, I am quite certain now, were wooden balls, smoothed on a lathe.

He blinked, one lid catching, and slowly crossing over the nail.

"Your shoulder," he said. I smiled, proud of the muscle my endeavors had built. "It is torn. You are ruining yourself. You don't look well."

I helped him up and stepped back, annoyed. "How can you see anything?"

"I can't."

"Why do you have nails where your pupils ought to be?"

"They keep the eyes inside my head."

After a silence too long, he wandered down the sidewalk. I did not look to see if he navigated the intersection safely, but returned to my task, my shoulder throbbing.

---

This is completely and wholly, as usual, the fault of a far greater writer.

The History Channel Trick

In an age that unworships at the non-altar of the relative experience, I recommend co-opting a trick perfected by the History Channel, both for some of their more standard history programs and their whack-a-doo pseudohistory programs, such as the "prophecies" of mystics, or the alien origins of the pyramids, or alien ghost autopsies, or whatever.

It is five magic words:

"There are those who say..."

Throw these in any time you would like to make an outrageous claim without any footing. It will sound authoritative and mildly suggestive that those who disagree will find themselves in an impossible situation.

Gremlins vs. Zombies: The Grempocalypse

The worst thing that could ever happen is that you get your pet gremlin wet* on the same night that a radioactive thunderstorm turns all the dead people into zombies.

Sure, the gremlins would fight the zombies, and the zombies would fight the gremlins, and that would super exciting, especially since the rain would turn the gremlins into more gremlins, and the zombie bites would turn the gremlins into zombie gremlins, and then the zombie gremlins would have to decide which side they would fight on, or if they would form their own army, and fight them both.

But eventually, they'd turn on you. Fun's over, and all of a sudden, you find yourself running through the streets, praying for Gandalf's eagles to swoop in at the last minute to save the day like they did in the Battle of Five Armies. Maybe you can make it until sunrise, and hope that the gremlins have re-killed all the zombies before bursting into flames. The giant birds never come, the sun doesn't rise and you aren't even left with the choice of whether to be turned into a zombie or become gremlin food - the choice happens to you.

Yet, there's a market for these spectacular, doomed experiments in fantasy:

Alien vs. Predator
Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons
Mermaid Yakuza vs. Terminator
Wolfman vs. Dracula
Moriarity vs. Fu Manchu
King Kong vs. Godzilla
Giant Squid vs. Sperm Whale

and of course, the penultimate conflict:

Satan vs. _________

Please tell me you didn't fill in the blank with "God." Because this particular titanic struggle between nasties doesn't include Him, for pity's sake. The word that belongs in that blank is "Us."

As one-time (and in many cases, current) subjects of the "god of the air" we also are locked in mortal - rather, immortal - combat with Old Scratch and his maniacal kin. But we aren't guys in white hats. If the devil is Predator, we're Alien. He didn't think up lying, pride and greed all by his lonesome, you know. Or if he did, we've become quite practiced at the dark arts of his making.

Winner gets to take on God. Unlike, however, the final target in Gremlins vs. Zombies, God isn't about to take off running. In fact, He's got just the sword to cut us to ribbons: His very word that formed us out of nothing is the same thing that will send us on our merry way to the wrong side of Winner-ville.

Yet he doesn't do that. In his wisdom, he reserves the destruction for Satan and his blokes, but for the other half in the wicked match-up? Mercy. Sacrifice. Humilty. A free ticket out.

Weird God, that God. Weirder than Jesse James vs. Frankenstein's Monster.



*A refresher: 1) Never get them wet - they'll spawn more gremlins. 2) Never feed them after midnight - it turns them evil. 3) Never expose them to light** - it hurts them.

**Unless, of course, they've eaten after midnight - then sally forth, Gremlin Hunter. Sally forth.

Fear of Girls: FoG of IGN

Oh, jeez. I'm pretty sure this post title just summoned Cthulhu.

If not, enjoy the new Fear of Girls Channel at IGN.

If it did, uh, sorry for the apocalypse.

2009 Heisman Candidate Lovecraftian Nickname Awards

Held annually on the campus of Miskatonic University, the Lovecraftian Nickname Selection Committee goes through an arduous and painstaking (as well as pain-staking, if necessary) process to determine who, among the Heisman finalists, is worthy of a prestigious Eldritch(tm) Nickname.

The time of waiting has come to a close. This years selections include:

Tim "Yith" Tebow - Because he's not of this world.

Colt "Automatic" McCoy - Because all fled--all done, so lift me on the pyre--The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.

Toby "Jugg" Gerhart - Because he haunts Notre Dame to this day.

Mark "John Henry" Ingram - not just because he can hoist a jack, but, more importantly he set history to right.

Honorable mention: Dez "Danvers" Bryant - Because I’ve heard personally of more’n one business or government man that’s disappeared there.

And finally, our top vote-getter:

Ndamukong "Necronomicon" Suh - Because if he gets a read, you're dead.

The Sheer Genius of Sheared Gnus

The difference between "sheared" and "shorn" is subtly insane. A sheep is sheared. A man's hair is shorn.

The shorn locks fall to the floor.
The sheared wool falls to the floor.

Unless the locks are sheer, in which the sheer, shorn locks fall to the floor. If the wool is sheer, it is still sheared, for sure.

Don't get me started on shoeshine from Poland, because if I dab Polish polish onto sheer sheared wool and streak it through my sheer, shorn hair, call the police, unless they are Polish. They'll polish me off.

Hey! What about the gnu? Not much, what's gnu with you?

Note: When teaching English as a second language, I recommend saving this lesson for last.

Inventor of the Catapult

Dionysus the Elder of Syracuse is most frequently cited as the inventor of the stone-hurling catapult, circa 400 B.C.

I wonder what King Uzziah of Judah (circa 770 B.C.) would have to say about that?

Going Deep In Strange Places

He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness, and light resides with him.

Never Mind the Truth, Here's the Sex Pistols

"Never mind" is a retort perfected in the lie mines of hell for this present age. The moment a lie is exposed, it can be easily veiled in a thick coat of "outdated anyway," and replaced with a shiny new untruth.

If you believe in progress, if you believe in the evolution of ideas, in the importance of taste, you may have swallowed poison in your time. If you have, you may have reached for "never mind" instead of an antidote.

Who Quotes the Watchmen? Quiz!

I doubt you've heard it, but there is a little internet rumor that a Watchmen movie might be coming out someday.

Test your Watchmen IQ with some important quotes:

"We can do so much more. We can save this world... with the right leadership."

"If you’ve got really smart people who are all focused on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done."

"The only person with whom I felt any kinship with died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia, or Alexander the Great, as you know him."

"I saw east and west, locked into an escalating arms spiral, their mutual terror and suspicion mounting with the missiles, making the possibility of disarmament progressively more remote."


"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."



"The brutal world he'd relished would simply cease to be, its fierce and brawling denizens rushing to join the mastodon in obsolescence... in extinction."


The Quiz Question:

Are these quotes from the mouth of Ozymandias or from President Obama*?


Here's a hint:


They were all spoken by a comic book character.


















One more quote:


"It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems."


Unlike Obama, Ozymandias had a Comedian who tried to contradict him once:

"No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for them to handle."







*Apologies for the rare dip into human politics. You know I care very little for the petty management affairs of men. I'm far, far more interested in what your literature has to say about your culture and your leaders. Of course, I'm the only one, troll or human, I've ever met who actually found the ending of the Watchmen graphic novel to be upbeat and inspiring.

Tracking Shot Lip Synch for Grace Kelly

If you've ever read Ussher's Annals of the World, or for that matter, the Holy Bible, you would understand why I love tracking shots.

I see all of creation, from the beginning of time to its inevitable end, as one complex and thrilling tracking shot. Whether it is the opening scene of A Touch of Evil or the one take fight scene from The Protector, good tracking shots make bold statements.

I love what the gang from TCU has done with Mika's Grace Kelly.

Asterisks Illuminate the Night

The asterisk* is the forefather of the hyperlink.

*From the Latin "asteriscum," meaning "little star" -- which happens to be a term which describes how I like to view myself** in God's kingdom. Keep in mind, I'm generally delusional.

**Which may also explain my fondness*** for asterisks.

***And my general dismissal of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.

Making of Fear of Girls

Finally, at The Microscopic Life with Terry Pounds, a documentary that gets behind the scenes of the world-renowned Fear of Girls.

There is one question that isn't addressed in this otherwise stellar film: how can views be better measured in a web environment that has become more multi-channel? In 2005, a viral video on youtube was likely to be hit, viewed and measured on youtube, at one portal. In 2009, users proliferate copies and embed (often uncounted - the embed play counter of youtube leaves a lot to be desired) videos at a much higher rate so that a video's "virality" requires a more complex measurement.

Nevertheless, a fascinating study of the art, business and love of making great films. And it is so great to see Lommel and Jorgenson out of character and in regular joe movie star mode.