Darkest Suburbia...and Beyond!

...and newly outfitted with a minimally bionic eye, thanks to cataract surgery last week. (Nowadays, you don't just get the cataract(s) taken out, they put in a lens implant - I got the basic model, thus "minimally" bionic.) This was the right eye; there's another operation on the left to come, but the exact date isn't yet scheduled. The improvement in vision is already dramatic and likely to be better still by summer, once the left eye is finished with recovery and the opthalmologists can finally write me a prescription for new glasses. [As it turns out, I'm sufficiently astigmatic that glasses work better on that issue than the higher-end implants would have.]

I'm not even going to look right now to see how long it's been since I posted here; suffice to say that any readers still left are fully justified in wondering if this really is a Frankenstein-like synthetic version of me here at the keyboard.

No such luck (although I could in fact use one or two upgraded or otherwise rejuvenated body parts). It's still me, still living the quiet life in Darkest Suburbia™, still puttering away on various projects (and behind on entirely too many of them).

Now, though, it's time to see if I can, in fact, jumpstart this journal (and the Web site I've been haphazardly rebuilding since changing hosts a year or so back). One reason - my ebook publisher, Uncial Press, changed hands twice late last year (initially sold to a larger ebook house, which was then bought by a print publisher whose business model thus far seems...at best non-optimal for ebook authors).

I'll attempt to supply updates on a more regular basis going forward (and to keep that promise rather more successfully than the last two or three times I said that)....

In the meantime, there are dishes to wash, lunch to make, words to type, et cetera. Hi-yo Silver, away!!

[No, I don't really have a horse; that would be against HOA rules....]

It's Tuesday night; your narrator has just stepped out the door on the way to the bus stop, so as to catch the last bus to work for his usual overnight shift. The door, as it's been trained to do, swings shut behind him...

...and my hand slides into my right front pocket, where there is no key ring.

Uh-oh.

On the one hand, this is a serious problem for a one-person household in Oregon whose closest spare key is located in southern California. On the other hand, it's a five minute walk to the bus stop, the bus is due in thirteen minutes, and it is in fact the last bus of the night.

I walk to the bus stop, establishing as I wait for the bus that no, my brother will not be coming up from Los Angeles to let me in tomorrow morning. We discuss the feasibility of replacing the lock with a fancy keypad model...

...and meanwhile, the bus mysteriously fails to appear. I check the GPS-driven app on my phone, which shows that it should be along in one minute - but it's a scheduled one minute, because the bus's GPS is evidently offline.

One minute fails to produce a bus. Five minutes fail to produce a bus. I check the app in an attempt to discern whether the bus somehow slipped past me while I was texting my brother. The app reports that the bus should be somewhere between my stop and the stop where I get off. It becomes obvious, however, that wherever it went, the last bus has ended its run without picking me up.

Clearly, the universe is conspiring against me. I sigh and make two phone calls, one to work and one to Uber. Impressively, the Uber driver is reasonably prompt and I am only slightly late for work, although without my key ring I can't get into my locker, where some of my usual work gear lives. The universe is also out to get my immediate supervisor; another co-worker has called in sick, and we also discover we have about twice as much work as there was supposed to be for this particular shift. Nevertheless, we persist, and the work mostly gets done in timely fashion.

Now it's time to come home - but how to get in? I have a light-bulb moment; I've recently learned that our HOA has a garage in which various odds and ends are stored, including assorted tools and such. It occurs to me that given our recent hot weather, and given that my condo is a second-floor unit sadly lacking in air conditioning, I've been leaving the glass sliding door to my balcony open at night for better airflow. (The sliding screen door is not open; I'm not inclined to let in the neighborhood squirrels or the occasional visiting goose.)

Possibly, I think to myself, the HOA will have a ladder in the garage, whereby I can climb up, get onto the balcony, and let myself in.

My brother points out via text that I am gaining ground on Lewis Carroll's Father William, and that perhaps I ought not be scrambling around on rickety ladders at my age. (Neither of us mentions that I have had an explicit warning from my doctor not to scramble around on ladders, rickety or otherwise, while one of my current prescriptions is still running.)

This discussion takes long enough that it's no longer too stupidly early to knock on my next door neighbor's door, on the off chance that I actually did give him a spare key when I changed my locks a couple of years ago. We establish that no, I wasn't that bright. However, my neighbor knows exactly which of my other neighbors is (a) on the HOA board, and (b) has the key to the garage in which there may or may not be a ladder. And wonder of wonders, the other neighbor is home!

Better still, we establish that there is, in fact, a ladder of sufficient height in the garage to reach my second-floor balcony. My two neighbors and I are, shortly, standing next to the base of said ladder, which is neatly extended up to said balcony. We look at one another. "John," my next door neighbor asks, "are you sure you can make it up that ladder?"

On the one hand, advancing age notwithstanding, I announce that I feel perfectly capable of climbing the ladder. However, the board member and custodian of ladders eyes me critically, and inquires, "Would you like me to climb up there, get in, and open up the door?"

I contemplate the ladder for a moment, and consider what the doctor is likely to say should I happen to fail my saving throw versus landing on my head as I swing over the balcony railing. "That's probably a good idea," I reply.

The other two of us watch - with my neighbor helping to steady the ladder - as the board member scoots with ninja-like efficiency up to the balcony, swings with monkey-like deftness over the railing, and takes all of two and a half seconds to defeat the screen door. Another thirty seconds find me back around at the front of the building, greeting him with effusive thanks as he emerges from my front door. Clearly my neighbor and board member is a bona fide ninja, and I have been saved from having to call a locksmith. [Clearly I also need to do some serious baking, preferably before the next heat wave arrives in a week or so.]

For the moment, in any event, the universe's conspiracy against me has been defeated, and life in Darkest Suburbia is back to its usual state.

I like Coke, I like sweetened coffee beverages, and I like freaky things that come in bottles, so I believe this review to be a fairly accurate and unbiased account of the worst two dollars I have ever spent in my entire life. Namely:

OH GOD OH GOD WHAT IS THAT TASTE, WHAT IS THAT FLAVOUR ON MY TONGUE SWEET JESUS, IT'S EATING INTO MY BRAIN, I CAN FEEL IT ETCHING ITS WAY THROUGH MY SKULL, OH GOD OH GOD I AM GOING TO BECOME A REANIMATED CORPSE FOR THE COCA-COLA FOUNDATION IT REALLY DOES BRING YOUR DEAD ANCESTORS BACK TO LIFE AND THEY DO NOT APPROVE MAKE IT GO AWAY!!!!

from The Uncial Letter (January 2019)

If you are a US Government employee on unpaid leave, we owe you a free read. Browse through our offerings. And then write to us and tell us which one of our titles you'd like and what format you want (epub, mobi, or pdf). Only one apiece, please.

Michael and the Captains

words: © 2017 John C. Bunnell
music: “H. R. Pufnstuf”

Once upon a double star,
Not too far from now and here,
A young and determined officer
Thought she saw her duty clear:

She thought she could prevent a war, ere the fight began;
Instead she watched her captain die (“That wasn’t in the plan!”)
As a mutineer she was hidden away, imprisoned till her dying day,
While the war grew fierce and hot, more pain unleashed with ev’ry shot,
Alone and lost, she couldn’t endure the cost;
The stars ran red, too many dead, and the war went on and on and on and on and on and on….

But then another captain came, dismissed her fear, refused her shame;
He said he held a secret ace, he offered purpose and a place;
A chance to make the difference, as she had hoped before;
If she would only join his crew, why, they might win the war!
It was, she knew, her only chance to make amends for prior sin,
And yet, should she rejoin the dance, what might she have to do to win?

Michael, time to fly;
Would you really rather die?
Michael, don’t you see;
You can’t beat the Klingons if you don’t come with me.

Captain, count me in;
Black Alert and let’s begin;
Captain, use me well;
I’ll never see Heaven but I’ll join you in H*ll.  [x2]

Herewith a quick take on my two most recent summer-movie visits:

Wonder Woman is very, very good — and manages to be so by mostly being a World War I movie rather than a superhero movie.  I am, of course, much too young to have living memories of the WWI period, but one of my grandfathers was an Army engineer in that war, then puttered around Europe for several years afterward doing a variety of field work for the American Red Cross.  My father made a point of writing down and preserving a great many stories arising from those travels, and Wonder Woman surprised me by matching the tone and texture of those stories to an impressive degree.  The members of the team Diana and Steve Trevor bring together feel like people my grandfather could easily have met and understood.  I’ve heard complaints about the portrayals of some of the minority characters, but my sense is that what’s shown is essentially accurate for the time and place — and that the reactions of the characters in question are as true to period as everything else.

Mind you, it’s not perfect.  The scene in which Diana crosses “No Man’s Land” very nearly threw me out of the movie — even in a comic-book world, there should have been too heavy a volume and breadth of firepower for her to survive being shredded using the traditional deflection-and-dodging powers that we usually associate with Wonder Woman and her gauntlets.  That the scene works is a matter of the sheer force of will Gal Gadot throws into the role…and by the end of the film, it’s clear that in fact, Diana’s Amazon powers are more literally godlike than they were in the Lynda Carter era.

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By contrast, The Mummy is a major disappointment.  Tom Cruise tries to coast through the movie on roguish charm, but the script makes him too much of an idiot and cad for that charm to do much good (except to the degree that it persuades the Forces Of Evil to keep him alive).  Cruise’s character literally has no control over his actions for large segments of the film — the resurrected Egyptian princess Ahmanet is pulling his strings most of the time — and even when he makes a choice that looks sort of heroic (notably, resurrecting the film’s other female lead), one can rationalize that he’s only doing so because he’s looking out for his own self-interest further down the road.

But the real trouble with The Mummy is that there aren’t any proper mummies in it.  What we have instead is Sofia Boutella as the aforementioned Ahmanet, and within five minutes of waking her up, the film has her mostly out of her wrappings and into slinky seductress mode, clad in just enough shreds of green to keep her nominally street-legal.  Nor are most of her monster legions mummies; just about all of them are better classified as skeletons, zombies, or ghouls.  The Egyptian — or even faux-Egyptian — folklore is just as thin on the ground.  With no likeable hero, no mummies, and no mystical Egyptian spice in play, all that’s left is a lot of CGI sludge and generic mayhem.  And that’s not much of a recipe for a successful Mummy movie.

Fortunately, I paid for my ticket to the Cruise Mummy by buying a boxed set of four movies from the much better predecessor franchise starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and eventually The Rock (total price well under $20) — a win for my DVD collection, if not for Universal’s current cash flow.