Readings

Seasons

Have I mentioned?

Destruction and and the Hidden World

I don't think I'm alone in loving DVD commentary tracks, often more than I like the movie itself. A lot of time, you get details that are larger than the movie itself. like with the director commentary for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Gore Verbinski talks about how hard it was to find any beautiful cove that wasn't completely developed b y people already. Look one direction and see verdant palms and cerulean sea. Turn around and check out the 40-room hotel and the attached 24-hour casino.

When the entire world is overdeveloped, sometimes destruction is an creator of new horizons and views. Two stories along that line, one from the US and one from Iraq.

Iraq first . After the first Gulf War, there were uprisings in the Mesopotamian Marshlands in southern Iraq. As part of crushing those uprisings, Saddam Hussein (using British plans that dated from the 1950s colonial period) built “an extensive and elaborate system of drainage and diversion structures”. Sounds like dams and canals to me, but it may be something more.

In any case, when the U.S. invaded in 2003, dykes near Basra were destroyed, which reflooded approximately 20% of the area. The Eden Again project is dedicated to taking this opportunity to rebuild the wetlands, and make better use of the water. (“Eden Again” comes from the legend that the Garden of Eden story may be based on these wetlands.)

The other example of creation from disaster I read about today involves the Glen Canyon. Any of you who know a bit bout the environmental movement are probably familiar with Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. One of the main plot concepts in that book was to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam, which created the artificial reservoir called Lake Powell and covered up canyons that Abbey considered as beautiful as any in the world.

Well, the ongoing drought in the southwest has caused Lake Powell to drop by 144 feet, to about 33% of what it was in July of 1999. The drought has many disturbing implications for drinking water and power generation in the Southwest and in Southern California. But ill winds and silver linings mean that you can go and see the beauty that Abbey wrote about in 1875, beauty that hasn’t been visible for over 30 years.

Travel writer Susan Spano wrote about this for the LA Times, though I read about it in the Tampa Tribune: Exposing Utah's depths

Opera Residue

So I went with the folks to go see the Orlando Opera put on Aida. It was fine, enjoyable, even though I came up against my basic disassociation from the Opera form again. I can listen to classical all day long, can enjoy musicals, and Gilbert and Sullivan and all sorts of performances that are related. But listening to singers perform at me in a language I don't understand puts me off, and often puts me to sleep.

And this is Aida, for god's sake! A well-performed version of it! And I still stared and stared, and then dozed just a little.

That said: I really like the poster. The Orlando Opera has a local Orlando guy -- Larry Moore -- do the posters for each of their seasons, and they're just beautiful. The Salome was a particular standout, but I tend not to buy posters of performances I didn't actually go to. Not always, but usually.

It's a shame the Aida poster isn;t online, because it is quite exceptional. Moore works in pastels, though I see from one of his other sites (larrymoorestudios.com ) that he also does fine art.

Speaking if fine, fine art, I feel I should my pal El Rey every time I mention art. Somewhere else on the site is a story I did about buying art from him, along with photos of the finished pieces. He has also started a blog, talking about his "process", just like some fancy-schmancy paint slinger. And remember: Every El Rey purchase you make goes to the fund that keeps him off the streets of the Mission District, begging tourists for cigarettes and coffee. No change, just smokes and joe.

Seymour Butts, Nobel Laureate

I hadn’t cranked up the software when he died, but I’ve been meaning to write down this apocryphal story about Saul Bellow. (Whose work I disdain, btw, but more on that later, after the funny.)

There was this woman I knew for awhile, through my Dad. I think she was dating his Friend Shu, but I’m not sure. Anyway, she had been involved with the University of Chicago. How? Hell, I don’t know. I was probably 16 when I heard this story. She might have been a former English grad student -- and I think she was -- but at the time my gearloose memory tells me she was involved in one of those “Ivy League Dating” businesses. (More on that later, too.)

Anyway, this woman -- let’s call her the Blonde -- claimed she had dated a lot of the “old men” in the English department at U Chicago. These guys, of whom Bellow was the Grandmaster, and I think Allen Bloom was the Grand Poobah, were all known (the Blopnde said) for dating chains. One woman at a time would cruise through their line of aging intellectualism, going out to dinner, listening to the great men pontificate, and then sleeping with them. And each of them would go to the same church Sunday morning – Episcopal, I think. Bellow was the last link in the chain of brain and cock. But he apparently didn’t sleep with all of the women who worked on the Chain Gang. If he did fuck ya, then you knew you had conquered in whatever silly way it mattered.

The Blonde described her experience on the Chain Gang, and then told the story of her dinner date with Bellow. The scuttle butt was that he didn’t like being complimented on his novels, because 1) suckups are unpleasant dinner companions; and 2) how were you, a lowly graduate student (and unsaid, but obvious, a woman) qualified to make any comment at all on the work of the Grand Master?

Yet at the same time, if you didn’t mention the books, he would also be offended. It was like the worst possible version of sitting for Oral exams. (There’s a sex joke hiding there somewhere, but I can’t quite read the map to it.)

The Blonde had prepared and planned for the dinner, yet all her preparation seemed to be wasted. Bellow stared at her stonily through the entire dinner, barely grunting as she carried the entire conversation by herself. Politics, literature, sports: no topic engaged him.

Finally, exhausted, she fell silent, only able to stare at Bellow over the post-meal drink.

At which point, Bellow said, “I’ll bet you’ve never slept with a Nobel Laureate before.”

I don’t remember if The Blonde she said she stormed out in a huff or not, but since she was telling this story to a group that included her current boyfriend, she might well have. But even at the time, all I could think was: That is the BEST pickup line I have EVER HEARD!

Local News: What about the children?

On the local NBC affiliate, I believe the first ten minutes involved the following stories:

- The 5 year old who was handcuffed by cops

- A guy whose self-righteous neighbor put up flyers accusing him of being a sex offender, even though the flyers show a different person. Turns out the neighbor may be arrested for doing it.

- A flasher who committed suicide after people in his neighborhood put up his "sex crimes" description, with "CHILD RAPIST" added to the sheet in huge black letters.

- And the Florida Legislature passed the Jessica Lunsford Act, which does some additional thing about sex offenders. Minimum sentences, I think. (Checking…) yeah, 25 years to life for certain offences, and then when they get out they have to be monitored by GPS tracking systems. GPS tracking!

- Finally, they finished up the child abuse and sex offender show with a story about a child rapist who followed his victim from Florida to Kansas.

I’m sure they must have done a story about the Michael Jackson trial, but I gave up on TV for the night after that. The Fox affiliate replaced the Simpsons at 11 with A Current Affair, so I’ve been trying the local news. Hideous. Chicago news is pretty good. Sure, it chases murder and mayhem -- “if it bleeds, it leads” -- but they seem just a little less unrelenting about it. In the 80s, I used to read a ton of splatterpunk stories involving cannibalism and zombies and awful awful things, but 10 solid minutes of child abuse and falsely accused sex offender is more than my poor brain can take.

I did flip channels first, and got to see a "shark attack" story, about the school of sharks that has slowly been working its way up from Palm Beach to the Space Coast. But then I flipped again, and got to see the story about the Mom who rented a Disney tape that had been recorded over with " The Voyeur #5". (No relation to Mambo #5.)

I should have just watched the Appliance Direct guy.

Crazy Pope Stories: Note-y Bennie

I realize that no Benedicts took part in the pornocracy. But it’s still a good story. Bennie makes a comeback with the story of Pope Joan.

Crazy Pope Stories: Pornocracy

So one of the issues that has come up with the selection of Cardinal Ratz as the new pope is that he is not the most liberal of theologians. No married priests, no gays, and definitely no women as priests.

Saying that Catholicism is torn about its attitudes toward women is like saying that Canada is cold, Brazil is hot, and that Florida is full of oddballs. As obviously true as it may be, it barely covers the complexity of the issue. For example, JP Dos didn’t want women priests, but was fairly tolerant of the Virgin Mary cult. As a function of political power, only allowing men to ordain and consecrate makes them the deal breakers in the church. No matter how important Mother Teresa was, she was still (theoretically) secondary to a priest.

Anyone who has been brought up in a religious tradition knows how the female members of the congregation often run everything, with the pastor as ether final arbiter or figurehead. “OK, Pastor Bob. Say what you want about the Holy Ghost, but that ain’t gonna get the bakesale cookies baked, is it?” That’s not how my Lutheran church worked growing up, under either Pastor Jerry or Pastor Joel, but certainly women did a lot of the organizing and the work of running the church.

But when the women actually have a powerful control over the actions of the church, that’s clearly a problem for the Vatican. Maybe it’s a problem of publicity, maybe one of power, but Popes no like times when women tell them what to do.

Case in point: the 10th Century Pornocracy. Also -- and probably better -- known as the “Rule of the Harlots”

From 904 and Pope Serguis 3, until Pope John 12 is deposed in 963, two women were considered major players in the papacy: Theodora, and her daughters and Marozia and, uh, Theodora.

Allow Philip Schaff (1819-1893), American theologian and church historian, to introduce us to these ladies:

(T)hree bold and energetic women of the highest rank and lowest character, Theodora the elder (the wife or widow of a Roman senator), and her two daughters, Marozia and Theodora, filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bastards. These Roman Amazons combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty and wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power and pleasure. They had the diabolical ambition to surpass their sex as much in boldness and badness as St. Paula and St. Eustachium in the days of Jerome had excelled in virtue and saintliness. They turned the church of St. Peter into a den of robbers, and the residence of his successors into a harem. And they gloried in their shame. Hence this infamous period is called the papal Pornocracy or Hetaerocracy.

Some popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Rome, and far less excusable.

I love that last part. Except for the whole “slaughter their enemies like dogs” part, don’t these women seem like they’d be hellaciously fun to hang out with? Have some wine, fuck a Pope!

(Oh, the passage is from History of the Christian Church, Volume IV: Mediaeval Christianity. A.D. 590-1073.)

Marozia seems to have the most influence. She was supposedly the lover of Sergius 3, as well as Pope John 10, who gave her titles like senatrix and patricia. She and Sergius are said to be the actual parents of Pope John XI, though many others think he was actually the son of her first husband Duke Alberic of Spoleto. Her supposed affair with John 10 didn’t work out so well, because she and second husband Guy of Tuscany seized power in Rome, had John 10 put in prison, and eventually killed. Marozia was the power in Rome until 932, when her son Alberic 2 had her and Guy deposed and thrown in prison.

As entertaining as it is to think about sex-obsessed Popes -- that is, obsessed with having sex as opposed to making sure no one else has it -- this description of the Theodoras and Marozia seems to stem from the writing of their contemporary and political enemy Liutprand, the Bishop of Cremona. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia is somewhat circumspect about these stories. Speaking of Sergius, they comment:

These assertions are only made by bitter or ill-informed adversaries, and are inconsistent with what is said of him by respectable contemporaries.

That said, the idea of attacking the Papacy by associating it with women has other examples. Like Pope Joan.

(By the way, Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopedia are the sources for a lot of this information.)

Crazy Pope Stories: Benedict 4 and the "Cadaver Synod"

Benedict 4 had a three year run as Pope, from 900 AD to 903. He's not noted for much, just sort of carrying out the duties of the office. Kind of the Millard Fillmore of Popes. Not bad enough to be the Franklin "there's nothing left to do but get drunk" Pierce, not even bureaucratic enough to have the accomplishments of a Rutherford B Hayes. Even Benedict 5 can be called the William Henry Harrison of Popes, since he died very quickly after taking office (33 days in 964 AD). (Though even that title should really go to Urban 7, the record holder for shortest-ever time as a recognized Pope: 13 days in 1590. Though you could debate Stephen 2, from 752, should hold the WH Harrison title, since he was Pope for three days. But he isn't officially recognized since he wasn't consecrated as Il Papa.)

One thing that Benedict 4 did do was uphold the ordinances of Pope Formusus (891-896 AD). Formosus was one of those political Popes, working with guys like Charles the Bald of France. Anyway, Formosus was political enough that he got on the wrong side of Pope John 7, who threatened to excommunicate him. Eventually, Formosus cut a deal with John 7 where he promised never to return to Rome or "exercise priestly functions". After John 7 died, the next Pope, Marinus 1, restored Formosus to some authority. And three Popes later, Formosus took over the job himself.

I think it’s fair to say Formosus had a tumultuous time as Pope. First of all, and comedically, Formosus was forced to crown a guy named Guido (Duke of Spoleto, an Italian city-state) as Holy Roman Emperor. Formosus encouraged one of Guido’s rivals, Arnulf of Carinthia, to liberate Italy from Guido, by marching on Rome. As a result of his successes against Spoleto, Formosus then crowns Arnulf emperor. In your face, Guido!

That’s medieval politics, and Pope Formosus, his predecessors and his successors, were all mitre-deep in this kind of maneuvering.

Formosus dies in 896, and Boniface 6 comes after him. But only for 16 days, making him the runner up for the WH Harrison trophy. The guy who comes after him, Stephen 7, is a made guy of the Spoletans. He’s Guido’s guy, in other words. Except Guido died in 894. but his son and wife, Lambert and Agiltrude, were still holding a grudge against Formosus. So, in the most disgusting brown nose act in recorded history (except for maybe the career of Henry Kissinger), Stephen 7 has Formosus dug up. To stand trial!

Get this. The year-old corpse of Formosus is dressed up in Pope robes, stuck on the Papal Throne, and has to face the same charges that Pope John 7 brought him up on back in 872! These are the charges he already cut a deal on in 878, when he was, you know, still breathing. Worst of all, he gets this public defender Deacon, who is probably getting paid the 9th Century equivalent of minimum wage, and who likely sees which way the Papal wind is blowing. So poor Dead Pope Formosus naturally gets found guilty. Those assembled tear the Pope Robes off the corpse, cut off the three fingers of his right hand (which priests use to consecrate items and people as holy), and they throw his naked bones in the Tiber River.

People are so freaked out by this whole deal that Stephen 7 is put in prison, and then strangled to death. After Stephen 7 dies, the body of Formosus gets re-interred in St. Peter’s, and Corpse Trials get banned by the church. (All this takes place in the 20 days that Pope Theodore 2 is sitting on the Pope Throne.)

So think about it: how crazy have things gotten in your political life when you have to have a rule against putting corpses on trial? All I can say is, Bill Clinton better hope his heart holds out until DeLay, Frist, and Bush are all out of office.

I’ve gotten somewhat far afield of Benedict 4, yeah? I mean, how does he factor in? Right, so all the bishops that Formosus ordained (with his later-severed three fingers) were un-ordained by Stephen 7’s actions. Benedict 4 re-ordains all those guys. And for his three Papal years, things are at least a little bit stable at the dawning of the 10th Century.

Not to last, I’m afraid. After Benedict 4 dies, Leo 5 is Pope for about a month before he is (supposedly) imprisoned and then strangled to death by his successor, Pope Christopher. And then Chris (the only Pope ever named that, so far) is driven out by Sergius 3.

Ah, Sergius 3. As nasty as the Cadaver Synod is, the next 60 years and 12 Popes are seen as so bad that the whole time period is given an overall title that indicates a time of horror and depravity, like “War of the Roses” or the “Star Wars Saga”. It’s called the “Rule of the Harlots” or the “pornocracy”.

Crazy Pope Stories: Cardinal Ratz / Papa Bennie 16

I was epopping with my pals Max and JK about the Pope Carnivale that just ended, and the investiture of Cardinal Ratz as Papa Bennie. So I started looking up the history of why Ratz would have chosen Benedict as his name.

For example, my memory tell me that the recently deceased JP Dos chose that name because Juan Paul Uno, his immediate predecessor, had had such a short term (33 Days) and the name deserved a longer tryout. So that led to 27 years of a Pope named John Paul.

Back to Benedict. Wikipedia provided a convenient list of all the Popes (and antiPopes), and even a specific list of Pope Benedicts. Obviously, Bennies 14 and 15 seem to have the most immediate resonance with someone like Cardinal Ratz, and make for a reasonable journalistic contrast: pacifist (15) versus power monger (14).

But what if 14 and 15 have nothing to do with Cardinal Ratz's choice? What if it's some other Benedict? So I think I'll break up the next few posts into Crazy Pope Stories, starting with stories coming out of the previous 15 Benedicts.

Fergus McDingus

Not Writing

Back On the Chain Gang

Just sort of cruising through

One other thought

OK, one other thought: Will Shakespeare plays a regular part in Sandman. It was the "Midsummer's Night Dream" issue which won the World Fantasy award and issue 75, the last issue, is about The Tempest. I like those issues well enough, though more in the thrown away parts than the things directly involving the plays.

That preference is somewhat due to feeling that any writer in English is secondary to Master Will.

Wait, no, that's not the right way to put it. In college, my pal Flynn had a professor who had studied under Bloom at U. Chicago. Bloom apparently had a copy of The Republic in which he had underlined every single line in different colors, a coding system which he had developed over decades of approaching the text. And after all this study, Bloom had concluded that, instead of Plato being a subset of philosophy, all of philosophy should be consiudered a subset of Plato, encompassed and anticipated by him. And all the subsequent history of philosophical thought was just a matter of filling in the margins and blanks spaces which Plato hadn't had time to address.

For a fiction writer in English, Shakespeare looms as large. In "The Tempest" issue, Gaiman kicks it up to the point that he has Shakespeare rewriting the Book of Psalms for the King James Bible. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble". And then, with Ben Jonson, WS creates the Guy Fawkes doggerel, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November..."

I don't actually agree that WS encompasses the entire history of fiction in English (nor do I agree with Bloom's purported opinion about Plato), but, like God, it's a hard fiction to resist. Especially since I'm finishing the edits on a damn book which has a title swiped directly from WS.

Fake Bios

On a totally separate topic, today I ran across Laura Ingraham's web site for her radio show. I don't want to get ranty, especially about one of the Eva Gabors of political punditry ("WHY is she famous again?"), so I won't. But one thing about her site was really annoying: her fake bio.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge fan of fake bios. I've written a lot of 'em, like this or this or these).

But boy, Ingraham's fake bio is just lousy. Because it reads like a wish list, instead of something funny or interesting or fresh.

I mean, that's just dull. Second rate. For someone who can twist a fact until it screams for mommy in the service of her views, you'd think she'd have a little more supple imagination about something besides the Gay and Lesbian Organization at Dartmouth and Bill Clinton's blowjobs.

Crap, that was getting close to rant land. Sorry.

Full disclosure: the fake bio idea is one I swiped from Harlan Ellison, though I'm sure it's been around for longer than that.

Here's one from Ellison, from his collection The Essential Ellison:

And here's probably my favorite fake bio of Neil Gaiman's from the whole passel of fake bios he did for the trade paperback collection "The Sandman: Season of Mists":

Just lovely. 8 short stories, for your pleasure. The trade paperback also has excellent Nadar*-style photos of the contributors. The fantastic graphic design (usually by Dave McKean, I think) of the Sandman trade paperbacks is one of their finest, and possibly most overlooked, qualities.

* Nadar (Felix Tournachon) was a bohemian who took up the photography in 1850s Paris. He made portraits of people like Baudelaire, Dumas, Berlioz, Sarah Bernhardt, Theophile Gautier, and others.

Keith Giffen

For no particular reason, the name Keith Giffen popped into my head. Probably because I was thinking about the Legion of Super Heros and the "Five Year Leap" storyline that Giffen initiated, back in the late 80s. It may be my favorite series ever involving the traditional super hero format.

And thus: the Keith Giffen Resource Page.

Half Assed Manifesto

So, the last time I did a blog, it was Manifest Destiny 2000, but that was more of a test than a full-on blog. I wanted to see how the Blogger software felt to work with, but also what it was like to try and log on from various random places across the US.

This time, it's a lot simpler. I'm just posting readings, as a way to set myself regular deadlines during the week. I’m working on a bunch of other, bigger, ongoing projects, and this is just a little motivator. Posting all the books or articles, or random research I’ve done. Documenting procrastination, really.

Deep thoughts will, if they ever appear, probably run toward random thoughts about series fiction, which is most prominent in mystery and science fiction. I don’t feel like writing deep or shallow thoughts about that right now.

Anyway, next post will be the last ten books I’ve read, plus the books I’m currently reading, and the ones on the active pile. “Active” means I’m planning to read them, but haven't gotten around to it for one reason or another.