a couple of random treats

[ellen_datlow]

The Eerie, Bizarre Sounds of the Saturnian System

or what we've been listening to out there and for something completely different:

Attention shoppers. Here's the 2007 site and news for the deals that can be had at all kinds of stories around the US the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, aka Black Friday
Black Friday deals

Comments

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad I no longer work in retail!

[lagilman]

Amen.

(although working in a wine store, the season started before Halloween and didn't really let up until the day after New Year's. Oy.)

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

I worked in various bookstores from 1999 to 2006. (Yes, I worked every Harry Potter opening night during those years - heady times, for a fantasy writer!) Although the job has a lot to offer a writer who needs a day job, decent pay is not one of the job's better features!

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

"Hi! I was looking for a book that you had up front about a year ago - or maybe it was two - and I asked Bernie at the front counter if you still had a copy. He said that you were out, so I asked Cicely in the back, and she said you were out, so I asked Bill in the DVD section and he said you were out, so could you get me a copy 'cuz I have to do a report on it by tomorrow?"

I truly fear even the possibility of working in a bookstore. If working in a liquor store turned me into a completely unrepentant straightedge, working in a bookstore these days would probably make me take my eyes out with a grapefruit spoon and burn off the tips of my fingers so I couldn't learn Braille.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, you poor child. Five years ago, I worked as a wine manager for a liquor store, so you get nothing but sympathy from me. (I actually have to thank everyone for the seven months I lasted until I found a better job: I now have less of a tolerance of alcohol than I did before I started.)

[lagilman]

I loved working in the wine store, mainly because as floor staff I got to meet with a lot of wine-makers and importers, and talk to a lot of customers about their tastes and experiences... but there were shifts I kept a running tab of "OMG of the Day."

And I do find that I drink a lot less since working there. I blamed all the tasting dinners I had to do to -- proof that you can burn out even on things you love!

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Heh. I can certainly understand that.

[devonmonk.livejournal.com]

Those radio sound from Saturn are amazing. What strikes me as strange is how much they resemble the "outer space" sounds in the old science fiction movies. Forbidden Planet, anybody?

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, most of this is fudged a bit: between compression and interpretation (for instance, what frequency to what tone), what you're hearing are the few that actually sound something like music. I imagine you could do digging through a lot of Cassini's data and either get something that doesn't sound melodious, or you get something that sounds completely different with a slightly different compression scale.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

It actually wasn't that bad. A few customers were bloody awful, but overall we got a higher quality of clientele than most retail establishments because the folks in our store wanted to, y'know, read.

The primary exceptions to this rule involved last-minute holiday shopping frenzies and book signings by right-wing pundits. Regardless of your thoughts on the opinions of such authors, I can say without reservation that they have the most obnoxious fans I've ever encountered.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

I've been to a couple of P.J O'Rourke signings in my time, so I can agree with you from firsthand experience. When the author is threatening to leave if the yahoos don't shut up and get back in line, you know they're bad.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

A store I worked at in San Francisco hosted a Michael Savage book signing. What a bastard! Savage and his staff actively baited and mocked our staff for being "a bunch of stupid liberals," and his fans tore our store apart, hassled our booksellers, annoyed the other customers, and generally acted more like a mob in 1930s Berlin than in new millennium America. Finally, Savage and his goons wound up signing and handing out - for free - books no one had paid for! I don't know if he ever made good on those "sales," but the manager was livid when she found out what had been going on.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

My exact thought. My initial reaction was fake fake--theramins are playing!

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Now's not the time to tell you about the last picture Huygens shot of the Titanian surface, is it? Oh, NASA says that was a rock on the horizon, but one with "POLICE BOX" in big white letters on the top?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

(sniff)--don't you dare bust my bubble!

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

I know, I know: Whitley Strieber is upset with me for the same reason. All I did was ask the aliens about him when I was last abducted and anally probed, and he didn't take it well when they told me "STRIEBER IS AN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS! EX-TER-MI-NATE!"

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Given a choice between wandering around the Saturnian system with about a half-hour's worth of life support and wandering through any shopping venue on Black Friday, I'll take suffocation. Every year, I celebrate Black Friday by staying home and watching the best documentary about life in Dallas ever made (the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead, not the 2004 remake), because when I have to deal with the zombies at the shopping mall across the highway from me, I'm not allowed to shoot them in the head.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

I rather liked the remake, actually. Not nearly as good as the original, but far better than it had any right to be. The opening sequences were actually more effective than almost anything I've seen in other horror films recently.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know: I'm fond of it, too, and not only because I've had a crush on Sara Polley for quite some time. However, the original does a better job of showing that there's precious little difference between the zombies in the mall and real-life customers who are presumably still alive.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I thought the remake played things a bit too straight, aside from the brilliant closing sequence, set to Richard Cheese's version of "Down With the Sickness" The original beats the remake as social critique; the remake still scores, though, as a high-grade horror movie.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

LOL--thank you for that.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Back in the mid-Eighties, a now sadly defunct movie theater here in Dallas used to run regular midnight screenings of Dawn, and we had an audience participation crowd that made Rocky Horror look sick. Part of the appeal was that we encouraged improvisation (at one point in late 1985, we had actual standup comedians hitting the show in order to keep in shape, and I was constantly adding such nightmares as, when a character is forced to shoot two child zombies, "When I say 'clean your room,' I MEAN clean your room!") and partly because most of the audience worked retail in the Dallas area. Around Christmas, we didn't need to pay $3.50 to watch crowds of mindless zombies bashing on the doors in an attempt to get in, because we lived it every morning when we came to work.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Beautiful! Yeah, I saw the film as a midnight movie in the early '80s, too. First time out, though, I saw it with my dad during its original release. Man, was I not ready for THAT! :)

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was. I still bawl my eyes out at the end of Alien, when the only interesting character other than the cat gets blown out the airlock.

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

There, there. He came back in the sequels... ;)

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

It wasn't the same. Besides, it's no worse than the computer majors crying at the end of 2001 when HAL gets shut off or incipient MDs at the end of Re-Animator.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I loved Ripley as a character and actually thought everyone else was pretty interesting too.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's me inserting tongue so far in cheek that it's coming out my left ear. However, I'll stand behind similar statements for a lot of other films, and not just because I'm cheering on the tyrannosaur in original and 2005 editions of King Kong. (Discovering that Robert Bakker and I both cheer for the cobras in "Rikki-Tikki-Taavi" made me feel better about being a herpetophile, and I literally can't watch Valley of Gwangi without getting a big lump in my throat at the end.)

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Agreed. One of the defining things for me about the first two Alien films (as opposed to most other horror flicks, including the later Alien movies) involved the vivid, memorable characters. Pity that so few filmmakers remember how important such things are!

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

GUD should Black Friday. Yes.