Room 101

Screengrab from
The Curse of Frank Black
— Twentieth Century Fox
Home Entertainment, Inc.

There is a Room in Frank Black’s head.

We all have rooms in our heads; it’s where we keep the things we don’t really want to think about. We go about our lives without giving much thought to what might be hiding in there. For most of us, it only adds a faint patina to our core being, an extra dimension, nothing more.

Frank, however, is different. Frank’s Room once waited for purpose with a sense of equal parts anticipation and dread, its edges intangible, fading into darkness. Now, on Hallowe’en night of Frank’s fifth year, it finds its first occupant.

Frank’s family had always whispered about him, that he might have inherited his mother’s ways. He’s so quiet, they said. So intense. And perhaps this intensity, this silence, has turned his gifts inward as well, because, while Mr. Crocell has not yet passed in the outside world, here, in the Room, he emerges fully formed.

Frank’s first ghost.

Pull yourself together, they’re just curtains.

In which I dive, possibly too deeply, into the world of drapery.

When I moved into my condo 11 years ago (I can't believe it’s been that long!), there were ugly, half-detached track rods across the windows, which I promptly removed.

Let me paint the picture: I have a West-facing unit (never the sunrise, but always the sunset, which I’m fine with), with one of those L-shaped living/dining rooms. As I’m on the top floor, I have extra-high structural ceilings (121.5" to be precise), but with dropped-ceiling tiles that bring it down to 93" (and no, I can’t remove the dropped ceilings as they cover lots of wiring and piping coming from the roof — that’s the drawback to ‘penthouse living’), which means I can’t really hang things heavier than paper from the ceiling unless I want to put a hole in a tile and hang an extra long pole/hook contraption from the concrete 28.5" farther up.

The windows along the wall go from the dropped ceiling to a windowsill a third of the way up the wall, and they span more than half of the width of wall. They’re broken into six separate panes, with three larger, almost square, panes above three smaller, rectangular, panes (the centre of which opens). All told (including framing), it’s over 472ft of light coming in — and that’s DIRECT sunlight from about 1pm until sundown, as there are no significant obstructions to the horizon for almost 5.5 kilometers (that’s over 3.3 miles*).

Los Angeles is melting in the dark

Screengrab from
Judgement - Mutant Enemy
Productions / 20th Century
Fox Television

(The Host steps up to the mike)

Hey kids, I’m so glad you could join us this evening at Caritas. You know, this city is a madhouse, and it seems like everyone’s out to get you. A quick judgement call is sometimes the only choice we have. But things aren’t always as they seem at first, are they? It’s like the heroes and the villains all melt into each other sometimes.

(Orchestral music starts to play)

The Resolution will not be televised

Screengrab from
Half A Life - Paramount

Personal Log, Lwaxana Troi Stardate 44805.3

Entry 4:

Well, this trip is turning out a bit differently than I had expected.

Love it: Call of the West

This weekend, I had a conversation with a friend of mine regarding significant albums (for his podcast Deeper Cuts). He wanted me to tell him about an album that held a special place in my heart, and it took me a while to narrow it down to just one, as there are so many for so many different reasons. I decided on Wall of Voodoo’s Call of the West from 1982.

Detritus

Conversation we had on vacation last week: what word were you pronouncing wrong in your head for years before finally hearing someone else say it?

Sorry

Yes, Canadians say 'sorry' for a lot of things. This is a form of 'social lubricant' - a nicety we perform to keep everything ticking over nicely and avoid friction. Some non-Canadians see it as a weakness, like we're trying to belittle ourselves before others to make a less likely target of aggression, but we see it as just how you let people know they matter. We were raised to be nice people and think of others.

Pretentious awakening

“We’re all pawns in this abhorrent game of Nathaniel’s bookdeath.”

- last line spoken to me in a dream this morning, so pretentious it woke me from a sound sleep.

Next fiction I write, it’s going in.

Can’t we just send him to his room?

We like to think things will be better in the future. You know, jet packs, meals in a pill, an end to disease. And enlightenment, a whole lot of enlightenment. As in, people will finally get along. Self-important jerks need not apply.

But I’m pretty sure they’re still going to be out there — as certain as death and taxes, the condescending ass-hat is a part of life, and always will be. And, while I’m sure it wasn’t David Gerrold’s intention, Bem demonstrates this perfectly. Pity the story itself wasn’t better.

Outside In Makes It So!

Hey guys, I'm an author again!

Star Trek: The Next Generation came out 30 years ago, so ATB Publishing has another Outside In book - and I'm in it again!

OUTSIDE IN MAKES IT SO: 174 New Perspectives on 174 Star Trek TNG Stories by 174 Writers

It's packed with great new takes, including mine - my third inclusion in the series!

From the back cover:

CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF ENGAGING ADVENTURE!

Put ten Star Trek fans in a room and you’ll wind up with eleven opinions, 47 heated debates about the nature of the Holodeck and somebody cosplaying Worf in a transporter accident with the Crystalline Entity. That’s because Star Trek fans are gloriously weird, uniquely different and sometimes entirely outlandish. And so is this book.

Celebrating 30 years of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Outside In Makes It So is a collection of 174 reviews, one for every story of the show, the four movies and a few bonus extras. Well, we say “reviews,” but we mean that loosely: within these pages, you’ll find scripts, recipes, a Monty Python sketch, a psych test, gossip columns, newspaper ads, a sitcom, a eulogy and a daily log from Riker’s beard, not to mention insightful and thoughtful articles examining Picard-era Star Trek from just about every angle imaginable…and then some!

Provocative, engrossing, hilarious and utterly gonzo. These aren’t your father’s reviews.

Order today!

Edith Investigates

Edward sat in his usual chair, the high-backed leather one near the fireplace. He wore his slippers, and on the occasional table at his elbow sat a steaming cup of tea. A biscuit, not yet dunked, occupied a small plate beside it. He held the evening’s paper, engrossed in the front-page story.

“Edith, they’re at it again,” he proclaimed to his wife, who sat opposite him in a smaller brocade chair, working on a cross-stitched sampler by the light of a small lamp. “That lot around the corner on Paternoster Row, mixed up in that business.”

“Heavens,” said Edith distractedly, as she chose another thread from her sewing box, “what did they do this time?”