Newscoma

I’m known to be drawn to morbid things. I’ve known this about myself since I was a kid. We would head to Jackson and hit WaldenBooks where I would get the latest book on Bigfoot, ghosts, Stephen King if I was lucky, UFOs or the like. My mother was a woman who believed as long as I was reading, then she was fine with letting me read pretty much whatever I wanted to. I was smitten by things that I didn’t understand, and better yet, to things that I felt that I must figure out.

But, alas, you can’t always have an answer to such things that we cannot see. So I read because I had a visual in my mind of what is and what could be.

Over time, things changed a bit and I went through my Holden Caulfield and Scout from “To Kill A Mockingbird” phase. Works done far before I was born that caused me to go through those feeling in adolescence that I was perhaps not alone.  Scout’s small town filled with images I readily knew, and Caulfield’s reasoning that we were impaled by our imperfections which we refused to acknowledge. When I was in my mid-teens, I went throw a fiery John Irving phase, although that lasted only for a brief period of time.

I’m easing toward 5,000 posts on this blog, although I’m not there quite yet. As I was recently perusing some older posts I realized that I write about death quite a bit as well as paranormal alternatives. My brother-in-law told me recently that I was one morbid person, thus the word in the first sentence.

I don’t think I’m necessarily ghoulish, I think I’m curious at best. Why do people do what they do? And, we are born into this world alone thus we die the same way. No one can do these things for us.

Why do people do what they do?

I don’t have an answer.

As those of you who read me know, I’m a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. During it’s run, someone gave me a book about the spiritual and philosophical parallels with religious doctrine.

It made some good points that got me thinking about how religious imagery from the Bible in our popular culture.

Well, say no more, say no more there’s something new coming to your local bookstore.

The Coen Brothers’ movies are now being dissected in a new book called “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According the Coen Brothers.”

Here’s what I’ve read it is about:

From their 1984 debut, “Blood Simple,” through their most recent work, “No
Country for Old Men,” which recently was honored with 4 Oscars, each of the
Coen Brothers’ films probes ethical and spiritual quandaries.
– “Blood Simple” is the story of a man with serious doubts, and what
happens when he attempts to discover what the “truth” is.
– In “Barton Fink,” the title character, a successful New York playwright
turned Hollywood screenwriter, mortgages his soul as he struggles with
terminal writers block among the residents of, what may be, hell-fire,
demons and all.
– “The Big Lebowski” chronicles the misadventures of the Dude — stoner,
pacifist, philosopher — as he attempts to right some wrongs and
vanquish the powers of nihilism and moral turpitude.
– “O Brother Where Art Thou” follows the odyssey (spiritual and
otherwise) of three convicts, a skeptic searching for his way home and
two seeking redemption from their sins.
– “No Country for Old Men” is an epic, prophetic journey that tackles one
of theology’s most daunting conundrums, theodicy — if God is good then
why doesn’t God intervene to stop unrelenting violence — and surmises
that we don’t really know what God is thinking.

I don’t know. I’m sure it will be a good read. However, I always find it interesting how our world seeks spiritual validation through pop culture. I’m no expert on this but it’s interesting to see that award-winning author Cathleen Falsani has done this but I like her blog especially her observations of Johnny Cash.

Falsani is a columnist for The Chicago Sun Times if you were wondering.

I’ll buy it. And I wonder what Falsani thinks about Battlestar Galactica ’cause whoa.

Last year sometime, I threw up a post about Joe Hill. It was about him being the son of Stephen King (not the labor guy or the guy that used to work for John Tanner.)

I have been in a funk for about a month so I decided to set ye olde laptop aside and read his debut book called Heart Shaped Box yesterday. I really needed not to think about things for awhile and so I decided to go back to that well-worn practice of actually picking up paper bound in glue and giving it a whirl.

I’m glad I did.

Spoilers after the jump if you haven’t read it:

(more…)

John over at Lake Neuron tagged me for a new, extra special crunchy memo.

Let’s go:

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. turn to page 123.

3. find the 5th sentence.

4. post the next 3 sentences.

5. tag 5 people.

I only have one book near me and it is Stephen Colbert’s “I Am America (And So Can You)

Okay, let me find the page. (Wait, got it.)

“At first blush, most would peg me as an average Joe, and I’m proud of that. But my sheepskin announces to all assembled that though I may be a man of the people, I have the keys to the clubhouse. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the phrase, “You went to Dartmouth? I find that hard to believe.”

So, I have to tag five people. If you haven’t responded in the past, I realize you hate these things so I’m going to give you a break. My five are: Megan, Aunt B., Claudia, CeeElCee and Sarcastro.

If you don’t do memes, that’s groovy. If you do, this is a good one.