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.

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.

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:

First of all, I read fast. I finished it in about three hours as it’s not a very long novel.

Now, I love me some creepy stuff. And I have to tell you, the book went beyond damned creepy. It was what I like to call a fast food read, which it is, but some of the visuals created in Hill’s book were really messed up. It’s the kind of messed up that when you put the book aside, it makes you go back and pick it up as you ask yourself, what the hell.

I’m not afraid of much. Stupid government, the red button in Dick Cheney’s line of view and cave crickets, but the idea of malevolent ghosts just sitting around messing with the lead characters in the early pages of the book was truly eerie. Just sitting there with the ominous tone of “I’m going to kill you and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it, but before that, I’m going to terrify and torture you.”

This ghost was one bad ass.

And it starts out strong and doesn’t let up. Hill was really inspired at taking an unlikeable character and making me feel empathy with him. He really is an unapologetic bastard, but the writing was good enough for him to grow and for me to realize two-thirds of the way into the book that he was so wounded emotionally that it was his own armor. It was what he needed to survive.

Back to the ghosts, and as a huge fan of GhostHunters, I don’t think Grant or Jason would want to mess with this billy-bad ass specter.

The good thing about this novel was how it incorporated the apathy about pop culture and the “brand” the lead character, Jude Cole, has created as an aging rock star who is so bored out of his mind that he collects morbid items not for his own enjoyment but to create more of a legend. His last CD was years ago. He’s 54-years-old and he honestly is lost and you feel it. Art from John Wayne Gacy (first page, I didn’t spoil it for you), Aleister Crowley documents, a snuff film (given to him by an adoring fan but he didn’t destroy it) and a cannibal cookbook sit in his private, yet not so private, collection because it’s about the myth as much as anything. Buying a ghost off the Internet seemed like a fine idea when it’s presented to him. Of course, he doesn’t believe any of this but you don’t know that for awhile, it’s part of his “brand” and his mythology he’s created as the driving force behind his band which seems loosely based on Metallica.

It’s about how to keep the money flowing in (which he has an overabundance of) and how when he “feeds” his fan base, they in return “feed” him back.

But the thing I loved most was the use of animal spirits in the novel. Ghosts apparently don’t like dogs. Dogs don’t like ghosts. And the way that this is written is absolutely exquisite. I really think I loved this part most of all.

In Joe Hill’s world, dogs will protect you from the monsters.

I won’t go any further but I will say I’ve been in a funk. Why a ghost story would cheer me up, I have no idea, but it did. It’s not Dickens, but I don’t dig Dickens anyway. Just not my thing.

I liked it.

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.