Whatever happened to witches?

I'm sure you know those little old ladies. You would probably leave a trail of stones when visiting them, but you know it's not polite. As it is, you are grateful for your GPS. A visit is a trial. You wonder if you will make it out of there without any lasting damage. It could be the incessant  wheedling or a bit of venomous nastiness, calculated to harm, but delivered with a deadpan face and unimpeachable intent.

Kick in the head

A quick post. There are things to be done and more work to get through after that. The day has been tough. I submitted 'Aunt Amelia at Dinner' and 'First Time' and await rejection. Apparently it builds character.

Coffee by Pierre Mare

Waking has never been easy. Even as a young girl, with the wonders of the day ahead, my vigor was slow to catch up with the clock. The promise of shopping and sodas in town could not rouse me from my Saturday morning slumber. My lazy flesh was unmoved by the threat of Hell and Damnation for a tardy arrival at Carver Street Congregation on a Sunday morning.

Movie night: The Invention of Love

Love, tragedy and melancholy in a steampunk setting show that utopias and lives based on technology aren't the smart way to go.

Listening to 'Southern Gods' (and review)

I took the step of getting hold of 'Southern Gods' as an Audible production. I didn't want to add the book to the tail end of a long and joyful 'to read' list. I also reasoned that I could listen while I worked. That didn't pan out. Either parts of the story got lost or parts of the work came to a stop.

Thrills: all the questions and no decent answer

Teenagers are particularly dumb when it comes to finding excitement, sometimes even dangerous to themselves and others. Drinking, drugs and sex have become commonplace, and that's just the childhoods of US presidential candidates.

Thought for the day

It's high time that modern zombies got their own religion, and I'm going to give it to them.

Rewrite: The Man Who Feared Wednesday

This has been a bugger to rewrite, but I am satisfied with it for now as it better resembles a story than a list of things.  It's a substantial rewrite that involved a lot of chopping as well. Read it here...

(And if you have any comment, please pass it on.)

Movie night: 'Endless'

A knife, an eyeball, a bite, the maiden, mother and crone, all packed into a couple of minutes with a heap of Fassbinder stylization. Brilliant and multi-award winning. This thing is like the end of a short story. It asks you to imagine from where it all comes.

Mandela Day - Something on reading for Namibians

One of the challenges in Namibia is to introduce a culture of innovation. There are only so many cuca shops and shebeens that the economy can bear.

The question of water in a wine glass

Why bother to wait for the water that comes out of a plastic bottle to arrive in a wine glass? Why sip it in a refined way? What is the flavour of that sort of sophistication? How about putting wine in the wine glass?

Inventory: things of fear and horror for storytellers

I have worked on this list for a while now to set up a basic inventory of the things that storytellers use. The first half of the mythological / traditional section comes from things mentioned in Marina Warner's 'No Go the Bogeyman' and 'From the Beast to the Blond'. This list is not exhaustive but it does give the main things that crop up in stories. The list is very Western. I will add to it as I go along and read more non-western mythology and horror.

A note on frightening horror readers

I don't know what it is that might frighten a seasoned horror reader. After the first few reads, everything becomes dispassionate, yet another 'creature feature'. This is born out by the fact that the movie market which uses tropes such as ZVW and killers is almost entirely targeted at kids, with the exception of a couple of art movies such as 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'Let the Right One In'.

Movie night: Regression

Here's another little gem from Black Milk and Thomas Dorman. Possessive love, madness, grue, acting with brilliant expressions and what appears to be an afterlife (of sorts). Although it seems to be a bit beside the point, please note that it contains nudity so if you are offended by that sort of thing, don't click.

Happily confused: knife culture at Independence

Things seem to have changed now. I know that knives are still carried by a lot of people, but scanning the press leads me to the conclusion that there are too many guns around for knives to be a major feature of Namibia's violent underbelly.

Thought on writing

Quite often I write things almost automatically. When I go back to read the things, I end up saying to myself, "How in God's name did you get that right?"

It's as if the writer and the reader in me are two different beings. This leads me back to Terry Pratchett's idea that there are particles of inspiration sleeting down, waiting to find a mind that is ready to give expression to them. It's amost as if the story or thought really is out there, wanting to be told, looking for someone to tell it. It's not as if the ideas are forced. I do a little bit of planning and then let go. The story chooses where it wants to go, and the amazing thing is that those ideas work out.

Rewrite week...

Eight weeks and seven stories in, I can say it has been a hectic learning curve. At this point I feel the urgent need to get things fixed and tidied. It's time to revise on the basis of several very welcome suggestions and some very useful guides to writing. Pronouns must go! I'll repost the stories as things move along. I'll post a new column on Wednesday or Thursday evening and then pick up with Alan Dale's DNA, Movie Night and  a new story on Sunday evening (hopefully). I'll keep on updating 'The Stream' and 'Watch this...' daily. A special word of thanks Selene M'Only and Tracie McBride for the pointers.

Movie night: 3:00 AM

This is one of those movies which can easily be watched between fingers. Enjoy.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

The Barbie doll, and its implications for personal appearance, has been studied and discussed in depth. Why has nobody ever questioned the idea of even considering a plastic toy for prepubescent girls as important? It seems insane.

Your fears will find you

Fate is a Calvinist with a wickedly perverse sense of predestination. If it sets out to get you it will. In this regard, consider the experiences of a friend who will go unnamed. After a first burglary, he put up a two meter wall. This piqued the burglars’ interest and they went over the wall. He too installed an electric fence. The burglars broke through the wall, beneath the thief-zapper. He finally installed expensive, directional motion sensors. Unfortunately, the thieves saw their value and took those as well. Fate is a four letter word.

Shoes and the subconscious

Fears, repressed desires and anger have a way of becoming fuel for the slow-burning fire of life. Yet the dark frustration is often partially directed at someone else. For instance, someone may have a subconscious fear that his shoes make him an object of ridicule. The result is that his shoes are obsessively kept gleaming, and that everyone around is expected to keep their own shoes in same condition.

The genetic and philosphical inevitability of guns

If you want to de-stress and affirm your manhood, throw a punch. If you haven’t yet seen that inestimable movie, ‘The Fight Club’, you’re missing out on a noteworthy piece of modern-day philosophy, and a convincing one-step self-help programme for the emasculated.

Maybe They Get Lonely by Pierre Mare

(A ghost story for my daughter)

Holidays! Without any school to complain about or make the afternoon feel more exciting, Nancy was so bored she could scream. Her insides itched with frustration. What could she do? All her DVDs were the same DVDs she watched yesterday and the day before, and the day before that. Her books? Well, she had read most of them, and the ones she hadn't yet read were the books she would read later. She thought for a moment about writing a book report or updating her blog.

“No,” she told herself. “Those are another day things, not today things.”