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Archive for September, 2006

Sedition

September 29th, 2006

Readers of this blog have noticed that I rarely address politics here–and when I do, the political issues lining up to get holed in my shooting gallery are most often related to technological matters. I don’t really like discussing politics, for two reasons: 1) there are much better political news and discussion outlets than this one-man virtual donkey show; and 2) politics generally bores me blind. But the Bush administration’s ridiculous “War on Terror” and the horrendous, almost McCarthyite domestic policies it has lately been stirring up have finally loosened my lips.

Brace yourself, people. This is not going to be pretty–and, ohhhhhh yes, there will be foul language. Send the kids out of the room now before my invective scars their fragile little minds for life.

George W. Bush is a goddamned moron. Nay, not a moron, which Answers.com defines in turn-of-the-century psychological terms as “A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.” A true “moron”, following this definition (which has not actually been used in psychological parlance since the early part of the Twentieth Century), at least can be a valuable member of society by serving some kind of positive function. But George W. Bush serves no function whatsoever save to dig a deeper and deeper hold for this nation to slip into.

Let’s, for the moment, forget the fact that he suckered Congress into redefining the definition of “torture”, as well as permitting warrantless wiretapping. That stuff is heinous in its own right, but the straw that final broke the blogger’s back was his pronouncement, earlier today (29 September 2006) that “critics who believe that fighting the war in Iraq has made America less safe are ‘buying into enemy propaganda.’”

WHAT enemy propaganda?! The only propaganda I have been exposed to lately are statements from the Bush Administration attempting to prop up our public opinion concerning the miserable, unwinnable “war” they marched us into by way of getting some good ol’ red-blooded American payback against them filthy towel-heads what blew up all our buildings. Consider the following statement quoted by USAToday.com:

Some of them [Bush’s critics] selectively quoted from the document to make the case that by fighting terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making people less secure here at home….This argument buys into the enemy propaganda that the enemies attacked up [sic] because we are fighting them.

The “document” in question is a leaked National Intelligence Estimate whose pertinent data appeared recently in the New York Times. Bushy claims that his critics “selectively quoted” from this document to support their perfectly common-sense thesis that “extremists were using the Iraq war to recruit more terrorists.”

Honestly…no one needs a leaked NIE report to realize this. The United States military invaded an Islamic country (that, incidentally, had one of the few truly secular, non-religious governments in the entire region) and destroyed the law-enforcement infrastructure in that country, which allowed a fullscale religious war between Sunni and Shiite factions to boil up on top of the perfectly natural anti-American sentiment that brewed among the Iraqis because we invaded their country. Whether our actions were justified or not on an international, or even a merely social, level is irrelevant: we, a very large, and very powerful military power invaded them…and, come on, people - NO ONE likes their lands and homes being invaded, whatever the reason. Especially when that invasion topples a regime that, yes, was certainly tyrannical…yet managed to keep sectarian religious violence under control. Now, the stabilizing influence of the Hussein regime is gone, and what’s left? An American “peacekeeping” force and a “new Iraqi parliament” that are so ineffectual and so confused that they are, for all intents and purposes, worthless. The religious wackos are having a field day. And anti-American sentiment is running wild.

And guess what? Al-Qaeda really likes to recruit religious wackos who have a thing against Americans.

Even if there weren’t data Out There that obviously supports this thesis, a simple, high-school-level Social-Studies-class understanding of the situation in Iraq would lead even a moron - ”A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years” - to conclude that it would be VERY likely that Al-Qaeda recruiters would be having a bloody field day swelling their ranks in Iraq.

“But,” Bush said (to long applause, USAToday.com notes), “I want to remind American citizens that we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Well, DUH. The Al-Qaeda bastards who got the drop on us on 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. But the Al-Qaeda bastards who are someday going to attempt - and, who knows, maybe even succeed! - at topping their 9/11 stunt with another sweeps-week attack on the Great Satan are probably going to come from Iraq. Why? Because we stirred them up - we poked our stick into that ant’s nest of Medieval religious insanity.

Mr. Bush, dig the shit out of your ears for one fucking second and listen to what the entire world is telling you: THE WAR ON TERROR IS PRODUCING TERROR. It’s a vicious cycle of truly Orwellian proportions. Witness:

1. Al-Qaeda terrorists representing militant Islam…oh, I mean, Islamic fascism (as opposed to, what, Bush/Blair PseudoDemocratic Fascism?) attack America. We respond by attacking the nation and regime (Afghanistan) that initially harbored them - an attack which I still believe to be justified - but then attack a nation which had NO roll in 9/11 whatsoever.
2. Islamic radicals see the US’s invasion of Iraq as fulfillment of their beliefs that the US and the Western Powers have some kind of crazy grudge against Islam - which has been one of their recruiting messages for years. Way to go, Bushy: you just confirmed (in their minds) one of their primary doctrines.
3. By pursuing “anti-terrorist” measures abroad, you have, in effect, stirred up even more anti-American sentiment…especially by “liberating” the Iraqi people from the stabilizing influence of a truly fascistic, but nonthreatening (to our nation), regime. Al-Qaeda recruiters would be stupider than you are if they DIDN’T flock to Iraq and any other Islamic nation feeling angered or threatened by US aggression.
4. This will eventually, and inevitably, spur another Al-Qaeda attack on the US. Then what? Another invasion? Another “liberation”?

Lather, rinse, repeat.

And you have the gall to accuse American citizens who point out your obvious failings of succumbing to “enemy propaganda”? I ask again: WHAT PROPAGANDA? Do you honestly think we, your critics, are visiting www.al-qaeda.com and reading their convenient online FAQs? Or do you think we’re getting our news and information from - GASP! - overseas sources via the Internet?

Oh, you do? Well, I guess that does explain the warrantless wiretapping and revised “enemy combatant” laws you just railroaded through our equally-idiotic Congress.

Well, here - let me make it easy on you. I’m sure the NSA or CIA or some other intelligence-gathering organization will red-flag the following text and it may very well appear in the next “domestic terrorism” newsbrief to land on your desk:

Dear Mr. Bush:

I, Derek C. F. Pegritz, am entirely opposed to everything your administration stands for in regard to the so-called “War on Terror”. My views on this subject, and all of the information that I required to support them, was gleaned from the publication George W. Bush: Rapist of the Prophet which I received by anonymous courier after I used my PayPal account to donate a “love gift” of $3.25 (USD) to the Al-Qaeda Missionary Fund. Upon reading this three-page, photocopied pamphlet, I have decided that there is no God but God (that is, Allah, not the Christian or the Jewish “God”), Muhammad is His Prophet, and the United States is the Agent of Shaitan - by whom, I believe, they mean you. Al-Qaeda mail-order propaganda has now permanently influenced my views and, I believe, I am now what you would consider Un-American.

Oh, yeah - while we’re at it, I might as well tell you that I am a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, an Anarchist, a “Hippie”, a supporter of Iberian Expansion in the Philippines and the Caribbean, a “white indian” riding with the Apaches, a Confederate sympathizer, a Tory (God…I mean, Allah Save The King!), an Abolitionist, a Black Panther, a Branch Davidian, and a supporter of Universal Suffrage (yes, even for Negroes).

Before sending an NSA “extraction team” to my house, please call ahead and inform me of their dispatch so I may properly barricade my house for a proper fourteen-day-siege and prepare enough Plutonium for a minimum of seven dirty bombs.

Sincerely,

DCFP.

PS: I shall, in the future, refrain from calling you a moron out of respect for actual morons, who have informed me that they take offense at being lumped into the same category as yourself.

 

Good Writin’ Episode 1: ""I dont know what to make of that."

September 27th, 2006

Ladies and gentlemens, welcome to a brandnew feature here on Pegritz(.com)!: Good Writin’ - a weekly showcase of excerpts from amazing works of literature. Hopefully, these little hors d’oeuvres of wonderful prose - and, occasionally, poetry - will serve as appetizers to stir up in you the same hunger for exceptional wordplay that they’ve stirred in me. Let them serve as bite-sized samples to give you a taste of the works as a whole, or as tasty little treats for your own imagination!

But just remember…my taste in literature is as variable and chaotic as my taste in music, so be prepared to taste-test everything from Gabriel Garcia-Marques to Stephen King, Caitlin R. Kiernan to Abraham Lincoln, Robert Frost to Robert Heinlein, the Upanishads to Gregory Corso. After all, no true gourmand can ever, in good conscience, limit him- or herself to any one particular cuisine at the expense of all others.

This initial installment presents to you the opening paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s chilling, and terribly sad, tale of drug money and sunbaked lives, No Country For Old Men (2005). The speaker is Sheriff Bell, the aged Texan lawman whose weary shadow lies heavy on the land and the story itself:

I sent one boy to the gaschamber in Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didnt have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to. He’d killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He’d been datin this girl, young as she was. he was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely dont. I thought I’d never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strap him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was about all. I really believe that he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And I’ve thought about that a lot. He was not hard to talk to. Called me Sheriff. But I didnt know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? I’ve thought about it a good deal. But he wasn’t nothin compared to what was comin down the pike.

Positively chilling, isn’t it? I’ve certainly read my fair share of horror novels over the year, but never in all those tales of demon possession, zombie plagues, bioengineered monstrosities, curses, hauntings, and Ancient Gods from Beyond the Stars have I ever read anything that literally sucked the body heat right out of my blood more than that passage. Not even the many terrible and expressively quotable moments in McCarthy’s acknowledged masterpiece, Blood Meridian, managed to salt my blood with the pure, gritty despair of that opening paragraph. In short, gentle, colloquial sentences (you can practically see the old sheriff shaking his head in defeated bewilderment as he speaks), Cormac McCarthy has shown us just how perverse and horrific the scarred underbelly of America can be. No demon, no alien god, no cartoonish psychokiller in a mask can ever be as chilling as an average, everyday human being who can kill a fourteen-year-old girl just for pleasure.

Incidentally, this first installment of Good Writin’ is, naturally, dedicated to the memory of my mentor Ron Forsythe - Ahab! - who first introduced me to Cormac McCarthy with the words, “None of your monster tales can prepare you for this stuff, brother.” How could I possible resist the temptation to discover just what words like that must mean?! So this Bud’s for you, Ahab! I’ll be sure to somehow get to you a copy of McCarthy’s forthcoming novel, The Road, even if it involves necromancy.

 

World War Z

September 26th, 2006

Zombies are fun. They’ve been a necessary part of the horror genre almost since Day One…but, oddly enough, zombies haven’t fared all that well in print. Anyone can name a plethora of zombie films, starting with The Mummy (a particularly dry and past-his-prime zombie, yes, but an example of the walking dead nonetheless!) and ending with Shaun of the Dead. But how many zombie novels, or even short stories, can you name? Hell, I only know of these because I’m a horror scholar, and it’s literally my job to keep track of this stuff! There were the landmark living dead anthologies Book of the Dead and Still Dead, both edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector, and more recently James Lowder’s collection The Book of All Flesh and its sequel The Book of More Flesh. And as far as novel-length works go, you’ve got new horror author Brian Keene’s The Rising and City of the Dead, and David Wellington’s Monster Island*, which first garnered acclaim when it was first released as a serial on the author’s blog. None of these novels are as familiar to horror aficionados as any of the zombie films, and for two good reasons:

1) the zombie subgenre is naturally better-suited to film due to the subgenre’s reliance on gore and very visceral horror, elements which just don’t come across as effectively in black-and-white print as they do on the full-color, blood-soaked screen; and

2) all of these novels suffer from being completely derivative of the raw visuals and survival-horror surface elements of Romero’s and Fulci’s definitive films without also dealing in the political and social satire of the films. This leaves those books as little more than one-trick ponies: Let’s just see how a varied bunch of people survive in a world overrun by the walking dead. Reading them is like reading someone’s notes on playing a survival-horror videogame. It’s just…dull.

The fascination with zombie apocalypses does not stem, ultimately, from how people survive the plague of biting, moaning undead - it’s who survives. The zombie subgenre is the most sociologically interesting category of horror because it doesn’t deal with just a family being haunted by a pesky poltergeist, say, or with a small group of knowledgeable people fighting off some Threat from Beyond -  it deals with humanity itself being threatened with extinction by our own dead. In a certain light, zombie outbreaks are no different than plague outbreaks, but there’s a major difference: when someone dies from Captain Trips or the 12 Monkeys virus, that person doesn’t stand back up, gather together a posse of fellow reanimates, and go hunting living flesh to consume! Zombie films and novels are always about small groups of people - a microcosm of Society At Large, if you will - banding together to survive the onslaught of the Undead Masses. My god, the symbolism is ridiculously obvious! As is the potential for satire…and that’s exactly what you find in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Simon Pegg’s wonderful send-up Shaun of the Dead.

Watching zombie films or reading zombie stories is fun - and educational - because you not only get to watch the dynamic activities of a group of survivors battling the stumbling hordes, you also get to watch the social dynamics among that group of survivors. You get to see heads being blown off, brains and intestines being gnawed on, and living people acting out all manner of stereotypical situations, characteristics, and so forth. Without that extra dimension of social insight, all you have is a shoot-’em-up that ends when either the Last Surviving Human gets bit or the Intrepid Survivors make it to safety. There are thousands of bad direct-to-video zombie productions Out There that are just like that, and though they may be shallow, repetitive, and completely unmemorable, at least they’re somewhat amusing to watch because of the mindless gore and the action. But who wants to read three hundred pages of just that?

Zombie literature has to take a slightly different tack than zombie films. Zombie lit simply cannot emphasize the action, or the gore, or the mere mechanics of the survival-horror plot–that stuff just doesn’t do so well in print. Instead, if you’re going to write about zombies, you have to emphasize the sociological, the satire, the emphasis on the “human condition” as opposed to the slam-whizz-bang furor of popping maggot-infested crania. And I don’t think I’ve ever read a zombie novel that does that.

That is, until I picked up Max Brooks’ phenomenal new work, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (official Random House site here)!

Max Brooks - son of Mel Brooks (yes, that Mel Brooks, the comic genius behind History of the World: Part 1 and Spaceballs) - first ventured into the realm of zombie lit with The Zombie Survival Guide (official site here), a tongue-in-cheek, yet still practical, handbook to surviving the inevitable zombie apocalypse. “Organize before they rise!” is the book’s slogan, and it is at once dead serious (ha ha ha!) and completely hysterical. Why? Brook’s guide is not a silly, over-the-top comic farce, but a completely sober, serious piece of satire that examines contemporary American civilization and its various weaknesses by showing what could happen should the dead begin to rise and completely destabilize our individualist, technocentric civilization. It’s a proud example of that sophisticated kind of satire best exemplified by Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, which took the piss from Eighteenth Century Britain’s highminded social critics by expertly pointing out that the Irish famine could be eliminated if only the Irish would consent to eat their children. For all zombie aficionados, the practical, down-to-earth advice of The Zombie Survival Guide was a Major Publication, because it scraped together all the ideas about zombie uprisings presented over the years by Romero, Fulci, Savini, and the like and distilled them into a hands-on guide explaining just what could happen to YOU - and what you could do to survive it - when the apocalypse begins.

But World War Z one-ups not only The Zombie Survival Guide, but - quite literally - every other zombie novel and movie ever made. You heard me. But, you reply, them’s some tough words, there, Pegritz. How does a novel by a famous funny-man’s kid trump Night of the Living Dead, or Dawn of the Dead (original and remake), or even The Evil Dead?! It’s simple: World War Z takes the social satire and survival-horror basics of Romero, combines them with the pervasive sense of Total Apocalypse of 28 Days Later and Land of the Dead, then blends them together with an extremely sharp perspective on the current state of world affairs to produce a “nonfiction” account of the entire Zombie War all around the planet. The novel is truly global in scope, not only because of its international characters and settings, but because it examines virtually everything that is Human in light of the Dead: foreign relations, domestic policies, cultural conflicts, technological issues, labor issues, psychological issues, public-health issues…hell, even pet issues!

Simply put: World War Z is the first of its kind - a worldwide zombie omnibus that doesn’t just restrict its POV to, say, a tiny sampling of Americans holed up in the Monroeville Mall. That approach is fine for something with the limited scope of a feature film, but a novel demands More Details. Brooks handles this by presenting readers with a wide range of perspectives: folks from around the world, ordinary people to governmental movers-and-shakers, military skullbreakers to abandoned children gone feral. He shows you the Zombie War from nearly every angle imaginable.

This book is exactly what zombie literature has been waiting for: its definitive text. Max Brooks has clearly eaten the brains of Studs Terkel, whom he thanks for the neural donation in the book’s credits-reel. In an interview with Ain’t It Cool News, Brooks notes that Terkel’s amazing oral history of World War II, The Good War, was an obvious influence on his own work. World War Z is not a “novel”, per se, in that it does not present a unified narrative propelled by the interactions of a limited number of characters: rather, like The Good War, World War Z is a collection of interviews in which the characters speak of their own experiences before, during, and after the Zombie War.

The interviews are collected in a number of chronological “chapters” detailing various stages in the Zombie War: the early stages of the initial outbreak in China, the spread of the undead plague throughout the world, the Great Panic, the following harrowing years of attempting to stabilize the situation, the final “sanitization” sweeps, and the first few post-war years.

To begin with, Brooks does an amazing job at defining the epidemiology of the zombie plague (in fact, he defined it earlier in The Zombie Survival Guide, and World War Z can easily be seen as a dramatization of the Survival Guide’s ideas). He leaves no stone unturned when illustrating how the worldwide outbreak occurred, spreading like wildfire due to many governments’ snide unwillingness to even believe (and, later, acknowledge) that the dead could possibly be coming back to life. The author never goes into the biology of the zombie plague, of course - that information is just not necessary to the story - but he does pay close attention to its consequences, painting a VERY frightening picture of just how fast a virulent new disease could spread throughout the entire world thanks to our global transportation networks and the inevitable governmental bungling of public health crises. But that’s just the beginning of the horror.

There are moments of action in the various characters’ narratives (some of the first survivors’ tales deal specifically with their initial encounters with, and bloody, brain-smashing escapes from, the walking dead), but the true horror of World War Z comes from the atmosphere of mounting dread that pervades the early chapters. As the governments of the United States, Russia, China, and the EU attempt to deal with the outbreaks in secret to prevent widespread panic, Israel and South Africa - sites of some of the earliest outbreaks - close their borders and begin taking aggressive steps toward dealing with the contagion. In the US, an opportunistic biotech tycoon rushes a useless vaccine through the FDA and makes a fortune selling a defense against the “African rabies” epidemic, while China and Russia attempt to cover up the crisis completely under stories of “insurgents” and “civil unrest”. By the time the First World governments wake up and decide to take any kind of reasonable action, the contagion has hit the unstoppable point of exponential expansion. Cities have become seething wounds filled with zombies and terror. The Great Panic has begun…and as people desperately try to flee the contagion, they find themselves trapped in hundred-mile-long traffic jams, easy pickings for the shambling, biting undead.

The most interesting aspect of the zombie plague is that Brooks does not present his zombies as the quick-moving, furious cannibals of the Dawn of the Dead remake or 28 Days Later. No, his zombies are your traditional stumbling, moaning, hands-held-out-in-front-of-them Romero zombies. They’re slow, they’re stupid…they can’t really climb stairs or figure out how to open doors. So why are they so deadly? Simple: numbers. They might be slow, but how are you going to fight an enemy whose numbers grow with every bite? Who can take ten bullets to the chest, have his arms and legs blown off, and still keeps coming relentlessly? The United States military attempts a “Shock and Awe” standoff with the tide of the undead outside New York City, in Yonkers, and despite the soldiers’ high-tech gear, they are quickly overrun and butchered by the walking dead…who just keep coming, and coming, and coming, pouring out of the city like a tsunami of hungry ants. The soldiers empty all their ammo into wave after wave of zombies, and when they run out…there’s still another hundred waves of undead coming.

Brooks is particularly sharp at illustrating how high-tech is not always a guarantee for survival or military success. We in the U.S. have a major love affair with technology, and often believe that if we can “out-tech” an enemy we can beat them easily. But Brooks points out clearly that high-tech solutions aren’t always the best solutions. Later in the novel, for instance, when the U.S. finally begins to rally and the tide starts to turn against the zombie hordes, the primary weapon issued to soldiers is a modified trenching tool now called a “Lobo”, or Lobotomizer. A shot to the head is still the most effective way to take a zombie out, naturally, but what happens when you run out of bullets? The Lobo is incredibly low-tech, but works every time. It needs no reloading, no maintenance, and is very cheap to produce in bulk. Now, consider the combat laser weapons also mentioned in the novel: they can fry zombies, sure, but they cost millions to produce, are extremely fragile, and can easily malfunction. Why use a multimillion-dollar laser weapon to zap a handful of zombies when you can equip a number of soldiers with $10 Lobos that only need a little muscle-power to work? While that laser cannon’s recharging, a couple of guys with glorified sharpened shovels can take off ten times as many heads!

Brooks’ descriptions of how our advanced civilization could be brought down almost overnight by something as “simple” as a plague of the undead is particularly harrowing - especially if you are, like me, a citizen in a country like the U.S. Furthermore, Brooks gives us glimpses of the world after the Zombie War: a world in which many buildings are built on stilts with retractable staircases and ladders, United Nations patrols scour the northern countries after winter looking for frozen zombies that might thaw and cause trouble, and many people once again carry swords. Low-tech, but consistently effective, solutions to a low-tech problems. The lesson of the novel is quite clear: technology is only as good as the people using it, and if they’re not prepared to use it properly against a special type of enemy, it’s more a hindrance than a help.

This is a novel with many lessons - and many of them are political. Make no mistake: this is a politically-charged novel. Brooks wear his politics on his sleeve, and they are most definitely not the kind of politics our current administration, or the current administrations of China, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Russia want to hear. Brooks is unconditionally and unapologetically critical of China and Russia in particular - but he is not looking down on them from a high-and-might First World stance. The author clearly has sympathy for individual people, and flatout recognizes that the two most dynamic economies of the immediately pre-Zombie era were not the US and the EU, but China and India. These nations’ governments, however, are not to be credited for these economic strengths: it was the average people who made up the rank-and-file of these countries who kept them going. Brooks even shows how, after the collapse of Castro’s regime in Cuba, the Cuban nation becomes one of the greatest economic powers in the world thanks to the stability of the powerful capitalist system that emerges there when mainland banks flee to the safety of that little well-defended, offshore paradise.

But don’t take Brooks’ for a bleeding-heart liberal. He clearly - but not explicitly - points out that the great mistakes the U.S. government made in the early days of the zombie outbreaks were committed by a Democratic administration that made its way into power on a strict anti-war stance after the collapse of our involvement in “the last brushfire conflict” (Iraq? No…really?). Liberals of all stripes will no doubt be appalled by the “Redekker Plan”, developed in South Africa and implemented, eventually, under a variety of other names around the world, to save governmental and military systems by abandoning strategic population regions so they can serve as “zombie magnets”. These zones would draw the ravenous zombie hordes while governmental and military systems could mobilize, concentrate, and eventually strike back. But in a true total war like this one…sacrifices must be made. Individuals don’t matter as much as long-term stability.

Nonetheless, Brooks’ zombie politics are, ultimately, about as anti-conservative as you can get. One can easily read World War Z as a scathing critique of our present world situation, with extra emphasis placed on the repressive governments of Russia and China, and no little scorn for the United States’ love of spectacle over responsibility. One of the best means of pointing out a nation’s problems are by setting up fictional situations that exacerbate them and make them obvious. Sinclair Lewis did so with It Can’t Happen Here, and throughout the first pages of World War Z that mantra, “It can’t happen here!” is repeated over and over by officials and civilians all over the world. But it can. The undead can and will find you. They are as inevitable and overwhelming as any force of nature.

And that’s what the zombie apocalypse, ultimately, is. A natural disaster for the entire planet, a worldwide Hurricane Katrina. Though clearly aimed at American audiences, I have no doubt that readers in other countries will be able to see the significance, because the rest of the world is much more familiar with natural disasters than the U.S. is.

In conclusion, this is the zombie novel of all time. No kidding. If you’re looking for vivid descriptions of arms being gnawed off or intestines being yanked out, then go and read one of those inferior other zombie novels. If you want to see the Full Picture of the Zombie War that Romero’s films only hinted at; if you want to read a masterful piece of satire; if you just want to enjoy a novel with a truly epic scope…then World War Z is what you’ve been waiting for your entire life! God knows, I have been waiting long enough to read something like this.

Also, the audiobook version is well worth checking out. it features the author himself as the interviewer, and such Hollywood greats as Mark Hammill, Jurgen Prochnow, and many others reading various characters’ stories! It is an abridged version, comprising only the lengthiest narratives from the book, but a wonderful companion piece to the novel.

And, yes…there will be a movie. Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights before the novel was even published! Now, this could be good news, or execrable news. If the film is designed to mimic the book’s “nonfiction” delivery and is presented as a documentary featuring actual footage from the Zombie War, interviews, and maybe recreated scenes, then it will be awesome. However, if it becomes “Hollywoodized” and turned into Yet Another Zombie Action movie like Resident Evil, then I fully expect to see a zombie horde marching on Hollywood to kill, maim, and eat the morons involved. Let’s hope the former prevails.

*Which also has sequels: Monster Nation and Monster Planet. Apparently zombie novels, like zombies themselves, travel in smelly packs.

 

I was a Twenty-Something Candle Muncher!

September 21st, 2006

Yeah, I know it’s been a while since I rapped at you with my smoove, Cormac-McCarthy-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis flow….Things have been a bit chaotic here in Pegritzland, what with the new semester upon me and sheaf after sheaf of student writings coming in to writhe beneath my savagely critical gaze. But here’s a little tale for you that’s been sitting around on my hard-drive for a while now. I’ve dusted off its bits and bytes, added a few details recently declassified by the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act, and generally polished it up to make it worthy of bearing the Pegritz(.com)! Stamp of Wicked Awesome Quality. So, without further ado…ladies and gentlemen, I give you a tale of thrills! chills! and complete idiocy. It’s….

I was a Twenty-Something Candle Muncher!

I do a lot of stupid things - usually for humor’s sake or to prove some sort of esoteric philosophico-ethical point that can only be illustrated by, say, leaping wearing a cowboy hat covered in J. R. “Bob” Dobbs buttons to a formal dinner. I do stupid things just for fun. Not Jackass-stupid, mind you. I’ve never done anything that really hurt, or in any way involved my scrotum. My idea of stupid is just…pointless and dumb. Case in point:

In the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Six, I was employed at The Book Store…which was actually a video store that also sold silly Americana bricabrac and assorted lame pseudocollectible trinkets. Franklin Mint collector’s plates and anime-eyed hummels and the like. I’ve many a tale concerning The Book Store and the hydrocephalic hillbilly cretins that frequented the place seeking New Releases to assuage their appetites for romantic, Sandra-Bullock-filled drivel or big bright explosions of the Action-Adventure variety…but those tales must await a future telling, for now I must expound the subject of my stupidity rather than theirs.

During the time I worked at The Book Store, I only got along well with one employee: a cute li’l blonde thang named Shelby. Shelby was completely and utterly awesome. She was quite easy on the eyes, let’s we say, but more importantly she was quite bright and was, therefore, an excellent coworker for me to hang with during the long hours of retail tedium. She and I could finish putting out all the new magazines on a Thursday morning ten times faster and ten times better than anyone else, and when it came to managing the video racks we were the acknowledged experts. Shelby had a great sense of humor, a wicked tongue raspy as a cat’s with sarcasm when needed…and a husband - which was really weird, because she was only eighteen and had, apparently, been already married for two or three years. To a backwards-ballcap-wearing dingleberry one year her senior who, when he would arrive to pick her up from work, would sit in his big ol’ rusty hooptie right in front of the store and stare daggers at my back as if I were pawing up his wifey right in front of him. Shelby found Hubbyboy’s antics just as hysterical as I did, and probably talked more shite on the poor loser than I ever did…which speaks volumes about the quality of their wedded bliss. Safe to say, though, that Shelby and I always had a great time working together…especially when we were closing the store.

Which brings us to the present narrative. It was a Tuesday night toward the end of May, and Shelby and I were closing as usual. The Book Store officially closed at 10pm on weeknights, but we prettymuch started shutting up the shop at a quarter ’til when we turned off the video monitors in the corners, shut off most of the lights, did the final video returns, and then spent the last fifteen minutes sitting around on the checkout counter waiting for the Official Time Clock to strike the 10 Spot so we could cash out the registers and head home. Hubbyboy was sitting out front as usual, his smoldering gaze lying upon my shoulders like an irritating sunburn, and of course Shelby and I were fake-flirting like mad just to piss his dumb ass off some more. I, however, was somewhat distracted by something other than the usual gravity of her lovely bosom: the luscious scent of the box of 100 Honeydew-Melon-scented Yankee Candle Company votives sitting in a box next to my register.

Shelby’s melons were pretty damn mind-devouring to a twentysomething single male such as myself, but nowhere near as hypnotic as the scent of honeydew melon that drifted up like a pale green breath of cool, latesummer freshness to my nostrils. Honeydew melon! One of my alltime favorite scents! The candles were a lovely pale green that matched their odor perfectly, and since I’d put the fresh new box of them out that afternoon I’d been completely entranced, my skull light and thoughtless, filled with their etheric scent, my eyes soothed and seduced by their delicate, faerie-wing greenness….Every five minutes, I’d pick up one of the candles and run it beneath my nose like a crack addict snorting up the precious fumes of his fix, filling my nostrils with dizzying, opiate honeydew bliss. Shelby found my melon-candle addiction particularly hilarious, and, yes, I tried to hide my habit from her view but there was no hiding such a special, special love from the world. I wanted to marry one of those Yankee votive candles and live forever in dewy ecstacy with my waxy bride. I wanted to stuff my pockets with those candles and fill my car’s glovebox with them, so I could be surrounded day in and day out with their lovely stink.

Worst of all, I wanted to eat one.

“Shelby,” said I at some point, only half-joking, “I could just take a bite out of this candle right friggin’ now because…because…something that smells so good just cannot possibly taste bad!”

“Oh, really?” Shelby answered (probably by this point ready to just take one of the goddamned candles and jam it down my throat to shut me up about them). “Well…I’ll buy you one of them - but only if I get to watch you eat it.”

Mind you, the candles were only a buck a piece…and, yes, I’d certainly thought about buying one and surrpetitiously giving it a long, sensual lick or maybe a delicate little nibble just to assuage my own idiotic curiosity because I really couldn’t imagine something that smelled so delicious could possibly not taste the same. But sensibility always won out and I restrained myself to just sniffing. But now that Shelby offered to buy me one of the grounds that I eat it before her…well, hell! Not only could I finally answer the question of the candle’s taste for myself, but I could do it before a cute girl and thereby prove my ineffable manliness. Fucking Hubbyboy out front wouldn’t dare eat a candle to impress a chick, but PEGRITZ SURE AS HELL WOULD!

I thought about it for a second, then replied: “Allright. You’re on.”

Shelby gave me a dollar and I rang up the candle on my register. Then, as she watched, I slowly peeled the wrapper off the candle as though I were undressing Shelby herself - a minor fantasy that I’d entertained now and again, of course - letting the unfettered honeydew airs rise from the candle. I looked upon the naked candle with a sudden spike of trepidation, which I kept carefully hidden for fear of impugning my stonecold idiotic image - but…it had been ages since I’d eaten a candle, something I actually had done before. When I was SEVEN. I vaguely remembered chewing up the tasteless wax and I wondered…might this candle be as tasteless? NO! It couldn’t be! I mean…it smelled so GOOD, it had to taste the same. Right?

Shelby was watching me, nodding, saying, “C’mon…eat it already. You know you want to!”

Well, what else could I do now?

So, holding the candle sideways, I sank my teeth into its melon-colored flesh and bit a huge chunk out of it.

I chewed slowly, feeling the wax crumble between my teeth, a strange, subtle chemical flavor slowly diffusing across my tongue….

Shelby saw the light fade from my eyes as I slowly ground up that waxen cud between my teeth. “Well…how does it taste?” she asked.

“Uhhh….Waxy?”

“So does it taste as good as it smells?”

It actually kind of tasted like a mouthful of unflavored salt-water taggy spiced with a few drops of dishwashing liquid. Somehow, all along I knew it would taste just like a gobful of phlegm, but hey….Duty had called. And now I answered truthfully: “Not really.”

“You know, I paid good money for that candle,” Shelby said. “I expect you to finish it.”

“Finish it?!”

“Yeah. You need to whole damned candle now. I don’t want it now that you took a big nasty bite out of it.”

“….Sure,” I sighed. I mean, I had to conclude my part of the bargain now. Shelby had spent a good dollar that she could’ve used to buy herself a Coke or a bottle of Lipton’s Apple-Spice tea to buy me a stupid candle to eat. Plus, a really attractive young lady was demanding, with her luscious blue eyes, that I - oh, what else could I do?

I ate the candle. I ate the entire fucking thing.

I chewed and chewed that wax and gulped it down in gritty lumps, each synthetic bolus of candlemeat sliding down my throat like the derision and laughter of the gods themselves. The tantalizing - but false, alas, sooooo false - scent of honeydew melon continued to float up through my sinuses even as the completely non-melodic, non-melonic taste of snot and Palmolive tortured my tongue and made my uvula writhe with every swallow. Thankfully, my stomach didn’t seem to mind being insulted by a few ounces of wax, for it didn’t hurt or otherwise object as I’d thought it would. In fact, it actually killed the gnawing hunger that had been troubling me since lunch that day.

When I was done, all I had left was the wick dangling from my fingertips.

“You’ve gotta eat that, too,” Shelby said.

“Ok, no. Uh-uh. No fucking way.” I don’t really know why but…after having gulped down so much wax, I knew that if I curled up that little two-inch-long piece of string and swallowed it, that would set off a volcanic eruption of spew. Shelby kept trying to get me to eat the wick but I patently refused and threw it into the wastebasket. Fortunately, by that point, it was officially 10 o’clock, and we could shut down everything and go home. I had officially proved to Shelby that I was a Real Man, not a highschool-aged, ballcap-wearing toyboy - I could choke down an entire votive candle like a MANLY MAN! Of course, that must prove that my wang was at least fifteen inches long and my complementary skills as a lover unmatched by any mere mortal!

Yeah. I’m sure that’s exactly what Shelby thought when I ate that stupid candle. By that point, I was just feeling like being a total blockhead. A veritable nimrod. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. And for what? To impress a girl? Ultimately…not really. Shelby was just a friend - a coworker whom I thought was cute, but that was it: I never had any real interest in her. To prove something to myself? No. I already knew I was a dumbass with a penchant for such strange stunts.

To this day I don’t really know why, precisely, I devoured that poor candle. Some stories don’t have happy endings - or sad endings…or even any kind of endings. Much like a Samuel Beckett play rewritten by a ten-year-old, the Culinary Investigation of the Yankee Candle has no real conclusion. No real resolution. It was dreamt up, it happened, and was promptly forgotten by all but me immediately afterward amid the same overarching air of Complete Mystery. Perhaps the Templars know why I did it…or the Gnostics. But I sure don’t!

EPILOGUE:

Sensitive readers be varned! The following material contains references that many many find…well, feculent. Procede at thine own risk!

So…now you may be wondering what the aftereffects, shall we say, of the candle-eating were. Everyone always asks that. Well, let me tell you so you’ll finally stop pestering me.

Two or three days later, the wax emerged as per the usual course of nature. And though the process wasn’t particularly difficult, I still found myself afterward entertaining a peculiar sense of relief, never known to me before, as though I’d finally put the entire ridiculous incident behind me, as it were. I’d finally expunged that moment of frippery from my life. But then…

rising from below…

came the pure, unsullied scent of honeydew melons.

 

Northern Lights

September 15th, 2006

God bless the Norse! Were it not for the wonderful Nordic peoples of Northern Europe in all their myriad forms, Western civilization would be vastly impoverished, lacking such essentials as Ikea, truly-Satanic black metal, Swedish meatballs (and the Swedish Chef), behornéd helms, the Valkyries, Sören Kierkegaard, August Strindberg, and–most of all–lots of really excellent music. There’s just something about the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Finns, the Danes, and the Icelanders–something perhaps genetic, or related to the fact that they spend most of their lives freezing solid in subarctic darkness–that contributes to folks from these fabled lands being superb musicians, especially when synths and electronics are involved. Check it out: Sweden has given us S.P.O.C.K. and Covenant (who, admittedly, are only good on odd-numbered albums, but when they’re on one, they are on one), Norway exported Aqua and Röyskopp, Denmark The Raveonettes, Finland the Gothic metal of Nightwish and triumphant winners of the 2006 Eurovision Award LORDI! Now, it is true that Iceland has given the world the monotone, whiny murk of Sigur Ros, but remember: that little volcanic Island of way too many umlauts has also given the world The Sugarcubes and Björk’s uneven, but generally awesome, crazy-little-girl electropop. And Múm.

Based on the above sampling, it’s tempting to think of the Scandinavian world as being a hotbed of synthpop, squiggly-squirmy IDM, and either sludgy, sloppy black metal or glorious dragon-slaying power metal. But don’t forget: the New Wave got its start in the US and Great Britain, and while the Tsunami of Sheer Awesomeness that was the genre peaked and then resided here in the States, leaving behind a flotsam of stalwart bands to hold true to the synth-combo flame during the godawful 1990s, it never really subsided in Europe–especially in the chilly seaside haunts and crags of the Great White North. Today, thanks to the Newer Wave revival that most people still like to call by the fresh, trendy name “indie rock”, some New Wave bands from the Land of the Vikings are catching the rest of the world’s ear…and I’m here to introduce you to the two best: Whitest Boy Alive and Husky Rescue.

Whitest Boy Alive is the totally non-electronic New Wave project of prolific Norwegian electronic/indie/folk artist-and-DJ Erlend Øye (also known for his work as part of Kings of Convenience). As worthy as Mister Oyeah’s other projects are–his solo album Unrest will get its own article someday soon–Whitest Boy Alive trumps them as surely as Trevor Horn’s work as The Buggles trumps everything he’s ever done with Art of Noise, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Seal, or even Yes. According to the band’s website, Whitest Boy Alive “started as an electronic dance music project in 2003″, but “has slowly developed into a band without any programmed elements.” What the band has truly developed into is a lush, yet minimalistic, evocation of the all finest elements of early-80’s New Wave. Their debut album, Dreams, is nothing less than the best New Wave rock album of 1982, arriving twentyfour years late and therefore becoming the default best New Wave rock album of 2006.

The music is as simple, yet as compelling, as anything by vintage Gang of Four or The Jam, though the name of the game with Whitest Boy Alive is not driving post punk but mellow, languid, yet still booty-movin’ pop rock. You’ve got drums, lead guitar, sometimes rhythm guitar, bass, occasional understated synths, and vocals–and that’s it. The production is clean and almost distortion-free; only a slight twang of overdrive can be heard once in a while. The drums are dry and uneffected, the bass sharp and prominent, but the guitars and synths and Erlend Oyez’s trademark gentle vocals all lathered up with creamy reverb–not too much, though! This ain’t a goth-rock album! To be honest, at times the band sounds like the vocalist from Double (remember? “The Captain of her Heart”) singing with The Eels.

But, my god, the hooks! The melodies! These songs are all as catchy as a dose of the ebola, and will leave you feverish with grins and excitement–they lodge in the brain like pieces of shrapnel from a New Wave bomb. The lead track, “Burning”, kicks the album off with a bouncy guitar riff and breathy vocals that I guarantee you will be humming for hours on end…but then “Above You” kicks in with its slower, funkier groove and its twiddly synths, calling to mind Echo & The Bunnymen getting down with Devo. The album explores a whole world of contemporary New Wavey influences, from Bloc Party beats to Revolver Modele’s jangling guitars and the dreamy soul of Iron & Wine. “Don’t Give Up” is a sweet ballad, of sorts, that would be perfectly at home over the obligatory after-the-big-fight-at-the-prom montage from a John Hughes film, and “Golden Cage” is nothing less than pure funky bassline cut with a lazy sunset melody and moody, I-give-up lyrics. The music is pretty. And rocking. And refreshing….One straight-through listen of the entire album will leave you feeling like you just ran into an old, beloved New Waver friend whom you haven’t seen in ages, but have discovered is still wearing the same Ducky hat, the same checkered Sketchers, and the same plaid suitjacket with Men At Work at Echo & The Bunnymen pins all over it.

Now…let’s change pace here a bit. Whitest Boy Alive is a rather mellow project, but raving about them above has gotten me a bit worked up. It’s time to lower the bpm now and relax into a nice, cool bath of slide-guitar melodies, frosty synths, and end-of-summer lyrics that evoke colorful images of…Vikings riding into the sunset? Yep.

Husky Rescue is an odd musical beast, rather like the jackalope or any other critter of American tall-tale lore: a Finnish studio “band” that combines elements of downtempo, lo-fi electronica with good ol’ American country, psychedelic rock, and cinematic atmospherics a lá Angelo Badalamenti and Ennio Morricone. The band is basically just producer Marko Nyberg, who “wanted to compose cinematic music strongly influenced by the power of films and the hypnotic quality of photography and paintings”. In order to bring this about, he enlisted twenty other vocalists, guitarists, synth wizards, and so forth to actually accomplish just that: music that enters your brain through your ears and blossoms into beautiful, evocative visions through the power of sonic suggestion (though being synaesthetic helps a great deal). This is psychedelic music, people. This is music that creeps into you and slides like a cool, refreshing mist of neurotransmitters through your nerves and soaks the imagination in inspiration. You simply cannot listen to Husky Rescue without sinking back into your seat and enjoying the gorgeous scenery that the music will whisper to you.

Country Falls, Husky Rescue’s debut album, opens with “Sweet Little Kitten”, a lovely little song as warm and fuzzy as the kitten its lyrics describe. Silky slide guitar opens the song atop a plodding bassline and a gentle beat, whispery vocals wrap you in cotton warmth. If Mazzy Star and The Scud Mountain Boys had had a child, this song would be it. Things pick up a bit with “Summertime Cowboy”, the album’s single, which is a sexy, uptempo jam propelled by sultry vocals, laserlight soundeffects, and a delicious lo-fi synth leads that sounds like a piano lick sampled from an ancient Nashville 45 single. This is the kind of song you’d expect playing in a David Lynch film, accompanied by gentle, acidic imagery: saffron clouds kindled by a bloody, falling sun hang light above as the moon, like a distant discoball, emerges from the deep purple east and languid country girls linedance in the chilly evening air. “New Light of Tomorrow” follows with a lachrymose slide guitar intro and lovely, lovely vocal harmonies that swell in stereo clouds to swallow you whole and hold you drifting in a warm, but lonely space where synths billow in slow-motion like silvery clouds soaked in reverb. And these are just the first three songs on the album.

In fact, Country Falls holds solid almost on every song–the only exception being “Sleep Tight Tiger”, a sweet lullabye to a sleeping child marred by the dullness of the vocals and the sheer triteness of the lyrics. But even at its worst, this album is brilliant–a truly postmodern fusion of sounds from the American West and the synthetic gloaming of Finland. Many of the tracks have an almost Radiohead-like feel to them in their seamless melding of live and synthesized instruments, but none of them are sullied by Radiohead’s typical underproduction and lack of melody. It’s rare to find a dreampop album that has catchy tunes…but this is it. These drowsy melodies stick with you and will haunt your mind with colors and scenes from surrealist westerns long after you’re done listening. It’s rare these days to find good psychedelic music, as most of what is passed off as such these days is either bad trance or even worse ambient. But Husky Rescue’s music is so consistently evocative that one cannot help but dream along to its swirl of memory-summoning tones. No one needs actual drugs when one has the eerie whistle of a thereminh rising over the synths and shimmering guitars of “My World”. If that song doesn’t send a thin blue chill up your spine, then maybe you should consider drugs.

To wrap it all up, these two albums are Must Haves. There are few albums that I believe everyone on earth should own for the good of their souls and the delectation of their ears…but these two Scandinavian Pearls of Great Price definitely fit the bill. Especially if you dig relaxed, melodic, but inspiring New Wave music. Whitest Boy Alive and Husky Rescue embody every last drop of the spirit of the New Wave, crafting expert pop music that is good for both dancing and living-room listening, both intricate and simple, and–more than anything else–representative of all the best that such a musically-inventive region of the world can produce. Here’s to you, Northern Europe! May the aurorae light your minds forever!

(This article cross-posted at my music-only blog, The Spacing Guild Guide to the Humanities.)

 

Keep it crackin’!

September 13th, 2006

Last week, some dedicated hacker(s) released a nifty little Windows programme entitled FairUse4WM which users can employ to strip Windows Media’s constricting “copy protection” from purchased mp3 files so one can copy, backup, and sync those files as one wants without having to worry about losing one’s investment to the strictures of DRM. Weeeeellllll, guess what? Microsoft hopped right to it and within three days issued a speedy patch to address this so-called “security vulnerability”.

Of course, how can a DRM crack be considered a “vulnerability”? Simply put: it can’t. Security guru and all-around Smart Fella Bruce Schneier in the above-linked article on Wired.com puts it bluntly:

[T]his isn’t a “vulnerability” in the normal sense of the word: digital rights management is not a feature that users want. Being able to remove copy protection is a good thing for some users, and completely irrelevant for everyone else….

But to Microsoft, this vulnerability is a big deal. It affects the company’s relationship with major record labels. It affects the company’s product offerings. It affects the company’s bottom line. Fixing this “vulnerability” is in the company’s best interest; never mind the customer. [Emphasis added]

Never mind that the code for WindowsXP and, lord knows, Internet Explorer 6 coughs up a whole new batch of legitimate security vulnerabilities every other day. Never mind that it took Microsoft three tries to (hopefully) patch a MAJOR IE flaw. Those problems don’t affect Microsoft itself, they affect users of Microsoft’s products - like me. Cracking Redmond’s DRM does no harm to users - in fact, as Schneier notes, it is a benefit to some and, at worst, completely unimportant to others. Cracking the DRM cracks Microsoft’s contracts with the Major Record Labels - and ohhhhh, no, we can’t have that! If everyday users find their computers infested with rapidly-proliferating spyware and Agent-Smith-like trojan programmes, their problems don’t matter a lick compared to those of the Major Labels, whose DRM strangehold on their property’s “rights” has now been invalidated!

But I don’t think it should be any surprise that the same industrious crew of faceless “consumer advocates” who produced the first FairUse4WM quickly responded with am upgraded version that gets around Microsoft’s unbelievably-important security patch. I haven’t followed up on the current state of MS’s DRM/anti-DRM Cold War, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more iterations of the crack/patch/re-crack cycle have already passed.

Of course, the exact same thing has begun with Apple Computers, as well. The Hymn Project has been working on DRM-strippers to remove Apple’s oxymoronically-named FairPlay DRM from tracks bought through the iTunes Music Store, and just last week MyFairTunes also appeared as an aid to users. Of course, with Tuesday’s much-ballyhooed but underwhelming upgrade of iTunes to version 7, Apple upgraded their FairPlay DRM as well.  About eight hours later, updated versions of QTFairUse and HYMN appeared to remove Apple’s newly-upgraded FairPlay.

This should be a clear indication to corporate users of DRM schemes that they don’t frickin’ work. Users don’t want them - else, why would there be so many programmes out there designed to crack and remove the DRM? Doesn’t the example of eMusic and other independent, DRM-free online music stores prove that DRM is a useless concept and no true guarantee of protecting sales? In fact, eMusic, who currently holds about 11% of the US market for online music sales, just opened a European division. Obviously they’re doing something right!

Keep it up, crackers. As long as there will be DRM, there will be people like you stepping to the plate to remove it. But I still maintain that the smartest economic move for a consumer to make is to just not bother buying anything with DRM on it in the first place. There are plenty of online music outlets that don’t use it, and they are very easy to find.

 

Threads and threads

September 7th, 2006

Threaded comments have come to Pegritz(.com)! thanks to Brian Meidell’s most excellent (and aptly-named) Threaded Comments plugin for good ol’ WordPress, the acknowledged Blogging Package of the Gods. This will make carrying on conversations and debates concerning posts much easier, and will hopefully encourage such! So get to commenting, folks - I like to argue, and you know you have something to say!

 

An Ancient Emptiness

September 4th, 2006

It’s Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day - maybe Easter Sunday - maybe even Labor Day (though I think only WalMart and the little fruit stand over the hill from me actually honor that holiday anymore) - and I’m off to visit some friends in Uniontown this evening. No matter whose margarita party or DVD-fest I’m going to, the route I take from my middle-of-nowhere digs into the Capitol of Fayette County will take me right through Uniontown’s center of commerce: the square of malls, shopping centers, gas stations and restaurants bordered by Matthew Drive, Route 21, New Salem Road, and the hoary ol’ National Pike itself, Historic Route 40.

Joe Hardy and the other County Commissioners can pretend that their newly-renovated(-and-gentrified) Downtown is the economic heart of Uniontown, but everyone knows that the county’s cash-flow pulse really originates from that Quadrangle of Retail Titans on the city’s western flank. The place is a fecund swamp of capitalism, with the Uniontown Mall (home to the venerable old department-store chains Sears and JCPenney), WalMart, KMart, Lowes, Home Deport, and now Target rising like lotus-blossoms above the concrete lillypads of their parkinglots, and all manner of smaller businesses and restaurants crowding around them like so many eager frogs poised to snatch with their tongues some of the innumerable dollars buzzing around the big stores’ honeyed bargain-bins. Take a drive past the area some afternoon. The intersection of Routes 21 and 119, right below the WalMart/KMart/Lowes plazas, will be choked with traffic drawn by the sweet pollen of Falling Prices and Blue Light Specials. The parkinglots will be packed solid, people swarming like ants in the glare of so much windshield-shattered sunlight. The strip of restaurants along Route 40 by the Mall will be crowded with hungry shoppers and a hundred different species of thirsty vehicles will be queued up at the nearby Sheetz like beasts at an oasis. Hell, even if you drive through the area at four in the morning, you’ll still find the place abuzz with activity, because most the restaurants, and the WalMart, are open 24-hours-a-day.

But today….Today, this holiday, is different.

As I come round a bend on Route 21, I can see the WalMart plaza on my left, the KMart/Lowe’s plaza just a bit beyond it. And - just as I expected them to be - they’re empty.

The halogen lamps burn atop their metal trunks but their light falls on bare, filthy asphalt gridded with chipping yellow paint, shining with a strange, confused glare in puddles of melting snow or rain or motoroil. The WalMart’s doors are bright with empty light and the big red letters flicker with alertness…but no one’s there to justify the light. The smaller stores along the plaza’s crescent, even the Shop n’ Save, are dark and still. A chilly, hollow feeling shivers through me, a pleasant melancholia. I slow down. There are other cars on the road, sure - other people no doubt going to visit friends or family, too - but none at all where I’m so used to seeing them.

I hang a left at the stoplight by the Taco Bell (also cold and dark, even its neon OPEN LATE sign snuffed) and slowly, reverently, drive through the eerie stillness of the WalMart lot. I turn my car’s CD player off and listen to the minimalist whispering of my tires on the pavement. Even empty as it is, I can’t bring myself to violate the order of the painted lines and drive slantwise across the lot - that would be tantamount to driving against the grain of ley lines. I drive slowly up an aisle to the front of WalMart and sit there for a moment, letting my mind drift like a piece of windlifted litter through the…the nothing. Here, where there’s usually so much - cars and trucks going in and out, here and there, back and forth; folks pushing squeaking carts, pulling squeaking children; sun- or moonlight splashing over everything - now there’s just…artificial light falling like luminous dust on vacant benches, speedbumps covered in frost, squashed pop cans and random pieces of paper, a lone shopping cart lying on its side in its corral like a sleeping calf. And me. My mind busies itself with metaphors to fill the cathedral silence of the empty lot.

A day or two before, most likely, I had been a part of this place’s usual hustle-n’-bustle. My car sat in one of those handicapped spaces over there. I crossed the sideways-striped pedwalk in front of the sliding doors with hundreds of other folks, going in with a wad of bills rustling quietly in my pocket, coming out with a bunch of stuff rustling loudly in a blue plastic bag. I’d probably been singing quietly to myself, as usual, as I went about my business, and when I’d hopped back into my car and fired her up, the sonorous booming of my woofers had muscled into the air.

Now, just the gentle purr of my idling engine sounds huge in the ceremonious silence. I’m not in a hurry to grab my purchases and go, to escape the mercantile hubbub and go home to my quiet house. The world is quiet tonight.

I take a quick turn through the equally-empty KMart parkinglot - and spot a lone figure pushing a mop within its locked doors…a ghost earning time-and-a-half haunting the still light and the silent ranks of registers.

A moment later, I’m cutting across the Uniontown Mall’s parkinglot as I head for Route 40. I’m a little more familiar with this place’s emptiness, as my friends and I have spent many a late night at the 24/7 Eat n’ Park just below the Mall - but there’s a qualitative difference between that familiar afterhours emptiness and tonight’s more pure emptiness. If you drive through the Mall parkinglot at 3am on, say, any other Saturday night, you can practically sense the tension of the next day’s workaday crowd, smell the future exhaust, feel the rumble of tires on the macadam. But tonight…this is rest. This is one of the Mall parkinglot’s few days off. Well, except for the small huddle of cars clumped up against the front of the Carmike Cinemas -  the movie theatre’s always open - and, perhaps, the Boston Beanery at the other end of the structure…but even they lock their doors and turn off their sign on some days. Regardless, the Zen vacancy of so much untrammeled asphalt seeps through me like a cool, gentle breeze as I pass through it, enjoying the sight of quiet where usually there is so little.

These moments of abandonment are growing fewer and fewer with every year. They used to be familiar, a run-of-the-mill sight, back when I was but a pup in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Almost nothing was open twentyfour hours then, and many businesses - even massive retail chains like KMart or Montgomery Ward - didn’t even open up on Sundays at all. The Sabbath was the first empty-lot feast to fall beneath our civilization’s exponentially-accelerating consumer culture. Now every streetcorner has a 24/7/265 Sheetz, or a GetGo, or even little mom’n'pop convenience stores populated at all hours by bored teenagers begging for a holdup just to add some pep to their allnight shifts. The world doesn’t rest anymore: our American civilization eats No-Doz for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; our economy has beaten the tyranny of night and sleep, religious observation and tradition. There are kids being born right now who will regard the old 9am-to-9pm era of business as being hopelessly primitive, wasteful, and tedious.

Is this a bad thing? No, not really….I’m always stopping at WalMart at 1am when my shift at the Herald-Standard’s composing room/ad-design department elapses. If I run out of peanut butter at 4am on a Thursday morning, I can just run out to the Sweet Pea’s on Route 21, or the Giant Eagle in Uniontown for my fix. Hell, if I need a new mouse or a new keyboard for my computer at midnight on Labor Day, I can always swing by WalMart for that. I haven’t enjoyed a “typical” 9-to-5 lifestyle or work routine since 1997: working the night shift at the newspaper has gradually rendered me nocturnal, and were it not for 24/7 superstores like the Big W and allnite gas oases like Sheetz, my life would be flatout impossible.

But still….There are times when it’s comforting to see the world at rest. To see the sliding doors of Capitalism locked and all the lights turned off for just a little while. To see empty parking spaces and to feel no urge to duck into the ”sweet spot” closest to the front of the store before someone else snags that primo chunk of parking realestate. There’s an eerie peace to be found in a paused world, because it’s now so uncommon. Peace and quiet are rarer than radium today, and I relish the handful of minutes I get to spend once or, at most, twice a year passing like a ghost through sleeping parkinglots.