The Chinese Seeds Conundrum

Stephen King could have written this mess, and we'd be only at like, Chapter Five, right now. Still from Creepshow, You Lunkhead.

Human beings are primates, I remind myself, or find myself reminded, on a regular basis--and the thing about your monkey brain is--it's curious. Well, your monkey brain, my monkey brain, the point is, we are more curious than we are smart, but we are also fucking dumb. Case in point: The Chinese Seeds Conundrum:

In late July, America was briefly enthralled with “Unsolicited Seeds from China,” which started showing up in mailboxes in all 50 states. These mystery seeds prompted warnings from the USDA, which said people should not plant them, and should instead alert their state agricultural authority and mail them to the USDA or their local officials.

Many Americans heeded this advice. Many more decidedly did not.

You guys, this is how the horror novel starts out. "Many more decidedly did not." That right there is just negligent, but what did the folks do? They were told not to plant them of course, because, like, lets say it's just some random GMO licensing legal fuckery that takes over your lawn--it's just raw naivete to assume there's anything good in that.  Or who even knows what:

Audrey 2 from the brilliant movie "Little Shop of Horrors"

Yeah, I'm not saying it could definitely be alien man-eating plants, but no. It could be--okay what if it were alien man-eating plants and then you had that on your conscience in your suburban picket-fence tract home somewhere that's green Mr. Man? Is that what you want?

Don't Sleep On Lovecraft Country

I originally thought this blog would be a hell of a lot more book, movie and tv reviews than it ended up being, but when something is just amazing, I will still let you know--and HBO's Lovecraft Country series, produced by Jordan Peele (which let me know this was going to be astounding quality) is actually better than I even hoped it would be and at episode three is hitting its pace.

I liked the book (it was one of those finds I have talked about when you go into a brick and mortar bookstore with a real bookstore smell and maybe even a bookstore cat in it--like Farley's in New Hope, PA, which was where I picked up Matt Ruff's inspired novel, where the kind of book you want to read finds you) but converted to television, in the hands of a great storyteller like Misha Green and with talent like Jurnee Smollett I have been blown away.

As with the remarkable HBO serial Watchmen, Lovecraft Country incorporates seldom-reviewed episodes of American history (like the Greenwood Massacre or the Turnbull Park Homes Race Riots) into outstanding genre entertainment. It is beautifully layered. In the most recent episode, which inspired this post, the ghosts of a tortured past are made whole by their names being spoken, and their supernatural horror is pitched against the very physical danger of white supremacy. The Black protagonists are terrorized by the local constabulary (in a wagon ride reminiscent of Freddie Gray's last "rough ride", Leticia Lewis is told about how her complaints to the law are lost, while they know very well about complaints made by her neighbors) and in a "are you for real?" kids being kids in an very obvious to 1950s kids Addams Family/Munsters haunted house-ass-looking haunted house, one of the kids playing with a Ouija board seems to be Emmett Till.

One part of the ouija board scene in this week’s @LovecraftHBO briefly chilled my bones. The little boy who asked if he’d have a good time on his upcoming trip. The board said no, and if you look closely we know why: pic.twitter.com/JWdKXcys6i

— Lee Bey (@LEEBEY) August 31, 2020

And here I was wondering if the tenant named Baldwin meant anything since the show quoted James Baldwin at length in episode 1 (and here we are at only episode 3, and it's already felt like a journey!)

This is good damn tv, and I recommend it highly. But maybe don't sleep on it--put a little something lighter between your viewing it and bedtime. Because here there be ghosts and magicians and bad things that burn crosses in the night. It can be a lot.

But it's really good.

It is Normal Now, Though

One of the things that bothers me about running the kind of blog I do is that when certain events occur, I can't seem to blog past them. That is to say, unless they are addressed, I can't just go ahead and blog about something else, but then again, I also can't write about the big story until I know what I want to say. Yesterday, I didn't have enough information to make any kind of post about it at all, and simply dropped a poem (which is, for me, a kind of structuring of thoughts that I can do based on feelings without feeling false). I still feel like there's something absent regarding the San Bernardino massacre, but no doubt, whatever doesn't ring right at this moment will suddenly settle into history like a pair of socks in a drawer.

President Obama, after the Planned Parenthood shooting, said that we can't let this become normal. But, in a wrenching way, I think it already has. We now have had a year where in 332 days, there have been 355 mass shootings. If something is happening on a more-than-daily basis--how normal is that? Consider when we all, in shock and horror, faced the example of twenty dead mostly kindergarten and first-grade-aged babies dying one December day, probably many of them with Christmas presents already wrapped in a closet, set aside by their parents, for a happy surprise that never came.

And people bought more guns. And no significant legislation to do anything about the proliferation of arms among regular and irregular folks was done. And it keeps happening, and we have thoughts and prayers and forgetting and the next tragedy, and each time, some people shut down in more fear and silent anguish and nothing, not ever, gets changed. And some people speak out in a sense of righteousness and vocal anguish, and still, nothing, not ever, gets done.

In the face of a possible home-grown radicalized Muslim mass shooter, we still have folks in Congress who are okay with people considered too suspect to get on an airplane getting all the guns they want. God forbid they should fly--as if it's safer they should be terrestrial terrorists in their locality?  Not that we have more than speculation yet, by law enforcement, as to the exact motive of the shooters. Maybe it was workplace-related, maybe it was jihad. Maybe it was six of one, a half dozen of the other. Maybe regardless the results don't change.

I'm Working on a Post Re: Selma, but for Now

I sometimes find writing fiction a useful way of working out ideas. So, until I make another topical post, I have a dark little tale set in a plague-ridden near-future for your consideration. Twilight Zone? Well, maybe a bit more like Tales from the Dark Side. (I'm not fully down with all these attractive-people vampire soap operas--Dark Shadows has already been done twice, three times if you count the Johnny Depp movie--which I haven't seen, yet. But if a show provides me with regular eerie tales to chew on, I will show up for that!)

I took a few bioethics courses in college and really enjoyed them. This type of thing was not covered. (It's a different plague-universe than this one. Both are permutations of an "entropy always encreaseth" worldview. Which actually isn't my main worldview at all. Really!)