Old dead white guys and me

Hawthorne, Lovecraft and Tempura.

Lately I've taken to reading a lot of Lovecraft and Hawthorne, and I can soon feel a stint of Poe coming on in their wake. What makes these dudes who lived and died 80-170 years ago so darn appealing to me? Maybe it's the fact that 2 of the 3 were native New Englanders. Maybe it's the dream-state obsession which I myself possess, and which Lovecraft even took to the extremes of speculating odious and cacophonic worlds apart from our mere existance on earth (and talking spacecats that lived on the moon). Maybe it's just my addiction to big words and good writing, but I'm a fan of classical American literature. Being a late bloomer I didn't really discover this until College, but what they made me read really struck my fancy in a way that I have felt at times is superior to fantastical fiction or contemporary writing styles.

Novels today... as much as I enjoy Bukowski and the trends he and some other dudes I can't name set, they are all straight-forward punch-whizz-bang stuff and often read like movie scripts. Delving into this post-post-post-post-post-posto-modern style can be fun at times, and even downright enjoyable, but it plays to a mind which can't sit back and take in 15-sentence paragraph of pure detail. Over the last few years I've really developed an appreciation for an artist who can paint a picture in my brain, or take me on a journey into somewhere far away. Sometimes I want a gritty, real pciture of life and all it's mundanities, sure - but sometimes I like to think about what it was like to be alive 400 years ago in an era of brutal religious persecution; or perhaps I long to experience ghastly supernatural horrors which would make those around me deem me mad; or maybe I even desire to fall through the spheres and experience a world strange and surreal in contrast to my own.

While the modern-day narratives of movies and video games do give the new generation a clever, even at times superior substitute - certainly more colorful than staring at a black and white page - they will always in my mind be second to the power of a good short story or novel. And while we're on the subject and though I'm like 9 months behind in saying this, Disney somehow didn't butcher Prince Caspian! They made it rich and lively in detail, and far superior to their first Narnia adaption which wasn't even that bad, besides its complete bloodlessness. Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be a visual cornucopia of Disney magic.

I got a Lord of the Rings audiobook with my name on it, but after I finish Harry Potter I might just switch gears to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or perhaps Salman Rushdie if I'm feeling adventurous enough. (I consume audiobooks by train, and words on paper at home) Upon completion of this post however I will probably dork out on Blue Dragon or Megaman 9, so I am at least a partial hypocrite with this whole BOOKS ARE SO MUCH BETTER thing.

In other Belcher-related news, I have my first band practice with F.I.D. this weekend (which if you've forgotten is the grindcore band I'm joining) so I am very excited for that. Also only 12 more working days until Christmas break! The suspense is killing me. Today in my Junior High class I was also asked my age by a 13-year-old kid whom I needed to show my I.D. to get him to believe I'm only 23. He also kept saying "YES WE CAN," impersonating Obama as the lesson was about "I can such-and-such" sentences.

Speaking of Christmas, my phone starting showing this screen:


I am enjoying my first Holiday season in relatively comfortable whether - it's been in the mid 50s to lower 60s for the past few weeks - and although temperatures will eventually drop some more, and although it might hit *gasp* freezing some time in January, this winter should be a veritable breeze compared to Upstate New York. Until we meet again, oh ye thespians in the melodrama of life!


"You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstacy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins..." - Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Haunted Mind