Strangeness in the Mail...and Elsewhere
(This was on some booktv show for like 10 minutes before it changed. No wonder people think books on TV be borin'.)Cat sitter walks in the door. "Um, there's got to be a story behind those." Points to the giant blow-up penguin and the huge dragon head. Me: "We've got a friend in Australia....sent us penguin...penguin wars...then bought dragon head...at daughter's place but now we have it. Er, at night people outside think they're humans." A kind of suspicious, confused look from cat sitter...but that's not what I want to talk about today. (Nor do I want to talk about Bib-stalk making my cheeks turn red.)No, some slightly weird books done come in the door. Like, for example, this one:
It looks like a bone, but it must be a book. 'Cause I review books, not bones. Caitlin R. Kiernan can do both, I believe, but not me. And how did they get my home address? That's a little weird...More weirdness, but a good kind, in the form of a new Rachel Pollack book--but strange in that it was sent from a press in the Czech Republic!
A little investigative work reveals, voila!, that it's the same people who did this book, which I believe I blogged about after our trip to Prague. Mystery solved.
Then this came. I don't know what to make of this. The images are both commercial and disturbing. The text is weird, but I'm not sure it's in a good way.
Do I applaud depictions of same-sex relationships even when the drawings kinda blow?
But then there's stuff like this that's kinda cool.
I rolled my eyes at this proto-emo moment. Yes, the pain--of finding out the narrative is just a little bit too twee under all of the agony. "The heartbeats could be heard in each and every one of them crying for help." 
Good, bad, ugly? You tell me. Is it meaningful? Is it symbolic? This is such a crazy, crazy book. "The doll wanted to run away from that horrific scene, but as she got deeper into that dark labyrinth she found several rooms where young terrified girls sold their bodies to the shadows of their captors."
Oh yeah, and this little item from a virtual unknown came from Subter.