reduced and recycled

It’s like starring in one of those movies about office people: everyone’s in a rush and no one’s really listening to each other. That’s today, right here and now, all of us engaged in an enterprise to make the most money for the fewest possible people, our shareholders. It’s not too bad, but it could be worse.

I’m about 100 pages into Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”, and am quite pissed that most of what I’ve read is slow-burning horror-type prose. Not pissed that it’s not good, mind; I’ve only tolerated a few horror stories because I’m not disposed to that sorta thing. The last I’ve read and really enjoyed was Stephen King’s, “The Stand”.

And that’s about it. But what I’ve read so far has me pretty interested, despite the creeping, ominous references within the book. Case in point: about 10 references to storms brewing (bloody hell); the dead walking with graveyard soil still clinging to shoes; a man swallowed up by a woman’s… genitalia; references to Odin. Ok, the references to Odin bit was a bit much, but inserted into the story nicely. (Woden’s day, anybody?)

Still, it got me hooked while I was doodling ideas for yet another theme design - I can hear the groans: what’s with this dissatisfaction with themes? It’s simple, really: they aren’t mine. A bit more complex: I think pop-psychologists can point to my distressing need for change, and thus theme-switching is an externalization of this need; further references to ‘works-in-progress’ refer directly to this need, as well.

So much for psycho-babblish; ah! neologism of the day , to wit:

n.:

1. to spew psychotic mumbo-jumbo in an effort to make sense of the inscrutable.
2. to disorientate and obfuscate in liew of explication and elucidation.
3. the words we, the unknowing masses, pay psychologists for.

An example:

“Badawi’s cabinet reshuffle makes complete and utter sense.”

Back to ‘American Gods’.. It’s pretty interesting to see where he’s going with all of this. For a hefty book of some large number of pages, he’s already said quite a bit; I expect he’ll be saying more. Reading his foreword to the book was also revealing; if he did indeed set out to write a piece about America - or about some small slice of America - he couldn’t have done it better by playing with the idea of older gods in the last legs of their eventual decay. I’m hooked.