It’s guess what we bought and what we received, once again. The buying–that has got to stop…

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Here’s the whole list. Paul Di Filippo was one of the judges. Glad to see The Arrival on there!

jeff

Rough draft of the beginning of a rather odd story called “The Quickening” set in Central Florida in the 1950s in an orange grove/plantation…

Jeff

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Okay, so…guess what we bought and what we got in the mail…

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I’ve had a chance a couple of times this weekend to check in on the blog and thought Matt did a great job. Please visit his blog, which is just as cool. Matt, you’re welcome back any time!

In other news, Ann notes there are plants growing in the gap between the trunk and the back of my car. She suggests this means it’s time to wash the car. I say it’s time to water the plants!

Jeff

This will be my final post at Ecstatic Days, and I want to sincerely thank Jeff for allowing me the opportunity to share some thoughts with you, as well as to thank all of you regular readers who indulged my random ruminations in such a supportive and friendly way.

It’s not often that one can talk books, ghouls, caves, adolescent rites of passage, bizarre humor and twentieth century occultists and actually have people not only know what you’re talking about but add to the conversation themselves. This is a special group of people that comment at this blog, and I consider it a real pleasure to have had this opportunity to speak with you all.

Thanks, and good night!

“Legend Tripping” is term recently bestowed on a common adolescent rite of passage in which a group of young people travel to a reputed site of supernatural danger in order to tempt or test the spirits of the place. After it is determined that the bogey or haunt has been satisfactorily tempted, the young people return to the safety of their community, gaining status within their group for facing the “unknown,” as well as forging a closer bond within their peer group for doing so together.

Sometimes these rites of passage involve taking advantage of other illicit adult pleasures, such as sex or alcohol, other times not.

I’m no expert, but Legend Tripping suggests to me that in some ways it is a way to finally confront and conquer the terrors of childhood: trading in the threat of the monster under the closet for the more ambiguous perils (and pleasures) of adult existence.

I had some Legend Tripping experiences growing up. One of the most vivid involved walking with few friends (one of my first boy/girl parties, actually) out to an old country road on the edge of our neighborhood. This was a gravel road, completely without streetlights, that wound deeply into a patch of woods. There were only two houses there: one of which housed “The Jesus Man.”

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Not sure if there are many Chabon fans here, or Spiderman ones for that matter, but some of you may be interested to know that McSweeney’s has apparently released Michael Chabon’s unused “Spiderman II” script. It’s available for perusal in PDF here.

I make no claims regarding the script’s authenticity, but as it is being released via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency in conjunction with the debut of Chabon’s Maps and Legends I suspect it is legitimate.

I’m a huge fan of The Onion. I love it when their articles hit just the right balance between side-splitting humor and cold, hard truths about the human condition, like this one:

Experts estimate that, by 10 p.m. Tuesday night, Blume had survived exposure to approximately 1,700 advertising images of epic banality, at least 35 emotionless interactions with complete strangers without making any real human contact, and more than 25,000 moments of soul-crushing inner emptiness throughout the almost day-long struggle. In addition, he also surmounted the onslaught of more than 150 separate anxiety-producing forces, including credit card debt, weight gain, hair loss, sexual inferiority, loneliness, a dead-end job, geographical isolation from extended family, virus-laden spam, the need to keep his cell phone charged, in-store Muzak, mortality, mounting laundry and dishes, his cable bill, indefinable longing, fear of terrorism, online gossip, the unavoidable certainty of his own unimportance, nostalgia for a past that never was, severe lower-back pain, and general ennui.

Read more from “Area Man Makes It Through Day.”

I have a few more favorites that I can think of right off hand. More after the jump.

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I suspect that there are more than a few writers of greater or lesser achievement among this blog’s readers, and I wonder if any of you might be up to answering these questions:

1) Can you name a good writer (or writers) who inspires you to pick up the pen and start writing right away?

2) Can you name a writer (writers) so good that he or she has the opposite effect on you? In other words, who intimidates you into thinking “I might as well stop, I’ll never be this good.”

3) Have you ever had the experience of reading a book that was so terrible that it inspired you to write? In other words, made you think “If this clown can be successful, I know I can too.”

I’d love the names of the authors for the first two questions, along with the name of the title (or titles) that made you feel that way. For the third question, I’d prefer that you didn’t name the writer in question, but if you can tell me about the experience without directly identifying the work or its creator that would be good.