The Proust questionnaire

Since I am still sort of "starting over" with this blog, I thought I should repost the old blog below for new readers, since it is pretty much all most of you will ever want to know about me.

For reasons no longer pertinent, I decided a while back to fill out the notorious “Proust Questionnaire” – the list of questions the novelist answered at a party when he was in his 20s. A version of the questionnaire is often asked of a celebrity in Vanity Fair magazine. Now, if all goes well with my life I shall never be on the back page of Vanity Fair, but that doesn’t mean I can’t test your patience here and now. This is probably more about me than you’ll ever want to know….

What is your most marked characteristic?

Decisiveness and will

What is the quality you most like in a man?

Humility

The quality you most like in a woman?
Loyalty

What do you most value in your friends?

The ability to point out my flaws with kindness

What is your principle defect?

Pride

What is your favourite occupation?

Writing, or chopping wood – but favourite activity is skiing

What is your dream of happiness?

No need to dream, I live it every day

What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?

Losing my memories, even the bad ones

What animal would you like to be?

A tiger

In what country would you like to live?

Grande Siecle France or Edo period Japan

What is your favourite colour?
Black

What is your favourite flower?

Rose

What is your favourite bird?

Phoenix

Who are your favourite prose writers?
Conrad, Gogol, Kafka, Willa Cather, Gaddis

Who are your favourite poets?

Auden, Lermontov, Ronsard, Keats, Akhmatova, Aphra Behn, Rilke, Blake, Edith Sitwell

Who is your favourite hero of fiction?

Feanor in The Silmarillion (warning: he is me)

Who are your favourite heroines of fiction?

Imogen (from Cymbeline), Rebecca West (in Rosmersholm), Beatrice Rappaccini (Rappaccini’s Daughter),Angellica Bianca (in The Rover), Emily St Aubert (Mysteries of Udolpho), Lois Lane, Cinderella

Who are your favourite composers?

Bach, Telemann, Purcell, Haydn, Mozart, Copland, Shostakovich

Who are your favourite painters?

Sargent, El Greco, Turner, Rembrandt, Vrubel

Who are your heroes in real life?

Horatio Nelson, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Cincinnatus, Ernest Shackleton, Saladin, Chuck Yeager, Basil II Bulgaroctonus ("the Bulgar-killer"), Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Who are your favourite heroines of history?

Lou Salome, Margaret of Anjou, Mary Queen of Scots, Helen of Troy, Emmy Noether, Jane Jacobs

What are your favourite names?

Women: Siobhan, Isabeau, Cassandra, Elizabeth, Vanessa, Lucy, Callista, Priya, Suki, Rebecca, Citlali, Rosamund, Emily, Katinka

Men: John, Santiago, Eamonn, Stephen, Laszlo, Andrew, Ethan, Alistair

What is it you most dislike?

Disrespect

What historical figures do you most despise?

Stalin, Robespierre, Luigi Cadorna, Iwane Matsui, Donald Trump

What event in military history do you most admire?

Battle of Verneuil, 1424.

What reform do you most admire?

Edict of Milan

What natural gift would you most like to possess?

20/20 eyesight

How would you like to die?
In aerial combat.

What is your present state of mind?

Restless

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
In others? Jealousy

What is your motto?
Sursum corda.

Guity Pleasures

No, not that kind. I am talking about bad music. Really bad music.

I am in the mood for a confessional, of sorts and within reason. A close friend asked me recently for a deep dark secret wish, and it turned out our minds thought a lot alike. You really don’t want to hear that one. But I had already shared a really embarrassing fact earlier in the conversation, and that was one of my guilty musical pleasures – a song I know I shouldn’t like, but do anyway.

I’ve made a list. Go ahead, laugh. Some of these get me in a mood for peril, some don’t.

“Miracles” – Jefferson Starship, 1976. Oh lord, where to start? The dippy little 1970’s stardust keyboards? The strangulated sax arpeggios? How about the most gruesome sound ever recorded: Grace Slick trying to sound sexy in the b-vox? I let this out of the Ghostbusters containment field where it had been sequestered these 33 years. And it is even trippier-dippier than I remember. I love it, but… any time anyone tells you the 70s didn’t suck, just say Marty Balin for the win. I was there. I know.

“Misunderstanding” – Genesis, 1980. Phil Collins. Don’t need to say much else to damn this 3 minute ode to exactly one (inadequate) musical idea and the perfidy of Woman. But it was a great tune to get drunk underage to. Plus, it – and its utter vacuousness – perfectly summarizes my early teen understanding of relationships. The guy who wrote this deserves to have been dumped – as did the skinny, dorky kid who thought this said it all.

“Brandy” – Looking Glass, 1972. A retelling of the Odyssey from Penelope’s point of view? Er, no. The chee-zee 70s soft rock vibe just makes it all go down smooth. Like motor oil. This song reminds me of a close friend, one who loves peril, so it gets me in the mood for highly idiosyncratic reasons.

“C’est la vie” – B*witched, 1996. Just in case we thought the sucking stopped in the 70s, here comes along this bit of Eurovision Oirish whimsy to brighten your day and destroy your future.

“Lido Shuffle” – Boz Scaggs, 1976. Anyone who refers to Chicago as “Chi-town” has never been there.

“Jungle Love” – Steve Miller, 1976. The second of a brace of guilty pleasures from two guys who went to the same prep school in Texas. For all the goofy guitar work on this, Steve-o sure put in some dark lyrics: “We all reach a scarlet conclusion/But we live our life in a dream…”

“New in Town” – Little Boots, 2009. Despite how it looks, my musical taste is not locked in the Carter Administration. Most of the contemporary music I get I actually think is good (Grizzly Bear, Phoenix, JJ, Yeasayer…) but this is a great, trashy song. You might know the origin of the name “Little Boots” better in the original Latin: Caligula.

“Let’s Go” – Wang Chung, 1984. Now, those old enough to fear the past probably recall the ultimate 80s-sucks song “Everbody Have Fun Tonight.” Believe it or not, Jack and Nick actually wrote that one as a very sweet, quiet song, which the label weasels turned into the icon of crap it is to this day. And “Dance Hall Days” is a clever quickstep. But you have to love the utter ridiculousness of this song. Well, you don’t, I guess. But I do.

I could go on, but I have incriminated myself enough for one day....

A peril vignette

I haven't posted this before -- it's an old vignette I wrote for someone a few years ago. Hope you enjoy. Photo reflects the peril but not the heroine's attire therein....

When we last left our heroine….

You had picked up a mysterious note left accidentally near the café where you worked. Two quiet men had sat down, ordered nothing but coffee, and barely exchanged a word as they opened up their briefcases and exchanged files. One small slip of paper had fallen on the floor, and you noticed it long after the pair had left. The slip was an electrical bill for an address – simply “The Rambles” – and you were about to throw it away when you saw the handwriting on the back. The handwriting was neat, and consisted of two words. “Fire Jade.”

You knew you had heard that phrase recently...but where? Then it had hit you: in the newspaper – the report of the jewelry heist. The famous “Fire Jade” pendant.

Your mind began to race. As a journalism major, paying her way through university with waitressing and part time jobs, this might be your big break, if you could unravel the secret of the missing gems! And you knew where The Rambles were – it was the old, spooky house at the end of the lane not far from her home. The Rambles was supposed to be unoccupied – some credulous folk said it was haunted. And someone was paying an electrical bill there? Perhaps, you thought to yourself, you could investigate. You wouldn’t do anything foolish – just see what was going on, if anything, at the old, creepy Victorian mansion.

After work, toward sundown, you return home, and prepare for your first big sleuthing adventure. You think of the Famous Five books you had read as a child – and how they always seemed to run into smugglers. You laugh to herself as you dress in “detective black” – black short leather skirt, mock turtleneck (it was a bit chilly out) chic black tights and your black leather knee boots. You throw on a leather jacket to keep warm, and bring along your tape recorder, electric torch, and a notepad and paper. Your long black hair catches the late afternoon breeze and trails slightly as you walk toward the Rambles.

It does not take you too long to arrive at the house. The dark mansion was set back from the road with a hundred and fifty year old iron railing around it. Inside the decorative gate, the front yard was overgrown as befitted an empty house. The building itself was shuttered up and in the first stages of dilapidation from neglect.

You remain out of sight across the street, and watch. There is no sign of anyone coming in or out of the house, but even from across the street you could see the door was ajar. Was the Rambles a drop off point for the stolen items? A rendezvous site? ”Maybe I should take a look a little closer,” you think, visions of awards and accolades leading you where caution would keep you away. You look around – no one was coming down the street, so the crooks would not see you enter the house. “OK, back up story in case I am confronted…” you say to yourself. “I was doing a story on neglected architecture for the local paper, and the building seemed open and unoccupied.”

You suck in a deep breath and head purposefully toward the house. The heels of your boots click quickly on the stone path as you stride briskly past the front gate. There still seems to be no one around, inside or outside. Swallowing hard to overcome some last minute misgivings about the enterprise, you pull the massive oak doors open just wide enough for you to slip inside.

The house is dusty and filled with cobwebs from years of neglect. The light is very dim, just enough to walk around without tripping on something, but not enough to really see much more than shadows at depth. The red sunset light shines dimly through the gaps in the boards which cover the large bay windows.

You are in the foyer, a generous space that opened to the parlour to the right, a dining room to the left, and a wide balustraded staircase that went straight up to the first floor. The parlour to the right is very large, with a high ceiling. From the centre of the ceiling, around cracked mouldings, a glass chandelier hangs, wired for electricity but dark. The furniture is all covered with white sheets, both in the reception room as well as the dining room

So still is it that dust hangs suspended in the air, sheets of it seeming to form where the horizontal shafts of dying daylight illuminate the interior. You turn on your flashlight and begin tiptoeing through the empty rooms. You can hear your own breath as you walk through the reception room, your footsteps echoing faintly and leaving slender boot prints on the dusty floor.

All this dust….You examine the side tables, the sofas, the fireplace with its enormous mantle. “Achoo!” You can’t suppress a sneeze as you sweep your flashlight’s beam across the walls. There are dark patches where pictures had been hung, and light had not faded the wallpaper. Those pictures are all gone – packed away in all likelihood in the cellar, and –

A loud creak on a floorboard. You freeze. Was that someone? Or just the house settling? You can’t tell for sure, but your courage is leaving and a common sense instinct to leave the house was taking over.

Your flashlight catches a swirl in the dust. Odd – You haven’t moved. It must be --- mmmpphhfffff!

Everything goes dark as you are enveloped in a sheet of some kind. You drop your torch, and try to flail to escape the unseen attackers who have snuck up behind you. But strong male arms pin yours to your side, and lift you off your feet. You try to kick, but you cannot get free!

Finally, a voice: “I got her, Nigel! She’s got some spirit, I’ll tell you!”

Another, deeper voice: “Let’s get her downstairs, Rog.”

You feel yourself being wrapped more tightly in the sheet and now picked up by two men. You buck and fight uselessly as they take you down the stairs, screaming for help, your cries muffled partly by the sheet used to trap you, until they plunk you on the floor, still wrapped up.

“Let me go!” you yell still literally as well as figuratively in the dark.

The voices ignore you. “Tie her up and gag her until I figure out what to do with her!” says the deeper voice. Your blood runs cold as you realiz this is no accident – you are the prisoner of these ruthless men! What had you stumbled upon?

You feel the sheet being unwound and you prepare to make a bolt for the exit as soon as it’s off. But as you try to run, powerful hands grab you by the shoulders and pin you to the ground as another set of hands pull your slender wrists behind your back.

In this basement there is some dim light bulb providing some dismal illumination. You can see one of your assailants now: Nigel, the deeper voiced man: tall, thin, with a thin, cruel mouth, a hawklike nose, narrow, mean eyes, and fingers like talons. You try to kick at him with your pointy boots with their narrow heels, but even with a direct hit on his shins Nigel just makes a face of mild pain without relaxing his hold on you at all. All you are doing with your kicks is annoying him, and you stop.

Meanwhile the other, Rog -- who is kneeling behind you out of your field of view – is tying your wrists wincingly tight. “Ow! Please, that hurts!” you say, hoping your pitiful pleading will make him ease the torque in your bonds.

“Gotta make sure you can’t get away!” says Rog, as he knots off the ropes. You test your wrist bonds, twisting your upper body in a futile gesture of resistance.

“Please! Why are you doing this? I’m researching local architecture and – “

Nigel looks at Rog, ignoring you as he cuts you off. “Rog, you seen her before?”

Rog comes around as Nigel pushes your booted feet together and starts tying your ankles. Your heart sinks. Rog is one of the fellows at the café. Your cover is blown. “Yeah, I seen her!” says the smiling, creepily affable man with the fleshy face , oddly reminiscent of Spencer Tracy – on a really bad day. “I never forget a pretty face, I do! She was the waitress at the caff!”

“No! Please! Let me go! I am sorry I intruded!” you plead, tears of fear forming in your eyes.

“Yeah, that you will be…” says Nigel with a grunt as he continues to tie your ankles. You try to kick, but Nigel holds you fast, enjoying your wriggling as it makes your short skirt ride up a little, exposing more of your lithe, delicious legs. He cinches your bonds, and knots the ropes.

You try to kick once more, but with your legs now tied, resistance is hopeless. You look up at your two kidnappers, you eyes wide with fear. “Wha…what are you going to do with me?”

Nigel smiles evilly. “Yeah, you’re right Rog, she’s a fine bit of crumpet,” the thin man says.

“Please, I don’t know why you are doing this!” you wail, hoping ignorance will save you.

Nigel holds your purse in front of you and opens it. Reflexively you pull your feet in closer to you, as the criminal violates your privacy. “Leave my things alone!” you protest. “I don’t know why you are doing this!”

Nigel takes out the slip with the clue on it. “I think you know exactly what we are doing, Miss…” he pulls out your wallet and looks for identification. “….Alexis. Pretty name. You’re a pretty girl. A pretty girl in a lot of trouble.”

You feel a sense of panic rising in your throat. “But..but..you have to let me go….this is kidnapping!” you shout.

“Rog, please gag our guest.”

“Nooooo!” you wail. “You can’t do this!” You thrash furiously in your bonds, accomplishing exactly nothing. “Please! Let me mmmpppphhhh!”

Your pleading is cut off as Rog pops a wad of old cloth in your mouth. Before you can spit it out he clamps a hand over your mouth, then with the other hand gets a scarf ready. He forces the scarf between your lips, wedging it deep between your teeth. He pulls the scarf back til it digs at the corners of your delicate mouth, highlighting your cheeks and forcing a kind of terrified involuntary smile on your face as the cleave is pulled taut. You feel the thug lift your long black tresses before he knots the cleave gag bracingly tight. Your jaw already is starting to ache. Your wrists are raw, your hands and feet numb from the savagely tight bonds. And now the two criminals look at you with diabolical triumph as they savor your utter helplessness.

“So, thought you’d tip off the police and get a big reward, right Alexis? Or maybe some prize? Well, it looks like you made a foolish choice today!” says Nigel, leering at you and patting you on the leg.

“So, Nigel, what do we do with her?” asks Rog. You look back at the one, then the other, your terror rising as they begin to discuss your demise.

“I think she knows too much,” says Nigel, rising to his feet and placing his hands on his hips. “I think she needs to meet Chip”

Rog laughs heartily and entirely inappropriately. He whispers in your ear, “He means the wood chipper in the other part of the cellar….”

You nearly pass out in terror, until Rog says “Hey, won’t that make too much noise?”

You nod energetically, and writhe pathetically in your bonds, moaning miserably in the hopes they take pity on you and let you go.

Nigel strokes his chin. “Hmmm, yes, I guess it would attract too much attention to this supposedly ‘haunted’ house.”

“Mmpphhfffff!” you try to interrupt their plans for your elimination. They look at you – Rog winks at you – smile, and carry on with their murderous plans.

“OK, then we’ll time it so that we can get away while she meets her maker. Rog – help me get her set up on the conveyor belt.”

You moan a muffled “Noooooo!” through the gag as the two men pick you up, Nigel by your feet, Rog by your shoulders, and carry you through a doorway to another, larger part of the cellar. There you see a very large metal box, easily eight feet cubed, with apertures at opposing ends. A fifteen foot conveyor belt, with high stainless steel sides, leads to one opening in the box. You can see the grinding wheels and teeth of the wood chipping machine through the aperture – an aperture wide and tall enough for you to go through!

The two thugs prop you up against a long piece 2x8 plywood and begin tying you down to it. You squirm to no avail as they lash you at the shoulders, waist, knees and ankles to the plank, then lift you and the plank to put you on the conveyor belt.

You frantically twist and turn but can do little as Nigel and Rog place you on the conveyor belt, feet first, heading level straight toward the maw of the crushing, gnashing machinery! You try to slide your way off the conveyor, but the sides are too high, the belt itself too narrow, for you to move at all! All you can do is raise your head to look directly at the inert, but evil-looking gears and crushing teeth of the machine’s infernal innards.

“Mmmmpphhfff!” you make once last attempt to beg for you life, but all you do is provoke the derision of your heartless captors.

“She’s make great compost,” says Rog sunnily.

“I thought you thought she was pretty?”
“Aye, that she is, but gardening comes first, don’t you say?”

Nigel chuckles and surveys your delectable, bound body as he answers his demented colleague. “That I do, Rog. That I do. Now Rog, you gather up the rest of the jewels and prepare to decamp. I’ll attend to our snoopy guest.”

Rog leaves you to Nigel’s dubious mercy. Well, Alexis, it has been an all too brief pleasure,” the thin man says. “But we leave you in the hands of Chip, who will embrace you in a very special way.”

“Mmmphhfff!” you moan, sobbing in your gag, your eyes desperately pleading for him to reconsider.

“Ta ta!” Nigel says, throwing a switch on the side of the machine. The teeth start to rotate slowly inside, in a hellish augury of your immediate future if you aren’t rescued in time!
Nigel pushes a lever and the conveyor belt starts to move, achingly, cruelly slowly.

You arch your back, but you cannot loosen your bonds that way. You twist and turn, thrusting your knees forward one at a time to try to make your restraints yield. But it’s no use! You are being drawn slowly but inevitably to your doom!

Nigel blows you a sarcastic kiss as he leaves you to your grisly fate. You are now maybe 13 feet from the maw of the wood chipping machine. You are blinded briefly as tears well up in your eyes. So stupid of you to try to get the ‘big scoop.’ Now look what’s happening.

You writhe helplessly some more. No use. No hope at all. 10 feet from your demise. The machine makes a low, diabolical hum, as if it is relishing the chance to sink its rotating teeth into your soft flesh. You think, incongruously, of how your clothes will be ruined!

Eight feet. You hear the footsteps of Nigel and Rog leaving the house. You are all alone now. It won’t be long.

Seven feet. Your struggling is slowing down as you are left exhausted and weakened by your earlier, useless attempts to get free.

Six feet. “Hewp! Hewp!” you try to scream through the gag, knowing no one will hear you.

Five feet. It must be sundown by now, you think. But you can hardly tell in this boarded up cellar. You slump in your bonds, defeated, helpless.

Four feet. You realize this is going to hurt a lot as your booted feet will be the first to be eaten by the machine. You thrash again wildly at the thought, then give up again.

Three feet. You think of your friends and family, how they will miss you and you them.

Two feet. The lead edge of the plank enters the maw of the machine. A horrible gnashing wail is emitted as sawdust and woodchips fly everywhere. You now realize how horrible the end will be! You try to pull up your feet but they are just tightly bound to the plank, which shudders in nausea inducing fashion.

Twelve inches. The end is here. There is no hope. No one will save you.

Six inches. You close your eyes. The plank is being eaten up in front of you. Bits of plywood fly everywhere.

Three inches. Suddenly, all goes quiet. You open your eyes. The light is out as well. What happened? You struggle, but you’re as tightly tied as ever.

Footsteps on the main floor. “Helloooooooo?” says a new voice. You try to call him, but your voice is stifled by the hateful gag. “Helloooooo – it’s Powergen – I’m here to read the meter…”

Footsteps coming down to the cellar. “Look, sorry to cut off your power, but you haven’t paid your bill!”

You see a torchlight beam sweeping back and forth. “Anybody here?”

You growl as loudly as you can. Footsteps race toward you. A flashlight beam on your face, gagged tightly.

“Mmmppphhfff!”

“Why, Miss! Whatever happened to you?”

You can make out the outline of the meter man in the twilight as he pulls you away from the machine. He quickly unties you and ungags you, and you thank him profusely as you rub your wrists to get the circulation back. A narrow escape, but maybe you have a story for the paper after all!

How not to create a villain

(The enchanting Spirit, once of Hunter's Lair, and compensation for a summer re-run...)

In my travels I came across this website on “How to create a credible villain in fiction.” It was so absurdly namby-pamby, I have to share it with you with a few reactions. Come laugh along with me as we rebut:

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Credible-Villain-in-Fiction

1. Start by reading Create a Fictional Character from Scratch. This will give you a foundation on which you can create any type of character.

2. Choose the degree of evilness or just plain "ick" you want to place into your villain. Some tales require the viciousness of a serial killer, while others only call for a bully.

>>>>> How tedious. Grading villainy on a scale of 1 to 10 is like saying I like Jackson Pollock because he used a lot of grey. Villains have to be fun!

3. Create a single, traumatic incident for your villain. It could be as devastating as seeing his parents murdered or as sublime as seeing a prized rosebush destroyed by the whims of nature.

The reason for this is to create a turning point in the villain's life.

>>>>> I loved Seth Evil in the Austin Powers movies. Inherited villainy. Just like real life. Perfect! This turning point idea – as if goodness were the natural state of the human condition. Rubbish!

4. Expand on this singular incident. Exaggerate it, twist it, and distort it until it becomes the rotten core of your villain.

>>>>> No. Better idea. Take a normal hobby – exaggerate that, twist it, and distort it until it becomes the rotten core. That’s closer to the honest truth. Example: butterfly collecting. Make the villain's attentions turn, for example, to collecting pretty damsels in glass cases, anaesthetized into a state of aware living death, and held captive and in chains. Why? Just because.

5. Choose a single thing that the character adores without greed or malice. It doesn't have to be a big thing--in fact, it's better if it's not. For example, the villain may enjoy strolling in a rose garden in order to clear his/her head. Or, even smaller, the villain enjoys the simple pleasure of cracking open a sunflower seed on his tongue and enjoying the saltiness of the meat inside.

>>>>> Oh spare me this cliché. Every villain adores a pretty girl. A bit too much. And not in a socially acceptable way. Why should the villain be this twisted? Making him quite normal on the surface makes him all the more dangerous when provoked.

6. Combine the "turning point" and the "single thing" and bounce them back and forth in your mind. How are they related? Why does the villain love one thing so much and is still filled with malice, hatred or just plain "ickiness"?

>>>>> If you have to think about this, it’s over.

7. Take into account the hero of the story. How does the hero fit into the villain's life? How do his wants mix, match, and collide? How are they similar, how are they different?

>>>>> A useful idea at last.

Warnings

· The creation of a truly villainous character can become especially intense. Try writing about him in smaller chunks than you ordinarily would. If you don't take a small break every half-hour or so, you may find yourself absorbing a portion of the villain's negativity, which can affect your relationships with the people you care about.

>>>>> Whaaaaat? Hey, listen: being a villain is my good side, an escape from my negativity!

· Avoid the temptation to start a villain from one of the deadly sins. If you do, you'll end up with a parody of a bad guy instead of a true villain. It is one thing to end up with a character that is the epitome of a deadly sin. Just don't start there.

>>>>> No kidding. I love the line in Serenity where the high-minded villain (called simply The Operative) asks all his victims “Do you know what your sin is?” before he assassinates them. The hero replies, “I’m a pretty big fan of all seven, but right now I’m going to go with wrath.” Then he proceeds to beat the crap out of the villain.

OK, I need to detox. Some lyrics from They Might Be Giants:

I look like Jesus, so they say,

But Mr Jesus is very far away

Now you’re the only one left who can tell me if it’s true

That you love me, and I love me

I built a little empire out of

Some crazy garbage called

The blood of the exploited working class

Now they’ve overcome their shyness

And they’re calling me “your highness”

And the world screams “Kiss me, Son of God.”

Bait

A great photo from Deviant Art - artist is Koukei. http://koukei.deviantart.com/art/Bait-60780990.

Although I generally don't have much time for heroes in RP, I do love the idea of torturing a damsel with the knowledge that she is bait for a trap set for soemone she cares for. That tends to make them a little less rude, you know? The struggling gets more desperate, the pleading that much more sincere....

NB the problem in RP is that it is hard enough to get 2 people in sync over IM -- villain and heroine. It's almost impossible, in my experience, to do it with 3. The hero usually treats the villain as someone to be overcome and dispensed with as soon as possible, and though I don't mind that, if you do it too quickly it is boring. And, as I sometimes take a great deal of care and time to set up a peril, I'd liek to get my money's worth, as it were.

Anyway, it's been so long since I actually set up a girl as bait that this photo really hit me. In this case, because it's Little Red Riding Hood, obviously fanciful, etc, I don't at all mind the loose bonds or lack of gag. That makes it suggestive in all sorts of ways I like.

Rewriting Star Trek

Slightly off topic, but for some reason I have been thinking about how much I like the girl yeoman outfits on Star Trek (the original series). I know they weren’t all yeoman – some were lieutenant this or phaser technician that, but really, in skirts that short with the scoop neck collars and the tights and go-go boots, they were all yeoman. And that’s a good thing.
More should have been in peril. Yeoman Rand got herself kidnapped and tied up in “Miri”, but that should have, like, happened every episode if I were running the show.
So, as an unabashed straight guy, I started thinking of Star Trek: TOS babes – especially the guest star babes. Here is a partial list of the ones I can remember – or ones I am particularly partial to: a top five in ascending order of awesomeness:
Lt. Marla McGivers in “Space Seed” (Madlyn Rhue): Misguided, accidentally treacherous, and filmed through only-in-the-60s gauze. Who cares? If only she had crossed Khan and paid the price. But no, it’s the Shat who winds up in the decompression tank. What a waste.
Yeoman Smith in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (Andrea Dromm): She never got to wear the skirt – no, she was in black pants like she was a waitress in some dreary late-1990s restaurant. But who cares when you are this hot? She made the frumpiest uniform awesome. And she’s on for about 10 seconds.
Yeoman Mears in “Galileo 7” (Phyllis Douglas): Another wasted opportunity. Plucky and capable crew girl marooned on a planet inhabited by really big cannibals. What could possibly happen to her? Actually, nothing.
Lt. Marlena Moreau in “Mirror, Mirror” (Barbara Luna): Man, did she rock the evil universe outfit (bare midriff, thigh high boots) or what? And (if I recall right) the sultry purr in her voice? Why go back to the “good” side?
And for my all time fave:
Dr Helen Noel in “Dagger of the Mind” (Marianna Hill): …and Kirk disses her because he’s so fricken Mr-Captain-nobody-between-me-and-my-ship dude. Jimmy, what in the name of Rigel XII are you thinking? I cannot even begin to describe her pulchritude! She even kicks a little ass in the episode, after being a little damsel-ly too. And she totally rocks the oufit. Totally. This is the reason you enlist in something as dippy as Starfleet.

Odd gags

(Not a terribly odd gag, but a thorough one. Darla Crane as Spellbinder...)

Here's a little list of odd gags I have used in perils. I’ll give the ones I can think of off the top of my head in a moment. First, I need to point out that I really have been giving attention to devious gags only in the last 2-3 years. For whatever reason, in the past I would often come up with unusual methods of binding a heroine, but would then just stuff a nice, cute little silk cleave gag in her mouth to shut her up, or else apply tape (ouch! But the peel off smarts!)
But lately I have diversified my gag portfolio in RPs and stories. As with materials used for restraints, I find that I just try to imagine myself using whatever materials are at hand as a gag. The scenario – the location, the peril, etc – has an influence on the gag.
The damsel also has a role. Mental images of a damsel often will steer me to particular gags. Or, if I know of a particular damsel weakness -- a favourite food, perhaps, or a penchant for a particular pampering – I take great delight in subverting that, and using that against her.
I started off diversifying with pretty standard things – if I had a girl hogtied in a scenario, I might serve her on a plate with an apple in her mouth for laughs. Heroines caught in large spider webs usually got their mouths stuffed with spider webs by large arachnids with a curious need to gag their victims. But then I started to branch out more. Here are a few odd gags used in perils that I can think of. No guarantees on realism here.
· I had a secret agent girl tied up in a car set to roll down a mountain road until she plunged over a cliff. I wrapped the car seat belt between her teeth and around her head before strapping her down in the seat (she had already been tied up before being placed in the car).
· An evil delivery man stuffed an unsuspecting damsel’s mouth with a bouquet of flowers
· A damsel about to be taken by conveyor belt into a giant paper shredder had her mouth stuffed with shredded paper before the tape went over her lips.
· A damsel turned into a tiny winged fairy, captured by other fairies and gagged with a single thick blade of grass. This was a part of a very atmospheric peril based on a Victorian era painting.
· A heroine captured by carpenters, who gag her with a wooden dowel rod fastened in place by black electrical tap in the shape of an X
· In a garage peril, the heroine finds herself gagged with a thin, supple inner tube
· I can’t recall why, but I do recall gagging a heroine by packing her mouth full of chocolate truffles.
· The heroine was to be eliminated by being tied in a crucifix pattern to the arms of a giant kite, then flown in a thunderstorm in a horrible recreation of Ben Franklin’s experiment. She was gagged with kite string. Lots and lots of kite string.
· The damsel had been kidnapped, but had to be taken out in the middle of Times Square and led to her demise under the tracks of the S subway line. So she was tied, her coat over her shoulders, and then gagged with clear tape so that in the evening, she could be held hostage in the middle of a huge Manhattan crowd, and no one would know she was being kidnapped.
· In the middle of farmland, the only gag available was a metal horse bit – used (ewwwww!)
· A block of ice was used once, that would melt too slowly for her to cry for help before she was destroyed.
· The damsel was on a movie set, tied up with film stock from a reel, also gagged with celluloid. The really fiendish part of this trap was that the heroine was slowly dragged by her mouth under a giant hinged film cropper – kind of a makeshift guillotine – until her neck was under the blade and the trap triggered
· Again, so long ago I can’t recall the details, but a superheroine story in which the heroine was subdued by special drugged nerf balls fired from those kiddie toys and bouncing off her spandex clad body, then when she awoke, she was of course tied with superheroine-proof cables, and her mouth stuffed with a nerf ball to keep her powers depleted until her diabolical demise.
· In a really sensuous (for me, certainly) finale of a story, strips of red velvet silenced our delectable heroine at a costume ball.
· In one of my more fantastical stories, the heroine had been taken prisoner by giant insects, and had been glued to a giant honeycomb with honey, and gagged with the same, as the queen bee’s larvae wiggled toward the damsel to slowly eat her. Ewwwww!
· Damsels should take care with their fashion accessories. I have used their berets (raspberry or otherwise), hats, scarves, belts, handbags, etc...
· Another superheroine found herself tied to a rock under giant rubber bands, and gagged with the same.
· A heroine captured in a bakery of sorts, her hands bound with molten sugar that hardened when set, and hardened spun sugar gagged her. She was dunked in cake batter and nearly turned into black forest torte
I am sure I am forgetting a lot of things. But this is a little sample of my devious and warped mind.

Talk talk talk

Something jogged my memory of a comment made by a very good online friend a while back. She said she was turned on by the idea of being, say, a superheroine who had been captured by a villain and put in some trap (the specific exampel was tied to the tracks). Her character escaped, but the peril was in a public enough place that it was covered on the evening news, which she and her friends were watching. And there she was, with all her friends commenting on the (public superheroine's) peril, while she in her secret identity had to play along.

I can relate to that. A recurring daydream of mine -- not a dominant one, but one which recurs from time to time, is of a damsel giving a sort of TV ad for a show of her "real story." It would go something like this: "Hi. I'm Caitlyn. I'm a secret agent. And I get captured. A lot." Cut to clips of her latest episode where she is indeed tied to a chair as the time bomb ticks away. "Tune in at 8 PM to see if I escape in time..."

A variant of this daydream is to imagine a damsel's internal thoughts as she struggles, tightly bound and, say, headed to the buzzsaw. "I...I can't budge! This time there's...there's no way out!"

I really don't know why, but the idea of a damsel in distress commenting on her own predicament seems to enhance the peril for me. Weird, or what?

Thoughts on a live action Penelope Pitstop movie

Many of you already know how much the reruns of the cartoon Perils of Penelope Pitstop warped my young brain. That, of course, and Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl, but that is a topic for another day. Anyway, a few years back it looked like they were thinking of doing a live action version of the cartoon. And why not? They’ve made two friggen movies about Transformers, a cartoon based on a toy. They’re making a movie about Hong Kong Phooey, for Jah’s sake. So why not a movie whose characters are human beings – what could be so difficult about that? The Pitstop movie was going to star Reese Witherspoon as Penelope and Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: Next Gen) as the Hooded Claw.

I am not a huge Witherspoon fan, but at least she is a real Southerner and bankable. And Spiner, if you think all he can do is robot – well, the guy is a great character actor all around and (IMHO) is a brilliant casting idea for the Hooded Claw. He would have the perfect update of Paul Lynde’s maniacal laugh. It seems though that it all fell apart…

Too bad. Perhaps the suits got nervous about the idea of all those perils, and how it would play to the 20-somethings. I think they needn’t have worried; it’s only the 40-somethings who would take the role stereotypes seriously. C’mon, dammit – we need to get a whole new generation corrupted by melodramatic gender roles and of course some good old fashioned bondage and death traps! Otherwise the central task of civilization – to perpetuate bad ideas – will collapse!

Argggh. It is not to be. But perhaps that liberates me to think of ideal casting for today for a live action Perils of Penelope Pitstop movie:

Penelope

I tried to limit myself to young Southern blondes, a discipline which produced this short list:
Hillary Duff – very annoying to some, but I do think she’s pretty for all the fakery and Disneyfication. She doesn’t seem to be Southern, but she was born in Texas, so she qualifies.
Britney Spears – yeah, I know, would have been sexier pre-breakdown, but Penelope can’t be jailbait, you know? Spears can’t act? Who cares, she’s from Louisiana.

Dakota Fanning – born in Georgia, check. If you think she is the little kid from War of the Worlds, well look again. She’s turning into a real beauty. By the time I got my movie green lit, she’d make a great young heiress.

The Wild Card Pick: Katy Perry. I know, I know. Brunette. Californian. But talk about someone who knows how to be very girlie but also very outspoken and self-reliant! Plus she is really pretty, has curves in all the right places, and knows how to use them. Her instinct for melodrama overrides technical objections in my view…. OK, so I just want her tied up and in peril, sue me.

Hooded Claw

It’s really hard to beat Brent Spiner. I have only one very offbeat alternatives.

Bono – Admit it. Isn’t he annoying now? The glasses, the posturing, the sanctimonious hectoring of people who actually know what they are doing? Now imagine all that bad faith in a dark suit, the same zeal aimed at sweet young Penelope’s fortune. He can keep the stupid shades – that will help.

Bully Brothers

We need some comedy here….

Jon Heder (a/k/a Napoleon Dynamite) and his twin brother Dan. Who does slackjaw better?

If we wanted to depart from the cartoon’s identical twin dimwits, how about a pair of physically similar political opposites. I am thinking of Michael Moore and Glenn Beck for example, both pudgy and vaguely thuggish. Their bone-headed semi-theological wrangling over how many liberals/conservatives dance on the head of a pin could provide Penelope with her window of escape….

Anthill Mob

No casting. Utterly irrelevant to the drama. Or better still, if we used, say, the principal cast from some awful pseudo-ensemble movie like Armageddon, just have the Claw kill them off in the first scene, to show that, in this movie, Penelope really is in danger!

Anybody have suggestions?