Thursday, March 28, 2024

Pollution Goblin

Happy Good Friday, everyone. The latest Caitlin R. Kiernan story in Sirenia Digest is sort of appropriate to the topic. It's an exceptionally good one in any case, called "STRANDLING", which mixes Lovecraftian eeriness with the melancholy topic of the impending death of a loved one.

It also incorporates the housing crisis as the two characters, a married couple, are able to obtain the seaside property the dying partner longs for because its beaches are hopelessly polluted, driving down the property value. The dying woman finds her reflection in a dying world. Then there are hints of something weird from that same sea, something the mind is not as ready to contemplate. So it's a fairly good story for Good Friday.

I also watched a bit of The Long Good Friday again on The Criterion Channel. It's just a good gangster movie, more of an ironic Good Friday movie, I suppose. I feel like there are more Good Friday movies than Easter movies. Taxi Driver comes to mind, mainly because Martin Scorsese's priest told him the movie had "too much Good Friday, not enough Easter Sunday." Well, really, there are a lot more Easter movies, but still far fewer than there are Christmas movies. I should make a list, maybe I will before Sunday.

X Sonnet #1829

The lovers' cloud obscured a bloody sun.
Logistics change the means of death.
As murder plots or sudden strikes are done,
A million things can stop a hapless breath.
A self-inflicted symbol staunched the blood.
Precocious dolphins damage fish to eat.
The shapes of older cats have changed the mud.
Sequestered bones were long behind the meat.
Condensing hist'ry haunts the lonely brow.
A story's spun to cheat the sane from health.
Despondent souls await the rusty scow.
For extra kelp the sea discharged its wealth.
A jagged isle spotted grants a wish.
But danger lurks behind the eyes of fish.

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