Thursday, February 11, 2010

A different approach, Feb 11, 2010

I'm in the mood for some Mexico City Blues. I'm also in the mood for Godzilla and some wargames. So, here's my thought: the first poster on this thread can take any poem from Mexico City Blues and riff off it any way s/he chooses (but cite the inspiration). Challengers must write a riff off the same poem. Then the challenger gets to pick. By then, a mob should have formed and if they are here, the mob may choose the final poem.

Mob: please score poems with one to three stars. Then we'll tally the score and declare the champ. Come on! Let's see if we can finally get some bloodsport in here.

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Thurs, Feb 11: Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

She swung her flail to hear enemies scream,
Throwing darts and knives, you know what I mean...
Scary girlfriend! Super creeps!

I know, this is CombatProse, but an incantation was the fastest way I could think of to get you in the mood. Monsters in my opinion, aren't completely hostile. See Theodore Sturgeon's "The Professor's Teddy Bear" for the scariest stuffed animal in literature. Vampires are boring. Zombies are boring. And see my essay 'on zombies' to see the classic monster cycle play itself out: werewolf time. The point is, monsters are by their nature, mirrors--avenues to our own horrible nature. The Vampire is the obsessive-compulsive: its rituals are necessary for its very existence. The Werewolf is the savage that lurks beneath every civilized person--whose bloodletting permits the civilized person to survive in a society that represses such primal instincts. The Zombie is a nuclear-age monster: an anthropomorphization of extinction. So real monsters, fantastic monsters--I don't really care--just be creative.

Now for the second half of the kombat rules: super creeps. 'Creep' is almost like a fnord in terms of how invisible its actual meaning has become: a creep is a specific type of freak. It's used too often as a word for someone you dislike--no, The older couple with stuffed, dead corpses of once-beloved pets all over their house? Creepy. The key is eccentricity: a presumption that their actions don't deviate from the norm. Creepiness comes from a misunderstanding or misapplication of social rules and norms--as well as a lack of empathy. A 'creep' was once, I think, what people called borderline sociopaths, hermits and olde tyme mild autistics. Throw a few Ed Geins in there and you you need a word to describe the type.

So, write of scary monsters and not just any sort of creep, a super-creep.

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