I'm sure you obsess about it all the time: how, at least once a decade and a half, I open some book of symbols or another and a mysterious card falls into my lap. Well, the last time that happened ("click" previous "hyperlink"), I went to the "website" of the mysterious organization who had placed their mysterious card in my mysterious book of mysterious symbols and interacted mysteriously with it. Are you still with me? Okay! Hang on! Remember yesterday? Remember how I "blogged" about a singing skeleton who is also a plastic toy filled up with air like a balloon? So, I "posted" that, and then I checked my electronic or "e" mail, and I had received, at exactly the same time, a promotional communication from the mysterious organization! And its subject line was "Archetype in Focus: Skeleton." WHAT! Then I calmed down and thought about it. Of course, the mysterious organization associated skeletons with October, just as I had. It was no warning from beyond! However! Let me draw your attention to the fact that my previous four "posts" - five, including this one - bear the label "skeleton." (And here I have to parenthetically state that if you exist, which you do not, and you access the "blog" by means of your phone rather than your home computing system, you don't get all the enticing extras, like skeleton labels.) I know what you're going to say now, but cool your jets, David Hume! Sure, maybe I've got skeletons on the brain! Or do I? For as a little investigation will prove, I use the label "skeleton" pretty dang loosely. Why, it could refer to the spine of a book, or to Chili's famed baby back ribs, dripping in their succulent juices. CASE CLOSED. Oh, wait! I wanted to quote this from that Colm Tóibín novel about Henry James: "a huge, obscure shape in the night, an angry, broken, pecking bird of prey, squatting in the corner, ready to take him, all black spirit, yet palpable, visibly there, hissing, come for him alone." But I don't think I can fairly pretend that this hissing bird of prey was an owl. The person suffering the unfortunate vision, which is certainly in tune with our Halloween season, is Henry James's father, whom "blog" readers may fondly recall as the man who wouldn't let tiny Henry James read a sexy book about hot corn. Wow! That made me think of something else: the book HOT CORN, with its depiction of hapless "hot corn girls" - with whose travails tiny Henry James was never allowed to familiarize himself - inspired me whilst happily I toiled on Julia Pott's show SUMMER CAMP ISLAND. I include above, at the risk of exploding the "blog," a title card from the show, manifesting that inspiration. I'm not sure who drew it. I'll ask Julia, and credit the artist in the near future! PS Julia already responded! She had plenty of time, because I finished watching von Stroheim's GREED, ha ha, before finishing this "post." I say "ha ha" yet my statement is true. The artist is Yoriyuki Ikegami.
