Tiny Me

It’s been another crafty week at the mydangblog household. First, you may remember the peel and stick wallpaper that Ken and I used to create the illusion of a bookcase door which leads to our secret library? Well, it’s not much of an illusion when it starts to fall off the panel attached to the door (as if the illusion wasn’t already problematic based on the size, and worse, the bizarre titles of the books on the peel and stick bookcase—Dawn Fly Stuff is still my favourite and you can read about all the rest in a previous post called Lost In Translation). But my tremendous disappointment at the less than sticky stickers was relieved when Ken said, “I have a great idea—I’ll get some trim and moulding and tack it all down with actual wood that looks like a bookshelf.” And that’s what he did. It looks even better than it did before the books all started to fall off, especially since the giant fake candle sconces in the middle are now hidden. But of course, the trim had to all be painted the same colour. Which I volunteered to do before I realized that I would have to use painter’s tape to protect the books in EVERY SINGLE SQUARE. It took me 3 minutes to paint the trim. It took me OVER AN HOUR to tape it all up. Still, at the end of the whole process, I think it looks even more realistic than it did before, and the stickers so far are staying stuck.

And then, because I was in A MOOD, I decided to tackle my new miniature room, and for the record, let me just clarify that it’s a miniature room, NOT A DOLL HOUSE because that’s a road that, as much as I’d love to go down, is also a rabbit hole that I may never emerge from. But last week, before we went to that awards banquet, I made Ken stop at an antique market up north because I had seen a Facebook post from one of their vendors who specializes in miniatures. Not only him, as it turns out—this place is the MECCA for tiny things and I was super-excited by what I bought, I mean, I got a cute little HARP among other things. I’d been thinking about it all for several days and rearranging things on the counter and looking for ephemera and whatnot, so after our secret library door success, Ken built me a box and I started the room. It turned out even better than I’d hoped and I’m so happy with it. Ken took a look when I was finished though:

Me: What do you think?
Ken (silently calculating): There are 3 clocks in this room.
Me: Of course there are 3 clocks. How else will Tiny Me know what time it is?
Ken: None of the clocks work.
Me: Tiny Me is aware, KEN. Time is a construct.
Ken: That…doesn’t make any sense.
Me: It’s my room—Tiny Me can have as many clocks as she wants!
Ken: Okay, Susab.

In case you’re confused, ‘Susab’ was the name on my place card at the awards banquet we went to. So to recap—they spelled my last name wrong on the press release, they had ‘Susan’ on the seating chart, and then ‘Susab’ on the place card. No wonder I didn’t win—they didn’t even know who I was! I should have just told them to use Tiny Me.

I Detect Another Mystery Show

Right now, as in Saturday morning which is when I usually write this, I’m a little distracted because I’m getting ready to go to the big banquet for that literary award I was longlisted for. I already know that I didn’t win, but there’s a roast beef dinner–need I say more? I’ve never been to a big literary banquet and I’m very nervous, like what if I drink too much and pull a Kanye by rushing the stage and insisting that Margaret Atwood should have won? (Narrator’s Voice: Update: She did not rush the stage. But she DID address a man in line at the bar with “You look familiar–is your name Jerry?” to which he gave her a strange look, muttered, “No, it’s Steve. I need to go get some water” and hurried away. And not long after, she was mortified when ‘Steve’ got up on stage because it turns out he was the HOST of the gala and also a VERY well-known Canadian comedian but in her defence, Steve is mostly ON THE RADIO). So in honour of my anxiety (which proved to be a valid concern), I present to you a throwback to a post I made a few years ago, which appropriately follows up on my Midsomer Murders expose. Hope you enjoy! (Also, at the end of this, there’s a link to a radio show I recently did, so also enjoy!)

Once, I was bored and there was nothing good on TV, so I decided to watch a rerun of a show whose title had intrigued me for a long time: “Houdini and Doyle.” From what I understood, it was about a detective duo at the turn of the century, and I love detective shows. One of my all time favourites is the updated version of Sherlock Holmes called Elementary, starring the irascible Johnny Lee Miller, and Lucy Liu as Watson. I also adore Benedict Cumberbatch in the BBC version of Sherlock, which I’ve rewatched several times on Netflix, so I thought I’d give Houdini and Doyle a whirl. All I knew is that Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American magician, and that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the Scottish author of the Sherlock Holmes series, among other things. I love magic and I love Victorian Scottish fiction writers (albeit a very small group) and I had high hopes for its ability to keep me happily occupied for the next hour. Unfortunately, the TV show was—and I’m being polite here—absolute sh*t. Here are my main complaints:

The plot was ridiculous. This episode took place in a town where everyone except the local doctor and a little girl suddenly died. People were just lying on the streets in their period costumes, or keeled over their dinners of mutton and ale. Even the dogs were dead. And so were the mice—I know this because Houdini pointed out a nest of dead mice under a porch in a very obvious way in order to prove—well, I’m not actually sure what he was trying to prove. Houdini and Doyle eventually decided that everyone died due to a large cloud of carbon dioxide which had escaped from a nearby mine and which had asphyxiated the entire town. And as convoluted as that all sounds, it wasn’t even the ridiculous part. The most illogical part of the whole thing was their explanation regarding the survival of the doctor and the little girl. I was hoping beyond hope that since the show revolved around a famous magician that there might actually be a supernatural or magic-y rationale, like they were both alien mutants with cosmic lung capacity, or immune to the biological weapon that the government was experimenting with or something cool, but no. The doctor was in bed having a nap, and the little girl was sick and was also in bed. Therefore, they were BELOW the gas cloud and escaped its nefarious and deadly clutches. At which point, I yelled at the TV, “WHAT ABOUT THE DEAD MICE UNDER THE PORCH?! ? WHAT ABOUT THE DOGS? ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TELLING ME THAT ALL THE DEAD DOGS WERE TALLER THAN THAT KID’S BED?!”
It made even less sense later, when having “solved” the first mystery, Houdini and Doyle then prevented the assassination of the President of the United States at a hotel because they had found a note with the words “King Edward” on it, and after thinking it was about killing the King, they realized it was the name of a hotel and got there just in time. All in one episode of 45 minutes (not counting all the commercials).
There were no magic tricks AT ALL. Considering the show stars one of the most famous American magicians of all time, there was a surprising LACK of magic-type stuff. Not even a f*cking card trick. They should have had Houdini in a locked closet, tied up with padlocked chains, racing against time to escape and thwart the assassination. Instead, he just knocked the gun out of the guy’s hand. Boring.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish, yet he spoke with an English accent. Yes, they sound different. The English always sound like they’re trying to knight you, and the Scottish always sound like they’re mad at you, thusly:
English: I hereby dub thee Lady Mydangblog. You may rise.
Scottish: Och, you’ve a new fancy name ‘n all! Gie up, lassy!!
But Doyle was always like “Good Heavens! What the devil happened here, my good man?” instead of “Whit? Awae wi’ ye, numptie!” Yes, I know that the actual Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was well-educated and spoke the “Queen’s English”, but it would have added something to the show if he’d used spicy phrases and unintelligible dialect. The plot didn’t make any sense, so why should the dialogue?
Houdini sounded Canadian and the whole show had a distinctly Canadian feel ie: it was kind of amateur-ish, like Murdoch Mysteries, where a Canadian detective in the 1890s “uses radical forensic techniques of the time, including fingerprints and trace evidence, to solve gruesome murders” (imdb) along with his partner, female coroner Dr. Julie Ogden (yes, a female coroner in the 1890s–very realistic). I wasn’t sure WHY I felt like Houdini and Doyle was so Canadian, then I googled it, and it turns out that the show “has Canadian producers and comes from the same production company as Murdoch Mysteries.” Mystery solved.
Last, throughout the show, Houdini kept insisting that you always know when you’re dreaming because “You can’t read in your dreams.” This is patently untrue. I read things all the time in my dreams, words that I’ve written, stories, poems, social media posts, and whatnot. I don’t always remember them when I wake up, but I READ them, so maybe I’m just more magical than Houdini.

Anyway, in keeping with the current trend of unrealistic detective/magician duos like Houdini and Doyle, I came up with a couple of my own.

1) “What The Dickens!”: This show stars Charles Dickens and David Copperfield, played respectively by Gerard Butler and Keanu Reeves, because why the hell not? In the show, Dickens has time-travelled to the future and meets American magician David Copperfield. Together, they investigate the disappearance of many large buildings and monuments, and battle their arch-nemesis Uriah Heep, played by Dick Van Dyke, who is as immortal as any supervillain. After they’ve solved every mystery (turns out it was Copperfield all along), Dickens returns to his own time and writes a very long novel called “David Copperfield” where he makes a LOT of stuff up, (he got paid by the word, after all) but leaves out the detective/magic part because he doesn’t want his heirs to get sued by Copperfield in the future for revealing his magical techniques.

2) “Fitzgerald and Wife”: In keeping with the fine tradition of married couple detectives, this show features F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Every week, they are presented with a new mystery which they fail to solve because they are too drunk.

3) “Robbie and Doug”: This is a Canadian reality show starring famous author Robertson Davies, who almost won a Nobel prize, and Doug Henning, a Canadian magician who ran for Parliament as a candidate for the ‘Natural Law Party’, which believes that all the problems in the world can be solved by learning the art of “yogic flying”. In the show, Davies just grumbles a lot about everything in an unintelligible dialect because he’s 90 years old and Scottish, and Henning solves all the crimes by flying around and meditating. The show is cancelled when viewers discovered that Henning isn’t REALLY flying—it’s only special effects. Yogic flying is actually just bouncing in a lotus position, and everyone knows you can’t solve crimes by bouncing unless you’re Tigger.

As a side note, I know that neither F. Scott or Zelda were magicians, but I liked the concept too much to leave it out on THAT technicality.

Also, if you’re interested in hearing me read from my OWN gothic thriller/mystery Charybdis, as well as from my new work in progress Nomads of the Modern Wasteland, I was recently featured on the radio show Reader’s Delight, hosted by the lovely Jody Swannell. You can listen to it here: https://radiowaterloo.ca/episode-vi-of-readers-delight/

The Most Dangerous Game

Here’s something that I recently discovered. Anyone who thinks that today’s young generation is coddled, babied, overprotected, love luxury and all those things that people have liked to sling around ever since Socrates have obviously never seen 13 year-olds play lacrosse. I had the distinct pleasure of doing this on Friday night as we went to watch our nephew in a local tournament. Now, our nephew is an athletic kid, slim build, and as we stood in the bleachers watching the team enter the arena, I couldn’t figure out which one was him:

Me: He’s one of the goalies, right?
Ken: Yeah…the goalies are over there.
Me: But neither of them could be him—they’re both HUGE.
Ken: I think they wear a lot of padding.

A lot of padding is an understatement—it was indeed my nephew and he looked like he had several couch cushions hidden underneath his uniform. I was trying to figure out how on earth a goalie could move around in equipment like that, then I saw the actual net, and it was only marginally wider than the kid in it, so it looked like not a lot of moving was actually required. And what was even weirder is that none of the other kids, the ones who weren’t goalies, were wearing ANY padding at all. Okay, I thought—I guess they get really violent with the goalie, shooting the ball at him hard and whatnot, but they must have a LOT of rules to protect the other kids. And then they started playing, and I was like, what the actual f*ck?? I mean, I coached high school senior rugby for several years and it’s a pretty aggressive game, but I swear, 13 year-old lacrosse players are MANIACS. They were whacking each other with sticks, knocking each other onto the concrete, shoving, tripping, tackling—it was unreal—at one point, there were four players in the penalty box, 3 from the other team and 1 from our side. My nephew’s team won something like 16-1 but they have a mercy rule (the irony of which has not escaped me) so they only show the score up until 8. And then, when the final whistle blew, they all shook hands like it was no big thing that they had just survived The Hunger Games.

After he got his equipment off and we hauled several large cushion bags to the car, we took him for some fast food:

Me: That was pretty violent.
Nephew: Yeah. The other team was playing a little dirty though. And the refs weren’t calling very many penalties.
Me: You mean they could have called MORE? So you’re not actually allowed to take your lacrosse stick and slam it into the back of another player?
Nephew: If they don’t have the ball, you shouldn’t.

And the best part was that I had the whole thing completely backwards—the goalie is the one LEAST likely to get hurt because no one is allowed to go into the inner crease plus the goalie is dressed like a giant mattress and everything just bounces off him. Well, off my nephew. Not the other goalie, who let in 16 goals. As my nephew succinctly pointed out, “Their defence sucked.” But their offense? That was killer. Literally.

It’s A Mystery

Recently, I’ve been binge-watching an old British TV series called Midsomer Murders. The show focuses on a detective named Barnaby who lives in this vast English territory called Midsomer (not to be confused with Midsommar, which is quite possibly the most INSANE and awful movie I’ve ever seen, nor is it a time of year like Midsummer, which in Canada, happens in October). Each episode is an hour and a half long and there are TWENTY-THREE seasons with between 4 and 8 episodes a season. It’s been on since 1997 and they’re still making new episodes. Right now, I’m in about Season 9, I think—it’s easy to lose track, but at this point, I think I’m qualified to make a few observations about this show.

1) How are there any people left in Midsomer? Because in each episode there are at least 4 murders, sometimes more. Midsomer is rivalling several entire countries as well as numerous American States to be crowned the murder capital of the world. You think Murder, She Wrote was a little over the top? Try living in Midsomer, where your life is in your hands every day because you own a relish factory.

2) How big exactly is Midsomer? In the first couple of seasons it seemed like it was a fairly small county consisting of two or three villages. But when all those people were murdered, they started adding on with places like Midsomer Parma, Midsomer Wellow, Badger’s Drift, Midsomer Worthy (not to be confused with Midsomer LITTLE Worthy, Midsomer Barrow—in fact, if you look online, there are SIXTY-TWO different towns and places where these murders all take place. It’s like Midsomer has its own continent. But I guess when you’ve been killing off your population for 27 years, you need to expand your victim pool.

3) Every single person who lives in Midsomer has a deep, dark secret. From the local barman to the local baron, they’re all hiding something. That’s why in every episode, there are so many red herrings. I mean, you can’t stretch a murder investigation into an hour and a half unless you have twenty different suspects who have a shady past/married their stepson/made someone drink hallucinogenic tea/had a secret lovechild fathered by the local Anglican minister/turned someone into a blood eagle/once shot a guy during a foxhound and claimed they were aiming for the fox/burned someone alive/urinated on a sacred tree (some of these happened in the TV show Midsomer Murders and some happened in the movie Midsommar and some happened in BOTH. Guess which is which?)

4) The same actor played Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby for the first 13 seasons and when he retired, his ‘cousin’, Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby takes over, and the best thing is that the actor playing John Barnaby, whose name is Neil Dudgeon was in one of the earlier episodes called Garden of Death. The IMDB synopsis of this episode is: “When an arrogant aristocratic family’s decision to develop a memorial garden into a commercial tea shop has the villagers up in arms, murders past and present rear their heads.” People got MURDERED over a tea shop. And the guy who becomes the new Barnaby was the sexy memorial gardener. Also, in researching this, I discovered Neil Dudgeon has been a bit actor in every single BBC mystery series, so I guess he has a lot of experience at detective-ing.

5) The synopses get increasingly more random and bizarre as the years go on. Here are some of my favourites:

The bodies of former criminals are found in a cornfield. The cause of their deaths and the strange position in which they lay is rather bizarre. Rumours quickly circulate in the village that it could be the work of some extra-terrestrial force. However, Barnaby is far from convinced.

When one of the world’s rarest orchids is smuggled illegally into Midsomer Malham, it triggers a catalogue of passion, jealousy and death.

The unveiling of a newly-discovered novel by deceased Midsomer crime-writer George Summersbee at the Luxton Deeping Crime Festival is jeopardised when the manuscript is stolen and a woman is fatally electrocuted by a booby-trapped roulette wheel. Can new dad Barnaby untangle a web of jealousy and obsession to find the killer?

The annual harvest fair and the daredevil riders of the Wall of Death come to Midsomer village Whitcombe Mallet. When the owner of an equestrian centre is trampled by his horse DCI Barnaby and DS Nelson have to unravel a complex feud from the past, where nothing is what it seems.

Alien abductions, illegal orchids, booby-trapped rouletted wheels, walls of death—what more could anyone ask for?

But recently, all of my mystery watching came in handy when we had a murder in our OWN house:

Me: I have discovered the body of a mouse in the guest room. This crime shall not go unpunished. Now let me see. (*carefully appraises group of suspects and then points with a dramatic flourish*) Atlas!! Was it you?!
Atlas: What? No! I have an alibi. I was outside at the time, barking at the squirrels.
Me: Hmmm. (*points with another dramatic flourish*) Then it must have been Ken!!
Ken: Why would I—what are we doing here exactly? I don’t remember this scenario ever happening…
Me: Don’t break the fourth wall, KEN. All right, let me see…there’s only one other suspect—ILANA!! It was YOU!!
Ilana: I didn’t do it, copper! I swear!
Me: Then why did the mouse write ‘Twuz A Kat in its own blood on the floor? Explain THAT!!
Ilana: Fine. It was me. But it was supposed to be a present.
Me: Mystery solved.

DCI Barnaby would be proud.

Reactine Well

Reactine Well

The virtual book launch for my new novel Charybdis just finished and it was lovely, so huge thanks to everyone who came, to my special guests Susan Richardson, Lawrence Moore, and Paul Brookes, and an especially big thank you to my amazing publisher Jane Cornwell of JC Studio Press for organizing it!

Aside from that, it’s been a lovely week because I’m currently kitty sitting my grand-kitty. Kate and her boyfriend are on the West Coast visiting his family, so we’ve been left in charge of the delightful Ilana. The delightful and furry Ilana. Did I mention that I’m very allergic to cats? So while I’m loving taking care of this tiny monster of joy, I’m also stuffed up to the gills, which is being compounded by all the pollen in the air now that spring is finally and definitely here, because if you know anything at all about Canada, you’ll know we actually have something like 13 seasons here, and I take this from the several many memes about Canadian seasons that one can find on the internet:

Winter
Fool’s Spring
2^nd Winter
Spring of Deception
Third Winter
Pollen Spring (this is where we are now)
Construction
Summer
False Fall
Second Summer
Fall
Winter Is Coming
Hello darkness my old friend

So you can only imagine how difficult breathing is for me right now, but I can’t help it. Ilana is adorable and sweet and a total little goblin who likes to wake me up in the middle of the night by punching the back of my head and then rubbing her face against my nose until I wake up:

Me: What the hell?
Ilana: There may be a mouse…
Me: Well, go get it. That’s your job.
Ilana: But I want you to know about it. If I catch one, I will bring it to you.
Me: Please do NOT do that.

Like most cats, she’s also very fickle about how and when she receives attention:

Ilana: I present to you my tummy. Please rub it.
Me: Awwww. Such a cute—ouch! Why did you attack my hand?!
Ilana: Changed my mind. Wait. Rub my tummy.
Me: Will you attack my hand again?
Ilana: No, I promise.
Me: Okay. You’re so sweet—ouch!! Damn it!!
Ilana: One more time?
Me: Sigh. Alright.

Of course, she’s still not comfortable around Atlas but she’s getting more used to him, and he still regards her as a wild woodland creature:

Atlas: That skunk is back.
Me: Not a skunk. But don’t bother her regardless. You think a skunk is an issue? Wait until you try to rub her tummy.
Atlas: Fair enough. Will you rub MY tummy?
Me: Will you attack my hand and bite me?
Atlas: What do I look like—a psychopath?

At any rate, we have her for over another week, and I’m thoroughly enjoying everything about her, because, as you can see by the pictures, she is the most precious little kitty in the world—no matter how much of a psychopath she is, and I’m single-handedly keeping the allergy medication people in business.