GABBLE RATCHETS
posted 2:18 PM
Eventually she sighed, asked the Italian girl for a white coffee, a cup rather than a pot. Got out her iPhone and Googled “Gabriel Hounds”.
By the time her coffee arrived, she had determined that The Gabriel Hounds was the title of a novel by Mary Stewart, had been the title of at least one CD, had been or was the name of at least one band.
Everything, she knew, had been the title of a CD, just as everything had been the name of a band. This was why bands, for the past twenty years or so, had had such pointedly unmemorable names. But the original Gabriel Hounds, it appeared, were folklore, antique legend. Hounds heard coursing, high up in the windy night, cousins it seemed of the Wild Hunt. This was Inchmale territory, definitely, and there seemed to be even weirder variants. Some involving hounds with human heads, or hounds with the heads of human infants. This had to do with the belief that the Gabriel Hounds were hunting the souls of children who died unbaptized. Christian tacked over pagan, she guessed. And the hounds seemed to have originally been “ratchets”, an old word for dogs that hunt by scent. Gabriel Ratchets. Sometimes Gabble Ratchets.
Inchmaleian totally; he’d name the right band the Gabble Ratchets instantly.
Monday, March 02, 2009
MOLESKINE, SHMOLESKINE
posted 8:28 PM
Field Notes
There was someone posting incessantly, on the boards here, after Spook Country, who apparently believed that I must be taking product placement money from Apple and Volkswagen.
Seriously.
Hollis had a Mac because I've never had a PC, so couldn't comfortably imagine her using a Windows machine, and Bigend's minions drove those overgrown luxury uber-Jettas because I drive a Passat, so could imagine Volks product more convincingly (I have to convince myself, before I can hope to convince you) and also because I saw one on the street, here in Vancouver, once and only once, and it made an impression.
And no, I've never gotten so much as a dime from either Apple or Volkswagen (and if I were Apple, I'd be plying me with cutting-edge product on a regular basis, but if you know Apple, you know that's not going to happen).
Nobody in my next novel is likely to use Field Notes products, that I know of, but I'd like to give them some (free!!!) product placement right now, right here on my blog. I haven't even seen any, in person, but I love their site, and eventually I'll get around to ordering some. I love the idea of really well-designed, well-made, preferable simple, American-made (or Canadian-made) products, particularly if they have really smartly-designed websites that are entertaining to read.
So here's your product placement for this evening: Field Notes. Has a kind of American Muji thing going on, it seems to me. (They should do a Field Notes t-shirt, if they don't already. Every manufacturer of genuinely cool things should do a t-shirt, particularly if they're sort of obscure and specialist. Keep it simple, logo-only, on a quality shirt, and they almost always sell out.)
Maybe I'll make this the first in series.
DIGITAL SHOTGUN HOUSE
posted 2:02 PM
Flatpack!
Sunday, March 01, 2009
TRAIN
posted 8:58 PM
Plowing snow!
A MILLION SECONDS IS 11 DAYS
posted 9:06 AM
A billion seconds is 32 years.
A trillion seconds is 32,000 years.
