Guilty Pleasures.

No, I’m not talking about the book by Laurell K. Hamilton…though I am talking about books. Those books you read when you just want to feel good. The books you know you should criticize as pure fluff – and maybe you do, when they’re brought up in discussion.

Right before you go home, dig out your dog-eared copies, and give ‘em another read.

These books are your guilty pleasures. They have no lasting literary merit, but they feel good. They’re emotional, their stories are soppy and overdone, their characters take “larger than life” a little too far…but they’re as much fun as eating ice cream for breakfast or bonbons for lunch. The sugar goes right to your hips; the fluff goes right to your brain and leaves a few thoroughly mushed brain cells in its wake. But you’re left having thoroughly enjoyed yourself, which gives those books merit enough on their own.

I have several guilty-pleasure books, and often wonder if I don’t write them myself. Some of my favorites, though, are Anne McCaffrey’s Rowan and the sequel, Damia. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading them in public, with their space-opera-esque damsels poised on the covers in such regal and graceful fashion. I have little enough masculinity left to sacrifice its remnants on that altar. They’re little more than romance novels with sex couched in terms of telekinesis and space travel, and their heroines are just a little too good to be true (yet manage not to be unlikable by avoiding the current overdone heroine trap: being a walking attitude problem, constantly lashing out at people whether they deserve it or not, anything to prove her street cred). Yet I like them. Maybe not as much as I like other books on my list of favorites, but I still enjoy them on days when I just need something easy-to-read that has no trouble making me laugh, smile, groan, or gnaw at my fingernails in a mixture of trepidation for the characters and embarrassment that anyone might catch me with the books.

What are your guilty pleasures? Are there any books on your shelf that you consider turning spine-in when company’s over, but that you secretly love?

Stranger than fiction.

I really need to start sleeping with the Eee next to the bed, because sometimes my nightmares are more bizarre, imaginative, and downright creepy than any story I could come up with – and I need to start writing this crap down while it’s still fresh and scaring the crap out of me.

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark as Noah playing the role of Moses leading the Aztecs away from the evil water to a paradise prophesied by the gods, ya’ll. And that’s just the start of it. Don’t even get me started on the flies, the carnivorous octo-blobs, the faceless people, the not-quite-right version of reality, the prophetic text sprayed across the street in gray paint and very large Courier New font, the swinging elevator, and having to chomp my way through something that was half-shrimp, half-tiny dragon…while it was still alive and shrieking at me.

Well, if anything…it’s fuel for more bizarre stuff in the otherspace if Ken ever goes back there.

Grain of sand.

I swear, one of these days I’m going to change my name to John or Chuck or Robert or something like that. Just to avoid any confusion.

I wonder how Adrien Brody handles this, other than just being smokin’ hot and famous.

Thought.

The next time you want to complain about the U.S. political system, take a good look at Iran.

At least we have the right to complain without having our freedoms taken away, right down to the freedom to make the world aware of the problem via the internet. At least we can mobilize to protest for our rights without our own government shooting us and killing us.

It’s becoming a larger issue than a questionable vote count. It’s more about awareness of a false democracy in which a questioned vote rouses the suppression response of a dictator. Be glad it can’t happen to you.

And show support for those to whom it’s happening right now.

0075. All the insides left cold and grey.

Gabriel Quinn died in the year 2039.

The meteor struck at 3:42 a.m. in the village of Adelphi, Ohio–one of the last places left untouched by the Palisthis invasion, if only because it had nothing to offer. A small population, remote location, and lack of resources ensured that Adelphi remained unmolested–provided they remained obedient.

Gabriel woke at 3:41 and fifty-two seconds as light flooded through his windows, reflecting in a flat plastic sheen from the faded, curl-edged posters on his walls. His mother screamed from somewhere downstairs. His father’s curses silenced her. A roaring filled the night, its cry a palpable thing that scraped over the fine hairs on Gabriel’s arms. He flung himself to the floor as the walls began to shake. A small porcelain elephant fell from his shelf and shattered against weathered wooden floorboards. He’d had it since he was a child; his mother had bought it for a quarter at a flea market in Dublin.

Throwing himself under the bed, Gabriel stared into the light, white and all-consuming. It reached through the window with grasping spears; he threw his arm up to shield his eyes, and screamed as it burned into his flesh. Pain flared, seared through him–and then eclipsed, as he ceased to exist.

Dawn flooded over Ohio hours later, and the smoking crater where Adelphi had been. By then the Palisthis had come and gone; the bodies piled high in aerial barges, broken and lifeless and good only for scrap iron extraction.

Daylight found only dust, and the shattered remnants of a hundred lives.

By morning, Gabriel Quinn lived again.