Caitlín R. Kiernan

Since both docbrite and mevennen have weighed in on their worst jobs ever, I figured I might as well, too. Truthfully, most of the jobs I held before I began writing fulltime in 1992 were museum-related, either doing paleontology or exhibit work, or university teaching jobs, and I loved them. I never really thought of those jobs as jobs. But just after high school, I did endure a small number of retail-type jobs. The worst of the bunch was almost certainly at a place called Doctor Pet Center (Century Plaza, Birmingham). It was a mall chain, and I think it must have gone out of business in the late '80s or early '90s. The R in "Doctor" was written as an RX. Very witty. DPC sold all manner of pets and pet supplies, though their main business was puppies. In September 1982, I was hired as a "pet selection counselor," which is to say primarily as a salesperson. Each "pet selection counselor" had a weekly quota. X-number of puppies we were expected to sell during that period. The puppies were kept in a sort of kennel behind plate glass, and it was my job to nab people as they came in to look, talk them into some one-on-one time with a puppy in one of the little back rooms, and then sell them the dog. It was a meat market, and though we were instructed to tell our customers that all the puppies came from AKC-registered breeders, it was generally known among the employees that a lot of DPC's dogs came courtesy "puppy mills." Often they arrived sickly and malnourished. We shot them up with antibiotics and did our best to make them pretty for the mall-goers. We had to wear little white lab coats, because, you know, it was Doctor Pet Center.

During my interview for the job, I rambled on and on about how much I loved animals, that I'd always wanted to work with animals, and so forth, until the manager, a woman who could have been Cruella DeVille's eviler sister, told me that she wasn't interested in people who liked animals, but in people who liked people. More specifically, she was interested in hiring someone who was motivated to sell to people. I lied and said I was both. And much to my surprise, I got the job.

But, as you may well imagine, I was a lousy salesperson. I didn't like to talk to customers. I didn't know how to talk to customers. During my time at Doctor Pet Center I managed to sell only a single dog, an aging basset hound we called Betty, the only older dog I ever saw in the store. I cannot now recall how the store had ended up with Betty, as all the other dogs were puppies. Anyway, yes, I sold Betty, even though she had arthritis. And then the man who bought her brought her back only a week later. And, about a month after that, in November, I quit. (I can proudly say that I've never once been fired from a job. I always quit before my employer had the chance to fire me.)

Not long after I sold Betty, shortly after she was returned, there was an outbreak of Parvo virus one night. There were just two of us working, because it was a slow weeknight. The outbreak started with a husky puppy. Within a couple of hours, I'd hauled half a dozen diarrhea-stricken puppies out of their shit- and blood- and mucus-drenched cages and away to our vet. All of them died, as would several others in the store. And that was the end of my career as a "pet selection counselor." I was tired of lying to people about where the store got its dogs, tired of trying to convince people we were humane, tired of the stupid questions customers asked, tired of trying to manipulate them into buying pets on impulse when, most of the time, they neither wanted nor needed a dog. I told my manager most of this, and, even though I was a lousy salesperson, she said she was very disappointed in me and thought I had great potential, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah. That was my worst job ever, all three months of it.

I also worked in a machine shop one summer, and I almost listed that as my worst job ever. It was hot and filthy and unbelievably noisy and dangerous and yet dull beyond all imagining. I ran a drill press from 8 to 5. The place was owned by a racist Libertarian gun-freak who scared the piss out of me. But, in the final analysis, Doctor Pet Center was even worse than the rabidly non-union machine shop. Never mind that during my time at the shop I lived in constant fear of decapitation by flying metal, the pet store was still worse. At least I hardly ever had to talk to anyone in the machine shop, and I never had to lie about ill-gotten puppies.

Yesterday was a nice day off. I did some Wikipedia (an article on the coelurid theropod Tanycolagreus and anatomy stubs for "postorbital" and "squamosal"). We read Chapter Ten of The Triumph of the Moon ("God (and Goddess) Parents"), in which Hutton examines the role that Aleister Crowley, Violet Firth (Dion Fortune), Robert Graves, and Margaret Murray played in setting the stage for the emergence of modern pagan witchcraft in Britian. We had dinner at one of our favourite sushi places, Sweet Lime at L5P. We had an after-dark walk in Freedom Park.

And then we watched Jackson's King Kong on DVD. This was only the second time I'd seen it, and most of what I said upon the first viewing still seems valid. I still think Jack Black was wrong for the part. I still think the film spent too much time in New York. I still think the ice skating scene is silly. Etc. But it is an amazing and majestic film. I think the two things that struck me most this time through were Jackson's decision to let most of the action on Skull Island unfold during the day (Cooper set it at night in the 1933 original), and the nature and intensity of the relationship between Ann Darrow and Kong. In the 1933 film, Kong is clearly fixated on Darrow, for whatever reason, and over the decades, there's been no end of speculation on the sexual subtext. But it was strictly one way. The ape loved the pretty white woman, who was terrified of him and only wanted to scream and faint every time he touched her. However, in the new film, Ann and Kong seem absolutely smitten with one another. The affection is definitely mutual, Ann becomes Kong's only defender, and don't frelling tell me it's all meant to be platonic. Phooey, I say. I think it's one of the film's finer attributes, and a brave move by Jackson, but I do have to wonder how many people were icked out, consciously or subconsciously, at the implications of "bestiality" and interspecies hanky-panky.

Speaking of which, I'm still watching the Tales from the Woeful Platypus poll from yesterday afternoon. Please vote if you are a subscriber. So far, only a very, very small percentage of subscribers have. My thanks to those people. I'm pretty sure, at this point, that both "Pony" and "Untitled 17" have made the cut. Okay. Time to write. N is for...

This weather, this miserable frelling weather. It's done nothing good for my mood today. I shouldn't complain. It might have been much worse. At least we had only a small bit of ice which quickly melted, and we didn't lose power. But yuck. And with gas prices being what they are this winter (up one-third from last year), we're pretty much keeping the heat off. At least the computers like the cold.

Anyway, we made it to the 5 p.m. matinee of King Kong yesterday (SPOILERS AHEAD), despite the horrid weather. And I mostly loved it, despite the somewhat horrid audience. I so rarely go to movies at the big-ass cineplexes these days, I forget what a nightmare the audiences can be. I'm beginning to suspect that Americans are no longer civilized enough for movie theatres. But...the movie. No, it wasn't perfection. It wasn't even the near perfection that Jackson acheived with The Lord of the Rings. But it was quite good, and it had enough absolutely superb moments to mostly make up for the rough spots.

What I didn't like: The film's greatest weakness is undoubtedly the first hour or so of the film, the long first third in New York City and then most of the stuff aboard the Venture. I appreciate that Jackson wanted to provide the characters with a little more depth and background than they had in the original film, but it goes on much too long. I don't see the point in having divided the character of Jack Driscoll in two, especially when one half amounted to nothing but lamentable comic relief (the insufferable Kyle Chandler as Bruce Baxter, the film's least necessary character). And I'm not sure that Jack Black was up to the role of Carl Denham. Almost, but maybe not all the way. I certainly could have done without the absurd ice-skating amongst the Xmas trees schmaltz near the end, and there were times when Naomi Watts' raport with Kong was just a little too cute and a little too much. While we're at it, I freely admit that I really don't like Naomi Watts and didn't feel she was right for Ann Darrow. I'm not sure why Jackson wanted to try to replace Fay Wray's waifish, almost Pre-Raphaelite grace with Watts' big-eyed charm, but there you go. I wasn't making the film. I also felt that the film's iconic last line falls disasterously flat, most likely because it was prefaced by a very different film than the one that it was originally written for.

What I did like: As soon as the Venture entered the fog banks surrounding Skull Island, it felt to me as though the film found itself. Suddenly Jackson was in his element again. There was very little I didn't think was entirely wonderful about the Skull Island scenes. The retro-dinosaurs were terrific and left me wanting more. Kong was rendered and acted brilliantly, right down to that poorly mended and somewhat askew broken jaw. The islanders were genuinely terrifying, and I thought that Jackson's decision to use mostly white actors in body make-up nicely avoided the racism of the first film and created a tribe of people who looked disturbingly alien. I was overjoyed at the scene in the ravine (filmed but excised from the original). In short, I think I could have watched Skull island forever. It wasn't quite as marvelous as Willis H. O'Brien's murky, moody B&W landscapes, but it had a fearfulness and beauty all it's own. I very much appreciated that we saw much more in the way of ruins — I could believe that there really had once been a great, unknown civilization on the island. The last of the Skull Island scenes, as Capt. Englehorn and Denham attempt to chloroform Kong into submission and Ann begs them to stop — that may have been the very finest scene in the film. It was far more poignant that the climax atop the Empire State. I thought the addition of the Evan Parke character, Hayes, worked nicely, as did (most of the time) Colin Hanks' role (Jimmy). The Heart of Darkness sub/metatext worked much better than I would have thought. Peter Jackson's vision of Depression-Era NYC was breathtaking, even if he did seem a little lost there. The scene in the theatre, with the grotesque stage show paying homage to the 1933 version and then Kong's escape was very good, and I loved the chemistry between Adrien Brody and Kong. Jackson handled Denham far more honestly than the first film was able to do (even if Jack Black isn't quite right for the role), and the film is as much about his undoing as it is about Kong's. Indeed, I can hardly imagine how Jackson hopes to redeem Denham for the rumoured Son of Kong remake. I could go on and on about what I liked because, generally, I think the film does work. I suspect I'll like it better on a second viewing, when I'm not so burdened by my (not always fair or valid) expectations.

I'm sure that I haven't done it justice. It's a marvel, warts and all.

Later, after the film, Spooky and I started Ray Bradbury's From the Dust Returned, which I received a couple of years back as a gift from Bill Schafer, but hadn't gotten around to reading. So far, I'm loving it.

Not much else to say. I heard today that copies of The Merewife are on their way to me, and I look forward to seeing it. Spooky sent out Sirenia Digest #1 a couple of hours ago, so those should be popping up in your inboxes. And I thought I'd repost the link to the FlamesRising.com interview, for anyone who might have missed it.

And what's this crazy dren about "the War on Xmas"? And why wasn't I invited?

Now, I think I'm gonna go freeze to death.