Time for Polydactyly!

Okay, when I read 'Contortionist's Handbook,' I wasn't aware that Thomas Harris had given Hannibal Lecter six fingers. It wasn't really played up until the last book, which sucked, and I'm certain it wasn't even mentioned in the movie adaptation of 'Silence of the Lambs.' I can say that with authority, because while I read the book, I saw watched the movie on a weekly basis back when my job included the depressing task of rolling 'The Waldo Shopper' every Tuesday. So every Tuesday, I'd roll 4,000 shoppers to be thrown the next day, and every Tuesday, the VCR got 'Silence,' 'Ferris Bueller,' 'Where the Buffalo Roam,' 'Uncle Buck,' 'My Cousin Vinny,' and 'Blazing Saddles.'

This went on for months, so if they'd included it in the movie, I would have noticed. The book, maybe I missed it. I preferred 'Red Dragon' and 'Black Sunday,' which I still consider Harris' best work, and in any case I didn't re-read books much back then. I hadn't really gotten to the point of analyzing, studying books, and I wasn't reading (for the most part) books that would stand up to that kind of scrutiny.

The 'Contortionist's Handbook' intrigued me on many levels. The idea of identity changing, that there'd be a group of people who have to do this all the time even though they're benign, a kind of perpetual underground that travels by paper, was fascinating. The autistic characteristics of John Dolan Vincent are amazingly accurate. I kind of hate stuff like 'Rain Man' that leads people to comment, 'Your daughter's autistic? That just means she's smart.'

Yes, people have actually said that to me. Also that Einstein was autistic, see also Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, and so-and-so's crazy uncle who invented an engine that runs on water, but the oil companies bought the patent out and threatened his life if he spilled the beans.

As if the steam engine was something new. The same people assert that Einstein Edison, Gates, etc. have/had ADHD if I bring that up. Like they're the same thing.

So Clevenger's character having savant characteristics is something that ought to irritate me, but he does it so beautifully. John Dolan Vincent has all the hallmarks of legitimate autistic spectrum problems coupled with a gift that (in the Greek tradition) is both his strength and his downfall.

I won't detail all the things Clevenger nailed, read the book. 'Contortionist's Handbook,' Craig Clevenger, MacAdam/Cage 2002. Trade paperback $12.50 retail, you can get it at Amazon for $10, so if you get a $25 total going for the free shipping you can get it pretty cheap. And it's a great debut, maybe the best first novel of the past five years or more.

But John Dolan Vincent also has six fingers on his left hand. His father was too broke/cheap to have it removed surgically when he was a baby, asking the doctor 'how do you know which one is the extra one,' without kidding. When John would get his ass kicked by other kids over being 'spider hand,' his Dad shrugged it off asking, how do you know the rest of us don't have enough (fingers)?

The book fascinated me so much I went on a polydactyly kick. As narrator John Vincent tells us int he book, a perfect extra digit in people is almost unheard of, 'except in some house cats.' He adds, 'With cats it's cute. With people, It's Not Polite to Stare.'



So I did this 'vodka' ad, originally as a lithograph. I have access at work to an HP Indigo digital press, so as along as I don't get carried away I can usually run a one-out print of something cool out. The stock we run isn't as heavy as I'd like for cards, but I've done some proud birthday cards and make my own business cards that way.

I put it up on the original Lobster Land site as a fake ad, as if Chernobyl Vodka was sponsoring us. I linked it to the Kid of Speed site, which is both fascinating and depressing. Most people get the size of the glass, that the woman is drinking vodka in her bathrobe like any Ukranian PTA Mom. They sometimes pick up on the logo over the reactor towers. They're U.S. reactor towers, I'm pretty sure, from a stock photo service, but the log is the actual Chernobyl Electric Company logo. And what people seem to miss is the extra finger on the model. I was very careful with it, but maybe too careful. It's one of those things that you can't quit noticing when you've seen it. You can't see online, I don't think, but where you'd expect a ® registered trademark, I used the biohazard symbol. Also, in addition to the proof, I listed the pC/li (the radioactivity) of the vodka.

I also did a six fingered hand for an avatar at some message boards (the Cult, the Velvet). Those sites draw a disproportionate number of people who've read the Clevenger book, so it went over pretty well there.



So of course I had to drag my family into it, creating a quadtych (is that what you'd call a triptych with four panels?). The effect isn't as carefully done here, but hopefully it's good enough for my blog.



A friend asked why Frau Lobster isn't more prominently represented in photographs on my blog, and basically it's because most of the time I try to take her picture, she sticks that six fingered hand in the way. She's not as hung up about it as Thomas Pynchon or anything like that, she just doesn't think she's photogenic (she is). I ofer the quadtych as evidence, even though you mostly see her lovely six-fingered hand...

As for the rest of my fam, you would think a kid with a hand like this would stick with the piano, but no such luck. She's shown some interest in the guitar lately, and I can't think this would be a handicap...



In other news, I forgot what I was going to say. And yeah, this is probably riddled iwth txpos, but I'm too tired and apathetic to fix it.

Oh, and not to make you feel like Big Brother is watching you or any of that, I use StatCounter to find out how many people are coming to Lobster Land, so I also stuck it on my blog. The Langa List got me a lot of hits with the original Lobster Land site, but no one stuck around.

So far, it appears that almost all my readers here are friends I already knew. Some are also bloggers, some are fellow Cultists, some I'm not 100% sure of. Is the ISP that shows up from Sunnyvale, CA on a regular basis who I think it is? I can think of two, one is an ubermod, one a former employee... Don't worry, I won't blow your cover. Its embarrassing enough that I write this shit, I won't rat you out for reading it.

I spent all that money and effort on developing Lobster Land and it sucks. The average visit (according to StatCounter) is less than five seconds and I don't get repeat visitors. My blog, which I assumed no one would ever read, has already generated a respectable number of hits on its own, and a lot of repeat visitors. Which bears out Max Barry's idea that a blog is better than a static site because it's not the same every day.