(no subject)

So, I realize Halloween is over and you guys may be out of the market for spooky, but in case you're not:

BBC Radio made a pretty cool audio adaptation of The Stone Tape and you can listen to it streaming for the rest of the month. And you totally should, because it's pretty great.

What is The Stone Tape, you may be asking? Originally, it was a made-for-tv BBC movie, written by Nigel Kneale, so you know it's going to be gorgeously unsettling sci-fi/horror. It concerns a team of researchers, set up in an old Victorian mansion, trying to develop a new recording medium. They discover that the house is haunted - the basement room occasionally contains a woman in Victorian dress who screams, runs up a set of stairs, and falls to her death. The head of the research team decides that this vision is itself a recording and the focus of the team's research shifts to investigating it. It is one of the best examples of cosmic horror I've ever seen filmed and it's wonderful.

And now there's a radio drama version! I like the audio version, and it's free right now (so you can start with that), but it's not quite as good as the original movie for two reasons. One of them deals with the climax of the story, and that shouldn't be spoiled, so don't click the cut unless you've seen it. ( spoilers )

Despite those two things, this is a fun and properly unsettling radio play. Highly recommended.

(no subject)

Yesterday, we had four very tall teenage boys walk into the children's library at Bainbridge and ask if we could lend them some ribbon. They had some papers they rolled up to look like a scroll and wanted to tie it so it would look more official. We gave them some blue ribbon and we asked what it was. They told us it was a Declaration, so we asked if they were overthrowing some kind of tyrannical regime and they said yes and then left.

I have so many questions.