In the spirit of Halloween, Jill and I watched a vintage Japanese sci-fi flick last night: Gamera, the Invicible. It’s about a giant prehistoric turtle awakened from its eon-long underground slumber by a wayward atomic bomb. From the 1950-70s, Japanese sci-fi showed an understandable obsession with the atomic bomb — starting with Godzilla, in 1956. In Japanese movies, the bomb didn’t create monsters, it just woke them up. But their monsters are not at all monstrous by American standards. A giant turtle? A giant moth (”Mothra”)? The difference between their monsters and ours grows from the Japanese’s deep and complicated relationship with natural things.

Japanese sci-fi has NEVER strived for convincing special effects. Their monsters are always stunt men in rubber suits cavorting through miniature sets made of painted paper and balsa wood. That’s part of the pleasure in watching them. Gamera, the angry prehistoric turtle, stands improbably, amazingly, on his hind legs as he wreaks havoc. He flies too! And spits fire!

American monsters have always been about killing and eating humans. Japanese monsters only start out irritated by meddlings humans, but then these monsters often turn friendly towards humans (part of that long and compicated realtionship with natural things that the Japanese have). And THEN these monsters get distracted by other monsters and leave the humans alone (a turn of events that we may attribute to Japan’s irrepressible optimism). In his sequels, Gamera goes on to fight 1) Barugon, 2) Goas, 3) Guiron, and 4) Zigra. Whew! This tag-team wrestling scenario — monster vs. monster — modeled a successful formula followed years later by to the popular Transformers franchise. Not surprisingly, Transformers first came to the U.S. as toys from Japan in the 1980s.

This monster-versus-monster formula was well worn by the late 1960s and gave rise to the lampoon “Bambi meets Godzilla,” popularly known as “Bambi Versus Godzilla,” made by then-art-student Marv Newland and now in the pantheon of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time: Bambi Meets Godzilla.

Which brings us to another Japanese sci-fi diistinction: the Japanese never kill their monsters! They’ll imprison a monster or thwart it somehow (sending it back to the bottom of the sea) or exile it (send it into outer space). But they won’t kill it — beacuse the Japanese are pacifists. Which is a stark contrast to the way Americans treat their monsters. The most heart-breaking American monster movie is 20 Million Miles to Earth, about a Venutian alien (a kind of lizard beast) that turns violent after it is abused by everyone that comes across it. We kill the monster before understanding what it is or what it might have taught us. (Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation in this film is brilliant, by the way.)

I enjoy Japanese sci-fi, in part, for the window on Japan during a heady time of growth: by the 1960s Japan had become America’s little alien cousin, seen by Americans as a harmless mimicker of American culture and a feckless makeer of cheap consumer goods. Woody Alien’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) underscores how laughable the Japanese seemed to Americans, whio believed that the Japanese couldn’t do anything right, especially when they tried to do things the Westerners did, like make spy movies. Their sci-fi movies seemed to prove the point best of all.

In fact, most Japanese sci-fi were not allowed to stand on their own. They had to be intercut with American scenes to make the stories palatable to American viewers. This practice started with Godzilla, which starred Raymond Burr just before he was made famous for his TV role as Perry Mason. in Gamera, the Japanese story is intercut mostly with scenes in an American military command center, where American officers stare at radar screens and field reports about Gamera’s hijinks.

But look at the hip Japanese journalist, with his Roy Orbison shades and mod ‘do. Dig his shark skin suit and jet-setting style. And watch for the jaw-dropping sexism as the American General asks Sergeant Embers, a woman, to get him some coffee. And, of course, wait for it: Gamera doing a kind of shimmy-and-shake dance as he strides forward to trample all that paper and balsa wood.

Click here for the official Gamera theme song

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I’ve been online a lot recently, looking for hardware and equipment to outfit the Houselove van — the van I’m converting into a camper for my book tour next summer, to promote From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. Converting the van is a big project because it’s got to have everything in it—from kitchen sink to toilet, solar panels to fog lights.

So, in looking for equipment — specifically, an inverter (changes DC to AC power) — I came across this curious collection of photographs depicting attractive Chinese women regarding hardware in a provocative way. What makes these images notable is that the women are staring at inverters. Not drills. Not big machinery. Not your typical cheesecake fare. The effect is kind of bizarre.

On the one hand, it seems an indicator of where China is in the capitalistic mix: they’re still learning. They get the gist of the advertising ploy but not the heart and soul of it. It’s kind of cute, really. Yeah, I know, it’s easy to be condescneding to the new kid who doesn’t know the local slang.

On the other hand, it’s no joke. China has followed the West — with a large stride — into big-time prosperity and it’s trying on everything we Westernes tried on, including our sexist attitudes about what makes women look best: strip ‘em down, place a big car next to them — or a little electronic gadget — and you’ve got gold!

The objectification of women isn’t China’s doing. These Chinese manufacturers are carrying on a practice that goes back a long way. Sure, we can point to the Greeks. Or pick on the Rennaisance Italians and their depictions of the Madonna — depictions that got quite sensual as time went on. But here’s my question: when did Western culture decide that women and tools go well together? Probably the early 20th century when heavy industry was in full swing and men had enough leisure and money to indulge in this fantasy. Most likely, it was a fantasy that caught fire during World War II, when the American military painted pin-ups on the sides of bombers. The combination of nearly naked women blazoned on weapons of mass destruction was, apparently, irresistible.

The legacy of that practice is widespread and incredibly hard to discourage. What’s with the silhouettes of naked women on truck mudflaps, for example? I never understood it. Do the drivers of these vehicles think that, by advertising their lust in this way, they can somehow attract a woman to satisfy their announced desire? It’s bizarre, when you think about. The only conclusion I can draw is that the silhouette of a naked women is talismanic — a primitive form of magic that certain men cherish in the wild hope that it will bring good luck (i.e., naked women) their way. It seems to come down to this: the naked, or nearly naked, woman as decoration — whether on a mudflap or beside a voltage inverter — is never just about the naked or nearly naked woman. It’s about certain kinds of aspirations that run deep, deep in the male psyche. It’s about acquisition and dreams of success and the fervent hope for miracles.

Never mind that no man would want his sister or mother or wife to be depicted on a mudflap. That’s the disconnect — because it doesn’t have to do with people, it has to do with something wholly unreal and unattainable. So that’s why, when I go online looking for tools and electronic equipment, I find . . . nearly naked women. Some part of me is amused and vaguely distracted and then disturbed by this, and I have to reminded myself that this magical, overly wrought, highly fraught image is more about the psychological history of men than about who they think women really are.

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I just got the cover art for my forthcoming book, From Animal House to Our House: a Love Story, and it’s great. Despite the old adage, “you can’t judge a book by . . .,” probably no single factor affects a book’s reception more than the book cover. This applies even to the tiny thumbnail images that must represent our books online. If you’ve tried to find a good photo of yourself for your Facebook page, you know what I’m talking about. Shrinking any image to that small a size presents all kinds of problems. I sent in a photo of myself to a publication not long ago and thought it looked fine until I saw it in print — thumbnail size. Whereas I looked like I had the start of a smile in the large, original photo, I looked kind of dour and thoroughly unsmiling in the thumbnail version. The shrunken photo had lost all of the subtlety found in the large one.

If you’re old enough to remember vinyl record albums before they became collector’s items, then you remember their glorious one-foot-square cover art. Record albums covers, with liner notes on the back, mimicked books. This was most clear in the gatefold design that allowed you to open the album like a book, offering many pages of text, photos, and lyrics. Back in the heyday of record albums (1966-80), you’d get a book of notes and lyrics, a photo spread, maybe even individual loose photos, and sometimes a poster. All of that changed with the advent of the CD in the 1990s, when album art shrunk to a 4 x 4″ size. Designers and producers still tried to give buyers a booklet of lyrics in many albums, but those little booklets got lost easily and their miniscule print was hard to read.

The art changed too. It had to because the small format demanded a more striking image that could be seen well — and vividly — at a glance. This was just one step away from the ubiquitous thumnail that now stands in for cover art on albums, books, and everything else. The online environment demands miniaturaization. Recently, when I put my first e-book on Amazon, I had to reconfigure the cover art several time to get it right and still it didn’t look right because I couldn’t include the full image of the portrait I used — it had to be headshots but the headshots didn’t convey the full atmosphere of the photo. It’s likely that we’re going to have to post alternative covers for our books online because the online environment just can’t capture what a full-sized book cover can. A book that has a lot of text on the cover, like the one for From Animal House to Our House, kind of loses definition as a thumbnail.

The point here is that the book — the physical artifact that we’ve lived with and revered for many centuries — has lost its place as an influential model of design. The computer is the new frame for all things visual. Soon it may be “hand-helds,” like phones, that dominate design. I don’t derive any pleasure from squinting at my smart phone’s tiny screen. It’s like trying to view the world through a peephole. This will change, of course. Phone screens will become a bit bigger and graphic formatting will be designed especially for those small screens. But there’s not a lot of joy in images that small. And what are you going to do with, say, a graphic novel on your smart phone? I guess we’ll figure it out. One possibility is that, along with your download, you get an extra — a big, sumptious version of the cover art, which then you can feed into your big screen TV.

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About a month ago, I switched from PC to Mac. I’d been wanting to do this for years, but the expense and hassle of changing over prevented me. Mac users have told me that the switch would change my life. I wanted to believe them. Hearing Mac users describe Apple’s completely “intuitive” OS platform is like hearing born-agains rapsodize about finding God. I’m not saying Mac users are wrong, I’m only saying that they are sometimes too starry-eyed. The OS platform is hardly more intuitive than the PC platform. It just comes down to what you’re used to. I’m not used to Mac. I’ve been using PCs for 20 years. So, even now, after a month of using my amazing I-Mac, I’m not completely comfortable.

Is Mac better than PC? The answer isn’t a slam dunk “yes.”

PCs are cheap — about a third the cost of a Mac. But Macs last a long time. PCs break easily. PCs get tons of viruses; Macs don’t. And PC software — especially Microsoft products — are notoriously buggy.

Also, Macs have incredibly good design, which means 1) they come with sealed keyboards — no more crumbs and cat hair and dust under your keys. 2) Mac integrates everything in a single unit — the desktop screen. Which means no more heavy tower and no more tangle of cords under the desk. This is a major convenience.

The big difference in quality between the Mac and the PC is that Mac thoroughly develops its hardware and software before putting it on the market. Microsoft (which owns the lion’s share of the PC market) doesn’t test its products well. If you tried Microsoft’s Vista, you know what I mean. Vista was a set of sloppy programming that consumers had to trouble shoot and test out and document all of the flaws until Microsoft could develop a better program, which it did eventually, calling it Windows 7. I don’t appreciate playing the guinea pig when I have serious computing to do. Microsoft should give away half the crap it makes.

In short, Macs computers are made of iron, while PCs are made of cardboard. But you gotta pay for that.

Still, I love how a double click in a PC opens just about anything. Macs make you click into a menu for “open.”

The biggest usability problem with Macs? The type fonts are universally too small. Icons and text on a Mac make me squint. There’s no easy way to enlarge them. No, you can’t go into “preferences” and make your screen read these larger. The only thing you can do in a Mac is scroll for a close up. But, when you do that, you lose your menu bars. It sucks. And Apple refuses to make changes because it says THIS is how the screen is supposed to look. Ever-sloppy PCs distort the view, but in this case PCs get it right.

The main reason I moved to Mac is that the Mac is wicked fast and consistently reliable, especially for heavy use programs, like video editing. I can’t tell you how many times I crashed my PC trying to edit video. Macs i-Movie is an excellent, flexible program.

And Microsoft products? Don’t make me laugh. Microsoft’s internet browser, Explorer, is — hands-down — the worst browser on the market. If you build websites like I do, you find this out the hard way because your newly constructed website will look great in Firefox, Chrome, Netscape, and everything else EXCEPT Explorer. One way or another, Explorer will mess up your formatting or make images disappear or in a hundred other ways make your life miserable. Then you have to go back and find out how to format your website so that it can accommodate Explorer’s numerous quirks. It’s maddening.

The hardest thing to get used to on a Mac is that it “floats” its programs. That means you have multiple windows open at once and you can see them all, stacked like a messy deck of cards. PCs, on the other hand, fill the screen with one program at a time. You can’t fill a Mac screen with any single program; you actually have to work hard to get an approximation of this. This means that, in a Mac, your menu bar for any particular program is ALWAYS at the top of the screen, not at the top of the page/window you’re working in. If you’re not careful and click off the window, you’ve floated some other program’s menu bar to the top of the screen. I like the PC way of putting the menu bar on the page/window you’re working with — you have less distance to travel to get your menu and you know exactly where it is.

As you have heard, there are no viruses or spyware or malware on Macs. Why? It’s simply not worth the cyberpunk’s time to fiddle with Macs because the number of Mac users is miniscule compared to the number of PC users. Also, Apple’s OS system is bult like a tank, apparently. So, when you move to a Mac, it’s like throwing away your condoms. No more worries of that sort.

There are LOTS of great PC programs that you can NOT get on Mac. I’ve lost two of my favorites in the switch and I’m still grieving about it. Mac wants you to use its well-developed suite of software but sometimes I’m not a team player like that. Sometimes I want to use a quirky litle program that does a limited set of things really well. I don’t want to fire up Apple’s “Garage Band” when all I want to do is shorten an Mp3. I don’t want to import my photos into i-Photo, which will vet them for other i-functions but will make you go through various, time-consuming steps to do so. I just want to dump my photos into a folder and deal with them later.

One of PC’s many weaknesses is that its file structure is like the catacombs of a Byzantine cathedral. Have you ever tried to retrieve a missing download from “temp” files in a PC? Oh my god! You might as well apply for a secret password, strap on a miner’s helmet, and take week’s supply of food before you go spelunking into that PC void. Did you know that PC makes some files “invisible” to protect you from yourself? Big Brother PC thinks you might erase or move vital files so it just makes them disappear. That’s why you can’t find your “temp” folder.

Fascistic thinking like that has made the PC platform a pain, sometimes on a daily basis. Mac is transparent. To find any missing file, Mac gives you a search box at the top of your screen. It’s amazing how fast it locates every file or folder associated with the data you’re seeking. Ever try to search missing file on a PC? You might as well go mow the lawn and paint the house while you wait for the search to end. Apple first pointed up Microsoft’s dictorial, overly-convoluted PC world back in 1984 with the ground-breaking Big Brother ad campaign. It’s beautifully done. If you’ve never seen it, see it now: Apple’s Big Brother Ad

In recent years Apple has been going after Microsoft by showing a hip, wise-cracking Apple kid making fun of a frumpy actor who looks like Bill Gates. Here are some examples: Mac disses PC. The choice is clear: you want to be young, quick, and smart like Apple or unimaginative, rigid, and old like Microsoft? Microsoft has been fighting back of late with its Windows 7, which shows young pretty people living a hip life made hipper, apparently, by the PC. In one ad Microsoft says, “We’re just getting started” as if it’s trying to make good on a long un-met promise — which, really, is the truth. Microsoft has used its consumers poorly. Consumers have put put up with it because the PC products and hardware were cheap and easy to replace.

I have one issue to take up with my fellow Mac users: you’ve got to be more honest about Macs! They are not the be-all and end-all of computers. They’re great but not perfect. I have never, ever, heard a long-time Mac user say anything negative about a Mac. They simply refuse, kind of the way the early Christians chose to facethe lions instead of giving any quarter on the question of their one true God. I appreciate loyalty but not at the expensive of a clear-eyed view of the world.

A friend asked me just this week if he should move from PC to Mac. The move isn’t fast and easy. It might not be worth the hassle for him. That said, I’m not going back to PC. It’d be like going back to an abusive relationship. Mac seems to respect me as a computer user. And I like how, sometimes when I least expect it, Mac brings me flowers.

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I’ve just posted my first (self-published) e-book on Kindle. It wasn’t easy. You’d think that all you’d have to do is format your text, maybe turn it into a PDF, and then upload it, right? No, no, no.

All would-be Kindle texts have to submit themselves to a Kindle converter. The Kindle e-format is not the same as your word processing format or your PDF format or, really, anything you have in your computer. In order to make your book readable on Kindle, you have to format it in a certain way so that the Kindle format machine (like Capt. Kirk’s transporter) can convert it without harm.

Without harm? Try uploading a PDF into the Kindle converter and it turns it into spaghetti. Same with a Word document. Same with a Text. Same with epub. Oh, my, I spent many hours fiddling with formats to see which one the Kindle converter would accept. I should add that I was trying to include images. A world of trouble!

Worse, the current generation of e-book readers do not accept all e-book formats. The Kindle won’t share with the Nook. The Nook won’t share with Kindle. However, both readers have some overlap. The Kindle 2 or 3 and the Nook read PDFs (the Kindle 1 does not).


Now here’s the frustrating thing: the Kindle 2 or 3 can read PDFs but you can’t upload a PDF to make a Kindle book. Does that make sense? Don’t let me geek out on you with further formatting facts and failures. Suffice it to say that, as we are in the infancy of e-books and their readers (the e-incunabula), nothing is standardized. It’s all unbelievably crude, like being in the Model-T era of automobiles. Eventually, the competing e-publishers are going to have to settle down and get along. But right now, it’s chaos out there.

The result is that, if you hope to publish an e-book yourself, you either have to be something of a techie or you have to hire help. That’s why we see so much growth in the e-publishing industry as new companies specialize in formatting e-books so that writers can upload them to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever. Formatting is critically important, obviously, because who wants to read a book that looks like a chimp put together?

A word of caution to the eager, would-be e-book authors: the e-book market is no less crowded than the hard-copy market. I have no idea how anybody is going to find my little e-book on amazon. Here’s the link: Nana Gragg’s Long Journey Home

E-book publication makes sense if
a) you’re a well-known author (check out the Kindle store and you’ll see some big names self-publishing stuff);
b) you’ve got something that is too short for traditional publishing — something equivalent to a nonfiction chapbook, for instance (that’s me);
c) you feel you have no other options and you’re willing to promote your e-book;
d) and/or you’re part of this brave new world, like Kevin Fanning, who resides exclusively in the e-universe.

I’m trying to get into the Kindles Shorts market. But there’s a submission process. First you have to self-publish the short you would submit.


I bought a Kindle just to test out the technology and, really, to see how the e-book version of my illustrated novel, Kiss Me, Stranger, looks. It looks good enough but far from ideal. As it stands, you could format a fabulously lovely e-book on your computer but no e-reader on the market is ready to do it justice. To get the clarity of color and the fidelity of format, you still need to place the text in a computer — that’s what the I-pad does. It’s a notebook computer, not an e-reader.

After many hours of testing out conversions, here’s what I’ve learned if you’re interested in publishing a text with images:
1) Kindle and its ilk are PC friendly. Use a PC to format.
2) Use (free) MobiPocket program for your final conversion.
3) Prepare the text for Mobi in MS Word 2003 (I know, I know); the current Mobi doesn’t accept .docx!
4) Do not indent. Do not tab. Do not space.
5) Hard return at the end of every paragraph.
6) Use only one space after periods.
7) Use tiff format for images, not jpegs.
Place the images between paragraphs. Do not embed them.
9) If you want images framed, you have to do it in your image editor before you place them in your document.

Ready?

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