Seeking "fluffy" entertainment

I hope the world hasn't broken me from being able to enjoy mystery novels.

Some months back, I had to put aside J. Jefferson Farjeon's "Seven Dead," both because it had mention of a "Suicide Club" (presumably: a group of people interested in ending their lives, who gathered to plan how to do it, and the last meeting....well, you can imagine) and also had a subplot of someone being pursued by someone mysterious but presumably menacing.

More recently, I started "The 12.30 from Croydon" (AKA "Willful and Premeditated," which I guess was the original title used in the first US publication). This is sort of an inverted mystery: instead of "someone is dead, we don't know who did or or sometimes how they did it, and the detective is in a race against time to use his/her intellect to figure it out," it's a "here is the murder happening...and here are the thoughts and feelings and actions of the murderer leading up to it, and immediately after." So you are inside the mind of the murderer, and I find it very claustrophobic and nightmarish. As I noted before: I have nightmares about *inadvertently* injuring or killing someone (like: someone runs out in front of my car and I do not have enough time to stop to avoid hitting them). The thought of planning it, and justifying it to yourself (presumably the perpetrator operates heavily along Utilitarian lines: "This old man is a mean, terrible, stingy person. If he would just die and I inherit his money, look at how many people (though mainly me) would be helped by it!" And I admit, I see strains in our culture that seem to hint at "maybe we should consider getting rid of the Useless People" and as soon as you define anyone as Useless, we are probably all in danger of being defined so - whether the person in question is a disabled individual, or someone who is well past retirement age, or a small child, or....well, you could keep on going.

So yeah, I had to put it aside.

The other night, taking a warm bath to try to help with the injured muscle, I pulled out one of my paperbacks of short mystery stories and read one at random. I might have read it before but forgotten it, I don't know. Anyway, it started with the mysterious disappearance of a woman in the night - she and her daughter were traveling, she seemed to be taken ill, the daughter tried to arrange for medical care for her mother, but wound up being taken on a wild goose chase....and when she returned, her mother was gone from the hotel (they were traveling back home from Palermo) and everyone acted like "no, she has never been here at all." Even the room they were in - when they finally let the girl back in - looks very different.

So, the working hypothesis that the detective develops: Aha, Palermo. The woman, like many British women, is a bit of a political busybody and she somehow irritated one of the Mafia leaders, and they have had her kidnapped. And so they operate on that idea - that the hotel staff in Paris have been intimidated into silence, and that the "doctor" was a fake, a plant, designed to help carry off the scheme, and...

And then it ends, deeply unsatisfyingly. It turns out the girl's mother contracted plague in Palermo, and this being the early 20th century, there is no treatment. The mother was spirited off to a distant hospital, the room was deep-cleaned and redecorated in order to eliminate any fleas that might be lurking, and the mother died in the hospital while everyone else was chasing after the Mafia hypothesis. And she was buried in a pauper's grave, presumably because no one knew who she was.

So there's closure, but it's upsetting closure: yes, the daughter is safe (didn't get the plague), but she never got to say goodbye to her mother. There is no "bad guy" to be caught and punished (how do you put a disease on trial?) and so there isn't the satisfaction of seeing justice done or things somehow "restored" - which is one of the big satisfactions for me of reading detective stories; the idea that "right" (at least, in the sense of justice and order) wins in the end because the detective figures out who did it. And there's also the satisfaction in most of these stories that the murder (or theft, or kidnapping) is a rare incident and there is a *reason* it happened - the greed of the person (wanting something they cannot have), or revenge, or someone who is jealous or angry. And so, you can kind of say to yourself: well, that won't happen to me. ("I'm a college professor. I am not, by American standards, rich, so no one would really want to rob me. And I don't have a wealthy family so no one would hold me for ransom. And I'm not involved in love-triangles, so I can't wind up the target of a jealous lover") Because too much of the world feels random, and like, even if you try to live your life in a circumspect way, you might still find yourself being shot in the Kroger because some random dude had a random beef and decided to start shooting.

And this story subverted all that: why was that particular woman unlucky enough to get bitten by a flea carrying plague, and her immune system unable to fight it off? That's too much like the stuff that happens in real life to be anything like entertainment for me. (I wanted it to be: yes, she had been kidnapped, but in an exciting showdown, the detective finds and rescues her, and she and her daughter are happily reunited).

So yeah. And I need something happier and fluffier right now, where nothing too terrible happens to anyone or if it does, it's brief and it passes and the ending of the story is happy.

As I opined on Twitter: I have *never* been a fan of romance novels, but maybe I have to pivot to those for a while. (And yes, I know: not all romance is light and fluffy and nice. But I think Georgette Heyer would be fairly safe and I know I have one or two of her Regencies somewhere on my bookshelves)

Also I have to be careful with tv right now. The other night I was watching a re-run of "The Incredible Dr. Pol" and it was one where a young reindeer at a reindeer farm dies. And the kindly, quiet owner of the farm, who has nursed this reindeer, and seen her rally, and hoped for her.... after she dies, he gets up out of the pen, and walks away, and quietly but dejectedly says "Damn it" and he's trying not to cry, and that just *killed* me. I think it's worse for me when I see someone I think is quiet and stoic being overcome by emotion - it's like, I get the impression "wow, this is extra bad if THAT person is reacting that way" (unlike someone like, say, me, who can at times cry at the drop of a hat). And then I saw a re-run of "House, MD" where again, the patient seemed like he was probably going to die, and I just didn't need that right then.

Part of it is just I'm in one of my periodic cycles of looking at the foolishness that humans seem able to get up to, and being frustrated by it. Part of it is the circular-firing-squad nature of our culture in The Era of Social Media.  Part of it is the fact that every human being everywhere is deeply flawed in some specific way, but the narrative now is that you must be as pure as newborn Baby Jesus in order to be worth anything in the world, and for every person trying to do good, there's at least one more waiting to find fault or point out their flaws.

And, yeah, yeah, I admit: I fall into that trap because I want people to be better than they are. But I try to look at the balance of a person's actions, and not, for example, declare Guy Fieri "Bad" because his restaurants are kind of hokey. Instead, I look at all the times he fed people who got burned out of their homes in wildfires, and how he seems to be genuinely enthusiastic and nice to the restaurant owners he visits (and I've read that some restaurants saw a huge pick-up in business after his visit, and that can't be bad: being a small restauranteur is hard, and lots of restaurants fail)

But anyway. I need some fluffier nicer lighter things. Both to read and to watch. (I need to continue with Season 2 of "The Good Place." It's not perhaps perfectly fluffy, but it's nicer than a lot of things).

I also occasionally watch a rather silly cartoon that just happens to come on during what is often a "dead time" on the tv. (Like last night: I would *normally* watch NCIS, even if it's a re-run, but the CBS Powers That Be have decided instead to run a version of "'Celebrity' Big Brother" (scare quotes around "celebrity" intentional) featuring some of the more-abrasive D-listers that are out there and a lot of has-beens (Kato Kaelin? Are they serious? What is this, 1995?)

Anyway. Definitely not my cup of tea because: manufactured abrasiveness and drama PLUS people getting attention because they want attention (famous for being famous, some of them). And I admit, the "getting attention" angle is part of what irritates me a little. Because I want attention (well, not like that, no) but I often feel like I don't get it. Yes, I know and on some level accepted that my lot in life is to labor in obscurity, and try to make things a little better for no thanks or no recognition, but....it's nice to have someone to talk to, once in a while.)

Instead, I watched a silly thing on Boomerang. I've been watching it off and on but at one point I thought "Geez, they must have made like only eight episodes of this, because I've seen each one several times" but now it seems they've gone into a new season, so...

Anyway, it's called "Bunnicula." Not to be confused with the book series of the same name (though it draws on that for inspiration.) I vaguely remember the books, I think they were out just about the time I was moving from "juvenile" fiction to "young adult" fiction (a hard transition, because...yeah, there was a lot of really "pointy" stuff in the young adult section). But I'm aware of them.

One of the big differences with the cartoon is it's 100% slapstick. It's NOT scary or creepy - oh, there are things that in-universe are scary and creepy, but to the viewers, they are just funny and silly (yes, even for many children, I think. I would not have found the show scary at all when I was a child).

It's mostly focused on the three animals: Chester, who is a Siamese cat, Harold, a dog (probably mixed breed; he is just that "random cartoon dog" shape), and then Bunnicula: who was Dracula's pet rabbit and is therefore immortal, and who vampirizes vegetables (which give him different weird powers).

Chester and Harold belong to Mina. Mina and her dad (there is no mom in the picture; it is not clear if (a) she's dead, (b) she and Mina's dad are divorced and she wants nothing to do with her kid, or (c) Mina's dad was always a single parent, like, somehow Mina is adopted) live in an apartment house he inherited from an aunt in New Orleans. Mina's dad is...odd. Kind of a sad-sack, and a lot of times he acts more immature than the 13-year-old Mina (that is the one thing I dislike about the show; I hate the trope of "wise children and foolish adults")

There's some....interesting....voice talents there. Chris Kattan (yes, that Chris Kattan) does Bunnicula and supposedly he does Mina's dad, too, though it doesn't sound like him. And Chester is voiced by Sean Astin (yes, that Sean Astin, and at first I had to check to see who Chester's voice was because he sounded very much like Curtis Armstrong in his "Dan Vs." (another cartoon I enjoyed) mode). 

Anyway. It's very much a gag-oriented show; different episodes have different set-ups (e.g., the guinea pig who was once Renfrew to Bunnicula decides Chester must be banished to some kind of a pit). They always end more-or-less happily: order is restored, the characters all laugh, Mina hugs her pets. Problems are resolved in about 11 minutes....

And yes, it's kind of silly and maybe forgettable, but it's entertaining and it's *nice*. Yes, Bunnicula is a vampire but he's not *really* evil; he is mainly interested in seeing that Mina is happy (and maybe gently dunking on Chester, who kind of has the annoying-hipster role, sort of the Squidward Tentacles role, to cross the cartoon streams). Harold is just a dog: he's not too bright but he loves everyone and he wants people to be happy. Though once in a while, he does Gracie-Allen-logic a solution to a problem.

Mostly the "issues" involve either friction between Chester and Bunnicula or Chester and Harold, or some kind of goofy supernatural being is causing problems around the Orlock Apartments, or Mina or her dad has some kind of problem the pets try to intervene in. It's obviously a kid-oriented cartoon, and I like that: I like some things that are definitely made to be "for kids" because they are restful and there's no need to be angsty or seem "hip" or anything like that.

(Ironically, I caught a few minutes of the re-run of the Bob's Burgers "Equestronauts" episode later in the evening and yeah, am reminded how (a small number of) adults can "ruin" something that was originally intended for kids by either forcing too much "ironic enjoyment" or bringing some kind of weird "adult" (in the sense of "adult themes") dimension into it.)

But yeah. Am just feeling very worn and frustrated at humanity recently. And so I admit, if I had a chance to, I don't know, be an anthropomorphic owl living in a tree outside the Orlock and getting to talk to Harold once in a while, or being a Pony in the Pony-world, or being something like a little Beatrix Potter creature living under a hedgerow and eating hazelnuts and making rose-hip tea, I'd take that chance.