tommyknockers

[Bluey Lunger]

no good at titles but this is about tommyknockers. does anyone have an opinion why sk used last names for his characters in this story? coming up on the ending, a re-read, and on this pass, i noticed that anderson and gardener have become bobbi and gard (they've opened the hatch).

there's a great quote in this story: and i believe that happiness is the exact opposite of sadness, bitterness, and hatred: happiness should remain unexamined as long as possible. i think victor the cat came up with this one. my notes are fuzzy.

there's some stuff about free will in this one, like in some of his other stories.
bobbi says something about it in those words, free will, concerning the main action of the story, the dig. some phrases happen in the story, as in others, preordained course from bad to worse. do we have free will? or is there some little guy up on titan pushing buttons, pulling strings, all to get a part for his spaceship?

and another thing: did sk ever break a ming vase in the course of his travels? there's another one broke here, in this story, like in so many others. john leandro, after his bout with the coke machine--the front of leandro's skull shattered like a ming vase hurled onto the floor. maybe sk is carrying around a big duffel bag of guilt over breaking his mom's vase, or something? and so we got all these stories? happens a lot, 'salem's lot, duma key, only there it wasn't a ming vase, just a regular old vase, and i think tom broke that one.

another great quote, this one to do with the interior: tomorrowland, it seemed, ended up being an empty place where people smart enough to capture the stars got mad and tore each other to shreds with the claws on their feet.

yea, verily.

[Bluey Lunger]

on that free will thingy again. (if you haven't read the story, why are you here?) anyway, that lester moran (wonder if he's related to that moran that ruth had a run-in w/earlier in the story?)...was he in the story to suggest a lack of free will? he wanted to see the fire. look where it got him. free will sure is a bothersome subject. guess we'd like to think we have free will, do this, do that, do whatever. i imagine we've all wondered who's pulling the strings at times though, right? lester: the truth was he was behaving like a lunatic. and he could no more stop himself than a junkie can stop himself when he sees his fix cooking in the spoon.

and i guess this next applies to the way bobbi started once she tripped over the thingy. how could you not go on? when you have a chance---a once-in-a-lifetime chance---to see something like that, how could you not?

it'd be cool if david brown, hilly as well, showed up in part iii, talisman/blackhouse.