Some Like It Hot

I’m reading Kraken, by China Miéville. One of my favorite novels, I think. All about an occult London underground of wizard unions and scabs, witch gangs, squid worshipping fundamentalists, sync cops, angels of memory, familiars on strike, and an Architeuthis specimen that goes missing from the London Natural History Museum, which just might cause the End of the World - by fire.

One character is a powerful wizard named Grisamentum, and when I read that word I couldn’t help but think of Grissom - Gus Grissom - the astronaut who died by fire inside the Apollo 1 space capsule on 1/27/67, and fathered the NASA moon hoax meme.

“Every knacker in London did some work for him at some point or other. And it was you behind that spectacular send-off. The funeral. Great fire. The cremation.” ~Kraken

That Firebird

Grisamentum, having an incurable blood disease, arranged his own funeral, by fire. A professor of pyrotechnics, name of Cole, did the job. As it turns out, Cole was married to a Djinn, which in Kraken, is associated with the element of fire (and yes, it's a pun).

Which brings us to Larry Hagman, recently deceased. In fact, he died on November 23, the same day JFK died, after being shot in Dallas on the 22nd. “Who shot J.R.?” was the famous line from the Dallas TV series, starring Larry Hagman, or as I like to call him, the hanged man.

The thing about Larry is that he played astronaut Tony Nelson, who married a Djinn in I Dream of Jeannie. Fortunately, we never saw the offspring of such a marriage in the TV series, but it makes me wonder...