Interesting things in the hall today

I think I need a new occasional feature: "Things of interest in the hall today". Having this much contact with the general public means being exposed to the occasional oddity. Some things of interest I've seen in the last week or three:

- Exhausted father pushing his kids in a stroller, trying to sing "Hakuna Matata" to them, but with the lines out of order and out of tune, and some of them made up. ("Hakuna Matata - it means no worries; Hakuna Matata - what a wonderful phrase; Hakuna Matata - We're going to go there")

- A child stalking through the bathroom, pounding each door, and chanting "hate myself, hate myself, hate myself". (I feel like I should have done something about this one, but I haven't the foggiest idea what.)

- A guy who was at least seven feet tall. I saw him on the far side of the gallery, walking with a friend, and thought that he was tall and his friend was short until I got closer and realized the friend was taller than I am. (And I'm reasonably tall for a woman.) It's just that the guy was That Tall.

- A small child with a cape and a wizard's staff. (There's no special event today. He clearly just wanted to wear his cape to the museum. Really, really cute.)

Add another one

There's a parent looking for their child in one of the halls. The child's name is apparently "Surrender".

...?!?

Overanalysis

So I just finished Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. Being fairly unfamiliar with horror, I was oblivious to the fact that this was a famous horror author, and didn't really manage to figure out what genre I was reading until over halfway through the book.

I find myself rather annoyed now, at the end. It took some thought to figure out what it was that annoyed me so much about the book, but I think I've put my finger on it. The author did exactly what people who hate and don't understand fantasy complain about: he made a world where anything could happen.

( Spoilers, in case you care )

So yeah. I'm not a huge fan of horror, and maybe I'm just not being sympathetic to the tropes and I'm as bad as people who complain about fantasy and science fiction for being themselves. And I can certainly say that on a line-by-line basis, the author's quite good - excellent word choice, great building of characters in a few strokes. But the more I think about the construction of the plot, the more irritated I get.