We took Deaglan to the fair today, at my mother in law's insistance. She left us some money and we got a little more and took him. We had fun, but I learned that no matter how hard you try to save money, you're gonna get ripped off at one of those things, so go ahead and blow the twenty bucks on the wrist band to ride the rides all day. And when you walk past the guys running the carnival games, you get the same feeling you get when you walk down a street that has a bunch of tattoo artists or prostitutes or strip clubs. They bark at you relentlessly until you give them money. And you get tired of coming up with excuses so you just smile at them and keep walking.
So now for an update on my self-flagellation. I just read the book Choke by Chuckie Fight Club (A nickname that is even more apropos than I thought, because of the three non-fight club books of his I've read and the other three I am working on, all of them say "Author of Fight Club" on the cover. Which proves my plan to be even more genius: write one thing a lot of people like and that makes a lot of money and I can stop trying.). I actually liked this book. The main character was both self aware and retarded enough to be likeable, so it came off as funny instead of just sad. I just started Haunted, and the first story, entitled Guts, is the one he claims makes people faint (73 according to the afterward of the book, which I'm sure has increased since the book was released.). So this morning I got a cup of coffee, a cigarette and stood on the balcony and was prepared to be disappointed...and almost had to stop halfway through a nine page short story. Yeah...it didn't disappoint. I haven't been able to read any more today....but I'm not sure I want to.
I guess I'm starting to get why people like him so much. The thing is though, he isn't coming up with this stuff himself: he claims to know people who have told him stories that he incorporates into his tales and he just expands on. This isn't the sign of a good writer: it's getting a fan base together strickly for the purpose of plagarism. At least I'm not miserable.
I lost the USB drive that has all of my music and writings on it. I hope I find it soon...though I think I left it at the Warsaw IPFW, and the ladies haven't seen it. That doesn't speak well of my chances. Problem is the story I started is on it. Figures.
It has been postulated by my wife that I am insane. The reasons are numerous, and in many cases, correct. She saw that I had reserved, checked out or Interlibrary Loaned every one of Chuck Palahniuk’s (hereby forever referred to as “Chucky Fight Club”) books. In this case, I can see her point, and I feel the need to write about my reasons, beyond being muy loco, because I am trying to understand my motivations. Why do I feel compelled, almost addicted, to reading these terrible novels? If left to read the reviews I give alone, one would postulate that I hate these books. Add in the fact that I have no reason to read them, why would I do this to myself?
Maybe Chucky Fight Club is a male version of reading the Twilight series.
Point one: For as terrible as they are, and I will probably point this out again and again, Chucky Fight Club can spin a nihilist phrase as well, if not better, than anyone. Almost all of the books I’ve read so far have at least one sentence that sticks hard. Point one, subsection A: he also reads fairly quickly, so I’m out a total of twelve to fifteen days suffering through his books.
Point two: He’s considered a satirist, a comic writer, though I’ve yet to see proof. I guess if you mean a fucked up human being writing about really fucked up peoples, than yeah, he’s funny. Consider it me scoping the market. A lot of people really dig his books, though no one I know has read them.
Point three: I’m also reading Carl Hiaasen this summer. And he’s so good I have trouble writing my own name after one of his books.
I think three points does the trick. If I think of more reasons…I’ll ignore them. I’m a masochist. Aha, thought of another one: I’m ruining these books for people, so no one will ever have to read them, ever. And lately hating Ann Coulter has been too easy. (So if you want to read this author, consider this the spoiler warning.)
PS I’m not reading his books in any order because as far as I know, his stories are all stand alones and he doesn’t have any reoccurring characters, like Chris Moore or Hiaasen. Also, I should note that I’ve also read a few interviews with the author. The one in Playboy made him seem pretentious, but those interviews always do. In Writer’s Digest, however, he did state that he knows a lot of better writers than him who weren’t persistent enough to get published. Good advice.
Lullaby is about a journalist who discovers a “culling poem” in a book of nursery rhymes when he does an investigative piece on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Other than the fact that the narrator has the same voice as the first person from Fight Club, and he has “pent up anger” so he can recite the poem in his head and kill someone on the radio (really?), this book is actually one of the more believable stories he’s written. Even considering it involves spells from a witch’s book of spells.
Quote: “There are worst things you can do to the ones you love than kill them.”
Things that bother me:
The book starts off very cool: introducing us to one of the main characters, a real estate broker who sells haunted homes over and over. When the people realize that there is a floating head in the middle of the living room and the bathroom is sweating blood, they don’t want to live there anymore, so she gets to sell the house again. However, half way through the book, as they’re traversing the country trying to find the copies of this poem, she states she doesn’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife. So, a book of spells is plausible but disembodied spirits and heaven and hell are crazy talk?
At another point in the book, the real estate agent and the journalist attend a Wiccan coven meeting. They’ve both lost a child to the culling poem: her, a daughter, him a son. I won’t venture how accurate the portrayal of the coven was, but we’re introduced to the real estate agent’s secretary and her boyfriend (a guy named Oyster, who is one of the most annoying motherfuckers ever described. You know the guys who can find oppression and hatred in everything you say? He’s that guy. He was a character that you hated but read every word because you’ve had drinks with this asshole, and Chucky must have either been there or was him.). Our journalist narrator focuses on Oyster’s pierced penis and the way his girlfriend’s strong back muscles morph into her firm ass. Later as they travel, he compares themselves to the family that they couldn’t have…Oyster the son, and his girl the daughter, them as parents. But he’s still focused on their nude bodies in an almost incestual way. I almost put the book down here.
And why does his injured foot spit out model pieces?
The book had an interesting twist, but I had to warn Bran off of it because of the climatic scene at the end. Of the ones I’ve read so far, this one was the best put together.
Rant: An Oral History of Buster Casey was advertised on the jacket to be about the progenitor of a huge modern rabies epidemic. (Quote: “What if reality is just a disease?”) It’s told in the tradition of an oral history, so it’s a bunch of different characters telling snippets of stories about Rant Casey, with their professions/relationship to the deceased after their name. I suffered through some pretty gross things to get through this book. It actually got weirder and weirder as the story went along, and I kept going back to the beginning as things got explained, like who this person was, or what this thing meant. (There are a group of people who are listed as Party Crashers, for example) Not usually a bad thing…until…
This will be a huge spoiler because I have no idea what else to say.
Chucky Fight Club said in an interview he just writes to keep his workshop members interested. That being said, why didn’t someone stand up after reading this book and say, “Let me get this straight: If you have rabies, and you enter a Zen state while driving, then crash and burn as hard as you can, you can travel through time? And if you fuck your grandma, you get superhuman powers? And you randomly put some Matrix neck ports for absolutely no reason other than to add a few extra pages?”
Now, in fairness to how incredibly fucking retarded that sounds, Chucky Fight Club works his ass off making that seem like it was thought out and researched: talk of theta waves and some kind of special time. But…uh, really?
And that fact completely overshadowed everything else about the story that disturbed me. Oh, and one of the characters names was Tina Something. Seriously.
Up ahead: I have Choke, which was made into a movie and Chris Moore described on his website as laugh out loud funny and the most approachable of his books. We’ll see. I have Haunted: A Novel of Stories, which I’m guessing is like The Illustrated Man, only sick. There’s a story in there called Guts, which I’ve heard that when he reads this story aloud at his signings, people actually faint. Some laugh out loud, but others pass the fuck out. I’ll be sad if it doesn’t live up to the hype. A nonfiction book he wrote is in at the library through ILL called Stranger than Fiction. How witty. And his newest novel, whose concept started this whole torture session, called Pygmy, is also waiting for us at the library. This book is a story told from the point of view of a terrorist who hates our country.
Now I’m going to go and try to figure out something funny to write. And read something good.
So the other day I was discussing movies with some coworkers and I mentioned that Fight Club is a personal favorite of mine. But then I said that it was one of the first and only times I can honestly say that the movie was better than the book. In most circles that I frequent, this is like saying the name of God backwards and pissing on a Koran while sketching Mohammad (peace be upon him) recieving a handjob from Kali. The reaction from my redneck coworkers was "There's a book? Based on the movie right?"
So beyond making me hate the fact that I'm the smartest person I work with, I got to thinking about why I didn't like the book. Was it because I liked the movie so much? Was it the fact that so many of the guys I ran around with at the time were almost religiously devoted to the book? Was it the fact that i read it stoned?
So after reading an interview with Chuck P about his new book, Pygmy, which sounds good, I decided to reread Fight Club. After I finished it, I took notes, so for posterity, if I ever wonder, here's my list. Comparisons with the movie will abound, and if you've not read or seen, prepare to be spoiled. But once again, don't waste a day. Waste two hours. The movie is awesome.
PROS:
It is a quick read, once you get used to the way he writes. At times, it's even facinating, in an Anarchist Cookbook with a plot kind of way. And some of the things that are said are brilliant. And this is why the movie is so good, because it basically takes all the best lines and leaves all the crap behind.
CONS:
And now to tear this book a new one. One of the things that make this author interesting is how dark the situations he writes about can be and how perverse the characters are. It is both a tribute and a curse, because as I read it, I have trouble letting go of how almost unbelievable everything was.
The book also does a terrible job of making Tyler Durden a hallucination (spoiler..oops. Since I'm ruining it, the main character is an insomniac who hates his life, and Tyler is an aspect of his personality that takes over while he's asleep.). In the book it feels tacked on, like it was something he thought of at the end and decided to try to edit his work to make it happen.
The narrator rambles through the first two thirds of the book. And even though Tyler is supposed to be a hallucination, an unnamed mechanic has the exact same voice as Tyler, and is as impassioned an opponent to the unnamed narrator as Tyler is. To me this feels entirely too convienient, and ruins any scene he's in. To me it's as if he wanted to have an opponent, but had written himself in a corner with his revelation. (This character is not in the movie. The movie makes the split personality work by flashing scenes that happened with Brad Pitt as only happening with Ed Norton.)
Now some questions about the ending of the novel. These are without context and unexplained. Sorry.
Why wasn't he castrated? Why did shooting himself work when getting the shit beat out of him didn't? How was he able to talk if he bit off half his tongue?
I also have decided that a lot of this authors money comes from people who want to love his nilistic, perverse universe where no one is as important as the main character. So yes, I disliked this book.
and sadly I have found myself addicted. I read Lullyby. He's like eating gas station food. You know it's bad for you, and it's possible it was prepared by someone with unclean hands, but you've been drinking or it's late and you don't want to put the effort or money into finding good food. Yes the main character of lullyby was basically the same voice as the main character of Fight Club. But it starts off describing a realitor who sells haunted houses over and over. so he get's better as a writer, but he's still gas station food.
"Yes, I'm up," I said, hitting the snooze bar and lying back down.
"I'm up too." Deaglan runs away. I roll over.
a smell fills the air. There is a loud beeping noise. Brandi groggily asks, "Is that smoke alarm?" The smoke alarm answers.
I say, "Shit," and run into the kitchen. Smoke is pouring out of the microwave like it's auditioning for the part of a fog machine at a rave. I open the microwave and start throwing water in, trying to get the smoke to stop. There are flames. The alarm keeps roaring. Brandi runs to the living room window and opens them, trying to get a breeze. Deaglan sits in front of the TV, remote in hand. He turns the volume up, so he can hear Dora over the commotion.
Turns out that Deaglan was hungry. He pulled a six inch sub out of the fridge that we had left over from the last trip to Subway. It was still in the wax paper when he threw it in the microwave and pushed the three button approximately thirty times.
The smell was horrid, and pervasive, and hidden in the cabinets. We had to throw out towels, clean up the water, and buy a new microwave. They make them with child locks now.
I have a couple of longer posts that I want to write about, but I either haven't finished writing them at home or I forgot my notes. One thing I'll be writing on is an essay called "The Simple Art of Murder", which is an essay on mystery stories by Raymond Chandler (he rips them a new one, it'll be good). Another is a long review of Fight Club, which I really like the movie to and have been saying for a while how much I disliked the book. I decided to reread it and I'll write my reasoning in the next posting. I'm hoping Bran will either read the book or watch the movie before I do, as there will be spoilers (which is okay because if you haven't read it you shouldn't bother. Just rent the movie. Fincher did a better job with it than the author did.) I'm gonna read more of Chuck P. (you spell his last name. I fucking dare you. Psycho fan).
Corwin is a beautiful child. He smells funny, but he's still a beautiful child. He certainly doesn't deserve the beatings he recieved from his little brother, though he could use a little toughening up. Also, he serves as a reminder about how bad something is. He is hitting puberty, and has the beginnings of armpit hair and other less armpitty hair. He is unable to be potty trained. Various smells seem fairly tame in comparison to a preteen's dirty pullup.
Cute things Deaglan is saying now:
"I a good helper"
"Dammit"
"Bastard" (you're judging me aren't you?)
"I do that, all day." (watch tv, eat, sleep, whatever.)
"I'll do it, okay?"
"I go pee."
"You hurt me" (no we didn't, okay, but it was an accident.)
"Quesadilla" (Pronounced kay-ka-dee-uh.) usually also in conjunction with how much he likes "Kahko Bell"
"Calm down, okay?" (he says this out of the blue and for no reason, and also like you just got done killing a mime.)
anything related to his new booster seat, as he's now big enough to move from the seat that could take a shelling attack to the one that is basically a phone book with an armrest.
"I robot" *said with a monotone* (he's taken the box our new microwave came in and started pretending to be a robot.)
He also calls us "Mommydada" as though we are a collective entity. He calls Bran "Momma" or "Mommy", me "Dada" and he calls my mother-in-law "Mom". Argue and he will point out that there is a phonetic distinction between the two. I encourage this because it's really funny.
Sorry for the child info onto the internet. A lot of the other things I want to write about are works in progress as I said.
Oh, and I want to write a comedy. Think I could?
I did get the new Robert B Parker YA novel the other day from the library (Chasing the Bear.) It's Spenser telling his longtime love, Susan, about his childhood, and seemingly focusing on a story of when he was fourteen and his friend was kidnapped by her drunk and abusive father. I like it so far, but I have a question: if you are taking a character that you have successfully written approximately eight million adult novels about (and they are adult, full of sex and violence and cursing) and you decide to write a YA novel using him, what is the reasoning behind it? I'm sure some ideas come to you, but here are some of mine thus far.
Firstly, the idea that you are trying to introduce the character to younger readers so it will create a new generation of fans, Great. I was even expecting a little of the who are you? rehashing that happens sometimes in series. But I've read about the first quarter of the book and there isn't really anything that identifies who Spenser is or has been. The first two scenes are expansions of stories that have already been told in the series, and I expected that. But there really isn't much that says, "Hey, My name is Spenser and I'm a detective in Boston, blah blah blah." As a long time fan, I guess this is a good thing, but then it brings me to question two: if you are writing the book as a gift to longtime Spenser fans, why not write an adult novel? Was it a story he wanted to tell and after it was written his publisher decided it would get shifted to the YA dept?
I'll probably have deeper thoughts on this after I finish it tonight. (I stayed up last night and reread his first two YA novels, Edenville Owls and The Boxer and the Spy). or I won't. It was two in the morning when I started it, so I may reread the beginning again. it's not very long, and new spenser stories only come out twice a year.
Alright, nothing exciting happened in the last week, although I've been fighting with Bran for the last day and a half. My fault, I don't know how to balance between stupidly patient and disfiguringly pissed off. And I both love and hate passive aggression.
I fought through the book Alternating Worlds by Gary Wolf. I posted this to Librarything:
I recieved this book along with high praise from my wife. Let me say first of all: I thought that it was a good tale. I also want to say that it would have been better if it had been written differently.
The back of the book has a lot of high minded speech about how much of a sophisticate the main character is, and how he's discovered a situation where people have to choose between a life of creativity or a life of simplicity. If you can read the back of the book, do so, but allow me to point out that that's not what the stories about. Maybe it's the advertiser in me, but a better way to describe the story is that the hero discovers a plot from a neighboring planet to spread their creepy religion across the galaxy, and the galaxy is dumb enough to let them, because it appeals to something in them. But there are people who would stand in the way, hence our good guys. Normally I don't even read the description because it ruins the story, and in this case, it was trying to make the story much more pretentious than what it actually was.
It was an interesting universe that Mr. Wolf created. I wish he would have spent more time showing it to me, instead of telling me about it. The book could have been half as long if he wouldn't have repeated himself by using exposition to explain events and then have the characters converse about the same events and not give any new information.
I have given this book three stars strictly on how creepy I thought the alternance cycle was. I don't want to inject my personal bias into this review, because if you are like me and aren't interested in architecture and art and interior design then you may find this book difficult to get through.
Now for more. The first two characters you meet are Jensen and Graham Rhode(?) and Jensen is basically a puppet. I actually hated this book. Not hated, but really didn't like it enough to ever want anyone else to read it. I thought it was full of pretention and the writing was pretty mediocre. If a trained editor, or just a tough minded person like myself or the Japanese speaking Caucasion had helped him the story would have been amazing. So I guess I wrote the review out of potential, because I don't want the guy to not make a buck because of me. He appreciated Bran's glowing review, I doubt he'll be trying to get me to put mine on amazon.
I reread Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer because it is the community Big Read this year, and I try to read the community book each year (note to self: must read Grapes of Wrath no matter how little I really want to. then I can say I've done it all three years I've known about it.) Last year was The Great Gatsby which I love, and I truly enjoyed Tom Sawyer. I didn't when I had to read it for school however. Maybe there's hope for me yet.The Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz lost me a lot of sleep last night. I was up until six in the morning, and then I laid awake for a half an hour pondering the adventures of Izzie and Henry and Rae and all the rest. It was an incredibly funny book, and a scene at the end where Izzy and Henry are trying to teach Rae a lesson, but it doesn't work out had me laughing out loud. Lutz is about as funny as Chris Moore would be if Chris Moore didn't have the word "fucktard" or the phrase "heinous fuckery most foul" in his vocabulary. It's the kind of book that makes me look at the scenes I've written and thought, what am I doing? Oh, did I mention that she uses footnotes? So a Terry Pratchett comparison is inevitable. I would call her the Terry Pratchett of the PI novel, except she's not really parodying anything. her world is original and fucked up.
I'm making myself read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn right now. We'll see how long it takes me to read. I like it so far. The fact that I actually picked it up at all is a good sign, because I repeatedly grab nonfiction books that I know I really want to read and loose interest almost immediately, or suffer through a few chapters before giving up. (list of books in the last year I've given up on: What's the Matter with Kansas?, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Street Gang: A complete History of Sesame Street, A Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism.) It's not that I don't want to read more nonfiction or even that any of those books weren't compelling. Some of it is school (it's hard to concentrate on a subject matter that's not the subject you're supposed to be studying) and some of it I swear is ADD. When I read fiction, I don't desire to put it down and read the myriod of magazines we have delivered. Nonfiction makes me remember that I haven't finished the newspaper. I'm hooked on this one, and it's too big for me to put down. Bragging rights when i take it to wal-mart tomorrow to read on my breaks, and then hopefully have it finished a few days later (suck it people who read one book a year and it's about fishing!). Pure ego. (I love that they think I'm the smartest person they've ever met.)
Anyway, enough on that. I also got to see the new Star Trek, and I want to say that at the end I was in tears because it didn't suck! i was convinced it would be a terrible movie because the two guys who wrote Transformers wrote the screenplay. And the director said he wasn't a Star Trek fan. But this one was very good. It was actually cool enough that I would recommend it to anyone who wasn't a longtime Trekkie, because it looked neat.
Oh, and I won a copy of Everyone's Guide to Atoms, Einstein, and the Universe by Robert Piccioni from the LT Member's Giveaway. John 2, Bran approximately four million.
I have read some good books. My mind works a certain way. I get a magazine from the warsaw library every month called Bookpage, and it lets me know what is out there. it's helped me find some interesting books thus far. I actually read a book it reviewed called Spade & Archer, the author I forget, which was actually a good prequel to Dashell Hammet's The Maltese Falcon. (If you were ever forced to read a mystery in your life [say Agatha Christie?], and it has turned you off, then you need to read Dashell Hammet or Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's the difference between Tolkien and Rowling. Hammet and Chandler have been copied to death, but the original has never been topped.) The parenthesis being said, the author of the prequel did a good job of capturing Hammet's voice, and showing how Sam Spade ended up the way he was by the time the original came around. Good plotting, but Archer was such a miniscule amount of the novel that it should have just been called Spade, or Spade and Ellie (Ellie is one of the best characters in either novel...Spade's secretary and the only girl he doesn't try to seduce)
I stumbled upon this interview a month or so ago, and decided to check out the first one. There are three reasons 1) she's really good looking 2) the penmenship joke 3) the fact that she drinks whiskey. These are terrible reasons for picking up an author I realize this. I almost read a Stephanie Meyer book because of a bookpage interview (thanks to my only other friend on lj for the save on that one). But in this case I made a good choice. The books are amazing. The first is called The Spellman Files. It is about Isabel Spellman, who works for her parents, has a perfect older brother, and a crazy, sugar junkie little sister. The family business is private investigating. The book was hilarious. I can't even begin to say all the things that were great about this book. It wasn't actually as much of a mystery as it was a family comedy. But the humor was mostly the way it's told, from the point of view of Izzy, who is a lot like my wife if my wife were a private detective living in San Francisco and her father was cool (relatively speaking). There is a bit of a mystery, but it's almost a subplot. The first book was almost put together like a series of short stories that tye together at the end, but not quite. Also, it ended much differently than I thought it would. I devoured the first one, tore threw the second (Revenge of the Spellmans) and put the third on hold (it was due today but wasn't back yet....*tear*) I have since discovered the third, Curse of the Spellmans, has been nominated for an Edgar, which means that if it's better than the first two, my lungs will melt from the pure awesome. It'll be like I looked into the ark of the covenant.
Dope came to Fort Wayne on Saturday with the band Soil, and it was an amazing show. We spent about eighty dollars on alcohol, since it was at Piere's. (I kept buying girly shots off the hot shot girls. Shame I'm immune to girly shit huh?) It was a great show, even though I thought it would be a longer set than what it turned out to be. Fucking rock stars though. they said that they wanted to party and they hung out in the VIP room all night. I stood next to the bassist, who is about four foot tall, and the lead singer walked past me on his way to his private party. Fuck them. There music is awesome but I have too much pride to hope to touch the hem of thier gown like they're actually important or something.
So that's what's up. In August, we're going to see Blue Oyster cult open for alice cooper in south bend with Terri, her boyfriend Gary and Yolanda. More later.
Fat Chance. i'm writing this bitch.
I'm a little terrified about finding time to get online, but it's not like it's something I can straight forget about. It may change to a once a week thing, but it won't be more than that.
Random thought. I wonder if the girls who are important to me know that I do like Tori Amos? I may have fooled them with my lack of love for other chick artists. But I do. And not just because she looks like an exgirlfriend of mine. Which I look at fondly, because that's as close as I ever got to banging a celebrity.
I will be reading a lot of PI novels this summer, to get the right tone. But I want to read Know-it-All by A.J. Jacobs, and reread Suzanne Collin's collected works, and there's a new Western waiting for me at the library right now. Plus the plethora of Early Reviewer books that Bran has recieved. i want to read those and put my two cents in on Librarything.
I just know that summer will go by too quick.
Oh and my picture is a painting that Jason made me for December. I love it more than I think even he knows. Though maybe he does. I wish I knew how to post it bigger, but maybe Bran can put it on Photobucket or something.
- Music:8stops7 "Esteem"
Unfortunately, the book is awesome.
This is a book about a zombie named Andy. Killed in a car crash, recently resurrected for unknown reasons, he joins a community of zombies in Southern California and all around the world who are treated as nonhumans. Despised by family and friends, food thrown at him, and the risk of public dismemberment hanging over his every action, the main character tries to assimilate. Imagine an American Ghandi without a working circulatory system.
When I was told that this was a comedy, I wasn't expecting as much depth to the character as there was. I wasn't expecting the main character to have a daughter he can't see for instance, or to be unable to communicate efficiently for most of the book. Yes, there are pop culture jokes in it and gore (it is a horror story after all), but the strangest thing to me was I wasn't horrified by the zombies, but by the actions of the Breathers themselves. Andy's voice is as human as anyone's, all the way to the end. It's terrifying to be a zombie, but not because your skin is peeling off, but because of the way you're treated. The author does a great job giving just enough background to make the world seem realistic without weighing the story down with unnecessary history lessons. He did his research, but there isn't ever an info dump, he just tells you what you need to know to understand either why something happens or to create context. The writing is thoughtful, and funny and easy to read.
The only thing preventing the fifth star is that it starts at one point in the story, then flashes back and catches up with itself halfway through the book, and it stays in present tense the whole time. This is a distraction to me. I'm not sure if that would bother anyone else, but it's my review and it bothers the hell out of me.
Anyway, I would have bought this book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes dark humor. Let me just point out: If you open the book and read the first chapter, you will read the whole book. and when you read chapter 37, you will go out and buy the book, even if you've already bought it once. It is good.
The book has a website: www.undeadanonymous.com There is a video for a zombie antidepressant that I didn't actually find as funny as the rest of the book. I don't really like author's pages that try to be a continuation of the books content, because as with this one, it ends up a rehash of stuff i've already paid for.
But anyway, read the book. I saw on his site that the books been optioned for film. (what book hasn't been. that's my goal. Write a book that gets optioned for a lot of money and then have it sit on a shelf for ten years.) I'll be watching for this author.
Anyway, Brandi and I have gone to two lectures and a play in the last week and a half. One for credit, one for extra credit, and one because, if you know us, and your reading this so, duh, you do, you'd be there too.
Firstly, we went to see the play The Diviners as put on by the IPFW theater department. This one was for our Fundamentals of Performance class. We saw it on opening night, and I had to write a reaction paper, so I'm not going to review it. It was a good play. it was funny, and at the end it was sad. It was also a little pretentious at the beginning and the end, but what do i know? I'm not a theater artist. The story takes place in Zion, Indiana in the 1920s. Little things make me laugh. On the front of the program it says that "The statements made by the playwrite are their own and IPFW does not endorse or condemn any statement made by the performers." Standard stuff really. But in the play a character makes fun of Herbert Hoover, who is universally considered one of the worse presidents ever, only slightly beating out Harrison.
IPFW takes no stance on the presidency of Herbert Hoover. That's funny.
We went on Monday, April 20 to a church in downtown Fort Wayne to see a lady named Jaimie Zimron talk about Aikido at the behest of our Religions of the East professor, Dr. Spath. (He's a super nice guy, great teacher, but he grades papers like he's weeding out applicants for Yale. Ten rare points of extra credit and I'd have gone to a Yoko Ono concert.) He walked right up to us when we got there, shook my hand and gave Brandi a big hug and said, "I'm a lot more fun outside of class. Thanks for coming." It was an interesting lecture. Of all the martial arts I've witnessed, I wasn't familiar with Aikido, so that was a learning experience. Her work involves teaching Aikido as a form of citizen diplomacy. She's Jewish, and she's trying to teach Aikido in Isreal to both Jews and Palistinians in a bottom up kind of peacemaking effort. i wish she would have talked more about the history of the conflicts, but she did talk about her awakening to the injustice that the Isrealies are propogating against the Palestinian people. The group our prof is executive director of, and that sponsered the lecture is called the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace. Who knew we had one of those? But that's why she didn't dumb down the lecture, so i guess I couldn't blame her. She got us some info after the lecture and she moved like a ninja on Ridalin.
And then today we went to see Sandra Day O'Conner, first female Supreme Court Justice and blah blah blah. It was a facinating lecture. Very serious. but there is a dirty little secret that I have to admit...other than her biography, I DIDN'T LEARN A DAMN THING. Maybe it's the intense civitas class from the Academy (haha not first semester) or Intro to Criminal Justice from Ball State (it's easy to make fun of BSU but I had to learn like 50 court cases in that class) or the fact that I'm very politically savvy, but nope, didn't learn a lot. It was interesting to hear her speak, and I only disagreed with her once. She talked a little about the Supreme Court decision that allowed the US government to round up Asian Americans during WWII, and referenced a dissenting opinion that said that decision was a weapon waiting to be used to further single out a group of citizens. She said that thankfully it hasn't been used. My arguement would be that the court never used that decision, and so far the memos from the previous administration don't show that it was referenced, but I am fairly sure I've heard it referenced by Fox News in defence of Guantanamo, as well as by other people who take a really long view on civil liberty. As in, statistically speaking, most of us are free, so we're a free country. We'll fix it tomorrow for the next generation. But what do I know, I'm not a former Justice or even a lawyer.
Afterwards, there was a Q&A, and looking back, it was hilarious. She was funny from time to time. I like her style, very brisk and to the point. No bullshit. But she also lawyered up a lot. "I'm not familiar with that case." "I don't know enough about that subject to answer." (that was in reference to a LGBT question, in which she wasn't familiar with the initials.) One gentleman did ask the question I would have asked if I hadn't been so sure about the answer, which I was right. "Are we prosecuting torturers from the US and do we live in a country that tortures?"
Her answer was "We don't anymore, and I don't know." I was right.
But to the hilarious. There were a lot of women's studies majors in the audience, and O god. I've seen gay porn, and I've never seen anyone suck someone's dick like some of these girls were sucking Ms. O'Conner's. One girl actually was holding a notebook like she had been taking notes and spent two minutes complimenting her choice of words. And where Ms. O'Conner had made fun of a dude who complimented her (just a little), she thanked the girl and moved on. Craziness.
All in all, an interesting week of events. next on the horizon, Dope and Soil at Piere's on May 17, long after our myriad of papers and dialogues are finished. Thank God.
- Mood:
hungry
I work with a guy named Matt. When I first started, I didn't like him. I thought he was lazy, unneccessarily aggressive, full of shit. He went to college for automotive, but as he put it "he was teaching the teachers", so he quit. I still have my doubts. He is, however, the best friend of my friend Paul, who writes country music, and has a good singing voice, and nice hair, and so since he and I have a lot in common, Matt and I became friends. He's actually not too bad of a person once you get past the really, really annoying exterior. He is getting screwed by Wal-mart, and I'm sure a bit of it is because he doesn't quite know how to shut the fuck up at the right time (butt kissing is not a bad thing, when it's strategic).
Well, it turns out that this loud mouthed redneck likes to read. He says that when he was in school he'd get grounded from everything, but his parents couldn't take his books away when he was in his room. His favorite author is Louis L'Amour. He has like all one hundred plus books of his. Well, he tells me the only book he's missing is his book of poetry, a book called Smoke From This Altar. I promised him if I ever found it I'd buy it and he could reimburse me, and then I forgot about it for about six months.
He must not have looked too hard, or I have mad skills (probably both). I found the book in about ten minutes, and for a good price. Since I was ordering books anyway (I now have the enire Gregor the Overlander series) I got it for him, and he's gonna pay me tomorrow. It's a short book, and I read it last night. It is really good. I've never dived too deeply into western literature, but if his poetry is any indication of his skill, I need to. His widow added some additional poems, and one is called "I've Haven't Read Gone with the Wind". Any reader can sympathize with this poem, whether it's about Margaret Mitchell or not. And he has another poem called "My Three Friends" which felt more like an Edgar Allan Poe tale than a writer of westerns. He knows his shit. I'm going to photocopy several poems out of the book tonight, so those who want later can read some of these.
Oh, and here's a new piece of news I discovered that makes me happy: Eve 6 is back on Tour! and working on a new album, even though they're not signed! (I had a huge man crush on the lead singer because I love the way they use language) What made me laugh was they have over half a million friends on Facebook, but only sold 190,000 copies of their last album (All In Your Head). If all those "friends" had bought the damn album, I wouldn't have spent the last five years digging a band that didn't exist anymore.
- Music:eve 6 "enemy"
For my final scene I'm paired off with an older lady who is willing to put the work in. And I get to do the final scene from the play "Doubt." Yes friends, I will be playing a priest who buggers a teenage boy. Woo! I get to be angry and then broken. This will be fun.
I'll be reading a lot of private investigator things in the weeks to come because I've come to the decision that if I'm going to write the things I really want to write, I have to be able to create the components. So if I want to write a good fantasy/mystery, then I have to master each individually. Most of the combo stuff I read is fluff, and it's only okay on either front. I want to write a book that is a good private eye story, but is also a good fantasy novel (or sci fi). So I'm starting with a straight PI story. And i actually managed to start something that gets right to the point. Wanna read it? If not, skip this next part. I won't post all of it, but this is the start that I wrote, and I really like it.
The rain was pounding against the roof of the van like the middle of a metal concert. The wipers were incompetent against the deluge, but it didn’t stop Jessica’s mom from barreling full steam down US 30 towards Warsaw. Jessica didn’t mind, because she was back in Indiana, and there wasn’t anything she wanted to see.
“I hate Indiana. I hate the weather. It’s cold one day and freaking hot the next. Floods, tornados, blizzards. All proof positive that God hates this state.”
“At least there aren’t any hurricanes or earthquakes,” her mom, Carol, said. Carol looked a lot like the eighties version of Florence Henderson, on purpose.
“Does the newspaper still suck?” Jessica asked.
Carol nodded.
“Still three days behind on local news stories, neglecting national news and pushing a freakishly right wing agenda?”
Carol nodded again.
Jessica groaned. “And I bet they act like they’re a persecuted minority. God, I hate all the hypocritical, red state, conservative, one issue voting, supposed Christian douches that live here.”
“The state went blue for Obama,” Carol said.
“Barely. Every illiterate redneck, white bread, unwashed Hoosier listening to NASCAR and country can kiss my skinny white ass.”
“You’re getting worked up dear. And I know a lot of people who can read. Some can even sign their own names.”
“Racist, homophobic, ignorant, foul-smelling douche bags. It’s all chewing tobacco and ditch weed. I hate it here. I couldn’t wait to leave for college, and I’ll be glad to be leaving in three months.”
Carol risked a quick glance at her daughter. “If you hate it so much,” she said, “then why’d you come home?”
Jessica returned the look and smiled. “I missed you guys.”
Once they were in Warsaw the sun tore through the clouds. It continued to rain, but it’s heart wasn’t in it, with the sun micromanaging everything. At a stoplight just before the hospital they turned left onto Spring Hill Road. As Carol maneuvered the curves towards Jessica’s childhood home, she asked, “So do you have any plans?”
Jessica sat up. She ran her hands through her short, dyed blonde hair. “I don’t know. Probably be bored. Drink a lot. Heckle churches. I’ll keep entertained somehow. Maybe I’ll get a job.”
They arrived home. In the front yard by the driveway was a large decorative boulder that Jessica used to jump off when she was several feet shorter. Sitting on it in the rain was a man she hadn’t seen in five years. As they pulled into the driveway, she caught his eyes. The man she knew wasn’t all there.
Carol noticed him too. “Do you know him?” She pulled into the garage and parked. She looked behind her. The man continued to sit and stare at the road.
Worry and sadness ran through Jessica. “It’s been a while. Wait here, Mom.” She got out of the van and walked into the rain. At the end of the driveway she said, “Hello, Jeremy.”
“I saw on your Facebook page that you’d be home today. I don’t have your number anymore, so I thought I’d wait here. I hope you don’t mind.”
“The number’s in the phonebook.”
“Remember when you and Natalie were in high school and your dad wouldn’t give you your messages?”
“Neither parent gives me messages, still. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t come home for the funeral.”
“You were in Asia. I didn’t expect you. But that is why I’m here.”
“You’re not here to catch up?”
Jeremy shook his head, and looked at her. “No. I’m here because I want to give you $80,000 to find out who killed us.”
Well, the first year i went, then year two I skipped, and this year they decided to schedule everyone a time to take the survey.
The meeting was a presurvey brainwashing. i guess management has gotten buttraped by previous surveys, and since the afore mentioned cock nuggets don't actually know anything other than our store number and location, they don't like our numbers. So Gary met with us and attempted to convince us of why we want to answer in a positive way. Now, i don't want to cast too many negative aspersions about Gary as a person. He is the GM of a Walmart, and I think he knows everyone's name that works there, and he's pretty nice. But I am railing against the brainwashing. He went over six of the questions. One of the questions was "I would recommend a friend work here." No, I wouldn't, but we had to discuss why we would want them to. I shut my mouth because the only answer I had was, "Half of the employees are idiots, including management, and my friends are smart. oh and see previous rant." Another was "I rarely think about working anywhere else." And it was here that I realized I was sitting in a room with about twelve people whose sole ambition is to move up through the ranks of walmart. I raised my hand and pointed out that I was majoring in English, and that I highly doubted that I'd have an oppurtunity to teach English Literature at walmart, so the question wasn't fair. Gary actually rallied and told me there are teaching positions in the company (we just opened a Walmart University, oh yes.) I wasn't sold. Next question: "it would take a lot to get me to leave Walmart." And this is what hurt the most. Gary defined the word "alot" for us. In a fit of Clintonian logic, he pointed out that finding another job is difficult, and no matter how good it is, it might not last. And that the three years I have left in my degree, in his mind, qualifies as alot. I tried to tell him that if I could get a job doing anything with my degree I'd leave in a heartbeat, but then the pressure of having a family to support appeared before me in ghost form and punched me in the throat, and I couldn't respond. Would I be willing to leave a job I hate for a cut in pay? Yes, but obviously not enough to shout it from the roof tops or go searching for it. So in deference to being mindfucked, I answered that one "Agree." But almost all the rest of my answers were negative. "Do you hold positive feelings for walmart as a company?" "Are you proud of the impact that Walmart has on your community?"
I felt like a whore who had been raped, trying to justify it as just another day at the job. But everytime I let them fuck me for money, I'm gonna think about all the ways i'm fucked for free.
First of all, my wife and I are taking an Introduction to Performance class, and our current assignment is a monologue. Since we're supposed to read the entire play and do a character analysis, I had the thought that we would choose plays and then pick our monologues from them. But my wife had a Good Student Moment and went to the monologue section of the library. Since I'm essentially whipped, I picked a couple of books and found one I loved, from a play called "Pancake Tuesday" by Lindsay Price. Brandi picked one and then couldn't locate the play. I looked all over the interweb, checked Ms. Price's website, Amazon, you name it, couldn't locate a copy of my play. Brandi had to pick out a new play. Would I?
So I emailed Ms. Price and said, "I need to read the play. I want to read the play. I'm willing to send you money. Help?"(I'm paraphrasing.) She responded a few hours later with a very nice letter explaining why I couldn't find the play on her site, and sent me a PDF. And it is really a funny play. If you see a play by her somewhere, go. (She's a Canadian playwrite who seems to write mostly plays for high schools.)
And then today IPFW hosted an Omnibus Lecture, and the speaker was A.J. Jacobs. Jacobs wrote The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. I liked this book enough that after starting it I bought a copy and took the library copy back. I expected a book that was much meaner towards fundalmentalist religion, but it was actually very respectful, but incredibly funny. The speech he gave was basically a greatest hits from the book, which is okay, because he was funny. His voice was exactly how I figured it would be. I totally recommend the book, and not just because I got to meet him.
They held a book signing after the speech, and were selling copies of The Year of Living Biblically and his other book Know-It-All. Brandi let me buy a copy of Know-It-All, and then started reading it while we waited for the speech to begin. She thinks it's funny so far. While we waited in line, a young couple were loudly masticating gum and each other, so Brandi and I made fun of them in a conversational tone, and they were so caught up with being annoying that they didn't notice. Amazing.
However, when we got to meet Jacobs, he thanked me for my question during the speech (which I kinda don't think he answered the way I had hoped) and chatted with us for a little while, and wrote a message in both of our books. "Good luck with the boys" in mine and "Nice to meet you. Bless you." in Bran's.
Someday I'll be published, and I'll be nice to all seven of my fans, just like these cats were nice to me.
Awesome.
And isn't my user pic the cutest thing you've ever seen? Deaglan loves his stuffed Pooh, and he went as Pooh for Halloween. I got the two A.A. Milne books for him, and he actually lets me read them to him. Say what you will about the Disney version, but the original Pooh is a freaking genius, despite being a Bear of Little Brain. And the Tao of Pooh is an awesome book for recognizing that. I could write more, but it's late and I should stop soon.
In other news, I think my job is killing me. A little bit at a time but really, I need to quit Wal-mart soon. I'm now having allergic reactions to the used oil. And I've got bug bites all over me. and my work boots are destroying my feet.
But i'm switching my major to English now. And I'll be done in probably 3 years! Huzzah!
And I just finished watching the uncensored Daily Show ass tearing that Jon Stuart gave Jim Cramer. Beautiful. I don't personally care for the show Mad Money but given the insightful previous critiques of CNBC that Stuart had done, it was kinda sad that it turned into a Cramer eviseration when it was really CNBC that Stuart was after. And even Rachel Maddow glossed over that a little, even after the interview which was clearly Jon slinging mud at Cramer's network, and not him.
And Steven Colbert taught me something. Did you know that Neil Gaiman's name is pronounced GAY-men(no I'm not writing commentary on his talents, it's just everyone I know prounounces it GUY-man, and that's wrong.)
Much love to my peeps.
By the way, if you can get a hold of this book, it took me about two hours to pour through. It has a lot of pictures and comics, but it doesn't shy away from the science too much. I do wish some of the info would have been expanded on. He explains how Pluto was discovered in scientific detail, I would have liked to know a little about how it's mass and atmosphere and other stuff were figured out. But it was fun. The author, Neil deGrasse Tyson, is a frequent guest on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. And I was amazed at how smart Bill Nye the Science Guy actually is, and how much it must suck to get hate mail from third graders.
Oh, and I'm burying the lead. April 7, 2009, The Thermals release "Now We Can See." I imagine there is a title track to download, because Men's Health said I should download it. And they're only retarded, not liars.
I just finished the book Wicked by Gregor Maguire. I don't know if there is anyone who hasn't heard of it, but if there is, it is about Oz, before Dorothy. I've never read E.L. Baum's original books, I just remember seeing the movie a lot when I was a kid. I haven't seen the movie in a long time, so I don't know about whether he imported aspects of either into the book or not. I do know that I very much enjoyed the Oz he created.
I liked that the political situation wasn't as utopian as the movie made it seem, and that the Wizard wasn't the great leader we imagine him to be. I liked that the Witch was a well rounded character, and not really all that wicked. It was a good idea, and it was well written, but I felt like the ending was phoned in. I get that Elfaba was driven mad at the end after the death of her sister and her own multitude of failures. But in all her failures it seemed like she didn't do anything memorable. At the end there is a paragraph that says the people rejoiced when she died. I asked myself why. The story starts off with her in a tree, listening to Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion. They are discussing who the Witch is, and listing various bad things. But the book never gave me any idea that she had done anything, other than in her own mind, that would have garnered her national attention.
I heartily enjoyed the fact that the Witch went to girl's school with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, and to watch Glinda develop from a snobbish, stuck up bitch to a friend was fun. But when we meet back up with her, we see only the vapid, empty Glinda from the beginning, and never learn enough about her to understand her motivations. It almost seemed pointless to have her so prominent for the first half of the book. The author actually tells it from behind her shoulder for a good portion of the beginning, creating the group of friends that Elphaba would develop at school. And at the end she's almost as responsible for the Witch's death as Dorothy is, and we don't get to know anything about why.
There were multiple parts of the story where he just hopped ahead years. Occasionally this made sense, but from the penultimate section to the last there was a seven year break in the story, and not even a bit of exposition about what sort of influence she had garnered, or what she may have done to create the possiblilty of calling her wicked. So while the book managed to humanize the Wicked Witch, it also managed to severely weaken her.
Maquire built up the Wizard as this terrible dictator, but also made him ridiculous at the end.
There was so much in this book that made me wonder what all the fuss is. I liked it, but I far from loved it. It's crazy but I honestly think it has to be about the writing. His dialogue is great. A scene sticks out where our heroine is only two and her Nanny decides to take her to play with other children. Nanny and the women in charge of the other kids have a conversation that sounded a hell of a lot like two adults talking around children being insane and mildly evil. Some of his descriptions were poetry. And the Oz he created was cool. It was also just near enough to our own world that he didn't spend time describing things he didn't have to.
I intend to read the rest of the Oz books, but I don't intend to read any of the other books he's written. And I'm sure as hell not paying for any of them.
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
wombatdeamor- wombatdeamor
Syndicate
