I also finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which is cool. I am becoming quite fond of her, indeed. Even though I have gotten into the habit of calling people I intensly dislike Margaret Atwood. Why, you ask?
"You know what? I used to think it was funny to call big tough a-holes, 'Sparkles'. You know, when someone is being a thug, like a security guard or just a big jerk. Sparkles. I think it would be even funnier to start calling them, 'Margaret Atwood'. Calm down there, Margaret Atwood. You'll get shaken baby syndrome"--It doesn't tell me which member of A Softer World wrote this, but I love them for it. In any case, I love that webcomic, and I will shamelessly plug it now: http://www.asofterworld.com/. I'd buy the book, the Truth and Beauty Bombs (or; the one with the cat on the front) but PayPal is necessary and that's not cool. But Amazon takes a cut of the jib most likely so I guess it makes sense, but...
(They were the ones that made that Stockholm Syndrome comic I sent you, Emma)
So, the book felt... weird. A dreamy book. Everything was happening in such an underwhelming way. (Maybe I'm just jaded?) Still, nonetheless, it was an interesting picture of a future that, if we can manage to progress to, is extremely probable. Mistakes and all. It was eerily and easily pictureable.
We are introduced to a man named Snowman in a post-apocolyptic world....
One; what were the pigoons a combination of? I got the pig part, and other combined animals are easy to figure out--rakunks (raccoons and skunks), wolvogs (wolves and dogs), but for the life of me I can't figure out...
Oh man, like I guess you've inferred, genetic splicings were common place. (What idiot would really put a human cortex in a pigoon's brain!?) One of the grosser ones were the ChickieNobs--basically bulbs of chicken meat fed, but cannot excrete or move or exist or do anything that's not digesting food. Well, I personally think it's absolutely disgusting. I'm no vegetarian, but I'll be off chicken for a while. What worried me even more is that later in the book animal rights' activists tried to 'liberate' them. Uh. Okay, it's inhumane, but they can't walk. They can't exist. you're just killing them qui... okay, I'm done thinking about them. I'm super-duper grossed out thinking about them. Blegh.
Oh, the reason why I didn't read the book earlier when Robby D actually recommended it to me is because the copy in the library had two naked female torsos on it. Kind of awkward to read around the house, no? It's all because of this one line regarding when Snowman hit puberty: basically, it says he had sexual dreams about naked female torsos without heads. Never touched on again. But I just thought I should mention it. Yay, now you're a better person for knowing that?
Oh, a really cool videogame Snowman and Crake played as children was Blood and Roses--I didn't really understand the rules, but basicaly it has a list of all humanity's greatest acheivments, for example, Crime and Punishment or disasters like the Trail of Tears or the Holocaust, or leaders like Napoleon, and so on. Anything of importance that has affected/been done by mankind. And items are traded and (I think) whoever wins is the person who has more 'rose' items, like the Mona Lisa or something beneficial. Blood items would be the holocaust, probably the French revolution or something, and yeah. I probably wouldn't be smart enough to play a great game, but I could sit there and look cute, so...
"'So I learned about life,' said Oryx. 'Learned what?' said Jimmy... 'That everything has a price.' 'Not everything. That can't be true. You can't buy time. You can't buy...' He wanted to say love, but hesitated. It was too soppy. 'You can't buy it, but it has a price,' said Oryx. 'Everything has a price.'" Ah, Oryx, the cynic. Of course, it's understandable, I mean she was (SPOILER!) sold as a child into child prostitution, not that she really understood what it was till much later. And even then, she looked at the positives of it: she was being whored out, but she was well-dressed, well-fed, and well-taken care of, which was nothing she could have ever hoped for in her village. So... Yeah? But I have a feeling, although she tried to remain detached to it, she was crumbling deep down. Perhaps that's why she was trying to be so flippant? (Did I use that word correctly?) Maybe she was hoping Snowman would try to dig deeper, to hold her, but she was too scared to break down in front of him, so she... wouldn't.... let him...? Maybe she burried herself in sex the way he did--hence, they were perfect counterparts and that's why they were so attracted to each other? Uhm. Maybe?
"For every pair of happy lovers there was a dejected onlooker, the one excluded. Love was its own transparent bubble-dome: you could see the two inside it, but you couldn't get in there yourself." THIRD WHEEL ADDS STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY. That is to say; I make couples look better by comparison. Oh wait, now I'm depressed. D'awwww.
"'Crake!' he whimpers. 'Why am I on this earth? How come I'm alone? Where's my Bride of Frankenstein?'" / "Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held"--Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
An interesting scene was Crake and Snowman arguing about civilization's destruction: if destroyed, could it ever be rebuilt? Crake argues no, because all the metals have been mined and used up, so there's no chance of repeating the bronze age or iron age. And machines will be gone, instructions to recreate their futuristic society would be impossible to follow, lacking the tools and all. But I think Crake was being too narrow-minded, personally. People might not be as advanced (and by not, I mean there's no way in hell they could be) but civilization is still being rebuilt. It's just not quite up to snuff with what Crake would consider 'civilization'. I mean, people living in pueblos as simply as Native Americans or early tribes would still be civilisation! So... So yeah, Crake. Just burned you like Thanksgiving dinner. Go find yourself a turkey baster, you're going to need it! Dayummm. I am good. Slap me some skin, Mr Darcy!
Crake's motives: He's a jerk. The end.
Oh, and Margaret Atwood burns animal rights' activists, like I mentioned earlier with the ChickieNobs. They released the super-intelligent and violent pigoons and the vicious but cute- and friendly-looking wolvogs in an attempt to 'liberate' them. Thank you PETA for screwing us all over. No, it's cool, I love getting gored by evil pigs. It's actually my favorite pastime. Actually, wasn't this how the virus spread in 28 Days Later? Animal rights' activists let out the diseased ultra-violent chimps, or am I thinking of another movie? Either way, THANKS GUYS. I'm relocating you to Jurassic Park. Oh wait, the velociraptors already 'liberated' themselves. Toodles!
So there's that. In other news, I began to write my ultra-terrible college essay and I started reading Emma by Jane Austen. Yayyy.
Oscar Wilde > James Joyce. In case you were confused, Marky Mark.
Oh, and Emma, I know you'll appreciate it, so I absolutely have to post this: So, you know that joke Jenna and I have about how Robby D wears red all the time so he can blend into the lockers? So he was wearing white today, and he wasn't in his room and Jenna was wondering where he could be. The projector screen was down, so I pointed to it and said, "He's there. But the only way you'll see him is if you turn the projector on." So, Jenna, pretending to be Robby D: "'Oh no! But you haven't caught me yet! Today will be known as the day you almost caught Captain Robby D!' And then he'll jump out the window and swing, on a rope, to his car. And drive away.'" I'm pretty sure I died laughing and I'll never be able to take him seriously again. It would just randomly pop in my head all through painting and I would start cracking up. Everyone probably thought I was crazy, but I bet they did already, hence why no one sits with me. Aww. But yeah, I hope that makes you disrupt the library again! See you in November!
PS. Spellcheck apparently decided to never work for me again. Man.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
I don't know what's right and what's real, anymore
I finally finished Marky Mark's sacred book (as named by Ms Lacroix), We, which I can finally tell you is by Yevgeny Zamyatin. That's why I couldn't remember the author's name off the top of my head, guys! Jeez.
Why is it the sacred book? Did I talk about this already? Because Marky Mark handed it to me and lectured me on it immediately: "Now, I've read it about nine times and you can see it looks new" (it looks like he bought it two days ago--turns out his copy is nine years old, as I subsequently found out) "no bent pages, no creases anywhere, you can't even tell it's ever been read." At this point I'm getting nervous. So I offer to just take a look at the author's name so I can search for it myself, you know, you don't have to lend it to me if you don't want to, whatever... "Oh no, that's fine. I don't usually do this, but I trust you." Oh. There's the cincher. I think I had a minor heart palpitation. For two days I had it set on my shelf and I just stared at it, afraid to touch it. I had a nightmare last night I left a crease on the binding. No lie. I even get worried about my fingerprints on the shiny, glossy cover... I'm fully convinced Marky Mark will find something wrong with it and just punch me in the face.
In any case, I managed to finish the book (though my fear distracted me from it in many ways) and it was pretty good. Basically, it's the predecessor to 1984, Anthem, Brave New World, and every other book in that genre. The main difference is they're working on sending rockets to space in this one and everything is synchronized down to cutting and chewing food. Kind of like A Wrinkle in Time when Meg and Charles Wallace discover that planet where all the kids are playing in the streets and they're all bouncing rubber balls in the same exact rhythm and rate and all. Good book, by the way. But I digress:
Okay, first, the apartments our hero, D-503, lives in are all glass. Just throwing that out there. Not to sound crude, but... getting changed!? Bathrooms!? Nope, done with this society already. Though I guess it would make it easier to decide on what to wear in the morning... hmm....
"After man's tail dropped off, it must have been quite difficult for him at first to learn to drive off flies without its aid. In the beginning he undoubtedly missed his tail. But now--can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself in the street naked, without a coat?" Every era before us looks ridiculous and we usually mock the less-advanced for their ways... In history class, this is easy to spot in the form of "those people were stupid, why didn't they just do X?" or "Hahaha, those sixteen-hundreders, look at them, with their butter churns." And I'm over here like "(sigh) To have lived in the Victorian era..." Oh, maybe a better example would be the fifties. Or the eighties. Well, maybe not so much with the eighties becoming popular again, but the fifties are a prime example. Sort of. I AM TRYING.
"To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives for fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty million years was not considered criminal. Isn't that absurd?" Gunter Grass said something weirdly like this in Crabwalk and I can't remember it! Grrrr.
Oh, here's one thing I liked: Unlike Equality in Anthem, he didn't suddenly accept the idea of soul and personality. He understood that the whole societal body could split, but he still didn't understand personality, if that makes sense. Equality was like "Oh, I'm my own person! I understand it in sixty seconds and Gaea understands it even quicker because Ayn Rand is currently failing." (The book isn't that great if you think about the substance over the main idea...) I mean, I don't get how you could suddenly accept such a life-changing thought so quickly and without questioning, even if it feels 'right'. It's still going against everything you knew in your previous twenty years. D-503 struggles with the ideas of soul for quite a good chunk of time and I never really get the feeling he fully accepts it. Instead of being like oh, I've reversed everything I knew in about two days and accept this new truth. Which just seems ridiculous to me. Sure, revelations like that are possible, but they've always seem to me like it hits you, and then you kind of need to become acclimated. Which I guess he did, because he sat down a while and thought about it. But Gaea was just like "Oh, okay. Cool." GO HOME GAEA.
"'What's the trouble? A soul? A soul, you say? What the devil! We'll soon return to cholera if you go on that way.'" Hm, this gets me thinking of a certain episode of the Twilight Zone, number Twelve... (She looks just like you!)
"'We' is from God, and 'I' from the Devil." Oh hey Anthem hey! Want to burn some villagers? Oh cool, let's hit that up. Ooh, but can we rip their tongues out first? Okay! Best. Day. Ever.
"'Who can tell? A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don't know how it will end. Or it wouldn't be worth reading...'" Fun fact!: I almost just typed 'eating'. YOUR WIFE LOOKS LIKE A CHRISTMAS DINNER. Hahahaha, don't ask. Anyways, what my point was going to be: "Call no man happy till he is dead", which was either said by Solon or Herodotus, but Google can't decide, so... Well, it kind of reminded me. Sort of similar. Compare and contrast in 1-2 paragraphs riiiiiiiight.... Now!
"I did not want salvation." / "'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'" (Jonathan, in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) Or, from Invisible Monsters: "I needed the opposite of a miracle." Which I'm totally paraphrasing, but hey. Hey. I can't even say I'm too lazy to go upstairs: This is all Meg's, here. And I'm not jogging to her house. I will get murdered, raped, or die of exhaustion. I DIDN'T MAKE THIS SENTENCE PARALLEL.
Oh man, the end! The end was great. Not great like oh, I liked the ending it was a good ending, but I liked the ending even though it was not so great for our hero. You remember that Twilight Zone reference? 'Number Twelve Looks Just Like You' has almost the same ending. It's good times, I do like that episode. (Soma/Instant Happy? Hook me up.) Marky Mark said the ending was sad, and it is, but I was too intensely elated by the similar endings to be sad about it until now. Man, I love The Twilight Zone. Good show. Contrary to popular belief, it is irony that is the breakfast of champions, not martinis. Well, at least not until I become a hopeless alcoholic...
What else? Well, I think I convinced my CI teacher to read Junky by William S Burroughs. Which makes my forearm hurt because of how gross that book is. GAH NEEDLES. Dammit, Burroughs!
And I ordered an Oscar Wilde action figure off Amazon. It had to be done. Well, maybe not 'had to be' but come on. It's what the cool kids are into nowadays. Don't tell me you or your friends don't own the Marie Antoinette action figure!
Why is it the sacred book? Did I talk about this already? Because Marky Mark handed it to me and lectured me on it immediately: "Now, I've read it about nine times and you can see it looks new" (it looks like he bought it two days ago--turns out his copy is nine years old, as I subsequently found out) "no bent pages, no creases anywhere, you can't even tell it's ever been read." At this point I'm getting nervous. So I offer to just take a look at the author's name so I can search for it myself, you know, you don't have to lend it to me if you don't want to, whatever... "Oh no, that's fine. I don't usually do this, but I trust you." Oh. There's the cincher. I think I had a minor heart palpitation. For two days I had it set on my shelf and I just stared at it, afraid to touch it. I had a nightmare last night I left a crease on the binding. No lie. I even get worried about my fingerprints on the shiny, glossy cover... I'm fully convinced Marky Mark will find something wrong with it and just punch me in the face.
In any case, I managed to finish the book (though my fear distracted me from it in many ways) and it was pretty good. Basically, it's the predecessor to 1984, Anthem, Brave New World, and every other book in that genre. The main difference is they're working on sending rockets to space in this one and everything is synchronized down to cutting and chewing food. Kind of like A Wrinkle in Time when Meg and Charles Wallace discover that planet where all the kids are playing in the streets and they're all bouncing rubber balls in the same exact rhythm and rate and all. Good book, by the way. But I digress:
Okay, first, the apartments our hero, D-503, lives in are all glass. Just throwing that out there. Not to sound crude, but... getting changed!? Bathrooms!? Nope, done with this society already. Though I guess it would make it easier to decide on what to wear in the morning... hmm....
"After man's tail dropped off, it must have been quite difficult for him at first to learn to drive off flies without its aid. In the beginning he undoubtedly missed his tail. But now--can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself in the street naked, without a coat?" Every era before us looks ridiculous and we usually mock the less-advanced for their ways... In history class, this is easy to spot in the form of "those people were stupid, why didn't they just do X?" or "Hahaha, those sixteen-hundreders, look at them, with their butter churns." And I'm over here like "(sigh) To have lived in the Victorian era..." Oh, maybe a better example would be the fifties. Or the eighties. Well, maybe not so much with the eighties becoming popular again, but the fifties are a prime example. Sort of. I AM TRYING.
"To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives for fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty million years was not considered criminal. Isn't that absurd?" Gunter Grass said something weirdly like this in Crabwalk and I can't remember it! Grrrr.
Oh, here's one thing I liked: Unlike Equality in Anthem, he didn't suddenly accept the idea of soul and personality. He understood that the whole societal body could split, but he still didn't understand personality, if that makes sense. Equality was like "Oh, I'm my own person! I understand it in sixty seconds and Gaea understands it even quicker because Ayn Rand is currently failing." (The book isn't that great if you think about the substance over the main idea...) I mean, I don't get how you could suddenly accept such a life-changing thought so quickly and without questioning, even if it feels 'right'. It's still going against everything you knew in your previous twenty years. D-503 struggles with the ideas of soul for quite a good chunk of time and I never really get the feeling he fully accepts it. Instead of being like oh, I've reversed everything I knew in about two days and accept this new truth. Which just seems ridiculous to me. Sure, revelations like that are possible, but they've always seem to me like it hits you, and then you kind of need to become acclimated. Which I guess he did, because he sat down a while and thought about it. But Gaea was just like "Oh, okay. Cool." GO HOME GAEA.
"'What's the trouble? A soul? A soul, you say? What the devil! We'll soon return to cholera if you go on that way.'" Hm, this gets me thinking of a certain episode of the Twilight Zone, number Twelve... (She looks just like you!)
"'We' is from God, and 'I' from the Devil." Oh hey Anthem hey! Want to burn some villagers? Oh cool, let's hit that up. Ooh, but can we rip their tongues out first? Okay! Best. Day. Ever.
"'Who can tell? A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don't know how it will end. Or it wouldn't be worth reading...'" Fun fact!: I almost just typed 'eating'. YOUR WIFE LOOKS LIKE A CHRISTMAS DINNER. Hahahaha, don't ask. Anyways, what my point was going to be: "Call no man happy till he is dead", which was either said by Solon or Herodotus, but Google can't decide, so... Well, it kind of reminded me. Sort of similar. Compare and contrast in 1-2 paragraphs riiiiiiiight.... Now!
"I did not want salvation." / "'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'" (Jonathan, in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) Or, from Invisible Monsters: "I needed the opposite of a miracle." Which I'm totally paraphrasing, but hey. Hey. I can't even say I'm too lazy to go upstairs: This is all Meg's, here. And I'm not jogging to her house. I will get murdered, raped, or die of exhaustion. I DIDN'T MAKE THIS SENTENCE PARALLEL.
Oh man, the end! The end was great. Not great like oh, I liked the ending it was a good ending, but I liked the ending even though it was not so great for our hero. You remember that Twilight Zone reference? 'Number Twelve Looks Just Like You' has almost the same ending. It's good times, I do like that episode. (Soma/Instant Happy? Hook me up.) Marky Mark said the ending was sad, and it is, but I was too intensely elated by the similar endings to be sad about it until now. Man, I love The Twilight Zone. Good show. Contrary to popular belief, it is irony that is the breakfast of champions, not martinis. Well, at least not until I become a hopeless alcoholic...
What else? Well, I think I convinced my CI teacher to read Junky by William S Burroughs. Which makes my forearm hurt because of how gross that book is. GAH NEEDLES. Dammit, Burroughs!
And I ordered an Oscar Wilde action figure off Amazon. It had to be done. Well, maybe not 'had to be' but come on. It's what the cool kids are into nowadays. Don't tell me you or your friends don't own the Marie Antoinette action figure!
Friday, September 25, 2009
And it's positive-negative, positive-negative
NOTE: So, the computer I started this on contracted a virus while writing, so if I start advertising porn or diet pills whatever, that's the virus, there. As much as I love advertising both those things and all... You know. It's just how I roll, guys.
Man, I finished The Autocracy of Mr Parham, and I don't even feeling like recording passages and notes and stuff. Not just because it's upstairs (god forbid) or because I'm mildly allergic to it... though that second one kind of contributes.... But it was a muddle. HG Wells, come on! Honestly, the end is (SPOILER!) the twist, the hackneyed, "oh hey guys, it was a vivid dream... that everyone else had." There's a reason people don't know this one. Since I'm so great at summarizing books I less than like:
"Hi I'm Mr Parham and I met this guy who is my exact opposite and kind of a jerk but I'll hang out with him for some reason and I hate seances but I'll go to this what so I can remain close to the guy I hate. Oh, look, this ghost is really a Martian. Oh cool, WW2. Oh wait, bad idea, never mind oh no they're gonna kill me--oh. Good morning! Just a dream. Good thing."
Gahhh. But honestly, the dream thing didn't even bother me, because I had gotten so detached and befuddled by that point. By then, I was like "This has to be a dream, HG Wells is just on opium now." Or whatever the drug of choice was in the 20's/30's. I stopped following when the ghost at the seance announced he was a Martian and was going to mess with England, and... What happened to him? I don't even know. Did he purposely try to start WW2? He seemed sinister, but gawwww. Oh, that was a joke for all zero people who read this book.
HG Wells, it's not you, it's me. Oh wait, it's totally you. We need some time apart, till I can find my copy of The Time Machine and maybe love you again.
One thing I did like was when the guy Parham hates questioned him about art. He didn't get what made a painting of a woman art and not a dirty picture, and vice versa. And you know what, samesies. I get incredibly embarrassed when I see naked art of either gender in galleries. I mean, what? Maybe my norms are different from your average gallery-goer, but I see a naked person and I'm not like oh, look at those beautiful brush strokes! I'm like put on your toga, lady. I'm shy, I guess. Or I'm not 'artsy' enough, which is the truth. Sure, I can draw and all, but go on. Try explaining art to me. Why this is, and this isn't. I will stare at you until you feel the need to hold a mirror in front of my nose just to check if I'm breathing. Really. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. IT DEPENDS ON OPINIONS. Don't you try it, I can recognize a logical fallacy from a mile away. Regardless of if I'm wearing my glasses or not. Anyway, where was I? Oh right, art vs. pornography. I'm rolling with Bussy on this one. What is the difference? (Try to ignore negative connotations perhaps, and there aren't any?)
Need to finish We by whatsisface Russian guy whose name I can't possibly attempt with no guide, and halfway through Oryx and Crake my Margaret Atwood.
Good night! (1:18 am)
Man, I finished The Autocracy of Mr Parham, and I don't even feeling like recording passages and notes and stuff. Not just because it's upstairs (god forbid) or because I'm mildly allergic to it... though that second one kind of contributes.... But it was a muddle. HG Wells, come on! Honestly, the end is (SPOILER!) the twist, the hackneyed, "oh hey guys, it was a vivid dream... that everyone else had." There's a reason people don't know this one. Since I'm so great at summarizing books I less than like:
"Hi I'm Mr Parham and I met this guy who is my exact opposite and kind of a jerk but I'll hang out with him for some reason and I hate seances but I'll go to this what so I can remain close to the guy I hate. Oh, look, this ghost is really a Martian. Oh cool, WW2. Oh wait, bad idea, never mind oh no they're gonna kill me--oh. Good morning! Just a dream. Good thing."
Gahhh. But honestly, the dream thing didn't even bother me, because I had gotten so detached and befuddled by that point. By then, I was like "This has to be a dream, HG Wells is just on opium now." Or whatever the drug of choice was in the 20's/30's. I stopped following when the ghost at the seance announced he was a Martian and was going to mess with England, and... What happened to him? I don't even know. Did he purposely try to start WW2? He seemed sinister, but gawwww. Oh, that was a joke for all zero people who read this book.
HG Wells, it's not you, it's me. Oh wait, it's totally you. We need some time apart, till I can find my copy of The Time Machine and maybe love you again.
One thing I did like was when the guy Parham hates questioned him about art. He didn't get what made a painting of a woman art and not a dirty picture, and vice versa. And you know what, samesies. I get incredibly embarrassed when I see naked art of either gender in galleries. I mean, what? Maybe my norms are different from your average gallery-goer, but I see a naked person and I'm not like oh, look at those beautiful brush strokes! I'm like put on your toga, lady. I'm shy, I guess. Or I'm not 'artsy' enough, which is the truth. Sure, I can draw and all, but go on. Try explaining art to me. Why this is, and this isn't. I will stare at you until you feel the need to hold a mirror in front of my nose just to check if I'm breathing. Really. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. IT DEPENDS ON OPINIONS. Don't you try it, I can recognize a logical fallacy from a mile away. Regardless of if I'm wearing my glasses or not. Anyway, where was I? Oh right, art vs. pornography. I'm rolling with Bussy on this one. What is the difference? (Try to ignore negative connotations perhaps, and there aren't any?)
Need to finish We by whatsisface Russian guy whose name I can't possibly attempt with no guide, and halfway through Oryx and Crake my Margaret Atwood.
Good night! (1:18 am)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
"An Overture to Illumination"
HI GUYS. I bet you thought I was dead, but I'm not! The Daguar and I are on good terms, and Marky Mark has grown so annoyed with me to dig a hole through his floor and cover it with leaves in hopes I'd go promenading over it, though he probably is thinking about it since I'm so obnoxious about essays. And I hear he's a hard grader, too. But Marky Marrrk. I thought we were buddies. Obviously not. No, kidding, We is great. Besties?
HERE IT COMES. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, in my opinion one of the best books ever written, who my favorite teacher said was 'okay' but guess what? I'm the one doing the writing here and circular reasoning so hard you've got motion sickness. Honestly, I can't think of an easy way to describe it other than "illuminated". Seriously. Meg and I were groping for a phrase or word to describe it, and all we could come up with was "Oh my god, that book." Which is why whenever anyone says "oh my god" to me in the henceforth, I respond with "That book?" Did I use the word henceforth correctly, I bet you're wondering... Dude, who even cares. Award for best word ever.
So, yes, there's a movie version as well. But! If you haven't seen it, may I interest you in a brief summary of the plot? A teenager who shares the name as the author is making a pilgrimage to Trachimbrod to find his family's homeland before WWII. He is accompanied by his translator, Alex, Alex's grandfather, and their dog, Sammy Davis Junior, Jr. Mixed in with this are letters of correspondence between Jonathan and Alex, and a retelling of Trachimbrod's colorful history.
Just as a note, before I reread the book this time, it didn't occur to me Little Igor was being beaten. I really thought he was just clumsy. I feel like an idiot... In other news, Alex and Little Igor's father is scum.
So, it's basically impossible for me to give you everything I loved about this book, like with Catch-22, but I will do my very best.
"And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.'" So it's out of context, but for some reason, this time it resounded with me. And even out of context I think it's cute. By the by, the women he was talking to he did love, in case you thought he sounded like a jerk, which maybe you'd only think if I had type the full page surrounding it but guess what? I have an essay for Marky Mark to finish and about 9,000 other books to post. THIS BOOK LEVEL IS OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND! Well, now that we got that out-of-date pop culture reference out of the way...
"We must go backward in order to go forward." I felt I had to mark it for you, Emma. Why? Cough cough! Oh, sorry, I must have had a crab in my throat. A walking crab. Huh? Huh? God, give me the number one comedian award right now. Seriously.
Oh, here's one I love. Yankel D, an eighty some odd year old man is watching his newly-acquired baby sleep. "'Could she be dreaming?' he wondered. 'And if so, what would a baby dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.'"
"I will now mention that Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior is often very sociable with hr new friends, but I had never witnessed a thing like this. I reasoned that she was in love with the hero. 'Are you donning cologne?' I asked. 'What?' 'Are you donning any cologne?' He rotated his body so that his face was the seat, away from Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. 'Maybe a little'... 'Because she loves cologne. It makes her sexually stimulated.' 'Jesus.' 'She is trying to make sex to you. This is a good sign. It signifies that she will not bite.'" HAHA. This is one of the funniest scenes in the whole book. I wish I could remember how this scene went in the movie. But I do remember the "She is deranged, but so so playful" line. (She being Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.) Which quite frankly could describe Dante too...
"'Is God sad?' 'He would have to exist to be sad, wouldn't He?' 'I know... that's why I was asking, so I might finally know if you believed!' 'Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal to be sad about. And if He doesn't exist, then that too would make him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.'" I call Catch-22 upon this! Actually, a lot of Brod and Yankel D's conversations are Catch-22s. And I like their conversations. They're not infuriatingly Catch-22. They're okay, I recognize this, but I'm okay with is because it's cute it's not I AM RIPPING MY BRAIN OUT RIGHT NOW KAY THANKS BYE. I like this going back and forth the most, however, so that is every reasoning you'll ever need to know for why I chose it. Or is justification the right word? Whatever, I totally botched circular reasoning up there (I think) so it's not like anyone called me on that or this.
Oh, and I love Brod and Yankel D the most. For the record.
Oh, okay! Page 160! This scene is going to be hard to get if you haven't read the book because let's face it, my describing skills are basically just terrible. But Alex takes Jonathan's diary and reads a scene that comes later on, only 'He' and 'Alex' are replaced with 'I', since it happens later on, from Alex's point of view. It makes me curious if it's supposed to be a sort of Breakfast of Champion deal. You know, Kurt Vonnegut's there, playing God. Is God for Kilgore Trout, and the characters in the book, and the whole book, and so on. That Jonathan was predicting the future, actually writing the future, because for Alex, he was God. Does that make sense? Alex is overwhelmed with a rush of emotions, disquiet, anger... With realizing this? the diary:Alex::Vonnegut and the apple:Kilgore Trout? Maybe I missed something, but I'd say it's a fair connection to make. (Dare I invoke some more circular reasoning...?)
Ah. Okay. So, Alex is talking to an old lady who survived the Holocaust who I won't describe because she's important. She is one of the few from her shtetl's destruction that survived. After telling of the gunning, which I would prefer not to go into great detail (it is worse than horrifying) Alex asks her: "'What if it was a challenge of your faith?'... 'I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened.'"
The scenes with Augustine are too much. They can't be justified here, and I'm probably just cheapening them. If my profile didn't tip you off: READ THIS BOOK.
Aw, I love 'The 120 Marriages of Joseph and Sarah L'.
"We are talking now, Jonathan, together, and not apart. We are with each other, working on the same story, and I am certain that you can also feel it. Do you know that I am the Gypsy girl and you are Safran, and that I am Kolker and you are Brod, and that I am your grandmother and you are Grandfather, and that I am Alex and you are you and that I am you and you are me?"
And Grandfather's story.
"...and his head settled into the pillow damp with Zosha's tears... he understood he was not dead, but in love."
And even for all its sadness it's so beautiful. This book is perfect. It's everything you could want, it's funny to a fault, it's touching enough for you to fall in love, it's absolutely heartbreaking, it's absolutely heartwarming. It sends you to despair and coddles you at the next moment. I love this book. I can say honestly that this book was a book that greatly changed my view of life and gave me something new, at the risk of sounding corny. It was illuminating.
The most upsetting, of course, were the scenes with the Nazis--and beyond that, knowing the colorful and beautiful history that had been destroyed in hardly a blink of an eye. And the desperation of Alex's grandfather, not yet knowing he'd live to be a grandfather. The most beautiful, the most heartwarming--Brod and her husband, when the Dial tells of how she would still be with him every night even knowing she would be beaten and cursed. And I included the scene I thought what funniest. Just thinking about the book makes me want to cry--not entirely of sadness, but of something more. Pain of my heart being full? I'll consult Brod's list.
The movie? I think I'll have to rewatch it soon. Differences, and lacking a lot, but I can't hold it against them, it's good, I like it.
The more I love a book the less coherent these are.
HERE IT COMES. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, in my opinion one of the best books ever written, who my favorite teacher said was 'okay' but guess what? I'm the one doing the writing here and circular reasoning so hard you've got motion sickness. Honestly, I can't think of an easy way to describe it other than "illuminated". Seriously. Meg and I were groping for a phrase or word to describe it, and all we could come up with was "Oh my god, that book." Which is why whenever anyone says "oh my god" to me in the henceforth, I respond with "That book?" Did I use the word henceforth correctly, I bet you're wondering... Dude, who even cares. Award for best word ever.
So, yes, there's a movie version as well. But! If you haven't seen it, may I interest you in a brief summary of the plot? A teenager who shares the name as the author is making a pilgrimage to Trachimbrod to find his family's homeland before WWII. He is accompanied by his translator, Alex, Alex's grandfather, and their dog, Sammy Davis Junior, Jr. Mixed in with this are letters of correspondence between Jonathan and Alex, and a retelling of Trachimbrod's colorful history.
Just as a note, before I reread the book this time, it didn't occur to me Little Igor was being beaten. I really thought he was just clumsy. I feel like an idiot... In other news, Alex and Little Igor's father is scum.
So, it's basically impossible for me to give you everything I loved about this book, like with Catch-22, but I will do my very best.
"And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.'" So it's out of context, but for some reason, this time it resounded with me. And even out of context I think it's cute. By the by, the women he was talking to he did love, in case you thought he sounded like a jerk, which maybe you'd only think if I had type the full page surrounding it but guess what? I have an essay for Marky Mark to finish and about 9,000 other books to post. THIS BOOK LEVEL IS OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND! Well, now that we got that out-of-date pop culture reference out of the way...
"We must go backward in order to go forward." I felt I had to mark it for you, Emma. Why? Cough cough! Oh, sorry, I must have had a crab in my throat. A walking crab. Huh? Huh? God, give me the number one comedian award right now. Seriously.
Oh, here's one I love. Yankel D, an eighty some odd year old man is watching his newly-acquired baby sleep. "'Could she be dreaming?' he wondered. 'And if so, what would a baby dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.'"
"I will now mention that Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior is often very sociable with hr new friends, but I had never witnessed a thing like this. I reasoned that she was in love with the hero. 'Are you donning cologne?' I asked. 'What?' 'Are you donning any cologne?' He rotated his body so that his face was the seat, away from Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. 'Maybe a little'... 'Because she loves cologne. It makes her sexually stimulated.' 'Jesus.' 'She is trying to make sex to you. This is a good sign. It signifies that she will not bite.'" HAHA. This is one of the funniest scenes in the whole book. I wish I could remember how this scene went in the movie. But I do remember the "She is deranged, but so so playful" line. (She being Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.) Which quite frankly could describe Dante too...
"'Is God sad?' 'He would have to exist to be sad, wouldn't He?' 'I know... that's why I was asking, so I might finally know if you believed!' 'Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal to be sad about. And if He doesn't exist, then that too would make him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.'" I call Catch-22 upon this! Actually, a lot of Brod and Yankel D's conversations are Catch-22s. And I like their conversations. They're not infuriatingly Catch-22. They're okay, I recognize this, but I'm okay with is because it's cute it's not I AM RIPPING MY BRAIN OUT RIGHT NOW KAY THANKS BYE. I like this going back and forth the most, however, so that is every reasoning you'll ever need to know for why I chose it. Or is justification the right word? Whatever, I totally botched circular reasoning up there (I think) so it's not like anyone called me on that or this.
Oh, and I love Brod and Yankel D the most. For the record.
Oh, okay! Page 160! This scene is going to be hard to get if you haven't read the book because let's face it, my describing skills are basically just terrible. But Alex takes Jonathan's diary and reads a scene that comes later on, only 'He' and 'Alex' are replaced with 'I', since it happens later on, from Alex's point of view. It makes me curious if it's supposed to be a sort of Breakfast of Champion deal. You know, Kurt Vonnegut's there, playing God. Is God for Kilgore Trout, and the characters in the book, and the whole book, and so on. That Jonathan was predicting the future, actually writing the future, because for Alex, he was God. Does that make sense? Alex is overwhelmed with a rush of emotions, disquiet, anger... With realizing this? the diary:Alex::Vonnegut and the apple:Kilgore Trout? Maybe I missed something, but I'd say it's a fair connection to make. (Dare I invoke some more circular reasoning...?)
Ah. Okay. So, Alex is talking to an old lady who survived the Holocaust who I won't describe because she's important. She is one of the few from her shtetl's destruction that survived. After telling of the gunning, which I would prefer not to go into great detail (it is worse than horrifying) Alex asks her: "'What if it was a challenge of your faith?'... 'I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened.'"
The scenes with Augustine are too much. They can't be justified here, and I'm probably just cheapening them. If my profile didn't tip you off: READ THIS BOOK.
Aw, I love 'The 120 Marriages of Joseph and Sarah L'.
"We are talking now, Jonathan, together, and not apart. We are with each other, working on the same story, and I am certain that you can also feel it. Do you know that I am the Gypsy girl and you are Safran, and that I am Kolker and you are Brod, and that I am your grandmother and you are Grandfather, and that I am Alex and you are you and that I am you and you are me?"
And Grandfather's story.
"...and his head settled into the pillow damp with Zosha's tears... he understood he was not dead, but in love."
And even for all its sadness it's so beautiful. This book is perfect. It's everything you could want, it's funny to a fault, it's touching enough for you to fall in love, it's absolutely heartbreaking, it's absolutely heartwarming. It sends you to despair and coddles you at the next moment. I love this book. I can say honestly that this book was a book that greatly changed my view of life and gave me something new, at the risk of sounding corny. It was illuminating.
The most upsetting, of course, were the scenes with the Nazis--and beyond that, knowing the colorful and beautiful history that had been destroyed in hardly a blink of an eye. And the desperation of Alex's grandfather, not yet knowing he'd live to be a grandfather. The most beautiful, the most heartwarming--Brod and her husband, when the Dial tells of how she would still be with him every night even knowing she would be beaten and cursed. And I included the scene I thought what funniest. Just thinking about the book makes me want to cry--not entirely of sadness, but of something more. Pain of my heart being full? I'll consult Brod's list.
The movie? I think I'll have to rewatch it soon. Differences, and lacking a lot, but I can't hold it against them, it's good, I like it.
The more I love a book the less coherent these are.
Monday, September 21, 2009
HAPPY BIRTHDAY HG WELLS!
Regardless of when this actually gets posted or the date it says, I'm writing this on September 21st. So, I guess it's kind of funny I started The Autocracy of Mr Parham today, huh? I like it so far, actually. More than Invisible Man and his short stories I've read, definitely. There are some pretty funny names of a Dickens manner in here too, Emma. Oh, and before I forget: Google made a cool little tribute to him on their logo. Of course, by the time I post this it will be long gone, but I'm sure there's some facet of Google dedicated to archiving these. (What a cool job drawing those tribute headers would be, huh?) Either way, even though it only kind of sort of spells Google, I'd say it's a good rendition of War of the Worlds. Would HG Wells be pleased? Well, I don't know, he looked like a pretty stuffy old guy. (He looks suspiciously similar to my seventh-grade math teacher... Did HG Wells enjoy making young girls cry?) He probably wouldn't approve of the Internet either, same reasons as Michael Crichton's. Oh, I bet they'd be BFFs! Aw, now I'm sad... Fun Fact!: Did you know War of the Worlds inspired Independence Day, one of my least favorite movies of all time? Well, so the story goes.
Oh, and Michael Crichton is releasing a new book? But he's dead? Well, okay guys. And Jonathan Safran Foer's new book is set to come out 11/2/09! Just in time for my birthday! It's called... Easting Animals. Huh. And apparently his wife writes books, too. (Wait--he's married!? Man!) I wonder if she's actually well-known, or it's like how Stephen King's wife writes books... (I have seen a book of hers once. One book, well, more than once, but always at the same library, so...) Maybe she's a good author, but it's going to take more than one book always there to convince me. And just compared to her husband in general... Aw, now I feel like a jerk. Sorry Tabitha!
Stephen King wrote his 9,000th book ever. After Cell, I'm a little tentative.
Anyway, on with the show! (The Iliad by Homer)
Achilles calls someone a "dog-face".
"...If I don't get my hands on you, strip you of your clothes--the cloak and tunic that cover your genitals..." Thank you for inserting an explanation of what clothes are and what they do in between threatening to beat a man down and send him in exile to a ship. Actually, I'm glad. Totally forgot what clothes do. And what they are. Homer, you're a life saver.
Oh, I thought one was funny because of how stupid a character is: he goes into battle wearing golden armor, aka wearing one of the softest metals ever. Pounded flat or at least somewhat thinly, you can literally bite into it and bend it, or leave teeth marks. No lie. Idiot Amphimachus.
"'Paris, you parody, with your wonderful looks, you sex-crazed seducer, you should never have been born, or married. How I wish that were the case!'" Man, talk about a burn--he just keeps on throwing those insults at Paris, who, quite honestly, deserves it. He started this war, because he was being quite the "sex-crazed seducer". (There's no way in hell that's the original Greek...) Anyways, Paris got served like Thanksgiving dinner.
Aw, it seems I lost the page, but there's a scene where Zeus tells Aphrodite that women aren't good in war and the only thing they are suitable to command is the bed. I don't know about you guys, but I laughed till Sprite came out of my nose. Oh wait, I'm supposed to look mature and educated, aren't I? Son of a--
"'...the god Hades, famed for his horses.'" Or, you know, that whole 'god of the dead' thing. Oh, oh, and the whole 'being James K Woods' thing!
"Aphrodite daughter of Zeus replied..." SHE'S NOT ZEUS'S DAUGHTER. She was born of... Uh. I don't feel comfortable regaling this one for you. Just look it up yourself... God, the Greeks were weird... HELEN'S FATHER WAS A SWAN. I don't think the Greeks quite had the model society we picture. Ever.
"'Achilles, I shall be extremely angry if do as you suggest.'" You totally put the fear into him, I bet. 'Oh no, I'm a hardened warrior, but this guy who talks like my mother is totally putting the fear into me right now. He's gonna be pissed. He might even put me in time-out. Doot doot doot on my BlackBerry. I'm so tweeting about this.' (Wha... where did that go?)
"'The loser will receive this two-handled cup.'" I can just see them now: "Two handles!? One is functional, but two!? By Zeus, someone must have knocked the sculptor's hat off!"
I hope you enjoyed this, Emma! When I finish my essay for Marky Mark I'll do Everything is Illuminated. AKA, never. Sorry.
Oh, and Michael Crichton is releasing a new book? But he's dead? Well, okay guys. And Jonathan Safran Foer's new book is set to come out 11/2/09! Just in time for my birthday! It's called... Easting Animals. Huh. And apparently his wife writes books, too. (Wait--he's married!? Man!) I wonder if she's actually well-known, or it's like how Stephen King's wife writes books... (I have seen a book of hers once. One book, well, more than once, but always at the same library, so...) Maybe she's a good author, but it's going to take more than one book always there to convince me. And just compared to her husband in general... Aw, now I feel like a jerk. Sorry Tabitha!
Stephen King wrote his 9,000th book ever. After Cell, I'm a little tentative.
Anyway, on with the show! (The Iliad by Homer)
Achilles calls someone a "dog-face".
"...If I don't get my hands on you, strip you of your clothes--the cloak and tunic that cover your genitals..." Thank you for inserting an explanation of what clothes are and what they do in between threatening to beat a man down and send him in exile to a ship. Actually, I'm glad. Totally forgot what clothes do. And what they are. Homer, you're a life saver.
Oh, I thought one was funny because of how stupid a character is: he goes into battle wearing golden armor, aka wearing one of the softest metals ever. Pounded flat or at least somewhat thinly, you can literally bite into it and bend it, or leave teeth marks. No lie. Idiot Amphimachus.
"'Paris, you parody, with your wonderful looks, you sex-crazed seducer, you should never have been born, or married. How I wish that were the case!'" Man, talk about a burn--he just keeps on throwing those insults at Paris, who, quite honestly, deserves it. He started this war, because he was being quite the "sex-crazed seducer". (There's no way in hell that's the original Greek...) Anyways, Paris got served like Thanksgiving dinner.
Aw, it seems I lost the page, but there's a scene where Zeus tells Aphrodite that women aren't good in war and the only thing they are suitable to command is the bed. I don't know about you guys, but I laughed till Sprite came out of my nose. Oh wait, I'm supposed to look mature and educated, aren't I? Son of a--
"'...the god Hades, famed for his horses.'" Or, you know, that whole 'god of the dead' thing. Oh, oh, and the whole 'being James K Woods' thing!
"Aphrodite daughter of Zeus replied..." SHE'S NOT ZEUS'S DAUGHTER. She was born of... Uh. I don't feel comfortable regaling this one for you. Just look it up yourself... God, the Greeks were weird... HELEN'S FATHER WAS A SWAN. I don't think the Greeks quite had the model society we picture. Ever.
"'Achilles, I shall be extremely angry if do as you suggest.'" You totally put the fear into him, I bet. 'Oh no, I'm a hardened warrior, but this guy who talks like my mother is totally putting the fear into me right now. He's gonna be pissed. He might even put me in time-out. Doot doot doot on my BlackBerry. I'm so tweeting about this.' (Wha... where did that go?)
"'The loser will receive this two-handled cup.'" I can just see them now: "Two handles!? One is functional, but two!? By Zeus, someone must have knocked the sculptor's hat off!"
I hope you enjoyed this, Emma! When I finish my essay for Marky Mark I'll do Everything is Illuminated. AKA, never. Sorry.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
She's so good-looking that she looks like a man
First, there aren't any book bits today, but bear with me.
According to Borders, it's the sixtieth anniversary of Harlequin Romances. Thank you for making me intensely uncomfortable for advertising that. (Where are the old ladies?) There was a boom sale last year at one of the local elementary schools and there were these two tables chock full of romance books and the old ladies were ALL OVER THAT. Creepiest thing ever.
Anyways, we stopped at this book store and I found The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo and The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin that are at least from the 1930's, or very early forties. Of course, there are no publication dates... So I e-mailed the owner; the cashier thought he'd know.
"I bet Robert [the owner] would know! You can call him at home! I can give you the number if you want."
"Um... No, that's okay. His e-mail's on the bookmark, right? I'll just e-mail him."
As much as I love calling strangers and pressing them about 80-year-old books... So hopefully he'll e-mail me back. On another note, old books are everywhere in Rhode Island. We went into a drugstore/surf shop and they were selling books from the forties in the back near the drinks... Not anything you'd recognize, but...
Anyway, that book store was really cool. It's called The Other Tiger and it's in Westerly... which is a part of RI which looks strangely like Brittany, France.
I was too excited about those two books not to announce it and trick you into thinking I was doing something great. I'm like five pages from finishing Everything is Illuminated, so hopefully I'll finish that later tonight and I can start on The Autocracy of Mr Parham. And I cut my finger on freaking glass so I can't read any more of We. MY KEYBOARD IS PRIME CSI EVIDENCE. No, it's not that bad.
Looked at colleges, too. My mom went to such a beautiful college... It was so tiny, though. It reminded me more of my days in Camp Washington... I miss Camp Washington...
Providence has a beautiful campus. I think I'm in love with any place with trees and green grass. That's one hell of a 'reach' school, however.
Oh, and there was a Washburn hall at URI! Awesome.
According to Borders, it's the sixtieth anniversary of Harlequin Romances. Thank you for making me intensely uncomfortable for advertising that. (Where are the old ladies?) There was a boom sale last year at one of the local elementary schools and there were these two tables chock full of romance books and the old ladies were ALL OVER THAT. Creepiest thing ever.
Anyways, we stopped at this book store and I found The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo and The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin that are at least from the 1930's, or very early forties. Of course, there are no publication dates... So I e-mailed the owner; the cashier thought he'd know.
"I bet Robert [the owner] would know! You can call him at home! I can give you the number if you want."
"Um... No, that's okay. His e-mail's on the bookmark, right? I'll just e-mail him."
As much as I love calling strangers and pressing them about 80-year-old books... So hopefully he'll e-mail me back. On another note, old books are everywhere in Rhode Island. We went into a drugstore/surf shop and they were selling books from the forties in the back near the drinks... Not anything you'd recognize, but...
Anyway, that book store was really cool. It's called The Other Tiger and it's in Westerly... which is a part of RI which looks strangely like Brittany, France.
I was too excited about those two books not to announce it and trick you into thinking I was doing something great. I'm like five pages from finishing Everything is Illuminated, so hopefully I'll finish that later tonight and I can start on The Autocracy of Mr Parham. And I cut my finger on freaking glass so I can't read any more of We. MY KEYBOARD IS PRIME CSI EVIDENCE. No, it's not that bad.
Looked at colleges, too. My mom went to such a beautiful college... It was so tiny, though. It reminded me more of my days in Camp Washington... I miss Camp Washington...
Providence has a beautiful campus. I think I'm in love with any place with trees and green grass. That's one hell of a 'reach' school, however.
Oh, and there was a Washburn hall at URI! Awesome.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The universe is shaped exactly like the earth if you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were
So, my copy of On the Road is some super-special edition that's the original scroll, there's a picture of Jack Kerouac on the back (do you ever say things just because you know they'll rhyme?) and the cover feels cool and not like a smooth tile floor. Though I guess the downside is that it stains in about 30 seconds...
So, in the beginning, there were like 120 introductory forward pages and I'm over here like, "Shut up, these always just want to make me kill myself". (Could we talk about Kerouac one time without talking about his downward spiral into alcoholism and beyond?) So I skipped them. Because anyone can talk about anybody with as many insights and chronicling and notes as they want, and this blog is proof of it. So... Hire me? (No lie, people get hired for their blogs nowadays. This fact and the Lego shirt make me think the future finally has happened, though I'm sure Marky Mark would most vehemently disagree with me on that one.
Oh, and I'm teaching Kerouac the art of the paragraph even if I have to get infected with rabies and involve myself in a highly illegal and life-threatening car chase game.
"...Apparently he was f**king with her. He was always doing so." This made me laugh because it just sounded too much like Alex from Everything is Illuminated to ignore. It was worth the expletive.
"...A traveling epic Hunkey, crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer and only because he has no place he can stay in without getting tired of it and because there's nowhere to go but everywhere." Can I taken a second to reinstate the fact that I love this man?
Oh man, there's a scene I think is incredibly beautiful. I don't why it touched me so, but hey. It's Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady blessing each other and making vows of "eternal friendship and love". I'd copy it down, but in whole context it's at least the two pages full, and as much as I love you guys, I like my wrists more. In this edition (The Viking edition) it's on page 161. But really, I can't do it justice; or maybe you'll read it and you won't be touched. Probably you won't be. In cases like these, it's never the same.
"'The Banana King is your meat.'" For Emma, I had to. Though, you know, it makes a lot more sense in context! (I wonder how he'd feel about Charlie the Unicorn? I saw a Charlie the Unicorn belt at the mall and thought of you...) The Banana King=a guy selling bananas, and "is your meat" is saying, he's your fodder, your inspiration, and so on. Well, I was proud of myself for 'getting it'! At least, I think I 'got it'. Why am I saying everything in quotes? Am I eighty right now?
"Ah it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing." I love that last bit, "heavengoing". I'm not entirely sure what he means, but I think he's referring to those moments when you feel perfect, you know, when you fit in with everything in the world and it's different from ecstasy, it's more like you're pleased and humbled and feel whole and are happy for it. It doesn't have a name, so far as I know, that feeling. (In Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Charlie refers to it as being "infinite")
"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under his father's roof, then comes the day... when you know you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, with the visage of a gruesome greiving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life." This reminds me of a quote from Doctor Zhivago I love which I can't find because Wikiquote sucks and my yellow notebook apparently got eaten by that bear that appears in the neighborhood every time I want to sleep outside. But it's basically about how when you're a child growing up it's like you're being led by the hand by someone who will protect you and care for you, but then when you're an adult, that hand suddenly leaves and you feel abandoned and alone. Lost, because you've never been in that situation before, and scared. Startled. Man, and it's so good. It's quoted in Into the Wild, too.... I am most enraged. Time to call on my fifties-era gang-member teacher to wrong this right...
"'...she's knitting my doom.'" Again, I just like how it's written. (Well, was said...) And how! Why don't I know anyone that talks like this? Sure, I'm your stereotypical Victorian/1920's speaker, but we need some of this. Anyone care to hop on the trolley? Please?
"He and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there."
"'...because man a road like this must eventually lead to the whole world.'"
"There's always more, a little further--it never ends." I'm sure you're seeing a trend in this type.
I can't find the section I marked, but there's a part where Jack makes love to a Mexican woman whose name I can't remember, but her son Raymond watches some or part of it. It's almost exactly like the scene in Big Sur, only without being amazingly upsetting and horrifying. The sentence was like "Raymond got out of his crib and came in the room", or something like that, and nothing more. Just thought of poor little Elliot.
"'It's the world!' said Neal. 'My God!' he cried slapping the wheel. 'It's the world!'" Okay, so it reminded me a little bit of Watchmen when Rorschach's psychiatrist says to his wife, "'I can't run from it, Gloria... It's the world..." Okay, so I paraphrased a little. But no, that's not just it. It just struck my heart somehow, I guess.
Oh, I probably should have said this book has the same main idea as all his other books.
Oh, and I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. First off, I can't imagine why kids complain about having to read this in school. I have a mini edition that just screams it was printed in the seventies that's something like 120 pages. So the school editions are like... 60 pages tops? At least. Gad, what whiners. Second, it's one of the most depressing books I've ever read. But wait! Wait, I still--well, maybe 'liked' it isn't the word, but I... recognize its merit?
Thirdly, it's about these two travelers, looking for work, run out of their hometown. One, the smaller fellow (George) is of normal intelligence, a little on the small side, but besides that, he looks after his fellow traveler (Lennie), who's built like a wall. Unfortunately, his intelligence is exceptionally low. (Hence why he needs to be looked after). But he has a heart of gold, and loves animals--an overpowering love, often accidentally killing animals like mice that he pets because he doesn't know his own strength, he gets angry when they try to bite him, and because his hands are just so huge.
I also can't tell you what the point of this book was, either. On the inside, whoever owned it before me has written "Steinbeck suggests the fulfillment of dreams requires companionship", and maybe he does, but damned if I can figure out how. The end... Jeez. And "Of love and need"? God, maybe George couldn't take it anymore, maybe it's unfair to expect and demand that he continue to take, but I think he's a right slimy bastard.
"'We travel together,' said George coldly. 'Oh, so it's that way.'" I don't really get what Curley means by "that way". I would have thought he was making a jab that he thinks they're gay or some such, but I guess that doesn't really bode with the fact that he always thinks everyone is having sex with his wife, including George and Lennie.
"'He's a nice fella,' said Slim. 'Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella.'" Yeah, George, they don't. Ugh. I hate George so much.
The scene with the old dog was forshadowing, I guess, now that I think about. I guess that was mostly the reason why George decided he had to be the one to... Ugh. Is it necessary we talk about him? Because seriously, he's a [candy-happy unicorn pony].
You know, I bet that conversation where poor Candy tries to get them not to kill his dog (to wait till tomorrow, at least, to put it off one more day) probably was the final thing that made George do it. I mean, he couldn't right continue with Lennie after the tart got... But, recalling that, when the old man's like "'Maybe tomorra. Let's wait till tomorra.'" and then Carlson says "'I don't see no reason for it...'" and pulls the pistol out then and there and takes the dog... Christ. He's slime too. Maybe the dog wasn't in the best of sorts, but really, anyone who would so eagerly kill a dog... (And not by accident. Which soumds weird if you haven't read the book, but...)
You know what, Lennie isn't a bad guy at all. He wouldn't have hurt Curly if it hadn't been for George goading him on. Maybe Curley had it coming like everyone said, but still, George, I'm egging your house. I don't even care if I have to walk all the way to CA, either.
"'Cause I'm black. They play cards in there, but I can't play because I'm black. They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me.'" I think Atticus would have smiled a little at this.
I had the final scene marked but I can't write about it. George is a slimy, weak, yellow-bellied spineless clod of dirt. I can't. Sorry. It's too upsetting a scene. Poor Lennie.
To change that dour mood, Robby D remembered Everything is Illuminated. Of course, I immediately started it! Love that booook! I also finished The Illiad, which I won't be reviewing because it's weird to try and review a book that could be your 1,400-year-old father. However, when I have more time I am going to make a belated-birthday-or-something post for Emma of all the hilarious things in it. (PS. The Odyssey > The Illiad)
PS. Hello Alex! Glad you've enjoyed this madness! Hope this most recent hasn't depressed you too much!
So, in the beginning, there were like 120 introductory forward pages and I'm over here like, "Shut up, these always just want to make me kill myself". (Could we talk about Kerouac one time without talking about his downward spiral into alcoholism and beyond?) So I skipped them. Because anyone can talk about anybody with as many insights and chronicling and notes as they want, and this blog is proof of it. So... Hire me? (No lie, people get hired for their blogs nowadays. This fact and the Lego shirt make me think the future finally has happened, though I'm sure Marky Mark would most vehemently disagree with me on that one.
Oh, and I'm teaching Kerouac the art of the paragraph even if I have to get infected with rabies and involve myself in a highly illegal and life-threatening car chase game.
"...Apparently he was f**king with her. He was always doing so." This made me laugh because it just sounded too much like Alex from Everything is Illuminated to ignore. It was worth the expletive.
"...A traveling epic Hunkey, crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer and only because he has no place he can stay in without getting tired of it and because there's nowhere to go but everywhere." Can I taken a second to reinstate the fact that I love this man?
Oh man, there's a scene I think is incredibly beautiful. I don't why it touched me so, but hey. It's Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady blessing each other and making vows of "eternal friendship and love". I'd copy it down, but in whole context it's at least the two pages full, and as much as I love you guys, I like my wrists more. In this edition (The Viking edition) it's on page 161. But really, I can't do it justice; or maybe you'll read it and you won't be touched. Probably you won't be. In cases like these, it's never the same.
"'The Banana King is your meat.'" For Emma, I had to. Though, you know, it makes a lot more sense in context! (I wonder how he'd feel about Charlie the Unicorn? I saw a Charlie the Unicorn belt at the mall and thought of you...) The Banana King=a guy selling bananas, and "is your meat" is saying, he's your fodder, your inspiration, and so on. Well, I was proud of myself for 'getting it'! At least, I think I 'got it'. Why am I saying everything in quotes? Am I eighty right now?
"Ah it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing." I love that last bit, "heavengoing". I'm not entirely sure what he means, but I think he's referring to those moments when you feel perfect, you know, when you fit in with everything in the world and it's different from ecstasy, it's more like you're pleased and humbled and feel whole and are happy for it. It doesn't have a name, so far as I know, that feeling. (In Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Charlie refers to it as being "infinite")
"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under his father's roof, then comes the day... when you know you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, with the visage of a gruesome greiving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life." This reminds me of a quote from Doctor Zhivago I love which I can't find because Wikiquote sucks and my yellow notebook apparently got eaten by that bear that appears in the neighborhood every time I want to sleep outside. But it's basically about how when you're a child growing up it's like you're being led by the hand by someone who will protect you and care for you, but then when you're an adult, that hand suddenly leaves and you feel abandoned and alone. Lost, because you've never been in that situation before, and scared. Startled. Man, and it's so good. It's quoted in Into the Wild, too.... I am most enraged. Time to call on my fifties-era gang-member teacher to wrong this right...
"'...she's knitting my doom.'" Again, I just like how it's written. (Well, was said...) And how! Why don't I know anyone that talks like this? Sure, I'm your stereotypical Victorian/1920's speaker, but we need some of this. Anyone care to hop on the trolley? Please?
"He and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there."
"'...because man a road like this must eventually lead to the whole world.'"
"There's always more, a little further--it never ends." I'm sure you're seeing a trend in this type.
I can't find the section I marked, but there's a part where Jack makes love to a Mexican woman whose name I can't remember, but her son Raymond watches some or part of it. It's almost exactly like the scene in Big Sur, only without being amazingly upsetting and horrifying. The sentence was like "Raymond got out of his crib and came in the room", or something like that, and nothing more. Just thought of poor little Elliot.
"'It's the world!' said Neal. 'My God!' he cried slapping the wheel. 'It's the world!'" Okay, so it reminded me a little bit of Watchmen when Rorschach's psychiatrist says to his wife, "'I can't run from it, Gloria... It's the world..." Okay, so I paraphrased a little. But no, that's not just it. It just struck my heart somehow, I guess.
Oh, I probably should have said this book has the same main idea as all his other books.
Oh, and I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. First off, I can't imagine why kids complain about having to read this in school. I have a mini edition that just screams it was printed in the seventies that's something like 120 pages. So the school editions are like... 60 pages tops? At least. Gad, what whiners. Second, it's one of the most depressing books I've ever read. But wait! Wait, I still--well, maybe 'liked' it isn't the word, but I... recognize its merit?
Thirdly, it's about these two travelers, looking for work, run out of their hometown. One, the smaller fellow (George) is of normal intelligence, a little on the small side, but besides that, he looks after his fellow traveler (Lennie), who's built like a wall. Unfortunately, his intelligence is exceptionally low. (Hence why he needs to be looked after). But he has a heart of gold, and loves animals--an overpowering love, often accidentally killing animals like mice that he pets because he doesn't know his own strength, he gets angry when they try to bite him, and because his hands are just so huge.
I also can't tell you what the point of this book was, either. On the inside, whoever owned it before me has written "Steinbeck suggests the fulfillment of dreams requires companionship", and maybe he does, but damned if I can figure out how. The end... Jeez. And "Of love and need"? God, maybe George couldn't take it anymore, maybe it's unfair to expect and demand that he continue to take, but I think he's a right slimy bastard.
"'We travel together,' said George coldly. 'Oh, so it's that way.'" I don't really get what Curley means by "that way". I would have thought he was making a jab that he thinks they're gay or some such, but I guess that doesn't really bode with the fact that he always thinks everyone is having sex with his wife, including George and Lennie.
"'He's a nice fella,' said Slim. 'Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella.'" Yeah, George, they don't. Ugh. I hate George so much.
The scene with the old dog was forshadowing, I guess, now that I think about. I guess that was mostly the reason why George decided he had to be the one to... Ugh. Is it necessary we talk about him? Because seriously, he's a [candy-happy unicorn pony].
You know, I bet that conversation where poor Candy tries to get them not to kill his dog (to wait till tomorrow, at least, to put it off one more day) probably was the final thing that made George do it. I mean, he couldn't right continue with Lennie after the tart got... But, recalling that, when the old man's like "'Maybe tomorra. Let's wait till tomorra.'" and then Carlson says "'I don't see no reason for it...'" and pulls the pistol out then and there and takes the dog... Christ. He's slime too. Maybe the dog wasn't in the best of sorts, but really, anyone who would so eagerly kill a dog... (And not by accident. Which soumds weird if you haven't read the book, but...)
You know what, Lennie isn't a bad guy at all. He wouldn't have hurt Curly if it hadn't been for George goading him on. Maybe Curley had it coming like everyone said, but still, George, I'm egging your house. I don't even care if I have to walk all the way to CA, either.
"'Cause I'm black. They play cards in there, but I can't play because I'm black. They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me.'" I think Atticus would have smiled a little at this.
I had the final scene marked but I can't write about it. George is a slimy, weak, yellow-bellied spineless clod of dirt. I can't. Sorry. It's too upsetting a scene. Poor Lennie.
To change that dour mood, Robby D remembered Everything is Illuminated. Of course, I immediately started it! Love that booook! I also finished The Illiad, which I won't be reviewing because it's weird to try and review a book that could be your 1,400-year-old father. However, when I have more time I am going to make a belated-birthday-or-something post for Emma of all the hilarious things in it. (PS. The Odyssey > The Illiad)
PS. Hello Alex! Glad you've enjoyed this madness! Hope this most recent hasn't depressed you too much!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Everyone wants a double feature...
Fun fact!: Apparently you can only time travel if you're afflicted with rabies.
I know, this post says the twelfth on it (most likely) but even more most likely is the fact that I won't finish it till January. Or maybe just Wednesday.
I read this book a week or two ago, but I figured I could procrastinate on this one since I don't have book club for it till the 27th. (Yay, I get to see Jackii again!!!) It is... Rant by Chuck Palahniuk! Yay! I quite liked it, but I think we should keep in mind that Chuch Palahniuk is god, so... It was better than Diary, and oodles better than Choke. I think it's time I admit that Invisible Monsters and I have a special bond, so, I'd say it's about even with Survivor and maybe even a smidgen higher on the list. The book spends most of its time being pretty straightforward and normal though, so the one thing that bothered me was my feeling that I was waiting. You know, for something more... Chuck-ish to happen. And I was kind of surprised when it did, but not entirely, because he's crazy like that. So I was kind of crouched, ready to spring. Like a tiger. Or a jaguar. Or... Dare I say it...? The Daguar!
One thing I didn't like was the fact that they talk about boogers. I HATE THAT WORD. And I hate thinking about snot. And Palahniuk being careful to describe it perfectly. Ugh, and I hate it when Stephen King uses 'boogery' as an adjective in his books. Blehhhhhh.
The book's tag line is that it is the "Oral Biography of Buster Casey". Buster 'Rant' Casey, the "most efficient serial killer of our time", but not in the way you'd expect. And it's not really our time, per say, I'd say maybe 20 years into the future? So that... that's basically all I knew before I read the book. Which maybe was why I was so confused. Party Crashers are sort of like street gangs for fun that ram each others' cars. That's really all I was confused about...
"This is how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday." I thought at first this was just your normal Chuck Palahniuk is so smart, because it's true, you know? But when Chuck reveals the little twist at the end it takes on a whole other meaning that's even odder and I'm doing to do my best not to even have a spoiler included in this but I know no matter what there will be. (Wait for it...)
Neddy Nelson was quite an interesting fellow. He appears very early on for the first few chapters, asking odd things like how do you explain X scientific anomaly--actual ones, too. Finding a perfectly fossilized sandal print alongside trilobite fossils is the first one he mentions. (That one's true, too--Look at this. Hope that link works for you...) At first I was kind of like, oh, these are interesting (some of which I'm actually familiar with myself) but it's a little random... But when Neddy Nelson appears again near the book's end it makes more sense. Anyways, I marked most of his little spheals, so it's almost like interactive blogging or something. ...What?
Neddy Nelson: Re: The metal nail fully embedded in a block of sandstone that was over three hundred million years old, discovered in 1844. I wish my name was Kingoodie. Re: The lump of coal which, upon breaking open, a gold necklace was discovered to be embedded inside: Whoever chose this site's colors should be murdered. I think my eyes are bleeding. Re: In 1913 when H Reck found a modern human skull amidst Early Pleistocene soil in the Olduvai Gorge: Ouch, take that H Reck. First skeptics thus far!
"Rant always went on about leaving home, getting out and hand-picking himself a new family, but to my way of seeing that's never going to happen. If you don't accept your folks for all their worst ways, no stranger is ever going to measure up. All Rant ever learned himself is how to leave people behind." Oh man, this quote! I can't even say anything about it if I don't want to give anything away! Aaargh! Just, just keep this in mind if you're reading it. It will make you chuckle! Or smirk. Or snort. Or something... It's dramatic irony! Kind of. Not till later. Only thing I remember from freshmen English! High Five?
So, at one point Rant as a child finds all this old money, worth hundreds of thousands of millions, some dating as far back as to the 1700's or maybe just 1800's. Whatever, either way, they're worth a mint. Personal connection time! I have two mint (1979 and everything) Susan B Anthony coins I found digging in my garden and in the driveway. No lie! So, the one I found in the garden is a little beat up, but the one from the driveway still looks pretty nice. I'm relying on them to save me if I ever get into a bad rut. People still buy collectible coins, right? Yeah? Maybe? It was a guy's job in a book I read... Yay...
I marked a lot of pages because I was confused... but then it wrapped itself up... Well, it's still a little confusing but shush. There was no point to this interlude...
"The poet Oscar Wilde wrote, 'Each man kills the thing he loves...' Each man except the smart ones." I most definitely didn't mark this because I love Oscar Wilde. Nooo way. I still don't understand the things about Karl Waxman, for the record. HELP.
Rant goes, 'Really truly with her whole hart, does Echo hate somebody?' I go, doesn't Rant mean 'love'? 'And Rant shrugs and says, 'Ain't it the same thing?'" I wrote about this... And I agree... Eventually all these posts will just be the same thing over and over and over... Unless if I go back in time, and... What? Wait, that doesn't work... Dammit, Palahniuk!
The port system is weird too, and I still don't get it completely. (Is this what old people feel like it?) Basically, this port system has replaced books and movies. It's a jack in the back of your neck. Using the jack, you can record events like the movie--but you also record what you're feeling, emotionally and physically, smelling, seeing, if you're drugged, if you're half-asleep, if you have OCD, if you see things differently because it's from an infant's eyes... and so on. So you can channel the feeling of being high, say, without any adverse health effects. XXX clubs scramble port signals so no one else can download the feeling and run the clubs out of business, since to download ports or whatever is free. It confuses me greatly.
"Me and Death, separated at birth." One, I liked this just because, two, it reminded me of a quote: "Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave"--Joseph Hall. I read it in the beginning of a story about a vampire who attempts to have a child by using a surrogate mother... It's called 'Cradle', and it's by Alan Brennert. Anyone? I actually find it quite interesting. It's in some generic Barnes & Noble vampire story collection. (I think it's 100 Vicious Vampire Stories? I had to duct-tape the binding, so I don't really know...
Okay, so, time travel comes up later. It's kind of like: "Time travel!? What the he--Oh. Chuck!" And you know, the theory is that if you go back in time everyone we'll know because something will be messed up--JFK will have lived (Twilight Zone fans, anyone?) or everyone will have three eyes or Hitler will still be in power or something. But what Chuck says is basically, how would we know the difference? I mean, wouldn't the future change for our whole lives? I'm explaining this badly, but say someone screwed with time and Hitler was still alive. We would have never known the difference, because in that perverted time line, we would have grown up with Hitler in power. (Even though he'd be like.... 90? Probably older...) Maybe an easier example would be that episode of Fairly Oddparents where they accidentally stop the American Revolution from happening and everything turns British. No one but Timmy knew that it had ever been different, and that was only because of Cosmo and Wanda. Stop snickering! I'm trying to make a point!
But, quite frankly, I don't think that's possible with means that aren't magical. (Had to throw that in.) I mean, no matter what changes it all leads to the same thing--like in this story I read where there's an archaeologist team digging up raptor skeletons. In the stomachs are very human looking bones... and a tarnished gold wedding ring. While this is going on, you find out about a professor being sent back to the time of the dinosaurs in a prototype time-machine. ('Sarcophagus', I don't know who it's by, but it's in 365 Scary Stories, generic Barnes & Noble scary story book) So he was obviously going to die no matter what; they find it before he goes back. Does that help? I guess just calling it destiny makes more sense...
They also say later that there are people who have found ways to slip out of the normal stream of time. And yes, you have to have rabies for it. They refer to people like this as 'Historians'. But so far as I can see from the book is that even the Historians are trapped by destiny. It was their destiny to go back in time and rape three generations of girls (not kidding) and this character's destiny to arrive too late and not be able to complete the Grandfather clause (by killing your parents you gain immortality) and so on. So even though they think they're free, they're just as trapped as ever. This... this is another Watchmen sort of deal, huh? I'm not spoiling anything by much, but it doesn't make much sense if I don't. I think only Palahniuk or Alan Moore would be able to describe it properly, in any case.
"You wonder why we always have war and famine? Can you accept the fact that the people, the Historians who run everything, they get off on watching our mortality?" This makes me think of Hellsing--the book series more so than the original anime, though the ultimate edition remains pretty true to the story... But. The main character is Alucard (cough cough Dracula) who at this point, is a good 600 some-odd years old. And he wants to die (but is still very human is his fear of death) and is jealous of the humans who can still die. But during one of the final big fights in the book he shows a very startling human side: the fact that he mourns his fear of death and is now paying for it, humans' resilience and dedication even though they're hardly "walking shimmers" (Vol. 8) and gets angry at a priest who throws away his mortality: he screams at him and finally begs him not to throw away his soul and become "A monster like me" (Vol. 8). But! That wasn't the point I intended on making. What I was going to say is he loves getting put through pain, getting his head whopped off, getting struck through with crazy priest-daggers, shot, and so on, because he likes feeling pain because it makes him feel like a human again. He gets off on mortality. And killing neo-Nazis and Brazilian police forces. I think I typed myself in a pointless circle, but Hellsing is pretty cool so I'm good with it.
In other news, there you have it. I don't think I gave too much away: what little I did give away won't make any sense if you haven't read the book, and even then. Oh, and I finished this on Tuesday. So take that, past me! I finished On the Road, too, but I'll do that later. Also reading a short Stephen King story called 'Apt Pupil' that I think I only like because of how similar it is to Death Note. (The first half of Death Note, at least.) Seriously, AU Death Note, and not just because from the start I pictured Todd looking like Light. Actually, that would make 'Apt Pupil' the original and the AU would be... ohh.
Aw, I bothered Robby D so much about the book he offered to buy me breakfast.. now I feel bad... Emma, I'm a jerk!
We read a Kurt Vonnegut story in Marky Mark's class... one of my favorites... Marky Mark just keeps on getting cooler and cooler.
I also gave the best, most succinct summary of Big Sur ever today: "He's like... Everything I believe in doesn't mean anything. I'm an alcoholic. Oh, and my cat died." Seriously. It's not fun to read... Just depressing...
Oh, and sorry if the links don't work.
I know, this post says the twelfth on it (most likely) but even more most likely is the fact that I won't finish it till January. Or maybe just Wednesday.
I read this book a week or two ago, but I figured I could procrastinate on this one since I don't have book club for it till the 27th. (Yay, I get to see Jackii again!!!) It is... Rant by Chuck Palahniuk! Yay! I quite liked it, but I think we should keep in mind that Chuch Palahniuk is god, so... It was better than Diary, and oodles better than Choke. I think it's time I admit that Invisible Monsters and I have a special bond, so, I'd say it's about even with Survivor and maybe even a smidgen higher on the list. The book spends most of its time being pretty straightforward and normal though, so the one thing that bothered me was my feeling that I was waiting. You know, for something more... Chuck-ish to happen. And I was kind of surprised when it did, but not entirely, because he's crazy like that. So I was kind of crouched, ready to spring. Like a tiger. Or a jaguar. Or... Dare I say it...? The Daguar!
One thing I didn't like was the fact that they talk about boogers. I HATE THAT WORD. And I hate thinking about snot. And Palahniuk being careful to describe it perfectly. Ugh, and I hate it when Stephen King uses 'boogery' as an adjective in his books. Blehhhhhh.
The book's tag line is that it is the "Oral Biography of Buster Casey". Buster 'Rant' Casey, the "most efficient serial killer of our time", but not in the way you'd expect. And it's not really our time, per say, I'd say maybe 20 years into the future? So that... that's basically all I knew before I read the book. Which maybe was why I was so confused. Party Crashers are sort of like street gangs for fun that ram each others' cars. That's really all I was confused about...
"This is how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday." I thought at first this was just your normal Chuck Palahniuk is so smart, because it's true, you know? But when Chuck reveals the little twist at the end it takes on a whole other meaning that's even odder and I'm doing to do my best not to even have a spoiler included in this but I know no matter what there will be. (Wait for it...)
Neddy Nelson was quite an interesting fellow. He appears very early on for the first few chapters, asking odd things like how do you explain X scientific anomaly--actual ones, too. Finding a perfectly fossilized sandal print alongside trilobite fossils is the first one he mentions. (That one's true, too--Look at this. Hope that link works for you...) At first I was kind of like, oh, these are interesting (some of which I'm actually familiar with myself) but it's a little random... But when Neddy Nelson appears again near the book's end it makes more sense. Anyways, I marked most of his little spheals, so it's almost like interactive blogging or something. ...What?
Neddy Nelson: Re: The metal nail fully embedded in a block of sandstone that was over three hundred million years old, discovered in 1844. I wish my name was Kingoodie. Re: The lump of coal which, upon breaking open, a gold necklace was discovered to be embedded inside: Whoever chose this site's colors should be murdered. I think my eyes are bleeding. Re: In 1913 when H Reck found a modern human skull amidst Early Pleistocene soil in the Olduvai Gorge: Ouch, take that H Reck. First skeptics thus far!
"Rant always went on about leaving home, getting out and hand-picking himself a new family, but to my way of seeing that's never going to happen. If you don't accept your folks for all their worst ways, no stranger is ever going to measure up. All Rant ever learned himself is how to leave people behind." Oh man, this quote! I can't even say anything about it if I don't want to give anything away! Aaargh! Just, just keep this in mind if you're reading it. It will make you chuckle! Or smirk. Or snort. Or something... It's dramatic irony! Kind of. Not till later. Only thing I remember from freshmen English! High Five?
So, at one point Rant as a child finds all this old money, worth hundreds of thousands of millions, some dating as far back as to the 1700's or maybe just 1800's. Whatever, either way, they're worth a mint. Personal connection time! I have two mint (1979 and everything) Susan B Anthony coins I found digging in my garden and in the driveway. No lie! So, the one I found in the garden is a little beat up, but the one from the driveway still looks pretty nice. I'm relying on them to save me if I ever get into a bad rut. People still buy collectible coins, right? Yeah? Maybe? It was a guy's job in a book I read... Yay...
I marked a lot of pages because I was confused... but then it wrapped itself up... Well, it's still a little confusing but shush. There was no point to this interlude...
"The poet Oscar Wilde wrote, 'Each man kills the thing he loves...' Each man except the smart ones." I most definitely didn't mark this because I love Oscar Wilde. Nooo way. I still don't understand the things about Karl Waxman, for the record. HELP.
Rant goes, 'Really truly with her whole hart, does Echo hate somebody?' I go, doesn't Rant mean 'love'? 'And Rant shrugs and says, 'Ain't it the same thing?'" I wrote about this... And I agree... Eventually all these posts will just be the same thing over and over and over... Unless if I go back in time, and... What? Wait, that doesn't work... Dammit, Palahniuk!
The port system is weird too, and I still don't get it completely. (Is this what old people feel like it?) Basically, this port system has replaced books and movies. It's a jack in the back of your neck. Using the jack, you can record events like the movie--but you also record what you're feeling, emotionally and physically, smelling, seeing, if you're drugged, if you're half-asleep, if you have OCD, if you see things differently because it's from an infant's eyes... and so on. So you can channel the feeling of being high, say, without any adverse health effects. XXX clubs scramble port signals so no one else can download the feeling and run the clubs out of business, since to download ports or whatever is free. It confuses me greatly.
"Me and Death, separated at birth." One, I liked this just because, two, it reminded me of a quote: "Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave"--Joseph Hall. I read it in the beginning of a story about a vampire who attempts to have a child by using a surrogate mother... It's called 'Cradle', and it's by Alan Brennert. Anyone? I actually find it quite interesting. It's in some generic Barnes & Noble vampire story collection. (I think it's 100 Vicious Vampire Stories? I had to duct-tape the binding, so I don't really know...
Okay, so, time travel comes up later. It's kind of like: "Time travel!? What the he--Oh. Chuck!" And you know, the theory is that if you go back in time everyone we'll know because something will be messed up--JFK will have lived (Twilight Zone fans, anyone?) or everyone will have three eyes or Hitler will still be in power or something. But what Chuck says is basically, how would we know the difference? I mean, wouldn't the future change for our whole lives? I'm explaining this badly, but say someone screwed with time and Hitler was still alive. We would have never known the difference, because in that perverted time line, we would have grown up with Hitler in power. (Even though he'd be like.... 90? Probably older...) Maybe an easier example would be that episode of Fairly Oddparents where they accidentally stop the American Revolution from happening and everything turns British. No one but Timmy knew that it had ever been different, and that was only because of Cosmo and Wanda. Stop snickering! I'm trying to make a point!
But, quite frankly, I don't think that's possible with means that aren't magical. (Had to throw that in.) I mean, no matter what changes it all leads to the same thing--like in this story I read where there's an archaeologist team digging up raptor skeletons. In the stomachs are very human looking bones... and a tarnished gold wedding ring. While this is going on, you find out about a professor being sent back to the time of the dinosaurs in a prototype time-machine. ('Sarcophagus', I don't know who it's by, but it's in 365 Scary Stories, generic Barnes & Noble scary story book) So he was obviously going to die no matter what; they find it before he goes back. Does that help? I guess just calling it destiny makes more sense...
They also say later that there are people who have found ways to slip out of the normal stream of time. And yes, you have to have rabies for it. They refer to people like this as 'Historians'. But so far as I can see from the book is that even the Historians are trapped by destiny. It was their destiny to go back in time and rape three generations of girls (not kidding) and this character's destiny to arrive too late and not be able to complete the Grandfather clause (by killing your parents you gain immortality) and so on. So even though they think they're free, they're just as trapped as ever. This... this is another Watchmen sort of deal, huh? I'm not spoiling anything by much, but it doesn't make much sense if I don't. I think only Palahniuk or Alan Moore would be able to describe it properly, in any case.
"You wonder why we always have war and famine? Can you accept the fact that the people, the Historians who run everything, they get off on watching our mortality?" This makes me think of Hellsing--the book series more so than the original anime, though the ultimate edition remains pretty true to the story... But. The main character is Alucard (cough cough Dracula) who at this point, is a good 600 some-odd years old. And he wants to die (but is still very human is his fear of death) and is jealous of the humans who can still die. But during one of the final big fights in the book he shows a very startling human side: the fact that he mourns his fear of death and is now paying for it, humans' resilience and dedication even though they're hardly "walking shimmers" (Vol. 8) and gets angry at a priest who throws away his mortality: he screams at him and finally begs him not to throw away his soul and become "A monster like me" (Vol. 8). But! That wasn't the point I intended on making. What I was going to say is he loves getting put through pain, getting his head whopped off, getting struck through with crazy priest-daggers, shot, and so on, because he likes feeling pain because it makes him feel like a human again. He gets off on mortality. And killing neo-Nazis and Brazilian police forces. I think I typed myself in a pointless circle, but Hellsing is pretty cool so I'm good with it.
In other news, there you have it. I don't think I gave too much away: what little I did give away won't make any sense if you haven't read the book, and even then. Oh, and I finished this on Tuesday. So take that, past me! I finished On the Road, too, but I'll do that later. Also reading a short Stephen King story called 'Apt Pupil' that I think I only like because of how similar it is to Death Note. (The first half of Death Note, at least.) Seriously, AU Death Note, and not just because from the start I pictured Todd looking like Light. Actually, that would make 'Apt Pupil' the original and the AU would be... ohh.
Aw, I bothered Robby D so much about the book he offered to buy me breakfast.. now I feel bad... Emma, I'm a jerk!
We read a Kurt Vonnegut story in Marky Mark's class... one of my favorites... Marky Mark just keeps on getting cooler and cooler.
I also gave the best, most succinct summary of Big Sur ever today: "He's like... Everything I believe in doesn't mean anything. I'm an alcoholic. Oh, and my cat died." Seriously. It's not fun to read... Just depressing...
Oh, and sorry if the links don't work.
Friday, September 11, 2009
This song is called, "It's a metaphor, fool"
Trying like mad to catch up on my week. For this post? The oft-talked about Desperation by Stephen King! Yaaaay! (No, I haven't seen the movie. The one time it was on TV it was a Thursday night. Who even does that?) Anyways, like you've heard a million times, it's my favorite Stephen King book, and it also was my first. Guess what? It's still my favorite Stephen King book, and it's still my first. (I'm pretty sure). So you know I like it and I'm going to be licking its shoes. So, let's continue...
Oh, as a general warning, this book is a little gory. Gory meaning violence--it's intense, but he doesn't go too badly over the top. It is very gross though. Smashed bugs and rather 'ripe' corpses. Language, of course. Not overly sexual, though there are a few moments where Stephen King can't help it.
A little overview, which I forgot to do for the last two books (sorry, but so I forgot. This is the Internet. You can Wikipedia this stuff. Welcome to the twenty-first century, huh?) The book starts with a man and wife driving through Nevada when they're stopped by a very odd police man. He seems kind at first, but quickly reverts from good cop to bad cop and drives them to the station in his town of Desperation. Before bringing the couple into the cell, he shoots the husband to death and then throws the wife in jail. Beside her are fellows already collected by this seemingly insane man. Very quickly it appears things are much deeper and much worse than just an insane cop. (Ugh, I fail.)
Was that good? Okay. Well, when the cop, Entragian, meets a character named John Edward Marinville (an author) he physically accosts him (phrase of the week?) and screams at him, saying something like "Your true failing is that you've never written a truly spiritual novel". After reading this for the ninetieth time, I think this book is supposed to be Stephen King's spiritual novel. And he does a good job of it, too. To this day I get a cold shiver when I read or someone says "gosh", too, which really doesn't have anything to do with what I just said, but damn Stephen King you so scaaarrry.
Ah, the very first hints we have that the cop is mad is this: "'If you do not choose to remain silent, anything that you say may be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I'm going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you?'" Catch that? Gives me the shivers, I don't know about you. And Mary constantly hears it echoing in her mind, too...
When he meets Marinville he throws in another little bit that gives me a rather unpleasant frisson as well: "'Why, do you realize what the ratio of drivers-to-accidents on motorcycles is? Computed on a road-hours basis? I can tell you because I'm a wolf and we get a circular every month from the National Safety Council.'"
"'A bad guy,' the cop said. 'That's all you need to know for now, son. A very bad guy. Tak!'" Of course, Entragian being possessed by Tak can't resist speaking in the tongue of the unformed, but at the same time, he actually is letting David know who the 'very bad guy' is, without meaning it. Heh.
"'My children of the desert!' the cop said. 'The can toi! What music they make!'" For those of you not obsessed with horror movies that are right on the cusp of being eighty years old, it's a parody of a line from the original Dracula film: "Children of the night... What music they make." (He was referring to a pack of howling wolves, and in Desperation, Entragian is referring to howling coyotes in the distance.) When I caught it this time around I cracked up. Then I felt a little sick that it was this character that had made me laugh but hey, if you can't laugh at a Dracula parody, what can you laugh at? I don't know. I laughed at the parody...
Though this makes me wonder: Tak, the unformed, is trapped in the ini in a mineshaft. So when he parodies a movie, or quotes a movie, or becomes enraged because he believes Marinville is insulting Steinbeck... How does he know about those things!? I mean, it's not like people just toss books and movies into the freaky glowing red pit at the bottom of a mine shaft. And even if they did, good luck watching the movies. My theory is that he takes a little bit of each person he possesses with him--So someone was a Steinbeck fan, someone liked old movies, et cetera. Just like a yeerk! Woah! I kind of like how everything in my life can be boiled down to an Animorphs reference...
Page 123 (haha) you meet Cynthia. I don't remember if she was in Rose Madder (I don't remember much about Rose Madder except for the part with the foxes that I didn't understand) but her whole spheal is basically the second half of that book. Just pointing that out is all.
"'The obsessive Bible-reading was bad enough, but this... why didn't you tell me about this praying business?'" David's mother asks him this. David is basically who you'd have to consider the hero of the novel--or maybe Marinville?--but this and the scene that follows pisses me off. Okay, the lady's near hysterical--Entragian killed her daughter and beat up her husband. But this... Ugh, this scene made me not feel bad for the mom when she's taken away. Hectoring her son because he believes in God and prays? Making him feel guilty for it? There's a name for a jerk like that, but I would not write it here. Well, the one that's worse than jerk. You know.
Often Marinville talks about having sex with an actress with 'emeralds'. Sometimes "All the emeralds." I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS IS A EUPHEMISM MORE AND I NEVER WILL.
Remember when I talked about Stephen King had this thing about birds, hearing sparrows in his head and such? (See the Needful Things post: YOG SOTHOTH RULES!) In this book it's "My head is full of blackbirds". Oh, you and your birds Stephen King. In Bag of Bones he has some important subplot with owls, but damned if I can remember it. I got rid of it too, so sorry. It was great until the very end, then it was kind of like... Stephen King, are you back on your crack addiction? Seriously.
One thing that weirds me out is that David sees what happened in the days the shaft was opened and Tak escaped into a man and attacked the town. Well, that fact itself doesn't weird me out--but one guy, Ripton, was possessed by Tak and at this point, no one knows of course. And he tells the man he's planning on possessing next that one of the mine workers or overseers are down in Reno. Now, the massacre of the town basically happened in what, a week? Two weeks? I doubt it was more than one week. So the man in Reno is probably still out there when the town's destruction goes on and while the story plays out... Or, I'd like to believe he was spared... but the shock on his out when he goes back home and finds this--this war zone--will probably put too much strain on his heart and kill him anyway. (He leaves town because his great grandkid is being born.) But still, can you imagine coming back to that... man...
Again in this book Stephen King brings up Simple Simon. He has a serious issue with Simple Simon, I'm thinking.
"'Do you really know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?' David waited, saying nothing. Maybe listening, maybe not. Johnny couldn't tell. 'Sometimes he makes us live.'"
So it's good times. If you've happened to see this movie, drop me a line because I'd like to know if it's worth even watching and I'm too cheap to even spend fourteen dollars to by it at Target.
What else? Let's see, Emma, I think I already told you, but Robby D still hasn't given back Everything is Illuminated yet. I don't think he actually wrote it down on a to-do list... Come onnnn Robbyyyyyy. It's my most favorite boooooooooookkkkk everrrrrr. Actually, considering how pushy I've been about this, he'll probably cut a hole in his floor and cover it with leaves, then hang the book over it... Pfft, I'd just land in Cronkasaurus Rex's room. My legs would be broken, sure, but I could hang out with a different teacher, who... also... doesn't... give... back... books. Man. You guys.
It would be incredibly easy to kill me. "Oh, look what's in that bear trap, Angela! It's a copy of Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut!" "Really!?" *CRUNCH* This could go on and on. I should stop now so as not to give my archenemies or the Daguar any ideas.
Oh, as a general warning, this book is a little gory. Gory meaning violence--it's intense, but he doesn't go too badly over the top. It is very gross though. Smashed bugs and rather 'ripe' corpses. Language, of course. Not overly sexual, though there are a few moments where Stephen King can't help it.
A little overview, which I forgot to do for the last two books (sorry, but so I forgot. This is the Internet. You can Wikipedia this stuff. Welcome to the twenty-first century, huh?) The book starts with a man and wife driving through Nevada when they're stopped by a very odd police man. He seems kind at first, but quickly reverts from good cop to bad cop and drives them to the station in his town of Desperation. Before bringing the couple into the cell, he shoots the husband to death and then throws the wife in jail. Beside her are fellows already collected by this seemingly insane man. Very quickly it appears things are much deeper and much worse than just an insane cop. (Ugh, I fail.)
Was that good? Okay. Well, when the cop, Entragian, meets a character named John Edward Marinville (an author) he physically accosts him (phrase of the week?) and screams at him, saying something like "Your true failing is that you've never written a truly spiritual novel". After reading this for the ninetieth time, I think this book is supposed to be Stephen King's spiritual novel. And he does a good job of it, too. To this day I get a cold shiver when I read or someone says "gosh", too, which really doesn't have anything to do with what I just said, but damn Stephen King you so scaaarrry.
Ah, the very first hints we have that the cop is mad is this: "'If you do not choose to remain silent, anything that you say may be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I'm going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you?'" Catch that? Gives me the shivers, I don't know about you. And Mary constantly hears it echoing in her mind, too...
When he meets Marinville he throws in another little bit that gives me a rather unpleasant frisson as well: "'Why, do you realize what the ratio of drivers-to-accidents on motorcycles is? Computed on a road-hours basis? I can tell you because I'm a wolf and we get a circular every month from the National Safety Council.'"
"'A bad guy,' the cop said. 'That's all you need to know for now, son. A very bad guy. Tak!'" Of course, Entragian being possessed by Tak can't resist speaking in the tongue of the unformed, but at the same time, he actually is letting David know who the 'very bad guy' is, without meaning it. Heh.
"'My children of the desert!' the cop said. 'The can toi! What music they make!'" For those of you not obsessed with horror movies that are right on the cusp of being eighty years old, it's a parody of a line from the original Dracula film: "Children of the night... What music they make." (He was referring to a pack of howling wolves, and in Desperation, Entragian is referring to howling coyotes in the distance.) When I caught it this time around I cracked up. Then I felt a little sick that it was this character that had made me laugh but hey, if you can't laugh at a Dracula parody, what can you laugh at? I don't know. I laughed at the parody...
Though this makes me wonder: Tak, the unformed, is trapped in the ini in a mineshaft. So when he parodies a movie, or quotes a movie, or becomes enraged because he believes Marinville is insulting Steinbeck... How does he know about those things!? I mean, it's not like people just toss books and movies into the freaky glowing red pit at the bottom of a mine shaft. And even if they did, good luck watching the movies. My theory is that he takes a little bit of each person he possesses with him--So someone was a Steinbeck fan, someone liked old movies, et cetera. Just like a yeerk! Woah! I kind of like how everything in my life can be boiled down to an Animorphs reference...
Page 123 (haha) you meet Cynthia. I don't remember if she was in Rose Madder (I don't remember much about Rose Madder except for the part with the foxes that I didn't understand) but her whole spheal is basically the second half of that book. Just pointing that out is all.
"'The obsessive Bible-reading was bad enough, but this... why didn't you tell me about this praying business?'" David's mother asks him this. David is basically who you'd have to consider the hero of the novel--or maybe Marinville?--but this and the scene that follows pisses me off. Okay, the lady's near hysterical--Entragian killed her daughter and beat up her husband. But this... Ugh, this scene made me not feel bad for the mom when she's taken away. Hectoring her son because he believes in God and prays? Making him feel guilty for it? There's a name for a jerk like that, but I would not write it here. Well, the one that's worse than jerk. You know.
Often Marinville talks about having sex with an actress with 'emeralds'. Sometimes "All the emeralds." I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS IS A EUPHEMISM MORE AND I NEVER WILL.
Remember when I talked about Stephen King had this thing about birds, hearing sparrows in his head and such? (See the Needful Things post: YOG SOTHOTH RULES!) In this book it's "My head is full of blackbirds". Oh, you and your birds Stephen King. In Bag of Bones he has some important subplot with owls, but damned if I can remember it. I got rid of it too, so sorry. It was great until the very end, then it was kind of like... Stephen King, are you back on your crack addiction? Seriously.
One thing that weirds me out is that David sees what happened in the days the shaft was opened and Tak escaped into a man and attacked the town. Well, that fact itself doesn't weird me out--but one guy, Ripton, was possessed by Tak and at this point, no one knows of course. And he tells the man he's planning on possessing next that one of the mine workers or overseers are down in Reno. Now, the massacre of the town basically happened in what, a week? Two weeks? I doubt it was more than one week. So the man in Reno is probably still out there when the town's destruction goes on and while the story plays out... Or, I'd like to believe he was spared... but the shock on his out when he goes back home and finds this--this war zone--will probably put too much strain on his heart and kill him anyway. (He leaves town because his great grandkid is being born.) But still, can you imagine coming back to that... man...
Again in this book Stephen King brings up Simple Simon. He has a serious issue with Simple Simon, I'm thinking.
"'Do you really know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?' David waited, saying nothing. Maybe listening, maybe not. Johnny couldn't tell. 'Sometimes he makes us live.'"
So it's good times. If you've happened to see this movie, drop me a line because I'd like to know if it's worth even watching and I'm too cheap to even spend fourteen dollars to by it at Target.
What else? Let's see, Emma, I think I already told you, but Robby D still hasn't given back Everything is Illuminated yet. I don't think he actually wrote it down on a to-do list... Come onnnn Robbyyyyyy. It's my most favorite boooooooooookkkkk everrrrrr. Actually, considering how pushy I've been about this, he'll probably cut a hole in his floor and cover it with leaves, then hang the book over it... Pfft, I'd just land in Cronkasaurus Rex's room. My legs would be broken, sure, but I could hang out with a different teacher, who... also... doesn't... give... back... books. Man. You guys.
It would be incredibly easy to kill me. "Oh, look what's in that bear trap, Angela! It's a copy of Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut!" "Really!?" *CRUNCH* This could go on and on. I should stop now so as not to give my archenemies or the Daguar any ideas.
The third planet is sure that they're being watched by an eye in the sky that can't be stopped
I'll start with The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky. It was an okay book. Ultimately forgettable, it hardly ever grabbed my heart out. The format was interesting and the idea of it all was cool (writing a diary in letters to someone who doesn't know you, an address you just pulled out of the phone book) but I wasn't too in love with it. It was kind of like... Like when I described what Crabwalk by Gunter Grass was like to Emma. It was like sleepwalking. All the climaxes were a little under-dramatic. Like the climax at the end--oh. Okay. Huh. What? It was too slow a ticking time-bomb. The difference between this and Crabwalk however, is the fact that... well, one, I liked Crabwalk more. Two, maybe sleepwalking isn't the best way to describe this... It's more beyond sleeping, it's like trying desperately to stay up for the end of a late night movie. It's less dreamy than it is drawn-out. Painfully slow. The images are like the fleeting few details that you remember about that late-night movie... that fade incredibly quickly. Maybe it wasn't fair that I compared these two. Yeah... it wasn't. Anyway, the reason why I read this book is because it became rather popular at my school. It was okay, but for my money, Crabwalk. I... I think this is the most muddled and confusing thing I've ever yet blogged.
First, I feel the need to mention Charlie's (the main character) sister. She gets better later on, but her first relationship is weird. I know how Emma loves crazy women, so I figure I'd bring her up. See, this guy likes her, and she plays hard to get and is verbally abusive all the time. Finally, the guy's temper snaps, and he slaps her across the face. He apologizes or something, or maybe just leaves the house, and she turns to Charlie and says something like "We're going steady now". The next time Charlie sees them, he walks in on them having sex. Umm. She disgusted me. I hated her the whole book for that. Sure, she brought it upon herself, she really was being a nasty awful girl, but hooking up with a guy because he physically accosted you and then having sex with him the next day is just... Ugh. Besides my disdain for her, the second she told Charlie they were together I was just like "Big Mikey would loathe this girl". Man, I know I do.
"I opened the door, and I saw Patrick kissing Brad. It was a stolen type of kissing." I don't know what a stolen type of kissing is, but I like that description of a kiss. It sounds cool.
"I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I thought to myself that just in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand."
Second book, one of my personal favorites, War of the Worlds by HG Wells. You know what I find strange about this book? It's perfect for a movie translation. Honestly, right in some more dialogue, and you've practically got a script or viable plot for a movie. Multiple perspectives, a little romance (okay, it's not so much a romance, it gives you more the feeling of a soldier in combat longing for his wife), killer martians... Yet, I don't think it's ever been kept in its original format. The version of the fifties and the most recent were both rewritten to be set in the US... Recent for their times... Of course, I haven't seen the most modern, but I read the Mad parody... haha. But the father was divorced, and I'm thinking most likely he just grew closer to his kids who didn't really like him much before the attack. In the fifties one, I think instead of the curate, the hero falls in with a girl and they have that whole scene stuck in the fallen building, and she doesn't die. And that scene basically ends the movie...
But! I think it would be seriously badass if they followed the book: Aliens attacking a Victorian-era Britain!? Someone hide Mr Darcy! He's their greatest asset!
Anyways, I love the book. The reason why it's a classic most likely lies in that it's a 'first' (like The Scarlet Letter, or Jekyll and Hyde or some such) and in this case, according to the back of the book it is "The first modern tale of alien invasion..." Modern tale? Were there stories of alien invasion before this? The only older sci-fi writer I can think of is Jules Verne... I want to find these earlier stories... But, regardless of its first status, it's still a good book. It's a little outdated, sure, but not for long because I'm bringing pocket watches back. It's still readable after, you know, a hundred some-odd years, so props to HG Wells. It probably doesn't hurt that I'm terribly biased and love that man, no?
Like Pride and Prejudice, the opening line is great enough to be quoted just because. "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves around their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." Phew. I've written about Cosmos before on here, right? In one of the episode that line is read with an octopus's eye in a fish eye camera view. Creepiest thing ever. It makes my skin crawl, no lie.
HG Wells is very on describing the martians and their intents, and comparing men to martians. Their intents are obviously to kill (and harvest!) us and mark our planet as a new home. We are, as said later, like ants to them. Quite often are people described in such a way in comparison to the martians. But! "And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison or dodo, but upon its own inferior races." ...HG Wells... bison aren't extinct... But, besides that, he's got a good point. The humans:martians::dodo bird:humans. Bet nobody expected to see one of those word problems after third grade, huh?
"He met a wagoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the pit--that the man simply drove on." HAHA. This cracks me up. This may in fact be my favorite scene in the book. Y--your hat fell off! Good God man, you must be mad! That's my new theory. You can cure asylum inmates by putting hats on their heads. Thanks HG Wells. PS. I love you.
Our hero describes a pamphlet he found about the martians and their conquest:"The artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. HG presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect." I mark this because, although our hero speaks of this form not being proper, it appears to describe the most popular images of the martian spaceships--usually when talking of this novel, they are referred to as 'the tripods', as well. Irony! Poor Wells. And look at this statue in Woking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woking_tripod.JPG Hmm. Looks like he only read the misinformation too...
"It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer..." Here our hero continues in describing the writer's theories on evolution ringing true with what the martian bodies revealed are like. The writer he referred to so impressed? HG Wells himself. The whole paragraph following this is basically name-dropping himself. Hehe.
"I could see his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch-chain." HG Wells is talking about pocket watches! High five, Browski!
A man our hero runs into talks of how the world will change when the martians rule. Man will be like cattle, since martians sustain themselves off our blood, but how not all would despise the martians--how some men would love the martians with all their hearts for the fact that their alien overlords and consumers feed them and take good care of them. "'They'll wonder what people did before there were Martians to take care of them.'" From there, some men may be trained to hunt other men like dogs after a fox, and maybe some men would be kept as pets till they had to be slaughtered. "'Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks... get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed.'" What's the most disturbing, I think, is how it rings true--how many people would rather be fed and safe, even while knowing what would happen in the end. Or maybe, eventually, people will be just as unknowing as the cows we snicker at in the slaughterhouse, unaware of what their life will end in.
SPOILER! "...slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the weed was slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things God, in all his wisdom, has put upon this earth." I believe this line is what the 1950's film ended on. That movie had a very religious feel, indeed. And there is some very nice foreshadowing in this book, actually to the point where I thought the foreshadowing (with the dying red weed) was actually our hero speaking in metaphors, and that the red weed was literally the Martians themselves. (And proceeded to whirl in confusion as I tried to figure out what the next 100 or so pages were about...)
Anyways, I can't vouch for the new movie, but the book is quite nice, and I'd say it's better than about 95% of modern (as in the last 40 years modern) sci-fi tales. For real. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find myself a TARDIS and go back in time to grovel at HG Wells's feet.
EDIT: On the Friday I was reading this in the hallway, Bob Darraugh walked by and said: "War of the Worlds! I hope that doesn't happen over the weekend!" Samesies, Bob Darraugh, samesies. And it didn't.
First, I feel the need to mention Charlie's (the main character) sister. She gets better later on, but her first relationship is weird. I know how Emma loves crazy women, so I figure I'd bring her up. See, this guy likes her, and she plays hard to get and is verbally abusive all the time. Finally, the guy's temper snaps, and he slaps her across the face. He apologizes or something, or maybe just leaves the house, and she turns to Charlie and says something like "We're going steady now". The next time Charlie sees them, he walks in on them having sex. Umm. She disgusted me. I hated her the whole book for that. Sure, she brought it upon herself, she really was being a nasty awful girl, but hooking up with a guy because he physically accosted you and then having sex with him the next day is just... Ugh. Besides my disdain for her, the second she told Charlie they were together I was just like "Big Mikey would loathe this girl". Man, I know I do.
"I opened the door, and I saw Patrick kissing Brad. It was a stolen type of kissing." I don't know what a stolen type of kissing is, but I like that description of a kiss. It sounds cool.
"I had an amazing feeling when I finally held the tape in my hand. I thought to myself that just in the palm of my hand, there was this one tape that had all of these memories and feelings and great joy and sadness. Right there in the palm of my hand."
Second book, one of my personal favorites, War of the Worlds by HG Wells. You know what I find strange about this book? It's perfect for a movie translation. Honestly, right in some more dialogue, and you've practically got a script or viable plot for a movie. Multiple perspectives, a little romance (okay, it's not so much a romance, it gives you more the feeling of a soldier in combat longing for his wife), killer martians... Yet, I don't think it's ever been kept in its original format. The version of the fifties and the most recent were both rewritten to be set in the US... Recent for their times... Of course, I haven't seen the most modern, but I read the Mad parody... haha. But the father was divorced, and I'm thinking most likely he just grew closer to his kids who didn't really like him much before the attack. In the fifties one, I think instead of the curate, the hero falls in with a girl and they have that whole scene stuck in the fallen building, and she doesn't die. And that scene basically ends the movie...
But! I think it would be seriously badass if they followed the book: Aliens attacking a Victorian-era Britain!? Someone hide Mr Darcy! He's their greatest asset!
Anyways, I love the book. The reason why it's a classic most likely lies in that it's a 'first' (like The Scarlet Letter, or Jekyll and Hyde or some such) and in this case, according to the back of the book it is "The first modern tale of alien invasion..." Modern tale? Were there stories of alien invasion before this? The only older sci-fi writer I can think of is Jules Verne... I want to find these earlier stories... But, regardless of its first status, it's still a good book. It's a little outdated, sure, but not for long because I'm bringing pocket watches back. It's still readable after, you know, a hundred some-odd years, so props to HG Wells. It probably doesn't hurt that I'm terribly biased and love that man, no?
Like Pride and Prejudice, the opening line is great enough to be quoted just because. "No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves around their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." Phew. I've written about Cosmos before on here, right? In one of the episode that line is read with an octopus's eye in a fish eye camera view. Creepiest thing ever. It makes my skin crawl, no lie.
HG Wells is very on describing the martians and their intents, and comparing men to martians. Their intents are obviously to kill (and harvest!) us and mark our planet as a new home. We are, as said later, like ants to them. Quite often are people described in such a way in comparison to the martians. But! "And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison or dodo, but upon its own inferior races." ...HG Wells... bison aren't extinct... But, besides that, he's got a good point. The humans:martians::dodo bird:humans. Bet nobody expected to see one of those word problems after third grade, huh?
"He met a wagoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the pit--that the man simply drove on." HAHA. This cracks me up. This may in fact be my favorite scene in the book. Y--your hat fell off! Good God man, you must be mad! That's my new theory. You can cure asylum inmates by putting hats on their heads. Thanks HG Wells. PS. I love you.
Our hero describes a pamphlet he found about the martians and their conquest:"The artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. HG presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect." I mark this because, although our hero speaks of this form not being proper, it appears to describe the most popular images of the martian spaceships--usually when talking of this novel, they are referred to as 'the tripods', as well. Irony! Poor Wells. And look at this statue in Woking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Woking_tripod.JPG Hmm. Looks like he only read the misinformation too...
"It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer..." Here our hero continues in describing the writer's theories on evolution ringing true with what the martian bodies revealed are like. The writer he referred to so impressed? HG Wells himself. The whole paragraph following this is basically name-dropping himself. Hehe.
"I could see his staring eyes and gleams of light on his studs and watch-chain." HG Wells is talking about pocket watches! High five, Browski!
A man our hero runs into talks of how the world will change when the martians rule. Man will be like cattle, since martians sustain themselves off our blood, but how not all would despise the martians--how some men would love the martians with all their hearts for the fact that their alien overlords and consumers feed them and take good care of them. "'They'll wonder what people did before there were Martians to take care of them.'" From there, some men may be trained to hunt other men like dogs after a fox, and maybe some men would be kept as pets till they had to be slaughtered. "'Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks... get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed.'" What's the most disturbing, I think, is how it rings true--how many people would rather be fed and safe, even while knowing what would happen in the end. Or maybe, eventually, people will be just as unknowing as the cows we snicker at in the slaughterhouse, unaware of what their life will end in.
SPOILER! "...slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the weed was slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things God, in all his wisdom, has put upon this earth." I believe this line is what the 1950's film ended on. That movie had a very religious feel, indeed. And there is some very nice foreshadowing in this book, actually to the point where I thought the foreshadowing (with the dying red weed) was actually our hero speaking in metaphors, and that the red weed was literally the Martians themselves. (And proceeded to whirl in confusion as I tried to figure out what the next 100 or so pages were about...)
Anyways, I can't vouch for the new movie, but the book is quite nice, and I'd say it's better than about 95% of modern (as in the last 40 years modern) sci-fi tales. For real. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find myself a TARDIS and go back in time to grovel at HG Wells's feet.
EDIT: On the Friday I was reading this in the hallway, Bob Darraugh walked by and said: "War of the Worlds! I hope that doesn't happen over the weekend!" Samesies, Bob Darraugh, samesies. And it didn't.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
DEAR FUTURE ANGELA: THESE ARE ANTHEM NOTES
In case if I should ever need to find them quickly months for now, because I read Anthem by Ayn Rand for Marky Mark.
The book is another story about an oppressive future community, a la Handmaiden's Tale, 1984, Brave New World and that's all I can think of. It's quicker and comparing it to, say, 1984 is like comparing an Oreo to an ice-cream cake. Already I can tell the theme of this class... But, first off, like Brave New World, people all exist as--they don't consider themselves as individuals, for example, instead of "I have brown hair" it's "We have brown hair." "They spoke to me for the first time" as opposed to "She spoke to me for the first time" and so on. Though I do find it curious they have the word 'alone' and know its meaning... But! Knowing those other books, I'm sure you can figure out how the story starts--one rebel realizes the situation isn't quite right and blah blah blah.
"'We are one in all and all in one.'" Compare to Brave New World... You know, the mantra from that, "Everyone belongs to everyone else". OH HEY.
"We learned that the earth was flat and that the sun revolves around it.... we learned how to bleed men to cure them of all ailments." So, the level is basically Medieval. Later on 'Prometheus' talks about how candles were just invented... What scares me the most is the fact that unlike in all these other books telling of a horrifying fascist future (or whatever you want to call it) the higher power doesn't know this isn't the truth. The founders must have concealed the knowledge, but in this book it has so degraded that the knowledge is gone, to everyone but our hero, of course. Basically, it has all gone backwards into a medieval world. (A la Timeline?) It's kind of like that book City of Ember, which spawned a movie (which I didn't see) and a sequel called Sparks that was blah. That time, this town was in a dark barren world. They had electricity for lights that would only last for x amount of years. In that case, the higher power had the knowledge he was basically screwing everyone over, but the thing that reminded me the most was I guess when the talk about discovering candle ensues. In City of Ember, the young girl and her friend discover candles and matches for the first time and are practically besides themselves with excitement. And, I mean, they're candles. They didn't have candles? Or, in Anthem, glass windows.
"At forty, they are sent to... where the Old Ones live.... The Old Ones know that they are soon to die." Wasn't there a movie like this? Except when you got to age forty, they found you and killed you and one guy escapes somehow? I remember Emily's dad telling me about it... and they made fun of it on Family Guy once...
One thing that bothered me: Our hero says that no man can view his own face nor ask what he looks like. But, later, he finds a mirror and says "when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as on the face of a lake." And yes, I know, he only recently discovered the beauty and vastness of lakes and nature and such, but this opened a whole other can of worms for me: Water. You think he'd have seen--or anyone else for that matter--his reflection in water at, say, a pond. A bucket of water. I know it wouldn't have picture-perfect clarity, but you'd still have a general idea, no?
Our hero names his mate 'Gaea', saying she was the mother of the earth. Wrong! Greek mythology puts her as the earth itself. So... So come on Ayn Rand. Bring your a-game or don't bring anything at all.
One thing which I appeared not to have marked but interested me greatly was the idea of set mating rituals (every spring). Not so much that, but everyone looks upon it and sex as a filthy, disgusting act which must never be talked about. But, so much to a point that when our hero first meets his mate, he can't even imagine how his love for her and something like sex could ever be interconnected. The fact that something so base and instinctive could be shut out completely so lust can't even exist is shocking and a little disturbing on a vast scale. The fact that a society could ban instinct? That it could make it impossible to be affected by it? That actually makes me wonder how the society could be sustained at all. Too much of that conditioning and it seems logical that the society will celibate itself to death. Well, maybe not logical, but possible. A little. Humor me, okay? But, yeah. Can you imagine the sort of conditioning to deem that undesirable? That goes against not only psychological factors (again, just play along) but biological and instinctual ones. Yikes. If you can go that far, you can pretty much do what you like, huh? People are toys at that point.
It was okay. Better than Brave New World, for sure. Like I said, not very meaty, very straightforward. It's even quicker a read than Stardust, too. I'd say take it from the library, though. Again, no sense in buying this, unless if you're absolutely in love with Ayn Rand. I like her, but I like her more when she hits me in the rib cage and then I keep her for free. (English teachers are dangerous beasts!) Oh, well, regardless of the fact that I'm cheap, I still wouldn't do it. It's about one hundred pages long and the bonus is Ayn Rand's notes on her original manuscript, which is longer than the book itself. And for eight dollars? I'd put it towards my own copy of Handmaiden's Tale instead. THERE ARE BETTER BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT AT HAND TO READ. But not Brave New World guhhh.
EDIT: Oh man, I feel really stupid for forgetting why I brought up City of Ember in the first first place. In both books, you see, they discover forests and wildlife for the first time and they're both amazed at all the beauty around them. In City of Ember it was the cool moonlit sky and a fox that made the girl gasp, and I think it was just just the foliage in general that awed our hero in Anthem. So... cool.
The book is another story about an oppressive future community, a la Handmaiden's Tale, 1984, Brave New World and that's all I can think of. It's quicker and comparing it to, say, 1984 is like comparing an Oreo to an ice-cream cake. Already I can tell the theme of this class... But, first off, like Brave New World, people all exist as--they don't consider themselves as individuals, for example, instead of "I have brown hair" it's "We have brown hair." "They spoke to me for the first time" as opposed to "She spoke to me for the first time" and so on. Though I do find it curious they have the word 'alone' and know its meaning... But! Knowing those other books, I'm sure you can figure out how the story starts--one rebel realizes the situation isn't quite right and blah blah blah.
"'We are one in all and all in one.'" Compare to Brave New World... You know, the mantra from that, "Everyone belongs to everyone else". OH HEY.
"We learned that the earth was flat and that the sun revolves around it.... we learned how to bleed men to cure them of all ailments." So, the level is basically Medieval. Later on 'Prometheus' talks about how candles were just invented... What scares me the most is the fact that unlike in all these other books telling of a horrifying fascist future (or whatever you want to call it) the higher power doesn't know this isn't the truth. The founders must have concealed the knowledge, but in this book it has so degraded that the knowledge is gone, to everyone but our hero, of course. Basically, it has all gone backwards into a medieval world. (A la Timeline?) It's kind of like that book City of Ember, which spawned a movie (which I didn't see) and a sequel called Sparks that was blah. That time, this town was in a dark barren world. They had electricity for lights that would only last for x amount of years. In that case, the higher power had the knowledge he was basically screwing everyone over, but the thing that reminded me the most was I guess when the talk about discovering candle ensues. In City of Ember, the young girl and her friend discover candles and matches for the first time and are practically besides themselves with excitement. And, I mean, they're candles. They didn't have candles? Or, in Anthem, glass windows.
"At forty, they are sent to... where the Old Ones live.... The Old Ones know that they are soon to die." Wasn't there a movie like this? Except when you got to age forty, they found you and killed you and one guy escapes somehow? I remember Emily's dad telling me about it... and they made fun of it on Family Guy once...
One thing that bothered me: Our hero says that no man can view his own face nor ask what he looks like. But, later, he finds a mirror and says "when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all the things behind us, as on the face of a lake." And yes, I know, he only recently discovered the beauty and vastness of lakes and nature and such, but this opened a whole other can of worms for me: Water. You think he'd have seen--or anyone else for that matter--his reflection in water at, say, a pond. A bucket of water. I know it wouldn't have picture-perfect clarity, but you'd still have a general idea, no?
Our hero names his mate 'Gaea', saying she was the mother of the earth. Wrong! Greek mythology puts her as the earth itself. So... So come on Ayn Rand. Bring your a-game or don't bring anything at all.
One thing which I appeared not to have marked but interested me greatly was the idea of set mating rituals (every spring). Not so much that, but everyone looks upon it and sex as a filthy, disgusting act which must never be talked about. But, so much to a point that when our hero first meets his mate, he can't even imagine how his love for her and something like sex could ever be interconnected. The fact that something so base and instinctive could be shut out completely so lust can't even exist is shocking and a little disturbing on a vast scale. The fact that a society could ban instinct? That it could make it impossible to be affected by it? That actually makes me wonder how the society could be sustained at all. Too much of that conditioning and it seems logical that the society will celibate itself to death. Well, maybe not logical, but possible. A little. Humor me, okay? But, yeah. Can you imagine the sort of conditioning to deem that undesirable? That goes against not only psychological factors (again, just play along) but biological and instinctual ones. Yikes. If you can go that far, you can pretty much do what you like, huh? People are toys at that point.
It was okay. Better than Brave New World, for sure. Like I said, not very meaty, very straightforward. It's even quicker a read than Stardust, too. I'd say take it from the library, though. Again, no sense in buying this, unless if you're absolutely in love with Ayn Rand. I like her, but I like her more when she hits me in the rib cage and then I keep her for free. (English teachers are dangerous beasts!) Oh, well, regardless of the fact that I'm cheap, I still wouldn't do it. It's about one hundred pages long and the bonus is Ayn Rand's notes on her original manuscript, which is longer than the book itself. And for eight dollars? I'd put it towards my own copy of Handmaiden's Tale instead. THERE ARE BETTER BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT AT HAND TO READ. But not Brave New World guhhh.
EDIT: Oh man, I feel really stupid for forgetting why I brought up City of Ember in the first first place. In both books, you see, they discover forests and wildlife for the first time and they're both amazed at all the beauty around them. In City of Ember it was the cool moonlit sky and a fox that made the girl gasp, and I think it was just just the foliage in general that awed our hero in Anthem. So... cool.
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