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!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
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.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMA (For the record, this is being posted at 1 am on the SIXTH)
So, watched 1408 today. It was a good suspense film, I'd hardly say horror, but I'm pretty sure I've become immune to scary things. "Oh no, he killed your husband! I'd be peeing myself, but it wasn't a bunch of raptors, so why would I be scared?" Uhm. Well, the end of the first Jeepers Creepers always gives me the shivers, and Alien, and, of course, Jurassic Park. Anyways, some of the changes I was glad about, the very final scene I was kind of like, oh... that's a dumb way to end... but in the end of the story Mike doesn't really go insane, but he basically becomes a recluse and his life isn't really ruined, but he's almost been turned feeble-minded, which is understandable. The ending of the movie was happier. The movie also added a back story, which was kind of necessary. A short story, you can include as little as you like, and all Stephen King really lets you know is Mike is a horror story writing 'true' accounts of his stays in various haunted areas. The back story was nice. The movie wasn't as... I don't know if subtle is the way to describe the horror in the book, but whatever it was, it wasn't that. The movie was more intense, but the slow-paced, growing-on-you horror from the story would have just bored (that doesn't look right) people, or driven them mad themselves. So, it was a good rendition. I liked it. It would probably have been scarier in the theaters, but hey.
There's a part where Cusack has these lines, talking about how creepy hotels rooms are. "How many people were in that bed before you... how many were sick... how many were crazy..." and so on. It's almost a direct quote from Stephen King's own commentary on why he thinks hotels are kind of creepy, and I got excited.
They still drop things from the book, even if they aren't explicitly mentioned(sounds like an oxymoron?)--for example, the Hawaiian shirt. In the book it's Mike's 'lucky Hawaiian shirt'. And "Wolves ate my brother on the Connecticut turnpike" was one of the last things recorded on the tape that is even semi-understandable--in the story, of course. I giggled when I saw that. (Is that sick?) Then later that day we drove the CT turnpike and I was praying there wouldn't be a freak snowing break...
One thing I didn't like was Mike telling the fan he didn't believe in ghosts. But all his books are about ghost sightings? That didn't make any sense. And the fact that his book about haunted hotels had previously been published... (And the letter? 'Don't go into 1408' is basically saying COME HERE FREAKY THINGS WILL HAPPEN. He wouldn't have found it any other way... but I guess then there wouldn't have been a movie.)
On the DVD I rented, the trailer was included--the extended trailer--and it has scenes not in the movie. Two or three, actually... what...?
Also, I love John Cusack now. Is it just me, or does he look kind of like Alan Rickman in Dogma?
So I spent the movie waiting for a creepy little kid to say/write redrum somewhere. So sue me.
And Catch-22. I honestly don't have a lot to say. There were changes, but I wasn't particularly mindful of them, and certain events I understood a lot better after seeing the film. While some things are taken out (thank god the Chaplain's 'trial' was taken out; I'm sure I would've gone mad watching that) it didn't really hurt the plot at all. Quite frankly, I'm glad Orr was practically deleted. He annoyed me so much in the book. And Aarfy is like a creepy Mr Rogers, in my humble opinion. But yeah, changes or additions, the director knew what he was doing. If you liked the book, I'd be surprised if you hated the movie. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that Yossarian is played by the man who would later be the crack-addict grandpa from Little Miss Sunshine.
I was touring a campus today, and a lady working there admitted there was a bit of a housing problem--too many kids, not enough beds. She said something like "I don't understand why they took more than they could support" and I had this really weird urge to say "Yeah, they had that problem on the Titanic too." I didn't, but man.
Emily gave me a really cool copy of On the Road. Yayyyyy!
There's a part where Cusack has these lines, talking about how creepy hotels rooms are. "How many people were in that bed before you... how many were sick... how many were crazy..." and so on. It's almost a direct quote from Stephen King's own commentary on why he thinks hotels are kind of creepy, and I got excited.
They still drop things from the book, even if they aren't explicitly mentioned(sounds like an oxymoron?)--for example, the Hawaiian shirt. In the book it's Mike's 'lucky Hawaiian shirt'. And "Wolves ate my brother on the Connecticut turnpike" was one of the last things recorded on the tape that is even semi-understandable--in the story, of course. I giggled when I saw that. (Is that sick?) Then later that day we drove the CT turnpike and I was praying there wouldn't be a freak snowing break...
One thing I didn't like was Mike telling the fan he didn't believe in ghosts. But all his books are about ghost sightings? That didn't make any sense. And the fact that his book about haunted hotels had previously been published... (And the letter? 'Don't go into 1408' is basically saying COME HERE FREAKY THINGS WILL HAPPEN. He wouldn't have found it any other way... but I guess then there wouldn't have been a movie.)
On the DVD I rented, the trailer was included--the extended trailer--and it has scenes not in the movie. Two or three, actually... what...?
Also, I love John Cusack now. Is it just me, or does he look kind of like Alan Rickman in Dogma?
So I spent the movie waiting for a creepy little kid to say/write redrum somewhere. So sue me.
And Catch-22. I honestly don't have a lot to say. There were changes, but I wasn't particularly mindful of them, and certain events I understood a lot better after seeing the film. While some things are taken out (thank god the Chaplain's 'trial' was taken out; I'm sure I would've gone mad watching that) it didn't really hurt the plot at all. Quite frankly, I'm glad Orr was practically deleted. He annoyed me so much in the book. And Aarfy is like a creepy Mr Rogers, in my humble opinion. But yeah, changes or additions, the director knew what he was doing. If you liked the book, I'd be surprised if you hated the movie. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that Yossarian is played by the man who would later be the crack-addict grandpa from Little Miss Sunshine.
I was touring a campus today, and a lady working there admitted there was a bit of a housing problem--too many kids, not enough beds. She said something like "I don't understand why they took more than they could support" and I had this really weird urge to say "Yeah, they had that problem on the Titanic too." I didn't, but man.
Emily gave me a really cool copy of On the Road. Yayyyyy!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Before there was rock, you only had god
Oh lookie here, I'm reviewing (or whatever you'd call theses posts) American Gods by Neil Gaiman! It was a really good book, but it slowly lost steam over time. You see, it starts out this man Shadow is just let out of prison but his wife has been killed. Having nothing to go back to, he heads off with a man named Wednesday who offers him a job. You find out pretty quickly that Wednesday is deeply in touch with the supernatural world, and he himself is a god, or part of one. Anyways, during the first three-quarters or half or something like that in the book, Wednesday and Shadow travel across America in an attempt to gather the 'old' gods that have moved there over the years. You know, Czernabog, the Norse gods, Mama-ji, Bastet, Anubis.... The reason why they were being gathered is to go in a final war to defeat the 'modern' gods--gods of television, of automobiles, of media, what people generally worship nowadays and sacrifice things to. "Time... Sometimes each other."
So, some notes before I start which probably don't matter to anyone but me. But I'm the one writing this blog so ahaha.
Low Key--I was so embarrassed I didn't get the pun until Shadow realizes it. I don't know that much about Norse mythology, true, but still I know the names, and gahhh it bothers me.
This relies heavily on Norse mythology so that was new and exciting, for the most part. I know about Yggdrasil and the dragon and the red squirrel (I've always imagined him to be more ill-tempered), so I got all excited when towards the end they tied Shadow up, but other than that, all I have is very rudimentary knowledge--you know, Loki's the trickster, Thor has a mighty hammer, the Valkyries and Valhalla but nothing really solid, like how I can snap out Greek or Egyptian mythology like I was raised on it.
Czernabog--Until the very last time he appeared in the book I couldn't figure out how to say his name, and therefore couldn't figure out who the hell he was, and it was driving me absolutely bonkers. It's pronounced Chernabog--Apparently he's Slavic in origin, but I know him from Disney's movie Fantasia. You know, 'A Night on Bald Mountain'? Ayup, that's him. After figuring it out, though, it was hard to imagine him as the old Yiddish-sounding man from the book. And, for those of you who haven't seen Fantasia, ever played the first Kingdom Hearts? Final boss before Ansem.
One thing I liked was, that although Bacchus is mentioned in passing, no Greek gods are really present. They're still pretty popular, I mean, we still learn about them in school. So arguably, while they're not being worshiped, they're at last being remembered.
"'Tell him that we have f*cking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much f*cking spam.'" What a cool quote, disregarding the excessive swears. (Well, he was threatening death, and I guess when you threaten death you don't bleep a thing out...) I think William S Burroughs said something to the exact affect of "Language is a virus." Oh, here it is--"Language is a virus from outer space." I like that one.
"'Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.'" First, made me think of V for Vendetta, of course. Second, it's the truth. A dying god is spit upon and laughed at and chided, so obviously being false and unreal compared to the new god and the new ideals that are golden and shiny for another few thousand or hundred years... A dead god is the skeleton of what's left. Too old, too gross, too strange to be sympathized with or respected anymore.
"'Liberty,' boomed Wednesday, 'is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.'" Evil and horrendous as it seems, as much as you'd like to avoid it or ignore it or tell yourself there's a better way (and there most likely is) blood is the most effective way to pay for anything; to get anything. Maybe you think I'm cold-hearted for that, but go on, think about some wars, and what they were for. And no, I don't know how to apply that to our current war. It's the difference between believing something is true and fully accepting it to the end--think Rorschach thinking the bombing of Hiroshima was a good thing as a child, and then the end of the book.
"'I read some books about brains,' she said... 'It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of god telling them what to do. It's just brains.' 'I like my theory better,' said Shadow. 'What's your theory?' 'That back then people used to run into gods from time to time.'" I like his better, too.
"A small boy sat inches away from the television set, a video of the Disney Hercules playing, an animated satyr stomping and shouting his way across the screen." It's got to be a little wink from Gaiman. I chuckled when I saw it. (The satyr in question is Phil, of course. What a good movie.)
Oh! And guess what! The mystery of Easter is explained. You know, how does coloring eggs and searching for them and bunnies and eating candy and stuff related to all the Biblical stuff? It's not! The name Easter derives from the German goddess Eostre, who was honored in the spring--for rebirth and life, like Jesus, but with her you get the candy and fun stuff. The coloring of eggs and bunny involvement, according to Wikipedia, are German customs. Sooo yeahhh. Not well known, I guess, because I have at least 9,000 mythology books and I've never heard of her.
"'You used to make jokes,' said Shadow. 'You don't anymore.' 'It's hard to find the jokes these days. Wednesday's dead.'" Sounds like a certain line from a certain comic book that Neil Gaiman allegedly had a hand in, hmm?
"'I offered you the world,' she said. 'When you're dying in a gutter, you remember that.'" / "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul?" I want to say one of those apostles said that. Man, I need to just go through my Bible and highlight all the cool stuff so I actually can find these things. I want to say it's in Matthew, but I wouldn't take that without a grain of salt. Anyways, just pointing out the closeness, because at this point, you still think the 'new' gods are evil.
"'It's not what I'd want at my funeral,' said Mr. Nancy. 'When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And when pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie.'" I practically died laughing when I read this. He's talking about Carrie. X D
Poor Horus. In the book, you know, he can transform between a hawk and a man like the other Egyptian gods, and he transforms when all the gods are gathering for the final showdown--and he is described as acting awkwardly, having trouble speaking, focusing his eyes, even walking and standing. The goddess who sees him says or thinks something like "he spent too much time as a bird. He's forgotten how to be a man." Of course, you know who that made me think of. Poor Tobias, from Animorphs. He morphed as a hawk and got stuck in morph because he passed the two-hour time limit. Eventually he acquires himself(it's easier to just read the book than have me explain this), but he forgets how to make facial expressions, if he gets startled he jumps backwards frantically, flapping his arms, and much more. Poor Tobias, I love him.
I didn't quite get the Czernabog/Bielebog thing. I thought it meant Czernabog was kind of an Abraxas sort of god, capable of both good and evil, but Czernabog saw his different side as a whole different persona. A schizophrenic god, if you will. I don't like Wikipedia's explanation, that he 'changes with the seasons'. What? No shut up, that's dumb, and really weird. I don't see how it got to that conclusion.
So, I liked the book, but like I said, I was more into meeting the gods. It kind of started losing steam around (SPOILER) when Wednesday was killed, and by the time the fat kid turned out to be a robot I was just like THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE ANYMORE NEIL. ROBOTS CAN'T BRUISE. It didn't help that I was imaging the fat kid from Watchmen the whole time, haha. And then, flipping the plot around... The way he writes it, you never think, why can't these gods coexist? You just automatically think the new gods are the ENEMY ENEMY ENEMY. And when you realize at the end, when that's not the case, I think he actually handled it well. Any other author and I think I would've tossed the book out the window, but I was like ohh, the two-man deal. I like that Neil, I like that. So, 4/5? 3.5/5? Something like that. The one thing I didn't get was when Shadow meets the 'real' Odin. What I'm theorizing is maybe only a shred of him went to America with some of his followers--of course, not all of his followers went to the new world. But I'm not sure.
I was expecting Stardust to be your average child's fairy tale, right up to page 26, when a faerie and the main character's father have a one-night stand. So much for that... But. The rest of the book was simpler, and aside from that one sex scene, it would be your average OT book, or maybe even a middle school level book. Well, I guess I can't judge that well, since I read my first Stephen King and Michael Crichton books at age eleven. (7th grade.) But, all in all, it was a cute and mystical fairytale, nothing confusing and dramatic about it. Everything fit together, and although at some times the pieces felt awkward and rushed, they all formed a perfectly complete picture in the end. Though the end kind of annoyed me, when the Faerie girl's curse is broken--she turned out to be kind of a bitch. You think the curse would've softened her, or something. And the end end made me sad. But it's a good, quick read if you want to avoid a book with a twisting plot and you having to remember a million things so you can even pretend to know what's going on... well, here you go.
"'I am the most miserable person who ever lived'... 'You are young, and in love,' said Primus. 'Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.'"
"Have been unavoidably detained by the world." Neil Gaiman=awesome. I love this line. Love it.
Let's see, I started rereading Desperation and War of the Worlds, but they'll be put on hold till I finish Anthem by Ayn Rand, which Marky Mark demands I finish by Wednesday. (Which will hardly be any trouble at all.) And, tomorrow I'll be watching Catch-22, so look forward to that. Oh, and I rented 1408. Let's rollll.
So, some notes before I start which probably don't matter to anyone but me. But I'm the one writing this blog so ahaha.
Low Key--I was so embarrassed I didn't get the pun until Shadow realizes it. I don't know that much about Norse mythology, true, but still I know the names, and gahhh it bothers me.
This relies heavily on Norse mythology so that was new and exciting, for the most part. I know about Yggdrasil and the dragon and the red squirrel (I've always imagined him to be more ill-tempered), so I got all excited when towards the end they tied Shadow up, but other than that, all I have is very rudimentary knowledge--you know, Loki's the trickster, Thor has a mighty hammer, the Valkyries and Valhalla but nothing really solid, like how I can snap out Greek or Egyptian mythology like I was raised on it.
Czernabog--Until the very last time he appeared in the book I couldn't figure out how to say his name, and therefore couldn't figure out who the hell he was, and it was driving me absolutely bonkers. It's pronounced Chernabog--Apparently he's Slavic in origin, but I know him from Disney's movie Fantasia. You know, 'A Night on Bald Mountain'? Ayup, that's him. After figuring it out, though, it was hard to imagine him as the old Yiddish-sounding man from the book. And, for those of you who haven't seen Fantasia, ever played the first Kingdom Hearts? Final boss before Ansem.
One thing I liked was, that although Bacchus is mentioned in passing, no Greek gods are really present. They're still pretty popular, I mean, we still learn about them in school. So arguably, while they're not being worshiped, they're at last being remembered.
"'Tell him that we have f*cking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much f*cking spam.'" What a cool quote, disregarding the excessive swears. (Well, he was threatening death, and I guess when you threaten death you don't bleep a thing out...) I think William S Burroughs said something to the exact affect of "Language is a virus." Oh, here it is--"Language is a virus from outer space." I like that one.
"'Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.'" First, made me think of V for Vendetta, of course. Second, it's the truth. A dying god is spit upon and laughed at and chided, so obviously being false and unreal compared to the new god and the new ideals that are golden and shiny for another few thousand or hundred years... A dead god is the skeleton of what's left. Too old, too gross, too strange to be sympathized with or respected anymore.
"'Liberty,' boomed Wednesday, 'is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.'" Evil and horrendous as it seems, as much as you'd like to avoid it or ignore it or tell yourself there's a better way (and there most likely is) blood is the most effective way to pay for anything; to get anything. Maybe you think I'm cold-hearted for that, but go on, think about some wars, and what they were for. And no, I don't know how to apply that to our current war. It's the difference between believing something is true and fully accepting it to the end--think Rorschach thinking the bombing of Hiroshima was a good thing as a child, and then the end of the book.
"'I read some books about brains,' she said... 'It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of god telling them what to do. It's just brains.' 'I like my theory better,' said Shadow. 'What's your theory?' 'That back then people used to run into gods from time to time.'" I like his better, too.
"A small boy sat inches away from the television set, a video of the Disney Hercules playing, an animated satyr stomping and shouting his way across the screen." It's got to be a little wink from Gaiman. I chuckled when I saw it. (The satyr in question is Phil, of course. What a good movie.)
Oh! And guess what! The mystery of Easter is explained. You know, how does coloring eggs and searching for them and bunnies and eating candy and stuff related to all the Biblical stuff? It's not! The name Easter derives from the German goddess Eostre, who was honored in the spring--for rebirth and life, like Jesus, but with her you get the candy and fun stuff. The coloring of eggs and bunny involvement, according to Wikipedia, are German customs. Sooo yeahhh. Not well known, I guess, because I have at least 9,000 mythology books and I've never heard of her.
"'You used to make jokes,' said Shadow. 'You don't anymore.' 'It's hard to find the jokes these days. Wednesday's dead.'" Sounds like a certain line from a certain comic book that Neil Gaiman allegedly had a hand in, hmm?
"'I offered you the world,' she said. 'When you're dying in a gutter, you remember that.'" / "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul?" I want to say one of those apostles said that. Man, I need to just go through my Bible and highlight all the cool stuff so I actually can find these things. I want to say it's in Matthew, but I wouldn't take that without a grain of salt. Anyways, just pointing out the closeness, because at this point, you still think the 'new' gods are evil.
"'It's not what I'd want at my funeral,' said Mr. Nancy. 'When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And when pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie.'" I practically died laughing when I read this. He's talking about Carrie. X D
Poor Horus. In the book, you know, he can transform between a hawk and a man like the other Egyptian gods, and he transforms when all the gods are gathering for the final showdown--and he is described as acting awkwardly, having trouble speaking, focusing his eyes, even walking and standing. The goddess who sees him says or thinks something like "he spent too much time as a bird. He's forgotten how to be a man." Of course, you know who that made me think of. Poor Tobias, from Animorphs. He morphed as a hawk and got stuck in morph because he passed the two-hour time limit. Eventually he acquires himself(it's easier to just read the book than have me explain this), but he forgets how to make facial expressions, if he gets startled he jumps backwards frantically, flapping his arms, and much more. Poor Tobias, I love him.
I didn't quite get the Czernabog/Bielebog thing. I thought it meant Czernabog was kind of an Abraxas sort of god, capable of both good and evil, but Czernabog saw his different side as a whole different persona. A schizophrenic god, if you will. I don't like Wikipedia's explanation, that he 'changes with the seasons'. What? No shut up, that's dumb, and really weird. I don't see how it got to that conclusion.
So, I liked the book, but like I said, I was more into meeting the gods. It kind of started losing steam around (SPOILER) when Wednesday was killed, and by the time the fat kid turned out to be a robot I was just like THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE ANYMORE NEIL. ROBOTS CAN'T BRUISE. It didn't help that I was imaging the fat kid from Watchmen the whole time, haha. And then, flipping the plot around... The way he writes it, you never think, why can't these gods coexist? You just automatically think the new gods are the ENEMY ENEMY ENEMY. And when you realize at the end, when that's not the case, I think he actually handled it well. Any other author and I think I would've tossed the book out the window, but I was like ohh, the two-man deal. I like that Neil, I like that. So, 4/5? 3.5/5? Something like that. The one thing I didn't get was when Shadow meets the 'real' Odin. What I'm theorizing is maybe only a shred of him went to America with some of his followers--of course, not all of his followers went to the new world. But I'm not sure.
I was expecting Stardust to be your average child's fairy tale, right up to page 26, when a faerie and the main character's father have a one-night stand. So much for that... But. The rest of the book was simpler, and aside from that one sex scene, it would be your average OT book, or maybe even a middle school level book. Well, I guess I can't judge that well, since I read my first Stephen King and Michael Crichton books at age eleven. (7th grade.) But, all in all, it was a cute and mystical fairytale, nothing confusing and dramatic about it. Everything fit together, and although at some times the pieces felt awkward and rushed, they all formed a perfectly complete picture in the end. Though the end kind of annoyed me, when the Faerie girl's curse is broken--she turned out to be kind of a bitch. You think the curse would've softened her, or something. And the end end made me sad. But it's a good, quick read if you want to avoid a book with a twisting plot and you having to remember a million things so you can even pretend to know what's going on... well, here you go.
"'I am the most miserable person who ever lived'... 'You are young, and in love,' said Primus. 'Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.'"
"Have been unavoidably detained by the world." Neil Gaiman=awesome. I love this line. Love it.
Let's see, I started rereading Desperation and War of the Worlds, but they'll be put on hold till I finish Anthem by Ayn Rand, which Marky Mark demands I finish by Wednesday. (Which will hardly be any trouble at all.) And, tomorrow I'll be watching Catch-22, so look forward to that. Oh, and I rented 1408. Let's rollll.
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