alright guys. heres the deal.
i fail at blogging…in case you haven’t noticed.
and i’ve been having one of my slumps, as i so often do.
but i just got some new books from the library, hopefully i’ll be inspired to write reviews and make comparisons and have you all eating out of the palm of my hand again.
the reason why i’ve been slacking is because i’ve been busy.
busy as in, i barely have time to breathe, my body is falling apart at the seams, my mind is in tatters, and i’m still trying to function as a normal human in society. i’ve had a lot going on.
i’m whining, i’m sorry.
ANYWAY. heres one of the things i’ve been working on, its for my writing class, we were asked to write a short fiction story based using a description of an object that we had already written, and a slip of paper that gave us a character to focus on. my object that i chose was a leaf, and the character was a rebellious student.
and because i don’t have the energy to write anything remotely productive here, i’ll post it.
its set in the future. just for your information.

and its called…

“What kind of world would that be?”

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The school bell keeps ringing, ringing, ringing, as if calling me out of my self-induced stupor. I watch as all of the other happy students practically skip with joy into the school, all while I sit outside on a lonely bench where no one will see me. Not that they notice me to begin with, but caution is always a good idea. How anyone can want to enter that building of boredom and brick is entirely beyond me, but then, I’ve always been told that I’m missing that elusive obedience gene.

I watch as the leaves fall from the trees around me, their suicidal desire for change is something I understand completely. I’ve been called strange, stupid, and any number of slang terms used to describe a natural-born like me.

A crimson leaf flutters down, its veins already turning dark with the hopefulness of death and the peace that accompanies it. I envy its abstract edges and odd points, all the decorations that its genetic mutations allowed for it to have. The once emerald stem curls around itself, as if trying to embrace death. The sad truth of it all is that I have much more in common with that single, dying organism than I do with the rest of the student population, not to mention the other 95% of the country that’s genetically engineered and the 78% of the world who went and jumped on the band wagon.

Blonde hair, azure blue eyes, the sickening pure white glow of the skin…if Hitler were still around, he’d figure that this was all part of some bizarre heaven. Everything so precisely created to emphasize our purity as a nation, our efficiency as human beings. The government-approved gene-splice embryos ripening in some plastic dish somewhere, just waiting to grow up and become the same society-dependent brat that the rest of them are. Every brain washed civilian carrying out his or her job happily and quietly, even if they got stuck being a garbage man for the rest of their lives. The quiet undertone of brainwashing that runs in currents through the school system. Apparently I’m the only one who has a problem with this.

Not that my opinion counts.

According to their laws and books and medical experts, I shouldn’t exist. According to them, I’m some strange anomaly that wouldn’t have happened had someone’s perfect wife not slept with someone else’s perfect husband. The story goes that I’m some miracle, that I defied medicine, but everyone knows that that’s just code for “I was someone’s unwanted baby that got dropped in a dumpster.” Back in the days of Sparta, I would have just been tossed off a cliff like a coin in a wishing well, but the government officials can’t bring themselves to do that, trying to fake some sort of virtue that they can never hope to actually have. The real reason why they refuse to off me is the fact that they know that I could be their daughter, a fact which would be discovered once my dead body was found and autopsied. Instead of facing political scandal, they would much rather feign righteousness and toss me into the alien world I’m supposed to assimilate into, each while thanking their separate Gods that they no longer have to deal with me.

Not that it bothers me anymore, I’ve pretty much been passed around like a hot potato for the past 17 years of my life, until I could be let loose into the world as an adult of 18. It was then that I was released into the clutches of college, which is basically just a glorified version of High school; except that the students get to find out what job we’ll be expected to do for the rest of our lives. Teachers spent the first day of class passing out a computerized prophecy to all the students, a slip of paper letting each person know what sort of monotony they would be expected to endure for the rest of their lives. Mostly those things are determined at birth and kept secret until you enter college, but people usually have a general idea of what they’ll be given, just judging by their parents and their social rank.

Now, where does that leave me? Assembly-line worker, of course. Anyone who isn’t in the database from birth is given the default job of an assembly-line worker, the jobs that none of the good little gene-splices want to do. Not that I expected anything better than that.

So that’s how I found myself outside on the second day of school, staring at the leaves on a bench outside. Technically I was still at school, because the scanners don’t care where you are on campus, as long as you’re on it. The people who write the programs and policies for places like this don’t give much thought to freaks like me with a tendency to break rules, so there’s about a thousand loopholes to slip through if you’re determined enough to find them. The only loophole I haven’t found is the one that lets you escape your future of monotony and grey machines. The scanners make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be, be it at work or at home or at school. If you aren’t where you’re supposed to be…you don’t go anywhere for a long time.

One of my friends from grade-school, a kid named Ryan, decided early on that he needed to get away from the agonizing tedium that had already permeated our lives and minds. Ryan was one of those “genetic anomalies” that I’m supposed to be, only he was the real deal. Not looks-wise, he was just as much of an Aryan race prototype as anyone else, but he refused to believe all the lies we were fed about our “perfect society,” and sought to break that image as often as possible. Even as a 6^th grader, he knew how to push the buttons of those in charge, and he was sedated more than once, as a sort of passive punishment that suited our passive and cowardly laws. Instead of encouraging obedience, these punishment sessions (they are formally known as social classes or lessons, but everyone knows what that means.) prompted Ryan to pull his most drastic prank ever: leaving.

At birth, each baby has a microchip inserted into their wrist. The chip stores everything about you, like an ID card back in the old days, and it is hooked up to the nation-wide database, which is how they keep track of you. If the scanners find you someplace you aren’t supposed to be, your chip sends you an electric shock, enough voltage to cause discomfort, but not enough to kill you. If you don’t immediately leave the premises, you get a second shock, this time more painful, and potentially fatal if you have a weak heart, or are too young or too old. Still not leaving? You’re shot. Straight and simple. The gun blast is meant to be heard so as to warn people of what can happen to them. Supposedly this is an antiterrorism system that also functions to help prevent school shootings, or at least that’s what the government officials and politicians told the tax-payers. Same with the chip, which was designed to be used to stop kidnappings and murders. People will throw away any freedom as long as they think they get something in return.

Anyway, Ryan knew damn well what would happen to him, and he did it anyway. I don’t know if it was suicide or just his mistaken belief in his own immortality, all I know is that in the summer before 7^th grade, Ryan walked out of the housing division we lived in, and a few minutes later I heard a gunshot. News reports said that it was some senile old man who was well past his time anyway and wasn’t aware of what he was doing, and Ryan’s parents laughed in my face when I tried to tell them what really happened. “Don’t worry, dear.” They told me. “He’s off visiting his grandparents; he’ll write to you, we’re sure of it.”

Letters did come, they were in Ryan’s handwriting, which was strange in and of itself, because no one wrote letters in our day and age. No one except for Ryan and I, who as 6^th graders thought we were breaking so many rules by not using the computerized communication system. Even I was fooled for a short while, until I got a letter at the start of the school year talking about how great his new school was, and all the friends he was making. The lies they feed us are so easy to digest when you don’t look too hard. The fact of the matter was that Ryan had had the courage to fight the lies, while I merely sat there, wallowing in the falsehoods and filth, waiting for deliverance as if it would fall in my lap like the cherry and cinnamon leaves from the maple tree next to the bench I sat on. Who was I kidding, thinking that I was so much better and different from the people I despised, all the while I did nothing to oppose their rules except exist against their theories and scientific facts.

The truth, or close enough to it, was that I had no place to go. With no courage to die, I was stuck with the slate-colored buildings and cold machines I was born to. Had a leaf not fallen into my lap, begging me to stay with all of its jagged, tattered edges, like the ragged sides of a wound, I very well might have gotten up and walked inside, resigned to my life of constructing toothbrushes or microwaves.

But I didn’t.

The leaf looked so fragile, yet so defiant, so brave. It skittered off of my lap and fell to the ground, the wind pushing it along the asphalt as the leaf tried desperately to grab at the obsidian-colored path. It was then that I heard rustling in the bushes.
Another thing the scanners had helped to do was to rid all schools and office buildings and their grounds of wild animals. Simulated bird calls floated down from the trees, but actual birds were deemed a distraction to those esteemed citizens who were working to better the country. That being said, the rustle in the bushes couldn’t have been wild life. That theory was further disproved when those same bushes began talking to me.

“Hey, Lice. Get down here.

Trust me, I thought I was going nuts just as much as you probably do.
“Lyssa! Come on, we don’t have time for the uncertainty here.”

Then I remembered where I had heard that nickname before. As casually as I could, I walked over to the bushes and began pushing the branches around, as if pruning the leaves. If anyone was watching (which, while doubtful, was possible) I would just appear to be a nature-lover, instead of the treasonous conspirator I was about to become.

“Ryan? Is that really you?” I whispered into the bushes. I felt rather insane talking to bushes, but I had to know I wasn’t hearing things.
“Yeah, its me!” a joyous voice called, before a hand shot out and dragged me into the perfectly rounded bush. I felt momentarily sorry for whoever’s perfect pruning work I had just ruined, but upon seeing my long lost friend I forgot that thought.
“How are you still alive? I heard you die!” I said, pushing leaves and branches out of my face.

“No, you heard me get shot in the forearm.”

Suddenly it all made sense. If aimed right, the bullet would take out the chip, therefore making Ryan invisible to the sensors. Whoever was sent out to collect the body would just assume that it was someone’s lost dog that got shot and ran away.
“But…How did you survive?” I spoke incredulously, as if talking to a god.

“Simple. I found the rest of them.”

“The rest of who?”

“People like you, only older. Mostly bad-genes, though there are a few like me who wizened up and got out. They all took me in. I can’t much use my right arm anymore, but that’s nothing compared to staying here.”

Still entirely baffled, I kept trying to stutter out sentences, none of which made any sense. The whole idea seemed way too good to be true. An entire society where I could live how I wanted? Definitely too good to be true. My life never worked out to be a happy little cliché like that; I was full of too much bad luck and ill-will.

I finally managed coherency, and mumbled out something like “So why did you come back?”
“I had to find you, Lyssa. I told them about you and they want you to come back with me. You’ve been one of us since the beginning.”

I threw my arms around him; my first human contact in almost a decade.

“There’s one catch,” Ryan said, his body tensing slightly, as if afraid of my response.

Uh-oh.
My brain started instantly coming up with a thousand different things that I would have to do to gain access to this secret society, initiation rituals, blood promises, suicidal missions that I wouldn’t come home from. The thoughts and fears all piled up in my head with every passing second, my mind racing toward the final moment of self-destruction when my brain exploded in unwanted feelings and confused emotions. The alarms sounded in my head, screaming at me to leave, to run, anything to get away. Warning, Self-Destruct has been activated. Prepare for impact in 5…4…3…

“What is it…” I managed to say, even though my brain was trying to say a thousand other things all at once.

2…

Brandishing a switchblade, which he then flicked open, Ryan sighed. “We have to cut the chip out of your arm.”

1…Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the impact of all of my hopes and dreams imploding.
“Oh…um…do I get anesthetic or anything?” I coughed out.
With a pained look on his face, Ryan shook his head no.
“It’s now or never, Lyssa. We have to go now. It’s too dangerous for me and the others to be in bad territory for this long. The pack is leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Is it…will it…am I…” Visions of suicides, stab wounds, sliced veins and arteries surged through my brain, short circuiting it. We had been indoctrinated from a young age to never injure ourselves, both to discourage later suicides and to prevent people from taking out the chips. Mostly the latter, the former is just a cover-up. No matter how much I disagreed with that society of genetically enhanced infants, that part of my training stayed strong. I focused on my breathing to keep from freaking out too much more.

“It’s the only way, Lyssa. You have to. It won’t hurt bad at all, I promise. You’ll probably pass out & not feel a thing.”

I eyed his jagged scar, the skin puckered and discolored from healing on its own. I cringed to myself at what I was about to do, but there was no other option. Holding out my arm, I whispered “Anything so I don’t have to shoot it off.”
His gleaming silver blade was ice cold as it touched my skin, drawing a line of oozing red down my arm. And then…

“And then I woke up.” I said, popping a bite of the latest school lunch creation into my mouth and instantly regretting it. “Jeez, what did they cook for lunch, cement and bad-genes?” I asked, my friends all giggling with me. I looked over at my boyfriend, Ryan, who still seemed troubled by my dream.
“What’s wrong honey? You seem out of it.”
“I guess I’m just thinking too much. I mean, do you ever think about how we treat the few bad-genes at school?” He looked down and started picking at the charcoal-gray mush, moving it around the tray.
“If I didn’t know better, Ryan, I’d say you felt guilty.” I said, an incredulous note in my voice.
“Well…Yeah, I guess I do feel guilty. Just because they weren’t engineered doesn’t mean they aren’t people like you and me, Lyssa.”

The whole table burst out laughing.
“Just like you and me? Ha ha! Oh, Ryan, you’re always so funny!”
“Whatever. I’ll see you later.” He grumbled, before shoving away from the table and walking away, all in a huff.

I looked at my friends remaining around the table and sighed. Cracking a smile, I said “Maybe someone should have given him a better humor gene. Just imagine those bad-genes being considered our equals! Ha ha! What kind of world would that be?”

so there you have it.
let me know what you think!

I find it kind of ironic that so soon after writing a post about Stiff (a book about dead human cadavers) i’m writing a post about Death with Interruptions (a book about what happens when death stops killing).
But since this is the best kind of irony, i will continue.

sorry if my writing is kind of weird today.
generally when I read a book by an author with a distinct writing style, i kind of adopt their style a little bit.
so if i use a lot of comma’s and go off on random tangents….thats José Saramago’s work.

Now then. if any of you remember my post that was practically orgasming about Saramago’s book Blindness, you’ll enter this already knowing how much i adore that man’s writing.
if you haven’t read it…let me enlighten you.
Saramago is a beast.
honestly, he is quite possibly the most talented writer i have ever read, and i’ve read a lot of things by a lot of different people.
his style is so unique, its astounding. he consistantly ignores all rules of literature (such as the use of run-on sentences, the use of comma’s, the use of quotation marks, the use of spaces in between dialogue…i’m sure theres more.) and it WORKS.
of course, it may just work because he’s crazy and Portuguese, or maybe he’s just a genius.
or both.
anyway.

Death with Interruptions is highly highly unique, even more so than Blindness.
While Blindness was very apocalyptic and sad, focusing on the inner workings and nasty details of the concept of man and how people react in dire situations, Death With Interruptions was focused on several things.
1) Be careful what you wish for (cause you just might get it…oh god, i just quoted the pussycat dolls didn’t i. damn.)
2) Put yourself in other people’s shoes
3) about a thousand other things that i have yet to pull out of the book (i just started reading it a second time. its one of those things that you will find a new thing to focus on every time you read it)

Basically, Death with Interruptions is a book about what would happen if, on new years day, only within the borders of one country, death stopped functioning. imagine this for a second. everyone within the borders of your country stops dying.
raise your hand if you think this would rock.
keep your hand up if you think that i’m talking about immortality, in a god-like sense.
did you fall for it?
i know i did for awhile.

the think that Saramago wants you to get out of the first half of the book is that we all think that not dying would rock.
…but what if we kept aging?
if death stopped stealing people from us, how would we know how to miss them?
not only that, but imagine all the horrible car wrecks you’ve heard about. think of all the terrorist attacks, all the awful ways of dying that you hear about every day (because the news wants ratings, and apparently the only way to do that is it talk about the most pitiful and sad things they can find. pathetic, really.) and now think about all those people, all those mangled remains, not being able to die.
so theres that obvious problem.

but also…if we all stopped dying…would life even mean anything anymore?
i’ve thought about this a lot. i don’t exactly know why, but its always facinated me. what if you couldn’t or didn’t or wouldn’t die? why would you ever wish that for yourself? constantly getting old, constantly getting maimed, mangled, not being able to relieve the pain?

awful. just awful.

however…while the first half of the book talks about that, the second half delves into something else entirely.

what if death (thats with a small d, by the way) were to fall in love?

i’ll leave that question open for you. because i don’t want to ruin one of the best books i’ve read all year.

i should really come up with a scoring system.
well, this book would get 5 out of 5 stars, 2 thumbs up, and whatever other units of measure there are out there to rate how good something is.
because really guys, Saramago deserves every ounce of that nobel prize he won for literature.
one of these days i’ll dedicate an entire post to him.
but for now, this will have to be enough.
because i’ve still got a ton of things to do, and i postponed them in favor of reading Death with Interruptions.

it was worth it.

also i would babble more, but my puppy is asleep in my lap and all i want to do right now is cuddle with her. she has that affect on people

okay, so heres the deal.
i’ve started (and not finished) about 3 books recently. i started the first one because i had nothing better to read, and then i found the second one, thought it sounded hella good so i started it, and then i got Death with Interruptions (by Jose Saramago also known as the god of literature) in the mail and now i’m halfway through that one.
so thats why i haven’t been posting.
and this whole post has really nothing to do with why i love quickpress except for the fact that i’m writing it using quickpress.
…today has been a strange day for me.

anyway, bear with me (or is it bare with me? or would that mean be naked with me? oh hell i don’t know) while i finish another book to write about on here.
peace.

alright, this is going to be kind of a weird post, because first off, its about the book Stiff, by Mary Roach, which is about “the curious lives of human cadavers.” aka dead bodies.

second off…there’s just been a death in my family, so its kind of eerie to be talking about it. but i think its a good kind of eerie.

death has so many negative connotations these days, and while yes, it is terribly sad, but it isn’t the horrifically sad business a lot of people think it is. its all about hope, its pretty much the most hopeful thing you can do with your life, because by dying, you are placing your trust in whatever is beyond here to carry you safely to whatever is next. be it heaven, rebirth, becoming part of the earth, or moving on to another time and place, everything about death implies moving on to a better place.

so why does everyone freak out about using Human Cadavers for research, or using them for compost, or any of the other number of ways they have been used?

thats what Stiff is really about. or at least it was to me.

for a long time i thought i wanted to be cremated. i thought that decay is disgusting, and i don’t want to get sewn up and filled with fluids that aren’t mine just so my family can have a life-size doll of me to prop up for all my relatives and friends to cry over. i don’t need that.
so hell, why not light me on fire? my ideal used to be that i wanted my ashes put in a balloon, and then have that balloon filled with helium, and then released, then my ashes can be spread everywhere and anywhere, and i thought that was beautiful.

i think differently now. for a lot of reasons.

my opinion on burial still stands. i think embalming is a pointless thing to do. however, i now add cremation to the list of ways i do NOT want to go.
its actually really gross. a lot more disgusting than just plain decay. i won’t go into details, but there is a few paragraph description of what happens, and i don’t want that to happen just so i can get put in a balloon.
not to mention the fact that you can do so much good with a body, and i’d rather help those that are still living and can use my body, rather than selfishly keeping it for myself. i feel like burials and cremations just solidify the idea that a dead body is just a person who is heavily asleep, and isn’t waking up any times soon, the idea that a cadaver is still a person, with all the personality and feelings and emotions of a person.
it isn’t.

for a long time i’ve decided that in order to compromise for my love of meat (i could never be a vegetarian. give me a huge hunk of steak and i will devour it and enjoy every second of that dead cow flesh. gross, i know, but true. i admire people who can stop eating meat, because they stick to their principles. i don’t. sure little baby chickens are cute, but i have no qualms about eating their mommies and daddies for dinner.) i would advocate for the usage of all parts of the animals.
like, you’d use the cow meat for eating, the skin for leather and whatever else had uses you’d use it. i’m strictly in favor of the no-waste way of life (or at least i like to think i am. i’m actually really horrible for the environment. when i use public bathrooms i use like a thousand paper towels. oh well)

why shouldn’t it be the same for us?

why should we give our bodies all this respect when they aren’t even US anymore. a dead body is as human as any inanimate object you can think of. after we die, our bodies might as well just be considered another piece of furniture.
so why don’t we DO something about that, something to help the people left alive?

which brings me to one of the things i wouldn’t mind doing with my body:
ORGAN DONATION.
if my liver, my heart, my kidneys, my spleen, and whatever else can be used to keep someone’s spouse, parent, child, or friend alive, well…why not?
i’m sure as hell not going to be using any of it. its not like i need it in the afterlife. if i do…the afterlife has stupid rules.
i highly doubt that heaven is a “livers only” show.
and if you still want to get buried, you can be!
hell, you can even have an open casket. the part thats going to be cut open will be under the clothes, and your organs will have a second chance at life while you decay in the ground. its a win-win situation, really.
or you could get cremated too. either way works.

still want to help people, but don’t want your organs given to someone else?
well then there’s option deux:
ANATOMY CLASSES.

remember in science class, when you dissected a frog or a pig, or a cat or whatever? i know some people that dissected cows eyeballs in gradeschool, which is kind of gross. though i got to hold a cow heart, so i really can’t complain about cow eyeballs. (also the cow heart was practically the size of my little 3rd grade head.)
well…that was really kind of pointless. so i guess its a bad example.
or at least i think it was. we just had to dissect frogs AGAIN in my science class, and i don’t understand how that’s going to help my probable english major in the slightest, unless one of my professors calls for a creative writing piece about sticking my fingers in a frog’s mouth and body.

okay, but seriously folks, think about all the surgeons out there, all of the plastic surgeons, heart surgeons, brain surgeons…theres millions of ‘em.
do you think they got practice by poking around in a dead frog?
nope. a lot of them probably (hopefully) practiced on a human cadaver, and learned how the body works through an anatomy class using some random dead guy.

now before you dismiss this, calling it disgusting and repulsive and how you could NEVER do that because its YOUR body and what not…think about it.
you’re not using it. your family isn’t using it (in fact, if you die of old age, i’m sure they’d rather look at pictures of you in a memorial service, rather than some over-stuffed, dressed-up thing thats probably leaking fluids into the coffin, because i know i’d rather remember people how they were rather than have their death shoved in my face. sorry, i have a lot of opinions on this).
and now think about this:
would you rather students practice surgery techniques on LIVE humans?
that would be an outrage, right?
so why is it so bad to be doing it on dead humans? they’re not going to feel the pain if the student messes up, and everyone makes mistakes, so why not let them get the mistakes out on people who aren’t going to sue them for malpractice?

now, granted, anatomy classes using real bodies are somewhat on the outs. they’re working on using plastic models and virtual bodies and such, because dissection does really bother some people.

but i’m pretty sure they’re not completely done yet, and i think that a lot of teachers think theres a lot of value in using human bodies. hell, i think its a good idea.

so keep that in mind. bceause its a very respectful process, and its helping so many multitudes of people if you think about it.

and now comes the real “donating to science” part.
CRASH TEST DUMMIES!

well. not really.

but how do scientists know how certain car crashes and safety features affect LIVE humans, unless they practice on dead ones?
think of the inside of a car. think of the airbags, the seatbelts, the radio knobs, the steering wheel column.
without cadavers, we wouldn’t have those things.
…well, we wouldn’t have airbags or 3-point seatbelts, but we would have radio knobs and steering wheel columns, except you’d get stabbed by both.
without the use of cadaver tests, we would still have steering wheel columns that were just a rod with a wheel on it, and if you’re in a crash and are thrown forward?
lets just say that those steering wheels fold like paper and the rod is aimed almost perfectly to run through your heart and lungs.
yeah, survival isn’t a big chance with that, unless you’re made of stone.
even if you were made of stone, you’d get a pretty hefty dent in you.
and the radio knobs?
“autopsy files from the 1950’s and 1960’s contain more than a few X-ray images of human heads with radio knobs embedded in them.” (page 92)
thanks to cadaver research, we now have recessed radio knobs.
and do the bodies ask for thanks?
nope. they just continue being smashed into things for the safety of us living-types.

hows that for selfless.

there are countless other ways that bodies can be used, these are only a few.

and i know a lot of you (if any of you are still reading this, and aren’t too quesy yet) are probably thinking “WHY IN THE HELL WOULD I EVER READ THIS BOOK YOU CRAZY WOMAN??!!?”
first of all, because no one seems to know anything about processes like Embalming and burial or cremation and what-not, and if you’re oh-so concerned with what happens to your body, you should be a little bit more knowledgeable about the process you’re going to go through, rather than just doing it because thats what society tells you to do.

second of all, Mary Roach’s style is hilarious. she takes dead bodies and makes them hilarious, all while staying entirely respectful of the dead.
its quite difficult to be funny while writing a book about corpses and what happens to them, but Roach pulls it off fantastically well, while still staying informative and not crude.

now, i pretty much loathe all non-fiction, because it bores me to death (exceptions being anything by Chuck Klosterman or Augusten Burroughs, but they write more about their own lives, or about music, so its not like getting education shoved down your throat)
this book was FANTASTIC. despite being non-fiction, not to mention its about one of the creepiest topics ever.
i highly HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone and everyone

but don’t take my word for it, go out and read it yourself. i didn’t do the book nearly the justice it deserves.

so what do i want done with my body?
i plan to donate my body to science, and let them do with it what they will.
i figure scientists and surgeons know more about my body than i do, and will put it to good use.

So, non-fiction books always take me AGES to finish reading.
which would be why i haven’t updated in a good like, 2 weeks.
HOWEVER. when i’m done with Stiff (by Mary Roach) expect one interesting post.
hehehe…this book is so weird.

For those of you physics nerds out there, you may have recognized the equation for velocity up there.
Velocity = Initial Velocity (Vo) + (Acceleration x Time)
Note: Velocity is not the same thing as Speed. its a whole lot awesomer.

ANYWAY.

why am i telling you this?

because I just finished reading a book entitled You Shall Know our Velocity by Dave Eggers.
This is important to know because
A) Eggers is awesome
B) I’m about to babble about said book for a good half hour
C) all of the above.

ready go.

alright, well the thing is, when i first picked up this book, my sister told me (sarcastically, of course) that i must be pretty “deep” to be reading something by Dave Eggers, because thats what all the indie kids to, they sit in their coffee shops thinking they’re better than everyone and reading things like Dave Eggers books and the like.
Note: I have always wanted to be one of those kids.
So basically I just took it as a compliment and started on with my book.

The premise of the book is basically this: 2 guys, the Narrator (Will) and his friend Hand (who’s real name is Justin) lose their best friend Jack in a horrendous car accident (the word horrendous is way too hard for me to spell) involving a semi-truck. Not long before that happened, Will received a large sum of money. Will doesn’t want or need this money, because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it, and it isn’t his money. So he wants to spend it on a huge round-the-world trip with hand. 7 days, $32,000 dollars to give away to whomever they see fit.

After finishing the book, I’m still not entirely sure I understand it. I mean I think i get it, but i’m still not really sure if what i think i get is what i’m SUPPOSED to get, what Eggers wanted me to pull away from this book.

the message that i’m getting is that this book is essentially religious, in a way.
its not like, ramming Jesus down my throat (which is why i enjoyed the book and am enjoying analyzing it, instead of vomiting all over it. i hate books that are all about Christianity.)
the essential issue that the book is grappling with is Balance vs. Chaos, and whether or not either one exists.

is there retribution? is there balance?
or is it all chaos and no logic.

so many people i think believe that both are possible, they think that they deserve to be paid back for good deeds they do, but don’t think that anything bad they do will get punished…or vice versa (good deeds won’t get rewarded, but bad deeds will be treated with vengence.)

me? i’m a firm believer in the theory of Balance, it hink that everything is held in a balance, that somehow everything is kept in balance.
this is the theory that appears to be held by Will, the writer, except he often gets confused.
the other theory seems to be held by Hand, who in fact says (at least in Will’s head he says this) “No. There is no balance, and no retribution, and no rules. The rules and balances you blather about are hopeful creations of a man fearing death.”

later, he also says (this is within the same conversation, which i think is the whole point of the book, the reason why Eggers wrote it…the conversation, not this particular quote) “Well now you’re contradicting yourself. With balance there cannot be chaos. With randomness there can be no punishment. You’re pleading for punishment in hopes that you’ll see your God. Without punishment there is no God. If there is balance then there is your Lord. If balance then Afterlife.”

the thing is, this whole “conversation” takes place within Will’s head. not like, schizophrenic-like (though i thought that was the whole point of the book for a long time, but it isn’t.) so really the whole book is about Will trying to come to terms with either the fact that there IS balance, and therefore God exists, or there is Chaos, and therefore there is no God.

i haven’t decided which side Eggers believes in, but i think thats the point.

the thing is, i still have this nagging feeling that i missed something important. i don’t know why. i mean, i think i’ve gotten the most important part of the whole thing, the philosophical debate…but it was all so painfully obvious, and i feel like it shouldn’t be.

plus i feel like there are so many questions left unanswered…but i think maybe thats just Eggers trying to point out that in life, questions go unanswered. but i don’t know what that means, if that means that because questions have no answers, there’s no balance and everything is random, or if questions have no answers BECAUSE there’s balance and we just can’t see the answers or there doesn’t need to be answers or something.

i have the feeling that Eggers believes in Chaos. thats the vibe i’m getting from the questions + answers little bit. but i don’t know.

for all i know i could be over-analyzing the shit out of this.

plus i’m still confused about the beginning, because in the beginning, Eggers makes a point of saying “Everything within takes place after Jack died and before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry inthe cool Tannin-tinted Guaviare River in East-Central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn’t yet met.”

WHY IS HE TELLING US THAT!

see, just when i have this book figured out, i find something that sends it all to hell. i don’t even understand the beginning of the book, the very first sentance confuses me. how am i to presume i understand the rest?

i don’t know. but i would definitly and whole-heartedly reccommend this book to anyone and everyone, because it brings up some really interesting issues and is just overall entertaining.

and in a few months, when i’ve had some time to ponder this whole deal, i will probably go out and buy this book (in hardcover, because the hardcover version is really interesting. the book starts on the front cover.) and i will read it again and make more sense of it, or none at all.
because thats the type of book it is, you know? you read and read and read and you make more or less sense of it each time, and you always find something new.

i love it, i really do.

alright, here i go delving into the realm of things that really have nothing to do with the major idea of this blog.
that is to say…the movie Troy.
although technically you could consider this still having something to do with literature because the movie is based on Homer’s “Iliad” which is literature.
so i’m still technically well within my rights to talk about this.
plus the only books i’m reading right now are books that i’ve already read and talked about. so i’ve got nothing new to blather about.
ANYWAY.

The movie Troy…oh where to begin.

okay, well, here goes the crash course in the actual story of the Trojan war.

READY GO:

Alright, the Trojan prince Paris falls in love with Helen of Greece, who is the beautiful wife of Menelaus, who is the brother of King Agamemnon, who is king of Mycenae (that was the original Greek mainland, this is way before Athens and Sparta). So Paris steals Helen away, and Menelaus is all like OH HELL NO. and he goes to Agamemnon because his brother is a beast and a half at things like war. Now, Agamemnon has been looking to go to war with Troy for a long long time, just to complete his whole conquest and get more power and what-not, so he’s like “oh of COURSE we’ll go get your wife back and of COURSE we’ll burn down the place and stab that douche Paris in the face, because I love you because you’re my brother.” So they go do that. Agamemnon launches 1000 ships (thats where Helen got the whole “the face that launched 1000 ships” nickname from. also, this semi-inspired death cab for cutie to write the song The Face that Launched 1000 S***s, though in the song you can’t really tell if he’s saying shits or ships, both are plausible i suppose. its not really a song about the trojan war…but i digress. a lot. lets go) and on one of those ships Achilles sits. now, Achilles and Agamemnon hate each other because they’re both egotistical; Agamemnon thinks he’s the greatest king ever, and Achilles is all big-headed about the fact that he’s part god and can’t be defeated in battle. So they don’t like each other, and get in fights pretty much daily. so blah-blah-blah, the Greek army storms the beach at Troy, fighting ensues, blah blah, agamemnon pisses achilles off by taking this girl from him, achilles is all “well, i’m not gonna fight that guy’s war. c’mon guys, lets go watch them fail.” (achilles has a group of like, hxc fighting guys. they’re total beasts.) achilles friend patroclus (i think i’m spelling that right. i could be wrong) puts on achilles armor and leads achilles’ troops into battle, to boost the morale of the army. it works, but patroclus gets carried away by it and ends up fighting Hecter, who is Paris’ older brother and is a TOTAL beast. Hector kills Patroclus, achilles finds out, becomes ROYALLY pissed, kills Hector, joins Agamemnon, the greeks pretend to retreat, leaving behind a large giant horse, which of course is brought into the city of Troy because, y’know, HUGE WOODEN HORSES ARE JUST LEFT ON BEACHES AS GIFTS, AND AREN’T SUSPICIOUS AT ALL. then they all jump out, kill-a-bitch, and blah blah blah. thats the story.

…wasn’t all that brief….but the war lasted for at least like, 7 years or something. it wasn’t all over in like, 4 days. so of course “brief summary” of the Trojan War is like trying to do a “brief summary” of war and peace.
and i left a THOUSAND things out.

okay. now then. about the movie. and why it’s FANTASTIC, even though it isn’t historically accurate at all.
minus like, 3 events.

1) Brad Pitt is ATTRACTIVE. I mean damn. that ass could stop wars (or start them in this case).  Plus he’s constantly running around in like, leather shit and his long hair…hold on lets get a picture up in here.

I'M TOO SEXY FOR YOUR PARTY. TOO SEXY FOR YOUR PARTY. NO WAY I'M DISCO DANCING.

ohhh damn. look at that delicious 8-pack.
and his little booty. DUH-LISH.

and of course, he’s a fantastic actor. He gives the character of Achilles a lot of depth, which is hard to do considering Homer pretty much portrayed him as a pompous ass who cared for nothing but stabbing-a-ho. So he brings a lot to the movie, and i apologize for the unprofessional man-oogling (i’m pretty sure its like, ogle or w/e…but i like pronouncing it oogle. so thats how i spell it. bitch.) of the preceding paragraphs.
but i mean…LOOK AT IT. DAMNN.

okay. moving on.

POINT NUMBER 2
2)  Pretty much just the general character of Hector. In the Iliad, Hector isn’t really this great, noble son, who only does right by his country and doesn’t care for the gods.
you’ve got to understand something about this time period.
you didn’t just go OH YEAH, FUCK GODS. US MEN ARE THE ONLY IMPORTANT THINGS.
i mean, you might as well just stab yourself in the eye and fall down a well. because the “Gods” would have done that for you anyway, and after you’re dead one of them would become some sort of pure white animal (like a bull, or a goose) and seduce your mom.
So in the movie, the portrayal of Hector isn’t really….accurate. at all.
except for the fact that he’s the champion of Troy, which is true. Hector is to Troy as Achilles is to the Greeks, and Agamemnons Army. Hector was GREAT at battles, he fought like a beast.

now then, lets move on to…
3) Hector’s Death.
true, he was killed by Achilles. This is one of the most accurate parts of the movie, his actual death.
okay, movie version: Achilles COUSIN, Patroclus, puts on Achilles armor, because he’s practically wetting himself, he wants to fight that bad. so when Achilles says he’s not going to battle, Patroclus takes Achilles’ armor, puts it on, and makes everyone think he’s Achilles. His ruse works so well, that Hector comes, wanting to battle Achilles, and fights him, stabs him, and kills him. After Hector finds out who he just killed, he feels like a terrible person and is full of remorse and awful feelings. Achilles is not happy (I ARE NOT AMUSED. LOLcats anyone?) and he rides his chariot around, shouting Hectors name, wanting to fight. Hector does because he’s so noble and honorable, and he loses (after a long, intense battle scene). Achilles then ties his body to the back of his chariot, and drags the body of Hector around in the dust and sand, horribly deforming the face and body.

WHAT PARTS ARE TRUE?!

TRUE: Patroclus and Hector did fight.
FALSE: Patroclus was NOT Achilles’ cousin.
FALSE: Hector wasn’t all noble and honorable, because he was just as egotistical as Achilles was.
TRUE: Achilles and Hector battle, and Hector loses.
TRUE: Achilles drags Hector around behind his chariot, royally fucking up the body.

so that part is remarkably accurate to the Iliad, which is good. though i think the reason they change Patroclus into his cousin is to give Achilles a human touch.
that and they make him fall in love with some chick who’s from Troy. Y’know, get the whole star-crossed lover shit. the whole romance part of that is TOTALLY a mixture of Romeo and Juliet and the Taming of the Shrew.

number 4 that i want to get to:
4) Agamemnon (is he an asshole?)
answer: YES.
but not as bad as the movie makes him seem.
the problem with any “based on true/semi-historical/some mixture of both events” story is that in real (or half-real, or maybe real) events, there really isn’t a clear-cut “good vs. evil” conflict. the writer and the director need to carve out some protagonists and antagonists to keep the watcher engaged, because they’re not going to give 2 shits if they don’t have someone to love and someone to hate.
so what does Troy do? they give you Achilles, the egotistical man who falls in love with a woman related to his enemies, the heartbroken warrior who loses his cousin, who was almost like a son to him. and they give you Paris and Helen, two lovers who can’t bear to part. and Hector, the loving father/husband, brilliant leader and fantastic fighter who makes a mistake that he pays for with his life.
so who does that leave you to hate?

thats right. good ol’ Agamemnon, the great king of Mycenae. King of the Greeks.

the movie portrays him as this fat egotistical maniac who refuses to fight his own battles and rests the fate of his reign on the blade of Achilles capable sword. the movie portrays him as caring for nothing but power. They never show him with a wife (though i’m surprised they didn’t do the cute little story about how Agamemnon sacrificed a daughter of his to the Gods so that he might win the war against Troy. that would have done SO MUCH for his whole image. though then they may have had to change his death…more on that later). or with kids, or even having friends.
he’s just kind of the evil dictator who cares not for human lives, only cares about owning the biggest pieces of land, or commanding the greatest armies and never stepping foot onto the battle field.

FALSE. false false false. lies. all of it.
well…he was mostly an ass. but most of them were.
except for Paris, he was just kind of a douche.

Agamemnon was a powerful ruler, true. he commanded great armies and won great battles. however, he was ALWAYS fighting by the side of his warriors. and while he did take a woman away from achilles, it wasn’t like the woman was really achilles’ property, and he deff wasn’t in love with her in any way (the movie had to have some sort of romance-gone-wrong, right? otherwise where would we be.).

Even better is Agamemnon’s death, which in the movie occurs the night of the invasion of the City, when they jump out of the Trojan Horse.
Agamemnon did not die at this time. nor was he killed by the woman who loved Achilles. In the movie theres this whole big fiasco where everything’s on fire, everyone’s dying or killing or both, and Agamemnon finds this chick (her name is Briseis) and grabs her by the throat and is all “YOU ALMOST LOST MY WAR FOR ME, BITCH.” if i recall correctly she stabs him heartily in the throat. or maybe Achilles does that when he comes to reclaim his love. i’m not sure, i haven’t seen it in awhile.

so how did Agamemnon really die?
well. heres my favorite theory. this is assumed/believed by a lot of people, but you can’t really prove it, because theres not really any good historical evidence if i remember correctly.
okay, so before he left, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter to the Gods to please them so that they’ll help him to win the war against Troy.
needless to say, his wife is PISSEDDD. While he’s gone in Troy, his wife shacks up with this other guy.
so Agamemnon comes back all triumphant and shit and he’s taking a bath and his little wife and her lover come in and kill the shit out of him.
can i get a PWNED?!

yeah. that sucks.
but it probably didn’t happen. oh well. i like to think it did.

so there you have it folks.
Troy really is a great movie, if you ignore most/all of the glaring problems in the historical accuracy.
and if you’re having problems coming to terms with how they refuse to stick to the story in the Iliad…just pause, take a breath, and look at Brad Pitt’s hotness.
i’m telling you. he could stop wars.
him an Angelina Jolie together are like the frigging Justice League.

….today is not one of my better days when it comes to making sense. sorry about that.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
-Albert Einstein

so. funny thing about that quote. see, the last time i used it was in a post on this other blog i have (mostly i just whine about my life on it. trust me, it isn’t pretty.) and it was (obviously) a post about technology.
and in that post, i cited this book, End of Days by Dennis Danvers.
why is this funny?

because this blog is going to be about the book The Fourth World, by Dennis Danvers.

hahaha. oh irony. you kill me.
anyway.

when most people think of science fiction they think of spaceships and aliens, right? i mean, i know when i think of it i think of this show Roswell that was on several years ago, and got canceled after 3 seasons (phenomenal show, BTW. it was where Katherine Heigl from Grey’s Anatomy got her start), and the show was about these alien/human hybrids who were trying to live among humans.
really facinating.
its either aliens, or some future civilization like in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, where everyone flies around in helicopters and takes legalized acid or something of the like that is government issued to keep the masses happy.

anyway, thats what most sci-fi is about right?

WRONG.

The thing i love about Dennis Danvers is that he creates these terribly realistic futures for mankind.
like in Circuit of Heaven/End of Days, the human race becomes so obsessed with immortality that they decide to give it to themselves, by creating this virtual reality universe-in-a-box where the entire population lives, with room enough for billions more. meanwhile, left on the earth are all the religious crazies, bent on destroying “the bin”, where all the sinners have gone. the religious crazies are lead by one of those crazy television preachers who’s on at 2 AM and says the most ridiculous things. sounds funny now, right?
imagine living it.
i can’t even comprehend…i mean, most people would hear that and be like “oh, well the virtual reality thing can’t be that bad. its floating in space, so the crazies can’t get at it, and you get however many years you want to do whatever your heart desires. how could that be bad?”
think about it this way: how boring would life be if no one ever died? i mean, the whole institution of marriage works because you spend your lives together, and you want to make whatever time you have special.
if you had infinite time…you’d get sick of each other. i don’t care how much you love someone. there isn’t a single person in the world that i wouldn’t get sick of after an eternity together.
we just don’t work like that.
so you see? you see how terrifying that future would be?
thats my point. thats what Danvers does to you.
he gives you a likely reality, you think “oh come now, that can’t be THAT bad” and then 40 pages later you’re like “oh my shit.” and you realize how everyone in the world is an idiot.

that is how i feel right now, only 17 minutes after finishing The Fourth World.

see, The Fourth World gives us this situation:
its really not that far into the future. but the internet has taken over everything. you enter this type of force-field contraption, and are instantly in a basically virtual reality internet. imagine actually being IN the internet, constantly. like, right now, you’d be at my site, watching me talk to you.
you could change what you look like, change your age, your name, your life. you wouldn’t come out except to eat or shower pretty much.
again. sounds great, right?

imagine never seeing the sun again. never knowing exactly who you’re talking to because anyone could be everyone. hell, right now you could be talking to obama and you wouldn’t know it.
you’d never know the REAL news, because who would tell you what was real and what was fake?
imagine your entire life online.

not so great now, huh.

thats the picture Danvers paints for us.

throw in the mix some romance, some government conspiracies and the revolution in mexico and you’ve got The Fourth World, also known as one awesome sci-fi book.

The whole reality of the book is so plausible as the reality of tomorrow that i was completely sucked into it by the end of like, 50 pages. i found myself thinking about the world as if i already lived in the internet.
and by the end of the book….i’m starting to wonder if the whole internet thing isn’t a mistake.

don’t get me wrong, i love it. hell, i’ve got like, 4 blogs, at least 3 (if not more) social networking profiles, i play games every day, i shop online, i do homework online, etc etc etc.

but look at us. pretty soon we’ll all be failing horribly at social contact.
the more i think about it, the more i think the internet is just one really bad idea that is just way to fun to do away with…like one-night-stands, or gossiping (which i found out is actually in our genes, so our brains are programmed to talk about other people….just not as much as we actually do. so we’re still at fault.).
we live half our lives online. we learn online, we meet people online, we socialize online, we study online, we shop online.
how long until we do away with any need for bodies and minds? how long until we just check into some virtual reality world and forget our old bodies behind us?
i mean, the more technology we have, the more likely we are to push people way. all of this technology acts as more of a barrier between us and others more than anything else.
i don’t have phone conversations anymore, all of thats on AIM.
actually, i don’t talk on AIM a lot either, most of that has moved to facebook.
how long until facebook moves to something else? until theres just another middle man between us and the people we consider our friends.

think about it. back in “the day”, everyone used to go out, and DO something. they didn’t sit online talking about it.
thats because they didn’t HAVE online.
they didn’t even have TV’s and VCRs and DVD’s and all the other acronyms i don’t have time to type out.
people needed to actually talk to someone FACE-TO-FACE if they needed something. they couldn’t pull out a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a touch-screen to tell mom that they needed milk from the store.
every new technological development puts more space between us and other people.
which is funny, because theres actually less and less space, if you think about it, because our population shoots up literally every minute.
oops. theres a baby.
and another.
and another.
and another.
yet we’re all so far apart.

the internet allows us to “socialize” without actually socializing with anything.
each year i have gotten progressivly less social and more obsessed with technology.
its gotten so bad where i literally have to force myself to go out and hang out with people.
its because these days, facebook is considered social contact. you can conduct entire friendships, hell, entire RELATIONSHIPS over the internet.
trust me. i’ve done it.
see, social networking sites are like communism. they look awesome on paper, but in practice, they just kind of fuck everything up.
except the last time i checked, there hasn’t been any Facebook Missile Crisis, or the great Myspace Cold War.
so theres some differences there.
but the analogy still holds true.
though that might just be because its 11:30 at night and i’m exhausted. things tend to make a lot more sense to me when i’m tired.
i’ve been convinced of ridiculous things when i’m tired.
like one time i would have sworn that the Nazi’s were in their airplanes over my house, and they were going to shoot my house because they thought i was a jew.

so i guess i’ll end this post with these words of advice:
1) read The Fourth World by Dennis Danvers (and all of his other books)
2) go outside and socialize more. you never know when the world will turn virtual
and, 3) don’t read The Diary of Anne Frank at 3 AM when you’re literally about to pass out face down in the book.
just don’t. bad things happen to good people (especially those with vivid imaginations)

I just wrote an entire paragraph trying to justify the difference between books and music.
the truth that i came to realize (after 6 or 7 sentences) is that there is essentially NO DIFFERENCE WHAT-SO-EVER.
Why? Well. i can’t really describe that either.
I mean, both things warrant the same response, which is as close as i can really get to why they’re the same thing.
i mean, literature and music has always gone hand in hand, because music has lyrics now.
i don’t really know.
but i might be slightly closer to understanding this whole thing at the end of this blog.
…this could be a long blog. just FYI. you might want to get yourself a snack, maybe some lemonade, i don’t want you dying of starvation halfway through my semi-pretentious blogging crap.

OKAY. now then. lets do this.

I just finished Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman.
Now, i’ve always ranked Klosterman as one of my favorite writers ever. he’s so deliciously snarky and he seems to actually understand the culture that he’s writing about, and accepts it. He isn’t like one of those detatched cultural critics who talks about music as though they’ve never actually experienced it, like they’re from a future era and they’re trying to pretend like they don’t actually associate with this culture crap that they’re talking about.
i hate people like that. which is why i love Chuck Klosterman.
Fargo Rock City is a book detailing the (insert adjective here) metal era of the 80’s (adjectives being things like, heavy, glam, speed, hard, death, etc.) and Klostermans involvement in it.
In my own personal opinion i feel like its the most siginificant book i’ve ever read about any type of music ever, mostly because he makes metal PERSONAL. which no one ever seems to do.
critics always make their reviews sound like “well, if you don’t like this you’re retarded because obviously its brilliant and everyone ELSE loves it so why don’t you?” or the exact same thing, except replace like/love with hate and brilliant with awful. they make their reviews sound like the voice of the people, when its obviously not.
critics are always just giving their own opinion of things, and i wish they would say that more often than they do, because that would give them so much more credibility.
you never hear a critic saying “hey, this is just my opinion, you might feel differently, and hey thats okay.” generally critics are assholes, or at least sound like it on paper, because they will tell you that your favorite album/movie/book is a pile of horse manure that should be vomited on, put in a bucket, and thrown off the end of an airplane so it can splatter into the ocean, causing the deaths of thousands of fish, because that would be a better use for it than actually listening to/watching/reading it.
This is why i could never be a music critic, because i love pretty much anything. i will even make exceptions for country (which i claim to hate) or rap (which i claim to hate when it’s mainstream). i listen to everything and anything, minus maybe 3 songs, or things i haven’t heard of or had time to listen to.
…wow, i’ve made it 540 words without really talking about the book AT ALL.
i should start doing that shouldn’t i? yes. well. here we go….again.

The reason i loved Fargo Rock City so much was because it was educational, funny, witty, and personal. Chuck Klosterman told us his side of the story about Metal, which is a side that never gets told. Metal is always laughed at, like its a huge joke, when obviously it wasn’t a joke to some people, the people that grew up with it.
its become totally ironic and funny to actually LIKE metal, especially 80’s metal (though really, there doesn’t seem to be any other kind, unless you’re not actually a metal fan and consider anything with lots of guitars metal ((this used to be me))) and this isn’t the case. I mean, i guess it isn’t as culturally significant (what does that even mean??) as something like The Beatles (duh) but nothing really is. Technically, everything about culture is about perspective. Metal may have sucked to someone who had access to other types of music in the 80’s, but if you didn’t really have too much access to anything else…it may have been the greatest music ever.
which is exactly how Chuck Klosterman felt/feels. but he probably had more access to music than i give him credit for, i really don’t know what its like living in a town of about 500 so i can’t really talk.

Fargo Rock City isn’t so much about “metal” as its about what its like to experience music.
thats why i liked it so much and had fun reading it.
as Klosterman was describing what it was like to discover Mötley Crüe as a 5th grader, i found myself reliving what it was like when I discovered Coheed & Cambria in 7th/8th grade. Music doesn’t mean anything to anyone except the person who’s living it, so its really pointless to talk about “music” in the abstract, because it doesn’t mean anything. Music is really all just math, its a time signature and a key and a number of instruments and a number of notes. thats it. So why does it mean so damn much to everyone and everything? because all of those instruments and notes make us feel something. but for some reason, nobody seems to get that not everyone feels the same thing, and therefore not everyone LIKES the same thing.
Chuck Klosterman probably hates half the bands i love (i’m a huge indie music nerd. and could probably be considered a hipster), and i am by no means a metal fan. but that isn’t the point.
I loved Fargo Rock City because it wasn’t ABOUT metal. it was about Chuck Klosterman and his reaction to said metal. And his reaction is the exact same reaction that any person gets when they listen to their favorite music.
I’m sure Coheed & Cambria means something completely different to other people, because all the other fans found Co&Ca in a different way than me. Me? i found Coheed when my sister would drive me over to middle school every morning, and something about Claudio Sanchez’s high voice spoke to me. Coheed & Cambria is and will be my favorite band for a long time to come. Why? i’m not entirely sure, i haven’t had time to really analyze this, but i assume that in some way i relate to the music and lyrics.
i don’t really know how i would relate to coheed’s lyrics, considering all of them are about this epic space story that is really amazing to me, but maybe thats the sole reason for my hero-worship of them: is because their story is amazing. and hell, i’ve always wanted to write a book (i’m still working on that one. close, but i’ve got awhile to go), so maybe i just have a lot of respect for someone who can combine the 2 greatest things in the world, books and music.
and maybe i just have a lot of respect for Klosterman, the only critic ever who has admitted to being biased when critiqueing something. So maybe thats the only reason why i loved this book. i don’t really know. i might hav ejust loved it because on some personal level, Chuck Klosterman has always spoke words that were on the same wavelength as my brain. he talks like i do, which is a big deal for me, because he makes so much sense all the time.

Long story short:
if you have any love for music, read Fargo Rock City.
and, after reading it, if you love Chuck Klosterman, go check out his other books, most importantly Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, which is his other favorite of mine, and Killing Yourself To Live, which is hella interesting and fun to read.
As for Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa puffs, i can’t really vouch for that book because i haven’t read it. its on my list, i just haven’t gotten around to stealing it from my sister’s bookshelf yet.

Either way, Fargo Rock City was a great book, at least according to me.
And if you don’t like it, you must be retarded. psh. loser.

Now, if you’ve been following along with my books blog, you might recall a post about webcomics.
(Hint: Go read This)
look at me, being all HTML savvy and creating links all by myself.

anyway.
in that post, i looked at 3 webcomics that i’ve been reading for EVERR, Questionable Content, XKCD, and A Softer World.
All of which are phenomenal webcomics.
But, I’m here to bring to you several NEW webcomics (well, Newer to me) for your reading pleasure.
When i look for new webcomics to read, i look for the following things:
1) good art (or at least understandable art, art that isn’t scribbles and crap)
2) a clever story or concept
3) a lack of reliance on poop jokes. because, while amusing, poop jokes get old fast.

so. here are 3 more webcomics to make your lives better.
enjoy.

#1: OCTOPUS PIE!

now, that link is a link to the VERY FIRST OCTOPUS PIE COMIC.
if you recall, i did that for Questionable Content as well.
Octopus Pie is a comic that relies on story arcs, which are basically small series of events (or big series of events) that carry the characters along.
AKA you will be very confused if you start with the most recent comics.

Octopus Pie follows a group of rather…interesting characters. The MAIN character is Eve Ning (haha play on words) who moves in with a girl she knew from preschool, Hanna Thompson, who basically spends most of her time high, getting high, coming down from a high or wishing she were high. Eve is the complete opposite of Hanna in many ways, being very sarcastic, cynical, and rather angry, and you can probably see where the hilarious hijinx come into play. Theres a lot more to the story, but i’d rather not ruin anything by accident.

Octopus Pie is drawn by Meredith Gran, and thats pretty much all i know about the author/artist on this one. i feel bad, i can’t give any long-winded biography on the artist, detailing every second of her life.
oh well.

Octopus Pie updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

moving on!

#2: WONDERMARK!

That is a link to the wondermark homepage. You can read Wondermark in any sort of order you wish to, as it is just random comics with no story what-so-ever (sort of like A Softer World, and XKCD).

Wondermark takes old drawings and gives them dialogue, resulting in hilarity. Heres one of my favorites:

See? hilarious! either that or you think i’m a fool.
but if you think that…why are you still reading?

Wondermark is done by David Malki ! and yes that exclamation point is necessary, and yes there is a space between it and the rest of his name.
don’t question, just do it.
There really isn’t a whole lot else to say about Wondermark, except the fact that its hilarious and you should read it.
it updates every Tuesday and Friday.

#3: INDEXED!

Indexed is also a random comic, with no plotlines whatsoever.
it is mostly a social commentary, done through graphs.
it takes some thinking to understand some of them, but the ones you understand you will literally Laugh out Loud at. not the inward chuckle, i mean ACTUALLY laugh out loud. its that funny.

see? its things like that.
there are bar-graphs, Venn diagrams, line graphs, the works.
the graphs aren’t that hard to understand, it just might take a couple seconds to really get some of them.

indexed is drawn by Jessica Hagy, and has gotten quite a bit of recognition from the rest of the internet crowd. you should definitly check it out.
Indexed is updated weekdays. aka monday-friday

NOW. I am challenging you.
Find me a new webcomic. it can be any webcomic that you think is funny, witty, ridiculous, hilarious, or whatever else.
The only criteria i’m looking for is that i can’t have already mentioned it in one of my two webcomic blogs.
If i like what i see, that webcomic will be talked about whenever i next decide to do another webcomic special.
Why should you want to do this?
Because i need entertainment, and if you really like the webcomic, the best thing you can do for the author is to spread the word.
so spread that word! hurray!

20 bucks says no one comments.
*evil eyed stare*