500 Days of Summer

Was kind of a letdown. I was hoping it would be much better than that. I love both Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, but the movie just fell flat, I thought. Maybe I've just seen too many of those "interesting girl" movies to even appreciate one that doesn't follow formula. It was ok, just not nearly as good as I was expecting it to be. Perhaps there's a lesson in there somewhere.

Also...

Added a good deal of content to the right side of this blog. Don't know if anyone actually looks at this stuff, but maybe one day, haha.

Simplification

Lately I'm trying to cull my interests down. I'm learning that I need to focus on fewer things in order to maximize my experiences with each of them.

This is much tougher than it seems ;\

The Great and Secret Show

Title: The Great and Secret Show

Author: Clive Barker

Published: 1989

Pages: 658

Rating: 5/5

Picked up this book in my new favorite used book store (unfortunately in Seattle), because I've always wanted to read Clive Barker and I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. Started to read it in the airport on my way home, and man, does this book kick ass.

The main idea builds from Carl Jung's collective unconscious theory; Barker paints it as a sea called Quiddity that we visit three times in our lives, in dreams. Once on the night we are born, once the night we first lie next to the person we will love the most, and once on the night before we are to die. I was pretty much hooked from right there.

Anyway, this concept is explored through a plot that casts good against evil in an epic showdown and leaves room for character transformations aplenty. And keeps the reader guessing, which I appreciated. The plot is better than most, by far. I've read better, but not often.

Beyond the story craftsmanship, Barker is an incredible writer. His words consistently bear the ring of truth and his characters are both believable and sympathetic. They develop in arcs that lend generously to the intrigue of The Great and Secret Show. I particularly loved the dichotomy (and balance) between Fletcher and The Jaff, but I'll leave it for you to discover what all that's about.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the occult, the otherworldly, the supernatural. Also, just so you're not surprised by this, as I was: this is the first book of a trilogy. It is readable as a standalone novel, however, as is the second installment. The third book has not yet been written, though Barker apparently speaks about it often.

A couple of quotes I enjoyed enough to write down:

"She no longer had to keep her cynicism polished; no longer had to divide her imaginings from moment to moment into the real (solid, sensible) and the fanciful (vaporous, valueless). If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was."

"It had been as claustrophobic as she'd anticipated, but at midnight on Christmas Eve, walking on Fifth Avenue, a forgotten feeling had sucked all the breath from her, and brought her to tears in an instant: that once she had believed. That belief had come from inside, out. Not taught, not bullied, just there. The first tears that had come were gratitude for the bliss of knowing belief again; their sisters, sadness that it passed as quickly as it had come, like a spirit moving through her and away."

"The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted."

Go forth. Read and enjoy. And come talk to me about it!

Airframe

Title: Airframe

Author: Michael Crichton

Published: 1996

Pages: 448

Rating: 3/5

This book kept me quite entertained on a flight to Seattle (which was, in retrospect, not the best idea, haha). Pretty standard Crichton thriller: rapid page-turning, short chapters, lots of tension. Great entertainment reading.

However, I really didn't think it was anything special. It certainly wasn't up to par with Jurassic Park, Prey, or Rising Sun. I'd say it compared most closely to Disclosure, but it wasn't quite as good.

On the other hand, Crichton's "issue du jour" for this novel was spot-on. It really attacks the media for shooting first and asking questions later, and that is definitely something worth exploring. I think maybe one of the biggest problems that this novel had was that this entire plot line was developed entirely too late; it only started around the midpoint of the text. There was, perhaps, a lack of focus, as much of the novel detailed an airline disaster and the investigation thereof. Some of this segment seemed like filler.

Anyway, only a few Crichton books left for me, really. And shame of all shames, the guy died. Damnit.

Whacky animation

How cool is this? Haha, I love it.

Fieldwork

Title: Fieldwork

Author: Mischa Berlinski

Published: 2007

Pages: 356

Rating: 4/5

This was a pretty bitchin' novel about anthropologists and missionaries, set against the background of tribal life in Thailand. It is written in the first person; Berlinski himself is the speaker, though he is not the protagonist. What was cool about this book was that it showed how anthropologists and missionaries are more or less doing the same work, though working toward entirely different goals. While anthropologists want to preserve and even immortalize native cultures, missionaries want to alter them.

Now, if you know me, you know that I wholly disagree with even the idea of missionaries, as I believe they are control freaks trying to dominate those weaker than themselves. The fact that they do this almost entirely without realizing how evil they are does not excuse their abhorrent behavior, in my opinion. But I'll get off my soapbox for now.

I read this book over several months, so I got to enjoy it slowly. Marielle picked it out as something we could read together, showing a talent for selecting books that I will probably enjoy. Marielle knows me well? Nothing new there, haha.

Anyway, I'd especially recommend this to anyone interested in anthropology, though it is an enjoyable casual read as well. Berlinski's descriptions of the natural world as it appears in Thailand are top notch, and the man has a way with words to boot. For a first novel, a very strong showing, I should say.

Pretty much need to get a résumé together for myself. Could be fun.

Great [existential] quote of the day:

"I stepped right out to the edge of the precipice. I thought that when Caroline saw me afterward she'd cry, "I loved that mashed-up piece of human wreckage." I looked over at the terrifying drop and my stomach lurched and all my joints locked and I had the following horrible thought: You experience life alone, you can be as intimate with another as much as you like, but there has to be always a part of you and your existence that is incommunicable; you die alone, the experience is yours alone, you might have a dozen spectators who love you, but your isolation, from birth to death, is never fully penetrated. What if death is the same aloneness, though, for eternity? An incommunicable, cruel, and infinite loneliness. We don't know what death is. Maybe it's that." -Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

This shit reminds me of something else I read, in the novel Shōgun:

"It's a saying they [the Japanese] have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for all the world to see, another in his breast to show his very special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except himself alone, hidden only God knows where." -James Clavell, Shōgun

I seriously dig on this kind of thinking. You really never can know another human being.

"Reluctance" by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods 
And over the walls I have wended; 
I have climbed the hills of view 
And looked at the world, and descended; 
I have come by the highway home, 
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground, 
Save those that the oak is keeping 
To ravel them one by one 
And let them go scraping and creeping 
Out over the crusted snow, 
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, 
No longer blown hither and thither; 
The last long aster is gone; 
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither; 
The heart is still aching to seek, 
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man 
Was it ever less than a treason 
To go with the drift of things, 
To yield with a grace to reason, 
And bow and accept the end 
Of a love or a season?

This poem speaks to me so much...I love the way it gives form to the idea of reluctance.

"What can I do? I'm in, love with you...and it won't stop..."

Annoying

Is it just me, or is it a total pain in the ass when you comment on someone's shit, and then every time someone you don't know comments on it, you get notified?

Can I turn this off? I need to find out.

Prison Break, season 3

Well, it doesn't suck quite as bad as I feared it might. Jury's still out, though, as I'm only up to episode five.

A way to be green by reducing

If you shower in the morning, consider leaving the bathroom light off. If your bathroom gets decent natural light, you'll have no problems. This may not work at night.

Also, if your bathroom has an exhaust fan, consider leaving that off as well. You'll have to wait a few minutes for your mirror to clear up, but that's probably no big deal. And during the winter, this can be an environomic (ooh, I like that) way to release a little heat into your house (when you open the bathroom door) and save on heating costs. Granted, the savings are miniscule, but even pennies add up.

The second tip here comes from this eHow article.

Ridiculous news story

And the guy says...“When I saw the raccoon I thought I’d have some fun."

Really? Really, dude?

Another reason that I love Stephen King

I read Twilight. I'll admit it. My sister (older than the target demographic, but still curious) decided to see if it was as horrible as she suspected it would be, and I joined her. It was, and is, total garbage. 

I hear the movie made things slightly better (by bringing the entirely flat characters to life, to a certain degree) and slightly worse (the way movies always do), but I didn't bother seeing it. Nor will I bother to read any more of Stephenie Meyer's craptacular writing. (Although The Host was slightly better than Twilight. Slightly.)

Anyway, check out this excellent article, and smile.

Do illiterates get the full effect when they eat a bowl of alphabet soup?

Yet another portfolio

of total awesomeness. This guy draws caricature like whoa. 

Favorites include: Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson (featured today on TeeFury!), John Lee Hooker, Amy Winehouse, Tracy Chapman. Oh, and everyone's boy, Barack.

He says he's working on a Bob Marley drawing. Sick.

A Simon Luckhurst original

I just stumbled across this short story while reading about Tom Robbins, and enjoyed it, so I thought I'd share.

A young fellow named Strange

Today at work, I witnessed a young child of no more than eight years beating hell out of several 50 lb. bags of Pedigree dog food. He was unaccompanied by any parents or other figures of authority, and was repeatedly, mercilessly, and quite mysteriously punching these huge yellow bags as if they were piñatas (piñatae?) and would yield vast stores of candy were he to break them open.

I was leveling down some Jamaican beef patties at the time, so I walked over and asked the lad if there was a reason he was attacking the dog food. Perhaps the Pedigree had done something to provoke his offensive? Startled by my question, he turned to stare mutely at me for just a breath or two, then unleashed one final salvo of wild punches and took off running down the aisle. He pumped his legs and arms rigidly, at right angles, seeming to run in place, and yet managing to propel himself away from me nonetheless. The entire spectacle was absurd, but of course there was no one else there to witness it.

Puzzled, but amused, I went back to my beef patties.