A quick read with some funny Twitter-ized parodies of famous books. The parodies are probably funnier if you're familiar with the original stories. MaA quick read with some funny Twitter-ized parodies of famous books. The parodies are probably funnier if you're familiar with the original stories. Maybe turning some of the sexual themes a little too overtly?...more
Dark comedy a la George Saunders. Feels like an allegory, but I'm not totally sure of what, exactly. Tyranny? War? Oppression? Failure to act vs. actiDark comedy a la George Saunders. Feels like an allegory, but I'm not totally sure of what, exactly. Tyranny? War? Oppression? Failure to act vs. acting too quickly? Surreal as hell though, that much is for sure.
Also: this is the piece of Saunders' that made me realize that he works (more or less) in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut. At least, in the future, when someone asks me to describe George Saunders, I'll say: "He's like the smartest kid in Kurt Vonnegut's class."...more
I can't tell if Green Eggs and Ham is a cautionary tale about advertising and aggressive sales professionals, or if it's about keeping an open mind abI can't tell if Green Eggs and Ham is a cautionary tale about advertising and aggressive sales professionals, or if it's about keeping an open mind about food (which would then be an easy synecdoche for any other culture). Both interpretations have merit and it would be easy to find supporting arguments for either. It is tempting to speculate that "clearly" Dr. Seuss meant for the book to be read in the latter context — but ol' Theodore was a crafty fellow and I certainly wouldn't put it past him to have intended the cautionary read either.
Interpretations of the text aside, you have to wonder what bad blood there is between our unnamed narrator and Sam I Am. After all, we open with him cursing Sam I Am by name before allowing the platter of succulent (if tainted-looking) green eggs and ham to become a proxy for his ill-will toward that persistent, diminutive foil. One imagines early drafts of Green Eggs and Ham reading more like "...I will not eat them here or there. I will not eat them ANYWHERE! I do not like Green Eggs and Ham and I DON'T LIKE YOU, SAM I AM!!!" before some over-zealous editor took his red pen to the page and asked Geisel to tone it down a little. What's their history, Sam I Am and our unnamed narrator? How far back does it go? What is the source of their rift? And how does one mere taste of green eggs and ham mend it?
------ SIDE NOTE: Hands down, this is Holden's favorite book. That means that we've read it to him a nearly obscene number of times. It also means that the "gently used" copy we bought has been taped and re-taped back together and will no doubt be replaced on or sometime shortly after H.'s first birthday. It might become an annual gift until he learns to not tear pages....more
If you must, you may call it jealousy, but there is no getting around the fact that if someone had read my essays during college, and then paid me to If you must, you may call it jealousy, but there is no getting around the fact that if someone had read my essays during college, and then paid me to keep writing those essays, then I could (would) have been Chuck Klosterman. [1] But seriously: I feel like I could have written all of these essays (possibly better) if only someone had come along and said: Hey, you've got the right kind of sarcastic wit and you know how to stitch together a bunch of quasi-esoteric references... can you bang together a couple of 5,000 word essays on pop culture subjects? Only problem is that I'd probably have peaked at like 25. [2]
Anyway: this is Chuck Klosterman. Basically, he is the older brother that I never had--the older brother of whom I am extremely jealous. He gets all the girls. (Even if he can't keep them.) He smokes all the best weed. (Even if he can't handle it.) He goes to all the best concerts. (Even if he doesn't enjoy them.) He's seen every episode of every show, went to every game of every team, heard every record by every band, read every book by every author, taken every class by every prof, and remembered every detail about all of them. [3] Thus is he the smartest kid in the room--even if he still goes around claiming to be an idiot. And despite all that, I can see right through all of his bullshit shenanigans.
And trust me: there are some bullshit shenanigans going on here.
Klosterman is lazy. Seriously: how can you (in good conscience) open an essay ("Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drunk Must Have His Drink") with a not-at-all-oblique reference to September 11th and then not tie that back in to the overall theme? When we get to the end of "Every Dog Must...", all he got was Billy Joel-Billy Joel-Billy Joel and the eternal struggle between Cool and Great. But he opens with "nineteen unsmiling people from the Middle East" and then he just leaves it hanging there, never to crash back into the rest of the narrative. Lazy, sloppy work. [4]
But for as lazy as Klosterman is, he's sharp. He "gets it". And how do I know that he "gets it"? Because he is harping on "that celebrity thing"--the same way that William Gibson talks about celebrity in Idoru; the same way that Bruce Sterling talks about celebrity in Holy Fire; and (to a lesser extend) the way that Neal Stephenson talks about celebrity (and/or pop culture's collision with itself?) in Snow Crash. Yes; Chuck understands it. The bizarre world of the successful (?) cover band in "Appetite for Replication". The meta-conflicts of the simulated life of simulated people in the simulated world of "The Sims" in "Billy Sim". The exegesis of Pamela Anderson-vs-Marilyn Monroe-as-the-best possible-sex symbol-for-her-time in "Ten Seconds to Love". The circular conundrum imposed by MTV's "The Real World" and the full explication of that subject in "What Happens When People Stop Being Polite". And that's all in the first 85 pages. Yes indeed; he may be lazy and sloppy, but this is Chuck Klosterman at his best. [5]
Anyway: Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: just as easy to love as it is to hate.
---
[1] Only seven years later?
[2] So... replace "jealousy" with "schadenfreude"?
[3] Despite smoking all the best weed.
[4] And/but that's OK? because he writes like some sort of proto-blogger? or like a college student at a fancy liberal arts school that never bothered to graduate? And/but maybe that's a whole big essay in and of itself? About the proto-blogger style? about the liberal artsy interest? about the elevation of pop culture and equalizing it with all of your fancy-pants schooling subject matter?
[5] ALSO: Chuck is really at his best when he's writing about sports. Because it's funny when nerds write about sports. ...more
If you already like Colbert then you know what you're getting into here; if you don't -- think of it as a No Spin Zone satire. The asides and footnoteIf you already like Colbert then you know what you're getting into here; if you don't -- think of it as a No Spin Zone satire. The asides and footnotes were a bit gratuitous.
I tend to think of this as the follow-up piece to The Dilbert Principle. Except whereas The Dilbert Principle was Adams writing as himself, attemptinI tend to think of this as the follow-up piece to The Dilbert Principle. Except whereas The Dilbert Principle was Adams writing as himself, attempting an exegesis on the business world of the late-20th century, Dogbert's Management Handbook is Adams writing as Dogbert, handing over what many would imagine is the tome given to managers after they learn the secret handshake. Though amusing and bitingly satirical, its content is not particularly original and most of the jokes are predictable fare from Adams. That doesn't make it bad; that just helps me justify the ... erm ... asynchronous nature of my consumption of said text....more
I got into the Dilbert comics sometime during high school. I was working part-time in the head office of a construction company, alphabetizing invoiceI got into the Dilbert comics sometime during high school. I was working part-time in the head office of a construction company, alphabetizing invoices and de-stapling paperwork. Gimpy stuff. "Office bitch" type stuff. The hours and pay were good though and my boss looked almost exactly like the Dilbert Boss -- but with a mustache and without being an idiot. Just the same, everyday's three panel strip clearly illustrated some incident that had recently occurred.
This book was given to me somewhere during that time period and was then consumed in asynchronous chunks, usually while on the toilet. In my mind, it remains a philosophical gem that (for better or worse) illuminates and updates all of the same points that Machiavelli was making hundreds of years ago. But Adams includes pictures.
(The bit about Arthur and Fenchurch is OK; but this one kind of... just... rambles? And not in that usual glorious aimlessness that characterizes Adam(The bit about Arthur and Fenchurch is OK; but this one kind of... just... rambles? And not in that usual glorious aimlessness that characterizes Adams' work. This one's just... what happened? Back on Earth; Arthur falls in love with a woman who floats; they fly (and fool around); Ford shows up out of nowhere and they flit off to see God's Final Message to His Creation which is out of order (or not); then end.)...more
This was my dad's old paperback. He gave it to me in... high school? The story around the book (that Farmer wrote it as Kurt Vonnegut's fictional scieThis was my dad's old paperback. He gave it to me in... high school? The story around the book (that Farmer wrote it as Kurt Vonnegut's fictional science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, effectively making it like... meta-fan-fiction?) is more interesting than the story in the book itself. The story itself is "just OK", following along with some fairly familiar sci-fi tropes and adding a sprinkling of puerile sexuality. I smirked a few times, but never chuckled. To me it was more interesting to try and imagine that I was in a by-stander in a Kurt Vonnegut story reading some actual Kilgore Trout. (From there then imaging what it would be like to read the stories written by the fictional authors in the story by the real author's imagining of another author's fictional author.)...more
What is there to say about THGttG that hasn't already been said by thousands of scifi nerds? We wind up devouring this book because it lampoons scifi What is there to say about THGttG that hasn't already been said by thousands of scifi nerds? We wind up devouring this book because it lampoons scifi without doing so in a way that derides it....more
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