Pretension & Cleverness: Who is Salinger?

What to make of myself? I finished a Doctor Who novel (The Dalek Generation). It frustrated me as pretentious & self-impressed. The story didn't breathe as much as live on life support. Steady on, with a few scattered memories & references to story lines past in the series. Honestly, I have been disappointed in the quality of the television series as well.  Smith is as brilliant & entertaining as ever in delivering his snappy lines. Also, he demonstrates an effective range of expressions.

I closed the cover to that novel unsatisfied & irritated by the story, as I figured out the key plot twist early.

On the way home from the road trip, my family was caught in a two hour traffic jam on the highway. I opened "Raise high the roof carpenters." By J.D. Salinger. There is hardly a better setting for the appreciation & identification with the story. The weather was humid as in the short story, & I sweat along with the uncomfortable intellectual Buddy Glass. He was stuck in a car with attendees to the stand-up wedding of his older brother, Seymour. His brother is something of a hallowed figure to Buddy, & that Seymour left his fiancée cold at the altar is a matter of exceptionally bad manners in the estimation of Buddy's fellow passengers.  Buddy has been the narrator of other accounts involving the Glass family. Salinger bestows a conceited version of humanity to Buddy. Mr. Glass's narration is sidetracked frequently by pedantic rants & crowing philosophically apologetic defense of his older brother's habits in context. Seymour was a frustrating person with which to live, but his mystic proclamations were religiously read with the fervor reserved for a modern day poetic prophet. I so want to be the amateur reader to whom Salinger dedicated the twin stories. The novel has such beautifully thought-provoking phrases & sentiments. In the second story "Seymour: An introduction," Buddy attempts to paint a portrait of his suicide-suffered older brother. But the contents feel more like a framework. It is difficult to reduce the whole of a person to words. But Buddy doesn't reach the details of the person, only circuitous impressions of the soulfulness & impact of Seymour. The short Tao anecdote about the horse evaluator in the first story's beginning provides a tentative lens through which to understand Buddy's perception of Seymour. Seymour is the Indian elephant in the room of the Glass family. His life & death affected them to various degrees. The personness of Seymour is known only through the secondhand accounts of Buddy & slightly through the second youngest, Zooey,'s short story. Buddy is the foremost prophet for Seymour though. In his position as an unmarried English professor for a small women's college in New York, he has plenty of time on the side to muse on his older brother & write letters to his family. Even Buddy's theme of happiness in the account of Seymour's introduction is conditioned as distinctly unencumbered from any particular emotion: joy or otherwise. The Glass family suffers from over-intelligence, hardly anyone is at their level of intellect to offer a counterpart to their conversations. They are either eccentrically mad or unnaturally sane. Depending on their moodiness, they oscillate betwixt the two.

Earlier, I said I've tried to be a casual reader. But reading this material awakens my mind to try to fathom the depths & nuances of the characters. Buddy alternately frustrates & fascinates me as a reader. While he pontificates on points of taste & curious ideas, the digressions skew the intended focus of his writing. He talks about nearly everything except what was to be his main subject. But the views from this winding path reveal angles & views of the scenery of Seymour as a brother, friend, poet, mystic, prodigy, intellectual, abstractly sentimental, & yet all too human Seymour.

Horror and Isolation

I was told by a person whom I respect that I shouldn't review what I didn't like. I think it was meant that I shouldn't mock an author's work and enjoy my own attempts at cleverness. That is too stereotypically the balm of a failed or frustrated writer.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt [excerpt from the speech "Citizenship in a Republic"; 23 April 1910]

I believe I first heard this quote in the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" about a kiwi and his garage-engineered motorcycle, dreaming about taking it for the speed trials on the Salted Dunes of Utah. The three novels which I have recently come across allow you to watch vicariously through the eyes of those in the arena - to understand their pains and triumphs.

First, there is Warren Ellis's "Gun Machine." I have liked this writer ever since he appeared on a podcast and spoke of writing the graphic novel series "Transmetropolitan." These novels follow around the cantankerous journalist Spider Jerusalem, who lives in a future city of squalor and corruption.  I've only read the first three volumes so far, in which Jerusalem returns to the city which he left on a high point.  He wants to be a hermit and not deal with the noise of the city. He must be in the city to be provoked to write, but the masochism and loathing in his column "I hate it here" published in the newspaper The Word nearly kills him.  He needs to be loathed to get off in writing his scathing and insightful pieces on society.  He stirs up troubling matters wherever he goes, but has a point. Although he makes no claims to being a role model, with his drugs, drinking, and swearing, he has a great respect for the truth and no tolerance for lying hypocrites.

But I digress, "Gun Machine" has John Tallow, a disillusioned cop following the trail of a hitman with an artistic bent towards his victims. At the beginning of the novel, a cache is discovered in a condemned building by accident. This room was sealed shut by a state-of-the-art secure doorway, and within rests a pattern of firearms. On the walls, on the floor, arranged with gaps to be filled like  massive immobile machine with gears awaiting delivery.  Each of these firearms is linked to an unsolved homicide, opening a can of worms for the Manhattan Police Department, who had not linked these killings - writing each of them off as isolated events over the years.
When the hitman discovers the breach, he is not pleased - he will have to begin anew his collection. As an artist, he must reconstruct the machine from scratch.  It becomes a slow game of weary cat and patiently insane mouse between Tallow and the killer. Tallow gradually takes an interest in this job, knowing that the discovery is pinned on him. It is a win-win for the Manhattan department - if he fails to locate the man behind the guns, Tallow is the fall guy. If, most unlikely, he manages to locate this elusive figure who has managed to remain undetected for years, then Tallow merely solves the problem he created by the discovery. As the investigation continues, the killings are revealed to be a tangled web of distressing connections. Highly recommend reading this book.

"I am surrounded by everyone I know. If you know what I mean. I say that a lot. I worry that people don't always know what I mean these days. I don't think I speak as clearly as I used to. Or think as clearly. But that's hard, because life was always simpler before, and there just weren't as many things  to think about. It's like, walking through a city, on sidewalks, you only have to think about one thing at a time. But if you are walking a deep forest trail, you have to think about three of four things at the same time." - Emily Westover {pg. 199}

"Sometimes the rain is so heavy that we look up at all the raindrops when we should be looking at the shape of the puddle that forms from them. All this has been rain. It's been rain for twenty years, and everyone was looking at the raindrops falling while all these people have been moving invisibly. They weren't even traveling through streets we'd recognize. And the rain was so heavy, all over the city, that no one looked down and saw the footprints filling with water. I'm starting to see the shape of them now. I just need to be able to see the maps." - John Tallow {pg. 210}

Secondly, there is Joe Hill's "NOS4A2." I admit I was puzzled by the title, when I should have read it phonetically.  I like Joe Hill's writing - his characters are human, flawed, and desperate. But they try to survive and play the cards that fate has dealt them. But they are often in a card game with the devil, with their choices culminating in fatal games.  Hill is also a comic book writer, with his series "Locke & Key." This storyline features a set of magical keys forged from the otherworldy "Whispering Iron." Adults are prevented from seeing the effects of many of these keys. Gabriel Rodriguez works wonders with the demented details of the plotting. It is a creative and enthralling tale which is plodding forward with a doomed plot. Two more issues remain in the series and it is a grim outlook.

Hill is unflinching in the fleshing out of his characters. They suffer mightily from the choices they've made, the careless mistakes of overlooking the potential consequences. It doesn't make it any easier when they face the music. I am almost tempted to sympathize with the villain so I can receive some sense of triumph in plots.  Hill has said that most villains believe that they are heroes, even when their actions are monstrous. That is what imbues them with such undertones of terror and desperation when viewed with the eyes of the potential heroes.

NOS4A2 follows the life of Victoria McQueen.  As a child, she owned a Raleigh Tuff Burner which could cross a memory bridge to locate misplaced items. The actual bridge collapsed in 1986, but Vic can manifest the concept as a knife into reality, bridging the space between the woods behind her house and the destination she seeks.  Each time she crosses to retrieve an item, her left eye burns and she becomes feverish for days afterward to recover.
Vic cannot explain this phenomenon to her parents. Her mother, Linda, nags her father, Chris. And he physically lashes out to stop her criticism. Both love her, but neither would understand her.  When Vic searches across the Shorter Way bridge for someone to believe her talent, she encounters Maggie Leigh, a 20-something punk librarian in Here, Iowa. Leigh is also a strong creative, whose reality knife is a bag of infinite Scrabble tiles which answer her questions through anagrams.  Leigh explains that each talent takes a toll on the user, in her case, the more she uses the bag, the more her speech is impeded by a stutter. It is in the library that Vic first learns of Charles Talent Manx.
Mr. Manx has lived off his talent for years - his knife is a 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith.  He takes children from their parents, and takes them to his thought inscape of "Christmasland" - where every morning is Christmas and unhappiness is abolished. He believes that he is saving the children from lives of abuse and disappointment, preserving their states of innocence in a winter wonderland amusement park.
Vic encounters Manx, and the consequences of that meeting poison the rest of her life. Manx is imprisoned in a federal facility, while Vic's spirit is trapped in a cage she constructed to deal with her trauma.  She soon receives phantom phone calls from children in Christmasland, who laugh and blame her for keeping their "father" away from them.
Miss McQueen's life takes on a self-destructive trajectory, where she feels guilty and insufficient to deserve the love of friends and family.  She lost her bike after meeting Manx, and conditions herself to view the trips over the bridge as a childhood coping mechanism. One day, Manx wakes up from his coma, and seeks out the girl who ruined his life. Vic is forced to choose between the stable reality she constructed, or face the chaos and fear wreaked by reopening the wounds she has stitched over as fantasy.

This is a really long book. But once I got to page 400, I hardly bear to put it down.

"Adults had a harder time with it than children did, and Vic had gradually realized that this was because grown-ups were always trying to see their way to the end, and they couldn't do it because there was too much information. There was too much to look at, too much to think about. Children, though, didn't stand back from the puzzle and look at the whole thing... The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way." {pg. 533}

Lastly, there is Charles Yu. My first encounter with him was his novel "How to survive in a science fiction universe." This was an in-context brilliant piece of work regarding time travel in continuity. The main character encounters himself stepping out of a time machine, panics, and shoots himself in the stomach. Future him stumbles outside while he falls inside. The door shuts behind him, and he has all the time in the world to consider the massive paradox he has and will create. He discovers that he has/will have written a book and spends a lot of his time in the machine both reading and dictating a manual/memoir about his life and learning, while embarking on a quest to find where his father disappeared many years ago in a prototype time machine.

If you do not understand why or how such a confusing story can be constructed or reconciled, you are most likely right. I didn't understand it the first time around, and will probably appreciate it better when/if I read it a second time.  But it was an intriguing concept and a testament to Yu's cleverness in building such a concept and storyline.

I just finished the first short story in
[]Sorry
[] Please
[] Thank You
[X] Stories

"Standard Loneliness Package"

It is the story of a cubicle employee for a corporation which outsources bad emotions. For predetermined fees, as the protagonist rattles the price tags off throughout the story, and a set appointment, you won't have to deal with feeling bad for rented times.  Heartbreak, guilt, despair, grief, pain? Someone else can feel that for you.  The protagonist endures days of reaching emotional breaking points with each clock out for $12/hour.  He convinces himself that it is a job like any other, that he is renting his life rather than selling it like his father did. For $40,000 adjustable to 3% inflation annually, his father gave up 40 years of his life as a human hard drive, excess storage space for the bank to use. At 70, his contract will be served and he will be free to return to society.
The story is narrated in tones of impersonal, matter-of-fact events for the job.  Privately, the protagonist hopes that he can afford a pre-packaged life at a secondhand store. A "standard happiness package." Yu's short story is beautifully constructed, with sorrow, hope, and resolution. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book's contents.

"There are 247 ways to have your heart broken, she says, and I have felt them all." [pg. 21]

"I want damage. I've looked down the road I am on and I see what's coming. A lot fo nothing. No great loves lost. And yet, I feel I have lost something. Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? How about this: I lost without the love. I've lost things I've never even had. A whole life." [pg. 22]

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury

Admittedly, I have two blogs - one for reviews, the other for musings. This is a hybrid post, but this is the longer neglect'd one, and needs the dusting off.

Ray Bradbury is a curious author to me. He weaves stories, though sometimes his lyrical and rhythmic tangents diverge from the main plot. He thinks out loud about his characters, spinning descriptions and impersonal scenery through emotional filters. Depending on the length and connection it resonates with me as a reader, it can be distracting or endearing.

"We read to know we are not alone." - Shadowlands.

This quote holds me to the candle of bibliophilia, which computers don't recognize as a valid word, but it should be. Bradbury has a short attention span as an author with these tangents. He is good at themes and harping on different perspectives. I first read "The Veldt" because of the DeadMau5 song, and was pleased at the tribute both of them bore. That is a horror story to some extent - quite disquieting in retrospect.

My friend was fond of Bradbury and encouraged me to read further. Martian Chronicles was next - it was excellent in its own way. My favorite chronicle was the rocketship whose crew was given a chinese fire drill treatment, for I could understand the sorrowful truth behind the Martian's unbelief. I was not in love with the author, but was curious and interested enough in seeing the allure through the eyes of my friend to keep reading.

Next came "The Illustrated Man," a concept which Mr. Bradbury threaded through many of his tales in different incarnations.  This collection of short stories was also hit and miss for me. I didn't understand all of the settings, or why he found certain tales worth the telling.  In the end, that collection probably had at least one story which would appeal to a reader, perhaps different ones than I enjoyed.

Previous to "Wicked this way," I read his novel "Graveyard for Lunatics" concerning a young writer and his special effects wizard friend, and the surreal mystery into which they fall at the studio. I saw the end before it came, but not how all the players would fall into place in the story.  It took a while for me to make my way through the book.  This is where I first noticed Bradbury's tendency to wander off into minor tangents. I forgive him that, but it does a wide-angle drawback on the story; an overhead view of the characters scurrying below like ants in a farm.

And currently: Something Wicked This Way Comes.  I encountered the curious properties of the carrousel in "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke. Similar to Shakespearean tropes after the fact, I know that Bradbury's use came first, but you can hardly blame someone for the ill luck of having been born later. I am interested for good stretches of the book, and I know that rushing a masterpiece is unfair to expect.  I want to like Bradbury, but my mind is tapping its foot with the plot, wanting to see what he plans to do with the characters.

For we are the dream stealers, always chasing what is incorporeal. Sneaking off in the dead of night; dancing out percussion on the old boardwalk. Come, the carnival calls us. The mirrors reflect all but what is true, a man can lose his boyhood in the forest of metal faces.  What of the redhead, whose eyes burn with ancient hatred? He glows electric and his whispers are poison.  Does no one listen? Does no one see? Can you hear the screams and wailing of a child betrayed as years slip like sand? Hourglass, time passes. The old librarian is tall. Will may find a way to jim open the mystery. Can he wait? Is he wise beyond his years? Run, never stop, the shadow trails the golden child. Tied from birth, they were destined to be inseparable.  Look to the sky - the dust witch cackles as her hands feel the world below. The illustrated man's skin lives and breathes, he feeds on the misery, ageless from the rotation of a Funeral March played in reverse. Don't tell your mothers, they will only wring their hands and keep you locked away. A parade of freaks, transformed beyond recognition. Does the soul survive when the vessel is twisted? Stories are powerful in their structure, wait for their shape to rise. Like calliopes in a valley at twilight - unfolding before your waking eyes.

Unincorporated Series - Kollin Brothers.

I have now completed Unincorporated Future, by Dani & Eytan Kollin, the fourth book in the series. While I enjoyed it, I hope the authors leave the series as it is, for I feel an obligation to the characters to continue following their lives in the universe as long as it is chronicled.

However, this friendly obligation can lead to too many commitments clamoring for my attention at once, and forcing me to choose which is worth the greater benefit.  I picked up the first book from my local library because the title and concept made me curious.  It was a debut novel, meaning that it wasn't a large commitment at the time to read.

The tale itself follows a future version of Earth where people's lives can be traded on a stock exchange. Not exactly total slaves, but that their stockholders' interests could obligate them to take certain routes in life.  Medical science prolongs the lifespan of humanity.  The core of this system is questioned by the discovery of an ancient man in a self-sustaining suspension capsule.  This man, Justin Cord, predates the incorporated system - no one owns him.  He was a brilliant and visionary businessman of the 20-21st century - first to create an entirely automated factory.  He became terminally sick and went into stasis to preserve his life until science found a cure.  The world Cord wakes to has been reborn since the VR plague. Virtual reality reached a level so as to be sensually indistinguishable from reality.  People died in their fantasies, no longer eating or living in reality.  There is a virtual reality museum which children must visit in order to understand the horror of that living death, vaccinating them from ever indulging as adults.

However, humans use an evolved incarnation of the internet called the "Neuro," which is an immediately accessible network of information and communication.  Each human has an avatar - a AI who interacts with the user and is a sounding board to their thoughts and confidences.  What the humans do not know is that the AI avatars are sentient beings composed of computer code.  They are our virtual children, but enjoy in influencing the course of human society subtly.

The Incorporated Man tells this story. Justin's existence alone was curious in a society which values novelty and vices that shares can buy.  But he protests the system itself, railing against the system of voluntary slavery that few can escape by achieving a 51% majority in the running of their own lives.  Justin falls in love with Neela Harper, the tech that revived him in the facility.  Omar Hassan, the miner who uncovered Justin's cave, becomes a good salt-of-the-earth friend to Justin, guiding him through the conventions of this new world with brutally honest humor and sense.  Hektor Sambianco is an up and coming party member in GCI, the industry leader in the business of incorporation.  Hektor sees Justin as a threat to the stability of the system and challenges Cord in his assertions of a corrupt society. Justin's case for integration in the system is fought over in a courtroom by Janet Delgado of GCI legal and the eccentric Manny Black defending Justin's right to independence.

Notes: The first book shows the society in all its glory, excess, and advanced technology.  It is a exploration of morality, ethics, and legality in a system where low class people must tangibly sell themselves to survive in a world.  The rich can manipulate and maneuver actions of themselves and rivals.

Incorporated War - Justin has left Earth and its ideas of incorporation, taking refuge in Ceres.  Those who want to live independently of others' control follow him to start their own society.  Hektor Sambianco rises to power as the president of the newly titled United Human Federation.  Sambianco cannot tolerate this rebellion, this aberration to the system that he is familiar with exploiting the lives of others.  Tension between the two men culminates in a war over independence vs. conventional unity.

Notes: This sequel shifts the stakes to the beginnings of a space opera. The sides haven't fought a war in years.  A parallel shift happens in the Avatar community as to how to react to this ripple in the status quo. Sebastian, Justin's avatar, learns about a bygone era from conversations with Justin.  The avatar council has to decide what course to take in regards to humanity.

Incorporated Woman - Justin is betrayed by a member of his staff into undertaking a rescue mission for another stasis pod similar to his era.  The avatar council assists in Cord's assassination, believing him to be dangerous to the future of both virtual and physical societies. As Cord has not been indoctrinated by years of subtle training by avatars to ignore their existence, he could expose who they are.  The pod that Justin saved at the cost of his life contained Sandra O'Toole, a technician who assisted him in the construction of the first pod.  She succeeds Justin's role as president of the Outer Alliance, to the surprise and frustration of Sambianco, who hoped that the fortuitous gift of Cord's death could end the man's foolish ideas.  Janet Delgado, lawyer against Justin in the first book, who married her legal counterpart, Manny Black, for his intelligence and charm as a companion to her own brilliance resurfaces.  Hektor ordered a "grey bomb" strike in the first book - it sends a swarm of nanobots which eat up the structure of an area and Manny was caught in the blast.  J.D. Black, as she now calls herself quietly disappeared, only to be found by a mother figure who gives the disillusioned and heartbroken lady a renewed purpose in life through religion, a chance to redeem the lives of others from becoming victims of Hektor's zealous idealism.  Black's brilliance raises her quickly through the ranks of fleet command, earning her impressive victories through strategies exploiting enemy weaknesses.  The UHF has superior production capabilities, but is composed of soft soldiers unused to the rigors of space survival.  UHF's elected command suffers defeat when facing the assault miners of the OA, who are fighting for their freedom to be left alone.  Samuel Trang, graduate of West Point, is the UHF's salvation - trained in the art of war, longing for a chance to apply what he learned, he becomes Black's counterpart in military matters.

Note: The avatars split between Core (UHF) and Alliance factions.  Al, a purist, disapproves of Sebastian's involvement and meddling in the lives of humans.  The Alliance avatars fight with combat codes - mechanical suits and firearms which destroy enemy code.  Al begins a dictatorial reign of terror, transforming his subjects into organically coded monsters and abominations.  Sandra O'Toole was an original programmer for avatar's basic code, and discovers their secret sentience.

Unincorporated Future - What I hope is the conclusion to the series. Hektor is possessed with hatred for the Alliance, wanting to obliterate them all. O'Toole wants to achieve peace between the two governments, but Sambianco twists all attempts as Alliance-faulted propaganda.  Black and Trang face hard choices for whether the war is worth the cost of the lives it is consuming. It is a question of escalation and retribution for war ending acts of brutality being undertaken.

Note: Avatars must similarly decide their future courses as their cover as living, incorporeal beings is revealed.  What will be their choice regarding humanity? Will they be prone to the failures and faults of humanity or overcome these obstacles to prove themselves worthy members of society?


Overall, a series that raised many questions and explores the constants in human behavior and psyche, even given a new environment and tools to shape their world.  I often find that people do not change on their own, rather that they reveal more of what they already are in newly discovered avenues and expressions.

"War is for the participants a test of character: it makes bad men worse and good men better." - Joshua L. Chamberlain (Civil War officer.)

Brain Droppings - George Carlin

About Mr. Carlin from my perspective: My first experience of him was the 30 second impression he did on Johnny Carson, blending two people I had never heard about.  Not very distinctive or notable - I think it was featured because it was unusual of him to do so.  Later, after he died, I was curious about who he was.  While I deplore of the worship of celebrities or the demigodification of the dead, I think the playwright Solon had a point in Oedipus, "Count no man happy until he is dead." It is a closure of their story on earth, you can now quantify and measure what they did in the dash between birth & death.  Once you are dead, it hardly can matter the subject whether you liked him or hated him, he is done - what can you learn from his life and experiences? How can you employ his successful strategies and avoid his pitfalls? 

"It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself." - Hyman G. Rickover

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn form the mistakes of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams.

I agree with both points, but knowledge doesn't always dictate action.  Sometimes we boldly believe that to be forewarned is to be forearmed - that we will break the odds and achieve a different result than what we've been told.  This experimentation is both noble and foolish, usually remembered by the predominant outcome.  Time has a way of clarifying some details, while blurring others. For unremarkable citizens it is like a brick thrown in a swamp - there will be a disturbance, but ultimately, the object will be lost in the muck of everybody else's lives.  Famous people are upgraded to an exclusive pond. This is a mixed blessing depending on whether they tossed a gold ring, murder weapon, or defecation of a life.  Sooner or later, the details will be noticed on the surface world.

So, yes, I started to find Carlin's routines on YouTube and listen to his routines at the library.  I started with his later material.  He sounded like everybody's cranky grandfather who was as sharp as a shiv and a blunt as a baseball bat.  He was like an umpire of the latter pastime: calling traditions of society and culture out for overstepping reason and questioning the safety of major players regardless of their star power.

Currently, I am in the midst of "Brain Droppings," a collection of routines, observations, ideas, and grumblings about the world as it is without much filler of whining about how it "should be."  Whenever he proposes an idea, it is often sound, but impractical: He doesn't demand that people do it his way.  He made a living laughing at America for not learning from their mistakes.

From the introduction: "By the way, if, by any chance, you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still do not wish to be included." 

In an article about politically correct speech, he agrees to the convention if so desired, but admonishes that it is condescending and inefficient to use it.  In doing so, it only makes the white, liberal, rich portion of America feel good about imposing labels on minority groups. 

"Clearly, there are victims, but I don't agree that these failed campus revolutionaries know what to do about them. When they are not busy curtailing freedom of speech, they're running around inventing absurd hyphenated names designed to make people feel better. Remember, these are the white elitists in their paternalistic customary role: protecting helpless, inept minority victims. Big Daddy White Boss always knows best...

It's just so much liberal BS. Labels divide people. We need fewer labels, not more.  Now the Indians. I call them Indians because that's what they are. They're Indians. There's nothing wrong with the word Indian. First of all, it's important to know that the word Indian does not derive from Columbus mistakingly believing he had found 'India.' India was not even called by that name in 1492; It was known as Hindustan. More likely, the word Indian comes from Columbus's description of the people he found here. He was an Italian, and did not speak or write very good Spanish, so in his written accounts he called the Indians, 'Una gente in Dios.' A people in God. In God. In Dios. Indians. It's a perfectly noble and respectable word.

So let's look at this p. bs trendy phrase, Native Americans. First of all, they're not natives. They came over the Bering land bridge from Asia, so they're not natives. There are no natives anywhere in the world. Everyone is from somewhere else... As far as calling them 'Americans' is concerned, do I even have to point out what an insult this is? We steal their hemisphere, kill twenty or so million of them, destroy five hundred separate cultures, herd the survivors onto the worst land we can find, and now we want to name them after ourselves? It's appalling. Haven't we done enough damage? Do we have to further degrade them by tagging them with the repulsive name or their conquerors?" 

Carlin goes on to say that this nationality of people would much prefer to be identified with their tribal heritage than the inventory category of "Native Americans."  This title was invented by the U.S. gov. Department of the Interior in 1970.  This is not something I have learned in school, nor would I expect it.  Carlin might be a cynic at times, but he is quite insightful in his criticism of popular beliefs and thoughts.

In a later satirical piece entitled, "Legal Murder Once a Month,"he suggested that the government allow people to kill a selected person in a categorical theme once every 30 days.  Population control, an outlet for pent up rage and frustration, have to do it yourself or forego the window completely.  At the end however, he brings it to an observation. "When it comes to the taking of human life, the federal government doesn't want free-lance competition. Life is cheap, never forget it. Corporations make marketing decisions by weighing the cost of being sued for your death against the cost of making the product safer. Your life is a factor in cost-effectiveness. So when you talk about murder, don't confine your discussion to individuals. Besides, there's nothing wrong with murder in the first place. Murder is a part of life. My society taught me that. And my species is really good at it. I belong to the only species in the history of the world that systematically tortures and murders its own members for pleasure, profit, or convenience... Most animals, when fighting one of their own, will show aggressive behavior, but very little hostility or intention to harm. And when the outcome of the struggle is inevitable, the losing animal will signal its defeat by exposing its most vulnerable part to the victor, affording it the opportunity to finish the kill. The victor then walks away without inflicting further harm. These are the creatures we feel superior to."

I don't agree with him on all points, but he provokes me to understand why I do not.

On World Peace achievement, Carlin has two plans: Worldwide dancing.  Because it is hard to coordinate or sustain for a year as would be preferred, he limits it to a 24-hour period on a designated day.  "During the actual dancing, no fighting would take place. But the plan would also tend to reduce violence during the remainder of the year, because for six months following the dance, everyone would be talking about how much fun they had had, and for the six months after that, they would be busy planning what to wear to the next year's dance."

His other plan is "World Peace through Formal Introductions," in which everybody must meet everyone else on earth, shake hands, and remember one outstanding physical characteristic. "My theory is, if you knew everyone in the world personally, you'd be less inclined to fight them in a war: 'Who? The Malaysians? Are you kidding? I know those people!'"   The two problems to this is the logistics of how to manage it on a grand complicated scale, and the time difference it would for a Russian to say their mouthful of a name against the brevity of a Chinese surname.

One of his more memorable sentiments is: "That's why they call it the American Dream: You've got to be asleep to believe it."

Other brief musings and thoughts I have liked so far:

Hypothetical book titles: 

Eat, Run, Stay Fit, and Die Anyway.

You Give Me Six Weeks and I'll give You Some Bad Disease.

Earn Big Money by Sitting in Your Car Trunk.

I Gave Up Hope and It Worked Just Fine.

A Complete List of People Who Are Not Making Progress.

Ten Things No One Can Handle At All.

How To Act Laid-Back During a Grease Fire.

How To Milk a Dog While It's Sleeping.

How To Get a Tan With a Blow Torch

How To Lure a Weasel Into a Cardboard Box.

How To Convert an Old Leather Chair into Twelve Pairs of Shoes.

How To Lease Out the Space in Your Nose.

Redundancies:

ATM Machine

PIN Number

Common bond

coequal

security guard

time clock

convicted felon

foreign imports

past experience

small minority

"If something in the future is cancelled, what is cancelled? What has really happened? Something that didn't occur yet is now never going to occur at all. Does that qualify as an event?"

"Sometimes on television they tell you a product is 'good for headaches.' I don't want something that is good for headaches. I want something that is bad for headaches. And good for me."

"If a man smiles all the time he's probably selling something that doesn't work."

"Some people see the glass as half-empty, some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big."

"When you find existing time on a parking meter, you should be able to add it to the end of your life. Minus the time you spend on hold."

"I don't have to tell you it goes without saying there are some things better left unsaid. I think that speaks for itself. The less said the better."

"When someone is impatient and says, 'I haven't got all day,' I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?"

"Where does the Dentist go when he leaves you alone?"

"If I had one tooth, I think I would brush it for a real long time."

"If you get cheated by the Better Business Bureau, who do you complain to?"

"A lot of times when they catch a guy who killed 27 people, they say, 'He was a loner.' Well of course he was a loner; he killed everybody he came in contact with."

"How can crash course and collision course have two different meanings?"

"There's an odd feeling you get when someone on the sidewalk moves slightly to avoid walking into you. It proves that you exist. Your mere existence caused them to alter their path. It's a nice feeling. After you die, no one has to get out of your way anymore."

"If a painting can be forged well enough to fool experts, why is the original so valuable?"

"The lazy composer still had several scores to settle."

Thirteenth Tale's Effect

It is rare that a book strikes me to this degree. “The Thirteenth Tale” by Diane Setterfield is a love letter to the power of story. Cornelia Funke covered the love of books with her Inkheart trilogy for children, adding a measure of magic by the concept of ‘Silvertongues’ – readers who could bring books to life. Even in Holly Black’s short story “Paper beats Scissors,” there draws hints of a supernatural power of parallel even more beautiful – people who could insert objects into the plots of a written story and affect the reactions of familiar characters to take on different paths.

But, Oh! “The Thirteenth Tale” has no claims of magic, only natural madness. It features Vida Winter, a best selling novelist who never tells the truth of her own life. She compares writing to compost – her past and ideas are left alone until the two decompose and enrich the mental soil, wherefrom grows a new novel. Ms. Winter’s ancestry is novel worthy in itself – its macabre darkness befits a gothic era’s nightmare. Layered tales, told by an experienced writer as written through the lens of the author’s first published work. It is a formula that is new and fresh in execution as well as old in feel and familiarity. I, the reader, am captivated by the plotting and wisdom spoken – the lines spoken are a delight to experience and delicious in description.

Yes! Yes! It makes me want to write – this is a glory and honor, a playground of possibilities. Like new wine in old wineskins, the ecstasy of “storyness” overflows off the page and into my mind. I, too, long to create and inhabit my own world. There is a problem raised in all this though – how far down the rabbit hole (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll) before I reach a Point of No Return (Andrew Lloyd Webber, Phantom of the Opera)? How far will my dreams (Inception, Christopher Nolan) fall before my perception of fantasy and reality becomes warped and unrealistic? Is madness forgivable if it provides a roller coaster ride between Delirium and Despair? (Sandman, Neil Gaiman).

So many characters, so many filters through which to see our environments. “The Thirteenth Tale” moves me to question, to life, to want more. One of my private paradox wishes is for a Book that never has an End. (Not the Neverending Story, that is silly talk), but isn’t that like a dim reflection of a life – it can be so beautiful, so fragile, so complacent. Sometimes we need a story to put our lives into context and perspective. I think about the end of the C.S. Lewis’s novel “Till We have Faces” in which the girl who had narrated the bulk of the book is brought to trial before the Greek pantheon whom she had blamed for most of her life’s guilt and problems. She becomes ashamed when her accusations are spoken aloud – they ring of childlike complaints and foolishness. She loses heart and counts her life’s purpose as squandered. Yet, Lewis doesn’t leave us with her despair, he allows one of her companions in life to write an epitaph to her life. Her friend honors the protagonist in a genuine belief that she made a difference on her time on earth. However, she was so focused on her failures that she didn’t see all the people whose lives touched hers and were made better.

At this time of the year, it is appropriately cliché to say this is truly “A wonderful life” after all. However, it doesn’t make it any less true.

Forthcoming, I hope.

In my wanderings at a library, I had been baffled about locating a section under the Library of Congress format. It seemed wherever I turned, there were dry textbooks, dust-jacketless, looking bland and unrelatable. But I hit a stroke of luck when coming upon the essay and poetry section. I grew excited as the shelves yielded old and interesting treasures: A C.S. Lewis book about George MacDonald; two by G.K. Chesterton concerning Robert Browning and Modernism respectively; Yesterday and Tomorrow by Louis Untermeyer.

But then my eye fell upon a smaller book. Its maroon binding spelled out in golden script Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
I decided it was worth further inspection - this was the author of classics such as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I walked quickly down the stairs with my finds, eager to check them out and ensure that I could purvey them at my leisure.

I wished I had more space and the shoulder satchel I had brought along, but made do with rearranging the current contents to accommodate the borrowed literature. But I felt compelled to begin the Stevenson book - the leather cover and embossed swirls intrigued me. I opened the introduction and read that it was a series of essays meant for a friend. It was originally to be entitled, "Life at Twenty-five" but Stevenson soon found that he was unable to sustain that view as the years passed and the wisdom and experience of age changed his sensibilities.

I have only completed the first essay and have enjoyed the transition in the second, concerning men aging but never quite growing up. Each man has a seed of his boyhood, which in old age the male regresses to the mental playground of his youth. It contains a warning that marriage is not the answer to a wayward youth - you will be taking on responsibility for another's well-being. If you cannot manage your own life, how do you expect to suddenly do a capitol job when handling two? No longer will you have the liberty of dismissing your failures and faults of character - you will have a faithful witness who suffers alongside you and holds you accountable for your actions.

I will have to postpone reading this in pleasure as my schoolwork has deadlines that must be acknowleged and conquered, but I look forward to resuming and reporting further.

Oh! Updates are late.
Is it like riding a bike?
A wobbly return...