Thoreau (Is the Worst)

I read another post off of Brain Pickings, which I love, about Henry David Thoreau, who I do not, and who I think is the original hipster. Thoreau is a hipster in the negative sense. I really couldn't stand him by the end of Walden. He wrote a whole book about living by himself in the woods when he was like a mile out of town and made his mom do his laundry for him. Anyone who looks up to Thoreau is mistaken. He's a fraud, not "one of the masters of the art of living," as Ms. Maria Popova put it. He's a pretentious hypocrite and I do not like him. I mean, what do you expect from someone with the worst facial hair neckbeard of all time. He is not a role model in any way. Except for hipsters.

Wild Animus

Wild Animus, Rich Shapero's self-published artistic effort, has sat untouched on my bookshelf for about four years. It was handed to me for free freshman year, in the space between UCLA's Northern Lights and Campbell Hall, and I finally decided to give it a go last night. I read a chapter and restarted tonight. I stopped, just now, after the first book section because I don't have to keep reading. Believe me, I wanted to. I felt like I should.

But I don't have an obligation.

Wild Animus is bad. Very bad. Some of the songs on the accompanying CDs are okay. I'm listening to them now. They're disturbingly similar, but taken as a concept album could go well with drugs. Drugs, you see, are a main theme of Wild Animus. The main character does a shit-ton of LSD and apparently goes crazy, thinks he's a Dall ram, and dies. I say apparently because I only read the first book section, which details this guy's meeting of a girlfriend, them moving to Seattle, and then visiting Alaska. The ram imagery, however, has been shoved down my throat since the third page. They have a secret ram language, Sam and Lindy, by the second time they're hanging out- which is also when they do acid together. That's stupid.

I described the prose to myself last night, when I decided I would definitely tackle it (sorry, me) as ham-handed and heavy-fisted. Really, I think that it's ham-fisted and heavy-handed, but it's incessant metaphor and blatant hippy-speak really addles the brain. It's way too much way too quickly, like every line is supposed to be some revelation about the world and nature. There's no "a-ha!" epiphany moment, just endless LSD drivel that fellow Amazon users have described as coming from someone who has never taken LSD.

But that's not the problem. I could deal with poorly written sentences, or rather overly "well-written" sentences that gag you. The problem is that I don't give a single shit about the characters. Because they are terrible, and terribly written. Their physical features are described too specifically, and their emotions are spilled out every two seconds. Their emotions change too drastically though. These aren't real people. Amazon reviewers say they are interchangeable or cardboard. I'd disagree. Cookie-cutter characters at least make sense in the stories they dwell. This girl goes from in fear to enraged to lovey-dovey. On a page, with no real explanation or build up. I don't like the protagonist. he names himself Ransom Altman at some point. What the fuck kind of a name is Ransom Altman? He wants to be surrender's ransom, he says. What? Rich Shapero has heard of metaphor, definitely, he uses it too much. Yet he completely fails on using metaphors for symbolism. Everything is spelled out.

Now, I've been writing a novel. And I've put in some blatant symbolism and written references too out-in-the-open. But not like this. It can't possibly be like this. This is bad. I had to stop reading! This got published as-is. I'd want an editor for some of the stuff I spell out. It's there as a placeholder, to take up space and keep my mind going. Shapero doesn't hide anything. He rubs your nose in it. And it's shit.

The good takeaway from this is that I can use the bad example to get better with how I write. I don't want to be anywhere close to Shapero's example. It starts with the characters. They have to be consistent. Now, Matilda is consistently useless and not a strong female character, which is a shame but that's kind of her role. And Bill grows a bit, but stays a hipster half-douche. Ava is underwritten. I know this. That's why she's cool, but injured and stolen. That way I don't have to spend too much time on her. I want her to kick major ass but that's not where my life experience lies. Joe changed probably too much in the well, and Geoffrey could be more consistent and foolish, but does relatively well as a character.

Those are my characters. They grow the story. George R.R. Martin has his gardeners and architects of writers. I half-architect after gardening, and sometimes the gardening destroys the building I've designed. My characters do the things they're supposed to. It makes sense for them to perform actions, and I just fit those actions into the story. But Rich Shapero? Rich Shapero said fuck it. He said, I've got a story and I've got some acid. These characters are going to do everything and anything to get to this plot point. Because they suck and do nothing to inspire empathy.

Or maybe not. Like I said, I couldn't finish the book. I might be able to, as a cautionary tale. But do I really need to? There's no prize for finishing bad books. It's a pride thing. No. I can't do it.

Near East M20

"Near East M20"

In a "chair"
the Droning, Droning
Monotone I know
from teachers here, and
before,
Sapping away any will
with the darkness
like a restaurant.
It's not ambiance,
It's just dim.
The students that file in late
like I did on the first day
have it better than I.
They have only
74 minutes of classtime.
Not 75.


I guess we're just going to have poetry posts for the first few posts here, but I can't fight their ease of posting. These next few are all from Near East M20, the class I took my final quarter at UCLA. The professor's name was Robert Englund, and that class could have its own Nightmare on Elm Street movie. Professor Englund was the classic absent-minded professor, and he could put you to sleep if you weren't careful. Thinking back now, we did slowly lose students over the course of the quarter in lecture. I thought at the time students realized the class was boring and stopped coming to lecture; perhaps something more sinister was going on, and Freddy was killing us all in our sleep. Since I answered one question one time, I guess I was at the back of the killing queue. One shouted answer meant an infinite class participation increase. I fell asleep yes, but also respected Englund for his vast stores of academic knowledge that meant he could tangentially lecture for ten minutes and still not know how to work a computer properly. Freddy Krueger probably has a quip for that. I can imagine a student trying to access the website and it glitching. Suddenly, Freddy pops out of the screen, clawing open the boy's chest and pulling him into the HTML. When the boy is dead and in the computer, Freddy says, "What's the matter? Gone to code?" and laughs at the double meaning.

None of these poems are gruesome, though. The first does make the connection, but not seriously.

"Robert Englund"

Freddy Krueger,
With his cracking jokes,
My professor,
With his cracked tokens.
Street smart vs. book smart,
A wiseass and a bore.
Though they might both
Put me to sleep
Wearing the same sweater.


The absolute best is about how I looked at the Periodic Table of Elements, and well, it gets weird.

"Oh Wait That Says IUPAC, NVM"

In the darkness,
at the top,
It says "TUPAC."

Remaining a mystery,
His troubled troubling death,
untimely- and yet they say
He predicted so much
in his unreleased songs.
I say they say, I do not know.
Perhaps this is why
He Graces the table
that predicted the qualities
of its unknown Contents
in the Columns and Rows
already discovered.
The speculation on Tupac Shakur
is Periodic, coming and going
except for those constant conspirators,
remaining in their agitated states
as the Nobles remain unphased,
Filled to the brim with
Valence electrons.

If He(lium) could Choose
how to respell his name,
once more, would he
Choose HePac or 2Pac
or does he not care about
the proton count?

Yellow solids,
Green liquids,
Pink gases,
and Metalloids in Grey font.
Where is all the Brown,
as all is presented
on a White background.
Each letter is in Black font,
except those Metalloids.
But the elements are placed
in blocks, I see D-Block,
just like prison cells.
F-Block, the radioactive Man-made elements,
are placed off on their own,
in a Solitary Confinement,
Their Danger too much for Nature.


Of the five remaining from that's day poetry session, involving only about ten minutes of actual notes, I'm only going to include two. They're the silliest and shortest, but the other three are in poor taste and poorly composed at the same time.

"Mole Escape"

I am going to play
Mole Escape.

"Super Mole Escape"

I didn't state the name right,
It's properly "Super"
With Megas and Ultras
To speed my Mole
On his way.
I say "his" because
I'm not playing with Matilda.
I send her on her way.