Star Wars Episode VII

Still only one woman announced as a new cast member. Really, Star Wars? How are the humans supposed to reproduce? WIth Bea Arthur? How is Lando going to get his game on with smooth Colt 45?

Poems VI

"A Walk in the Morning/Wood"

I took a walk one morning
would I say that that was that?
No, for I stumbled upon a bone,
Earnestly circled by a cat.
Its back was arched, its fur erect,
Shunning me, shooing me forth.
So I thought hard on the matter
And promptly changed my course.

Poems V, from a ski day at June Mountain

He was a dragon now
He looked like himself
But he was a dragon
Unequivocally. He knew.
Breathing fire
Hot
Like a fart on someone else's thigh
Seagulls flying
He was better than them.
All of them
All of who?
He didn't know anymore
Anymore
Than he knew who he was

-but he did know-
The universe and its secrets.
Our universe's name was Ted
It had replaced Francine
Or rather
Inflated inside her
A balloon in a balloon
Clowns have balloons
Dragons don't.
Rawr

"Shrooms"

I think saying the title after really makes the poem better for that one. These poems were written skiing at June Mountain. There are only two. I was by myself.

"Dope Status"

Try eight
You know it when you jump
Kicker off of Deer Bowl
I'd landed with a thump

Not once not twice
I gotta make it
Can't go home
My pride just won't take it

I'm the only one who knows I landed a three
But the most important person to see it is me

I know I did it
That's what counts
I refused to bounce without, I'm no slouch
So
All hail the conquering hero
With bruises and booboos
But a 3-6-0

Dandelion Wine vs. Blood Meridian

The last two books I read were each "classics" of their authors. Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine" is a semi-autobiographical novel about a 12 year old boy in summer. Cormac McCarthy wrote "Blood Meridian" as a violent exploration of borderland outlaws in the late 1800s in the Southwest. Both authors express themselves incredibly poetically, with fanciful language and high metaphor use. The difference is, McCarthy's novel was a struggle. I breezed through "Dandelion Wine." I worked through "Blood Meridian."

And to me, that makes "Dandelion Wine" a much better book. It's filled with deaths, yes, but it's also filled with hope. It expresses a deep sadness that reflects reality, and only serves to make you glad at the end of it. "Dandelion Wine"'s tears are the kind that Butters cries in the one episode of South Park where his Raisins "girlfriend"ends it with him. Even when you lose something important to you, the knowledge exists that you had it in the first place. Tragedy comes from living. Without it, the tears don't come but neither does the smile.

"Blood Meridian" makes a point with its drudgery and repetition. War and violence keep on keepin' on, and the hearts of men lead to evil if they give in. The poetry was beautiful, the vocabulary perplexingly yet intriguingly arcane, but it never could hook me in. Plot? Not really. Just a lot of walking and riding and killing, and an author making it all seem mundane. I guess it's more depressing than shocking. It is true looking around the internet that it could never be a movie. It lives on its own as a book.

Both books, by the way, are linked to Moby Dick. Which is weird. I guess this is an example of how your brain always finds the connections when it's primed or already looking for them. It's like noticing how your iPod always seems to play the same artist in an hour even when you're on shuffle. Actually it's random, but your brain goes in for false pattern recognition.

Read "Dandelion Wine." Many times. Study "Blood Meridian" in a college course.

This quote from Dandelion Wine links in to both of them, but is really a good life lesson about throwing in the towel when it's the proper time:

"Tom, when the time comes that the same cowboys are shooting the same Indians on the same mountaintop, then it's best to fold back the seat and head for the door, with no regrets and no walking backwards up the aisle."

And then there's a quote I thought I had written down but I can't find so I'll try and recite from memory:

"She wasn't thin in the way that girls are when they're not loved at seventeen, or fat in the way that women are when they're not loved at fifty, but a firmness, a roundness, when women are at any age and there is no question."

Something like that. The proper Venus.

BREAKING NEWS

This just in: 2014 is going to be a great year

How do I know this? Because the Niners lost, there is no snow on the mountain and I'm basically unemployed, and I gave up on pining after a good friend who will only ever be that.

But Jimmy, that sounds like 2014 is the worst year on record!

Yes, accurate.

But I have nothing left to lose. Which makes a man very dangerous. Alternatively, not dangerous at all, just optimistic that things have to and will get better.

I'm excited. No longer down in the dumps. Nothing to hang my hopes on, just me. It's liberating and a little cheesy. But it's gonna be great.

Stay tuned, spam sites that are my only hits on this blog. Because life is looking up.

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.

A Quick Note on "Millenials"

I do not put myself in the same "generation"as 30 year olds. That's stupid. If anything, rapidly increasing technology changes the generation timeframe by shrinking it. Would a 30 year old really identify with me? No. At least they shouldn't. And that's what everyone is getting wrong during these Millenial debates. As you age, yes, the distinction lessens. But when we're talking about the young, we have to understand that the young have small bands where they identify themselves. Remember, a 50 year old married to a 40 year old isn't weird. 40 and 30 year old? Fine. A 30 year old and a 20 year old actually starts to sound pretty iffy. A 25 year old and a 15 year old is a statutory rape case, and horrific. We're not even going to touch on 20 and 10. So when that "generation" is 30-15? We shouldn't be considering them very similar at all. Eventually, we can generalize, when that 15 year gap doesn't seem like anything, like for 50 year olds to 65 year olds. Even then though, I'd have my apprehensions. 65 year olds and 50 year olds now had similar levels of technology growing up but I'd claim they still think of themselves differently. Think about the increase in cell phone usage and smart phone access in this generation. The debate exists, and I can't for the life of me figure out why we think it's saying anything of substance.

-Jimmy

Sorry about the convoluted method of thought if you find it so. I had to get that off my chest.