The World Savvy Reader

February is just January in a Honey and Gold Leaf Suit

2012-02-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

After Ishmael boards the Pequod and they set out on their three year journey, Moby Dick slips into some strange post-modern tangents. A great deal is written about Ahab and the White Whale, which is spectacular. The two of them are linked as though they are one. Ahab's ivory stem differs a great deal from Long John Silver's peg leg because they are both symbolically different. Silver's missing leg was a way of making him seem vulnerable. He was so dangerous precisely because nobody thought he was so dangerous. Silver was very much the devil, but Ahab is more of a man. His white peg leg is symbolic of the disease that has corrupted him; the obsession. Melville's detailed description of how this obsession infected Ahab is one of my favorite chapters of the book. But then there's this Folio business.

Folio, octavo, and duodecimo are technical terms by which printers used to classify book sizes of that era. Melville a) uses his own classification system to describe the whales scientifically and b) classifies them as though they were books. This, humorously calls back to the title of the book, "Moby Dick" which, although by no means larger than some of the other classic tomes, feels larger because of the narrow cast and the length by which we are trapped with this crew on this vessel of the Pequod. The book itself, by Melville's own clever calculation, is the whale!

After that, there is a wonderful chapter on the whale's whiteness (entitled "The Whiteness of the Whale) which I skimmed while I was tired one night so I won't analyze it here, but I will re-read it at some point since it was, even in my half-sleep stupor, an extraordinary chapter. Then there is this little play-let with all of the men celebrating Ahab's declaration that they will kill Moby Dick. This kind of echoes the chapters set from Starbuck, Flask, and Ahab's own points of view. Melville uses different techniques to get us attached with these men who we'll be sailing with for so long. He also gives us classes on the whales through his Folios, so that we know some approximation of what the men know. Melville is training us as though we were hired hands on board. I, for one, am honored (and suitably terrified).

I feel bad because I am only half on board the Pequod at the moment. After a lengthy battle with our landlord over a mouse issue (who needs whales when you've got mice in the house?) as well as working on this video game paper for the University of Wyoming, there's a lot going on which seems to limit my attention. So February is just a carry over from January at this point, with nothing to mark the other's passing. We just keep sailing. I haven't even caught my first whale.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHARLES DICKENS

Today, Feb. 7th, is the birthday of Charles Dickens. I've only ever read one line of his, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times", and that line doesn't make any sense, but I've heard that his books are good so I'll pick one up this year. "Bleak House" or maybe "David Copperfield", I'm a big fan of magic. NPR did a really nice piece about his work, which often involve hundreds of characters and a great number of side plots, diametrically opposed to "Moby Dick"'s singular pulsing narrative and its spoon full of characters. Mark me: I will read at least one Charles Dickens novel before the year is up. Happy Birthday, Charley.

CONGRATULATIONS, HALI SOFALA

Hali has received her second in-print poetry publication offer for the year. "Women Arts Quarterly" picked up her poem, "Weight", and the literary journal "Basalt" just accepted "An Apology to My Hair". These are two fantastic poems and completely emblematic of a burgeoning fruitful and artistic career. Get in on the ground floor of the future poet laureate of America by donating generously to these literary journals!

CONGRATULATIONS, ME!

My recommends end-cap is now up at the Barnes and Noble Southpoint in Lincoln, NE. Soon they will be importing this particular end-cap to Barnes and Nobles around the United States and China so come here to see the very first one in all of its glory; the original, the premiere, the one and only:

Pictures really fail to capture its beauty. These books have been indelibly placed on high-grade reenforced plastic shelves, each measured for perfect symmetry, which was considerably difficult with the imposing sign at the upper left. Witness the majesty of my Recommends!

The Predicament of Fate

2012-01-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

*In order to comply with the upcoming regulations of the new SOPA and PIPA bills, I will no longer be taking photos from anywhere on the internet. Sorry, Internet, I have too often drank from your supple breasts and for it I will now humbly flagellate myself thusly:

Ishmael and Queequeg set forth from New Bedford to Nantucket
(Tortuga is Queequeg.)

I said that I would get to Ishmael's predicament and so here it is. There is a strong thread of fate that runs through Moby Dick which makes it more than just a story about a whale. All of the events from page one to three-hundred (where I am at) have touched on the experience of Ishmael as a puppet in the hands of a greater being:

"I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part as I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgement." pg. 18

Ishmael confesses that although he has never been whaling before he feels an urge to board a whaling vessel so strong that he can not avoid it. And even in New Bedford, where many whaling ships leave port, he feels instead called to Nantucket. There are several references to the Book of Job which go well beyond the mere coincidence of one story's relation to another. Melville is telling us about fate.

I like the idea of fate, and am drawn to its embrace as a way of leading me from one routine to the next. While I'm not certain whether or not it exists (just as I am not certain of the existence of anything), I would like to think that fate is like a weak current for some and a strong current for others. I myself feel the strong current of fate that rushes me aft to each place and challenge. I do not like to be still. Ishmael no doubt feels a fate much stronger, and that is his predicament. He cannot be certain whether or not he has chosen the voyage or the voyage has chosen him.

There is a difference between fate and Christianity that Melville takes great care in exposing. Queequeg himself is a pagan of the most admirable sort while Bildad, a financier of the Pequod, the ship that is ready to make sale, is a stiff Christian of the worst sort. He is judgmental and stingy, working hard to underpay the hands and doing as little work as possible himself. In Melville's view, Christianity is but one particularly way of humanity's resolution to the predicament of fate. Paganism is but another.

"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions of Yojo and his Ramadan; - but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all- Prebyterians and Pagans alike- for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending." pg. 207

This, to me, should speak for the Christian community's current war on homosexuality. It is no great sin to feel that homosexuality is wrong, but to allow that feeling grow into hate and action is tremendously sinful. To twist that belief into legislation and burn it into the foreheads of people who would hurt nobody, whose mere right to love is the only thing worth fighting for, I think that is a greater sin than the ones Christians purport to beat back into the shadows. It hurts me to know that this corruption is a disease run rampant within the Christian community.

Still, if Melville's novel teaches us anything, it is that this is nothing new. We are all bound to the river of time wherein fate draws us hither and thither, to one end or another. We can only hope to do a little good before our time.

Objectives

2012-01-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

I am dedicating this full month to a single book, "Moby Dick". But that doesn't mean that's all I'm reading. I'm also reading a number of books on video games, Tom Bissell's "Extra Lives" and Miguel Sicart's "The Ethics of Video Games", a few PDFs on Art and Gregory Pepetone's "Gothic Perspectives on the American Experience" (none of these books in their entirety, I should add. I'm also waist deep in Bethesda's "Skyrim"). What I envy about Ishmael in these opening chapters is his singular objective, while I throw myself haphazardly into endeavor after endeavor.

My protagonist in Skyrim, whom I've ingratiatingly named Elitere after Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's ninth fictional muse, is equipped with a rolodex that cleverly organizes his objectives and sub-objectives so that at any given time Elitere is tackling roughly 11,000 things. I myself can only handle about four, and not very successfully. Ishmael, I'm afraid, has the right of it. In his on-screen menu, there is but one objective and it is: Board a whaling ship in Nantucket. That's it.

Leo Babauta, purveyor of the much lauded website Zen Habits, recommends a list of three main goals you have for the next say, six months, and then work to achieve those goals little at a time. Ishmael concords with this method. He is thus far the picture of a supreme individual. He has reached Nantucket with his boon companion, Queequeg, and is ready to do some whaling. I, on the other hand, am spinning my wheels.

GOALS:
1) Finish a Novel Rough Draft
2) Train Tortuga to be a R.E.A.D (Reading Education Assistance Dog)
3) Prepare for my Wedding on August 4th!

A Bite of the Crimson Apple

2012-01-15T15:25:00.000-08:00

I have never crowed to the kingdom of Mac, nor have I kissed the ring of the blessed Saint Gates. I am a digital rogue, ready to spit arrows for whichever side can do the most for me. But since getting my Macbook a few months ago and procuring my first iPhone just under a week ago I gotta say: this Apple shit is pret-ty sweet!

I've got my Nook app, Dictionary app, Dictation app, Wasting Time app, Wipe my Ass app, and hell, I can even play Grand Theft Auto while I'm driving! Then this week's This American Life had to go and spoil my party. "Mr. Daisy and the Apple Factory" outlines the manufacturing company in Shenzhen, China where labor workers are mysteriously climbing to the roof of this 400 floor building and killing themselves. Talk about killing my iBuzz.

Ooh wait, I gotta show you this adorable picture of Tortuga I took with my iPhone this morning. Awwwww! Isn't she cute!!! I wonder how many people died so I could take this photo.

Curiously, Apple chose this week to release it's 2012 progress report on the rights of its in-house labor. Here it is: http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2012_Progress_Report.pdf. Now, I've only skimmed it, but I didn't see any mention of the company Foxconn in it, which is actually the manufacturing plant that builds electronics for Apple, Dell, Nokia, Panasonic, HP, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, and so on. Apple may be completely telling the truth in this report, while omitting the fact that Apple doesn't actually build most of its own crap.

I'm not leveling a great steaming pile of holier-than-thou at the foot of Steve Jobs because frankly, I totally understand. Let's say, for the sake of this blog post, that you're a corporation with a ton of overhead costs and you've got a ton of competitors trying to undercut you in price and value in order to lay claim to your empire. Fuck that. Lets say that you're a person with a ton of overhead cost (you've got electric bills, car bills, alimony) and an ex-wife who is trying to take everything you've got because you got hammered in Rio on that business trip and decided to experiment, just that once!, with Leon the bartender and a beer funnel.

Now, you know that organic eggs are made on free range farms where chickens live at a resort until they're too old to supply then they slip away into a peaceful death where poultry Nirvana awaits with open wings. But they're a whole damn dollar more than the eggs that come from a factory where chickens are forced at gunpoint to produce so many eggs per hour under conditions that look like the Hell world from Silent Hill. You're a good man, and you want to get the organic eggs, but lets face it. If you get the good organic eggs then you've got to get the good organic beef and pretty soon you're going bankrupt and your bitch of an ex-wife is running away with Leon in your own yacht.

These are the organic eggs.

You're just a guy (or a corporation) that's trying to make it. You get the factory eggs because you need those factory eggs, and you need that factory beef. It's because of that stuff that you're able to make those alimony payments without climbing onto your own 400 floor high roof. In short, you're under the thumb of your own success. I don't lay the blame at Apple, but at the feet of humanity. I'm a little less prouder to be an iPhone owner, but a lot less proud to be a human being.

I suppose the biggest problem is that I love my new iPhone, and it hurts to know that some sinister corporation called Foxconn is laughing at my infatuation, and heaping my admiration, and the admiration of all those of us in Cult of Mac (which I guess I must confess to be a part of now), onto the backs of those workers who would rather leap to their fleeting and agonizing deaths than to make one more bloody iPhone.

Call Me Ishmael

2012-01-12T08:55:00.000-08:00

Just as we've callowly strolled into the year, so hasIshmael sauntered into "The Crossed Harpoons" in the town of NewBedford to join with a whaling crew. I am only four chapters into Moby Dick butI'm already in love with it. So much has already happened to me this year thatthe tempered pace is a welcome retreat from the outright hostilities of oursociety's frantic digital feet.

I am, at this moment, typing this in bed on my Nook Tablet while my brand new iPhone glows in itscradle next to me. All of this would be useless on a whaling craft, bothbecause of the distraction and because they are not harpoons.

I will not call Melville's prose elegant. This is notFitzgerald or Joyce. Melville is actually heavier on his feet. His vessel,Ishmael, is not a man of extravagancy, but is rather a common man filled with adeep regard for the extravagance that surrounds him. This is why the pacingfeels right to me. Ishmael examines and reports everything in such detailedfascination that I am in equal awe of his predicament. (We'll get into thenature of that predicament later.)

I relate to Ishmael's sense of wonder much more than I doJim Hawkins' sense of adventure. Ishmael suits me more, and I gather that mostpeople who read Moby Dick feel this way which maybe why the novel's openingwords strike such a chord.

My own journey is filled with tools of the trade that awe meto the floor. I have spent a lot of time discovering how these digital devices can beused to my own betterment rather than as expensive toys. As Ishmael says, I'drather tour the seas as a sailor than as a passenger.

This morning, I went jogging with my dog, Tortuga, with mynew iPhone pumping "Muse" into my veins to keep me from slowing down.I have used my Nook to read every night, and can interconnect ebooks betweendevices so that at lunch I can continue reading on my iPhone.

As far as writing goes, the year brings new challenges aswell as new tools for our voyage. Hali and I have been accepted into theUniversity of Wyoming's English convention, "Video Games as Texts, Texts asPlay", which will be held in April. We will be presenting our paper,"The Bulls Eye of Morality: How Narrative Structure Shapes the Ethics ofVideo Gameplay". We'll also be in attendance at AWP in Chicago,representing the Prairie Schooner. Hali has developed a new website, www.halisofala.com, and Twitterfeed to promote herself as a Web 2.0 socialite, hobnobbing with the WorldSavvy.

All of this is to say that when Ishmael sees Quequegcasually use his harpoon to put a few beefsteaks on his plate and marvels atthe coolness with which the man handles the equipment of his profession, I know the feeling. Call me Ishmael.

My Nooky Wook

2012-01-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

The brain functions like a muscle, with a natural tendency toward idleness. It doesn't want to work. You have to make it. I began this blog as a way of pushing myself toward continuous tutelage under the minds of some of the greatest authors, in order that I might learn better how to live my own life. Here's a tool that will help: It's called the Nook Tablet.

Yeah, I know. It's also a tool for wasting your time playing Angry Birds, but hey, don't blame the tool for how its used. Take it from your favorite Nook Salesman: You Have to Buy One of These Things! I outfitted mine with an array of productivity apps on Christmas day that makes it a planner, note taker, PDF reader (literally, it will read PDF's to you aloud), communication device, and a carrier of Civil War era newspapers. I don't always use all of these applications, but I can get nearly 2 million books for free from B&N, 36,000 from Gutenberg.org, and thousands more elsewhere.

But I like the smell of real books, Eric. I like the feel of a book in my hands.

Hey, I understand. I do too! That's why every morning I douse myself in book scented cologne and use hollowed out books for mittens. Other than that, enjoying the feel of a book is pretty poor excuse for shirking it's contents. After all, with a Nook you can create and edit highlights, e-mail book selections to yourself, and carry an entire library of documents, notes, and just about everything else with you everywhere you go.

If you're really craving some old book feeling, then hop over to instructables.com to find out how to make one of these bad boys:

EDLIW RACSO is my ROHTUA ETIROVAF!!

Yes, I'm that BIG of a dork. But admit it. You're jealous.

In any case, I've already highlighted all of the pirate vocabulary in 'Treasure Island', and I've checked out books from libraries 3,000 miles away without leaving home. Nook Tablets can do a lot more than reading, but these aren't worth the price if they aren't used to read. My real issue with the Kindle Fire is that it limits itself in the reading department by using files that only Amazon approves rather than standards. Also, with no external memory card slot, it forces you to use their "cloud", which means being hooked up to wi-fi all the time. I can't say I'm crazy about the $79 per year Amazon Prime fee either, but what Amazon is really selling is apps, which aren't books. The Fire is a fine machine, all told, but shady business practices and an Apple-like propensity to hardwire their customers into using only their product line have tarnished Amazon's reputation in recent years. That, and I work for Barnes & Noble, so the Nook is really the choice for me.

Janus

2012-01-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

Janus, the Ancient Roman god of transitions, is typically depicted as having two faces. One that looks to the past and one that looks to the future. January is derived from Janus, as it is the month of transition, new beginnings, and turning a new leaf, or a new face, as it were. So in light of the new year and January's namesake, I thought it was fitting to write about a few characters who iconify the nature of duality in literature.

Also, the Roman god of Hide-And-Seek.

The books I've ended the year with are "The Hobbit" and "Treasure Island". In each, characters reveal themselves to be both good and bad, weak and strong, under varying circumstances... hey, just like real people! They transition, often believably so, to grow into characters very different from who they were at the start.

Thorin Oakenshield is one of my favorite characters because he is both courageous and good throughout the journey in The Hobbit, but is then corrupted by the mountain of treasure at the end. There are some intense emotions where Bilbo finds himself caught between two fairly well-minded armies. Bilbo himself is a weakling at the beginning, so much so that the dwarves don't even know why Gandalf has sent him with them.

I'll be honest, it took me a while to get into The Hobbit. Just like Harry Potter, the beginning seems like nothing more than fun fanfare for fantasy fanatics. A strange little man lives peacefully in his hobbit hole until one day a wizard comes by with twelve dwarves to invite him on an adventure. Why, of course! Everything makes perfect sense! They need a damn hobbit to carry a mound of treasure from a dragon named, of all things, Smaug! Is this book by Beatrix Potter?

It isn't until Gandalf leaves them at the foot of Mirkwood Forest that things become riveting. (I should mention that this is a good deal into the novel. Page 122, in fact.) It is not until Gandalf's protection is withdrawn and the dwarves and the hobbit are on their own that Bilbo's cleverness begins to shine. We get glimmers of it in the cave where he meets Golem, but Golem is pretty stupid and it doesn't take that much to fool him. It's Mirkwood that brings out the daring in Bilbo and, with it, the novels innate complexities.

I am fraught with inner turmoil.

Bilbo is lured on the quest with promises of gold, but the cost of his journey makes him understand that what he had was pleasant and small life in which he was happy, and that happiness was worth all the gold in Smaug's mountain. Bilbo becomes more worldly, and that understanding is the real treasure. We see later in The Lord of the Rings that this understanding leads Bilbo to live a long and fruitful life.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island has even more character duality. Just about every character in the novel has a dark and light side. Captain Smollett is seen as a hard-nosed captain who the protagonist, Jim Hawkins, doesn't like. The Squire, Trelawny, is a big mouthed ignoramus who makes the mistake of hiring on Long John Silver and his friends to help crew the HISPANIOLA, but both men prove to be worth their salt in a scrape. Trelawny is a spectacular shot with a pistol, and Smollett is proven to be correct in his misgivings about the journey, but doesn't hold it against anyone.

There is no character more befitting of the duality moniker than Long John Silver though, who is just as virtuous as he is villainous. Even after his crew has over taken the HISPANIOLA he seems to be an overall amiable chap. He pontificates Benjamin Franklin style on how his buccaneer friends should be saving their money rather than spending it. He seems to have worthy dreams of easy living and retirement rather than getting rich merely for riches sake. He becomes somewhat of a father-figure for Jim Hawkins until Hawkins realizes that Silver plans on overthrowing the ship in order the gain his ends.

Silver's handicap, his lost leg, also works as physical representation of his duality since he appears often weak and useless without the use of his precious appendage. It isn't until Hawkins witnesses Silver grab hold of a low hanging tree branch and fling his crutch into someone's back before hopping over to him and stabbing him with a knife that we see the true danger of such a man. Silver is probably one of the worst villains in literary history, because of his power to win people over. The monster in Silver is kept under strict well-trained control, and let out only a few times in the novel. But it's always there, casting an eye over the things that Silver wants, and manipulating to gain its ends. Silver is friends with Hawkins, then enemies, then friends again. His two sides seem so natural that it's hard to hate the man, even when he ruthlessly slaughters good people. He's that damned charismatic.

The lesson here is beware of the false front, and to understand that these books demonstrate the human propensity to mix good with evil. It's also important to step back and to take note that the years are changing us for the better, not the worse. Gauge a man by his actions, not his words. Bilbo himself could not understand why he was being taken along the journey, but what Gandalf saw in him what he could not see in himself until it came down to it.

We are very different people when the pushing comes to shoving. We of quieter lives tend to forget that.

Why There are No Game Shows in North Korea

2011-12-28T17:08:00.000-08:00

Honestly, I didn't mind 'The Hunger Games'. As far as an Ice-T vehicle is concerned, I thought it was done well enough. And I enjoyed the whole not-so-subtle racial commentary that pervaded the film. Rutger Hauer and Gary Busy are stereotypes and Ice-T is a stereotype so it works. The movie isn't trying to push anything on us. It just is what it is, and its unapologetic about being so.

Suzanne Collins book on the other hand, "Surviving the Game", gets all the action parts right and little else. I can quasi-understand how the book has become such a raging phenomenon among hormone driven teens who enjoy reading books about merciless slaughter and forced sexual innuendo. This book has plenty of it. Where it falls apart is in also trying to be complex.

You see, in 'The Hunger Games', Ice-T is selected by a group of hunters to go on a hunting trip. He is lured out into the woods and made the sport of a few lavish millionaires who enjoy hunting humans because they make the best sport. Ice-T is a homeless man on the verge of committing suicide, but in the wild he is forced to find himself and his hatred of the millionaires gives him a reason to go on living (i.e. revenge against the white man). The story isn't complicated, and sure, there are glaring holes (a starving homeless man would probably make for the most terrible hunting pray there is) but the movie isn't trying to be anything more than a action movie. It works because of its simplicity.

White Millionaires = Evil
Black Homeless Man = Good

Not to mention that the film confines itself to a single group of evil white millionaires, and a single black homeless man. We have no reason to argue that these particular men are evil, or that this particular man is actually a self-sufficient survivor in the wild. The same holds true for Richard Bachman's famous novel of game show horror, "The Running Man", in which the evil corporations pitch a murder convict into a labyrinth so that armed gladiators can hunt him down and ruthlessly slaughter him on national television.

Yes. This is one of the ruthless gladiators.

Now the problem becomes that you have the entire world (i.e. 'us') who wants to see these men killed. How does Stephen King - oops... I mean Richard Bachman - handle that problem? "The Running Man" contestants are all thieves, rapists, and murderers; people that we would see on death row in the real world. The show host even displays their felony counts on the air so that people can understand their crimes and hate them enough to want to see them fried to cinders or electrocuted or crushed. This isn't too different then sitting them on a chair and pulsing them with enough electricity to power a Mannheim-Steamroller Christmas Show and we already have game shows that pit regular folks against professionals, and sports that pay big money to have people pounded to a pulp for our enjoyment, so it's not much of a stretch.

The point is that 'The Hunger Games' and 'The Running Man' both have simple premises which don't require a great stretch. They're simple action plots and its easy to suspend our disbelief. In Susan Collins' opus, however, we're given so much to consider that when you actually start to think about it, the world unravels. We have a futuristic society that is divided into 12 districts, where each one is known for a particular trade. That's cool. It's kind of like how we in the real world have different countries, each known for a specific export. And then, once a year, each district sends a delegate to participate in a game to brutally murder delegates from the other districts. You know, kinda like the Olympics except delegates are twelve to sixteen years old and they are forced to participate against their will. Wait - what?

Who wants to see adolescent teens be forced by adults to murder each other? Who is the emperor of Panem anyway? The guy from 'Saw'? Even if that were so, who is watching this with any reverence for the players? Collins answers that for us in the book: No one. At least, nobody that Collins talks about. There is not a single character in the novel that enjoys 'Surviving the Game'. Occasionally our heroine protagonist will turn to wink as some invisible camera which is watching her from somewhere so we assume that she is entertaining someone.

I have a number of problems with this. Firstly, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ice-T never played to their audience's compassion. They actually hated their spectators, much as we would hate our spectators in their position. For Ice-T this was easy because his spectators were the same people who were hunting him, but Schwarzenegger hated the audience watching him as much as the gladiators themselves. He broke cameras, lashed out violently as the people watched him. Even Russell Crowe in "The Gladiator" denied the audience the pleasure of seeing him kill somebody for their enjoyment. This all made sense because we are placing ourselves in their position and we have sympathy for these characters. But Katniss winks and smiles after sending a hive of killer bugs after her enemies. She kisses her district partner, Peeta, for the people watching at home. (I'd hate to think of what they would have done if they were a couple years older.) All of this seems to make her complicit in the abomination of this reality show.

Another problem I have with this is that I never quite know where she's looking to throw these smiles, winks, nods, and flashy eyes. The cameras are supposedly from overhead dirigibles that have some sort of invisibility cloak, or maybe they're in the trees or something. How does she know where to look? I'm forced to assume that the sinister Capitol has an omniscient camera everywhere that sees absolutely everything from every angle. This is what Collins' seems to think too since Katniss never really says, "I want to smile to the audience to let them know that all is going to plan, but where are they watching me from? The forest is so quiet that I can almost believe I'm alone except for the faint whirring of an invisible security camera coming from the tree to my left. So I smile in that direction and hope that I'm not making an idiot of myself by turning away from the camera." All she does is smile and assume that they'll figure it out in editing.

Then there's the fact that nobody else seems to be playing to any audience. Granted that Katniss is meant to be a remarkable girl who goes seemingly against the grain, but playing to the audience is not her idea in the first place. It's more of a product of her handlers during the first part of the novel. When her trainer, Haymitch, and her makeup artist begin devising ways of winning sponsors, I immediately wondered what spins the other characters were going create in order to win audience sympathy. This is the first real plot hole, since we have to assume that nobody in the history of "Surviving the Game" has come up with this idea until now. In which case, everybody else in the world of Panem is an absolute moron. Career athletes from the rich districts angrily scream and lash out like barbarians when something goes wrong. They kill their friends like evil gangsters, and they actually go into a rage and pull their hair out like orcs whenever Katniss gets the better of them.

If we are pulling for Katniss to succeed, then everyone watching these games must also be pulling for Katniss too since she's clearly up against a team of monster children. But remember that these kids are also from other districts, right? They've also been forced to participate in this ritual of self-slaughter against their will? So possibly they're just not as good as Katniss is at doing so, right? So why is it cool that she's killing them? You see, by making them into monsters, we can easily look past Katniss putting an arrow through their throats. The names Collins' gives them? District 1, District 2, District 3, etc. Not names but numbers, like video game NPCs, they have no real face or character. The ones that Collins is forced to name for the purposes of the plot get names like Thresh or Sir-Stabs-Alot. Do you really want Thresh to win? Who was rooting on Thresh? or for District 2?

This girl is slowly starving to death.

Katniss openly appeals to the compassion of an audience that has no qualms about sending a twelve-year-old to their death. Perhaps if the Capitol was made up of Thalmor High-Elves from Skyrim who valued human life so little that watching children battle to the death was like watching roosters fight I could believe that this world actually fostered this kind of spectacle. But then Katniss's clever dalliances with the audience would have no effect. Since they clearly do have an effect, then why do these games exist? Even if the rich districts had so much faith in their children that they would put them in such a sport, then what would be the purposes of throwing in poor starving kids too? Nobody wants North Korea to participate in the Olympics. Things like game shows and sports are the product of civilizations developed enough to place a high emphasis on recreation and sport. District 12 shouldn't even have a delegate.

Yeah sure, Eric, but then there wouldn't be a damn novel. C'mon! What is your real problem with 'The Hunger Games'?

First of all. I don't have any problem with 'The Hunger Games'. I loved 'The Hunger Games' and want to be very clear for the internet record that I LOVE 'THE HUNGER GAMES'! I can't wait to see that movie! It's going to be the best! OMG! *Heart* Whoever hates 'The Hunger Games' should be pitched into a nest of Tracker Jackers with arrows in both knees!

It's 'Surviving the Game' that I don't care for. There is something more insidious in the nature of this novel that I'm talking about here. I'm not accusing Collins' of anything here. Many have accused Collins of taking her ideas from Koushun Takami's "Battle Royale" but that's ridiculous. If anything that just proves that the themes and ideas behind 'Surviving the Game' are pretty common. My issue is that 'Surviving the Game' is clearly designed to be a movie rather than a book.

It reads well enough structurally, but Collins goes out of her way to create a mood of action and drama rather than actual literature. In terms of lit-speak, the novel is written in the first person and is extremely limited to Katniss's thoughts. It's also in the present tense, so Katniss thinks about what she's doing as she's doing it.

Suddenly I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don't even have the decency to pay attention to me. That I'm being upstaged by a dead pig. My heart starts to pound, I can feel my face burning. Without thinking, I pull an arrow from my quiver and send it straight at the Gamemakers' table. I hear shouts of alarm as people stumble back. The arrow skewers the apple in the pig's mouth and pins it to the wall behind it. Everyone stares at me in disbelief. (7.96)

As close as we are to Katniss's thoughts we are never really more intimate than the above paragraph. Something that bothered me through the entire novel is that she never really even thinks about whether or not she would be able to murder another contestant in cold blood. She just keeps assuming that she will die and won't have to. But then she starts winning, and still doesn't consider that she'll have to kill Peeta or Rue. She isn't tempted at all to cut them in their sleep, which is fine, but she isn't afraid that they'll do the same to her either. It's like she knows that she won't have to. And indeed, she doesn't. The kid who kills Rue actually does Katniss the favor of saving her from having to do it, and giving her a personal reason to kill him without caring. Then the Capitol actually changes the rules so that she doesn't have go up against her own district mate. These changes would be fine if they didn't seem predicated by her previous actions. We seem to be watching Katniss rather than being deep within her psyche.

Even in the scene where she sings to Rue as she's dying (again with no thought that she maybe being stalked at the time) Collins mentions, "the last part is barely audible" in the middle of the song. Audible to who? Rue is dead. Not audible to Katniss herself, so she must mean the audience.

Why are these games televised if not to give us something to watch? Certainly, Collins could have had district members secretly stolen away from the families by wealthy members of the evil Capitol to participate in these games for their private enjoyment, just like in "The Hunger Games". Instead these games are televised. Players have sponsors like in the X Games. It's an event. Why?

Keep in mind that I've only read the first novel, but I can assume that this will lead to the revolt that is implicit with these sorts of stories. Ice-T revolts against his captors and kills them. Schwarzenegger becomes part of an underground revolution bent on overthrowing the corporation behind "The Running Man". Maximus uses the Emperor's own sport to cause unrest among the people in "The Gladiator". And so it must go that Katniss becomes the head of some rebellion against the Capitol, but surely all of this doesn't hinge on these games being televised. The games could merely be another product of the Capitol decadence. Still, they have to be part of a reality show because that offers some commentary or whatever, and it also sets us up for some spectacular shots for the movie.

Collins doesn't describe anything. She leaves everything loose and open to interpretation. I had no idea what the Capitol looked like, so I conjured up some futuristic city in my head. There's some weird mix of futuristic tables and televisions with a kind of primitive woodsy theme because of all the wilderness and hunting. Tracker Jackers are genetically mutated bugs that people used to fight wars with, a combination of science and nature.

Wait. That doesn't make any sense. Why don't they just use guided missiles like we do? The trouble with using genetically mutated insects is that they don't know what side they're on, and are just as likely to kill your army as they are your enemies. The brilliant scientists of Panem figure this out only after the bugs make it impossible for people to leave their totalitarian districts. Good work, Alternate Universe!

It's as if Collins is leaving the descriptions up to a creative costume department, cinematographer, and a visionary director to fill in the massive gaps.

epic fail.

Ultimately, of course, 'Surviving the Game' is a success. So what's my point? My point is that just because it's a success, doesn't mean that it's good. Just look at 'Twilight'. Even people who like it admit that it's a guilty pleasure. But at least I can understand things like 'Twilight' and 'Sookie Stackhouse' as soft-core porn for old women and teens. 'Hunger Games' seems to be trying to pass itself off as something profound. (No! I mean 'Surviving the Game'! I'm so sorry, Internet. Don't hurt me!) There are whispered themes of identity crisis and some kind of political intrigue with the war and the formation of the districts. And then Peeta says this:

“Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games”

Then refuse to participate in the games you dolt! Die with some dignity rather than whoring yourself out for entertainment so that you can live. In Collins' philosophy death is so utterly terrifying that the threat of it will cause people to do anything, even become heartless killers themselves. Which is exactly what happens. But it's okay, because it was the Capitol that made them do it, just like it was okay for Nazi soldiers to kill women and children because they were being forced to by the government. Admittedly, the line is a bit blurrier here, but it's still there. It's not okay to kill somebody just because you're being forced to.

But as far as the first book goes, Peeta doesn't even know who the Capitol is. The only representatives that we see are the judges who are sent to score Katniss during the training, and they don't even seem interested. They're so bored they just talk to one another until Katniss finally shoots an arrow at them. Why do they even have the games if nobody cares. If this were a football draft everyone would be studying Katniss's every twitch and bead of sweat. Why are these guys so bored?

I guess Collins' wants Katniss to stand out so much by firing the arrow at them that she has to make the judges bored by all of the years and years of banal repetitious contestants so that her little arrow trick actually earns them a bit of excitement. This entire world is built around this sixteen-year-old's ego. No other contestant has warranted a changing of the rules, or even a reason for the judges to look up. In fact, Peeta mentions how a few years ago there was a weather problem and they just watched the opponents freeze that year. (Wait, so he watches the games too? Hm, so much for not being a tool.)

I could say that the games are boring and nobody seems to care, but then there are districts that train all their lives for it and so much pomp and circumstance is given to the opening of the games, so this seems to be as contradictory as the idea that there are people who enjoy the games, yet everybody seems to be against them. Circumstances seem to change to meet the requirements of the story. It feels like some epic commentary, but Collins' heavier points are more like clouds than bricks.

Ultimately, this feels to me like a sixteen year old girl's fantasy. Things are horrible and everybody is miserable until she comes along, and even though she doesn't want it, she becomes the center of everything. She is torn between two equally handsome and capable young suitors, and she is a master warrior and wins the hearts of the world. Good luck, children of America. I hate to break it to ya, but if there was even an ounce of believability in this novel then Thresh would have killed Katniss with that rock when he had the chance. God knows I would have.

2011 in Review

2011-12-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

This is me reviewing the list of books I read in 2011. (See how impressed the dwarves are!)

Well, we've come to the end. 2012 is upon us, and with it a new year of books. My only resolution this year is finish writing my own novel, and to have it sent out by 2013 - should the world hold itself together in the wake of the Mayan calendar's terminal date. But before we begin with all of that, here is a list of the books that I've read in 2011 (in no particular order).

1) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - I finally picked up where I left off 6 years ago.
2) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Best book of the series.
3) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - Least favorite, still good.
4) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Second favorite.
5) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows - Not as many people died as I wanted.
6) The Magician's Assistant - Anne Patchett takes us to Nebraska.
7) Sleights of Mind - Science tries to do magic, and fails.
8) Carte Blanch - Jeffrey Deaver misses the point of Bond entirely.
9) The Man with the Golden Gun - James Bond must confront the fact that he's a good person.
10) Secrets of 24 - Collected essays on one of America's most controversial dramas.
11) State of Wonder - A stupid scientist goes to the Amazon and sits around.
12) Goldfinger - Ian Fleming makes a game of golf seem like an action scene.
13) The Man who was Thursday - Genius.
14) Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt lived two blocks from where I lived!
15) Squirrel Meets Chipmunk - You can read this book in twenty minutes but boy does it ever stay.
16) When You are Engulfed in Flames - Just as funny the second time around.
17) Nothing to Envy - North Korea is another world. Unconceivable in the scope of its horror.
18) The Case for God - Karen Armstrong outlines a religious ideology that I can finally embrace.
19) Cutting for Stone - Easily one of the most brilliant books of the year.
20) O Pioneers - Did for the midwest what 'Wise Blood' did for the south.
21) Handling the Undead - Only read half of this, but that's enough.
22) World War Z - The tippity top of the zombie literature heap. That's saying something.
23) Zone One - Couldn't leave well-enough alone.
24) The Walking Dead Vol. 1 - I keep trying to like this. But I keep not liking it.
25) The Hunger Games - It's "The Running Man", only with children!
26) The Hobbit - Smaug rocks my socks off.
27) Treasure Island - I haven't read this yet, but I will before 2012. Mark me.

There's a fair mix here, I should say. Although I was not pleased with a fair number of the readings, and some of the books that I thought I enjoyed disappeared from my thoughts not twelve minutes after turning the final page. I won't bore you with any Top 5 lists, but I will say that I have noticed a distinctive increase in literature and a decrease in my self-help diet.

I like self-help books. Good self-help books, that is. I am a natural pessimist and can get rather gloomy from time to time, so I find a good optimistic jaunt to be stimulating for my motivational nerve centers. If I picture those nerve centers in my head, I see green glowing microscopic plants running along the fibers of my neural cortex, wilting after a long week at work or type, type, typing away at the Star City Blog website for hours on end without giving any thoughts to my own endeavors. Books by Dale Carnegie, Martin Seligman, Tim Ferris are a pleasant shower over a dying breed. I'd like to see more of the kind in 2012.

Also, more of the classics. "Moby Dick", "Lord of the Rings", and "The Divine Comedy" on are my list for next year. I went with a lot of modern literature this year and found myself, more often than not, disappointed. Literary behemoths like Colson Whitehead, Anne Patchette, and Abraham Verghese seem to have relatively little to say on the points of God, the nature of good and evil, the corruption of money. Instead, they tend to take everyone's side. Even Verghese, who I adored, felt more muddled in his ultimate commentary on the nature of things than Tolkein. In "Cutting for Stone", God becomes more of an allegory to the surgeons, important in the sense of what religion teaches about devotion rather than the question of whether or not there is a Christian God or a Hindu parade of gods. This is also something along the lines of what Armstrong professes in her book, and it's an amiable philosophy that allows for different belief systems to coexist in relative harmony, so long as nobody promotes their particular religion.

Not that I'm a fan of zealotry, but I think there is a healthy balance between being accepting of others, and proud of your own beliefs. G.K. Chesterton's Christian-laced narrative about the inner war between chaos and order was my absolute favorite book this year for many reasons. But the first reason is that it's ultimate condemnation comes down on the self. We are our own worst enemies. When G.K. Chesterton was approached by a top magazine to write an article about what was wrong with the world today, his two word reply garnered some press. To the request he wrote simply, "I am".

In the catalogue of books I've read this year, the ones who come out on top are those like Chesterton's, which believe fervently in their mantras but do not push too keenly to serve any particular agenda other than drawing in the reader. J.K. Rowling has spectacular views of friendship, morals, beliefs, but those aren't written of expressly in her books. Instead, they are woven organically into the fiber of the happenings. Her characters grow. Conversely, Suzanne Collins' tale of teenage barbarism seems to promote winning against all cost. Were I the lead character in "The Hunger Games", I would not simply accept my fate of being thrown into a gladiator pit to primitively murder my classmates. When Katniss does this, she seems somehow complicit in the event. For Collins' characters, death is the ultimate end and it is better to kill than to be killed. For Rowling, the truth is in the acceptance of death over committing murder. Potter must accept death, as we all must do, rather than wage war against it and thus become the evil that he fights against. Again, for Rowling, just like Chesterton, the battle is internal.

Next year will be a year of classics for me, I think. Writers have so much more to say when their worlds are in turmoil than they do now. Also, in the spirit of helping my wife-to-be (we will be married this year on Aug. 4th) as she plumbs the depths of great poets. I'd like introductory lessons to Keats, Kipling, Shelley, and a refresher on Donne, Eliot, and I can't remember the others. Also some more contemporary poets that Hali has suggested: Brathwaite and Walcott to name a couple.

I will be getting my very own Nook Tablet on Christmas! I'm excited to share with you the joys of electronic reading, posting passages, copy editing, and playing Angry Birds while I slowly rot in my shoes. Thank you 2012. You've given me so much to look forward too.

When The Dam Cracks

2011-12-14T15:59:00.000-08:00

I took the store's Nook to Georgia at the beginning of November while I was reading Colson Whitehead's "Zone One". I had read the New York Times Book Review, which compared "Zone One" to a seasoned academic dating a porn star. A literary giant taking on the gutter genre of zombie-lore. I was interested in how a such a combination works, and was severely disappointed in both sides.

The zombies of "Zone One" are your prototypical zombies in the banal sense that they've been eradicated of their earthly dispositions by some unnamed disease that turns them into devouring shells. The humans scatter into hovels where they hope for the problem to go away. The deeper meaning of "Zone One" has to do with decrepit city life and it's drain on the masses. But even this lacks the insight that Romero conjured in the original "Dawn of the Dead". After all, how many times have we heard of this same whining about the scum of city living? When "Dawn" was released in 79' super malls were still new. We were still growing into the materialists that we became in the eighties. When it comes to zombie lore, "Zone One" seems tired.

That's not to say that "Zone One" is a bad book. If it had come out in 1990, it would have been hailed as a work of genius. But high literature is so late to the party that everybody is already leaving. The new Mark Foster movie based on "World War Z" looks like a facsimile of the last several zombie movies that have been released.

Kevin, my Dad, and myself spent a long time discussing zombies, and I let my brother read the first few chapters of my own zombie book. "Maybe the problem you're having with all these other zombie novels is that you didn't write them," he said. Yeah, I know that's the case exactly. I hate them all because they're all great. "So what did you think about the chapters?" I asked.

Kevin thought about it for a moment, "Same old, same old."

We Will Eat You!

Our Post-Apocalyptic Past

2011-12-10T16:23:00.001-08:00

"World War Z" is a phenomenal book, and perhaps the most literary iteration of the zombie story, even against Colson Whitehead's "Zone One". The best thing about it is it's concept, which is a natural progression of his previous bestseller, "The Zombie Survival Guide". Zombie guides have now become commonplace, but when Brooks' debut was originally released it was, for lack of a better term, novel.

Max Brooks conjures a world that has been ravaged by the zombie plague and manages to make it believable. His oral forays into how best to smuggle humans across international borders during a zombie outbreak and how the Lobo (a combination zombie killing and digging tool) was invented bring the harsh realities of a world gone mad in sharp focus.

Its so good, in fact, that some of the fun of the B-movie convention gets lost in details of how The Battle of Yonkers turned into a fiasco because of American arrogance, or about how the first comprehensive reports about what was happening was written. It all feels so real that at times its easy to forget that we're talking about zombies here, and not some global small pox epidemic. Brooks is keen on keeping the action rolling so that it doesn't feel too dim, also since the voices come from those who have survived the zombie plague, we know implicitly that the world has survived. We are now in better times. The zombie outbreak has taught us how to cherish our time together.

But that means that there isn't much to look forward to. No main plot is being followed, and there is no ultimate answer. The selections of interviews, believable though they may be, vary little at the beginning of the book from those at the end of the book. They are immaculately scripted and Brooks is a craftsman at combining well hewn research with a vivacious imagination to create this world. But that doesn't change the fact that in the zombie world, there's just no place to go.

What can we extract from "World War Z"? What does it tell us about ourselves? Are we (humans) fraught with the ingenuity to survive the coming harvest or are we just plain lucky? Yes. I don't think that Brooks worked too hard to spin some kind of didactic philosophy into "World War Z", he just wanted for the zombie convention to be taken seriously. And in that he succeeds, but toward what end? Ultimately, his zombie iteration says the same that all zombie stories do: Don't take it for granted. Your happiness is but one slip of the neuron away from becoming the worst horror imaginable.

And when that happens, those who die will be the lucky ones.

The Definitive List of Songs for The Zombie Apocalypse

2011-12-06T18:11:00.001-08:00

I've spent the last few weeks compiling a list of songs for a zombie outbreak. Why? Because it keeps me sane, that's why. Also, I'm tired of reading zombie music compilations that involve nothing but death metal screaming. Sure, screaming has its place, but there's plenty of that in a zombie outbreak already. What's needed, I've always felt, is a little levity. A little melody. A little love. - Yeah.

1) Golden Earring - "Twilight Zone"

   Not sure why, but every time I hear this song I think of what the perfect attitude for the brain-melting paradox of a world gone dead must be like. When Barry Hay wails, "where am I to go when I've gone too far?" his attitude seems to be that of "fuck it, it is what it is." That's the attitude that survives you 'when the bullet hits the bone'.

2) Zager & Evans - "In The Year 2525"

   I heard this song on the road as my Grandpa drove me toward the airport a few weeks ago to head back to Nebraska from my brother's wedding, and was haunted by it. It's meant to be funny in the way that zombie movies are kind of funny. What a ridiculous notion, the dead rising to eat the living. Ha. Ha. But by the end of the song, lead singer turns from his zany predictions of technological dependency (life in a pill, machines do the walking, you know the score) into lamenting the future of humanity. Kind of like zombie movies.

3) The Zombies - "Hold Your Head Up"

   This is a song my father used to sing to me when I was little. I think the apocalypse could use some optimism (I'm looking straight at you, Cormac McCarthy).

4) Sufjan Stevens - "They Are Night Zombies Ahhhh!"

   My sister-in-law, Aubrie, sent me this song and I am now greatly in her debt. This song has a swift jazzy bass that runs through it, and when the chanting it send that spike of chill right up your spine. In truth, the song is a dedication to Illinois, where "Night of the Living Dead" was originally filmed, thus it is the start of this whole zombie cultural phenomenon. Hence, if it isn't on any zombie song list, that list is dead.

5) Johnny Cash - "Hurt"

   This song doesn't belong on this list. I know. The 'hurt' that Cash sings about has nothing to do with zombies, or anything that zombies are about. Indeed, I have a hard time listening to it in any other context than Johnny Cash himself. Even Trent Reznor has confessed that the song is no longer his. All of that said, I put it here anyway. Sue me.

6) Pink Floyd - "Run Like Hell"

   The first time I heard this song I thought about zombies. I was maybe 9 years old. The beat mimics the sounds of boots hitting the pavement and in "The Wall" we come to recognize zombies as those mindless followers of a warped ideal. Zombies are the dead inside, the unthinkers. And they swell in larger numbers than the opposition. There's only one thing to do, "RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN!"

7) Roy Orbison - "In Dreams"

   I stole this from "Blue Velvet". David Lynch knows how to extricate the fiendish from the friendly, and by throwing this song into a movie about a sexual psychotic he redefined it. I'm not trying to re-redine it. I just like to listen.

8) Blue Oyster Cult - "Astronomy"

   There's a lot of conflicting ideas concerning the meaning of this song, but I don't really care what it means. In fact, I like not knowing. Does that make sense? I put it here because I feel like if I decode it, it will tell me the secret to the zombie holocaust. Listen.

9) Black Sabbath - "War Pigs"

   Sort of like "Run Like Hell", this song decries the mindless war pigs as "witches at black masses" and seems to revel in the metaphor of Satanism as those who inflict war on others. Ozzy doth protest too much, methinks, but the zombie cultural milieu faces the same problem. It is, at its heart, a metaphor for the mindless, but it enjoys the metaphor so much that it's meaning gets lost. Thanks, Ozzy.

10) Skeeter Davis - "It's the End of the World"

Two Months Dead

2011-12-05T07:37:00.001-08:00

A couple things: October and November. I contributed an article to the StarCityBlog about Lincoln's "One Book One Lincoln" program, for which I met with the chairwoman of the selection committee and had a lovely discussion about one of my favorite books this year, "Cutting For Stone". After that, I took the job as lead site editor for "StarCity" and everything went to hell.

I thought, "why not? I edit 'The World Savvy Reader'! What's the worst that could happen?" The worst that can happen is that every day relies on how many readers come to my site - I really don't have time to write because I have to hound writers, post current events, and find more writers to hound. Why? For ad hits, that's why. This isn't a "write what you feel tra-la-la" kind of site, it's a knife in the notepad. Deadline means deadline, buddy.

It took me some time to extricate myself, during which I eased the burn of the internet grind with books about post-apocalyptic zombie hoards. The story is tired: A survivor wakes up from a coma to find himself lost in a world stripped away by flesh eating members of the Dead Club, who angrily return from their post-mortus to settle some unknown score.

John Lindqvist is a novelist that I've been meaning to pick up. His treatment of the vampire tale one of the few takes on the lore of the undead that I can stomach. (Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire", Bram Stoker's "Dracula", and of course Mike Nelson's "Goth-Icky" are the other ones.) So I was looking forward to his stab at zombies. Unfortunately, "Handling the Undead" is not really a zombie novel - at least not in terms I would identify zombies with. Dead people come back, sure. But they just kinda sit there. Also, Lindqvist braids three different analogous tales which feel, at many times, repetitive. Each protagonist has lost a loved one that has come back to them in zombie form and now they must deal with the zombified version of said loved one. Problem is, they all pretty much react the same way i.e. they freak the fuck out.

Perhaps the novel picked up in the latter half, but I didn't stick around to find out. There was no tension from these zombies. It was like waking up to discover that your loved ones had all become bums. Give em' a bath and take them to a soup kitchen! I moved on to Max Brooks' "World War Z".

Like a Rolling Stone

2011-09-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

I'm roughly a third of the way into Abraham Verghese's "Cutting for Stone" and it's easy to see why this book is the official selection of the City of Lincoln. No other book I've ever read has managed to capture life quite like this one does. It's humorous, mystical, compelling and informative, but it's also incredibly entertaining.

I could give you a synopsis so far, but that wouldn't do the book justice because "Cutting for Stone" is not necessarily about what its about. The extraordinary birth of twins in Missing Hospital (originally "Mission" Hospital) throws a wrench in the works humanitarian efforts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 'Missing', of course, is significant for a number of reasons. First, the death of the mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, and the subsequent disappearance of the father, Thomas Stone, leave the twins in the care of two hospital staff members. But also, much is made of the fact that no one in Addis Ababa is from Addis Ababa. They are castoffs and runaways from India, England, and The Middle East - Missing.

"Cutting for Stone" isn't really about life in Ethiopia because we hardly ever venture outside of the hospital walls. The staff's houses are on the grounds, and Missing Hospital feels within its own world. Verghese writes the surrounding country with wonderful affinity that differs so wildly from those horrible $.90-a-day-can-save-a-child ads. (Exploitation, if you ask me.) Verghese's Ethiopia is a country of promise in need of help from missionaries who only give bibles, and governments who don't give much of anything.

It's hard to gleam an overall point to the novel so early on, but Lincoln has chosen wisely it's official selection for 2011, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Reading for Home

2011-09-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

I'd like to rename this month "Reading for Home" rather than "Reading for Place" because the common factor I've found in my readings for August is that in both books I have nearly jumped at the recognition of the real-world commonality between myself and the characters in the book.

I have not missed an opportunity to tell anyone at work who'll listen that I was living two lanes away from where John Berendt stayed during his eight years in Savannah. Every morning at 6:00 am I would get up and take my dog, Tortuga, jogging through the 21 squares that make up Savannah's Historical District. We'd pass Jim Williams' Mercer House, turn down Bull St, and then jog along the Savannah River. We'd pass all the restaurants that we could never afford to eat; The Pirate's House and the 17 Hundred 90 restaurant, all of which is the landscape for John Berendt's tale.

Then, in Willa Cather's book "O Pioneers", after a similarly gruesome murder, the heroine Alexandra goes to Lincoln and walks the campus university to in remembrance of her dead brother, Emil.

It was growing dark when she reached the university campus. She did not go into the grounds, but walked slowly up and down the stone walk outside the long iron fence, looking through at the young men who were running from one building to another, at the lights shining from the armory and the library.
pg. 185

The first thing that Hali and I did upon moving to Lincoln was walk that very stone walk outside the campus's iron fence (which is shorter today, but still stands). Where characters move in and out of a story, the place maintains a root that binds us all together in time. Emil was here. Alexandra was here. And now I am here.

When "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown was first released, I had already been slated to study abroad in Paris. I thought the book was interesting enough, but what excited me most was that I would be able to purchase the "Fodor's Guide to The Da Vinci Code" and walk the path of Robert Landon myself. I went to the Louvre and stood where he stood. I visited St. Pierre Du Mond and so on. While this process felt somewhat manufactured to me, like going on Pirates of the Caribbean after having watched the movies, I was not above allowing myself to enjoy the experience.

The difference with "Midnight..." and "Pioneers" is that they aren't manufactured. The author did not write the story with mass market in mind. (John Berendt may have, but if so, he did it well enough that it didn't matter.) These book weren't meant to be tour guides, they only happened to be written about the places that the author knew, and they became emblematic of those places they describe. That makes them a treasure invaluable to the readers who discover them, and both are really terrific books.

This is the picture that comes up when you type "Nebraska" into Google Images.

A few weeks ago Hali and I drove to Ames, Iowa to visit a friend. We left early in the morning while the sun was rising, and returned that evening as it was setting over the crest of the prairie foothills. I have never seen land so beautiful in my life. On the coast, we always admire the ocean for its scope. The trees and mountains give southerners a sense of claustrophobia that only a trip to Tybee or Jekyll Island can cure.

Out here though, the land rolls so smooth and distant that you can actually look left and see where a storm is pouring over one part of the land and turn right to see where children are playing under clear skies on the other side. This is the image I see whenever Willa Cather writes about "The Divide" and I understand just a tiny bit better what it means to be a Nebraskan.

Five Past Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

2011-09-21T22:46:00.000-07:00

Only a week after finishing "Midnight...", I find this splattered all over the Huffington Post.

Troy Davis was convicted in 1991 of murdering a security guard in a Burger King parking lot in Savannah, GA, and was put to death tonight, just a little over two hours ago. The reason that this is such a contentious issue is that in the years since Davis's conviction so many have come forward to offer new testimony that raise serious doubts about the initial verdict.

If this sounds a little like the Jim Williams case described in "Midnight...", just hold onto your britches. The chief prosecutor of the Troy Davis was District Attorney Spencer Lawton, the same DA who took Jim Williams to trial a record breaking 4 times! Lawton is quite the nefarious character in Berendt's book, and I can't imagine he appreciates the attention much.

In Berendt's book he is directly accused of prosecutorial misconduct, is indirectly accused of coaching a witness to commit perjury, refuses to share evidence with the defense, introduces key testimony during his closing statement to avoid rebuttal, and in one case, doctors evidence to make Jim Williams look guilty. This is the guy who pulled the switch on Troy Davis tonight.

This story brings a frightful reality to the book, and I actually got a chill watching this news footage. Not because this is the place where I live, but because this is the place where we all live.

Loutallica!

2011-09-21T07:16:00.001-07:00

Here is Lou Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side". This October, Lou Reed will be releasing an album with Metallica entitled "Lulu"! How nice is that?

Awww, isn't this cute?

What does this have to do with books? Lulu's website suggests that the album was inspired by a pair of plays written by Frank Wedekind, "Earth Spirit" and "Pandora's Box" (1904). I thought that this was interesting, so I trucked on over to Google's ebook store and looked them up. Turns out, they're free! So I just downloaded both and put them on my Nook! Didn't take me that long either.

Don't know when I'll read them, but there they are.

Quick note: The "Lulu" poster was banned on the London Underground because it looked too much like graffiti.

"I dread signing my name to them pieces of paper!"

2011-09-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

I'm 100 pages into Willa Cather's "O Pioneers" and I gotta say, I miss Savannah. There's something admirable about the sleekness of the socialite scene. My father is someone who knows how to work a room, and it has always been a trait that I've admired. Jim Williams is definitely the hero of Savannah, and a perfect reflection of it's glowing front and seedy underbelly. In "O Pioneers", Alexandra Bergson is the face of the Great Plains.

Although perhaps she is more admirable than Jim Williams in her immovable set of values, she is far less interesting. While the story takes place at the turn of the century, out in the middle of the plains it really doesn't matter. The dirt is just as barren as it was a thousand years ago, and there is no diplomacy to be had with it. As her father, John Bergson, dies and leaves the farm to his daughter to run, we get the sense that he is handing over a war with the land.

I was told that in order to understand Nebraska, I needed to read Willa Cather, and I think I understand what that meant. Although perhaps not here particularly in Lincoln, most of Nebraska is flat farmland being rustled by salt-of-the-earth farm people like the Bergsons. Farms are passed down through generations, and every year is a battle. Cather describes the land:

"It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. He (John Bergson) had an idea that no one understood how to farm it properly, and this he often discussed with Alexandra." (pg 22)

Alexandra turns out to be more business savvy than her father, and talks her brothers into taking out a second mortgage to pay for some better land and some farm hands to help. It's an investment that the boys are doubtful of making because it doesn't involve getting their hands dirty. "I dread signing my name to them pieces of paper!" Oscar says to his sister.

While I gravitate toward the geography of the south (my apartment was only two lanes away from where John Berendt stayed during his eight years writing the book! - And where else did they finally acquit Jim Williams of murder? Augusta!) I do understand the Bergson boys' distrust of the fine line. Just two days ago, Hali and I took out a similar loan to make an investment in the computer I'm typing this on right now.

It is a Macbook Pro, top of the line in beautiful sleek working condition. It has a i7 processor and a thunderbolt port! A port so new that they haven't even made things to plug into it yet. I haven't really had a computer since we left Madison, WI and I've been using Hali's for the past two years. I took my limping Dell with me to Savannah, but mostly I used the Macs in SCAD's computer labs to do work. Bottom line, I've been needing a computer for a long time. This is for graphic design, video production, and photography.

This got me to thinking that the digital frontier is the new Great Plains, and that text and images are the new crops. There is a reason they call creating web content "Content Farming", and here we've just purchased the best land that we can get. But now come the hard work and toiling of breaking this horse so that it nets us a return. And what do they call that? "Cubicle Farming".

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

2011-09-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I kept myself busy at the Nook desk trying to impress everyone with my Nook knowledge. A full time position has recently opened up as the Digital Lead and I want desperately to get that job. Working part time is rather like being in a physical relationship with a girl who refuses to be your girlfriend. It's nice to have something to do every once in a while, but what I need is a stable relationship.

This means that I'm trucking around town to fling resumes and writing samples in my off hours hoping to pickup an entry level editing job somewhere. That, and since the ragweed levels have spiked here in Lincoln, NE, my face is bloated, clogged, dry and explosive with abrupt sneezing fits. I'm carrying travel tissues with me everywhere I go.

Reading "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is one of the few highlights of the past couple of weeks. The book is teeming with gossipy goodies from one of America's most audacious hidden treasure cities. I really wish that I had read this book while I was living there, as I was so interested in the ghostly side of the city that I neglected to notice what was happening with the living.

I spoke with a friend of mine who is still living in Savannah the other day and we concluded that while I was attending SCAD, I could not really experience Savannah in the way the John Berendt does during his eight year coverage of the city. I was more living "on" Savannah rather than living "in" it. My experience with it has been either as a tourist or as a student, but never as a citizen. The culture has always eluded me.

It's nice to read about that culture and to find some identity within it.

Last night, I had such a pulsing headache that I could barely smile at incoming customers, but I managed somehow. I taught the class, and pleased a lot of patrons who needed help with their Nooks, and I was ready to get home and lay down with a wet rag on my head when a woman dressed all in black walked in the door and asked to see the Public Relations Manager. I directed her, and then watched her walk over to the customer service desk, exchange a few words there, and begin signing books.

Great, I thought, she's an author. It was Ted Dekkor co-author Tosca Lee. She was coming in to sign a few copies of the new Ted Dekkor book, "Forbidden". I've read a lot about the book since and it's apparently a follow up to Dekkor's "Circle" trilogy, which I've never read. Dekkor has a wide net of devoted fans and obviously a presence here in the mid west. (There. I just downloaded the free sample on my Nook!)

Anyway. Back to filling out applications!

Update!

2011-09-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Correction: "Cutting For Stone" by Abraham Verghese just won the One Book, One Lincoln prize so David Maine is out. We're going to Ethiopia instead of um... Animal World.

Welcome to September.

2011-09-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

We're discovering new places and new writers this month now that we're in our first weeks of Lincoln, Nebraska. The first place we're going is to Savannah, where I lived last year during my brief and bitter affair with the Savannah College of Art and Design's Film Graduate Studies Program. I have not lost my fascination or love for the place, and am 70 pages into David Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and have already rekindled my passion. Oh, how I miss my apartment on East Gordon Lane!


See.

Alas, we move on. The next book on our list for the month is University of Nebraska's own Willa Cather's "O Pioneers". As far as I can tell, Willa Cather is the Flannery O'Connor of the Midwest, and everybody here quotes her endlessly, so if you want to fit in in Lincoln, just quote Willa Cather to everyone.

Finally, we're going to be reading David Maine's new novel, I think. "The Gamble of the Godless" just came out and it's about something that has to do with strange places; something about werewolves and knights in space... or not. I'm not entirely sold on the idea, but I think David Maine is one of the best and most underrated novelists of our time so I'm going to give this book a shot.

I should also mention that these are some of the first books that I'll be reading on Hali's Nook, which she's been using since Christmas. I bought "Midnight..." used for a buck, but the other two I'm going download and read electronically because it's the future, and because I work for Barnes and Noble now.

The Calm of Organized Resistance

2011-09-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

So we got home from visiting friends in Ames, Iowa yesterday to discover blood and glass all over our floor. We've had problems with housing management ever since we moved in a few weeks ago to find rotten window frames, leaky plumbing, and overhead lights that heat up the house so much that the doors swell up and won't open. Our landlord went MIA for the first two weeks our stay, during that most vulnerable time when we were in place we didn't know, jobless, with no working phones or internet to communicate. AT&T's signal is iffy on the surface, but in our basement apartment, we might as well be the only people on earth.

Our Property Manager would get in touch with us once a week to apologize and reassure us that something was going to be done soon, which became more antagonistic than it would have been to just let us sue because we kept feeling that things were going to get fixed, and so we would shift our attention to the other problems on our list. Windstream told us that the phone wires in the building were rotten, and that we would need permission from the landlord to run new ones. Because getting permission meant having a conversation with our landlord, we knew that it wouldn't happen, so we went with Verizon.

Verizon has a complicated network of towers they use to stream wireless phone and internet service right into the apartment, and they assured us that this was the wave of the future. "4G is going to change everything," the gentleman at the store told us, and we were impressed with his enthusiasm. I don't know what 4G is, but it sounds so Star Trek that I couldn't imagine it not working. The devices were sleek and black with purple flashing lights, and when we installed them in our apartment our internet was so slow that even my text had to buffer.

One day while I was getting ready for my job interview at Barnes and Noble, I heard the sounds of glass shuffling outside the window. This was strange because our windows are half underground, protected by a small concrete well that houses the glass. I looked outside and an old man was sitting in it, picking up pieces of glass that had broken in a storm. "I'm here to do some repairs," he said.

Finally, I thought, something is happening.

The old man came into the house and examined the crack in our front door window. He disappeared only a moment later, leaving a small puddle of blood on our foyer floor. He would do this for the next week or so; show up, pick up two pieces of glass, then disappear. He would come into the house while we were out sometimes, and we would find pieces of our ceiling on the floor. He fixed the pantry door so that it no longer stayed shut, and replaced the missing shelves in our refrigerator door with the racks that are supposed to go inside.

We complained endlessly, but to no one. The Property Manager knows how to disappear, show up to console, then disappear again. When we discovered the glass all over the floor and the blood spatters, we wrote an e-mail, attached photos, Clorox-ed, Lysol-ed, swept, and swept again.

The windows are fixed now, sort of. And I have a job now, part time.

It's hard for me to get mad. The glass and the blood are signs of progress.

The Right-Size Target for Bond

2011-09-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

There is too much. Let me sum up.

I read Ian Fleming's original novel's, 'The Man with the Golden Gun', and 'Goldfinger', during my last few weeks in Augusta working for the sinister Borders Corporation. I can't complain though, because I got all my books through used booksellers on-line for a dollar with no shipping fees and I quit just two weeks before the Corporation as a whole collapsed behind me. (Metaphorically speaking, that is.)


Not the Borders I worked at, but an incredible simulation.

Fleming's books are phenomenal! He gives a weight to the Bond character that the movies can only approximate, and its no wonder why he's such a cultural icon now. The truth is that any movie studio would be hard pressed to capture Bond's pathos in a visual format without turning him into a stuntman. In the books, Bond is not an action star. This is most likely because Fleming, like most good writers, understood that action scenes don't play well in novels. In a movie, viewers can say, "Holy Shit! Did you see that guy just jump out of that window? He was six stories up! The fuckin' explosion was only two feet behind him!"

Nobody points to a line in a novel and says, "Seriously, dude just jumped out of a plane with no parachute! That's wicked!" Because it takes no creative imagination to come up with the idea of an action scene. We all do it everyday at work when we pray to God that a asteroid will hit the store so that we can climb the rubble and pull out burn victims before the struts collapse like Gene Hackman in the "The Poseidon Adventure". Then we hope to God that He doesn't actually answer that prayer. But in films, the visual effects do the work that character development and creative plot do in novels. The only way to make Bond a successful film character is to externalize his inner psychic construction.

Here's an example: In the novel "Goldfinger", Bond plays a round of golf with Auric Goldfinger in what has to be one of the longest golf play by plays ever included in a novel. I thought that the film did a remarkable job in sustaining this scene for roughly ten minutes, but the book dedicates 30 pages to the game. What makes the game riveting is that both characters have a double-agenda. They both want to win the game, but they also want the other to give away his secrets. Auric wants to know who Bond really is, and Bond wants to win the trust of Auric, but also uncover his money laundering scheme at the same time. Neither man knows what the other is hiding, but both know that the other is hiding something. The game of wits between them is mirrored by the stroke of the golf club.

"The Man with The Golden Gun" is not quite as tautly executed as "Goldfinger", but Fleming's superb storytelling makes it a treat nonetheless. I read it by the pool at The Castle hotel where Hali and I spent our Honeymoon in July.

See.

We had to put the wedding off until next August in order to move here to Nebraska, but we'd already booked tickets to Orlando to see Harry Potter world, La Nuba, and Medieval Times so we indulged ourselves one year prematurely. I had a few misgivings about using our only Honeymoon for prepackaged artificial entertainment rather than something more authentic like a trip to Paris or London, but it was somewhere mid-way into "The Man with the Golden Gun" that I realized that touring London is as artificial as touring downtown Disney, except that Disney does not pretend to approximate the kind of reality that a bus tour of Jamaica does. You can't be a tourist without seeing things from a tourist's perspective, and the only place where the tourists aren't shielded from blistering reality is in a place where there is no reality.

Bond is a similar paradox. In his novular form he chases Scaramanga to Jamaica by rooting through the alleys and ghettos. The book divides its color scheme into the clean and balanced gold of the gun and the muddy backwaters of the Caribbean Islands. Except that, for Fleming, what appears to be clean is actually ugly, and what appears to be ugly is actually golden. For instance, when Bond enters the rutty whorehouse that Scaramanga frequents he is helped by an enticing young female bartender. The woman who cleans and serves drinks in a shack is given more strength of character than any Bond-girl in the films, and even while I expected Bond to seduce her I didn't want him to. She was too pure. Fleming sensed this too, and Bond makes no attempt at her while Scaramanga punishes her for her continued rebuke of his advances.

Bond enters Scaramanga's inner-circle, gains his trust, and again both are thrust into a game of wits where each is attempting to out-plot the other. Only this time, Bond's soul seems to be at stake. He is forced to consider that he might be as ruthless a killer a Scaramanga himself, and the end has Bond forced to decide whether to shoot Scaramanga in cold blood, as he has been charged with by MI6. The setting is in the swamps, where Scaramanga has attempted to escape injured and is finally cornered unarmed by Bond. Both men, who have maintained an aloof cleanliness throughout the novel, even down to their reflective loafers, are now caked in slime, blood, and flies.

Fleming does not force Bond to make the decision to shoot Scaramanga in cold blood, although I wish he had. This is where the paradox comes in. Bond is a tragic hero thrust into role of an action hero. If I could have worked my will on the ending, Bond would have shot Scaramanga in the head with only a moment's pause, placing the orders of his countrymen above even his own values. But this would have made "The Man with the Golden Gun" a tragedy, and it wouldn't have been as fun. While Bond might seem like a trip to exotic locales with beautiful women, and treacherous but likably cheesy villains, it is still only Disney Land. Bond's saving grace is that it never pretends to be otherwise. People may shake their heads and deplore such obtuse graphic indulgence, but the Bond novels understand exactly what they are and hit the fine target between high literature and porno-violence that they aim for. Such is the mastery of James Bond's precision.

The Deaver-lution of James Bond

2011-07-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

I've been avoiding this blog because Jeffery Deaver's "Carte Blanche" was so miserable that writing about it feels too much like returning to a scene of a personal tragedy. Alan Perrott has the best book review I can find. He writes for the New Zealand Herald. While the question of setting Bond in modern times is certainly relevant, I don't think its a make or break for a Bond novel. Certainly, it could be set in the modern age of iPhones and suitcase nukes, but that's not what makes "Carte Blanche" so awful. The reason this book is so bad is simply because Bond isn't in it. (Coincidently, this is my same problem with "Quantum of Solace".)

In trying to serve up a new Bond, Deaver manages to erase the character whole sale. No more gadgets, (unless you count his nifty iQphone apps, which I don't because everybody has one), no more womanizing, no more alcoholism. Nope. This Bond is all business. Of course, that's the real problem. Stripped of his disparity, Bond is little more than a cold calculating robot who performs his tasks to the mark with no real encumbrances. Reading Fleming's novels, (and indeed watching the better movies) one gets the sense that Bond's real worst enemy is himself. And this is something that we identify with.

Given his impossible competency, he's never really hindered by the bad guys he pursues. His problem is that he enjoys his job too much. He gets derailed by a love interest, often his arrogance leads him into blowing his cover, and in Fleming's novels, his alcoholism tends to get him into trouble. When we root for Bond, we're really rooting for him to fend off his demons, and we find strength in the fact that he always does. Deaver's Bond has no demons to conquer, so the action is banal. Even the plot is, at it's best, a lifted plot from typical Bond lore.

Deaver's writing is underwhelming, with chapters taking little more than a page or two, and paragraphs taking little more than a sentence. We travel outside of the minds of its characters, so motivation is often unclear until after the action has taken place. Then Deaver will explain why Bond did what he did, and we'll realize that he everything in hand all along. Bond is not only a genius, but he's an arrogant asshole as well. His quips are canned, and always footnoted by the author so that you know they're quips. Otherwise they might be mistaken for serious dialogue. Yep, that's how bad they are.

At the outset, I found the encyclopedic narration about various departments and equipment fascinating, and I have no doubt that other readers will to. Deaver knows how to wow a reader with trivial facts concerning gun models and the makes of various cars. But all of that gets old really fast when there's nothing tangible to attach it to. This is a Bond novel that a computer might have written, had it been fed all the information about Bond, and programmed to produce a product. I'm not saying that Deaver is a nefarious robot obviously dispatched to destroy Bond's credibility in aid of the sinister SMERSH organization. I'm not saying that.

But then, it's just the sort of thing they would do.

Good Morning, James. Meet July.

2011-07-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my last day of work, and then Hali and I are setting out for Milledgeville to spend the month of July with our family's before we move to Nebraska. That means that I'm taking it easy and chilling out with some swift and sexy spy novels with my world savvy hero, James Bond. We'll try to take in a few lessons from the suave British Commander as he travels to Dubai, Iraq, London, Miami, and China while I sit at home reading with a pile of Cheetos on my belly.

We're also watching a lot of my favorite television show, 24, and since the book series "Declassified" suck ballulars*, I've chosen a non-fiction title called "Secrets of 24" which actually covers the moral and political strands of the action series through essays by popular writers who are smarter than I am. I've also got the book, "James Bond and Philosophy", but since it's packed up in a box buried in a storage unit somewhere you'll have to read that one on your own.

Finally, we'll be traveling from the super real to the surreal with G.K. Chesterton's famous work, "The Man Who Was Thursday", which is more of a metaphysical thriller about spies (I think) in London at the turn of the century. We'll compare the heightened reality of the Bond's and Bauer's worlds to the world of Thursday, as well as venturing into some political and global intrigue. All from the cozy confines of my lawn chair, with my dog curled up under the sun, and me with a good book.

I should mention also that I purchased all of these books at Borders.com, used, for a dollar each with my Borders Plus card which meant free shipping. All in all, the magnitude of a month's worth of literary entertainment for less than ten dollars is, dare I say, criminal.

*ballulars is a word created by my dear fiance, Hali Sofala, who is a wonderful wordsmith. And "Declassified" is quite bad, mostly because the writer attempts to rival the show in the real-time format, which is quite silly for a novel to attempt, and makes them suck ballulars.

Harry Potter Does The Lord's Work

2011-07-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

I had planned a blog post about Harry Potter and Christian Theology after reading "The Deathly Hallows", but I decided that the subject was too big for a single blog post. Somebody really ought to write a book. And they did! Danielle Tumminio's "God and Harry Potter at Yale" is the source book for the class she teaches dealing with Harry Potter and theology. I got a taste of some of her tutelage at the Huffington Post this morning, and now the book is on my want list.

I also read through MuggleNet.com's "Harry Potter Should Have Died" last weekend. (I stole it out of Aubrie's room while she was in London.) It was an interesting book for Potter fans by Potter fans, but I wouldn't expect any hard hitting arguments from it. Mostly, it contains a series of "would you rather..." hypotheticals meant to provoke discussion among friends rather than inform. Fun stuff, for sure, but nothing really controversial.

BTW (that means "by the way", by the way), I just posted my first comment on someone's blog today. My first real comment. Nothing mind-bending, just a "bravo" to Tumminio for tackling the subject of Christian theology in Rowling's books, but it feels a little bit like approaching somebody in a crowded room who's already surrounded by people. It means a lot more to you than it does to them.

The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics

2011-06-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep last night, so I sifted through internet blogs like Bookslut and The Book Lady's Blog, which are both terrific literary sites, but are geared toward the more romantically inclined. They have a depth of tone and flair that my ragtag blog can only admire. I couldn't find anything on "The Magician's Assistant" at either one, possibly because it was published 1998, when the Publisher's Weekly was still the go-to source for book reviews. Inevitably, I found myself trolling through political blogs; the scourge of the internet. I swear, it's worse than porn.

I should say that this comes at the end of a torrential day of nonstop rain, and me sitting in my empty apartment alone with my dog, Tortuga. There seems little hope that we will ever move to Nebraska, or that this day will end, so I thumb through a Republican rag to get what Chris Wallace affably terms, "the other side of the story".

Truthfully, it's not half bad. I find myself often splintered in the dead middle of the political spectrum, swinging one way on half of the issues, the other on the other half. I'm so split minded that I don't enter into debate because inevitably doing so will force you into one side or the other and I don't believe that politics should be a game with sides.

What does this have to do with "The Magician's Assistant"? Lots. As it happens, the book I'm reading now is a Jeffery Deaver novel called "Carte Blanche", the latest in the long line of 007 novels, now adapted to our current era of Web 2.0 cyber-terrorism and iPhones. (As expressed by Bond's love for his shiny new iQphone!) And it is such a jump in thought from Patchett's book that it stresses the moral spectrum of conservative and liberal thought.

Let's set aside, for now, the differences in genre. I'm speaking strictly of writing tone here. Patchett's work stresses emotional empathy to such a point where the circumstances of the plot become secondary. Sabine's predicament wouldn't be nearly as entertaining if she weren't the character that she is. After all, dealing with the loss of a loved one has been well documented in literature, both fiction and otherwise. But because she feels so real to the reader, as does the characters that surround her, we are willing to travel the torment with her. The novel actually feels a little over long because it's clear by the final hundred pages that Sabine is going to be okay. She's going to move on. This emotional empathy is a liberal trait, particularly for somebody who has no real national heritage, claims Los Angeles as her only allegiance, and who lives with a gay couple.

Sabine is an affront to conservative values of traditional family. (*HERE THERE BE SPOILERS*) At the end, she effectively steals Kitty and her children away from her husband, Howard, who proves to be abusive. Of course, this ending works only because Howard is abusive, and therein lies the flaw. Howard is the only flat character, clearly placed to allow Sabine to take Kitty and the kids back to L.A. with her. In "The Magician's Assistant", all the magic is in L.A. and Nebraska is a wasteland that turns families against themselves. There is no character who loves Alliance, NE, the way that Sabine loves L.A. And running away is the final answer for both Parsifal and his sister, Kitty.

I empathize with Sabine's plight because I am also different. I come from a family of GA natives who enjoy drinking and rough sports, mock the liberal point of view, and still carry that stint of anger toward the north passed down from the Civil War. I was the only one to attend college, a liberal arts college at that, move away, and find my place among social outcasts. But I was never ill treated by my family. On the contrary, my family has always accepted that I am different and allowed me my idiosyncrasies. None of them will ever leave the south, but all of them understand that I will. This is what has split me so much. In describing the south, Sabine views it as "backward" - this, of course, is alight to her character flaw since Patchett lives and writes from her home in Tennessee, but Sabine is proven to be correct in her voyage to NE, as deeply Republican a state, as the boiling south beneath.

My point here is that "The Magician's Assistant" is a novel that leans heavily to the left, while "Carte Blanche" by Jeffery Deaver leans heavily to the right. For Deaver, deep empathetic dissections of his characters are not necessary because they fall clearly on the sides of good and evil. His villain, Hydt, is owner of a recycling company called Green Way, and he has a fetish of photographing dead bodies. This is the kind of novel that Howard Plate belongs in.

Now lets speak of genres because Daniel Foster, of The National Review, seems to hold the oft-lit candle of conservatives that Hollywood holds a liberal bias, as expressed in his detailed book review of David Mamet's "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture". Where in he lauds Mamet for "set(ting) himself apart from so many Sean Penns and Tim Robbinses, then, by refusing to consecrate his creative work as anything more venerable than "entertainments"," speaking toward the effect that film and literature ought to be nothing more than escapism after a hard day's work at the coalmine. ("Battle L.A." for everyone.) This is the clever peg that "Carte Blanche" sets itself in, but it is conservative for another reason as well. It's an action/ thriller novel, which, by the very implication of its narrative, forces it within the realm of conservative thought.

John Stewart, in his highly publicized interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, expressed his viewpoint (though, not quite strongly enough for my tastes) that journalism lends itself toward a liberal point of view. What he meant by that is that in the course of being fair and balanced (as in for real "fair and balanced") we are forced to empathize with all players in a particular story rather than leaning either way. This means that if you write a story about a character like Sabine, you have to understand her situation. Understanding her situation makes you see the value in her particular lifestyle, and it’s hard to blame her for being the home-wrecker and lesbian that she becomes.

The same works in the opposite way for thrillers and action shows. The typical James Bond scenario is one where the action occurs by virtue of knowledge that Bond is on the side of the “good guys”. No elaborate dissection of his ego is necessary because we understand his purpose. In the case of “Carte Blanche”, he’s trying to stop a terrorist plot to gas hundreds. This is not unlike a plot scenario in the action television show “24”, which has been often criticized for a conservative bias. But look at any action book or movie. They favor conservative view point because the nature of the struggle is external rather than internal. When everything is externalized, the conservative viewpoint wins out. This isn't a bad or wrong thing. It just is. There is a time and place for "us vs. them" thinking.

The problem with real life is that things are never as simple as they are in such “entertainments”. They don't lend themselves to a conservative point of view unless reality is bent toward that view. This is why news programs like Fox exist, and why arguments against liberalism in "The National Review" favor arguing against the far left, which is where Mamet and Foster's political swords find muscle to skewer. Or, as Foster puts it, "too much of his (Mamet's) discussion of policy disputes in today's has this feel of the perfunctory, or the sort of thing that will satisfy the choir, but won't do as persuasion, or proselytism- or even propaganda."

Right, Foster. Because it's us versus them.

The Magician's Assistant

2011-06-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

I heard about Ann Patchett on NPR while I was driving to work. She read the opening of her new book, "State of Wonder", and talked about her mentors. I was enthralled by the stroke of her pen, how fluid her words were and how evocative she told even the few paragraphs that she read. So when I went to work I checked out one of her early books that fit with this month's theme, "The Magician's Assistant".

Sabine, the titular character, has just lost her Magician to an aneurism. Now she is lost. Parsifal was not only her Magician, but her husband, and love interest for twenty years. I say love interest because he was homosexual, and unable to return her affections for the bulk of their relationship. Patchett's book exists in two frames of time: Sabine's life before Parsifal's death and her life afterward. She jumps elegantly from past to present as if they are the same time which, for Sabine, they are. Often she is so distraught that she sometimes doesn't know where she is.

Soon after Parsifal's death, Sabine learns of his rural roots in Alliance, Nebraska, and she is introduced to the family that he always denied having. The drama of the novel plays out between the places of Los Angeles and Alliance, Nebraska, just as they play out in the two separate eras of Sabine's existence. Parsifal's given name is Guy Fetters, and as Sabine comes to know the Fetters she is re-inducted into the splendors of life.

"The Magician's Assistant" is not shocking or provoking. It is fluid, and recounts a life that would seem extraordinary if told flat out. Sabine, after all, is a magician's assistant, antique rug dealer, architect, and engaged in a long term threesome with her lover and his boyfriend. But from her perspective it is a life that is as common as it is concrete, and the conservative family that she comes to love is the one that is decadent and shrouded in darkness.

The collision of these worlds happens in a series of dramatic revelations that keep the plot moving steadily forward and make the journey pleasurable. But for the most part, it is Patchett's prose that make "The Magician's Assistant" such a delight, as there are few dips in the plot that seem to derail the finale and Patchett seems unwilling to let the plot go where it really wants to. The story's villain, Howard Plate, wants to be real threat, but he is continually defanged for no real reason other than that Sabine refuses to be afraid of him. He seems almost from another kind of story, and is constantly being banished from this one.

The real magic in this story is in the relationships between Sabine and Kitty Fetters, Sabine and Guy's mother. These over shadow the complications in plot that derail the story by the end of the novel. Also, Patchett's tenderness for her characters shines in her descriptions of them and its easy to feel the same admiration and love for the warriors of Alliance, NE, that Sabine comes to. This was, if nothing, a story of affection. And I felt it to the very end.

'In fact, the entire state of Nebraska defied imagination.'

2011-06-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

Who actually lived there?... Sabine got the Rand McNally road atlas out of the trunk of her car and thumbed through to Nebraska, a page kept perfectly clean and uncreased from lack of use. Other pages showed green for hills, darker green for mountains, blue for rivers and the deep thumbprints of lakes, but Nebraska was white, a page as still as fallen snow. It was not crosshatched with roads, overrun with the hard lines of interstate systems. It was a state on which you could make lists, jot down phone numbers, draw pictures. And there, in the beating heart of nowhere, Sabine found Alliance. Alliance, Nebraska. How could he not have mentioned that? It didn't look like something you would simply forget.

- The Magician's Assistant
Ann Patchett

Your Knee Bone's Connected to Your Thigh Bone... Your Thigh Bone's Connected to Literature!

2011-06-23T02:17:00.000-07:00

The study of literature is about making connections. A World Savvy book is a book that you can carry with you, always, and reference it in the situations that you encounter in real life because it was somehow able to inform that situation. My last post, for instance, was an attempt at making a real world connection between what I had learned about the Mona Lisa in Sleights of Mind and how we perceive things day to day. Not all books are going to stick, and for some, more effort is needed to keep them close at heart than for others.

This is the seminal struggle with studying literature: some books are more literary than others, and how do we determine which books are literary enough to be 'literature' in the sense that they stand the larger test of informing a reader's life, and which ones are literature only in the sense that they're printed on paper? This is a journey that has no destination, and it's important to understand that when setting out. There is no finish line; no test at the end of class. Like proper dieting and religious practice, it is a way of life.

Sleights of Mind is a good book. It's entertaining, and often informative. I now know that I can never be a magician because I haven't got the ego for it. I cannot lie to people, even if they know that I'm lying. Magic, for all it's wonder, is a lie. Even though I know that Criss Angel isn't actually levitating, my mind wants to believe that he is. The contradiction drives me nuts. Also, it's important to understand that magic is more skill than knowledge of the trick, which is why you can't perform it just by knowing how it's done anymore than you could perform standup comedy simply by memorizing the jokes. The act is in the performance.

These are ideas that Sleights of Mind helped me to solidify in my mind and that makes it a World Savvy book. I don't revoke my former criticisms of the book, but I wish to amend them with these conclusions. I would recommend Sleights of Mind to anyone who wished to get some intriguing insight into the world of magic, and how it manages to confound us. There are surprising nuggets of information that will stick, and you'll find yourself thinking about it long afterward. Both the good parts, and the bad.

What Mona Lisa Knows That We Don't

2011-06-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

The heat in Georgia sometimes reaches triple digits, and during this time of year it is accompanied by rains that feel like the kind of hot sweat associated with night terrors. It is, as you might say, unpleasant. It was one of these night storms that took out the AC at the Borders where I work, leaving us to sweat at the registers over paperbacks and newsprint.

I don't mind hard labor, but it's something that must be prepared for. You don your cargo pants and throw-away T-shirt and you start digging in the red Georgia clay until the ditch is deep enough to lay down PVC to string wire through. That's the kind of heat that drives you. Put that same heat in a retail book outlet chain and it's like pulling a Gorilla out of the forest and putting him into a ... well, a retail book outlet.

Our discount offers are not nearly as enticing when your pages stick together because the ink has melted into glue. But I was not deterred, for the simple idea that I would struggle to think past the heat. 'Think cool, air conditioned thoughts', I told myself, 'and move slower, more meticulously in order to combat heat exhaustion.' There is no heat like heat in business casual attire. I didn't want to break a showy sweat. I wanted to conform to the heat, accept it and move on. The trouble with this plan was that no customer was willing to move on with me.

Every single customer, no exception in the lot of them, wanted to talk about the heat. "Is your air conditioner broken or are you saving money, you know, cause I heard you might be going out of business?"

"Yes, that's exactly what it is, ma'am. We've turned off the heat because we decided that it was an expenditure we just didn't need. I suspect the lights will be the next to go. You'd better start buying something soon, or we just might find the plumbing unnecessary as well." This is not what I said, only what I would like to have said. As the face of Borders, my responses were canned and I can barely recall any of them now. Something to the effect of, "The AC's broke, I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

"Well, they ought to pay you extra! You're the one who really has to suffer."

One man even insisted on buying me a drink. It was all in kindness, so I can't bring myself to be angry with these people, but you must never buy something for a cashier. It is a breach of company policy and can be seen as bribery. When I ran a kiosk in the West Town Mall in Madison, WI, we had a two for one calendar sale. A patron didn't want his free calendar so he allowed me to pick one and take it for myself. I was already aware of my personal policy toward cashier/ patron relations, but there was a twelve dollar calendar that I really wanted so I took the deal. This was the only time I've ever taken an offer from a customer, and it pleased me so much that I called up my fellow kiosk operator at the other end of the mall to tell her about it. "You remember that zombie calendar I've been waiting to go on sale?" I said, "Well, you're never going to believe, a customer just gave it to me!"

This idea impressed her so much that she followed suit, taking similar gifts from customers. One day when I came to work she wasn't there anymore. She was let go.

Perceptions change depending on where and how hard you look. If you look directly at the mouth of the Mona Lisa, she appears straight faced and unflinching. If you focus your attention elsewhere, she appears to be smiling coyly, as if she knows something you don't. The same thing works for shifting your attention from the heat of the store to something like courtesy and professionalism. Given their good intentions, customers got my kiosk mate fired and had me pouring out every pore like a sieve.

The AC is out. That is one of a million things in this world that you can not control. Have the grace to look past it, to the things that you can control. It's only when you look away that the Mona Lisa smiles.

Sleights of Mind

2011-06-15T03:21:00.000-07:00

Sleights of Mind by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde is the first new release that I've ever reviewed on this blog! Yay, for me. It has been released to fill the wide narrative gap between magic and science that we've all known about, but were just being too polite to mention. You see, magicians use sensory tricks to lead our brains where they want them to go, toying with our cognition so that we think we see coins disappear, or cards travel through decks, or tigers attacking Sigfried and Roy. So what do magicians have to teach us about how our brains work?

Turns out, not much. While this book is interesting to read from the standpoint of an audience member who likes to learn how magicians do their tricks, I doubt very many neuroscientists will be picking up Sleights of Mind to learn how Criss Angel confunds his audience into thinking that he's walking on water. One of my biggest issues with this book is that it does not take the complicate nature of the audience into account. When a magician redirects your attention, you know what he's doing, but you allow him to do it because it's part of the show. The same way that you suspend your disbelief when watching a movie, or laugh at things a comedian says that you wouldn't normally laugh at. This complicity is never spoken of in Sleights of Mind, I imagine, out of respect for the magicians the authors are consulting.

Full disclosure: I glossed over the second half of the book because I got bored, so they might have mentioned some time after page 200, but I was already upset that they hadn't mentioned it in one of the first few chapters. The reason that this is so important is that it informs every other aspect of the magician's hold on you. Not only does the magician require your attention, but they require your acceptance that he (or she) is performing a magic trick for you, i.e. it is in your interest that you drop your sensory defenses. This is why magicians and hypnotists can't really walk around hypnotizing and magicianing people willy-nilly.

That aside, there are some interesting things in Sleights of Mind about the way our sense memory works and how our attention span can be manipulated to change our perception. Though I could have done without the spoiler warnings every time the authors are about to reveal how a magic trick is done. Trust me, guys, nobody is skipping over the every other paragraph so they don't hear the tricks explained. In the end, I was only reading the magic trick spoilers.

I'll tell ya, the most interesting thing that I learned in Sleights of Mind was there are schools for magic, and there is even a Magic Olympics. Check out FISM! And the greatest exposing was that there could be secret societies of people who practice magic right under the noses of us Muggles, and without us ever even knowing about it. This shoddily produced infomercial will tell you everything you need to know about Sleights of Mind!

How Boggarts Really Exist and Why Dumbledore Has Cancer

2011-06-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

It always bothered me, reading Harry Potter, that the Rowling chose to set this fantasy world within the larger "real world" that we know, rather than making it some fantasy world altogether like Tolkein's Middle Earth or even Lewis Carol's Wonderland. Owl Mail will never beat E-mail, sorry. Don't care how magic they are. And try casting a protego protective spell when I'm firing automatic rounds from a AR-15 Colt rifle straight into your lightening shaped forehead scar. Our modern world would rip the Wizarding World apart, so why not just create a world where Apache Helicopters and iPhones don't exist?

The answer is a literary term called magical realism, and Rowling employs it throughout the Potter series to engage readers in discussions of deep philosophical topics that pertain to the real world even while drawing us into a complete fantasy. Magical Realism takes elements of fantasy and employs them in the real modern world, often to make a point about how we live. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis create fantasy worlds that reflect the real world, but don't take part in it. By doing both, Rowling manages to double-dip her literary wand into both the fantasy and real worlds. Often, she does this in order to engage adults as well as children, which is why the books actually manage to capture both audiences.

Take Boggarts, for instance. To a child reader, they will learn that a Boggart is a magical creature that will assume the shape of someone's greatest fear in order to chase them away from the dark places where they dwell. Boggarts are cowardly creatures, you see, and they hide in places like dark cellars and cabinets. Their true shape, nobody knows. Wizards can get rid of them by casting a Riddikulus charm, which turns them into something funny. Adult readers will understand the symbolism of the Boggart, and that it is actually a metaphor the for fear we have of dark places. Even adults may have apprehensions when entering a dark forest or a deserted mansion, but we often see our worst fears play out in our imagination. This fear is the Boggart, and it is a very real animal, often stymieing us in life and keeping us from doing important things. Riddikulus is just a ridiculous way of saying, well, "ridiculous" - and turning negative thoughts into positive ones. What happens to a Boggart after a Riddikulus charm is cast on it? Rowling never says, and this is key. Because Boggarts, i.e. our fears, are actually harmless creatures once we've revealed them to be the ridiculous notions that they are. So nothing happens to them.

Here's a picture to keep your attention:


Literary analysis can be hard. You've earned this visual stimulation.

In "The Half Blood Prince" we see that Dumbledore has a mangled and burnt hand that no longer moves. We learn later (spoilers here, read the book before you finish reading this sentence) that it happened while he was trying to destroy a Horcrux. We're not sure what it is or why, but we're given more at the end of "Deathly Hallows":

Dumbledore raised his blackened, useless hand, and examined it with the expression of one being shown an interesting curio.
"You have done well, Severus. How long do you think I have?"
Dumbledore's tone was conversational; he might have been asking for a weather forecast. Snape hesitated, and then said, "I cannot tell. Maybe a year. There is no halting such a spell forever. It will spread eventually, it is the sort of curse that strengthens over time."

The deadening of the cells in Dumbledore's hand as well as the sureness that it will eventually spread makes it clear that what Dumbledore has is the equivalent of Wizard's cancer. We may look beyond Rowling's clear advocating for Snape's mercy killing because of the extenuating circumstances in which he was killed, but we cannot overlook the fact that Dumbledore was doomed to death, and had accepted it by the end, just as Harry Potter is also forced to accept the fact that he will also die. This is a major theme in books, and it is certainly not limited to childish fantasy. These are very real world issues, and they are dealt with in a heavy but artful way.

We'll end the discussion of Harry Potter on this note: When the final book of the series was released in 2007, scores of teen crisis hotlines erupted with kids having a hard time dealing with the deaths of some of the series' pivotal characters. I remember reading this in the summation of Horror in the 2008 edition of the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones (no relation). What Harry Potter is really about is growing up, and learning what it means to become old and die. It attacks issues valid for consideration to both young people and not-so-young people. And it uses a method that entertains as much as it informs.

Great books, all.

Harry Potter vs. John McClane

2011-06-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

My problem with Harry Potter began in the first book, when Malfoy tossed Neville's Rememberal and Potter swooped on his broom to get it back for him, to which Professor McGonnagall announced "We have our new seeker!" And I thought, sheesh, favoritism much?

But this is actually a central theme in the Potter universe. That is to say: the grand design around Harry Potter's life. You see, Harry Potter doesn't really have any choices. He's bound by destiny to live up to his name, The Boy Who Lived, and to fulfill a prophesy which means he will destroy the second coming of Lord Voldemort. This makes him a relatively boring character, since he never acts but merely responds.

There are several million examples of this, but it is most apparent in his flippant relationship with Cho, who is extremely emotional and always seems to want something from Harry that he can't provide. Often their fights are caused by her overreactions to his lack of action. At one point, Hermione tells him that he has to cut his date short to meet her for something important. Sure thing, boss. Rather than properly explain, he tells his girlfriend that he has to go meet his girl-friend and walks out on the date. My point here isn't that Harry is a bad boyfriend, but that he merely responds to the actions of Cho and Hermione without really making taking any actions of his own. Hermione is the true founder of Dumbledore's Army, for with Harry gets most of the credit. Harry's name mysteriously erupts from the Goblet of Fire, and then he's coddled throughout the Triwizard Tournament and groomed secretly to win. He's made the Quidditch team captain without even asking for it. And, in the end, his final heroic act is to do nothing at all. Voldemort simply cannot overcome his fate, which is to lose.

This is not really a fault since it was clearly written intentionally to be this way. By making Harry a thoughtless puppet, Rowling creates the illusion that we, the readers, can be Harry. After all, Harry never does anything that we wouldn't do in his position. Even his most difficult decision in "Deathly Hallows", between whether to chase the Hallows or the Horcruxes, is made for him when Voldemort claims the Elder Wand. (If you don't get any of these references than you shouldn't be reading this blog.)

Rowling uses Harry as a vehicle for the reader to sympathize. Her real characters are the ones who surround Harry, and who are flawed and have personal desires and needs and triumphs and failures. Where Harry just seems to float through the series magically destined to do everything right, and to be eternally upset that his parents died before he ever got a chance to know them. His angst grows in the series, apparently to reflect his coming-of-age, but it's only ever a show. It never influences his actions in one way or another. He has a screaming match with Ron in "Deathly Hallows" which could arguably be said to cause Ron's leaving, but Ron started the argument, was wearing a cursed locket at the time, and chose to walk out. Again, Harry only responded.

Let me be clear: this is not a fault in the series. Many people love the character of Harry Potter, and with good reason. He's admirable, witty, and genuinely good-natured. I, however, do not like Harry Potter. I'm more interested in heroes to aren't destined to be heroes, but become so by triumphing over their own faults. Take John McClane for instance, from "Die Hard". He's a lousy husband trying to make right, but he's arrogant and takes too much pride in being a New York cop. He's crafty, but at the expense of common sense. When terrorists take over the building that he's in, he takes pleasure in goading them by leaving messages on their dead friends, and mocking them over the CB. These faults have consequences, and get one hostage killed and put his wife in danger. You might say that McClane is merely reacting to the situation, which is true, but he's responding in a way that none of us would which makes him much more interesting than Harry Potter.

Reverse their scenarios and you'd find that the best thing for Potter to do, stuck in a building full of terrorists and hostages, would be to try to get help while he was still hidden beneath his invisibility cloak. McClane, in Harry's shoes, would take out Death Eaters one by one in gruesome ways in order to feed his own anger, and he'd take a demented pleasure in knowing that Voldemort couldn't win. Deep down, McClane is has the same hatred and fire that the Death Eaters do, but he overcomes that with love for his wife and daughter. But when that love is threatened, McClane will stoke the fires to smote his enemies. "Priori Incantem, Mother Fuckers."

VS.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Movie Franchise

2011-06-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

     I didn't start watching the Harry Potter movies until my fiance and I began going out around "Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix", which we saw in IMAX in Atlanta. Not a bad date. I thought it was an okay flick; lots of kid's stuff, wizards and that. There was a flashy wizard battle at the end that was eye pleasing, but the story was muddled and I didn't really care about anyone. I remember the whole ad campaign featuring a witch with changing hair color named Tonks. She got more face time on the posters than she did in the film, and much of it seemed a waste. Going back and watching the other films didn't help me any. They all had this same problem. They were aesthetically popping, and the generalities of the plots made a childish kind of sense, but I still didn't see what all the fuss was about. Oh well, I thought, maybe you have to be twelve.

    Then we saw "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" at the Sundance Theater in Madison, WI, and I really began to lose my shit. Why the hell is Diagon Alley abandoned because a few Death Eaters are threatening the place? I swear, these wizards get pushed around a bit and they all up and leave over night? And how the fuck did the Weasley's get a store, and if the Death Eaters are chasing everyone else out of town then why the hell not them? Wasn't there a Ministry of Magic? What were they doing?

     I read the first two books before "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1" came out, but they didn't grab me. They were exactly the same as the movies except it took me a week to get through it instead of a few hours, and there was no CGI. At least I didn't have to sit through Emma Watson eye gouging performance, but that aside there was no difference. The reason for that is easy enough to understand. The first two are the shortest books and the longest movies, so they match up fairly well. After that, the books get longer and the movies get shorter, so more is left out.

     I recognized how crippling this phenomenon was when I read "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", because when you don't know where the Marauder's Map comes from, and its significance, it's just a prop. The Weasleys just hand it over and say, "There ya go, mate," and boom, Potter has one of the best magical items in the whole freaking magical world. Wish it were always that easy. Hey, and what about that Time Turner that McGonagall just handed to Hermione, which incidentally, is the most powerful wizarding artifact in the entire world. Forget your Sorcerer's Stones and your damn Horcruxes! You've got a time machine! You can just go back and kick mama Voldemort in the stomach a few times while she's pregnant, or ring the little brat's neck before he grows up and kills everybody!

     The book fills in all of these little plot holes that make the movies so porous and watching each movie after having read each novel was infinitely more rewarding than seeing the movie alone. This isn't to say that the movies are bad, they just require a thorough understanding of the books to be enjoyed in the way that a franchise like "Lord of the Rings" does not. I expect that the filmmakers understood that the majority of their audience would be able to make those leaps, having read the books, and they could lend more focus on getting the aesthetic qualities correct. This is why we have to see the whole Quidditch World Cup scene in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", without an explanation as to how Harry got there. The filmmakers decided that the majority of viewers would already know, and be more eager to see the World Cup than to waste precious screen time on expository dialogue. Not an altogether bad decision when you consider how successful these films have been.

   And since so much explanation has been left out of the films, I have finally surrendered and read all seven Harry Potter books this year, just in time to see the final film unfettered. I will admit that the books grant a lot more air for discussion than the movies. But we'll get to that later. Today, I just want readers to understand that there is very little value to any of the Potter films without having read their titular counterparts. You may as well be watching "White Chicks".

Here's a trailer:

Can't wait to see it in IMAX!

Be Excellent to Each Other. Party On, Dudes!

2011-06-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

"Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed."
-Karen Armstrong-

On the register line at work there is a tiny pamphlet that can fit in your wallet, and it asks if you're interested in Eternal Life. Sure, I'm interested. Inside there is a little caption that reads, "I accept Jesus Christ as my lord and savior", then a blank line for your name. On the next page there is a stamp sized certificate saying that you're in. It's that easy!

I'm not against this per se, just like I'm not against books like "The 4 Hour Body" or temporary tattoos. They're quick pint sized versions of the real thing, and they can help you wean yourself onto stricter diets or give you an idea of what an actual tattoo would look like on you. But you can't sign and keep a stamp sized certificate and be religious anymore than you can eat a bowl of red beans and be twenty pounds lighter. (Believe me, I've tried.) What "A Case for God" demonstrates is that religion is something that you have to constantly work on, just like diet and exercise. You try. You fall. You try again.

Hali and I go through cyclical periods of regular church attendance. We're not great at religion but we're constantly working toward being better at it. We've joined two Episcopal churches in the past two years, and volunteered at programs for each, but our weeks of non-attendance outnumber our weeks being there. We try to make up for it by reading diligently, but Armstrong points out that the nature of religion is based on that struggle. It doesn't matter how good of a person you are. What matters is that you're always trying to become a better person.

There is another book based on this principle which I would like to read. I heard about it on NPR, Father Gregory Boyle's "Tattoos on the Heart", which chronicles his work at Homeboy Industries, where he mentors and reforms former gang members. This was a great episode of "Fresh Air" and I actually sat in my car for twenty minutes in the bank parking lot to listen to this man talk about how one of the worst things a religion, or a political party, or a republic, or whatever can do is separate people into a "them". There is no "they" or "them", there is only "us". Sports teams are the only exception. They get a pass. Once you accept this mode of thinking, then you realize that divergence of opinion is not the problem. The problem is the inability for some denominations to accept that divergence, and to exchange in dialogue. Not argument, but dialogue. Father Boyle uses this point in reference to the gang members that he works with, but I feel that it is a healthy viewpoint in all things. We are all in this together.

I haven't read "Tattoos on the Heart" yet, so I can't give it an official endorsement, but its on my list. Right up there with "Lord of the Rings".

Who Killed 2010?

2011-05-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

First, just let me say how disappointed I am in Rockstar Games' new blockbuster, "L.A. Noire". In case you don't know, this is a game that sets you in the 40's era as a take-no-lip gumshoe on the trail of some nasty Los Angelites, and it's been widely lauded for its technical feats and its appeal to smarter gamers.

Poo poo, I say.

Here's a puzzle: I'm thinking of a number between one and ten. You can have as many guesses as you'd like to discover my number and if you get it within ten tries you're a detective. That's "L.A. Noire". The reason I've been so looking forward to this game's debut is that I've been trying to escape this mortal coil for a digital one, a soulless replica of a human being who is confined to a world which makes absolute sense and given the tight rails that countless developers, writers, and programmers have built with years of ergonomically challenged labor. Why? Because the real world is unpredictable! The real world has no rail to guide you! There's no theme that pervades it. It simply is, and I am nothing but a speck in it and that realization is all too daunting for someone as emotionally insecure as I am. And so I seek escape through movies and books and video games.

But I try to face that world. The real one. Through non-fiction writings that help to explain so many of those parts I don't get. Is there a God? An ultimate programmer; writer; director extraordinaire who has an ultimate plan for my life. The world of "L.A. Noire" is too small for me. It's writing is too shallow, and even eight square miles of recreated 1946 L.A. seems largely like window dressing to the banal investigative tools at my avatar's disposal. The imaginary world is too small, and the real world is too big. So I feel caught in limbo, working day to day so that I can find a world worthy of ducking into.

"A Case for God" by Karen Armstrong is one of the best defenses of the Christian viewpoint that I've ever read, and of all the books on this blog it is the one that has influenced me the most. In order to understand Armstrong's argument for God, you must first understand her use of the term, "God". She is not speaking of the fundamentalist God, which has been taken literally to mean a man in the sky who looks like Jesus's dad and sees all your thoughts and desires. She is speaking of God as the term for the unknowable and the omnipotent. Before fundamentalism, much of Christian doctrine was seen in this way. Biblical stories were set upon us as examples of piety and taken for lessons in moral altruism. It did not matter whether or not they actually happened. Their historical significance was never a part of the question. Armstrong makes the case that it is only in recent years that we have begun to place value on the accuracy of Biblical stories as a means of deciding whether they are worth believing in. She teaches that in today's world belief has become synonymous with faith, and that was not originally the case.

One of Thomas Aquinas's famous proofs of God's existence was that the creator of the universe was unknowable, and since that unknowable thing was God, then God must exist. When you understand God in this light, his miraculous works make sense. When you try to pin God to Biblical scripture, the idea no longer stands to scrutiny. So much of religion today attempts to place everything into a single box: to believe in God is to believe in the Bible and everything it says. Those who don't will burn for eternity while those who do will bask in the rewards of righteousness. Armstrong explains that theology exists to understand that things are not so simple we would like them to be. As technology grows, and tends to do our thinking for us, our capacity for abstract thought shrinks. We want things to be easy. We pop in the video game and we ask the programmer, "how do I be a detective?"
"Pick a number between one and ten."

And the great mystery is solved.

Can I Has Bail Out?

2010-05-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

Complete and total failure, this month.
I am ashamed to report that this entire month is a do-over in regards to financial security. I'm going to need real help if I'm going to start trying to save up for my pilgrimage to Savannah in August. I've read two books on money this month. "Money: The Missing Manual" J.D. Roth and the "Motley Fool's guide to Personal Finances", both of which helped in every logistical sense, but could not grant me the strength to take a peek at my real finances.

I hate looking at my account. 'Hate' is a real understatement here. I mean, I have deep seeded loathing of financial management that hearkens back my developmental years, which I'm sure, have something to do with my father's insistence that your bank account is a reflection of who you are. Stripped of my boyish looks, my imaginative wit, and my cockeyed way of viewing the world, I'm nothing more than three $2.65 withdrawals for coffees and cookies a day, and an absentminded $40 withdrawal for drinks at O'Charlie's on the weekend. I live beyond my means, and looking at my account is a reminder that I'm worth less than I earn. It really makes me feel terrible.
So, I avoid it.

This month, I've directed a play, gotten engaged, gotten a promotion at work (two, in fact), finished a full-length screenplay, and got my financial aid package from SCAD. All in all, not a bad month. But I haven't dared dip into that deep dark well of my bank account. And I still daren't.

Instead, I said 'Ah, fuck it' and bought a $60 video game.

Kill me.

Time is Money

2010-05-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

Money is worthless to me. I don't need two dollars; I need a cup of coffee. I need my laundry washed, but I do not need a buck, twenty-five. I don't need gas, but I do need to get places quickly. So I need a car, and that car needs gas, and I need money to get the gas to make my car take me places quickly.

You get my point yet? I don't work for money. I work for the things I need. The source of my mismanagement of money is because I can't put a proper value on money. I don't like money. I like my plastic debit card even less. These are all just obstacles for me to get my two-dollar cup of coffee in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night. Total: six-dollars a day. I don't need six dollars.

So, I'm standing there at the cafe of the bookstore trying to think of some banter to engage in with Tray, the eccentric host of the Joe Mugg's coffee. I defer to Kate Goodman's book, "Improvisation of the Spirit", where she says that good banter doesn't have to be clever, just different. I never used to engage in banter because I would spend way too much time trying to write it in my head. Now I just go with whatever comes out of my mouth. "You know," I say, "if I stand here long enough waiting for you to make my coffee the money I'm earning on the clock will cancel out the money I'm spending on the coffee, so go ahead and take your time."

Tray hands me the coffee, cuts his eyes and whispers what he always whispers to me, "Villain." I still don't have a good reply to this. I say, "have a good one, man" and walk away. End scene.

Today, JP, a math major at the local college, hands me a chart on the times that I would have to stand waiting in order for my time on the clock to cancel out my purchase. Say, the coffee is $1.55 and I make $7.25 per hour. I would have to banter with Tray for about 12 minutes for the coffee to be free. That's over ten minutes of improvisation, and witty banter. I don't have that much material.

But what really warped my brain cells was that JP had converted money, which is worthless to me, into time, which is my most precious commodity. It makes complete sense! If Time = Money, then Money must also = Time! (This is how bad at math I am. That was a revelation to me.) Every purchase I make can be measured in time instead of cash.

A $6.00 cheeseburger meal from Wendy's = 50 minutes of work time
A $15.00 movie = 2 hours and eight minutes of work time
A $40.00 night out at O'Charly's with my girlfriend = 6 hours of work time

In this equation, you can really see how much the time adds up. A day that I'm off could easily cancel out a day that I worked. Since I generally get two days off a week, those could easily cancel two of the days that I work, leaving me with only three actual work days. Then there's the bills. My $200 dollar car payment takes me 27 hours to work off. That's a full week of work.

Oh, and all of that's before taxes. My tax rate is around 15%, which means I'm really getting paid about $6.17 per hour, which means that $1.55 cup of coffee costs me 15 minutes of work time.

This begs the question: how much is your time really worth to you?

You are a vicious bastard April, and, uh, I'm glad you're dead!

2010-05-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

This month has been absolute hell on my living room floor. We've been going through stacks of books for Bookreview.com, mountains of dog toys because there just isn't time to play with her as much, lots of pacing back and forth about finances, and the coming voyage to Savannah. Oh, and then there was that fire.

We finally had some relaxation time and I had to go and screw it up by leaving a candle going in the living room which set her purse on fire, which set the coffee table on fire. I came in and saw the flames licking our big plasma screen television (my prized symbol of American middle class status) and without hesitation I grabbed our dog's bed and pounced on it. I crushed some glass that was in the purse, and burned holes in our carpet and the dog bed. The coffee table is now horribly scarred, and the purse was damaged beyond recognition. The plasma screen's okay.

So Hyman's book got taken off the list because frankly, it sucked. It was the dieting equivalent of a total rectal examination that lasts six weeks. If you can avoid it, you should. Philip K. Dick's books came down due simply to the lack of time. But I did read Sarah Vowell's book, "The Wordy Shipmates", and Harry Lorayne's "Memory Book". Both of which have changed my life for the better.

Sarah Vowell is a total babe to me. She's the kind of person who can look at the dark side of the human soul and give it a big hug. Which is really what it needed in the first place. (Just ask Darth Vader.) And the stories that she tells revolving around the lives of characters like John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and John Cotton broaden your view of America's founders, and make them come alive to you. She does this by focusing so intensely on these few pivotal characters and giving them a contemporary nod so that you understand how they saw things. Her book is really an extended essay, revolving around the theme of what makes America the "city upon a hill".

When she uses quotes like, "Of whom much is given, much is required", or "We do not imitate - for we are a model to others", I feel a sudden glare off of future memes that I will bend my eye toward in the coming months as I head for Savannah. I am gripped by the pioneer spirit, and ready to make my own colonies. I will be leaving my girlfriend behind for a number of years, sending back letters during the voyage, and building what will become our future together. This is exciting and frightening at the same time, and it's only months away.

I'm excited about May. June and July, I'm don't care for so much. But I've really got a good feeling about May. That's because this month I'm going to make ends meet in more ways than one. We're going to be reading for finances, which not only means connecting the dots between my film school stuff and my blog stuff, but it also means confronting my financial fears. That's important.

I'm going to be reworking this blog in the near future to incorporate a more cinema centered tone.
Be ready for that.

City on the Hill

2010-04-23T04:57:00.000-07:00

In 1630, John Cotton spoke to the Puritans leaving England for the New World aboard a ship called the Arbella. He told them, in not so many words, not to worry. He told them that they were doing the right thing, even though they weren't so sure. It must have been scary for the young pilgrims, promised only a nation of woods and natives, to leave the civilization they'd known all of their lives.

I think that my real point in telling you that story was that I remembered John Cotton, John Winthrop, the Arbella, and the subsequent sermon "A Monument of Christian Charity" in which Winthrop tells his new people that they will build a "City on the Hill". A little known fact is this: Winthrop also sent a letter back to England saying the exact opposite, asking for the king's blessings, and essentially saying "never mind us, we're just folks in the woods". (Nevermind that we will later kick your English ass during the American Revolution, and become the world's foremost superpower, we're just trying to build a few fuckin' cabins, man!)

This is all out of Sarah Vowell's book, "The Wordy Shipmates", which actually has about as much to do with memory as Steve Pinker's book, "The Stuff of Thought", did. But it's about words and facts, and it's interesting to read. My memory skills have much improved, as I've learned the Link System of memory, the Peg System, and the Phonetic Alphabet. Which, when you remember to apply them, all do wonders for helping you recollect things like: The Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1630 headed by John Winthrop, or The third amendment protects you from quartering soldiers, or I left my keys on the entertainment stand next to the empty Cheese-Its box.

The thing is, you have to remember to apply them. And that actually turns out to be the hardest part, since applying is a lot of work and make for slow reading. Still, a lot of other things have occurred this month that are un-reading related. Namely, my visit to SCAD. Afterward, rather than continuing to diligently work toward improving my memory, I went and got a bunch of books on movie-making. Not to mention the fact that the majority of my reading time has been occupied with books for Bookreview.com

Nevertheless, we have one more week in the month of April, and I will use it towards rounding out Harry Lorayne's memory techniques, reading "The Wordy Shipmates", and doing however many more reviews I can do. Next month, the reading load will be considerably lighter, and my entries will be farther in-between. We'll be using our new memory skills in conjunction with our social skills we developed last month in order to start sorting out finances. That's right: it's all about the Benjamens next month!

"Hey guys, let me show you my diseases."

My Mind Broke. Poopy.

2010-04-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

Look to your right.

No, not your right, the right side of the screen. You'll notice that Mark Hyman's "UltraMind Solution" is no longer there. I took it down because the diet was essentially this: salad and fish and fruit. Not that this bothers me, but the whole six week plan was a single page spread with a checklist that Hyman wants people to copy, I guess. Or download a whole separate book from his website.

Also, I took a few of his diagnostics tests and didn't really fall under any of the conditions necessary for being in need of any real treatment. Basically, my plan should be to eat healthier, not to starve myself. I did not remove Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought" however, because I really enjoyed the kind of dissection of language presented in that book. And I have looked at word use in an entirely different way since reading it. I may even pick it up again in time. So that's a keeper.

The main reason that I haven't lived up to my reading list this month is because the book reviews are flying at me faster than I can handle them. It's ridiculous. I've done three so far this week, but I just got two more in the mail. I have four more to finish this week before I start opening more packages. (Of which there are eight) But at least I'm starting to pull ahead of the customer complaints.

You Need a New Johnson Rod

2010-04-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Can we talk mechanics for a second?

No, this isn't about your car. Yes, it's about your memory. Just bare with me.

So, you go to this mechanic and he's telling you some shit about your car and you just know he's trying to rape you. You just know it. "That little clicking noise we were looking at for you turns out to be a lack of power feed to your main auxiliary unit and any second it could explode so it's a good thing you brought it in here because we need to get that unit replaced ASAP," (you figure that he figures you'd think he's former military, but you know he just watches a lot of 24. You're no stooge.) "It'll only be a couple grand. It's not cheap, but you're lucky, because if you had driven this thing another mile you'd need a whole new car, plus you'd be dead."

Yes, mechanics are crooks. They're out to get you. The reason for this is that it's an easy exchange of goods and services for money, only you know that the mechanic knows a lot more than you about your car. When you go to the doctor, of course, things are not so simple. First of all, the stakes are much higher because you can always get a new car, but you've only got one body. Secondly, you have a health care provider through your work so you've basically already paid for whatever the doctor is going to do. This makes the exchange quite opposite. "That mole has been there since infancy and it's really benign so I don't see any reason to mess with it."
"Damn it, Doc. If there's even a .01% chance that it's cancerous than you need cat scan me and throw me on the surgical table. I'm ready. Let's do it now! Git er' done, damn it! That's what we say! Git er' Goddamn done!"

This phenomenon is known as "More is Not Always Better", and is one of the many contributors to our nation's rising cost of health care. You see, as more and more procedures are developed for smaller and smaller things (ADHD, depression, back pain, etc) we pressure our doctors to do more things about them. And since Doctors live in fear of lawsuits, not to mention they get paid more for the procedures they do, they do more and more things. This means that insurance companies pay more and more money, and premiums get higher and higher.

Which brings me to doctor Mark Hyman, M.D. and his book, "The UltraMind Solution", and my overall point which is this: what people don't know makes a HUGE impact on industry. That doesn't mean that you need to know everything, but you do need to strive to be more world savvy when it comes to health care, car maintenance, computers, etc. Look for the alternative route, but don't lock yourself into any one road either. I have a lot of skepticism when it comes to alternative medicine, mainly because I don't know anything.

This month is about optimizing brain power and memory, and this is one of the few books I've found to suggest that you can do so by changing your diet. That's an interesting concept, but Hyman dedicates a large portion of his book to explaining in acute medical jargon how it works. Which is great, if I could understand it. What I do understand is that it's a "miracle cure", which I don't buy. For all the detail that he pours into the doctoral portions of the book, he leaves out so much in the case studies, the stuff I actually understand.

All of his (Clayton) symptoms were being treated with seven different medications prescribed by five different doctors. These included Ritalin for ADHD, allergy medicine, and inhalers for his asthma and hives, acid-blocking medication for his stomach problems, and painkillers for headaches.

Clayton and his mother were diligent and determined to make changes. At his two-month follow-up visit, Clayton had discontinued all medications, including Ritalin, antihistamines, bronchodilators, steroid inhaler, Tylenol, and Advil.

There isn't much detail about how these changes occur, only that they do. Start dieting and poof, they're gone. You're better. Sounds a little like snake oil to me.

Still, I felt the same way about Harry Lorayne and his methods have proven themselves to be helpful time and time again. And Hyman seems to know his stuff, even if I can't tell if he's complete BSing or not. The reviews are good, and his method is simple enough. It's basically a plan to eat healthier, which can't hurt, right? So what do I have to lose?

BTW

2010-04-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

A small amendment to my two previous posts:

I like "The Stuff of Thought"! It's a captivating read and infinitely interesting. But it's not something that you can shoot through. It needs to be read and studied, and you have to draw your own conclusions. The ultimate issue I have with it is that it's overall point is to look closer at the way we use language in order to understand our behavior, and you understand that point after his lengthy introduction. After that, it's lessons in verb conjugation, tense usage, and the transformation of social language. These are things that you need to memorize to know, and even after that you're not likely to use that knowledge unless you're a linguist.

I've been a little upset at myself for setting down the book and moving on. Part of me wants to sit down with it and learn it, just so that I'll have the knowledge. "Maybe this will help me write dialogue," I thought, "maybe I can expand some of its principles into life lessons. Like turning phrases so that they have stronger implications," and these things maybe true, but it would take a lot more than a single reading to understand how to apply this knowledge. And it doesn't speak well to our problem of memory.

Perhaps after I've learned how to retain information, I'll return to it. As it is, I've already forgotten most of what I read.

The Stuff of NOT! (Part 2)

2010-04-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

    Okay.
    Sorry about the rant.
    I called Best Western. Fixed everything.

    I keep getting into the subject of each chapter in "The Stuff of Thought" only to wonder when Pinker is going to make his ultimate point. In Chapter 8, for instance, when he talks about politeness, and how our language is in constantly rearranging itself in order to keep the talker and the talkee from "losing face" he never demonstrates the real world value of understanding this concept. It's wonderfully interesting to know that the reason we open a conversation is with an apologetic request for forgiveness "Excuse me", but how does knowing that help me?

    And you may not think that this is important, but without any real world value, I'm not likely to retain the information. Just like I can remember nearly everything Neil Strauss taught me about the art of Huna because it helped me establish a stronger frame around myself, I won't remember any of this unless I know what to do with it. And that isn't to say that there aren't applications for this material, only that Pinker doesn't give them to you. You have to find them yourself.

   It's interesting to note that a fragile social system like say, High School, which is bent on saving face, reputation, and honor is fertile grounds for a culture of overcomplicated politeness. You hear this when high-schoolers end everything in an upturned question, "Um, Mr. Jones? The answer is four?" Nobody wants to take a firm stand on anything because they don't want to lose face by being wrong. It becomes almost an epidemic, "So, um, do you like, um, wanna meet up after school or something?" "I'm going to go play video games? ... or something?"

   I committed the faux pas last night when I was wishing goodnight to my co-workers, instead of saying the cultural staple, "drive safe!", I said, "don't die on the way home!" And my co-worker, Jessica, stopped and looked at me in utter confusion and said, "Why would you say that?"
   I froze in horror. Honestly, I just don't like cultural convention. I wanted to say something more memorable. I shot too wide apparently.

   You see, essentially, "Drive safe!" and "Don't die on the way home!" mean the same things. Except that our social fabric is not used to treating the words "death" or "die" lightly. We fear the utter mentioning of the word as a kind of subconscious evocation of death itself. I was almost certain I could hear her thinking as she climbed into her truck, "Great, what if I do die on the way home now? I'll bet he'll feel pretty horrible." Which is to say that I wouldn't feel any less horrible if I had simply said, "Drive safe!"

   So knowing the conventions and social parameters of language is important, but it's a lot of work to extricate that knowledge from what Steven Pinker gives us in "The Stuff of Thought". He's more interested in the knowledge itself. Just like my algebra teacher was. That makes it difficult to care about unless of course I plan on teaching linguistics. Which I don't.

The Stuff of NOT!

2010-04-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

I'm about done with Steve Pinker's book, "The Stuff of Thought". Not because it's bad, but because it's boring. Which is sad, because it's subject matter is far from boring, and Pinker has so much to say that it could easily fill several volumes with books on this subject - (Other books by Pinker: Language Learnability and Language Development, Learnability and Cognition, The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules - get my point?)

What "The Stuff of Thought" actually lacks is real world application. It's like when I was taking algebra in the fifth grade and I asked our teacher when we were ever going to have to use this stuff and she (quite stupidly) said, "if you ever become an algebra teacher, you'll need it." This pissed me off. Apparently she thought I was trying to be a wise-ass and decided to respond in kind, but even that's no excuse. Kids are allowed to be immature. Teachers should be above that. Even so, I was asking a completely legitimate question, "why do I need to know how to solve for x?"

Now I'm older, and I can think of a thousand different answers that might have satisfied my thirteen-year-old self more than "if you ever become an algebra teacher", which since I knew that I'd never become an algebra teacher was the same answer as "no reason at all, little boy", or "because we hate you, child". She might have said, "You need to learn problem solving, which is what algebra is. You may not need algebra specifically as an adult, but you'll always be confronted with problems, and you'll have to rely on what you know to solve them. So if you know that y is 2, then how might you solve for x?" Or she might have said, "It has nothing to do with algebra at all, but about demonstrating an ability to learn, to follow orders, and to do proper work like you'll eventually have to do someday for some company that you've never heard of. Since we can't teach you how to properly assemble a carburetor because you all won't become mechanics, or review customer option forms for an insurance company, we teach you something abstract like algebra. Something that will be easy for you to abandon later." Or she could have just told the truth and said, "You will consult vast financial obligations in your future in which you'll need at least a rudimentary knowledge of algebra. The more you grasp now, the easier it will be to figure out the percentage of interest rates for credit cards, student loans, and car payments, how much electricity will cost you per month, how much you stand to lose on the new tax bill, can you afford another child, or how will a couch fit into the square footage of your living room. When will you need algebra? Please. Life is algebra!"

All of this, she might have said. But because of her smart ass answer I resolved never to learn algebra, and to this day I can't find it in myself to care enough about my bank account to check it daily or to regard my paycheck stubs. Steve Pinker writes with same assumption that these things are interesting without making any real regard for their higher purpose. That's make is hard to care, even though I actually do care.

Sorry, I've got to go now. Writing this reminded me to double check my account balance and I just realized that the hotel double charged me for the weekend in Savannah. Thanks alot, Mrs. Hancock.

Big Woop.

2010-04-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been remiss. In trying to learn how to memorize things so fast I've nearly completely abandoned last month's work. I continually forget to talk about other people's interests, leading them to dismiss the fact that I can now memorize the serial number on the back of my girlfriend's computer, or the ISBN to a one dollar item (0840019884, btw), because I'm anxious to show it off. People that liked me last month have interrupted me in mid-sentence to go stock shelves. Leaving me to wonder, am I the only one interested in this?

The answer is clearly no, but when I show people these things they get the mistaken notion that I'm somehow demonstrating their inefficiency. It's unfair, certainly, to make the assumption that everything I say is about them, when really I'm only talking about my own new found ability. I feel like Spiderman, having just been bitten by a radioactive spider and woken up suddenly chiseled, and I run to work to say, "Hey, everybody, look at how chiseled I am! Isn't it amazing? And check it out, I can walk on walls too, and lift a fuckin' car!" And everybody just nods and thinks, wow, he's really a prick, huh?

Baffling, isn't it?
But that's human nature. Anytime you talk to someone, they immediately factor their own relation to your topic, even if it has nothing to do with them. I do it too, but the truth is that I want everyone to like me so much that I listen to their plight because I feel honored to be talked to. Most people don't have my inefficient sense of value, so they factor themselves into your topic in other ways. For instance, if I mention how much I like cucumbers, my girlfriend will instantly mention how much she hates them, as if I had issued some kind of challenge to her. I like cucumbers, ergo cucumbers are good, ergo you are bad for not liking them. When really I just want you to know that I like cucumbers and I'm excited about eating them and I want to share that with you.

Perhaps the problem is with my phrasing. I've cut the other person out of the equation by merely talking to them about memory techniques, such as when I was talking in the back of the store with one of the managers and I mention how great my memory had become since studying Harry Lorayne's book. He instantly, almost defensively, came back with, "I've always learned to remember things by doing them over and over again. I memorized certain ISBN numbers just because I've typed them into the computer so many times."

I felt like saying, "You're missing my point. I'm not excited because I memorized an ISBN number. I'm excited because I learned how to memorize an ISBN number." But that doesn't even really get at my main point. Because anybody knows how to memorize an ISBN number, but few people know how to do so effectively. In one reading. With no repetition. I've learned this system, you see, and now I can memorize any number and I want to share that you, not because I think you're inadequate, but because I'm excited about it.

This isn't like I just found Jesus or something. Or I just discovered I was a republican and I want to tell you about it. This isn't something that people have strong opinions about. (At least I thought it wasn't.) It's not some private secret, its just a neat trick for remembering numbers. Like a magic trick. Almost pointless except that it's infinitely useful. But I feel like I'm stepping on people's egos, and rather than admit to it, they're just pretending that I'm boring them. "That's great, Eric. We'll talk about later," one co-worker said to me. Then later, as I tried to illustrate my process for remembering the word urticaria, they just gave me a rude thumbs up and walked away.

So this month seems to be running counter to the things that I've learned last month. Even Hali seems dismissive of the fact that I can now memorize entire grocery lists and the names of all of those people I shook hands with last month. Is it really that boring? Am I that far off base that my interest in demonstrating a marked improvement of memory after reading only half of Harry Lorayne's book is a miraculous testimonial that anyone can have a better memory if they want one? Or that it's even interesting that I could make such a vast improvement after only a week of study? Does everyone really find this boring, or is it an issue of ego?

Basically, it doesn't matter. I've decided to close the curtains on this experiment to the open eye of the public until I can demonstrate this power in a more mature way. Say, by remembering a license plate number of a drunk driver, or remembering the names of book titles and authors around the store, or the confirmation number to our hotel or something. If nobody wants to see it than I won't show it to them. Instead, I'll continue last month's practice of talking in terms of the other person's interests, although I run into the problem of losing material fast. How many times can I ask about someone's dogs, or about their niece? Or how was the big test they've been studying for? I feel like a broken record. Where do I go from there?

The God of Materialism (or... How I Memorized My Grocery List Today)

2010-04-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

     Here's the story:

    We were walking to the local Wal-Mart today when I began stripping off all of my clothes and washing my naked body with razorblades. The pain was incredible as you might imagine, so I threw my mangled body into a nearby lidless can of shaving cream. Hali was worries and rushed over to help me, but it was too late. The only way to extricate myself was to put the lid on and push in the top plunger. I came out onto the sidewalk as a pile of thick red hair conditioner. Hali wept over my liquefied body.

As she did a strange thing happened. Tiny, cheeping yellow chickens came by and bathed in me. As they rubbed me through their feathers, waiting the required period for me to replenish their unique shine, a ravaging Tortuga (my dog) came billowing through the parking lot. She was insane, her muscles bulging with growth hormone and steroids that they've been giving her at Hali's parents house. (She's staying there while Hali and I prepare for our trip to Savannah this weekend.) She grabbed up the baby chickens in her mouth and tossed them back and forth, breaking their bones. When Hali went to stop her, she tore into the velvet curtains that adorned the windows of the Wal-Mart shopping center. Something had to be done.

    It was the Wal-Mart workers who came to our rescue. Two of them, dressed in dark blue jump suits and black goggles, set to repairing the window that Tortuga had just jumped through with a spray-on chemical sealant. They blotted out the sunlight with a thick foam that quickly hardened. Four other similarly dressed employees armed with small cows tucked under their arm (I say "small" cows because the cows weren't "baby" cows, but actual full grown cows the size of a bagpipe) surrounded the rampaging dog. They played these bagpipe cows by squeezing their utters into the dog's face, who quickly lapped up the fresh milk and fell asleep.

    Then the employees set to work. They chopped up the dog because apparently she is low in carbs, and began cooking and packaging it for the shelves. "Tortuga Meat" goes for about six bucks a pound! They ate while they worked, until eventually their eyeballs fell into their sockets and their heads rolled off of their bodies and onto the linoleum floor. That's when the monkeys came.

    The monkeys were worse than anybody. They began slicing the heads of the employees up into bread length slices and shoving deli meat in between them to prepare for a trip that the monkeys had been planning. They wanted to go to China, and they needed food for the journey. So they grabbed some bags of chips ("Chip's Chips", so named for my Uncle Chip Jones, not to be confused with the famous pitcher, Chipper Jones) and some snacks and began their journey. Since they were unable to visit China because the only way out of the Wal-Mart was sealed, they set up camp in the Asian Foods section of the store instead. They built Styrofoam huts and lived pleasantly in them until one day the courageous Ham, a pig in a trench coat, came searching for them.

    The monkeys were no match for Ham. He drilled wooden stakes into their hearts, and Wal-Mart was soon rid of the infestation. The people of Wal-Mart were so pleased by Ham's courage and bravery that they awarded him all the cookies he could ever eat, and lined the crest of his coat with grape packets like metals on a general's uniform. They hired servants for him, who cleaned him well, paying extra special attention to the cheese in between his toes. Then the people of Wal-Mart promptly tossed him into their meat machine and ground him into pepperoni. Welcome to life among the gods.

     I thought of this story while Hali and I were driving from the Village Deli where we'd just eaten lunch to the Wal-Mart where we were going to pick up some groceries. The reason is because I was employing Harry Lorayne's Link Memory System, in which each food item is linked both the item before and the item after it so that I remember the entire list in sequence.

     Of course, my writer's mind made it important for the story, as absurd as it is, to have a theme. (In this case, the consumption of meat). I also felt it necessary to give the story a beginning, middle, and end although none are really needed in the Link System process. JP at work, uses more of a tour system, whereby he puts the images into different rooms in his house and imagines going through them one by one, as if he were on a ride. My images are gruesome where his are more cartoonish. It really becomes a display for your creativity and imagination.

     The first item on the list was bodywash, so I pictured myself in the parking lot washing myself. The second item was razorblades, so I imagined I was using razorblades. You can see the items very clearly in the story. When the employees' eyeballs fall into their heads and their heads fall off I imagine cereal, because that whole scene is very "surreal". And when the monkey's make Styrofoam huts in the Asian Foods section, I think of Stir Fry.

     Putting the entire list into my head this way didn't take more than twenty minutes, and I must say that it was a lot of fun putting this wild and grotesque story together in the process. Afterwards, I was so proud of myself that I called my brother and my Mom to announce to them that I, who had no short term memory to speak of two weeks ago, had just memorized an entire grocery list.

    Now, I can go through this story quite quickly to list all of the items on the list:

1. Bodywash
2. Razors
3. Shaving Cream
4. Conditioner
5. Cheap Dog Toys (Cheep! Get it?)
6. Curtains
7. Window Sealant
8. Milk
9. Low Carb Lunches
10. Cereal
11. Bananas (hence the crazy monkeys)
12. Low Carb Bread
13. Lunch Meat
14. Individual Bags of Chips
15. Snacks for this Weekend's Trip
16. Stir Fry
17. Hamburger Steak
18. Grape Packets
19. Cookies
20. Cheese
21. Pepperoni

I'm Dying to Know, Man, Does The Carpet Match the Drapes?

2010-04-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

     Steven Pinker's book, The Stuff of Thought, is a brain trip. So much of it ties in so well with what we spoke about last month that I've decided to lay off the memory stuff for awhile and speak about it. (I'm memorizing numbers like a machine now, by the way.)

      I need to frame this around a conversation that I had with my girlfriend last month about why it is so important for kids to walk into a club or a gym or a grocery store armed to the nines with written routines, openers, negs, and the whole shebang if they want to get a girl's number. She just couldn't understand. "Why do all of that shit?" She asked, "just ask them out. What's the big deal?"

   "What's the big deal?!" I said, "It's a HUGE deal!" Although for the life of me I couldn't think about why. I mean, why is it a big deal? Why does Neal Strauss have to write books and come up with an alter ego for himself and create a frame that's larger than life just to get a woman's phone number? A lot of it has to do with a guy's self confidence, but the other half has to do with semantics.

     In "Rules of the Game" for instance, Strauss uses a Chris Rock routine to illustrate what women hear every time a guy walks up to them at a club and asks what her name is, or what her favorite movie is, or what brand of aftershave she thinks he's wearing. It doesn't matter what he says because all she hears is, "How about some dick?" Anything that the guy says is only surface structure for the real question, "How about some dick?" The guy's job is to come up with ways of disguising what he wants so well that the female is so impressed that she gives him what he really wanted in the first place. Her number, or a date, or a one night stand, or in some cases, a relationship.

     Pinker illustrates that we really do this in every situation, not just where it comes to male and female mating rituals (where the tension is so thick that you can easily see how these phenomena play out). He gives the example, "If you could pass the guacamole, that would be awesome." An unbelievable banal and utterly common phrase- a whimperative - which is issued under the presupposition that the hearer will comply. Sure, they're going to give the guacamole if you ask for it, but you can't just say "give me the guacamole". Just like you can't say "how about some dick?" Here's Pinker:

     The way out of this dilemma is to couch your request as a stupid question ("Can you...?), a pointless rumination ("I was wondering if...?"), or some other blather that is so incongruous the hearer can't take it at face value. She does some quick intuitive psychology to infer your real intent, and at the same time she senses that you have made an effort not to treat her as a factotum.

You'll recognize the vocabulary word from yesterday, and you should see in your head a handyman writing facts on a totem pole, if you don't know the meaning of it already. So now we see the importance of constructing elaborate surface structure over simple whimperatives. And how the deeper the request (how about some dick?) the more elaborate that construction must be.

     We are all players in the game of everyday conversation and the struggle for dominance in simple dialogue. Even an ill mannered hooligan will ask you when you come back from your date if "the carpet matches the drapes", which is cleverly crafted scaffolding around the question, "did you have sex?" He really doesn't care if her carpet matches her drapes, or even what he pretends to be caring about; if the hair on her head is the same color as the hair between her legs. What he cares about is whether or not you could answer that question because you saw it, and if you did see it, then you must have had intercourse, right? This is really a phenomenal construction, which is why it is so overused and now completely cliche.

    The job of a good writer, and a good pickup artist, and a good conversationalist, is to come up with new and elaborate structures to house the same tired rhetoric.

    Now, are you going to eat that guacamole or not?

Handy Man Reads Facts on a Totem Pole

2010-04-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

    There's a great Lynchian dynamic that comes with memorization techniques, and I'm sick with embarrassment that I didn't notice it before. Rather than learning things by rote, or repetition, the way I've always done it (or not done it, as it were) it's easier to separate items into a conglomerate of pictures, which are by their very nature absurd. A handy man reading facts off of a totem pole, for instance, is an absurdist image to say the least. But it helps me to remember that the word factotum is heft synonym for handy man.

     Here's an example of a vocabulary list that I wrote and memorized yesterday, along with their corresponding memory pictures. Read it, and picture each one in your head. Get a clear picture of it. Then see if you remember the meaning later. You'll amaze yourself.

Sobriquet - a nickname; I think of somebody calling someone by their nickname, the man is offended by the name. He calls out, "so be quiet!" only it comes out "so bree kay", which is the pronunciation of the word.

Mytonymy - this one is easy. My-tony-me, parts of the word give you a hint about what it means since it actually means to use a part of something to refer to the whole thing. The famous example is "lend me your ear", which really means "lend me your attention". Ear is used to represent the entirety of your attention.

Peduncle - is a plant, a flower. I imagine paying an uncle with plant seeds instead of money.

Fealty - means loyalty. I imagine I'm bowing down to worship a giant cup of tea. I'm caressing the porcelain as if it were the only porcelain in the world and therefore priceless. I'm loyal, you see.

Rapacity - means greed. A DJ skipping a rap record with a tiny city on it. He owns the city and forces its citizens to give him all their money. Greed.

Saturnine - means gloomy and sad. I sat on a number nine and it stabbed me in the rear. Now I'm sad.

Castigate - means to scold. This one is easy. You were scolded and punished by being cast out of the gates of the city.

Litany - a prayer or chant. This one, I just know so I didn't associate anything with it. Make your own image for litany.

Execrate - means to be angry, or show anger. I'm shoving eggs in a crate, and they won't fit, and I'm darned-tootin' mad about it.

Sycophant - someone who over flatters. I'm sick of this giant ant following me and telling me how pretty I am.

   Erudite - a learned individual. A reader-ite.

   Abeyance - a temporary suspension. Abe Lincoln on a wire suspended over a city street. The wire is about to break (it's temporary). Sorry, Abe.

   Sambar - a deer with pointed antlers. A candy bar with the word SAM on it. It's shaped like a chocolate deer with pointed antlers.

   Olfactory - pertaining to smell. And old factory that's produces smells.

   Colligate - to put in a particular order. To collect in front of a gate.

   Agglutinate - to thicken. A glue I ate.

   Effete - this one, I'll admit, I forgot. I didn't properly put the picture in my head. I just looked it up and it means to lose character, or to lose vitality. So I'll picture somebody with no feet. They've been de-feeted. Even the word has no feet, it's e-feet, rather than de-feet. It's lost its D.

   I only read those words for the first time yesterday. All that repetition stuff we did in school was a crock.

Mind/Matters

2010-04-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still working out exactly what this blog is supposed to be about. Last month was about the vague conception of power, and all of its forms. Richard III's rise to power, Neil Strauss power over women, Robert Greene's laws of power, Niccolo Machievelli's power over governance, Dale Carnegie's social power, and Frank Lloyd Wright's lack of power over himself. The truth is, becoming a World Savvy Reader is all about power, so we really aren't leaving that arena as we move into April's theme: Mind Power.

What we're really doing is building a skill set that will be vital to the success of our ambitions. Look at it as the R&D department of a company. NUMMI, for instance, was a joint venture of two corporate giants in the 80s, Toyota and General Motors. Although they were savage competitors, each one needed something that the other had. Toyota wanted to build cars in America and GM wanted to attain the quality of Toyota's cars.

The solution was NUMMI, a car manufacturing plant in California dedicated to teaching other GM plants the kind of teamwork that made the Japanese such great workers. It might have saved GM too, if not for the slow adoption of its principles. It took almost twenty years for the rest of GM's plants to begin closing in on NUMMI's production performance, and by then it was too late. NUMMI was shut down yesterday. GM went bankrupt last year. Toyota, which apparently contracted GM's venereal disease during their brief and bitter affair, is now taking some massive PR hits that you've no doubt read about. You can hear the full NUMMI story here.

The point is, NUMMI was an experiment for both companies that was successful. It was risky for both sides, costing a lot of time and money without the benefit of immediate returns. That's the whole purpose of R&D, to venture out and fill those underlying gaps that have always kept you down. It's essential that you fill those holes in order to optimize production. Neil Strauss refers to them as 'sticking points' in PUA (Pickup Artist) terminology, but they can apply to everything. The sticking point I most encountered last month was my inability to memorize critical routines and openers to use when contacting new people. My mind jumps all over the place, making it extremely difficult to land solidly when telling a story or listening to others.

We're dedicating April to developing a new manufacturing plant in our heads. Combining the skills of the last two months with the works of a Harry Lorayne (the "Yoda" of memory), the unfortunately named Mark Hyman, M.D. and his Ultramind Solution, as well as Steve Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought". We're also covering our literary bases with some Phillip K. Dick science fiction and Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates". Time to get wordy.

Gotcha!

2010-04-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

    I can remember attending Creekside Elementary before my little brother was born. I don't have a lot of memories from before Kevin, because after he came along he was my entire world. But I do have this one:

    At Creekside, there was this program called Gotcha! which awarded kids for doing good deeds around the campus. If a teacher caught you doing good deeds they would tap you on the shoulder, you'd turn around doe-eyed, and you'd get a small laminated ticket. With that ticket you could go to the office at lunch time or after school if you didn't have to catch the bus and you could use it to buy any number of wonderful items.

    I can't remember the hallways of the school I went to, and I can't recall the color of the building, or even any of my friends. But I remember that rack with all of the goodies on it. It looked just like the kind you'd see at a convenience store, on the counter where you paid. Except those displays are supposed to be in convenience stores. They're there to entice you to buy a little something extra. They're a gag. A con. A trick for April Fools. They didn't belong in the principal's office of an elementary school.

    I wanted a Gotcha! so bad that I made every arrangement a six year old can make to get caught doing a good deed. If someone fell down, I looked around to make sure a teacher was watching before I helped them up. I pulled desk chairs out for everybody. I stopped coloring on the walls. I put my hands in my lap. I remember other people getting Gotchas for the most trivial things, like holding the door open for someone or letting them have their space in the lunch line. It was maddening!

   Then one day, as we were filing out of the classroom for lunch I happened to be last in line. That meant that it was my job to turn off the light and close the door to the class room. High above the light switch there was a golden hook with all of the different colored laminated Gotchas hanging like a set of keys. I turned off the light, which I had to reach on my tippy toes to get to, and then I went and took the teacher's rolling chair and pushed it over to the door frame. I shimmied up onto the chair and stole a Gotcha! Then I went to lunch.

    The irony of it hit me like gust of wind on my way up to the office after school. It was perhaps the first time that I understood irony, and maybe that's why I remember it so well. I had done something bad in order to be rewarded for doing something good. What was the harm? Nobody was hurt.

    Still, this felt so much worse than if I had hurt someone. I had disgraced myself and there was nobody there to see the wound. This was a private torment and I could never tell anybody what I'd done to get the Gotcha, and I couldn't feel good about getting whatever prize I was to take. There was nobody to make me feel better about having taken the Gotcha. The real prize wasn't what was in the office, but what came with getting the Gotcha. The affirmation of what kind of person you were. Having stolen the Gotcha, it had the reverse effect. The laminated slip only laughed at me. It reminded me that I was a failure. I had tried so hard to get one before that I missed the point entirely. Doing good is its own reward.

    I thought that selecting my prize would make me feel better, and I chose a bottle of bubbles rather than a Snickers bar even though I really wanted the Snickers. I thought the bubbles would last longer. They didn't. I left the bottle on the porch when I got home and never played with them. Man, I really wanted the Snickers.

End Game

2010-04-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

    Power is really a useless word. Like Love. It implies so many things that it really implies nothing at all. What this month has been about is social dynamics. I've been throwing myself furiously into the air of open conversation in order to prepare myself for the coming trials of film school at SCAD.

    You see, when I was in high school I never talked to people. It wasn't only that I didn't know how, but also that I didn't care to. I hated my peers. Not individually, of course, but the social structure of high school is so overtly treacherous that the safest road is around, not through, it. (If anything, I am a master at taking the safe road.) When I went to college I decided that I was going to be more personable. I was going to become seen by my compatriots in literature. Only when my freshman year began did I discover that I hadn't any of the social skills most kids learn in high school. I was awkward and undaring. Eventually I sank into depression, and sought out a councilor. I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I traveled with the drama department to Paris. It was a profound turning point.

    Since then I have slowly become more socially equipped, yet I still buckle under the weight of my neurosis. Yesterday I began reading Harry Lorayne's "The Memory Book" and discovered a neat memory trick. Recognizing it instantly as an opener (like in Strauss's book) I approached JP and showed him the memory trick. I was a little nervous, and that compounded with the two cups of coffee I'd just had made me shake, sweat, and speak over rapidly. JP already knew the memory trick, and in fact, showed me another one. He was polite about it, but I think I might have come across as overbearing.

    Afterward, I obsessed about it. I retreated back into myself. I moved slowly and sadly, and fell into the pit of rumination I'd read about in Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism. First I felt bad, then I chided myself for feeling bad because JP and his girlfriend really seemed to enjoy the memory trick, they just didn't match my enthusiasm. Then I felt even worse for feeling bad. I even had that old haunting thought, "I should just not talk to people." It was the recognition of that thought that spurred me into action.

    My problem was I was too overeager. Remember what Strauss says, every social engagement is an opportunity for feedback. I don't need acceptance. I just needed to slow down and really deliver the memory exercise better. So I went to our cashier, Jessica, and did the memory test again. She also knew the trick (damn, does everybody know how to remember shit but me?) but the test lead us to have a wonderful discussion on the merits of memory. After that, I used the opener on a customer, and we enjoyed a fruitful conversation as well!

   Let me tell you about the night before last. I met two customers who swore that it was fate that they met me. (Yes, my friends, fate. Not a crummy apron that says Books-A-Million). And then proceeded to expound themselves before me, pontificating on everything from the business that they were starting to their failed marriage to their burgeoning career as a writer. Last month, employing the principles of Neil Strauss and Dale Carnegie and Robert Greene, I've met Beverly, Ruby, Carole, Henry, Jess, Sarah, Debbie, Harvey, Robert, and others. I've gotten the phone numbers of two of my co-workers, and three of my customers. The manager of the local Piccadilly's even gave me a free meal because he enjoyed our discussions of sugarless deserts so much. (Hint: Talk in terms of the other person's interests.) I've made friends with all of my co-workers, and even gone out and had drinks with a few of them. I've traded movies and books and ideas. And I've become a better person.

Basically, I completely my own version of the Style Life Challenge from Strauss's "Rules of the Game". I didn't throw a dinner party and I didn't cold contact girls for numbers, but I employed his methods. I developed my own set of openers, roots, time constraints, and even a routine or two.

That was the month of March, 2010.
I'm excited to see what happens in April.

My New Constitution

2010-04-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

     While Niccolo Machiavelli wrote the original version of this book, Robert Greene really brought it up to date in 1998 with "The 48 Laws of Power". It's become sort of a pop culture phenomenon, finding itself in the lyrics of Kanye West, Young Buck, and Greene has done a collaboration with 50 Cent called "The 50th Law". Because of this, I assumed that Robert Greene was an African American professor or a charter member of the NAACP. The primary demographic of people who come into our store to buy "The 48 Laws" are young black men in white undershirts and jewelry. Which was uplifting, since "The 48 Laws" is primarily a history book, full of fun short anecdotes that readers are meant to draw lessons from. It's completely race neutral, which is not the kind of book African American professors or charter members of the NAACP write. Nor is it the kind of book that young hard-nosed black kids from the streets typically buy. So why has it struck such a chord with the rap and R&B crowd?

     Here's why:
     I don't think I need to spend much time making the case that a central facet of the rap genre is rampant egotism. The idea is that kids listening to the music will feel empowered to burst out of their hard-knocks street life to become what Lil Wayne calls milli on aires. Rap essentially preaches empowerment at any cost, an understandable sentiment from a race that's been long kept from having any power at all. In the world of the rap song, cops are dirty, morality is eye for an eye, and all of your dreams lie on the other side of power. Years of commercial production have whittled out the real rap grit and what's left is just a tiny package of power. It's all about you. You. YOU.

You, as in them. I'll show you my point.

Man, life, just ain't life, without me

                                                    Hip hop just ain't hip hop, without me
                                                                    Young moola baby
                                                                    -Lil Wayne "Milli"

Got a chip in my engine,26 inch rims,got fade away money,
bitch i'm ballin out the gym,
got my old school pumpin,
hit wheel, on recline,if you think a nigga broke,
you out yo monkey ass mind,(yeah)
diamonds on my pinky,(yeah)
hand on the pine,
touch and die, yo mama do the second line(yeah),
screens fallin from the sky,
syrup fallin in my cup,
old school chevy, thang,
comin down(nigga), what,
got diamonds in my mouth,
got som gucci on my seat,
got g's on my(ay)
bitch its cold when i speak,
got a freak on my arm, got a charm around my neck,
you can gone pass the mike,
watch i'm bout to catch wreck,
still screamin out mayne,
pistol in my hand,southside so thowed(thowed in the game),
big face on my chain,
84's on the frame,
big bodies comin down, hoggin up both lanes,

-David Banner "Get Like Me"

Uh, Felli Fel, Ne-yo, Yeesy, Calm Down, Easy, Easy.
Keep Tellin' Me You Got A Man,
But He Can't Do What I Can,
Let Me, Show You What You been missing,
Keep Show'in You The Miner Thing,
Let Me, Show You The Finer Thing,
Let Me, Show You What You been Missing,

-Kanye West "The Finer Things"

What I find so interesting about these lyrics is that the singer is making a clear indication of himself. Not the listener. He's saying that he's a millionaire, not you. He's got power, not you. He's a better boyfriend than you, and he's a better rapper than you are. But that isn't what the listener hears. That might be what I (I, dorky twenty-something bookworm) hear, but that's not what everybody else hears. They hear themselves. They see who they want to be reflected in these lyrics. They see power.

Robert Greene is a vindication of that image. So often, rap fans are brushed off as ego driven narcissists who crave only the vices that come with power. Guns, money, women, drugs. They don't realize that actually the reverse is true. Those things are symbols of status. A man with 26 inch rims and bling in his teeth is more powerful than a man with say, a dodge Neon and belt from The Gap, even if they're both in the same income bracket. "48 Laws of Power" admonishes symbols of status. It also cuts morality out of the equation, and makes the ego the central condition. You can be powerful if you follow these laws, it says. Rather than bottling the illusion of power in a 4 minute song about your dick, it gives you a road map to follow in living out those cultural status symbols.

The real difference is that the rap crowd is more shrewd than most. Heavy Metal crowds are more about releasing anger, their music is an exorcism. Comedy crowds are about forgetting your problems, or about laughing at them. Then there are the art crowds. God knows what they're about. Rap is about power. And Robert Greene is gangsta through and through.

Let's Be Frank... Actually I'd Rather Not.

2010-04-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

The title is a pun pertaining to the principle character in T.C. Boyle's latest novel, "The Women". Obviously, the pun is a miserable failure since I've just spent these two sentences explaining the meaning of the pun. But seriously, let me be frank. "The Women" is a lovely, captivating, and masterful work that I can absolutely do without. Etched to its core, it's a Nora Roberts romance about the women revolving around Frank Lloyd Wright, while he arrogantly dismisses them. It's painful at times, somber at others, and there's some wonderful humor in it as well, but mainly it's a showcase of Boyle's writing talent. Like so many art pieces in a museum that you really don't have time to admire to the length of it's meaning. Move on to the next one, then the next, then the next.

I prefer work that sinks its art into the more practical. The way Robert Greene finds a way to tell you a fun story, that also teaches you how to outwit your opponent, or how Neil Strauss's writing sparks at time with a poignancy that you didn't see coming, because mostly he's just woman obsessed. "The Women" is brilliant for the sheer sake of being brilliant. (The Nora Roberts line wasn't mine, by the way, it belongs to Marie Arana of The Washington Post who said "Move over, Nora Roberts! With this potboiler about the love life of Frank Lloyd Wright, T.C. Boyle, one of America's most inventive writers, bursts feverishly into the realm of romance fiction!"... Really?)

"The Women" is, more than anything, a slow fireside read that is entertaining and easily consumptive of your entire day. It's slow and endlessly revealing. Robert Greene and Neil Strauss write with the frantic pace of high octane sports cars, delivering information fast and furiously. Boyle's work is on pace with Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, built into the mountains and crevices of his plot, unmoving, and obsessed with observation.

I should take this time to admit that I have something of an attention deficiency. I don't say Attention Deficit Disorder because I have never been diagnosed. (Although I surely would have been if I were ever tested. So would you.) I come from a world that streams at a mile a minute to my television set. When I was little, I had one monitor and it was my entire world. It brought me movies, and video games, and commercials, and TV, and news, and sex, and sports, and everything. Now I can count at least four in my immediate vicinity, two in the other room. I long for a world that moves at the pace of Boyle novel. And I love "The Women" for giving it to me, but the month is over now. And I'm slipping back into the canals of fiberwire.

The ultimate power of T.C. Boyle's novel, "The Women" is in its literary tact. It's ability to lead through the annals of human emotion unfettered by the screaming pace of today's post-Palahniuk society which tries to blow your mind out of the back of your head rather than slowly pulling you into its world. "The Women" is utterly believable, so much so that you're not even awed by it. Once you've taken the stroll with Boyle and Wright, you feel as if you are as much a part of the world as they are. You forget that this is a period piece, that divorce was rare back then, or that Wright is actually the villain. His obliviousness makes him so forgivable that you can't help but love him. You love being here. "The Women" is the reason why I haven't written a blog in over a week. (Well, that and allergies. I'm not gonna lie.)

So, yes. I loved "The Women", but I didn't love it. It was a nice place to visit, but when it comes to literature, I enjoy the fast lane. A week into reading Boyle's book and I found myself staring at Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates" and wishing to God that I would finish "The Women" soon. In fact, vowing that if I didn't finish it soon I was going to give up on it altogether. "I get it" I thought, "Boyle's a genius. Frank's a genius. I've reveled in their genius and now I'm ready to laugh again. I'm ready to be talked to." And I did.

End of Story.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Playa

2010-03-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

     I'm reading T.C. Boyle's "The Women", which is more about powerlessness than power. It's a great counterpart to "The Game" since it implies the pickup artist's actual mercy at the hands of women than his domination of them. Frank Lloyd Wright is a prima donna who has a weakness for vibrant young women and apparently a penchant for unprotected sex, given how many young he spawns throughout his affairs. He is also under the vengeful watch of his wife who has taken to opium, and is hunting ferociously the young mistress that Wright hopes to marry next.

     What literary fiction shows us, that nonfiction cannot, is the whole truth rather than the partiality that Strauss gives to his subject. We may not agree on the accuracy of Boyle's tale as it pertains to Wright's life, (although I would give Boyle the benefit of the doubt) we do know that within the context of his message it is true. We see every side of every account rather than just the single viewpoint of a single account. For instance, we can see and understand the withered love of Miriam for her husband as a prophesy of what Frank's current youthful pact with Oglivanna will become, just as much as the reverse is true. We can understand Frank's obsession, and his destructive personality even where he cannot. However, with "The Game", Strauss gives only a measured voice to his seductees and even then he sugar coats their opinion of him. He mentions several times how much they enjoy their time with him, how mutually beneficial the game is. How "everybody came". And he may be correct, but given his proximity to the situation we cannot take him at his word. He is, by the very nature of his position, an unreliable narrator.

    How might "The Game" look from the opposite perspective of all those women that were certain that they weren't being fooled suddenly made aware of one another? In the end, "The Game" is a con. Men fake an emotional connection in the same way that women fake orgasms. Sometimes the con is mutual, but anybody with a healthy perspective knows that most of the time it's not. No woman wants to give into a man who only sees her as a conquest, and even though Strauss makes the case that women sometimes are looking only for sex, he doesn't address the fundamental break of that argument. If women were simply looking for sex then pickup artists wouldn't need routines and lines in the first place. They wouldn't need to fake that emotional connection. In the opening of the book Strauss explains that he used to be somebody who only got the guilt of the woman's pleasure after his friend, Duncan, got the sex. But later, the guilt weaves itself out of the narrative altogether. That doesn't mean that it's gone, just that Strauss is able to become the kind of person who no longer sees it. Good for him.

    Neill Strauss is still my hero. Don't get me wrong. His books have changed my life at a core level. He's taught me that it's possible to redirect and refocus my energy to become the kind of person that I want to be. But T.C. Boyle, with his novel, "The Women", shows us that we can overshoot that energy too. Frank Lloyd Wright is probably as famous as he is because of his triumphant personality. He was as great a self-promoter in his day as P.T. Barnum (who we read about in Robert Greene's book), and that aspect of his personality that made him so well-known is the same one which made him so miserable. The truth is, power is something that can be taken to mean many things. Power in thought and wealth is not the same thing as power in virtue and in self-control.

    Even after Richard III has commanded all of England to kneel before him, he is still slave to his own conscious, and unable to sleep. The common man struggles within himself to overpower his darker side. As we see plainly in "The Women", and "The Game". Men trying to find their balance, overcome their weaknesses, and do so without losing sight of their true selves. Life is an ongoing struggle for power, and it seems that the moment you stop struggling, is the moment you lose.

Brain Power

2010-03-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

I hit a heavy snag on Day 12 of the Stylelife Challenge, and I've seen its effect ripple out from there to all of the other challenges. The problem is this: My memory sucks. It doesn't just suck in the normal way that people's memories suck. I have a borderline memory disorder. I will hang bags on the door full of things that I'm supposed to take to work and still forget about them. I'll read the names of authors on the terminal at work three times to solidify it in my brain and still forget the name by the time we get to the section. I've grown accustomed to eating whatever fries without ketchup because I forget to ask for it, and just ordering the same bland regular coffee because I can't remember what anything else tastes like.

This makes Neil Strauss' routines nearly impossible for me to perform without dedicating a massive amount of time to: A) Developing new routines to work on people I'm not trying to get into bed, and B) Memorizing and performing those routines. The first routine Strauss demonstrates is oral storytelling, something you should already know how to do. I don't tell stories because I can't hold them in my head long enough to tell them.

This means that my biggest power struggle is the one going on inside my own head!

    So what do I do? What do we do?

    Next month's array of books are short story collections as well as scientific books on memory and brain power. We'll work on improving our mind power and attention spans by reading Dr. Mark Hyman M.D.'s The Ultramind Solution, and studying from "the Yoda of Memory Training", Harry Lorayne! A new month of the year, and a new set of gurus! Awesome. I'm stoked.

     We're also going to continue exercising our social skills by practicing principles from Strauss, Carnegie, and Greene. (I've noticed that since these principles have been working so well, I find myself having trouble holding back. I tend to spill on and on about what's in my mind, forgetting one of the basic principles: talk in terms of the other person's interests.) As well as reading short works from T.C. Boyle, David Sedaris, and others.

    As for the remainder of this month, I'll be back with full reviews of Neil Strauss' The Game and Rules of the Game, Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power, and we'll be speaking about T.C. Boyle's The Women, as well as my final field report of the month.

    Mo' Money, Mo' Problems. So the saying goes.

In The Valley of the Have-Nots

2010-03-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

     The second 10 days of my month long sprint in reading for power has not fared as well as the introductory stage. I've actually had some difficulty getting my hands on Louis Sinclair's "It Can't Happen Here" and though I started Donald Goines' "Daddy Cool", I quickly realized that it wasn't going to fit into my theme. But that has been the least of my problems.

Today marks the third day since payday that I haven't been paid by BookReview.com for the work that I did in February, and I've already reviewed over ten books this month, with another ten sitting on my desk gathering dust while I wait for the affirmation of my wages. The message is clear: Get another job, dipshit! I can't continue to work just to be nice. Remember what Neil Strauss says about 'nice', often it is a pretense for fear. We're really only nice because we're afraid of not being nice. (Note: this isn't always true, but in this particular case it is. I can't keep acting like a sucker.)

Also, Neil Strauss' "Rules of the Game" has phase shifted me out of the loop. I was keeping up pretty well, but when contacting people became full on routines, I couldn't keep up. I'm still reading daily, but my doing has steadily declined. The day when this all started was Day 12, which is one of the most important days. Here, you learn to pull from your arsenal of stories, your personal stories, to please a crowd. This is important, and I want to give this day my full attention. However, my mind is cluttered with too many other things to be focused. This state of being, I have officially labeled The Valley of the Have-Nots. It's that sucking pessimism in your brain that makes you feel sorry for yourself. You don't have enough money. Your job isn't good enough. You can't do it.

How do you climb a mountain?
I'm not sure. I never have. But I'd imagine is a slow, systematic, strength building endeavor. You grab the ledge above you and pull. So let's take a lesson from the mountain climber and figure out which ledge is the next one, then reach up, and pull.

Here is a tactic that comes from ZenHabits.net that I use when I'm in the Valley of the Have-Nots. List three goals that you want to have completed in the next six months. Here are mine:

                 1) I want to be financially balanced.
                 2) I want to turn this into a successful blog.
                 3) I want to be prepared for film school.

Now you need to come up with three small things that you can do today that will be significant to those three goals.

                A) Pay my bills.
                B) Finish this blog post.
                C) Contact the school to set up a meeting.

See now, how I've taken the initiative and turned my terrible brooding day into a productive one. Just focus on those three things and let everything else slide away. All that matters is the ledge above your head.

Peacocking

2010-03-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

Neil Strauss' "The Game" is an addictive read. Not only because of its interesting insight into the world of professional pick-up-artists, but because it is a story of group of men who make it theie obsession to restructure their personality, both inwardly and outward, into the kind of person that they want to be. It's the opposite of "Fight Club", (insert your obvious joke here). It's about resurrection rather than destruction. Intense faith, rather than nihilism. (We'll overlook the misogyny for now.)

Besides teaching us that all that business about being brought up the wrong way and not having what other guys have is complete hogwash, it also teaches an interesting concept called Peacocking. I've spent my day restructuring my girlfriend Hali's cover letter according to this philosophy and sent her this e-mail to explain the concept:

You need to Peacock. Everywhere you go, you need to learn to turn up your colors so that you turn heads in the room. (You also need to learn when to turn them down.) Your cover letter needs to Peacock. I wouldn't even say it needs to be good, but it needs to be bold enough to make the reader pay attention and get them to look at your CV immediately afterward. It must get them to want to meet you, even if they don't expect to give you the position. You don't have to use everything I put into this version, but keep in mind that you want to make a bold and emphatic statement that is going to tower above everything the reviewer as read so far.

Part of this is an exercise in my power reading, but I happen to believe it's true. I could be the best writer in the world and go absolutely unnoticed by the world, or I could be a mediocre writer with a Peacock personality, and be read by everyone. That's the point I've read over and over again. Find a compromise between the person that you are and the person that you want to be, and do everything you can to hit that target. You want to be rich. You want to be successful. But you also want to be artistic and reflective, humble but not modest. Bohemian, but practical.

All of that starts with Peacocking.

Love you babe,
Eric.

Say it isn't so, Gandalf.

2010-03-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Burden of Power

2010-03-14T07:28:00.000-07:00

The last few days have seen me tapering off in my struggle for power. I've slipped into my old introvert ways. A recurring theme in Greene's book is that power means power over one's self above all. Since Day 10, I've seen that power slipping.

The main reason for this is that power works in phases. Richard III is a wonderful example of this. You can break down his plan into several phases that lead up to his taking of the throne. Of course, he neglected the most important phase which came just after seizing it, but he clearly planned out his actions and behaviors with each other step. Richard says it himself that the most awesome power that he possesses is the power over his own emotions, "and thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

THE PHASES OF POWER

They change according to your endeavors to use them, but what is certain is that you must abide the phases if you want to be successful. We'll use my own experiences as an example, and compare them with Richard Duke of York's masterful rise.

1) Get Everyone to Like You -
This was my first phase in coming to Books-A-Million, and essentially every kid's first order of business when they go to a new school or are accepted into the little league team or whatever. You promptly greet everyone you see, you use openers that you learned from Neil Strauss's book, and you maintain a keen interest in their daily lives. Keep a notebook with their names and interests written down. Be ready to engage in small talk with them. Keep smiling and show all humility.

All of this I have done, but these are but first impressions won. (Hey, Shakespeare!)

2) Solidify Your Allegiances -
After a few weeks at Books-A-Million I've made friends with a couple of the employees, and acquaintances with the rest. This means that I know who I am most suited to be friends with. If my aim were to seize the throne of the management office, I would be trying to build friendships among those echelons, however, my quest for power is not so devious as Richard III's. I am a moral man, first of all, and secondly have no desire for a career in retail. So my friendships lie with those who are creative, funny, and intelligent.

Solidifying those friendships means calling them up, arranging nights out at the local bars or working on films or things like that. Lots of listening and contemplating what make these particular friends of mine tick. How might I emulate their good traits? How my I learn from them?

This is where I'm at now, and it's difficult for me because it means changing my routine. I can't stand changing my routine. I don't like to go out too much, and I'm extremely busy with my new blog, my dog, and my book reviews. Not to mention, that the past couple of weeks have been overwhelmingly eventful, and at work I've lost concentration on being present and social. I'm going to try to turn this around in these final two weeks of the month, and hopefully reach stage three.

3) Influence Your Friends -
On the moral high road to power influence is a 'give and take' transaction among friends. If I want friends to help make a movie I've been planning, or if I want them to copy edit a story I'm working on, or if I'd like for them to knit me something, I need to offer up something in return. I'll help them move out of their apartment, or I'll work on their film, or some such thing. That is how friendship works. However, if I wanted to take the moral low road, I would influence my friends by promising them things that I couldn't deliver. Being my friends, they would comply thinking that I was true to my word and greatly excited to be getting whatever I had promised them.

Of course, once I'd gotten what it was I wanted they would no longer be my friends, because I wouldn't deliver on what I'd promised. This is never a wise tactic since you don't know what influence the person you wronged has within your community. You might find yourself ousted from the throne mighty quickly.

Another method of influencing would be to speak in terms of another's interests, conjuring up feelings of love or hatred towards another. If I were gunning for a managing position at my work, and I were as loathsome as Richard III, how might I go about seizing the throne? I would make friends among the managers by becoming interested in what they were interested in. Spying. And figure out which one was the weakest in their position, then I would prey upon that weakness by turning everyone's hatred towards them. Soon, the place would become a particularly nasty place to work for them, and they would want to quit. But they might need the money to feed their ailing dog or something and I, in seeming a friend to all, would help them secure another position elsewhere.

But this, besides being a nasty way to live, is remarkably risky, delicate, and exhausting work. It means being 'on' all the time. Ever aware of your surroundings. Constantly suspicious of everyone. And a master of self-control and patience. If you move too hastily, others will see you for the monster that you truly are. Move too slowly, and you risk living a life of utter servitude.

Being evil is not rewarding unless you win, and crush your enemies, and you don't mind being hated for it. For most people, being good is much easier. This is what makes 'Richard III' such a mesmerizing play. Here is a guy who did everything to seize the throne, and was miserable and loathsome for it. Sometimes the greatest power to be had is in not having it at all.

When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bends and silently farts.

2010-03-12T06:20:00.000-08:00

We've passed the 10 Day threshold and I think we've gotten a good introduction to the roles that power can play. I will say indeed that a more confident personality and a tighter command of social constructs (vis a vis, an aim at providing value to those around me, being genuinely interested in others, smiling, avoiding arguments, using successful openers, etc. etc.) have been rewarded with a free meal at the local Piccadilly's, the name and e-mail address of a literary agent, an invite for drinks, and most importantly the respect and acknowledgment of co-workers, customers, and friends.

However, this is all elementary social play. The true test lies within the next 20 or so days, where I hope to influence a number of things. The first is my paycheck at BookReview.com, which something must be done about. Books are stacking a mile high on my desk and I have a hard time getting to them while I'm still waiting on last month's paycheck to roll back around on the 15th. It's ridiculous to be working halfway into the month, when you're still not sure if you're going to be paid for last month's work.

Influence Your Boss To Get Something You Want
There are a number of ways that you might do this. The first is a principle employed by Richard III to seize the throne, and that is leveraging. Robert Greene's book, "The 48 Laws of Power", admonishes the power that comes from dependency, "Law 11: Keep People Dependent on You".

Thus a wise prince will think of ways to keep his citizens of every sort and under every circumstance dependent on the state and on him; and then they will always be trustworthy.
-Niccolo Machiavelli

Ask yourself, how dependent is company or organization you work for on you? If they cannot function without you then you have a great deal of leverage. Richard of Gloster was careful to be sure that he'd made all of the right friends, by promising them all of the right things, before seizing the throne. He even made it seem as though the peasants needed him, when in fact he was the worst thing for them. His mistake was that it was all an illusion that fell apart the moment he ascended the throne. Nobody was really dependent on him, and he was justly slain.

Dale Carnegie's approach is more apt for the present day. His principles teach that we must "talk in terms of the other person's interest." Which means that instead of saying, "Boss, look, I am the Georgia Express Review Office and I have all of the books that you need to review, and I do not plan on reviewing them until we move payday to the first of the month rather than the fifteenth," which may work since it's true, I should cultivate an air of interest by saying, "Boss, we'll make a lot more money if I can review twice the amount of books in a month as I normally do, but I can't do that because by the end of the month I'm burnt out, and my check won't get to me for another two weeks, sometimes three. Which means that I don't really get rolling on the next batch of books until the latter half of the month. BookReview.com would make a lot more money if we moved the pay period to the beginning of the month."

My goal for today, and yours, is to use your newfound powers to get something, anything, that you want.

Dive Thoughts, Down to My Soul

2010-03-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

If you're reading Robert Greene's "The 48 Laws of Power" then you're well acquainted with case studies, but our primary concern is literature here at World Savvy Reader, so put on some gloves and start digging into a heaping pile of Shakespeare's "Richard III", his oeuvre de triumph of power plays.

Overhead is Lawrence Olivier's captivating "now is the winter of our discontent" speech, which you should listen to if you want to find the Peter Sellers clip below funny.

Yeah, that's it. Laugh it up, you ham!
This is all just a big joke to you, isn't it? Well, while you're laughing other people are snatching the power rug right out from under your feet. Early in the play, just after Richard has announced his devotion to using every element of Greene's playbook in order to ascend the thrown, we are given a marvelous demonstration of his seediness as he woos Lady Ann even after he has admitted to killing both her husband and her father.

Here is the master at work:

I have not yet finished with either Greene's nor Strauss's book, yet I can already describe to you a number of methods under Richard III's employ to gain the heart of Lady Anne.

1) Strauss's View of Utter Confidence - Richard never balks under the weight of Anne's constant stream of insults. In fact, with every insult she throws at him, he praises her back. When she bluffs that she is going to kill him, he calls her out on it immediately, completely confident that she won't kill him. (Note: don't try this today. Murder is not as trivial as it used to be, and woman are not nearly as fickle.)

2) Dale Carnegie's Principle 5: "Get the Other Person Saying "Yes, Yes" Immediately" - "Is not the causer of the timeless deaths of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward, as blameful as the executioner?" Richard asks, in a sense accusing her of sharing blame with him in their deaths by being the root cause. Of course, this leads to the first breach of Lady Anne's defenses, since the bereaved often blame themselves for their spouse's death.

3) Robert Greene's Law 11: "Learn to Keep People Dependent on You" - My murdering her husband and her father, Richard vows to replace them both with himself. He makes her understand that by murdering them he only "did it to help thee to a better husband". He also confesses to us earlier that "What though I kill'd her husband and her father? The readiest way to make the wench amends, is to become her husband
and her father" Since we know that women, being fickle and dependent in the eyes of Shakespeare, will cling to their dependence on others we can understand that Lady Anne has no choice but to depend on Richard.

   There are countless others that need no further explanation. Richard controls the pace of the conversation, "But, gentle Lady Anne, to leave this keen encounter of our wits, and fall somewhat into a slower method", and he reassures her in his lies even though Lady Anne knows him to be a liar.

    LADY ANNE - I would I knew thy heart.
RICHARD - Tis figured in my tongue.
   LADY ANNE - I fear me both are false.
   RICHARD - Then never man was true.

   I will leave you now with this quote from Robert Greene:
   "Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons."

Neil Strauss' 14 Laws of Learning

2010-03-09T13:09:00.000-08:00

What is information if not for sharing?

If you're reading any of these books than you need to know how to absorb the lessons they teach. Day 9 of "Rules of the Game" has a wonderful list of rules to follow if you're having any trouble. I'm including them here, but I'm also rewriting them to suit our purpose, as we are not in pursuit of sex, but of power.

1) Acquire and apply knowledge in small chunks.
The greatest thing about "Rules of the Game", "The Prince", and "48 Points of Power" is that they all break down vastly complicated concepts into small and easily ingested chunks. I have a much easier time reading from a little of each book every day, rather than trying to read an entire book each day.

2) There is no such thing as rejection, only feedback.
Forgo your ego during your ascent to power. I have a tremendous problem with this one as I am more fragile than I pretend to be, and I tend to take it hard when people are critical or dismissive of me. It is this neurosis that is perhaps the biggest hurdle in my own quest.

3) It's never the other person's fault.
Always assume responsibility. This way, you are in control and can fix things next time.

4) Learn actively rather than passively.
The whole purpose of this blog is centered on this one rule. Becoming a World Savvy Reader isn't about simply reading, but about doing. Each day is a new opportunity to learn through these stories and put those new learnings into effect in our own lives.

5) Don't rehearse negative outcomes.
This is another rule that I have a terrible problem with. My imagination works overtime to come up with the worst possible scenario for what I'm about to do. The other day when I was trying to call strangers at random to start conversations Hali convinced me that I was going to call a serial killer who would use my cell phone number to track me down and axe me. I skipped that day's assignment.

6) Understand how your mind learns.
This one's important, so I'm going to quote Neil Strauss word-for-word here:
The psychological field of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) offers a useful four-step model of how the mind learns. It can serve as a yardstick to measure your progress.
   A) Unconscious incompetence: You're doing something wrong, and you don't even know what you're doing wrong.
   B) Conscious incompetence: You're doing something wrong, and you're aware that you're doing it wrong, but you haven't yet fixed the problem.
   C) Conscious competence: You've learned the right way to do it, and you're doing it correctly with focused attention.
   D) Unconscious competence: You no longer have to think about something or work on learning it - you automatically do it correctly. In the parlance of the game, this is when you finally become a so-called natural.

7) Be willing to go through the pain period.
This one is also important because it's where most of us fail. It's easier to dive into debt for a big screen television, Xbox, and a new house, and spend the next 10 years paying it off with a minimum wage job than going through the pain and pressure of 6 years of med-school. The pain period scares off 99% of your competitors. Which means that if you tough it out, your among the top 1%. That's all you have to do.

8) Don't look to friends or family for approval.
Another tough one for me since usually I need more than approval. I need support. So far, with this blog, the support well is completely dry. Remember, it's the results that matter. Get through the pain period and you can consider it a nice reward to watch the haters eat their words.

9) Be willing to test new ideas, even if they don't seem logical.
This rule, I excel at. I've never been very logical.

10) Once something works, figure out why it works.
Just like when you're solving a puzzle.

11) If you don't know what to do, don't leave.
This one, I don't necessarily agree with when it comes to instruments of power, since you might do damage to a fragile but fertile growing reputation. But Strauss is smarter than I am, so it's worth listing here. His point is that you learn by doing, so if you're in a social situation that's foreign to you. Welcome it. Don't retreat.

12) Hang around someone better than yourself.
One of Robert Greene's 48 points of power is "Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky". It may sound cruel, but there are those with a chronic case of misfortune and it's almost always contagious. The reverse is also true. Partner up with those who are smarter and more capable than you are and you'll be amazed at how much of it rubs off.

13) Make sure that your ratio of effort to results is increasing.
As I write this blog, I'm reading more and writing more in the past few weeks than perhaps I ever have. That is it's own success. But I'm also learning, doing, and feeling more confident. But it hasn't been easy. My girlfriend has been ill, my dog has been in surgery, and my step-father is in the hospital, so keeping it up has been a tremendous effort.

14) Finish what you begin.
This is a concern, as I've started several books now and I'm committed to finishing them all, but I don't want to leave any of it behind. This means continually keeping up with reading, writing, and analyzing. Proper planning leads to a healthy follow through, and even as we approach the mid-point of our quest for power. I have already begun next month's adventure.

Aim Small

2010-03-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

The other day I approached three different people, complimented them on what they were wearing, and politely asked where they got it. This was a re-engineered exercise from Neil Strauss's book, "Rules of the Game", of which I have reached Day 6. So far, exercises have included working on my posture, my voice, and my anxiety at approaching others.

I know what you're thinking. So what? How do these things play into the larger picture? Well, they don't really if I stop doing them. But just as last month I vowed to exercise maintaining a "genuine interest in others", and have since made a practice of asking my co-workers about their day. I have taken interest in their personal lives at no gain to myself other than the value of this knowledge. I am also continually training myself to provide value in my everyday interactions.

We may fool ourselves into thinking that the tactics of Machiavelli are immoral as a means of excusing ourselves for not taking the steps necessary to move ahead. We may rebuke these exercises by saying, "it's dishonest to compliment somebody when we don't really mean it," or, "I'm not really interested in others, so why should I fake interest?" Indeed, as I began reading, I made these same speculations. It was only as I began practicing them that the answer presented itself.

Strauss and Carnegie actually take opposite roads in the area of false sincerity. For Neil Strauss, its all about the action. The confidence you exude. The way you sound when you give the compliment is more important than the compliment itself. In essence, the compliment is about making yourself look good. Whereas in Dale Carnegie's book, "How To Win Friends and Influence People", he stresses sincerity. He wants you to find something that you can honestly admire about a particular person. He wants you to stress the receiver of the compliment. "Be hearty in your approbation, and lavish in your praise," he says. The point is that you can take either road.

Remember that everyday is practice for the day afterward. Even if you gain nothing from these interactions, you lose nothing. And as each day passes and you become habituated to taking genuine interest in others, finding ways to provide value, and becoming easier at approaching people to offer a compliment or ask a question, you grow closer to reaching your goal.

An Ode to Nicola Tesla Entitled, "Poor Dope"

2010-03-06T09:28:00.000-08:00

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, huh? Yeah, that's what Nikola Tesla thought. He was an ardent student of science in its utter purity. He rivaled Thomas Edison in his push for alternating current (AC) as opposed to Edison's direct current (DC), and by all accounts he was a much smarter scientist than Edison. His inventions are honored today among scientists and companies which view his work as building the fundamental ballast on which radio and electrical systems are used today. Tesla, however, died in poverty in 1943, having never received the recognition in life that he deserved. Why is that?

Let's ask Robert Greene:
"Many harbor the illusion that science, dealing with facts as it does, is beyond the petty rivalries that trouble the rest of the world. Nikola Tesla was one of those. He believed science had nothing to do with politics, and claimed not to care for fame or riches. It ruined his scientific work."

Think about it. How often do you see people in the very position of power that you would like to have, knowing to a certainty that you are far more qualified than they are? And what do you do? You wreck yourself trying to prove to your superiors that you're better, and nothing happens. The boss doesn't really care that you can do it better, because it's already being done. And changing personnel just creates more work for them. So then you lament about the ways of the world. You curl up inside yourself and decide that it's useless. Some people will always be the haves and some will always be the have-nots.

Take a cue from our wonderful friends at the California Powerball Lottery, "You can't win, if you don't play". Learn to make friends. Be social. Keep your ambitions private. Don't rush. Keep your skills hidden until it is beneficial for you to prove yourself. Don't be openly deceitful or malicious, but don't be overly generous either. Learn to circumnavigate the roles of power within your network. Make the right friends. And eventually, when it is time to strike, do so. The consequences of refusing otherwise is the path of Nikola Tesla, and leads only to a deep private shame of the work you once enjoyed.

Stock Clerk Master

2010-03-05T08:12:00.000-08:00

"Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals, and I'll give you a stock clerk."
-J.C. Penney-

    The road to power is not a short one. You can't read Robert Greene, Neil Strauss, and Niccolo Machiavelli, only to put the books down afterward and go out to begin your reign. If there is one thing that I've learned from all of them it's that patience is the primary virtue of the powerful.

     The endgame for this blog is for me to become a successful writer. But before that can occur I need to be a successful reader, and be able to put into effect those readings that I've assigned for myself. Perhaps you're endgame is to be a successful lawyer, or a successful stripper, or even a mediocre manager of the Brown's Deli and Daycare. It doesn't matter. The fact is, that we cannot simply go out and be those things. We have to bide our time and learn to insert ourselves into the proper channels.

     Towards that end, Neil Strauss has written a masterful workbook called "Rules of the Game", which is a strenuous 30-day training program aimed at getting you girls. "I don't need girls," you say, "I need a job, dipshit, we're in a recession." Well, turns out the principles are fundamentally the same.

     Women are actually attracted to the same things that corporations and schools are, people who exude confidence. "Rules of the Game" is really about mastering your self-image and learning to appear confident enough to win women over to your way of thinking. (Win Friends and Influence People, in other words.) So simply by gearing his exercises toward making business connections rather than physical connections, "Rules of the Game" becomes a hardcore course in gaining power. And that, my friends, is more valuable than any woman.

What Do the Ends Justify?

2010-03-01T07:19:00.000-08:00

Here's a million dollar idea: a total conversion mod (you know, like a computer game) of Machiavelli's "The Prince" for corporate America entitled "The Boss". Every aspect of the book could be changed to fit the modern retail world, and in fact, when I started working at Best Buy in 2005 my boss, a pencil necked bald man named Thomas, handed me this copy of "The Prince" and told me to read it and return it to him. I read it, and promptly refused to return it to him. The ends, after all, do justify the means, and I decided that it was much better off in my possession than in his.

Words like "principalities" would be changed to "positions", and "colonies" to "contacts". Subtle meaning would be lost in the transition since Machiavelli is really only discussing a single job title while in the corporate world there is management of all sizes and strengths, but throughout the conversion meaning would also be added. The ends, of course, justifying said meaning. Here's what I'm talking about:

At the end of Chapter 6, Machiavelli uses Hiero the Syracusan as an example. "This man rose from a private station to be Prince of Syracuse, nor did he, either, owe anything to fortune but opportunity; for the Syracusans, being oppressed, chose him for their captain; afterwards he was rewarded by being made their prince... This man abolished the old soldiery, organized the new, gave up old alliances, made new ones; and as he had his own soldiers and allies, on such foundations he was able to build any edifice." What Machiavelli is describing here is upward mobility, just like an entry level employee would rise from her position as a temp to becoming a regional vice president by abolishing the old methods, organizing new ones, giving up old alliances, making new ones, and building a new foundation where in her career can grow more hastily.

In my position as Sale Book Manager at Books-A-Million I have very little power. But what power I do have, I recognized right away and consolidated it by promptly rearranging all of the bargain titles so that I would be the only one who knew where they were. I also make an effort to establish myself to customers by suggesting bargain titles as alternatives to the retail priced titles. This is a healthy consolidation of power, which is likely to keep my position secure, but it won't help me advance in the company. Which is fine by me. Where I hope to advance is in writing, and having my positions at BookReview.com and Books-A-Million well fortified, I can begin making efforts elsewhere. And that is the foundation of Machiavelli's principle. Keep your citizens (customers) happy, and your enemies (people gunning for your job) in absolute ruin.

The Noble Experiment

2010-02-28T22:06:00.000-08:00

There's a cheap composition notebook that sits on my desk with the words scrawled in black marker, "The Noble Experiment". The phrase first uttered by Herbert Hoover to describe that "grand and noble experiment" prohibition first came to my mind because I began by promising to give up television, video games, and the internet, for simple elegant printed prose. I would do so for a year, keeping only my journal, and like Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, I was to seclude myself from technological society in favor of a simple and dying medium: print.

Problems immediately arose with this idea. One was my job with BookReview.com, which requires internet correspondence as well as regular web content management. The other is my girlfriend, Hali, who was so opposed to the idea that she threatened to break up with me if I went through with it. Another was my own resolve, which would diminish in the searing loneliness that comes with doing nothing but writing. So prohibition failed, but rather than simply overturning my own private Volstead Act, I morphed it into "The World Savvy Reader".

March starts tomorrow, and it's the first official month of our year-long voyage to becoming readers of action, readers of knowledge, and most of all readers of power. Reading for 'Power' is our first month's assignment, and that means reading Robert Greene's national bestseller and learning the 48 points of power. It also means delving into the secret world of professional womanizing with Neal Strauss's "The Game", and learning Machiavellian war tactic's with "The Prince".

Since we're building on lessons learned in February from Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People", Jeffrey Gitomer's "The Little Black Book of Connections", and Katie Goodman's "Improvisation for the Spirit", I'll be referencing the principles of those books as we exercise them in learning and exercising our own power.

Literature is also extremely important throughout this journey, as it puts these rules into a larger context so that we may see the truth and consequences of power. Towards this end, we will be taking a look at William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and "Henry V", as well as Louis Sinclaire's "It Can't Happen Here" which was the inspiration for the infamous mini-series "V" and chases a plot of power corrupted. We'll undoubtedly find more novels featuring characters of power, rising to power, or different kinds of power along the way.

In literature, each book exists in tandem with another. Books are connected in ways which the internet can never emulate. Books drop out of the network. They're forgotten. While the better ones are exalted. Here's an example: Reading Josh Bazell's book, "Beat the Reaper", last month I discovered several mentions of another title, "Daddy Cool", which was written in the sixties by Donald Goines and demonstrates all kinds of power. The power obligatory in fatherhood. The oppressive power of pimps and their young prey. The power and cowardice of the gun. For that reason, "Daddy Cool" is also on our list.

We're not only reading a bunch of books and interweaving them with our larger lives, but committing ourselves to plans of action to become more experienced World-Savvy Readers. Our battle scars this month are simple and should provide us with an accurate study to the effects of how winning friends leads to influencing people which leads to increasing power. I've got some fun assignments in mind, but in order to keep them in close context with what we're studying we'll have to attack them one at a time. So those blog posts will be coming shortly.

I'm planning to hit the library and the book store pretty hard tomorrow, and begin my demonstration of how, come April, a world savvy reader can become twice as powerful in a month as he has in years of watching television.

Always Be Closing

2010-02-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

Although she'd been around them all of her life, she didn't have a dog of her own until she was thirty-six years old. Her husband gave her a rottweiler. A puppy no bigger than a football. When she took it to the vet, he looked up at her from the stethoscope and said, "how much do you weigh?"
"Excuse me?" she wasn't sure she'd heard correctly.
"How much do you way?"
"About one-sixty, why?"
"You're dog is going to hit one-eighty easy. And fast. You should get him professionally trained if you want to keep him."

Jennifer, my boss, did not have her dog professionally trained. Instead, she raised her rottweiler, Max, to be a lapdog and he followed her around everywhere. "He was a big baby," she said to me last night in the conference room, "when we had our weekend meetings Max came with me, and you can ask anybody here, he would follow me everywhere. No leash. He was quiet. He was my best friend."
Last month she had to put him to sleep. He was fourteen years old. Jennifer didn't come to work for three days after that.

The Accidental Billionaires

2010-02-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

If "The Accidental Billionaires" can teach us anything about networking, it's the opposite of every other book on this month's list. In the cases of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, it wasn't "who" they knew, but rather "what" they knew. Which is fitting since the two of them were plotting to build a site that would help them meet more people.

The fact of the matter is, there are no real rules when it comes to success. It happens, or doesn't happen, in a million different ways, each as varied as the next. The only thing that we can glance from novels like these is that success isn't guaranteed if you try, but it's certainly not going to happen if you don't try. Eduardo becomes the hero of this tale because of his level headed rational approach, and because most of us aren't programming geniuses like Zuckerberg so Eduardo is easier to relate to. However, he's the one who gets the boot in the end.

I love non-fiction, but the trouble with it is that poetic justice in real life is terribly elusive. However, even if Eduardo is no longer a part of Facebook we can still be sure that he will be successful. (If the Eduardo in the book is at all like the Eduardo of real life.) Throughout the book we watch him grow in his business contacts, in prestige, and in experience over his failure with the company. It's Mark that we have to worry about.

If it's true that money can't buy happiness than Zuckerberg still has a ways to go. His narcissism grows under the tutelage of Sean Parker, founder of Napster and similar prodigy, but as we watch Parker bolt from company to company, continuously thrown out on his ass because of his own arrogance and misbehavior, we see shadows of what Zuckerberg will become. Mark, after all, is still only in his twenties, and he's created one of the greatest websites of all time. He's rich beyond measure. What's next for him?

Perhaps these are things we tell ourselves to mask our envy, but reporter Ben Mezrich must have foreseen these conclusions. He tapered the story toward them to achieve a dramatic angle that's engaging on the most superficial Facebook kind of way, as well as cutting a deeper meaning in those same parallels. Who among us hasn't witnessed a Facebook union amid wall posts, statuses, and relationship heart icons, only to see them break, and watch the tides of the social landscape within our networks change. This is the kind of story that Facebook was built on, and the kind that it's doomed to tell over and over again.

The Noun of Self Becomes a Verb

2010-02-21T06:22:00.000-08:00

She was buxom, like my girlfriend, except with a certain savagery about her. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and standing at the customer service counter with her sheepish hastily goteed boyfriend. They were looking for books on cunnilingus and a book called "The Big Bang" which she said, "isn't about The Big Bang at all, but about sex." She had a southern drawl laced beneath a throaty inflection. In twenty years, her voice will be scratchy and hard to listen to without wincing, but right now it's perfect.

Her name was Meredith, and her boyfriend's name was Stacy. As uncommon as the couple seem they are as regular as the customers get in the Books-A-Million where I work. We have old irreverent men who snore away the working hours in the reading sections. We have not been cleared to remove them so they use us as a temporary shelter and our magazines as blankets. One gentleman thought that the building could also prove useful as a free private pornography booth, and masturbated to the adult magazines right down the aisle from where the women have their knitting club. He was a repeat offender, also wanted at the nearby Barnes & Nobles, Borders, and the local libraries.

This is, in many ways, what a bookstore is. It's a place that incites action. Television dulls you down, removes you from the earth and into a world of pixels and technicolor; a world of intangible signals. It abducts you like a UFO does a farmer. Books, on the other hand, will make you do crazy things. Kids lose it over a Thomas the Engine table that we have in the children's section. They read the books until they feel satisfied that they can stoke the fires of an actual engine, and haul granite or corn or whatever it is that train engines haul. Their imaginations boiling, kids will play on our Thomas the Engine table for hours.

As I'm hammering out the details of this blog, a theme is slowly becoming prevalent. I caught glimpses of it yesterday while I was at the dog park with our hound, Tortuga, and I was mentally focused on employing the principles of Dale Carnegie, Katie Goodman, and Jeffrey Gitomer, who I have made this month's gurus of social enlightenment. As Tortuga inched out from under the bench to greet the other dogs, I also ventured out.

I introduced myself to Matt and his dog, Scottie, who have lived in Augusta for all of their lives and absolutely love it. I spoke with a kind woman who was bringing her dog, Mia, out for her 23 year old son. I ran into Lauren, from work, and her friend Josh, and their two dogs, Bain and Molly. We met dogs, Hunter and Jackson. A jet black Great Dane named Olby greeted us. And as we took place in this ceremony of inter-species networking ("We're in their world now," a woman said to me) I made it a point to remember all of their names. We met Kim and her husband Tim. They were human. I shook hands and patted the backs of animals as tall as me on all fours. When I looked around and noticed that Tortuga had taken command of a legion of bulldogs, terriers, poodles, and even a weimaraner, I realized that Dale Carnegie was right. I'm living with a master social guru. Tortuga had instinctively employed nearly every one of Carnegie's principles.

She'd picked up a stick, which all dogs love, and had taken it from dog to dog saying, "you'd love to have this stick, wouldn't you?" and of course many of them said "yes, I would, thank you very much." But Tortuga, a master entrepreneur, only smiled and assured them that they would have it when they could take it from her. As we all know, dogs are socially obligated to take any dare. That's where the phrase "dog dare" comes from. By this method, Tortuga was able to rally the entire dog park into a frenzy. Like a herd of stampeding buffalo, they chased her in cloud of dust around the pen. When a larger dog, Hunter, finally snatched the stick from Tortuga, the mob changed direction and chased him. This went on for several minutes.

It's taken me over 20 years to build the courage to shake a stranger's hand, tell them my name, and ask them about their family and what they do for a living. I struggled to recall everyone's name, and still forgot many of them, but Tortuga will know every dog that she met when we go back. And they'll all know her. "A hen has to lay eggs," Carnegie says, "a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love... and you know that behind this show of affection on his part, there are no ulterior motives: he doesn't want to sell you any real estate, and he doesn't want to marry you." While I was still inching out from under my bench, Tortuga was ruling the lot.

This is how reading opens our eyes. It makes us better lovers, better train engineers, even better at imagining that we're train engineers. It can also drive us "batshit insane," as JP at work recalled while telling us of the 300 pound masturbater who came barreling through policemen toward the front doors, his pants still wrapped eagerly around his thighs, and right toward JP and the manager. "It was epic, man, epic." They grabbed the man in the parking lot, and piled on him just like the hoard of dogs finally managing to subdue Tortuga in massive dog pile. Books show us how we are all different, and the same.

"We're in their world now," said the woman on the bench.

"Improvisation for the Spirit" Chapter 3 Questions

2010-02-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

This month is about learning to be a better people person. As part of that endeavor, I'm reading Katie Goodman's wonderful workbook, "Improvisation of the Spirit". It's a gem of a read; full of the kind of self-esteem nourishment that people like me need. There's a lot of exercises and journaling involved for the purposes of self-exploration. Here's my stab at Chapter 3 "Being in the Moment":

Q: How much time do you spend lost in the past or future?
A: Lots! I'm always either pre-planning an interaction or reviewing in my mind how one went. I do it so often that it feels useless to stop myself because of the amount of effort it would take to do so.

Q: When you are lost, is there a theme?
A: Yes. I'm always passing judgment on myself about something I've said or done.

Q: When fantasizing about the future, is there a theme?
A: Sex. No, I'm kidding. It usually involves me being over enthusiastic about something and then whoever I'm talking to becoming turned off by my senseless enthusiasm. Either that, or it's sex.

Q: What would happen if you ignored the past? What's the first answer that pops in you mind?
A: It wouldn't matter, since I'd still be terrified of the future. I would probably be the same way. Except without the failures of my past weighing me down, which means I would just make new ones. Then I'd have a new past to ignore. I think I'm misreading the question.

Q: What is happening in the present right now?
A: I'm really tired and there's some random clicking sounds coming from outside that just woke Hali up, but now it's gone. I'm a little concerned about this questionnaire.

Q: What does your body feel like when you think about the past, present, and future?
A: I cringe when I think about the past. However, I am oddly optimistic in considering the future. In the present, I am tired.

Q: What do you fear will happen if you let go of the past?
A: I'll create a new, similar one.

Q: What do you fear will happen if you don't constantly plan?
A: I'll make a fool of myself.

Q: What do you fear about the present?
A: I fear taking action.

This American Life

2010-02-18T09:41:00.001-08:00

Here's the episode of This American Life inspired by the Dale Carnegie book. Listen for free here!

Transactors Improv Co.

2010-02-18T09:32:00.001-08:00

A hardy thank you to the Transactors Improv Company, who are the only Improv group that I can find who are active in the Augusta area where I work and play. Of course, they won't be here for awhile so I'm stuck in an high pants-ed industrial hell until the players come back to town.

Give them some love. www.transactors.org

How to Win Friends and Influence People

2010-02-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

The first step to becoming a successful writer is becoming a successful reader. That's easy. The second step, the one that comes before writing, is becoming a successful people person. Dale Carnegie, in recalling a short-story course he once took, recalls "this hard-boiled editor stopped twice in the course of his talk on fiction writing and apologized for preaching a sermon, 'I am telling you,' he said, 'the same things a preacher would tell you, but remember, you have to be interested in people if you want to be a successful writer of stories."

This is gospel. I have the interest, but I lack the people skills. So this month I'm doing some development work on my cerebellum, that part of my brain that controls my voluntary muscle movement, which is often hindered by my overdeveloped sense of imagination (which can fire off from any number of areas in the brain, but mostly the neocortex and thalamus). My problem is that too often I over-think before I speak.

For instance, at work the other day Kenneth and Traye, a cool couple of dudes who work at the Joe Muggs in the Books-A-Million, were taking turns singing opera songs while we were closing up shop. I found myself drawn into the theatrics of it, although I could make no contribution other than my sheepish curiosity so I sat down and watched. When they saw me watching they laughed with what seemed to be a mix of embarrassment and bravado. "Look at Eric," Traye said, "he must be thinking we're crazy." I didn't want them to think that I thought they were crazy. In fact, I was admiring their open attitude, but I didn't want to seem entertained either. So I said nothing, and the moment passed by when I might have complimented them.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" is probably the best book on this subject ever written. Dale Carnegie goes to some lengths, not to merely tell you how to handle these situations, but to demonstrate them with anecdote after anecdote, until they're pounded into your memory, like how you mash old soaps together to make a larger, better one. No modern book on dealing with people is worth the mineral oil in the ink it's printed with if they don't mention Dale Carnegie. His book has been in continual print since it's first publication in 1937, and is really a one of a kind read. I'll be referencing it through out this month's posts.

Another book I'm reading is Jeffery Gitomer's "Little Black Book of Connections", which is exactly what it professes to be in its title. It's small, basic, and definitely not for everyone. Gitomer offers a great use of voice for his readers, often hard-nosed business people, but little for the quiet mid-twenties man bumbling his way into middle adulthood. His ideas are wonderful, they include: adding value to your relationships, coming up with a thirty second commercial for when you meet people, and keeping records of your contacts, but he writes little on how to employ these methods. He also wants you to subscribe to his website: www.gitomer.com if you want examples. Much of this book is about self-promotion, which, as a writer, makes my non-commercialist skin crawl. Still, the man knows his stuff, and he's worth listening too.

Then there's Katie Goodman's "Improvisation for the Spirit", a wonderfully upbeat book about how you can use the skills of Improv in your everyday life. Much of her principles are the same as Carnegie's, but with an Improv spin that makes them feel new and exciting. Reading this book is not nearly as difficult as trying to do some of the activities in them. You'll hear more about those in the weeks to come.

In keeping with the theme of networking, I'll be reading Ben Mezrich's "Accidental Billionaires" which is about the creation of the world's leading social networking site, 'Facebook'. It's being adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin, of "West Wing" fame.

Alright, readers. Let's get reading.