Spindependence

Dear diary, which this blog is not, it has been quite some time since I have written within the confines of this WYSIWYG editor. Holidays for some reason have a habit of serving as arbitrary reminders for me to post here. In the time since last posting, many a holiday has passed, including the anniversaries of both the "independence" of this country and modern France. The campishness of quotation marks aside, the idea of independence is nonsense. The number of individuals or earthly creatures that can claim true independence is actually the old null-spot. My apologies to those who feel truly free, but then I think it is worth reexamining what that means, why it feels so important, and so on. But that won't be done here.

Instead I shall return to the near seven year-old statement of purpose of this blog: to gripe. There have been a few meaningless items to inspire my ire in the past three months, but this latest literary turd has pushed me over the edge. I had taken this chunk out of my day to do a little personal writing, but when Microsoft Word decided that it would quit on me countless consecutive times to the point where it couldn't recover the recovered versions of the recovered versions of the recovered versions of my initially unsaved documents (saving them was the initial impetus for this bit of software to quite in the first place), I thought why hello dear blog, how art thou?

Things haven't changed here I've found. Some of the images and hyperlinks embedded in past text have surely broken as those files and pages have moved paths or been removed altogether, but that is neither here nor there when the text itself has been maintained.

Text that should not be maintained, however, would be that within American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I think perhaps the working title of "American Godawful" should have stayed in place save for the fact that Gaiman is not even a US citizen. Now this steaming pile that embarrassingly won every Sci-Fi/Fantasy Award in the year of its release does have some credible reviews on Amazon, one referencing its illicit content, and the likes of this truthsayer.

Why be so offended by this book? Why not just stop reading? These are EXCELLENT questions that I will not answer. Instead I will pose more questions. How could anyone actually enjoy this book? Is it possible to write 600 pages (font-dependent) that are so incredibly disjointed? That one answers itself with a yes. I will stop with the questions. Instead here is the format of this book:

• Main character that does nothing and has no depth (I have some of the book left to read. I have a feeling the character is going to do something at the end, which is out of character, as his character is to do nothing. His name is Shadow, so I guess he is a shadow of himself, just as this is the shadow of a what is necessary to write a good book).
• Supporting characters that are loosely based on mythological gods and make cliché statements. They also do nothing and have no depth.
• Multiple embarrassing sexual encounters or daydreams (I want to give Gaiman the benefit of the doubt of this being a device rather than his own personal obsession, but even as a device, emphasis on the latter syllable, it's poorly executed).
• Make you believe there is a Scientologist conspiracy if this book can be not only published, but be successful (sales) and heralded (with awards)

I'd say the best moments are when you shut the book, except then you might read the gratuitous praise and horrendous back-cover synopsis. At any rate, kudos to Gaiman for duping so many, and shame on the duped.

I've taken a strong stance here. People have opinions and those opinions differ and one of the great aspects of life is discussion. If anyone can explain to me how this book is even remotely good, I'm all ears and eyeballs.

Thank you, and God bless America?

Wringing In the New Year

Well 16 days into this 2014 and my blogging's behind if you know what I mean. I don't mean that it's behind me—though there's been blogging in my past—I just mean that any effort at scheduled/ritualized posting of content is, as is often the case, not happening. A strong example of this includes my changing 14 days to 16 in that opening line.

2014 is keeping a brisk pace, at least on the weather front, and perhaps soon on the beverage front. January's only half through, and while I never like to count days off and out, it would be nice for it to not be so nut-chillingly cold. Still, there are other locales with other climates, and there's no sense griping about the weather when I can gripe about literary frustrations. At the moment those include picking up a well-reviewed and well reviewed novel that is going down about as smoothly as insert simile of your liking to connote a degree of bumpiness. Which is to say that's it's not terrible or anything, sometimes jaded to the point of cynicism me just fails to see something new or, more to the point, wholly interesting in the concept.

But while I might fail to love the book in question thus far, I do like it for raising, to me, the ongoing issue of defining what it is we like—rather than simple harsh denigrations of what we don't like. Saying no is fine, but if it's not getting you any closer to yes, it can become a bit of an issue. So know that there are some no's as far as this book goes, but I will continue to give it a go. Why? A combination of curiosity and already having abandoned one book of late. Reading, like many things, is a personal matter. A preference for a degree of realism in lingo and dialogue made me drop the last book, and a the old writer writing about a writer scenario has given me a current itch. In the latter instance it's because I know it to be a thing I do as well, and while writing should include you, I also look for it to step outside of you in some meaningful way.

Lackluster literature for this layman aside, I'm feeling good about 2014, and I hope you are too in your corner of the world.

Somewhere in a Vienna Airport...

There's a book I wrote and had published in limited (5 copies) release -- since I had a coupon code for free printing and I love deals. The secret romantic in me has a lot of love for the found object and it perhaps being a sort of serendipitous event. To that end I'd decided I should drop off a copy of said book somewhere in Europe while there with the wife-to-be. There was a most excellent venue presented to me in Prague, but alas I wasn't carrying it. Or I may, in fact, have just been too nervous about it. Probably overzealous to drop it in the Kafka section. With a touch of sadness, I czeched out.

Nearing the end of our journey another great and eclectic book shop within the Museumsquartier that might be this place presented itself. Again I don't recall whether I was bookless or ball-less in the circumstance, but once again opportunity passed. After all, it's a little embarrassing to stick your own book into a place like that.

So at last I gave into halfway guerrilla marketing, purchasing the latest Junot Diaz book at an exorbitant rate in a Vienna airport book shop, and replacing it with my own offering. Inside was just an inscription hopeful that someone would pick it up, read it and, most importantly and least likely, enjoy it. Who's to say how much of this will or has taken place as one thing I didn't do was include any sort of contact information, save even a link to this blog or perhaps a twitter account.

At any rate, between the swapping of [book] places with another writer from New Jersey, and that the book is about an itinerant and then left in an airport, it all seems to have come in not too far shy of 360 degrees. Sometimes you don't get to find out where or how a thing ends up. And since fiction is about inventing outcomes (or lying and calling them invented -- one might use the terms "repackaging" or "repurposing"), an invented future for this work fits just fine.

Life in Contechxt

Frequently in life of the flesh and in life of this Internet I go about bemoaning technology. What better sounding board for it than the medium(s) it/themselves, right? Focusing on the Internet in particular, I once spent a great deal of time on here. As it happens, I still do, as for eight or more hours per day at a workplace I am in front of a screen and connected, and here I am now in hours at which I am not at a workplace. That alone is 33% of the day. And given that I sleep ~ 6 hours/night, we're talking 4/9th of my waking day, so ~44% on weekdays. Except tack on maybe another hour to be unsafe and that's 9/18 or a full 50% of my day (on weekends probably 11% or less), 25% for sleeping, and in the 3-4% range for a run so I'm left with about 21% of the day.

I'm leaving out cooking, eating, pooping, commuting, and some other things. That isn't a whole lot of leftover time, even with my reduced web use. As is often mentioned, it's not the presence of technology so much as what we do with it. And for me, it's often been about reading. Of late it's taken me to stories with 'beginners' in the title. If you've read this far, do yourself a favor and read the high quality Raymond Carver short story  "Beginners" (thank you Internet for making it available). And then maybe if you've got more time, sit yourself down to absolute beginners. Where that book deals with the absolute beginner as the never before existing teenage class with expendable income in a backdrop of 1950's England, now we've got the technagers who won't have experienced life before the web. But thanks to it, they can know all about Webb.

Well shit, that's July.

What's Wrong is Write?

Or is it what's write is wrong? I can be a pretty judgmental sonofavich when it comes to writing. All writing, from the short story to the novel, journalism, plays, screenplays, and the often forgotten letter. Even in internet comment, this very blog, or text via phone I have grammatical standards — which results in the suffering of those who are text recipients of mine. Far worse: I don't always get grammar right myself. I do like that there are many styles of writing, but it's the levels that bother me. What is it, really, that separates good writing from bad? You pick it up and you just know, right? Except what do you know? You know what style appeals to you for reasons you can't grasp which may or may not be influenced by all of the individuals around you who you do or don't like who do or don't like the things you are trying to determine whether you do or don't like.

That's a long introduction meant as an effort for me to not seem bitter about stories like this one. Billed as a Cinderella story, I was unable to locate the evil stepmother (perhaps Hocking's drudgerous day job) and noted as well that it was devoid of pumpkin-based carriages and glass slippers. See, what I'm being is what is, in common parlance, an asshole. I know the Cinderella comparison need not be so literal. And you know what, good for Hocking. I thought, yes, here is someone who circumvented the system (publishing) which may not have evolved quite as much as it should in the digital age. I shall resist going off on my usual tangents about the loathsome nature of digital. Where there is bad there is good, and vice versa.

So, wanting to root for Hocking, I read the first page or two of her hit book and I couldn't help getting a little deflated. The draw or appeal for me to keep reading wasn't there. That exposure though, was a while back now, and I just revisited it to try to be more...fair? It still wasn't what I would call good, but nor did it seem as bad. And that, of course, is part of the problem.

Really it isn't about this woman who managed to achieve success because, really, good for her. It's just that usual bastardly not-quite-entitlement where I hope to be slotted in, so I can enter the echelon of the lucky few who earns their keep writing.

Shifting gears, I'd like to give a quick shout to the Sister Cities of Chicago. It seems like a pretty good list to me, and only corroborates why I find myself happily ensconced in this Midwestern metropolis.

At any rate, a warm wave has interrupted the cold of winter and so it's a reminder of sunny warmth on the horizon. You've got to embrace that cold depression for the enervating transition to summer. Let's see what old Punxsutawney Phil portends.

Uh-mer-kuh

The fourth of July has passed on again and, as always, it was a great time. It really is one of those things that brings people together. I will say, however, that running shirtless in American flag shorts through the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of your city may not be the most sensible. One driver did yell "America," but that was before I had crossed the line—the literal neighborhood line. And though I run through this neighborhood all the time, one man did ask, with reasonable menace in his tone, what in the f#ck I thought I was doing running through there. The best thing to do sometimes is to keep running. As I neared my abode on the return, a man yelled from his third-floor balcony, "Woooo, America, f#ck yeah." I gave him a woo back and my faith was restored. The unusual thing was how deserted the roads were, and how few people in general I saw. It was like a scene from 28 Days Later or any such [zombie] apocalypse film, and it was a rather creepy thing. For all that at times I might want less bustle, the contrast, when not changing environs, can be confounding to the point of mild disturbance.

At any rate, I'm sharing the following photo to show how I decided to embrace America the rest of the day. Even amongst the eclectic attire of Boystown and certainly on the lakefront, much commentary was inspired. I only wish I had a photo as a good chum and I—he decked out in equally intriguing cut off America jeans—entered the liquor store, a spectacle in itself with half of its facade a rather cheap-looking castle. To be able to do this, spend time with good friends, and walk to the lake to watch free fireworks with thousands of strangers, this is why I love this country. I can't describe why it is I get such specific joy. Perhaps because everyone seems so on board with one thing, a rarity amongst the overarching culture of antagonism and negativity I see in a lot of pop culture that sometimes is thrown under the moniker of hating.

As I rode the train last evening in cut-off corduroys and cut-off tee (the very one in that photo in fact), I couldn't help but allow some negativity of my own to seep in as some loop workers boarded the train along with me. All of the stereotypes about douchey behavior of finance types were being fulfilled in speech so I did what I sometimes do and stared judgmentally at them. I recall a time an ex-girlfriend did this on a subway train in New York to marvelous effect. Silent, seething disdain, while generally not the best way to go through life, I do appreciate when it puts at least a temporary stick in the spokes of boorish buffoonery. My true favorite moment, aside from the slow realization, is the discomfort when one of these parties of two vacates the train, leaving the lone man or woman to stew alone. It all starts when they get on and give me a look for my attire and haircut and I only need remind them judgment goes both ways. My constant vacillation between fun-loving human and a nauseous distaste for so many of my fellow humans may very well be what helps propel me through life

In other news of crappy chronicling, a proof copy of my first effort at a novel arrived. While it's entrance to the public domain is dubious, I couldn't help but grin with the sense of completion there is in having a tangible copy of my effort. Maybe if I started using a typewriter...And maybe it sucks, but it's a hell of a feeling just to have completed something. I, for one, don't do that enough. So yeah, there, once more, for Uhmerkuh!

Me and JD, or is it JD and Me?

Just before the war with the eskimos, sometime during De Daumier-Smith's blue period, the laughing man went to visit Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut. Down at the dinghy he met Teddy, who declared it a perfect day for bananafish. He did this for Esmé — with love and squalor. Pretty mouth and green my eyes thought Franny and Zooey, perhaps old JD's off in a place where the catcher in the rye may raise high the roofbeams carpenters and give Seymour: an introduction.

Thanks for the memories Mr. Salinger. I'm about to sit down to your books anew and try to remember how to write. Hold on Caulfield, here we come, gettin' straight delorious.

Gonna try to sleep off this Twizzler coma, most likely awakened by a red bowel movement. Happy Groundhog Day y'all...