squidbag

Along Came a Disappointment

[WRITTEN BEFORE I FINISHED THE BOOK]

For years now, librarians, bookstore clerks and random other supposed "readers" have been pointing me at James Patterson.  Having finally picked up a copy of Along Came a Spider - from the library, or I'd be really pissed - I am now forced to wonder if, as part of the business model where he gets a bunch of other authors to write shit (really, just the purest, unadulterated excrement) for him and convinces them to not take credit for it, he also employs a cadre of seemingly normal citizens who claim to have read his books without having done so and who make five bucks everytime they recommend one of his piles of garbage in a cover to some unsuspecting sucker.  

Be advised; if you were one of the people who recommended James Patterson to me, you're now on fucking notice.  Your recommendations are from henceforth highly suspect, and it will take some time before I listen to you again without wincing.

Not even passable airplane or bathroom reading, this trope-filled, cliche-ridden (I keep expecting the main character, Alex Cross' s boss to yell "MCBAIN!?!") collection of strung together sentences masquerading as a story.  I have read FAR better and more literate books this Summer alone, and many of those were YA.  On what grade level does Patterson write?  3rd?  Except for the brutal murders and a the sprinkling of the word "fuck" every ten pages or so, I'd think so.  Sensationalism abounds - there are three savagely murdered and abused children in less than one hundred pages, and that's saying nothing about the mutilated and dead women and the numerous other allusions to death.  There are three separate violent events, supposedly committed by two guys, but you know it's the same guy, and that this is one of the "twists" that's coming.  This book stinks so bad I feel I have to open a window, turn on an exhaust fan and apologize for it.  I plan on kicking James right in his left knee if I ever see him.

What's the last book you read where everyone but everyone's got a fucking nickname?  Children's lit and true crime Mafia books, yeah, but otherwise, give me a break, Jimmy.  Watching Patterson trying to be clever on the page is like watching my dog throw up.  Just get it over with so I can clean up and move on.  I'm not sure the man's ever had an actual conversation or listens when people speak - his dialogue seems like regurgitated movie lines from the 80s and 90s.

This is an actual sex scene from this book (which is for the most part, written in the first person): ""You look so beautiful." "I did it just for you." Jezzie smiled.  "And I'd like you to do something else for you.  I'd like you to do something for me, too."  And so we did one another."  I'd like to stress that this is not parody, or a joke, or anything but a straight transcript of what's lodged in this terrible book.  You may now turn to the side and vomit.  I shall wait.

I'd like some feedback from black people about crusty old white James' interpretation of their race-based thoughts and problems, 'cause his "thoughts and feelings of black folk" seem pretty contrived and stereotypical to me.  When he speaks for the character he calls Nana Mama, I feel embarrassed, like someone's performing in blackface.  Oh, and the Irish should be pissed at James too, since he spends a whole paragraph perpetuating the "whole of Ireland is alcoholic" myth.

[WRITTEN AFTER I FINISHED THE BOOK]

Having wasted part of my Saturday on this crapheap now, I have to additionally point out that apparently, Patterson thinks Chaucer is responsible for Le Morte d'Arthur, and that his plot holes are so massive even light can't escape.  I was 50 pages from the end before I realized that one whole murder - that the murderer guy admitted to by leaving a note on the body of a dead federal agent - was never brought up again, even during the sensational trial straight out of every Perry Mason episode, and that, despite the internal pining for the lack of justice for black victims of violent crime, no justice for the black victims of the violent crime was ever done.  Nice loose ends, Jimmy-boy.  

I am terrified by one thing in regards to this book: I was originally going to read a bunch of them.  That's a scary thought.

Burning this book - while satisfying - would be a waste of fire.  After all, fire is a useful bringer of light and heat energy, while this book is nothing more than a steaming pile of rancid bullshit writing so bad it'll put you off eating for awhile.  (Diet aid - new marketing direction?) I've seen better prose scrawled on pub bathroom walls in Sharpie by people so drunk they couldn't resist adding a picture of a cock and balls.  I picture a giant pile of James Patterson books being moved around by WALL-E after we're all off planet, having left James behind with the other cockroaches.

The most disturbing thing about this book is not that it sucks - it's that everyone liked it.  It was a NYT #1 Bestseller for fuck's sake.  People made a movie of it.  Aargh.  For the record: Anyone who tells you to read anything by James Patterson - unless it's a suicide note - is NOT your friend.

The Long View of the Wrong View

I've seen enough now to realize that all I have to do is wait, and these dumb motherfuckers will go away.  Sometimes they come back, but ultimately - they just slowly go away.  I just wish I could remember that when they're actively annoying the shit out of me, but it's hard not to swipe at the flies when they're around your head.  Hopefully, someday soon, I will have the presence of mind to realize that they eventually all lose their sheen and they drop away like the petals from one of those horrible stench flowers that reek like rotten meat.

Fifteen years from now, Obama will still have been the 44th President of the United States, and Glenn Beck will be a double handful of nothing.  He's off TV right now for one reason and one reason alone - no one was watching.  Come on - can you imagine that greedy-ass Fox would take his show off the schedule if advertisers still wanted to buy time there?  Nah, he's out to the marginalized world of pull-string talk radio, where only the most inflammatory can still achieve any kind of recognition.  Remember when Rush Limbaugh used to write books full of non-ideas and had a big TV show?  When did that shit stop?  When he lost a rung or two on the relevance ladder.  No one went to Sarah Palin's movie - what do you suppose that means?  Remember when Bill O'Reilly was hot shit, and made the news everyday?  Now he's on this religion quest and generates more laughs than cheers.  Did you know that Ann Coulter squatted over America and  crapped out another fake book this year?  Yeah - neither did anyone else.  No one gives a fuck.

Of course, the other side of this is true; if our guys cease to be relevant, we have to leave them behind, or we can't really claim any kind of progressivism, can we?  For now, though, I'm going to choose to focus on the fact that soon these rightwingnut talking heads will one by one die, and history will lump them all together as a loud and nasty hydra-shaped blip at the beginning of the 21st century.  "Loud and Nasty Blip" will become my "Calm Blue Ocean" mantra the next time Beck evokes Nazis or fascists or anytime I hear stupid, inflammatory crap being spouted by the wrong.

(Image found at ShirtaDay.com, so you can buy it, if you'd like.  On a shirt!)

Advisory Positions

I have a friend (who can break his anonymity if he so chooses, but I ain't doing it for him) who likes to refer to me as his "spiritual adviser" or "anger management coach."  He uses these sobriquets in a quasi-facetious way, but there's an element of truth to both, I suppose.  What he means to say is that through his observation of me - a person who he considers to be a fairly angry guy who doesn't let it rule his life (for the most part) - he himself has learned to channel and point and aim his anger at things that deserve it, or use it as energy to be productive and progressive.  It works - it's a fairly potent energy source once harnessed.

He's not the first person who has said this to me.  More than once I've had someone mention to me that they were afraid of getting mad, once upon a time.  Not me.  I grew up angry at people around me, at myself, at authority figures, family and others who let me down right away, and so I learned - slowly, over the course of 17 years or so - what to do with it, and more importantly, that it was a useful, valid and perfectly natural emotion, with no more factors to condemn it than have happiness or guilt or melancholy.  It's simply a state of being, albeit one that scares people.  (People are scared by anything they're to which they're unaccustomed - watch the reaction of a chronically depressed person to a Pollyanna, and you'll see what I mean.)  By example, I have passed this fact along to others.  I'm kind of proud of that.

I have people in advisory positions in my life, too, of course.  I was taught unqualified and perfect love by my wife, who loved me not because of nor in spite of my flaws - they simply were me, and thus loved.  Without Eric and Jesse, pacifist approaches to situations simply might not have occurred to me.  They gave me not only tools to do the job, but acknowledgment of its difficultly.  Numerous people have given me their stories and histories, joys, rages and discontents, and I carry a little bit of all of them everywhere I go.  Some events bolster your convictions about friendship, and some people are there when you need them and stick around for a good while thereafter.  Good and bad, you take away a little bit of each person as a voice in your soul and hear them when you need them most.

I was thinking about you when I wrote this: Jimbo, JB, Colleen, Josh, Amy, the DLF, Dug, Vini, Mer, Jess F., the Basilones, A. & O., Erin, Megin, Basford, most of NiH & a few other people I don't want to embarrass.

Chopra & Superheroes

I will begin by freely admitting that I knew next to nothing about Deepak Chopra when I picked up this book (if you'd asked, I would have said something like "The Indian self-help spiritualist guy, yeah?  He's on Oprah a lot?") and that what intrigued me about it was that someone famous and apparently respected was trying to tie together the worlds of modern mythology (the superhero) with spiritual & ethical principles for living.  And there was a generic sort of comic book superhero on the front, and that Deepak named his kid Gotham, which I thought was like when Nic Cage named his kid Kal-El.  (Turns out that it's a specifically chosen anglicanized spelling of Gotama, the name of the Buddha.)

I wouldn't recommend wasting any time with this book.  I got nothing out of it except a lot of mild frustration, which of course, Deepak would tell me is my own fault, and nothing to do with his book.

Two major problems here: one is that the whole book reads like "Baby's First Eightfold Path."  Basic principles of human well-being, balance and enlightenment are typically simply stated and take an effort to understand completely, hence "enlightenment."  The journey and the process are one.  In this book, the principle is simply stated, half-assedly related to something in comic books, and then driven into the ground with a sledgehammer for six to eight pages before being re-stated more simply in the form of a pageful of self-help bulletpoints.  I guarantee you've heard more useful from a yoga video.  It's the worst kind of watered-downtalking claptrap - accessible "truth" for people who aren't ready to access it because they've done none of the work.  And it can't be YA, because it's boring as all get out.  My son would be flipping pages looking for the superhero parts.

Where we run slap into the second problem: Deepak seems to know next to nothing about comic book superheroes.  From the smallest irksome behavior (praising the alien Silver Surfer for his humanity when the dude's from Zenn-La) to not mentioning the Green Lantern Corps during a discussion of willpower.  He's just flat wrong about Storm's powers, and seems not to understand the origins of Wolverine, Wonder Woman or Batman, this last of which is just inexcusable.  He goes on to put a taunt from Bullseye into the mouth of Daredevil - from the movie, no less - and use it as an argument for how humans can be magical when they strive for magic.  First off, I'm pretty sure that "you're good, but I'm magic" is something that Bullseye says after committing a brutal murder, and second - you're talking about magic and ignoring Dr. Strange, Dr. Fate, Zatanna, Brother Voodoo, Papa Midnite and John Constantine?  You have a read a comic or two, right?  

Oh, wait, actually, I know you haven't, because no one who had any background at all in comics would use the god-like interdimensional Beyonder (who likes to use superheroes and villains as pawns in battle games) as an example of ultimate superheroic potential, or point to Phoenix as an example of ultimate self-actualization.  Dark Phoenix is never mentioned - you know that part where she goes nuts, eats a star and snuffs half a billion aliens?  A real example of self-actualization would how Jean wrests control away from the Phoenix force and makes decisions that save lives, but Deepak focuses on the power at hand when people are as aware and centered as is the fucking Phoenix.  Ridiculous.

I'm also stunned that anyone could have conversation about being one with one's enviornment and the universe without bringing up Swamp Thing (specifcially Alan Moore's) but that would be an expectation, and I'm not sure why I'd have those about this book.

His grip on Greek and Roman myth seems equally shaky, or perhaps it's just that he's paying lip service to them.  Somebody needs to send him a Bullfinch's, though.  Gilgamesh is mentioned once, and seemingly at random, and there's nothing at all about how Jewish mythos fed the creation of the modern superhero, which during a discussion of their spiritual relavance seems crucial.

I have wasted my time so you won't have to.  You'll get far more out of the comics Deepak didn't bother to read than you would this affront to paper called a book.

Sucks to Be You

I've had a strange week.  A guy dressed like Santa Claus in the summer gave my kids toys in the mall on Thursday morning, I've had multiple instances of people not doing what they said they would do - some for good reasons, and some not, I spent the whole of yesterday mad as hell at my current landlords, and I've been throwing money around - mostly as part of the process of buying a house - in a way that makes me uncomfortable.  Also, I start school in a month and a half, and I always hate that feeling.

And yet, I wouldn't want to be Rodney King.  If you're Rodney King, you're rembered for a riot and a catchphrase and the whole of America sits and waits for you to fuck up again, and you wouldn't want to disappoint them, so you've got to run out and break the law in some stupid way occasionally, so your most recent arrest can make the celebrity column of the Washington Post.  Read the item carefully; lest you think there is a "Mess with Rodney" harrassment squad of cops out there, they did watch him screw up repeatedly before busting him for DUI, so they were kind of trying to give the man a chance.  It sucks to be Rodney King.

I wouldn't want to be Victoria Jackson, either.  I bet it sucks to be her, every bloody morning.  If you enjoyed her work on SNL back in the slightly recent day, you may be upset to learn that she is now BATSHIT INSANE.  Not just because she's a Tea Party RightWingNutJob who never voted before the 2000 elections, but because according to a recent post she thinks Obama is a Hitler, and that he's out to kill her.  She draws all kinds of parallels between Obama and Hitler, like how they both changed their names and how they both have white mothers.  Oh, crap.  My wife also has a white mother and changed her name when we got married - maybe she's also  A HITLER!  I'm gonna go check.  Safe for now, but no beer halls for her anytime soon, I can tell you that.

I wouldn't want to be Casey Anthony, that's for sure.  She's fucked.  Those of you crying that there's "No Justice for Caylee" lack the requisite patience required to even watch a whole Spaghetti Western, apparently.  Third act, people.  She's obviously a lying bitch who has alienated (or possibly killed) everyone in her life, and now she'll be released from 1000 days in relative isolation into an undisclosed location and without any prospects or special protection.  This sounds suspiciously like "pushed into a vacant dirt lot from a 15 mph van," could quickly become The Running Man or Series 7, gentle readers.

In short, I'll take my problems and live with them, thanks.

A Tax on Talking Shit

Whatta maroon. What an inveterate douchecreature is this mentally crippled shame attic escapee, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.  He wants to re-write the Constitution because voting doesn't benefit him.  Tyrants do that.  Look deeply into his eyes, and you can see that a secret is buried there.  There is shadow lurking behind that gaze, and it thinks that power belongs in the hands of those with the financial wherewithal to grasp what it can do to, as opposed to do for, others.  Whether or not he's ever had an idea that matters, however, is a notion buried beneath the tidal pool of excrement that floods American discourse when he opens his mouth.  Today, he apparently said that if Americans got mad at the Republicans for letting the government shut down again that they might have a point, a point with merit, but that Mitch wasn't going to let that happen, handing off the hot potato to Obama, who must be totally at fault, because he's been President for three years already, and this boat turns on a fucking dime.  This is simply shit talking.  There is no logic to these ideas, simply assertions followed by rhetoric, which is fine if you write a blog, and not so good if you're an elected official.

If you fuckers really want a balanced budget and even a surplus, there should be the equivalent of the swear jar on the kitchen counter for politicians and people in public life who talk shit.  Talk shit, and you put a few grand in America's talking shit jar - we'll have extra money overnight, my friends.

Tired of politicos like McDonnell who think that they can get away with saying whatever groundless bullshit they want to?  Tax them for talking shit.  Want to see a windbag-based economy really pay off, then let's charge some money to Bachmann and Santorum for signing the racist, sexist, homophobic pledge and then also to the group who finally dropped the paragraph about slavery.  Why?  We all know how you feel, what are you hiding now?  When John Boehner refuses to drop a tax break for the wealthy by calling it "a tax increase on job creators," you know he's talking shit, so it's time to make him pay up.  Any time Ann Coulter releases another one of the travesties to literature she calls books - where she horks up vitirol and vomits it out onto 300 otherwise useful pieces of paper - she should throw in half her fucking take.

Tired of religious leaders paying lip service to traditions that serve no one living and instead venerate the narrow and outdated views of people who may or may not have even existed?  Have 'em toss their Talking Shit Tax into the collection plate.  What about celebrities who pimp their stupid ideas about religion, diet, or half-baked crap philosophies?  Any famous person bitching about the burden of being famous?  Kanye West or Eminem's whole career?  Just more money for the Talking Shit Tax Fund, here to grow something from the shit.

Part of what we raise will have to go to the hiring, maintenance and equipping of a TST Police Force to come around and administer a metaphorical slap in the fucking teeth in the form of a monetary citation to anyone caught talking shit in any setting.  (Hey, I need a job.) If you're shooting your fucking mouth off about another group of people, infringing upon someone else's rights, or spouting crap you can't back up (which includes flaming Facebook and other social circular virtuactions), you will be subject to a stiff TST fee right up the ass.

I'm paid up.  Are you?

Enduring Marriages

Focus on the Family is a Christian Right organization that's been about the business of shaping people's attitudes by narrowing them since I was about three years old.  Originally founded by Dr. James Dobson, an arch conservative who believes that gay people are wrong and that "tolerance" and "diversity" are simply "buzzwords for promoting a gay agenda," (pads available) the organization is now run from within and is concentrating on a "get 'em while they're young" approach with a Christian version of Nickelodeon and numerous Facebook pages.  These are also the National Prayer Day people, and wow, do they hate gayness.  "PRAY NOT GAY" is a slogan of theirs, I believe.

Right now, they're sponsoring a Focus on the Family Focus on Enduring Marriages Contest where they encourage people to write in and tell the story of their longstanding marital relations, answering some specific affirming questions, and offering in return some gifts and prizes, like what Jesus would do in that same circumstance.  The official page for the contest is that Facebook page, and you have to be 18 years of age to enter, have been married for more than 30 years, and just answer some simple questions.  

You see where I'm going with this, right?

We need a whole slew of gay couples who've been married for more than 30 years.  And I don't think we're splitting fucking hairs on "married," either.  You know if you are, and Focus isn't going to give a shit either way.  We need to collect as many enduring gay marriages as we can get our hands on and flood Focus with affirming, positive, enduring big GAY relationship stories.  It won't prove anything we don't already know, and it won't change their minds, but it will be a lot of fun, and it doesn't look very complicated.

You know you want to.

Bachmann Bullshit Overdrive

Michele Bachmann apparently has, to some people, that MILF vibe going for her, but once again, like in the case of Sarah Palin, I don't get it.  All you had to do with Palin was look at her next to Tina Fey, and you could see that she wasn't a hottie, she was a made-up and trotted out tool, and Bachmann's the same way.  When you spew shit as much as these people do, you must be an asshole, and puckered sphincters are a lot of things, but attractive just isn't one of those things.  So lay this one down and step away, temporarily blind America.

Now - Bachmann's been taking some heat this week for signing The Family Leader's pledge, a boring and insipid document produced by folks as crazy as she is.  TFL is, of course, affiliated with the octopine Focus on the Family, the organization that seeks to laser beam your family in half with God's truth until you all see the light or die from it.  Does she deserve to take this heat?  Well, assuming she can read - yeah.  Yeah, she does.  Give her all the heat you've got to spare.

Even if she believes every word of this travesty to written documents, it proves that she's stupid, and knows nothing about unifying people, since this thing is screamingly divisive, as evidenced by her being forced to defend it in public a couple of times already.  The whole reason it exists is to snuff the rights of gay people in the name of God and country, but it takes time to be puritanical, racist, stupid, and poorly thought out in the process.  Additionally, it somewhat offhandedly attacks Islam, as though an afterthought.  And raising the question of whether or not she (or Prick Santorum) knew about the racism on the first page?  Please.  If I try to weasel out of a contract I signed using the argument that I didn't read it properly, I will be unsuccessful on the grounds that I should have fucking read it, and shouldn't have signed it if I hadn't.  It's a shameless money grab by candidates who know that organized Christians have deep pockets filled by people who give money every Sunday.  So cut the shit, guys.  You signed it - suck it up.

The obvious sexism, homophobia, racism, unsavvy "maverick" political behavior, and completely fabricated assertions (Seriously: who's advocating that promiscuity is good for public health?) and rampant dumbness are no longer shocking, however.  There was a time when I thought these people were people, and so my standards were higher, but I can no longer even remember that time without regression therapy.  No, it's this new thing - promising the ridiculously impossible - that caught my attention.  They want whoever signs this thing and gets elected - an unlikely combo - to abolish pornography.  Sort of.  Read the paragraph.  It's kind of like they're asserting that they just want women and children to have no part in it,  which is great for the children, but porn's going to be kind of boring without women in it.

Seriously, though: You want to abolish a form of sexual expression and stimulation that no one can adequately even define.  Really?  So every naked picture, all the erotica, most of the Internet, that painting from Titanic: what qualifies?  Some guys jerk off to National Geographic or nighttime TV, you going after that, too?  I bet they are.  I bet these are the people who would clothe naked statuary.  I think we can all agree on "crazy."

Who is Michele Bachmann?  A witch?  I don't know.  Is she someone who would restrict the rights of women to have abortions or serve in the military in front-line positions?  Yes.  Is she someone who supports the idea that Black families were better off during slavery?  Who would abolish certain forms of consenting free-expression and vastly curtail the rights of anyone who's not a straight white Christian male?  Yes.  Is she in favor of a population boom here in the States?  Yes, again.  Would she make it harder for someone to get out of a bad marriage?  Yes, she would.  Is she a strident mouthpiece for a movement who would turn back the clock on American progress until it's a sundial?

Well, yeah.

Christopher Walken's Poker Face

I don't know why the schtick of Mr. Walken reading text aloud is still funny, but it is. I'm reasonably certain that it's just because he's funny, and that gets plugged into whatever it is he's doing.  I laughed out loud at this, but you kind of have to wait for it a little bit.  As always, though - it's worth it.  Not as good as an all-Walken stage re-enactment of Twin Peaks would be, but solid nonetheless.

Brentwood vs. the Homeless

The City of Brentwood, Tennessee, has been writing citations against homeless people selling Nashville's "Contributor" Street Newspaper in public spaces.

The Contributor is a street newspaper that focuses on homelessness, and is sold by homeless people who keep the profits they earn by spending time in public spaces and selling it.  It costs a dollar, and the vendors are never aggressive, never hard sell, and are always glad to sell a copy.  I buy it whenever I see one of those guys and have a dollar.

Brentwood is a mostly white, very wealthy exurb of Nashville, filled to the brim with "traditional" families and new money.  The old money, incidentally, is in Belle Meade.  Brentwood is a kind of enclave of white flyers from Nashville proper, and its demographics are evidence of that.  It is the biggest place in the wealthiest county in the state and it's called 'Brentwood,' which is kind of a dead giveaway as to what kind of place it is.  People who live in Brentwood dreamed about living there before they moved there, and now they think everyone else dreams of living there.

Of course they have a law banning the selling of merchandise on any public street, and of course they used it against sellers of the Contributor.  Any claim that the law is being applied equally and above board are likely bullshit, as the opportunities to apply it to anyone else are likely few are far between.  There's no doubt in my mind that Brentwoodies have asked for this activity to be curtailed so that they don't have to look at homeless people - who likely don't live not in houses in Brentwood - and that the city is covering its ass in case someone gets crushed between an SUV and a median packed with pretty flowers.

However.  It's likely that the attempted selling of the Contributor in Brentwood can be interpreted as an aggressive act of territorialism, as can the response.  Additionally, one would have to ask the Contributor vendors what exactly they expected the reaction of rich-ass Brentwood would be to them showing up on their well-mown patch.  It seems likely that this whole thing might have been a publicity stunt from the get-go, with the idea of shining a light on homelessness.  If so - good on the Contributor.  Way to go.

Now the ACLU is involved, though, looking to see if the vendors of the Contributor have had their rights to free speech curtailed.  Have they?  I'm not sure that they have.  If it can be proved that they broke a pre-existing and fairly enforced law, then they're S.O.L. in my opinion, and should have known that Brentwood would drop this particular cashmere hammer on them.  Like most people, however, I'm hoping the Contributor gets to be made available in Brentwood, where I'm certain that no one buys it.

But now you know about it, and so does everyone else.