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Books

Oblivion

So I finished Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and it seemed pretty logical to follow that up with Oblivion. The stories are pretty long and so far have no direct connections between them so I'll give my thoughts on them separately. I've only finished the first three.

Mr. Squishy

I don't swear much on this blog or ever but please permit me to say holy shit because holy shit, this story. I have never known Mr. Wallace's work to be especially cheerful but I did somehow think that maybe this book wouldn't open with an absolute kick in the face. Yeah relative to the rest of the book from what I've seen maybe it's more like a elbow nudge and eye-roll but on an objective scale this is a kick directly in the face. What is this about? The grotesqueness of failed ambition? The paradox of wanting to make a difference and being a good person? I'm not sure. When Wallace writes about these failed people, is he being empathetic to a generation? Or is he writing out of that sort of lasting fear that outlives the thing that you fear of? Like do you ever get when you catch a bus but just barely you find yourself still locked in some fear that very easily you could have hesitated a bit here or there and missed it? Wallace caught the early bus of talent and made that hard connection to determination and stayed on over the whole rocky road that is success but the fragility of the whole thing might haunt him. Or maybe I'm projecting. Or, and this is the most scary, does Wallace actually feel he is one of the Mr. Squishies of the story? That one hauntingly oblique reference to being one of the ones in the focus group, what could it mean? What could it all mean? Stuff like Chris Ware that transmits loneliness on such a base undeniable level is brutal, but I am finding that the greatest despair hides in mystery.

I digress, though, 'cause what this actual story is actually about is a focus group and a man on the building and people working for the focus group company. And I guess it is also about botulism and a crowd on the street and delicious all-chocolate Felonies!. And each plot is a metaphor for the rest, and each symbol a symbol for all with varying levels of subtlety. And each description is perfect and each image really truly haunting. I have had a string of somewhat nightmarish dreams involving botulism in some form. Honestly if it wasn't so excellent I probably couldn't keep at it. dfw seems to want to push the sadness of the characters to the point of ridiculousness but we learn, and this is really truly scary, that we'll believe anything when it comes to someone's sadness.

The Soul is not a Smithy

This one's actually a bit more upbeat I think. Hmm. We get a sense that it ends sort of happy for the main character, at least? He seems happy with his wife, he understands his father more but doesn't seem hung up on regretting not understanding him when he was alive, which he knows would have been impossible. His mentions of his firm don't seem especially negative. I dunno. I found myself obsessing with the idea of the main character's adult happiness. I think that's what I was supposed to do. That aside almost every aspect of this is sad, sad, sad, which makes me I think want him to be happy later so much as at least one some sort of happy outcome. But yeah moving on I think this contains some of his best prose. He really really perfectly captures the wandering attention of the narrator, the way he mirrors his focus with the events of the scene is effective for all sorts of reasons. His “describing a movie” technique, or here, describing a pseudo-comic, is out in the fullest of forces. I'd like to write more in depth on what I mean by this but I think most people who've read his stuff probably have some idea of this. But yeah whereas before he'd sort of let that go on extended for awhile, here he interrupts it with a really natural feeling of distraction and elaboration. And ohh man the story of Ruthy and her dog is really one of his most overtly sad things, isn't it? And it's so sincerely sad, too, which is a whole other subject I really want to cover, the operative word for the last few months worth of things I've read is “sincerity”. Something about the entire description of the substitute teacher's breakdown seemed really “sincere” too, dunno.

But yeah this story was just fantastic. So many things I felt like I could really relate to. So many amazing descriptions. Wow, wow. Just finished it earlier today so I guess I don't really have a whole lot to say yet, but wow.

Incarnations of Burned Children

Okay so on the kindle for good e-books it'll separate chapters and stories like this, which is nice, 'cause I can then go to specific parts much more easily. A bad thing, though, is that I get a bit of spoilery metainfo like here I knew this would be especially short before I even started reading it. Although I really do think that even if I hadn't I'd know as soon as I started reading it that it would be pretty short. It just has that feel, you know? With the titles instead of names and such? Anyways I got really hype because dfw does some really really knock down sort of emotive stuff in his shorter fiction and this did not disappoint. It's one thing to immerse someone in a horrific situation beyond the imagination, but to take something easily imaginable but just not something someone would ever want to think of can be so much more powerful. I guess it's because it's this brand new reality that you always have to live with. Some crazy horror story might be a hundred times worse in terms of actual suffering, but it never really happened. This is something that's happened many many times. And oh geez the whole “the wound that was being treated was not the real wound” is something that absolutely destroys me, always had, back as far as Snowden in Catch-22, one of the first big boy novels I can remember reading. I think this is my favorite one so far.

Mansfield Park

I had to read this for school and I wasn't like, worried about it or anything I'd say. I figured I'd like it I mean c'mon Jane Austen's one of the greats, right? And I've yet to dislike one of the classics. But woah. No. I hate this thing. I really really wish I didn't but I do, I can't stand it at all. Not only that, but I see absolutely no literary value in it. Argh. Okay no first that's a lie there is some value. The novel is certainly very long and yet cohesive. The plot itself is trite and dull but at least it concludes without too many major things disregarded. Characters have some amount of consistency and do something resembling growth. And the prose is pretty, but I can't say anything nicer about it than that. It is definitely the work of a confident and expert writer who has set out to write something and has written exactly that. So I suppose it deserves some praise for that. But for the life of me, and I honestly feel like I have lost a good deal of my mental health trying to figure this out, I cannot see why I would be asked to study this today when there are so many other fine novels. This is the most socially ignorant book I have ever read. It seems like it was born out of some ivory tower located in the vacuum of deep space in a universe far removed from ours. Yes I know different place and time and all of that but so many other books are in much different times and places and can still connect to me by addressing issues that are common and live in the depths of the human spirit. Here is where I would try to transition into a new topic and start a new paragraph usually but no screw that this book actually makes me angry. Dostoyevsky plumbs the very depths of what it means to be human and does so by commenting on the biggest issues of his day which have really no bearing on me now. Austen seems to be completely unaware of the world outside of this very tiny slice of romanticized upper class and the characters barely skim the very top surface of humanity. Things are either wrong or right. There is no complexity in issues. Fanny's morality is absolute and everyone else has to be corrected by her in some way. Please contrast Fanny with Dostoyevsky's the Prince in The Idiot for the sake of getting angry. Both of them are essentially unfailingly good, yes. But the Prince's goodness is the sort of active, impressive goodness that makes interesting things happen and raises issues. He's still a flawed person and although his spirit is undying you get a sense of an actual struggle to be the person he wants to be. He is truly a beautiful soul. You may be wholly unable to actually relate to him but you try to, you want to be able to. Fanny Price whines and cries and complains but never ever attempts to improve her standings from within. She is completely powerless and inactive. Her absolute morality is a wrought iron box instead of a majestic mountain. She doesn't do a single interesting thing throughout the entire story. Okay gender issues, let's breach that. People have told me a few times now that yeah sure I won't like it I'm a man and the story's for girls. No, screw that, I won't accept it. Nor will I allow the protagonist of a long novel to be thrown around like a mannequin for the sake of realism. “Isn't it sad that women had so little power then that Fanny Price had to allow things to continue despite knowing better?” Yes, it's sad, sure. But it's not like that conflict is really presented to us in any sort of interesting form. It's not “I wish I could speak out about this, let me relate to you my suffering” it's just “I can't speak out about this, that's a fact, let's move on.” This is what I'm talking about when I say the book simply does not take place in my universe. It doesn't even follow the set of logic in my universe. Fanny being unable to do or say anything of any consequence to anyone sounds way more like really lazy writing to me, like a lazy and easy solution to the paradox of having Saint Whiny the Infallible bumming around all these depraved souls while they continue to do depraved things. Oh and I ought to put those “depraved”s in quotes because my god I have never seen a more bland cast or sequence of events. Times nothing. Shakespearean protagonists wouldn't lie around in catatonic shock over a little affair. They'd make some beautiful poetic speech vowing revenge or something and then do something actually worth a gasp or two. And my god such glorification of this bland little upper class slice of paradise they call Mansfield Park. You know how they write stuff about the inner glory of the common man? They being authors worth a damn. Or you know how you can do stuff that seems to justify a man's standing, conversely? This does neither. This is a cross-section of a group of people that seem shallow on the surface and on the inside they're even shallower. My god I have never seen people objectified to this extent before. Not even in my Japanese animes. Maybe this is just realistic for the times too but again I can name a lot of books in the era that actually seem to have human beings in them instead of these cardboard cutouts. Maybe those books weren't as realistic but seriously there is a point where you have sacrificed too much of your depth for the sake of realism. Oh and plus in what way is this realistic? This is the most juvenile of all fairy tail type happy ending tripe, self-serving in that unashamedly gross way of bad fan fiction. If it wasn't for the pretty phrasing and pointless length I'd swear it was indistinguishable from “My Immortal” etc. Already privileged (goddammit the house in Portsmouth had servants. I cannot get my head around this. If you wanted to show some sort of deplorable impoverished hell why not show the house of the servants themselves? Or how about some slaves? No one in this book suffers even for half a second no one no one nothing interesting happens to anyone in this godawful book) girl with no flaws that any other can see goes somewhere even nicer where everyone falls in love with her except for a few people who “get what's coming for them”. Aaaragrhghatagh it just steams me to read this stupid thing. I think I can take solace in the fact that, on further inspection, Austen doesn't really appear in my literary canon at all! I don't think anyone I like a lot took inspiration from her in any way shape or form. I don't even think she represented any sort of social advancement as far as I know. This is just some trash that slipped through the cracks of history and wound up in my hands. I don't get it. At all. Like think about this. Subjects covered in Crime and Punishment (and I mean COVERED, with like, multiple characters with differing but fully formed viewpoints, each of them expressed eloquently and in natural progression with the story, actual interesting legitimate opinions on these issues that are left up to the reader to consider fully without full explicitness): crime, punishment, entitlement, religion, love, class, pride, prejudice, logic, madness, marriage, education, tons of current social issues, fate, free will, I could go on. Subjects covered in Mansfield Park, by those standards: none. Subjects “covered” in that they're given some sort of opinion: class, love, marriage, morals. So much stuff is just completely and utterly ignored. Okay at this point I doubt anyone is reading this but oh my god I just have to express how much I hate this book. It really bothers me how much I hate this. I feel like other people might feel when they talk about how much they hate Joyce and it's all making me feel very sick to my stomach. There must be something here I've missed. It can't be that wholly devoid of anything even beginning to resemble poignancy or a statement on the human condition or actual conflict or social commentary or anything, anything at all that's worth reading some two hundred years later. Not that I can do better but so many amazing authors can and why did I have to read this one I can't possibly read all the good books so when I am lying there on my deathbed and wondering what it was that happened in One Hundred Years of Solitude I will surely remember how Fanny and Edmund had all these wacky adventures and I will damn Jane Austen then and there so let me do it now anyways damn you Jane Austen damn you to the pits of hell.

Sitcoms

This season I am watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's seventh season, Community's third and Workaholics' second. It's interesting 'cause I'm following the fanbases for these shows more actively and they're all sounding pretty similar in a few regards, mainly that they're all saying that a) the show is running out of ideas b) the show is pandering c) the characters are becoming caricatures (known in some demonic tongues as “flanderizing” and d) the show has officially jumped the shark. Now obviously not everyone is saying this, but irateness leads to vocalizing more than contentedness etc etc but what's really funny is that a lot of people said this last season for the former two shows and nearly every season after the second for IASIP. And I think they were the same people! I don't think it's like they're saying they feel like the show is continuing to do these various bad things, they seem to look back on the previous season very fondly.

My theory is this: sitcoms almost always go through a period where they morph into something much more specific. Funny elements are given more time and less funny stuff is cropped out. Stuff that's kept in has to be escalated. This results, in, essentially, pandering, a departure from “realistic” plotlines to outlandish ones, escalation of old ideas, etc, etc. When you're watching this stuff for the first time it can seem sort of lame, I guess, especially if you're a big fan. You'll notice these sort of things and yearn for the old days. But really, what matters is that the funny stuff is still funny. That is really what actually matters. So yeah in Community's 2^nd episode Chang was way crazy and the model UN thing was ridiculous and Britta was way over the top but c'mon it was hilarious. Same with the first three episodes of IASIP. And all the episodes of Workaholics. And the third episode of Community? That was great! Hilarious! I dunno. I think a lot of these people watch sitcoms for vastly different reasons than me. It's interesting. Anyways more importantly the fourth episode of Community I just watched now and oh wow, oh wow. They seem like they almost have an attitude now of doing “regular episodes” and then super-tryhard format-breaking innovative “masterpiece” episodes. I'm cool with it in general, yeah. This one isn't quite as good in concept as the “clip show that isn't a clipshow” from last season, nor is it quite as funny, but it is still very good. I can't remember the last time someone's done the multiple timelines sort of plot and had so much fun with it. They didn't hang up on the idea so much that we were expected to laugh more at the idea than the jokes themselves. Maybe they overdid the style of humor that's like, a bunch of crazy things happen, someone walks in on the resulting chaos but like, each time they did that sort of joke said craziness kept getting more and more genius and crazy. Overall maybe my second favorite episode of the series. Great stuff.

Anime

Strike Witches

I started watching this expecting it to be the new low point of my life and I guess it probably still is but on the other hand it really isn't that bad? I started watching it 'cause I wanted to see what all this Saimoe-dominating fuss was about and now I understand what the fuss is about and I'm worried I probably won't be able to stop watching. Seriously it is not that bad actually. The plot is... sketchy, yeah, I dunno, like Evangelion with only half of the ramifications considered, but there is some plot, and it motivates stuff without interrupting the real meat of the show, which is, of course, the characters (this isn't some objectification “just meat” joke, by the way, 'cause of most of these characters are actually pretty well developed (that isn't a joke either)). It's no Soro no Woto, oh no, but it is a crude approximation of that technique, which is better than nothing. All the action scenes are quite well done and exciting, great details on all the military fanservice, great scenery, etc, etc. It's excessive in all the right ways but the way in which it is most excessive is the really disturbing way i.e. why are none of them wearing pants? Seriously I thought the “no pants” thing was a joke, an exaggeration, but nope, there's just flat-out no pants. Huh? It's actually really surreal at times, everything will be serious-ish and dramatic and there'll be plot or character development or something but no one will be wearing pants. It's like some vat of fanservice just got spilled on the show. You might say it's intrinsic with the premise but it really isn't. I mean I guess some amount is intrinsic to pretty much any anime, but that's the sort of wacky shenanigans type of fanservice that Misato promised at the end of Evangelion previews, the stuff of beach episodes, etc. Here it's just randomly in every shot. I mean magic flying leg machines sure sure but I'm sure they have time to take off their pants/put them back on afterward. It really does confuse me because I figure people who are into that sort of thing would dislike the amount of desensitization it causes. I dunno. Anyways the next episode is a beach episode and I'm terrified to watch it because I have no idea where they will go from here. Some of the characters I really like, though.

Saimoe stuff

Alright let's check in here quick. We're getting to the big hype matches soon, and I am big hyped.

Group A: I predicted Misaka over Miya. Had no idea Astarotte was so popular. I still think/hope Misaka will make it though. Congrats to Christina for making it to round 3.

Group B: I had no real idea here. I thought Merry would do well but I should have realized the popularity of Angel Beats. Erica making it to finals is obvious in retrospect but I don't think she can beat Kanade. I hope she does, though, although I haven't even watched Angel Beats.

Group C: I said Madoka over Run or Elucia here and bam I was pretty accurate. Not an especially hard call, though, not many close matches here. Madoka will stomp in finals.

Group D: I guessed Yuno over Squid Girl and it actually might happen. Both these characters have tons of momentum and hype and honestly I'd be fine with either of them getting it.

Group E: I guessed Sayaka over Ohana but geez Iroha is no at all as popular as I thought it was I guess. Or maybe just The World God Only Knows is way more popular than I thought it was, geez, should get on that. Sayaka still has this easily, though, I think. Crazy that Homura is the only Puella Magi not making it out of groups, eh?

Group F: I figured Mami over I had no idea. I wouldn't have guessed someone from Hidan no Aria because geez I have heard like nothing from that show. Surprised that Yuuko made it as far as she did and also peeved that she knocked out Nano and Nori. Yuno is carrying the team Hidamari banner solo now.

Group G: This is a pretty stacked group I think but I figured Index and Kyoko would make it to finals and it seems like I'll be right. Kyoko will win it there, I think/hope. Good for Index for finally not having crazy hard pulls and making it to around as far as she “should”.

Group H: Here I guessed Kuroneko over some TWGOK character but nope Hidan no Aria/Infinite Stratos. Really doubt the IS girl will make it to finals, and I doubt either of them can beat Kuroneko.

So I'm doing pretty well with predictions so far all things told. Still, pretty crazy. No Keions left, no Nichijous and only one Hidamari. Pretty scary. This is the year of Madoka. 4 of the 8 spots in finals will be occupied by them, most likely. It woulda been five if not for that absolutely crazy loss of Homura to Misaka that I just cannot get my head around even now. Like any Saimoe, though, I'm finding myself more interested in figuring out how next year's will go than this years. I want to see Akari win. I honestly think she has a shot, too. I guess we'll just have to see and see if we still care!

Boku ha Tomodachi Ga Sukunai

Have only seen one episode yet. I started watching this based on the merchandise, specifically the Nendoroids of the main characters. How ass-backward is that? They looked pretty good, though, like the one girl had a butterfly in her hair. So far this seems to be generic, generic, generic. The premise is like a super-simplified Haruhi, which alright sure that could be fine. The MC is essentially Toradora's, right? Except I find him extremely unlikable, although I guess he did have some funny scenes. Maingirl seems like conflicted, I dunno, her personality doesn't really add up yet. Same with secondarygirl. Why don't harem shows get rid of the MC? I'd rather see a YuruYuri sorta relationship web between everybody else. No idea what to expect of the rest of the characters but not exactly hyped I guess. I dunno. It's alright though. The animation is really nice. Character movement and such reminds me of Denpa Onno, which I also have only seen one episode of. Have you noticed that the trend these days seems to make people smile deeper and have more complicated eyes???? Okay now have watched the second episode. Sorta weird for them to go all parody mode so early but I guess they figured it'd be better with only the two girls so far. Speaking of which it's weird that they still haven't introduced the rest of the cast but whatever. Pretty funny really, lots of well executed jokes, production value high. The running joke of the MC being misunderstood is pretty funny, making me start to like him. Overall probably going to keep watching this although there are better shows I should be following more like:

Guilty Crown

Geez if you want to look for high production look no further. I felt like I was watching a movie. This thing must have a budget that could feed me and everyone I know for a year. And like good food too! If this anime was a food it would be really really high quality sherbet because sherbet looks very nice and has great music but a plot that I am very skeptical about being good. Really though whenever I get all cynical about a really ambitious plot-type show like this I have to remember that hey the first episode of Evangelion probably looked about this stupid plot-wise? Maybe even stupider like they just sorta dump Shinji in there. I dunno. It could be good. It will be really stunning to watch, at least, unless they're just going super tryhard with this episode.

Music

NieR tribute album -echo-

I haven't played NieR and since JRPGs take forever and I fancy myself a very busy man these days I probably never will. I had heard before that the soundtrack was pretty good but honestly that is irrelevant. What mattered was the band line up for this tribute. Track by Matryoshka? I am sold already. Ametsub? world's end girlfriend?? sasakure.UK??? Oh man oh man oh man. What's even better is that the rest of the bands I hadn't even heard of but I just knew they'd be great. This genre of like ambient Japanese IDM, often with vocals and string parts, has just been exploding in the doujinshi scene lately. There's hundreds and hundreds of little bedroom artists cropping up doing this sound in tons of amazing new ways, which is great, because I love that sorta sound. They hit some sort of threshold where making a really good sounding string synth or whatever, something that sounded “real” instead of “chintzy”, was possible for basically anyone instead of just anyone with equipment. For a long time the sound was good enough for hyperactive speedrave/speedmetal sorta stuff and stuff that was so entrenched with “genre” that the cheesiness of the sounds only added to it (see: some of the IOSYS stuff, “dead girls be-bop” being a good example) but now we're at the point where you can begin to do some really emotional things. How cool is that!! Of course it isn't a universal movement, and there's a lot of variety here, hitting all the sort of “classic” doujin sounds. sasakure.UK's track has a real IIDX feel to it, but that plus like Matryoshka plus vocaloid. Excellent! A few of the other tracks in the middle go for the more rockish or jazzish feels but the prevalent mood is that like, post-IDM? I dunno what to call this genre. Classic-glitch? Or maybe romantic-glitch is more accurate. But yeah excellent stuff all around. As I explore this blossoming genre more I get that exciting overwhelmed feeling I got the first time I looked into other genres. It's been awhile. The standout track here is still world's end girlfriend's, by some margin. Like granted they gave a nice 8 ½ minute section for him and let him do what I figure must have been the game's final boss' theme, but it still isn't fair, the guy's an elder god of the genre. This song is like, life-altering – that page turn sample, the strings, that total sense of buildup, splatters of glitch: the hints at chaos to come... and maybe at the 2/3rds point you feel satisfied, this is more of a progression song than a traditional big bang climax sorta song, that's fine, that's even better a lot of the time, but... what's this all hinting at? And then, and then, the “volta”, that wonderful part when the choral parts bend “wrong”, and you realize something big is still going to happen, something pretty huge, and I gotta say, I have heard a lot of big climatic finishes before, I have heard a lot of them from this man himself, but the way that piano comes in, the way the whole thing just starts humming, and then that crazy beat, you know you're entering the next level. I have heard a lot of this sort of thing before yeah but this honestly could be the best one. That's probably hyperbole though. Maybe I like the ending so much 'cause it sounds like something they'd make a stream out of in ITG and I really like doing streams now in ITG but geez I dunno I dunno it really seems like a really great song.

M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming and Justice – Audio, Video, Disco

These both had a lot of hype but they also had people saying “why can't they just stick to what they were great at”. M83 hasn't done much of a departure, more of a continuation into pop that they've really been heading towards for half a decade now. This is a great big sprawling gorgeous album and I really sort of want to say “yeah but now they've lost their subtlety, they've lost their restraint” or something just to justify why I haven't listened to it a lot and have listened to that world's end girlfriend song twenty times but I really can't because it isn't true. I hope this album brings them a lot of success and I think it really has a good chance to. Okay now Audio, Video, Disco, this was a pretty big departure in one fundamental respect but like not much of a departure in many others. Everyone's saying “70s prog rock 80s stadium rock” but like... barely? It's sort of structured that way I guess, the vocals are pretty like that at times, sure, but I dunno, still seems pretty dancy? I guess they lost a lot of the noisy stuff, that's a shame. A lot of these songs are dang catchy though. I wouldn't put it above Cross, and I think Planisphere is still the best thing they've done and I kinda wish this was more like that, but this is fine. I think people way overestimated what it'd be, hence all the backlash. Dunno though.

That's all for now I think.