This is (Almost) the End

Woo-hoo, the semester's nearly over!


I can finally take a break from the internet...for about a month, then I have to do summer school.


No matter, I won't look a gift unicorn in the mouth. I'll just enjoy the brief reprieve I've been given.


I've got a lot of reading to catch up on:


The End of Faith by Sam Harris


Night Shift by Stephen King


Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by Divers Hands


Cabal by Clive Barker


Terror by Night by Ambrose Bierce


The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers


The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen


...and the last 2/3rds of The Bible.


Should be fun!

Stream of Consciousness

 

Confusing, confusing--it's really confusing--confusing kind of rhymes with "schmoozing"--schmoozing with the high elite--I don't mean to imply that they're stoned--unless you're counting opium, then yes, they very well might be stoned--opium is made from poppy seeds, as is heroin--and if you eat a poppy seed muffin you'll test positive for opium--it's true, I saw it on an episode of Seinfeld, and why would they think to lie about something like that? Lives might very well hang in the balance--Seinfeld is a show about nothing--kind of like how this blog post is about nothing--nothing comes from nothing, the creationists love to say--but I ask, have they ever even seen nothing? Nowhere you can go in the universe that has nothing in it, because the fabric of space-time is everywhere--it's inescapably--like death--I don't fear death, but I do have a healthy respect for it--other people are so sick in the head that they actually worship death--the religious icon for Christianity is a man being tortured and executed, that's really fucked up--Islam's not much better, they want to be martyred and take as many innocent civilians with them as possible--if they do this, they get 72 virgins, a race of beings called Houri, who, post coitus, reseal their hymens, so every time you have sex with them is like the first time, so every time you have sex you get all this blood on your schlong--that's some people's idea of heaven--heaven is just one example of highwaymen in funny hats making ridiculous promises they can't keep-- I say "don't make promises you can't keep", like I promised this blog post would be confusing, and it is (incidentally, this is exactly what reading Mrs. Dalloway is like--it's confusing).

A Friendly Letter to J. Alfred Prufrock

Hey J., I know you've been feeling down lately, thinking about how lonely and friendless and unloved you are, but things will get better. You're better. As our mutual friend, Stuart Smalley is often fond of saying "you're good enough, you're smart enough, and dog gone it, people like you." You should really trust his advice. He is a senator, after all. People have to like him or he'll lose his job.

 

Sure, you're going bald and your arms are super skinny, but you have a lot of good qualities. I mean... You're good at poetry--tons of high school students are forced to read your love song, and some actually enjoy it. Um...You've got a really good personality. Very deep and introspective. Any woman would be lucky to have you, and if they don't, that's okay.

 

Being alone is not so bad. You've got nobody to impress except yourself, you don't have to pay for expensive dinners, you don't have to deal with jealousy or infidelity, you don't have to buy a diamond ring that probably comes from child slave labor in Africa, you don't have to deal with in-laws. you won't get stuck with an crying baby, you can go to see the movie you want instead of sitting through some boring chick flick, really, the benefits here are endless.

 

And about the mermaids--forget them. If they don't want to sing to you, that's their loss. Really, it's kind of a blessing, things would never work out between you and them. They're narcissistic, high maintenance, and they get really mad if you buy them a seashell bra for their birthday. I mean, if they want to go to jail for public indecency, that's their own damn fault. No skin off my nose. Whatever. Besides, your naughty parts won't even match up, so you're mostly stuck with holding hands, which is hard since they're webbed, and kissing, which is not advised, and their teeth are really sharp. Like a shark kind of sharp. Which rules out something else they can do with their mouths... Anyway, mermaids make terrible lovers, trust me on this one.

 

Try to feel better, good buddy.

A Laundry List of Problems With Great Expectations

 

There's a laundry list of the problems I have with Great Expectations. It's mostly a matter of pacing--things happen far too slowly, and when they do finally happen they take the most anticlimactic route possible. The exact same story could have been told, with nothing valuable lost, in half the number of pages. I know Charles Dickens was probably being paid by the word to crank this thing out, but still, this is pure diarrhea of the mouth.

 

The biggest problem I have with Expectations, however, is a problem I often have with first person stories and that is: are we really supposed to believe that the protagonist has a photographic memory? How are they able to remember entire conversations they've had verbatim, so that the story they're narrating can be considered an accurate recollection of events passed? Pip, the protagonist of Expectations, can fully recall just about everything anyone's ever said to and about him from the age of seven onward. He even memorizes letters he receives and then is promptly ordered to destroy in said letters. Nowhere is it ever stated in the book that Pip has a good memory, much less an unfailingly perfect one. For me, this eidetic memory thing really stretches my suspension of disbelief. I know this isn't a fault original to Expectations, but when I was reading it I could be helped but be extremely bothered by it.

 

Dickens, I'm going to call "bah, humbug" on you.