Hider Roser

I'm at the beach! And reading goes hand-in-hand with warm winds and crashing waves, at least in my experience.  I've read the excellent book of poems Hider Roser by Ben Mirov, which managed to make me laugh even with its dedication: "for I have no idea."

Being melanin-challenged, I have to do my most of vacationing slathered in SPF 50 or sitting underneath the stars. And the star gazing leads to a lot of questions about who/what/where/when and why we exist in the universe. This collection urged on this train of thought, with poems like "Cluster", as well as the title poem:

From "Hider Roser"

The water is beautiful and she allows you
to put your arm around her.
Smell her ear, part of a star
that exploded when you were negative
10,000 years old.
In a few hours she is gone.
In four years, even goner
and Dean is telling you something about nothing
the sparrows in his tattoo
forever flying out of a rose
until Dean is dead.

At one point I was getting a bit freaked out, thinking how every plant, animal, hair follicle, and cheeto is made up of star stuff--the basic elemental ingredients of the universe--and life on Earth is the only thing sentient enough (as far as we know) to experience how these ingredients combine and interact. We're just a big assortment of atoms made up from stuff available on the planet. What was the spark...what caused the change, the evolution, that took that star stuff and made it into the first cell?

Now this assortment of atoms is going to stop waxing philosophical and share some lines from Hider Roser. Of course via the one thing on Earth that doesn't consist of atoms: the internet.

Here are some favorite lines:

First line from "Containment Unit for Mysterious Green Vapor"

I shouldn't talk about myself that way.

From "You May Not Know This but in His Youth James Tate was Some Sort of Champion Swimmer!"

was something Christopher wrote
in an email and I pictured Jim
swimming through a cloud supported

by the power of my mind,
barely enough to keep a candle lit
yet somehow able to think of a hundred

sharks.

From "One Hundred Poems from the Chinese"

Is there anything One Hundred Poems from the Chinese
can do for the broken toilet?
Probably, but neither you nor it can figure out what.
And yet, One Hundred Poems from the Chinese is there for you
like a moonbeam lighting
a little piece of the house.

From "Dove Life"

              When you feel it
smother your face at night,
descend the staircase

to your basement, your workout bench
your shoebox full of photographs.
Or travel so far into yourself

when you arrive at the center
the ripcord is a wick
and you must use your teeth

to remove the plastic packaging
that surrounds your heart.

95 pages
6, 094 / 20,00 page goal

A Dance with Dragons

This book. This effing book.

That's kind of all I want to write, but I'll try to expand my commentary.

This was the 5th and latest installment in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and as the series has progressed, it seems like the plot keeps getting slower and slower, and more convoluted with every page. It's so weird to compare the later books with the first, where basically an entire war starts, dragons are born, people are orphaned, and manage to travel the length of Westeros in a manner of pages. I actually thought while reading that maybe the war would be finished by the end of the first book. HAR! HAR HAR.

The Ice and Fire series is like one of those functions in calculus, where the limit doesn't exist. Someone please help me with the terminology, because I've had math erased in my brain and replaced with 30 page family trees of fictional characters with names like "Yezzan zo Qaggaz" (Scrabble winner right there). Basically Martin just keeps expanding the story forward and backwards, but at an ever decreasing speed. The books will eventually become self-aware and write themselves, creating a story with no end or beginning.

The limit does not exist. Winter will never come.

The only thing that redeemed this monster of a novel was

DAENEYRS TARGARYEN
THE BOSS 

She is so kickass. I don't want to spoil what happens, but it's amazing, and your life forever change after you read what she does. It's tragic that we'll have to wait 5 odd years before her epic scene makes it to HBO. 





1040 pages
6,809 / 20,000 page goal

Non-adventures in medicated reading

It's July 1st! Which besides being Canada Day also marks the midway point through the year. So how am I doing with my 20,000 page reading goal? Only 5,769 pages turned, you say? Let the excuses begin!

Since about mid-January I've been taking an SSRI and anti-anxiety medication. I started them for a lot of reasons that I don't want to get into, but let's just say they've helped. But not without some side effects. One being nigh uncontrollable dizzy spells. The second being an overwhelming blanket of boredom and apathy, and the inability to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. Pretty much the only enjoyable activities I've been able to get into lately, other than lying in bed face-down, is watching Oliver Age 24 videos on youtube and playing Candy Crush: the most addictive and soul-crushing ADHD game on the planet. I can't even find the spark of interest to play Xbox anymore, which I'm sure puts me at the bottom of the totem pole of pure sloth.

I've tried getting through A Dance with Dragons, because surely magic and gratuitous sex scenes can get me back into reading, right? But no luck. I've checked the ebook out from the library a record six times without completing it. My doctor warned me SSRIs can cause a lack of interest in sex. Perhaps my version of this is a lack of interest in fictional wizard-y people having sex.

Regardless, I'm still super glad I started taking the medications. And I don't mean to discourage anyone from taking them. But the side effects have been a (non)wild ride. Try functioning as a human being when you simultaneously have somnolence and insomnia.

So, my goal for July - December? Still the remaining 14,231 pages. I'll give it a ... hey, I just got another life in Candy Crush! Excuse me...

I Forgot To Be Famous

Finished Almie Rose's ebook of essays, I Forgot To Be Famous: On Dating, Relationships, and Getting Screwed and Screwed Over in Beautiful Los Angeles from a Writer Who is Trying Her Best, which was just released today. Almie runs the fantastic blog Apocalypstick that I've been following ever since I started this one. I'm 100% jealous of her wit and ability to pull off a sexy lion costume.

Here are some snippets from the book.

From "How to Get a Musician Boyfriend"

Be bold. Don't be too drunk. Drink Pepsi-Cola. Be a proud American. Quote your favorite childhood films. Ask, "Did Dunston ever check out?" Think about what would happened if we still used salt as currency. Try and imagine a new color. Maybe pretend to be British. It's your life.

From "Ex"

I don't care if this goes against all of my feminist teachings: I want to feel like a prized thing, like the Arc of the Covenant or the Silver Monkey that those panicked children had to assemble in The Shrine of the Silver Monkey on the show Legends of the Hidden Temple. I never had anyone that gorgeous who wanted me. Who actually picked me. I have dignity, it's just that it's attached with Velcro.

From "The Zombie Apocalyps(tick)"

So I'm asking right now, should a zombie apocalypse come, can someone adopt me into their group? Though I have no real skills, I do have a vast knowledge of zombies in pop culture and some great cutting remarks. Kill Zombie Nicolas Cage and I'll assure you, "That's okay. His career was dead long before he was." And in the end, that might be enough.

Her ebook is published by ThoughtCatalog, and available for just $2.99 at Amazon.


52 pages
5,769 out of 20,000 page goal

Internet Lovelies / Microsoft and the War Against First Sale

via reddit

As a true tsundoku-ka, let me share some non-book internet lovelies with you.

Sometimes I’ll cry and wish I saw my real, true friends more. Sometimes I’ll cry a lot and wish I was still 19 when a friend was so easy to find and you were surrounded by these huge groups of people. It didn’t matter that you loved them or even liked them. They were there and that was comforting. But now I’m 25 and everyone is moving away and moving on. I am too. I know this. So sometimes I’ll just say fuck it and do what I want because I need to not be there, wallowing, wondering, getting trapped by the pull of the internet. Online, everyone is having a better time than you. I am not strong enough to deal with that. At the end of the night, at least I can say: I was not here.  

Brittany Julious, Link

The...the Khalcheesy...

Yes. That's right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

Josh Olson, from "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script", Link

In the current abortion debate, there is no talk of children. Those who are anti-abortion never mention them. They seem to be the same people who want to cut food stamps and get rid of social programs that might help children and mothers. They never talk about nineteen-year-old fetuses. They don’t talk of war or hunger or about how much it costs to buy shoes and socks and how hard it must be to have children without a washer and dryer. They never seem to take into account who the father is, or who the boyfriends might be. I never wanted to have a baby if I wasn’t positive I could give it a wonderful life and my undivided attention. I didn’t get that from my own mother. When I was little, I didn’t understand that there is no such thing as undivided attention. My feeling was I needed to become a good mother to myself before I invented a child that needed one.

Nora Dunn, Link 

via @TheLincoln

I feel so bad for anyone who watched the recent "red wedding" episode of Game of Thrones without having read the books. How are you guys holding up? Do you need a hug?

Gendered book marketing has particular impact upon boys. Girls, as Brooklyn-based author Gayle Forman explained at Reading Matters, will read across gender. But boys are often self-conscious about reading books that might be considered to be “girly”. “Why is it acceptable for a girl to enter a boy world, but not the opposite?” Forman asked.

The reason is, of course, that books exist in a society where femininity is still considered to be a second-class characteristic, and masculinity defined most strongly as an absence of the feminine. The debate about “fake geek girls” in fan culture, the current meltdown at the SFWA about sexism in science fiction and fantasy, even the furore over Faber’s chicklit reprint of Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, demonstrate that misogyny and sexism are alive and well.

 Alison Croggon, Link

There's a really interesting Kickstarter going on now for funding an indie press called Boss Fight Books. They'll be releasing a line of books by some really incredible writers focusing on classic video games. If you donate at least $5 you'll get a digital copy of one of the books once it's released. So basically if you're interested in any of the titles, just donate to pre-order a copy.

I'm eying Super Mario Bros. 2, a.k.a. what I spent the majority of my childhood playing.

Speaking of video games, if you have an internet connection you've probably heard all about the uproar over Microsoft's reveal of the next generation of console gaming: the XBox One. Promptly rebranded by nerds as the XBone. And at first glance this may seem to have nothing to do with books, but I promise you it does.

Why was there an uproar over the XBone? Several reasons: terrible bulky design, internet connection requirement (including the need for it to be connected at least once every 24 hours otherwise it becomes a brick), Kinect sensor built-in and required to operate, the focus of the system lying much less on games and more on it as some weird TV controller, etc. But the biggest problem, the feature that could change gaming and all digital (and possibly even analog) purchases of anything in the future, is its policy regarding used games.

Here's the deal. All games played on the XBox One have to be downloaded to the cloud or the console's hard drive. If you buy a physical disc with a copy of the game on it, it will be downloaded immediately, and the disc will henceforth be dead. So if you're one of those people (me) who doesn't have a million dollars, and buys a game for $59.99, plays it for six weeks, then sells it back for $30...you're screwed. It's a complete overhaul of the used media system that's been in place for decades.

Here are the rules:

Why this matters: it's a direct attack against the right of first-sale. Which if you need a reminder, "enables the distribution chain of copyrighted products, library lending, gifting, video rentals and secondary markets for copyrighted works (for example, enabling individuals to sell their legally purchased books or CDs to others)." Publishers have looooooong been attempting to weasel their way out of this limitation of their copyright. And the digital revolution has left a perfect opening.

There's never been a question that when you buy a physical thing, legally, you henceforth own it, and can do whatever you want with it. You can trade it. Sell it. Wear it as a hat. Whatever. As long as its creator/publisher got paid at least once, during the first sale. But what happens when you buy a digital thing? Do you own a bunch of 1s and 0s? Are you renting it? Can you wear it as a hat? Good question. That's a battle still being fought between consumers and Amazon, Overdrive, iTunes, etc. It's honestly still up in the air. There's nothing like working in interlibrary loan to teach you that nobody really has copyright figured out anymore. It's more and more difficult to enforce and interpret every day.

And maybe you don't feel like this is a big deal, being unable to trade and sell used video games. After all, you can't do it with digital music (though there are ways around it), PC games/software, or most ebooks either. The difference being that console games tend to cost $60 or more. That's a lot of simoleons. Now if the games would cost about half that much, as purely untradeable/unsellable digital copies, that wouldn't be so bad. I've downloaded plenty of DLC which acts exactly like that. But there's no sign that this will be the case. Not to mention by cutting out independent game shops there will be no competition in game pricing. Weird how the biggest capitalists in the world are the ones most afraid of actual capitalism.

But if this move by Microsoft and game publishers is successful, it could revolutionize the way we interpret digital ownership, and the right of first-sale in general. It will put into question how ebooks and libraries should function. Not to mention businesses like Red Box, Blockbuster, GameFly, Replay Games, eBay, and half.com. But more importantly, LIBRARIES.

So do yourself and everyone else a favor, and please don't buy an XBox One. At least not until they change their policies. Pretty pretty please, with Super Mario Bros. 2 cherries on top?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

art via pekepeke0 on deviantART

I was going to combine this post with a review of Dan Brown's Inferno and call it something like "Terrible books with positive and progressive messages, but are still pretty terrible." But I won't read Inferno until I can get my hands on a free copy.

Steig Larsson was a "better" writer than Dan Brown. At least from what I can tell from the translations. As in the actual words that make up the writing, not necessarily the plot structure. Because Brown has that nailed down. Whereas all three books in Larsson's Millennium trilogy have extremely odd plot structures. The first, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, had its climax somewhere near the middle, with a long, waning second half. It was difficult to translate to the more rigid structure of film, which is why nearly a quarter of the book is cut from both Oplev and Fincher's film versions. And in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, it doesn't feel like there's ever really a climax. Unless you count Lisbeth's trial as one, when she reveals everything we already knew about her since book two. And that's all this ended up being: a complete rehash of everything we already knew. No new adventures or baddies. The only time my attention was piqued was when Lisbeth helped Erika Berger with her stalker. But that was over in a handful of pages. As compared to the hundred-or-so pages explaining the history of the Swedish secret police in excruciating detail. However it's not just the structure of the plot that makes me call it "terrible" writing. It's the fact that the plot in all three books is just so OUT there. Shit gets ridiculous. Kickboxing lesbians, the prime minister involving himself in a criminal trial, secret agents, and just waaaaay too much coincidence.

BUT! But. There's something to be said for a monumentally bestselling series of books that focus on the worldwide plague of violence against women. Starring (or co-starring) a seriously talented, interesting, and unique woman. Is Lisbeth Salander a superhero? The definition of a superhero is vague and subjective at best, so there can never be a real answer. If it requires a super human power, then technically Batman isn't one. Whereas Lisbeth has a photographic memory. If it requires an animal-inspired costume, then she's out of luck.

There usually aren't any quotables from books like this, but I do have one that makes a point I agree with:

"What you don't understand is that our stockholders bought stock in the paper because they want to make money. That's called capitalism. If you arrange for them to lose money, they they won't want to be stockholders any longer."

I'm not suggesting they should lose money, though it might come to that. Ownership implies responsibility. As you yourself pointed out, capitalism is what matters here. SMP's owners want to make a profit. But it's the market that decides whether you make a profit or take a loss. By your reasoning, you want the rules of capitalism to apply solely to the employees of SMP, while you and the stockholders will be exempt."

Yesssssssssssssss. Take heed, Wall Street.

832 pages
5,717 / 20,000 page goal

The Trees The Trees

I read Heather Christle's The Tree The Trees while waiting in line at the DMV. When you go to the DMV it always takes an hour and a half. I don't know why so many people go there unprepared, completely flabbergasted that they have to sit in a room with strangers for an hour and a half. I'm good at waiting. I'm a master of it. If I had the money I would ride a train back and forth from home to Philadelphia, just so I could wait for my destination, no other options or responsibilities hovering in view.

Reading poetry in a very loud place, with screaming children, pop music ringtones and the ever present bingo-esque call for persons in line ahead of you, is surprisingly easy. It's a pleasant bureaucratic white noise. But I find it completely impossible to read verse on a screen. I have no idea what the difference is, but backlighting makes all efforts futile. But I hope you do not share my affliction, so you can enjoy the passages I share.

From "JE M'APPELLE IVAN"

I am alone     I am a real bear     with a head full of
hazard and light     I live in nature     live with no
friends     and no equity     who needs it     I have
my face     I have my hands     which are as I speak
mauling the air     one time I took a trip     I lay
horizontal on a marvelous raft     I did look up
regard the blank stars     and accept them as holes in
the frame

This past weekend I went hiking, since nature decided to finally stop snowing out of season. Making my way through a nice carpet of bluebells I stopped at a steel gate. I'm not sure what made me stop and stare at it for so long. But eventually I glanced down and at its foot was an almost invisible turtle. He was camouflaged beak to feet with dried dirt. He stayed still for a very long time, and I resigned he was dead. I took a step closer and saw his tail twitch. He was alive, but not by much. Dried up and nearly a hundred yards from water, I guessed he was a victim of the flood that had been through the area a few weeks earlier. I found a wash basin half-buried in dirt, another product of the flood, and placed the limp 25lb snapping turtle inside. I carried him the hundred yards to a river and began washing him off. On closer inspection I realized his shell had been severely cracked. Rotting flesh was beginning to poke through the crevices. He opened his powerful snapping jaws wide, either in pain, fear or aggression. Or all at once. I put him in my car and drove home, ignoring the smell of putrification and river fish. I washed him off again with clean water once home, but it only reveaed more of the damage. It's a Saturday evening, and veterinarian offices won't be open until Monday. With little money in my bank account I'm not sure what help they would be anyway. A call to the local wildlife rescue reveals that their facilities are full. Google tells me that severely damaged turtle shells are irreparable and usually fatal. The only option left. Return him to his home. Perhaps that's where he wanted to be all along. I put him back beside the river and leave him to the wild.

From "WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN THEY KEPT GROWING"

now I understand     you are the owner of a small
piece of time     like anyone else     tonight
everyone's sending me flowers     and I am upset
thinking maybe where I am the earth will collapse
I mean     they are light enough     but gather this
many together     and some are peonies     I can't
understand how they even stand up     babies can't
do what they do     I don't want to be over     any
time in the next hundred years

I'm at the DMV because I bought a new car. New as in new to me. New as in 2008. The paperwork involved seems more painful than what the monthly payments will be. Everyone I talk to seems surprised I'm 27. Maybe it's the barrette in my hair. Or the Hello Kitty perfume. I want a "Virginia Wildflowers" license plate because that seems nice. Although getting the "Pro-choice" one and gauging reactions is tempting. I want a personalized plate as well, to match the flower theme. But so many of them are already taken. MTN-LRL? No. RED-BUD. Nuh-uh. PEONY!? Keep dreaming. I've never hated like-minded strangers so much. PHLOX is available and the DMV website congratulates me on finding it, but I think I know why it's never been taken. LILAC is there as well, but inappropriate for a red car, I feel.

"1998"

one time this real moon was trying to arrest me     I
was like     I don't even know what I did wrong
has the whole world gone away     why didn't
anyone tell me     never much good at escape     I
thought I'd try complete surrender     dropped every
weapon I had     then the moon was like     listen
you slice of the future      you can cry but you can't
make me change

There's a theme of time and perpetuality in Christle's collection. The perpetuality relates to nature. And time to us. We are mortal. But nature is enduring.


From "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME"

I know where I'm going to die     right here     in my
own honest body     I avoid my body by sleeping
for instance I've just woken up     now here come
my galloping arms     my head the malletless gong
so many days I do not understand     one plows
forward     one gathers     it rains     each month
maintains its own atomic number     a year does not
have a skeleton     it has an uncracked egg     I have
to eat it     I have to get married     my friend the
golden onslaught married stuff in bloom

From "THE ACTUAL FUTURE"

           now I'm going to talk about the future
of my peer group     the actual future     when I turn
into a human     and have to take vacations to
weep into myself

A sincere and fervent desire to write "to weep into myself" in the "Comments" section of an absence report form.

From "THIS IS NOT THE BODY I ASKED FOR"

the thing is     you can't send it back     so     today
I'll accomplish a lot     I will compare my head      to
an eight by twelve glossy photo     of a man on a
fabulous jet-ski     what I see right away is the noise
we both have that in common     I'd like to jet-ski
straight out of this life

My number, F-204, is finally selected for bingo. I go the desk, lay out my folder containing the car's title, a completed VSA-17A, SUT-1, VSA-5, VSA-14, and check for $342.75, precalculated based on the 3% tax on the car, $10 titling fee, and cost of registration for one year. We only need the title and check, she says. Okay, I say. What do you do for a living, she asks. I work in a library. Oh, she says. I figured it was something like that. I admire your presentation and organization skills. Thanks, I tell her.

I finish the transaction and walk out with plain tags. I was thinking about the turtle and forgot to ask for the wildflower ones.

Heather Christle's The Tree The Trees is available at Octopus Books.

60 pages
4,885 pages / 20,000 page goal