Monday, November 25, 2013
Monday, February 15, 2010
Still Reading
It's taking me A while to get through Mason & Dixon, I admit it. Keep getting interrupted doing things like reading NON-fiction, books for my career like Koons: How I Did It, and looking for this book How to Win Friends and Influence People which took me FOREVER to find because I was looking under Andrew Carnegie and it's written by DALE Carnegie. Whoever heard of a guy named Dale writing a book? All the guys named Dale that I know excel in things like breaking and entering. So Mason & Dixon has been a slow road, but then people used to WALK places or at least go on horseback, so what. I've taken several years to finish a book in the past (but of course I always read other stuff during, like celebrity bios, to which I'm addicted. Heard there's one coming out about Bob Kidney, but I'll believe it when I see it. But if it's true, I'll pay full price for that one, and put everything else aside!). What I'm wondering is how many operating systems will become obsolete while I'm in the midst of this book. A reporter from HollywoodXpress purportedly asked either Mason or Dixon, can't remember which one, what operating system they use, to which they answered, "What the fuck are you talking about, man?" So, okay, I'll try to crack open another Cherry Coke and keep on reading, except I can't stomach that stuff, I still say it tastes more like almond than cherry, and thus reminds me of a particularly nauseating toilet cleaner from my days of cleaning office park bathrooms along the Columbus, Ohio outerbelt in the Reagan years.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Lewis & Clarke
Still making my way thru Mason & Dixon - taking me so long I'm sure I could of writ it by now.
Cheered up a bit by my good friend Rick Moody while at a Rosedale vs. Middle Village softball game he told me that he was asked by "the press" (forgot which now) to review Mason & Dixon because the regular book reviewers all refused to review it because it was too long!
Don't know if that's true, but then Moody never lies, except all the time.
Cheered up a bit by my good friend Rick Moody while at a Rosedale vs. Middle Village softball game he told me that he was asked by "the press" (forgot which now) to review Mason & Dixon because the regular book reviewers all refused to review it because it was too long!
Don't know if that's true, but then Moody never lies, except all the time.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
I Am Depressed
I am sitting here in this 3x5 prison cell called Pynchon, somewhere south of the border called Pynchon, marking months off like days, off the calendar called Pynchon. I have isolated and identified this depression which sits in the corner and threatens to take up all the air, all the warmth, indeed all of the molecular space in this extremely limited space I am condemned to. I have given a name to this being, my enemy, and its name is Pynchon.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Vineland
A quick read (I know it’s been awhile, but I was just vacationing in Sweden, all spring and summer) by Thomas Pynchon standards, but not by any means "lite," or even "light," or even “lingonberry sparkler.” This novel came out in 1990, a year, as you may recall, that seemed to mark scraping the bottom of something (little did we know). There had not been a Pynchon book published in many years, except for a collection of short stories, so the hubbub around this book was considerable. Most reviewers considered it a disappointment, but I have to admit, it's my favorite of all of his books (haven’t read the last two yet!).
Zoyd Wheeler has run out of Count Chocula and must settle for Froot Loops-- and this simple event propels him through a series of misunderstandings, missed connections, and coincidences in a story that mirrors Orwell's 1984, the year the story is set-- but not really, of course-- that's just the jumping off point.
The characters-- friends and family of Zoyd's-- find themselves battling secret underground organizations and the banality of the popular culture, both-- and little distinction is made between the two. As the story progresses, in fact, little distinction is made between Zoyd and his posse of old hippies, dropouts, and counterculture casualties and the forces of evil they are battling. Eventually the realization is reached that they are battling themselves; the opposing forces have just set up a mirror at the crossroads and the freaks, unable to distinguish very much through a blue haze of marijuana smoke, spend all of their remaining time and diminishing resources catapulting flaming balls of what were once good intentions at hideously reversed images of themselves.
In a post-modern twist, real life author Rick Moody is introduced into the story, along with Japanese auteur/comedian Beat Takeshi. The two bill collectors-cum clowns threaten to take over the novel, and finally release a toxic cloud of radioactive ice crystals into the atmosphere when their demands aren't met. The water of the region, contaminated as a result, is then found to cause personality disorders in the majority of the inhabitants under the age of 45-- a disorder the aligns their neurosis’s perfectly with that of Moody, who when he then runs for mayor, wins handily. Takeshi, in a last ditch attempt to retain the power of terror, shoves a chopstick into each eye of an Austrian action hero while campaigning on national television.
The novel ends with the Phoenix family’s returning to their gypsy days and traveling to Cuba on a homemade raft. Zoyd, in a fit of despair, takes a job at the Sacramento IKEA, retrieving shopping carts from the ghetto. DL, who I haven't mentioned yet, prepares himself for the worst earthquake in recorded history. And Elmhurst becomes the world's greatest authority on later period Brautigan. Echoes of this novel can be found in all of the Coen Brother's films-- indeed, Zoyd is a mirror image of "The Dude"-- and rumors of Pynchon and Garrison Keillor being one in the same were finally put to rest.
Zoyd Wheeler has run out of Count Chocula and must settle for Froot Loops-- and this simple event propels him through a series of misunderstandings, missed connections, and coincidences in a story that mirrors Orwell's 1984, the year the story is set-- but not really, of course-- that's just the jumping off point.
The characters-- friends and family of Zoyd's-- find themselves battling secret underground organizations and the banality of the popular culture, both-- and little distinction is made between the two. As the story progresses, in fact, little distinction is made between Zoyd and his posse of old hippies, dropouts, and counterculture casualties and the forces of evil they are battling. Eventually the realization is reached that they are battling themselves; the opposing forces have just set up a mirror at the crossroads and the freaks, unable to distinguish very much through a blue haze of marijuana smoke, spend all of their remaining time and diminishing resources catapulting flaming balls of what were once good intentions at hideously reversed images of themselves.
In a post-modern twist, real life author Rick Moody is introduced into the story, along with Japanese auteur/comedian Beat Takeshi. The two bill collectors-cum clowns threaten to take over the novel, and finally release a toxic cloud of radioactive ice crystals into the atmosphere when their demands aren't met. The water of the region, contaminated as a result, is then found to cause personality disorders in the majority of the inhabitants under the age of 45-- a disorder the aligns their neurosis’s perfectly with that of Moody, who when he then runs for mayor, wins handily. Takeshi, in a last ditch attempt to retain the power of terror, shoves a chopstick into each eye of an Austrian action hero while campaigning on national television.
The novel ends with the Phoenix family’s returning to their gypsy days and traveling to Cuba on a homemade raft. Zoyd, in a fit of despair, takes a job at the Sacramento IKEA, retrieving shopping carts from the ghetto. DL, who I haven't mentioned yet, prepares himself for the worst earthquake in recorded history. And Elmhurst becomes the world's greatest authority on later period Brautigan. Echoes of this novel can be found in all of the Coen Brother's films-- indeed, Zoyd is a mirror image of "The Dude"-- and rumors of Pynchon and Garrison Keillor being one in the same were finally put to rest.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Gravity's Rainbow
It took me awhile to get through this one, but I wanted to take my time so that I would really get it completely and express myself perfectly here. I'll zip through the next couple of Pynchon books, however.
This is pretty much the story of Khama, king of the Bechuanas, and his relationship with the Nazi's, and the zoot-suit-ers, in parallel stories. Everything is in shambles due to the incessant bombing on the continant, and so an undergroud sect take all of the important European art, except for the Vermeer's, to the Island of Tulipomania. There, a secret society begins to make perfect reproductions in case the war turns out badly. Now, a Russian man named Tchitcherine discovers the abandoned Vermeer paintings, and using them as colateral, starts a gypsy army called "The Left" who volunteer at the mobile American weapons department testing stations. As they are blowing holes in the earth, trying to develop a bomb that will contain the axis powers. In one of the holes is discovered a secret underground tunnel that leads under the ocean and comes out in the storeroom of a department store in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The U-boat, Anibus, which has made its way through the St. Lawrence Seaway is prepared to attack Wisconsin, and then during an event called "the Last Randevous" the world is saved by pure luck, and the Master of the Woods. I regret to report that the last couple of pages of my book are missing, but still, I think I get the general I got the idea. It's probably worth reading, if you want to get some details I left out.
OK-- there you have it! Bring on whatever is next, and... happy reading!
This is pretty much the story of Khama, king of the Bechuanas, and his relationship with the Nazi's, and the zoot-suit-ers, in parallel stories. Everything is in shambles due to the incessant bombing on the continant, and so an undergroud sect take all of the important European art, except for the Vermeer's, to the Island of Tulipomania. There, a secret society begins to make perfect reproductions in case the war turns out badly. Now, a Russian man named Tchitcherine discovers the abandoned Vermeer paintings, and using them as colateral, starts a gypsy army called "The Left" who volunteer at the mobile American weapons department testing stations. As they are blowing holes in the earth, trying to develop a bomb that will contain the axis powers. In one of the holes is discovered a secret underground tunnel that leads under the ocean and comes out in the storeroom of a department store in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The U-boat, Anibus, which has made its way through the St. Lawrence Seaway is prepared to attack Wisconsin, and then during an event called "the Last Randevous" the world is saved by pure luck, and the Master of the Woods. I regret to report that the last couple of pages of my book are missing, but still, I think I get the general I got the idea. It's probably worth reading, if you want to get some details I left out.
OK-- there you have it! Bring on whatever is next, and... happy reading!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
This last month was bad for reading due to the snowy weather (OR a dog ate my homework)
OK! I'm like 300 pages from the end of G's Rainbow, so I'm going to stay up all night to finish it because the end of Feeruarey was my goal, though i was thining there was LEAP YEAR this year for some strange reason!
I'm going to listen to Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow while I read and eat rainbow colored foods, if I can find any at Whole foods-- I mean they must have, right? With a name like that they wouldnt just have like four or five coloers?
ok, enough chatting, I've got to read......
I'm going to listen to Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow while I read and eat rainbow colored foods, if I can find any at Whole foods-- I mean they must have, right? With a name like that they wouldnt just have like four or five coloers?
ok, enough chatting, I've got to read......
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The Crying of Lot 49
This was from 1966, and it’s really short, you can read it in like half an hour, so it’s the book that people trying to get into Thomas Pynchon first pick up—but that’s a mistake! Because it’s his most difficult of all his books! It seems to be about this woman Oedipa trying to settle the estate of this dead rich guy, and then she travels around California and runs into a lot of weirdo characters, but it’s anything but a simple story. It’s not a story at all, but a long series of paranoid delusions and urban legend that come to life, one inside another, that create an entire hallucinogenic, time warped landscape of a text!!!!!!
Toward the end there’s something about a “smiling billboard” – though I don’t remember the context—and that freaked me out because I had just read something that I wrote long before I read this book which had a reference to a “smiling billboard.” I know I couldn’t have stolen it—not from this book, because I hadn't read it—but maybe we BOTH stole it from the same source. If I could figure that out, maybe it would be a clue into the dude’s psyche!
The weirdest thing for me is that there is virtually no description of the main character, Oedipa, and because of her name I immediately thought of her as kind of old and fat--- the then eventually she starts having sex with everyone and there’s some indication that she’s in her TWENTIES—so it’s really confusing. Which makes you think that this character is really the first person, the Pynchon character, or at least the world is seen by P. thru her eyes. Anyway, the whole story revolves around this alternative, underground mail system, whose symbol has been said to look like a trumpet with a mute in it—that mute being the crucial symbolic element here. The secret here, which I discovered on my own, is that the symbol ALSO looks like a spray can for insecticide. That’s one thing you always have to remember with P’s novels, not only does everything mean something else, but it also means something ELSE completely different, and THAT means, as well, symbolically or metaphorically, something else besides. So good luck with this mess!
Toward the end there’s something about a “smiling billboard” – though I don’t remember the context—and that freaked me out because I had just read something that I wrote long before I read this book which had a reference to a “smiling billboard.” I know I couldn’t have stolen it—not from this book, because I hadn't read it—but maybe we BOTH stole it from the same source. If I could figure that out, maybe it would be a clue into the dude’s psyche!
The weirdest thing for me is that there is virtually no description of the main character, Oedipa, and because of her name I immediately thought of her as kind of old and fat--- the then eventually she starts having sex with everyone and there’s some indication that she’s in her TWENTIES—so it’s really confusing. Which makes you think that this character is really the first person, the Pynchon character, or at least the world is seen by P. thru her eyes. Anyway, the whole story revolves around this alternative, underground mail system, whose symbol has been said to look like a trumpet with a mute in it—that mute being the crucial symbolic element here. The secret here, which I discovered on my own, is that the symbol ALSO looks like a spray can for insecticide. That’s one thing you always have to remember with P’s novels, not only does everything mean something else, but it also means something ELSE completely different, and THAT means, as well, symbolically or metaphorically, something else besides. So good luck with this mess!
Monday, November 20, 2006
a kindread spririt overseas
Just found this on the WIde World Web!
http://www.benking.co.uk/blog/?p=106
Someone who loves both Pynchon and IKEA!
Are same sex marriages still legal in England?
http://www.benking.co.uk/blog/?p=106
Someone who loves both Pynchon and IKEA!
Are same sex marriages still legal in England?
Friday, November 17, 2006
Review of V. by Thomas Pynchon
Just finished reading V. by Thomas Pynchon, from 1963. here’s my review. Spoiler alert! Don’t blame me if I ruin it for you. The main character, Profane, is a sailor, naturally, and he’s the good guy. Stencil is his doppelganger, or evil side. Both of them spend the book looking for V, or “V”, which will bring them, you know, enlightenment, happiness, love, great riches, or whatever. The first place to look, naturally, is EVIL; you can’t ignore the v there! Then there are all the other V’s. Some of these are wild goose chases (or said by the one of the sinister German characters “VILD goose hunt”—of course there are a lot of Germans, ex-nazis, “var” criminals and such, and stuff about the V-1 and the V-2 missiles and their “wicious nature.” Is V the victory sign or the peace sign? That is the question! ON the way, like I was saying, there are a lot of false leads, but that’s the point, red herrings, with coleslaw and what’s that white shit that goes with fish. IT’s Friday, and every Friday here in Schaumberg I think about going to a FISH fry, because I used to live in MILWAuKEE. There are no FISHFRYs in Schaumburg, only oven-fired pizza. Don’t worry the editor robot will remove all that. I need a cigarette—a ViceRoy! There is a VAST tobacco company conspiracy, and a vacuum cleaner salesman, Voss, and Vince Vaughn, a “voman” known to be a Virgin the last, in Virginia. Okay, viscidities vacillate and go Vroom! Very very very good VSOP brandy is drank. Don’t forget the roman number 5! Vacation from vector and Indian boy named Venkatesh, V carved in marble is actually U: (MVESEVM) A gimlet at Victor’s helps vacillate the Add Visory committee when asking for Ad*vice, use the Variable Symbol for image distance Or the Symbol for instantaneous potential difference or the Symbol for instantaneous voltage or the Symbol for specific volume try Vale and Vector main Vein terminal Velocity component and speed. Ventilator blues Ventral as a Verb, verbal Verse Versus Vertical plotline Via Vicarage in Vide paying the Violin with a Virus due to the Visibility of his Vision and the inevitability of his Vocative Voice at the rim of the Volcano, high Voltage Vowels Become Luminous with potential energy, and Potential efficiency and Potential Vanadium Variable regional Vats of Venerable Versions of Vespers who the Vicar of the Village and the Viscount Volunteer Victoria for, you know. Is V a cross or Vietcong? Is it Vapor density, various dates, or venereal disease? Is it the general Verb or intransitive or vide infra? With Vide supra and vice versa! Voucher attached for V-6 engine or V8 juice? Value added or value deleted analysis Or Ventricular arrhythmia Or Veterans’ administration or vicar apostolic or vice admiral OF Virginia Or Visual air Or voice of America only Volunteer artillery, nO! Vacancy forced Vaccination, homebound Vagabonds and reversed Vasectomy for Valentines Day. It’s all there, but the main thing is the women, the classic noir names: Velma And Vera who of course are Vicious and ever bit at viscous as they are Vast, and vacuous, and operating in a vacuum. But you CAN’T tell me in the END that V is anything but the Vagina. OK! It’s a fun book and a quick read, but don’t try to figure it out. It’s a can of VERMS.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Autograph SEEKERS Go Home!
My website started getting thousands of HITS, hundrends of thoussands, even... I couldn't fugre out why until I realized that it has the same name as this new novel that's coming out by that guy Thomas Pynchon, who I am familiar with, but I haven't read any of his books. I had no idea when I named it this! I mean, I came up with this name while eating a mushroom and peperoni pizza from Lou Malnati's along with some drugs that I'd reather not mention here and a vanilla bean and lingonberry ice cream martini from TJ Fudrucker's followed by Jaeger shots! I know: DUMB! So while puking my guts out I was kind of in a state of some kind of weird grace, eventually, and I thought, now would be the time to think of a name for my new BLOG, since here I am puking my guts out. I don't know, puke, blog, kind of the same thing. So I was trying to think of that expression for puking, but I couldn't think of it-- hurling, yeah, but no... the porcealon god, no, too religious, and I can't spell porciilarn... what was it?! I tell you I couldn't think of it, but what came to me was AGAINST THE DAY. I have no idea why that came to me, but it was like GOD put the words in my mind. Well, once I recovered, the the expresion I was trying to think of came to me finally: Driving The Big White Bus. Okay, but by that time, it didn't seem so charming anymore, and I didn't really want to name my blog THAT. SO I went with Against the Day. But I assure you... IT has abslolutly NOTHING to do with that Thomas Pynchon or his new book which I'm sure is more well written than what you read here. But do his characterers have philosophic forrays into the IKEA store? I doubt it. But maybe they do. Now I'm interested, kind of. SO what I'll do here is read all his books (THere are only a few, right? ) and then write little reveiws here of what I think, ending with the new one once it comes out. SO yeah, sorry to all of you who are coming to the blog in ERROR, it's just the kind of accident that happens in these days of so few words and so many people putting them into random senseless order.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
This is where I live!
Can you see me down there? I'm heading off to the IKEA in Schaumberg rgith NOW! so if anyone reads this on saturday morning you should meet me over there I'm going to do some shoping first, I want to buy one of those black couches they call a "loveseat" which is halaiarious because I can't imagine anyone making lovie in it much less making out or even relaxing or watching tv or anything but I want to buy one because they look good in your place and are also really good for placing shit on, like papers and boxes and anythign really that you'd put on a table beause they are so hard and don't squish down the stuff won't fall over!After I get don'e with my shopping I"m going to have a good long lunch in the cafeteria so maybe you can find me there! I'm going to have the regullar lingonberry smorgasbord! Longonberry panckaes and waffles, and muffins with longonberry jam, and to drink some lingeonberry sparkler and then for dessert lingonberry pie, and if I'm stillhungry, lingonberry cobler as a second dessert! And then if I feel like doing some more shoppiong to work off all that food, I might stay for dinner and have the poached salmon with lingonberry reduction sauce, and a spincih and lingonberry and gorganzola salad, and then for dessert lingonberry sorbet! What better to do on a rainy day in the asshole of america?!?!?!
Friday, September 15, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
BAD SUSHI!
Last night I had some bad sushi from the local "picknsav" or whatever they call it now, the "meteormart" or something trying to atract the more upscale condo crowd. I looked aroiudn and aroudn for lingenberry sparkler or perservers, or anythign lingenberry at all, but there was none to be found, so I finaly settled on the storemade "sushi" wheere they hire mexican guys to wear these japanese head scarves and make the sushi and your suposed to think there jampanese guys. Not that I care how makes it if they make it right, but for one thing the rice is all wrong, it's too soggy and it doesnt taste right anyway, but the seaweed shit is all wrong as well. They pretty much got a grip on the wasapbe and the pikeled ginger, but the fish part! that's the worst! I guwss I should be graeteful taht its isnt just spoilded bad old fish, liek the kind that 's at the beach on lake michiagn here on the coast of schaumberg (just kidding there is no coast of schaumberg) becsuse they way the rest of the meal is going , I wouldnt put it past them to use fish that had been around just a littel to long. BUt NO, mayube the is WORSE after all, it's not even FISH ists IMITATON fish. It's fake fish made of god nos what, most likely soybeans and shit. And youi know what? It dostnt taste the LEAST bit like fish at all, but I guess your suposed to douse the whole mess in wasabit and soysause and then you wont even notcie thaat it has ABSOLUEY no flavor! Anywya, ok, I tryed to say, ok just enjoy it have a good dinner, and the bottle of mexicna cabernet I was washing it down with helped, but really the whoel meal just bummed me out. It was called somethiign liek the "marina special" but this shit was never near the marina or ocean or even a pond. But better thatn the "spicy tuna" wath out for that! That measns spooilded tuna that theyu put a bunch of hot sauce on so you wont notice!!!
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
LOOKIN TO RELOACATE
I’m looking for a place to live in the Schaumburg area, maybe Hoffman Estetes, where I can keep my dogs and test out my expermmental dirtbikes, okay? Eveyrone gives me a hard time where I am now, and I’m fuckin sick of it. I hate shamabrug, the place is full of idotts., but I’m drawn to the beautiful rolloling hills, and the natural bueaty of the the late 20the centrry archictecutre. Also, I like living close to the Ikea store, because I can get stuff I need really fast,. Like when my garbages dispoasal breaks of something I can get a really nice Swwedish composter/salad spinner. And I’m totlally addicted to the Lingenberry sparkler, which I like to mix the pure grain alcholol., to make a drimk I call the “carter cocktale.”
Monday, August 21, 2006
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Sunday, July 30, 2006
I am not the Carter Bryson you think I am.
I am not him. Can I help it if my parents happened to name me the same name as the most heinous crimimal of the 20th Century? I am one of the few people who is happy that it is a new century, because I feel like it is the only way I can redeem myself. I think I will start by doing good deeds and trying to procede with care, respect and intellgence. Don't cum here looking for some kind of twisted retrtibution, or kinky sex stuff like in the past. I have found my way now, and it is with Him. I'm not wearing no longer those assless pants or cockring on my toes, bangels, and buables, beads, and corny confessions, forget about it! If you're looking for the big peniz photographs, we have a few left, but the money is all going to a good cause, the Church of Carter's dick, that's where. If you want to come over, you have to decipher the phone message that is hidden encoded in this very paragraph and bring the extra large rubbers, and some black current preserves, my favorite fun food currently! OK and blue bonnet margerine, and maybe buttermilk. I really can go for the buttmilk these days, you know. Eighteen or over please. Hurt, Curarter.
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