prohibitive!

[After the traumatic events,] he knew that his sailors would scatter up and down the coast, go their ways so they wouldn't have to see each other and remember; only after years had passed would they want to meet, so that they could remember the pain when it had become so distant and faint that they actually wanted it back, just to feel again they had done all those things, that life had held all those things.

-- The Years of Rice and Salt

I'm enjoying Robinson's book so far, but some of the reviews over at Amazon.com imply that the conclusion of the book gets too preachy to enjoy. I'm not sure I'm going to reach that point, though--the reincarnation cycle in the book seems to transcend religious arguments and simply be a great narrative structure, allowing characters from different time periods to experience a lengthy timeline in a reasonable manner.

Still, I'm finding it difficult to avoid jumping over to my Perma-Bound copy of Tuck Everlasting so I can have a fresh memory of the book when I see the movie soon. How odd that they'd take a star from my favorite television show and put her in the movie version of my favorite young adult novel.

Whoops, did I say "the" movie version? Make that "a" movie version.

Now what does it say about me that I thought this is for personal hygiene?

I live in a strange world, I tell ya.

Posted by prohibit Tue Sep 24 16:14:18 2002  

Sometimes I wax into a tremenciously self-righteous pedestrian 'tude and try to stir up all sorts of mean thoughts about people driving cars. The other day I was walking along a bridge that crosses I-5 and thought to myself, "Man, it'd be great if the government would hire snipers to just sit up here and randomly shoot single-passenger vehicles."

Then I realized: Considering how likely one is to die or be seriously injured in a vehicle accident, it's kinda like we already have that in effect.

Posted by prohibit Sat Sep 21 19:23:25 2002  

Oh my. I am just all a-quiver now, the fletching Jane has gamely slapped the shuttlecock to my side of the court, allowing me a chance to execute a perfect slam.

Should I slam, or refrain? That's the thing troubling me--is it better to simply accept these implied threats against me, or to rise to the challenge, return the smack, and by answering, end it? To conclude, to finish, that's it; and by a finish I mean to end the pain and suffering that reading Jane's work can cause: now that's something worth wishing for!

See, Jane, you're not the only one who can get an entry out of restating someone else's work (though some of us are a little more articulate than "meh meh meh"). Face it: you already know the Act and Scene numbers. You're a better reader than writer. It's a good thing the gloves are off, 'cause now you won't have so much trouble turning the pages of my many-leagued novel when you're still searching for your colon (hint: it's right below where you'll find your P, depending on your angle of attack).

Posted by prohibit Thu Sep 19 06:55:08 2002  

Jane has accepted the challenge. She doesn't yet realize that the whole point of it isn't quality, it's quantity. Though I'm quite sure her quality will kick mine's ass (I mean, compare the weblogs, fer gosh sakes!), I type like twenty times faster than she does, so I'm totally going to leave her in the dust.

Like, totally. Fersure.

Posted by prohibit Wed Sep 18 00:15:53 2002  

The Kids in the Hall have seen better days, apparently. Dear dear Bruce McCulloch directed a movie recently, and it's not getting a nice treatment from reviewers. Dave Foley just hasn't had any good work since "Newsradio" (well, unless you count Blast from the Past, which was presentable, and apparently got him a gig in Monkeybone, which I never saw, oh, and A Bug's Life, which was great...okay, yeah, he's had some good appearances since "Newsradio", but it's what I really remember best), and I hear he's gained a lot of weight (which is considered a bad sign if you're American, but I'm not sure how it's interpreted in Canada--oh, don't let me forget to write at length on my hypotheses regarding the relation between obesity and class consciousness in American society).

Kevin McDonald is my favorite "kid", and I think he's actually had the best career since KITH concluded. I mean, "Invader Zim", Lilo & Stitch? (Apparently the latter isn't about queueing theory, much to my surprise.)

Finally, a saving grace: apparently Scott Thompson appeared on "Greatest American Hero" as a young lad. So it's not all sad news.

Depending on your perspective.

Posted by prohibit Tue Sep 17 23:59:27 2002  

This week I finished Gravity's Rainbow. I tried figuring out how long I've been reading it by consulting the entries I've written here, but the best I can figure out is that I started it sometime in May when I got a Trivia Night question right at the People's Pub due to being mired in the book. I also tried reading it while standing in line waiting for the Secret Film Festival this year. So I essentially spent my entire summer reading the book.

Was it worth it? Man, what a tough question. There are without a doubt some great bits in the book (many quoted here previously), but the book overall was really challenging. I was trying to come up with some way to describe it, and I think a pretty close analogy is:

Imagine yourself sitting on the bus next to an incredibly beautiful person; you happen to glance past them and notice out of the corner of your eye that they're smiling at you. You return the grin, and perhaps begin some quiet pleasant conversation. You feel your blood rushing to your extremities in the sheer joy of maintaining eye contact with such a beautiful person, then a guy sits down behind you, and it quickly becomes apparent that he hasn't bathed in months. His stench envelops you in a wrenching combination of body odors including rancid sweat, processed alcohol and urine-soaked jeans. You urgently want to get away. But boy oh boy isn't this person you're talking to just incredibly beautiful, and you seem to be the only one who notices the smell. So you keep talking to this attractive human being, doing your best to refrain from vomiting onto the floor. Then the smelly guy (in my experience it's nearly always a man, I'm not sure why) starts spouting off conspiracy theories with liberal sprinklings of toilet humor and references to his penis (with accompanying crotch-grabbing and boisterous singing), and your beauteous conversationalist is smiling at what he's saying!!

Then something blows up.

I think that pretty much covers it all.

Things that surprised me about the book:

• Conspiracy theories abound! I had read about 70-100 pages into the book in the past before being unable to continue and hadn't picked up on the conspiracy theories much (in fact, that might be why I had trouble getting past that point, since that's really when they (sorry, "They") really start to be introduced. This facet of the novel seemed kinda kitschy to me, though others seem to really sink their teeth into that chunk of it.
  
• Sooo much sex, drugs, and Zoot suits.
  
• A big chunk of the book doesn't take place in World War II--instead it deals with the aftermath of the war.
  
• I found it utterly impossible to read the book in my usual manner, where I attempt to drain every sentence of its total meaning--the sheer density of Pynchon's language precluded any such attempts. It was like a Heisenberg reading of the book--I could know the plot's direction, I could appreciate the poetic spins, or maybe I could grasp the humor's velocity, but not all at once. Yet it was still fun.
  

And the sex, of course. Sure, you'd expect a modern book about rockets to have a little nudge-wink about the phallic symbolism of a thrumming rocket pounding its way into mother earth, but Pynchon takes it to a level I could never have conceived on my own. Oddly enough, it's all right there in the (well-known) first line: "A screaming comes across the sky." It ends up being a rocket, but now that I look back at the orgasmic usage of the word "come" in the novel, the line seems to be more about a particularly intense climax. Which is odd, since I don't think the book really delivers on an earth-shattering resolution, though I must say it's got a nice framing device (you'll have to read it for yourself, I can't spoil this one for you; even worse, I don't think reading the first few pages then the last few would provide any real understanding of it. The book just has to be experienced.).

Anyway, I've exorcised this particular demon. I can move on to other books--I considered Mason & Dixon now that I seem to have found a connection between the two books (both have characters named Cherrycoke, and bits of GR are concerned with the time period in question in M&D), but A is suggesting I write a novel, and H seems to think it's a keen idea, so I really need to read something that's more along the lines of what I could conjure up. I'm definitely not on Pynchon's level of worksmanship, so I have to go with a subtler, more accessible author. Thus do I embark on a journey through The Years of Rice and Salt. Appropriately enough, I just finished a castration scene in the novel, like a final severance from Pynchon's dangling bits.

Posted by prohibit Fri Sep 13 07:30:08 2002  

Are they people who surf buttholes, or buttholes who surf?

I try to ask the important questions.

Posted by prohibit Sat Sep 7 22:54:03 2002