Friday, August 31, 2007

Raw Shark Texts: an introduction to crazy

What up. I want to write a review but I am feeling lazy. So it will be a shorter one.

Patrick Coate recommended a book to me. And of course I obeyed. I ordered the book on Prospector, which is the Colorado equivalent of OhioLink. Then I read it rather than doing school work for the first week.

The book is The Raw Shark Texts, the first novel by British writer Steven Hall.

In describing the book to me before I got it, Patrick compared it to House of Leaves, the ridiculously frightening and upsetting novel by Mark Z. Danielewski. He did mention it was toned-down a little, but he still warned me that it was equally crazy.

I have to say he was right. I won't get into a plot summary, but it definitely has its parallels to House and matches it in insane setting, character and plot development. One thing it doesn't quite try, though, is twisting or annihiliating text the way House does.

The ideas developed in Raw Shark Texts would sound ludicrous if I tried to describe them, so I will just say that Hall breaks some scientific rules, laws and theorems early and often. The concepts in the book are frightening and are described with horrifying detail. As I said, to describe them dryly right now would sound ludicrous, but when you're reading the novel, they are not only plausible but completely real.

The only problem with the novel is that, every once in a while, the actions of the characters aren't so realistic. The main character wakes up with no memory of anything--his identity, history or surroundings. Yet when he starts receiving letters from himself, he decides not to open them, because the psychologist tells him not to. Umm, sorry, but I would have way too much curiosity to be stopped by a psychologist who I wasn't even opening up to.

But the occasional character mistake aside, the action moves along well and the main characters are very likeable. When the climax rolls around, the crazy events come flying, and it's really cool. Very exciting, although at times a little hard to follow.

As I think about it, the book definitely left an impression on me similar to House. That same kind of unsettling uncertainty that a good horror novel or movie should give you. As I said, the concepts of the book--two of which are "concept fish" and "personality transfer," just to give you a taste--sound crazy when repeated, but are absolutely engrossing when you're reading.

I would recommend Raw Shark Texts to everyone from Tony Storti to Scott Hoffmann, including Beard but excluding Alyssa Wagner. What I'm saying is, if you are interested in a slightly disturbing novel--disturbing not in a disgusting way, but in an off-putting way--I would highly recommend Raw Shark Texts. You could almost think of it as an introduction to House, if you think you aren't quite ready for it.

Grade: B+

Up next, I am considering a review of the University of Dayton. Suggestions?

Love,

Steve

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Brady Quinn is my boyfriend

I have been busy the past few days. Umm let's see.

I got a job. I'm a tutor at the Writing Center at UC Denver, which is very much like the job I had at UD. We had job training last Thursday and Friday. I met the rest of the tutors except one or maybe two and they are all very cool. The job is going to be good. Also I have class with one of the head tutors, Drew. MORE ON THIS LATER

I started class Monday. That class, Rhetoric and the Teaching of Writing, looks frickin' exactly like a class I took junior year at UD, Composition Theory. Just because I was a junior doesn't mean much though; there were grad students in that class. I think I can handle this stuff the second time through, though. The professor seems really cool. He's a retired high school teacher who teaches one class per semester at UCD. He's nice.

Tuesday I accidentally skipped a class. I have three classes, right? One Monday night, one Wednesday night. Those two are three hours each, and once a week. The third class I thought was once a week also, Thursday morning. WHOOPS it's Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and fifteen minutes. I discovered this Tuesday night. Ah well.

Wednesday was Language Theory, or Linguistics. The professor is a hilarious guy named Ian Ying, straight outta China. He likes to make jokes in class, although he does tend to do the Jeff Bennett thing--pausing near the end of his sentences like we're supposed to know the exact word he's going to say next. As for the class itself, it should be interesting. I've heard some of the things before, in dear old Dan Miller's class, but it'll be fun.

Today I went to the Tuesday-Thursday class, which is Writing in New Media. It looks fun. Dr. Comstock is the professor, and she seems really cool and laid-back. The class is all about writing in different media, which means audio and video productions at some point in the semester. I can do that, I guess. The great part is, we formed groups that will last throughout the semester, and my group looks really good. I'm with Drew of the Writing Center (another grad student), Jeff (the other grad student), and Jef. Jef is a senior writing major, and his first name features but one F. For that reason, our group name is One-F Jef and the Graduate Students. They're really funny guys, and I think the class is going to be great.

However, it does mean I'll have to write. And considering it's been about a week, I don't know if I'll want to do that. I do, however, want to whine.

So that's what has been happening. Also did I mention we got a guinea pig. I don't think I said so before. She is very funny and we have named her Maeby. We got her free from someone on Craigslist. She likes walking back and forth in Teresa's rolled-up thesis poster. She lives on the floor of the dining room.

Okay that is life. I will be back soon.

Love,

Steve

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

I return, triumphant, to a small government office.

Here's what happened today.

Sitting around, for a while. Then the DMV. I got my picture taken, got a temporary license, got registered to vote. Only stood in line for about 15 minutes. It was heavenly.

THE REAL STORY IS I got an e-mail from the CU Denver Writing Center about getting a job this fall. See, they had turned me down a while ago, but then the guy e-mailed me and said he needed one more person. I COULD BE THAT PERSON!!!

Of course, he sent me this e-mail July 31. It was addressed to my UD e-mail, which I hardly check. So I hurried up and responded to him, and he said I could get in there about 15 hours a week. Fuck, better than nothing.

I have job training tomorrow and Friday, 9-2. As Joe and I say, "Hired!" Back when we needed summer jobs, we would always debate whether we would be "hired" or "fired" by the company. Obviously, "hired" makes a lot of sense, but we would laugh about the idea that a company had "fired" us just by not giving us jobs.

ANYWAY I'm back in the tutoring game. That's where I'll be all day tomorrow. How in the world I'll get up in time for it, I do not know.

I'll be sure to tell you all about it when I get home, secret diary.

Love,

Steve

I don't bitch about public services (and yet here I go)

Teresa and I had a busy day today. A busy day of waiting.

We went to the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles in a very nice little strip mall in Aurora, Colorado. We both needed to get a Colorado driver's license. T does some research and finds that Ohio is among the states that Colorado recognizes in some sort of category, meaning I don't need any further documentation besides my Ohio license. Rock and roll. Texas isn't in that category (I always knew it was a foreign country) so Teresa brings her birth certificate and Social Security card. Off we go.

We arrive between 2:00 and 2:30. We are given little white numbers, the kind that come on big rolls. She is 511. I am 512. They are serving 211 or so. Rows of chairs are filled with all sorts of people. I'd say at least 150 people waiting, maybe more. Okay, we lean against a wall and wait.

Stand-up comedians seem required to take shots at the DMV. I think it falls after race and gender jokes, but before "my crazy family" jokes in the list of required bits. I always took the jokes with a grain of salt, since my experiences at the Cuyahoga Falls DMV (Lillis Avenue by Graham and State) were always relatively sane. But now I see the sad error of my naivete.

We waited until about 4:00, when Teresa decided she was hungry. She went to a sub place down the street, and I sat staring at the "Now Serving" sign, which seemed to be stuck permanently around 240. At one point, I glanced at the guy next to me, and saw he was holding 412--exactly 100 spots ahead of me. I think my exact thought process was Fuck shit dogshit fucking hell, but we just chatted for a minute about whether or not we liked waiting (no and no were our votes).

Teresa came back with subs, and our white middle-class guilt led us to sit outside to eat. That's where we met Jesus Christ Reincarnated, a nice middle-aged woman from Liberia. She had an awesome accent and she had just finished in the DMV, learning that her daughter had to be with her and she'd waited hours for nothing. She'd be back tomorrow.

She was Jesus Christ Reincarnated because she had a handful of wadded-up numbers, given to her by people who didn't have time to wait. She fished them out of the trash to give to us and bumped us from 511 and 512 to somewhere in the mid-400s. A college-age guy sitting out there with us moved up, too, and pretty soon we were scouring the parking lot looking for something better. Then another younger guy handed me 399, and I passed off my 512 and 467 to somebody new.

We wandered around trading our numbers for a while, then headed back inside to give away our higher numbers. Teresa wound up at 322 and I was at 372, and our new friend--Rashad, who goes to Metro College very close to my school--was at 365. Then Teresa just switched with him, since she was my ride and it didn't make sense to go so far ahead of me. She even passed on his offer of $5 to trade. What a little angel who missed a chance at $5.

Then 5 PM rolled around, and we'd been there three hours or so. They locked the doors, leading to several irritating instances when someone tried to get in, only to have a DMV employee bark way too harshly at them. Christ, chill out, Mr. Jump-to-Conclusions Mat, they don't have a number so you won't be serving them anyway. At this point they're at maybe 305. I think, if we hadn't moved up in numbers I would just have to kill everyone in this place. I have no means to do this. Clearly, I have gone insane.

Eventually they called Rashad--I clapped a little but nobody noticed--and then they called T and then they called me. I believe I got called at 5:35, putting our wait at 3 1/2 hours, or way under average, based on what we heard from other people. I stepped up to a heavier woman with long, dyed-blonde dreds. Somehow she was very nice, even though she'd been dealing with people waiting over 5 hours all day.

I told her that I just needed a Colorado license, here's my valid Ohio one, and I think that's all I need, right? She says, let me see here, W-E-I-S-H-A-M-P-E-L, and Steven, and--oh, this doesn't have your middle name on it. Do you have something with your middle name on it? Actually, it would need to be a birth certificate or a Social Security card.

Hahahaha, good one, blonde dreadlock lady. That is truly humorous. Give me a Colorado license or I will eat your spine.

I can't get the license today. She fills out some kind of "Incomplete Application" form and gives it to me. I take it between sobs, and off we go. But wait! Blonde Dreds has written at the top "No line wait"!! She even underlined it!! "No line wait." It's right there!!!! I kissed her on the mouth and then she called the next number in line. I walked away singing her praises.

Teresa got her picture taken and we were out of there by around 6. As we left I thought, See you tomorrow, Tom Smykowski. See you tomorrow, Blonde Dreds. See you tomorrow, loads of people who should bathe as often as possible.

It's going to feel so good to get there tomorrow, flash my little "No line wait" and march right to the counter. I can probably hold back the tears, but I just might shriek with delight as we leave.

Now, I just need something to do with all that extra time I'm going to have.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Now I just feel terrible about how I spend all my time

Before I tell you why the world is doomed, here's what I've done recently.

I went to my school again today, using a different route. And all by myself. I took a bus and light rail and then I was there. I walked around and I didn't look at a map even once and I didn't get lost although I didn't necessarily know exactly where I was for a while but it was okay. I went to the Bursar's Office BUT I WON'T TELL YOU WHY. I also only missed one bus because I couldn't figure out which side of the street to be on. Turns out the eastbound bus was going west when it came to the stop, and the westbound bus was going east. So I had to be on the north side of the street, not the south. Catchai?

Then when I came home I didn't do much of anything. T and I sat around. I ate soup for dinner (yes, mother, I'm eating dinner). And we watched a lot of the television. More on this later.

First, before I get to why we're doomed, let me tell you something. I haven't been the best friend to Kat Scanlon of Chicago, Illinois. She goes to Loyola. She's in crazy astrophysics. Which is intimidating. The reason I bring her up is her blog, which is really really great. Kat writes out her dreams. They are ludicrous, of course, as dreams always are, but the way she treats them makes it even better. What's awesome is how much of her personality you can read from the posts, which are surprisingly descriptive. I guess it tells you something that she decided to make a blog of her dreams, too. Check it out, it's pretty hilarious.

Okay now for the destruction of the world. I recently starting re-reading Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death. I originally read it for a sociology class at UD, Mass Communication and Modern Society with Dr. Dan Miller. For whatever reason, I grabbed it off the shelf yesterday and it started depressing me all over again.

Postman's basic idea is that television is the dominant medium of our age, and that as the dominant medium it shapes our social conversations. It's straight Marshall McLuhan stuff.

Postman claims that television is a medium of show, flash and style. He says it's good for "junk," which is pretty much true. The problem occurs when television tries to broadcast "serious" material, like religion, politics, even news. What happens, Postman says, is television turns these serious things into entertainment, ruining serious topics. Secondly, television teaches us that everything--education, religion, debate--should be entertaining. TV makes serious topics entertainment, and teaches us to expect entertainment out of everything.

Thing is, the book is really, really good. It's funny, and it's an impressive mix of academic references and pop culture examples and jokes. I know I made it sound depressing, but it's not so bad. If you could handle my paragraph of explanation, you'll be fine. I would definitely recommend looking up this book, and at least reading the second half, starting with Part II. It's the section in which Postman goes through a few different facets of society--news, religion, politics, education--and explains how TV takes a big old shit on it. It's a chance for Postman to march out some hilarious examples of TV figures trying to be serious and looking sad.

Anyway, give it a shot, if you have a chance. If you're at UD, it's probably in the bookstore, and it's cheap, as I recall.

That's all for tonight. As for tomorrow, we have no plans at all. It's supposed to be really hot, like 99 degrees, so I don't believe we'll be leaving the apartment at all. We shall see.

Love,

Steve

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Hahahaha Hold Steady Hold Steady Hold Steady

Okay look I had this crazy idea a while back.

See, on The Hold Steady's website lyrics page they have a section labeled "miscellaneous." There are five songs there, and I had located two, "Hot Fries" and "Curves & Nerves."

And one day last semester I thought, I need to find these other three songs. BUT HOW?

I e-mailed Tad Kubler, one of the guys in the band, and he told me the easiest way was iTunes.

"ITUNES?!?!?" I bellowed. "Tad, you dense fuck, I don't have iTunes!! That's not easy at all! FUCK, MAN!!!!" That was my reaction.

Now jump ahead to yesterday, when I asked Teresa to look on her version of iTunes for those three songs ("You Gotta Dance (with Who You Came to the Dance With)," "Milkcrate Mosh," and "Modesto Is not that Sweet"). I really wanted "Milkcrate Mosh," because of the hilarity of the lyrics online. How could you not love the charming closing couplet, "Went down in the Denver slums and woke up in the Sugar Mountain Pines / Only to find that what you put into your mouth always gets into your mind"?

That one wasn't on iTunes, but "You Gotta Dance" and "Modesto" were. And so was a little number from the Boys and Girls in America recording called "Girls Like Status." So we bought them all, $3 total, there we go.

Holy hell. Hold Steady rocks hard. If they had put "Girls Like Status" on Boys and Girls, I swear I would have given it an A. What did I give it, anyway? I would have given it something higher. It's so fucking cool.

And "You Gotta Dance" is really ballsy. It's maybe their most intense, straight-rocking song, passing up "Cattle and the Creeping Things" or "Same Kooks" for that title. It's older, I think. I'm pretty sure it was a B-side on the album Almost Killed Me. It's a great song, though.

"Modesto" is lame. It's slow and nondescript and you want it to be over. Sadly, once in a while Hold Steady forgets their own power and fails to rock. That's okay.

So if you have iTunes, lay down a couple dollars for "You Gotta Dance (with Who You Came to the Dance With)" and "Girls Like Status." Totally worth it.

In the meantime today T and I did little. We went to Target, she got a watch. Our dishwasher doesn't work so well. It batted about .300 on the dishes we put in there today. So I got to hand-wash them, which sounds like backhanded sarcastic bitching, but I actually like washing dishes. Tomorrow we explore the Denver bus system. We're going to ride it to my school and hers, and probably get lost somewhere in there.

Take care now.

Love,

Steve

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

I'm gonna post so often you'll get tired of it.

Here we are in Denver. T and I have moved in. We have an apartment and everything. See, I am a functioning human being.

Our place is really nice. We have a bed and a couch and a TV and a shower that mostly produces warm water. And sometimes cold water.

Hey listen everyone I got an account on Facebook. I made fun of it in the past, and I was right, of course. But now I'm right to join it. Make me your friend so we can be friends.

I went to my school for the first time the other day. It was a nice place. It has an awesome view of the downtown, which is maybe two blocks away. We didn't get lost or nothing.

Today we're going to Teresa's school. She's been there before with her mom but I have not, with her mom or otherwise. Bet it's not as awesome as my school.

Okay I plan on updating the blog often, so I'll talk to you soon. In the meantime, somebody read www.qwantz.com and tell me what I've missed. I haven't read Dinosaur Comics for ages.

Love,

Steve