joE & noaH

Joe found Noah on Netflix and we sat down together to watch it.  The next day we were talking about the movie, and he asked me if I knew the names of Noah's sons.  I came up with Ham and Shem, but couldn't think of the third one.  Joe looked it up on the internet and found out that the other son's name was Japheth.  Then he told me, "Shem is the oldest son, and Japheth is the youngest son.  And Ham is the middlest son."

Which is really quite logical.

It reminded me of the time that he was talking about the Holy Family and he referred to "Jesus Christ, Mary Christ, and Joseph Christ."  You know, the Christ family.

I aM radaR

     "I'm afraid of dying alone."
     "I would never let you die alone," said Misa.
     "I love you, Misa, but we all die alone.  They never tell you this in school, but this is the only truth you can depend upon.  Solitary demise."
     "But then you still go to heaven.  And heaven is full of people."
     "Miroslav smiled.  "And then you go to heaven, Misa.  Full of people.  It's true.  There's always that.  Although you could go to hell."
     "Lots of people there, too," said Misa.  "You'll never be alone."

Reif Larsen

I saw this book at Barnes & Noble in the new fiction section, but didn't pick it up because (1) I'd not heard of it, (2) I didn't recognize the name of the author, & (3) I thought it had a shitty cover design 

( 

 ).

But I noticed it a second time at B&N, and then when I was hanging out at Crescent Hill Library I noticed that they had two copies, so I figured it was stalking me and I opened it up to have a look.  Didn't take long for me to decide I needed to keep on reading, so I checked it out.  I'm 317 (of 657) pages in as of this morning, and I have to say that this is one superb hunk of writing.  Reif throws off ideas / images in a few words that I would have spent pages dwelling on . . . which means that the book is just bursting with imaginative swells.  It's pretty stunning, actually.  

I also became aware of the fact that I actually bought (but never read) Reif's first book--

--

for which he was purportedly given a one million dollar advance.  (Holy shit!)  I remember seeing this book at Carmichael's and thinking that it was supercool and buying it, then seeing it a few days later at Half-Price for a buck or two.  I will mos def have to find out where I put it and give it a read once I've finished I Am Radar.  And oh--ut ut!--I just saw that there was a movie based on that first book:  The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013).  The trailer looks pretty cool

&

but it looks like it's not available on Netflix or Amazon Instant, and it's a little pricy to buy ($23 is the cheapest I've seen so far), so that might not happen.  

But this Reif fellow is super okay.  And he's an American, too!

scribD

I started a free 30 day trial of Scribd on April 15th.  Today I'm at the halfway point of the trial, and so far I've read

Doppler by Erlend Loe
Lazy Days by Erlend Loe
and The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Star Trek / Planet of the Apes issues 1, 3, 4 and 5 (issue two was      
     only posted as a preview, which irked me)
Citizen of the Galaxy issue 1
Bee and Puppycat issues 1 through 6
Ragnarok issue 1
G. I. Joe issue 5
Orphan Black issue 1

I'm in the process of reading
The Deadly Streets by Harlan Ellison
Some Rain Must Fall: And Other Stories by Michel Faber
Seth: Conversations by University Press of Mississippi

and listening to 
Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

And in my library I currently have waiting for me so many books that there's no way I can finish them all before the end of the trial period . . . including The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare, a bunch of Charles Bukowski books, Foundation's Fear by Gregory Benford, Fantastic Four Masterworks Volume 4 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby . . . .  

This is looking like a hell of a deal for $8.99 a month.  In fact, since I've been watching Orphan Black I decided to check out the comic book next time I went to Great Escape, then had a thought and looked to see if Scribd had it.  They did indeed have the first issue, which I immediately read.  I'd have spent $3.99 just for that one issue.  And the same goes for the Star Trek / Planet of the Apes crossover series--that would have been $3.99 a pop, so the issues I read on Scribd would have cost me $15.96.  (At least in theory.  The art was so bad and the story so mediocre that I probably wouldn't have bought more than the first issue.)  I've also started taking long walks with my Kindle, and I really need audiobooks to make this something I can continue to do, and Scribd lets me download audio books to my device.  That alone is probably worth the full price of monthly admission.

So I think I'm sold.  At this point my only reservations are (1) there are some things I want (such as Erlend Loe's Naïve. Super 1) which aren't available on Scribd, and (2) it pisses me off that a couple of times I've seen comic book runs with issues missing from the series--like Star Trek / Planet of the Apes missing issue 2.  On the other hand, I've found enough books that I want to read to keep me going for some time, and I've been absolutely gobsmacked once--when I found that they had the Kamandi story from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade issue 2--I don't even know how that's possible.  I'm thinking that I can probably save more than $8.99 a month just in comic books that I'd like to read.  

If you fancy a glimpse, go HERE.

1 Ut ut ut!  I was just browsing around on the Scribd site and put in Naive. Super for like the dozenth time (just in case they decided to slap it in there) and noticed that there was a category called "documents" which had several listing for this title.  When I've looked at "documents" before they've been things written about the book in question, but I decided to have a look anyway, and lo and behold . . . the first document seems to be the complete text of the novel.  Whassup with that I don't know, but I'm going to go read me some Erlend Loe right now.

UPDATE:  May 10, 2015
Nearing the end of the free trial period.  Since then (above) I've slowed down a bit on my Scribd reading, but have continued listening to Silver Linings Playbook, and have finished reading Seth: Conversations, Paying For It, and Ed the Happy Clown.  And the slow down wasn't due to lack of interest or lack of material to read, I just was writing more and started reading I Am Radar by Reif Larsen (real book form) because I happened across it on a visit to the library.  Plus the new Palookaville (#22--must have item, btw) just came out.  I still have a lot of stuff I want to read, so it looks like I'll be following in Chester Brown's footsteps next month and paying for it.  We'll see how it goes.  For now, though, I'm pretty happy.

wallpapeR

I've come to see that we--

                                                           not just me,

                                                                      you, too,

just move from one room to another

sometimes a step

sometimes a walk

sometimes a drive

sometimes a flight
sometimes a fight

one room to another

so we can watch things that aren't real

listen to people we can't talk to

do things we could have just as easily done

in our own rooms

and I've begun to wonder

why I shouldn't just stay in my own room.

I can entertain myself.

worsT thinG

The worst thing you can do is to love somebody.  
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/phonynoam

You know what love is?  It's a temporary state of vulnerability in which you reach out to someone in an attempt to convince yourself that your life is not futile, that you are not worthless, that your every action is not inane, and that there is some purpose to your drawing breath in this world.  It is a replacement for God.  If there actually were a God, there would be no concept of love, because we would each be complete in ourselves. We would need no mortar to hold together the dead bricks of our existence.  Love is a temporary state because once we are convinced that we are loved, we feel fulfilled, and thus we no longer need to be loved.  

It is precisely like the appetite for food. When we are hungry, we seek out the most appealing food. If we find none, our criteria becomes less stringent.  If our hunger persists beyond a certain point, any food, even that which we would previously have found disgusting, becomes acceptable.  Once we have eaten, however, we immediately become more fastidious about our choices, rejecting that which  previously nourished us.  It is as impossible to maintain a state of being in love as it is to maintain a state of hunger.  Hunger is either satisfied, thus ending the state, or the one who hungers dies . . . thus ending the state.  

If one is kept at a very low level of caloric intake, close to starvation, hunger--Iove--could persist for an extended period of time,  but sooner or later the hungerer either dies or happens upon a better source of nutrition.