Month of September, 2010
This month went by in a flash for me. I've mostly been doing research on topics I'd rather keep to myself (things such as panda bondage and water snarfing syndrome--very embarrassing).
Nevertheless, here is a selection of what I'm reading, watching, and listening to.
Mumford & Sons - This is folk rock, according to wikipedia. I don't particularly care what it's called though. Sigh No More is a great album and I'm enjoying delving into it bit by bit.
Here's "
The Cave".
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen - I heard perhaps the latter 3/4 of
this interview on NPR on Sept. 11. Then I promptly ordered the book. Before I knew it was Franzen speaking, what struck me about the first bit was that the pattern of thought reminded me very strongly of David Foster Wallace. Even though I had heard Franzen talk before (on a weird sort of joint thing along with Wallace on Charlie Rose with poor Mark Somebody playing the third wheel), for a few moments I thought maybe they were playing an old interview with DFW. It's easy to see why they were close friends.
Not long ago I looked back back at some of the first few communications between my partner and I. The messages were saved without our names attached and, reading through them, I found it was often difficult or even impossible for me to determine which one of us has written which messages. That's kind of an amazingly pleasant feeling.
Wallace is quoted as having said that good writing should make us "become less alone inside."* A friendship of compatible minds accomplishes the same, I think. By "compatible", I mean really, really, super similar in your thought patterns and conclusions. Not just being the only two people in town who like pork rinds with rooster sauce. (I don't like pork rinds at all. Just to be clear, in case you were thinking of buying me a present or something. =p)
Civilization Revolution - I've liked every installment of Civilization, but this (on the 360) is the one I'm currently obsessed with playing. Been fiddling around with the Game of the Week feature, which is a great motivation to master the game.
I also have the app of the same name for my iPod, which is good for practicing different strategies. In a way I like the app better because the simple graphics make it easier (for me) to focus on the symbolic/quantitative significance of each square and unit. As far as I know, there is no way to disband/sell units on the app version, which is a teensy bit limiting. The rules for the settler unit's movements also differ between the two versions. That's not a bad thing; it just means they're different games. Those differences aren't terribly relevant until you start really trying to shave your times down.
Gran Turismo - This is a pretty old
album by The Cardigans (1998), but I'm digging into it again lately. You've probably at the very least heard "My Favorite Game" on the radio and I do like that track, but the
other songs are worth checking out as well. Robert Christgau writes of the album, "With a hit on their resume, they're free to be the depressed Swedes they always were." I like them that way. :-)
That Mitchell & Webb Look - The first season is on Netflix now. My favorite sketch might be "
The Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar", which is neatly summed up on wikipedia as "A drunken, drug-addled tramp... seems to be under the impression that he is a brilliant and intrepid Victorian detective..."
Also good.
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*To be honest (by which I mean presumptuous), I suspect that most people actually don't have any sense of existential aloneness at all--neither the experience nor the idea of it.
It's like sometimes there's this strange, vague cry coming from the back of their linen closets but if they pile the shelves high with assorted fluffy stuff, one can really barely hear it anymore. That's almost as if there weren't any problem to begin with.
And some people (perhaps those same people?) are grievously irked by very notion of someone writing books about the sort of thing that Wallace and Franzen wrote/write books about.
For further reading, check out the comment section following any article on Franzen (such as at the NYT or NPR), where invariably there is at least one gem along the lines of: "I'm way TOO HAPPY for this author and I'm
too happy for this book, too happy for this book, so happy AND THIS LOSER SURE HAS SOME FUCKING NERVE INSINUATING... "
This probably isn't a simple case of "the lady doth protest too much". I would guess that those commenters are very happy. It's just that the structural integrity of their brand of happiness depends upon their not knowing that the foundation is comprised of delusional beliefs. Like Santa Claus, if you stop believing, it stops working. They sense, quite rightly, that if this original house (shaky as it is) were to tumble down, building a new and better one would be--at best!--a painful, laborious process. Perhaps it would prove impossible and they would have to face the world in all its violence, without shelter.
And so--because they know they are too weak at present to bear the full weight of reality--they assault the inspectors.
