Hot Damn It's HOT

Largehearted Boy clues us into a Sucide Girls interview with author Chuck Palahniuk.

An excerpt:

Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to?

Chuck Palahniuk: Not much. I’m just coming back from picking up my day’s food.

DRE: Are you going on tour soon?

CP: I just finished a US tour and I start the Canadian tour this weekend.

DRE: So Haunted is a crazy book and I totally forgot that Guts was in it. Guts is a really gross story.

CP: Yeah but a funny one.

DRE: It’s very funny because I can see that happening to me which is the sad thing.

CP: I think that’s why people relate to it. Everybody’s got sort of a horrific sex story like that.

DRE: Guts was the one that was making people pass out at readings. Would you read the whole story at the readings?

CP: Oh yeah but typically I’d have to stop halfway through when the people were being lowered to the floor. Everyone was all upset about these people passing out. Then I’d finish the story.

Read more here...

Michael Berube has a new post on literary criticism entitled "Everything You Know Is Dead," a must-read for anyone in the same position as I am educationally or otherwise.

An excerpt:

Early last year, I announced that literary theory was dead. Now, just this past May, while I wasn’t looking, Judith Halberstam announced The Death of English. Well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. First the author, then Man, then theory, then English. Where are we going to put all these bodies?

Now, I’m fond of Halberstam’s Female Masculinity, which I recommend not merely for its adventures in gender-bending but also for its brief, charming queer reading of the movie Babe. But the disciplinary history of English isn’t her strong suit. There’s a great deal to quibble over in her essay, but I really can’t keep asking my faithful readers to plow through extremely long posts and neglect their jobs, so, ye faithful readers, I will call to your attention only to a couple of things.

Read more here...


Currently reading: Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie

Dreiser's Sister Carrie is an urban novel. A country girl comes to the city, ends up with a slick saleman as a kept woman, but runs off with a bar manager to New York where she finds fame as an actress. Her bar manager husband falls on hard times and kills himself. Carrie's fortunes rise as Hurstwood's falls. The characters operate in the world of the city with its mystical pull. Their decisions and some chance events help guide along the plot, but this is a world of survival of the fittest. Carrie turns out to be fit, while Hurstwood does not. There are undertones of Darwin's theories. Dreiser himself occasionally appears as a voice in the work separate from the narrator and the characters...

Back from the Books

Sorry for the delayed posting, but summer school has been kicking my ass. The whole transition from reading one book a week to one book a day AND working is taking some getting used to.

Looks like I got some love from The Torture Garden today. Check out Shane's site since he has the Bloc Party Silent Alarm Disc and Interpol's Antics for you to enjoy, two of the best discs I've heard in a while.

There's also an audiobook version of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I know a lot of people have been geeking out on lately, and for good reason. Douglass Adams is good stuff.

I picked up tickets to see Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones play September 28 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Pearl Jam is opening for The Stones, and my heart is probably going to explode with happiness between sets. My tickets are behind home plate, and cost about 170 bucks each. As far as I'm concerned it's worth it though.

I just finished reading Frank Norris' McTeague in my English 762 class. As for a critical interpretation into the book, if you strip away the naturalism that runs prevalent throughout the book you will find a fairly early depiction of the sadomasochistic relationship between Trina and McTeague. Norris is a unique author in that he died at a fairly early age (32), much like another naturalist writer, Stephen Crane, who penned Red Badge of Courage (and who died at 29).

Gorrilla vs. Bear is all about tonight's Game 6 matchup between the San Antonio Spurs and The Detroit Pistons. Personally, I'd like to see Detroit win and take the series to a Game 7, for no other reason that I love Ben Wallace's retro 'fro.


He also has an Arcade Fire live song for you to sample, and a fair share of pictures of the Detroit Hot Girl.



Penn State English professor Michael Berube speaks on human rights, Sean Hannity, and Hugh Hewitt on his blog today:

Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Mister Answer Man: Special Human Rights Edition

Dear Mister Answer Man: At Obsidian Wings, Charles Bird asks, “Can we agree that, no matter how the words are weaseled, putting American in the same sentence with Nazis, gulags and the Khmer Rouge has no place in civil political discourse?” Is this just another tendentious wingnut reading of Dick Durbin’s June 14 Senate speech, or is it really the morally serious question it purports to be? I can’t make up my mind. – J. Humphrey, Montreal

Mister Answer Man replies: It is a morally serious question of the first order, Mr. Humphrey. And that is why, if Mister Answer Man ever encounters someone saying, “do you know, the Americans have tortured and killed just as many people as were tortured or killed by the Nazis” or “in the gulags” or “by the Khmer Rouge,” he will declare that such sentences have no place in civil discourse. Mister Answer Man frowns menacingly at all sentences that suggest that America is exactly like Nazi Germany / Soviet Russia / Cambodia under Pol Pot.

Indeed, one of the most profound things about Mr. Bird’s question is that it implicates numerous other rhetorical maneuvers that have no place in civil political discourse. Applying the Bird Principle, we can agree that, no matter how the words are weaseled, the refusal to hold all nations to a single moral standard—for example, Article Five of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights—has no place in civil political discourse. Equally important, in light of recent events, we can agree that whenever an elected American official argues that the United States should not employ the tactics of brutal, totalitarian regimes, smear campaigns against that official have no place in civil political discourse. (Read more here...)

And I suppose I should mention that Billy Corgan announced via the Chicago Tribune today that he is getting The Smashing Pumpkins back together, that he basically hates Zwan and was an idiot for allowing one of the best alternative bands ever to simply dissentigrate.

From the article (via Stereogum):

Today is a special day in my life as it marks the release of my very first solo album TheFutureEmbrace. For over 17 years I have been proud to represent Chicago as an artist through my words and music, and am continually humbled by the undying love that I have been shown from this city as one of its native sons.

...

When I played the final Smashing Pumpkins show on the night of December 2, 2000, I walked off the Metro stage believing that I was forever leaving a piece of my life behind. I naively tried to start a new band, but found that my heart wasn't in it. I moved away to pursue a love that I once had but got lost. So I moved back home to heal what was broken in me, and to my surprise I found what I was looking for. I found that my heart is in Chicago, and that my heart is in The Smashing Pumpkins.

For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams. In this desire I feel I have come home again.

I'm not sure if this is the best news ever, or the worst? If they come back with some rockin' ass tunes ala Siamese Dream or Gish, and not that Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness melodrama then I might consider it an omen of good things to come.

Back to the Lesson at Hand

Sorry for the long delay in posting, but this week has been the equivelent of "hell week" for me. I started classes, had to take the GRE and entertain my girlfriend all in the same short span of a couple days and I really got buried under it. My average GRE Verbal score shows that too. Oh well, I'll just have to take it again in August in hopes of getting into the PhD programs that I want.

Friday's glance around the blogosphere:

Largehearted Boy recently posted a radio interview with author Chuck Palahniuk. One of the most insightful things I've ever heard, a must-listen.

Some Live Counting Crows

Weezer Acoustic version of Undone featuring Gangsta Rap verses-The Video

A couple of blogs I frequent have been up in arms about the National Conservative Weekly's list of Top Ten Most Dangerous Books from the 19th and 20th centuries. You can check it out here, and let me know what you think.

I'm really surprised by some of the choices and their rankings, like the Kinsey Report? Surely that can't be that dangerous of a book. I'm surprised the conservatives didn't throw in Jon Stewart's America after his drubbing of them on Crossfire.

My New Roomate

Got a new roomate today. His name is Siddhartha, and he's from India:



Siddhartha is a leopard Gecko.

Leopard geckos belong in the class Reptilia, order Squamata, and suborder Sauria (lizards). Their genus name, Eublepharis, means "good eyelids." Unlike some other geckos, leopard geckos and their close kin (eublepharine geckos) can close their eyes. Another difference is that they don't have expanded toes or clinging toe pads. Most of them have fat tails and all live in dry habitats.

Leopard geckos are native to western India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and can live more than 30 years in captivity.

Like many small lizards, a leopard gecko can autotomize, or shed, its tail to distract a predator or escape its grasp.

My friend Mike posted a picture of his new tat at his blog.

A couple of years ago I got a tattoo. It's a UW-La Crosse "L" and it has the words Victus Omnia underneath it in cursive, which means "conquer everything."

I've been trying to think of another tattoo I could get. I wanted something Wisconsin like, but not exactly UW because I never went there and it doesn't have all that much meaning to me other than basketball and football games. What I think would be really cool would be a german coat of arms. Only problem is I can't exactly trace my lineage all the way back to figure out what my family coat of arms is and no one in my immediate family has any clues.

indiesurfer.blogspot.com/ links to the new Common cd today. Good music blog, check it out.

I'm entertaining the lady friend here in Indiana the next couple of days so I may not be posting, but classes will start Monday and that should give me something to complain about.