books on tape - finally getting around to disappointments

This week I am disgruntled because I spend all my time on subways with heavy boxes. New Yorkers are so nice in helping me carry this stuff, but of course I'm thinking that this is how Ted Bundy found his victims. Read the Ann Rule book and I don't really like her books but that one was more interesting. But having a boring job I finally got around to getting books on tape of two writers that I've been meaning to read forever - Don Delillo and Kinky Friedman.

THEY BOTH SUCK!!!!

Don Delillo's book is read by Laurie Anderson and she's got a somnabulist voice. It works in her music somewhat but she could read Henry Miller (and I'm talking about the Miller of the Tropic books when he was kicking ass) and put you to sleep. But even overlooking her languid slow reading it's a terrible book. It's The Body Artist. And it's boring. It's all middle class white arty types and as far as I can tell tehre's something about menstruation paintings (does anyone find that "challenging" or "deep" or "good" anymore - it's not only stupid and disgusting but boring) and something about a dead husband. Or whatever. It reminds me of Paul Auster - but it sucks.

Which is how Generation Ecch (cool book if you can find it) described the way most of those blurbs on 80s and 90s books should have read - "It's like The Catcher in the Rye - but it sucks" (for a time every book was compared to The Catcher in the Rye because books about guys wandering around not doing much of anything were very popular)

And Kinky Friedman is just a Tom Robbins imitator. That whole lefty Jewish cowboy with a lot of strange secondary characters seems intriguing. Instead it's just kind of lame. They are all "weird" in that New Yorker version of weird. They swear and talk about religion and get drunk in the same bars and act like it's all really holy. I wonder if I would have liked him when I liked Tom Robbins (for the record, I returned to reading a Tom Robbins book and I couldn't fucking stand it. Every five minutes the narrator had to make a sermon about how you can be holy and fuck 15-year olds. I fast forwarded through most of it so I didn't hear that part about how older guys can fuck better because they take their time - but I know it's in there.) And he keeps repeating the same fucking jokes. Like the one character that keeps calling him Stinky or Winky or Kinky. It wasn't funny the first time.

Hell, after the Kinky Friedman book I can't even stand Be Cool - I normally love Elmore Leonard books but it's so much like the Kinky Friedman thing that I can't deal with it.

I'm going to the library at lunch. Maybe I can get better stuff.

Then again I have been carting my boxes on the subway since Sunday - with the exception of Monday night when my friend helped me take a lot of it, but then kept me up late because she had other errands to run. I'm tired and crabby. I'm not sure if I'd like anything I'm reading. Hell, I can't even concentrate on Jane Austen (although reading a Jane Austen book on a Subway is a surreal experience. Ok it's just depressing. I want to be sipping tea with all my extended family and gossipping in an English Country Estate damnit. I don't even mind if I end up in the scandal side of the book - I'm reading Persuasion)

Speaking of which - what the hell is Hugh Grant doing in the new Bridget Jones movie? He wasn't in the book - well that character was in it for about 5 pages and then he disappeared after getting punched out. Most of it was Bridget's evil friend trying to steal Darcy.

But no, I think Don Delillo would suck in any mood. At least I can imagine my 18-year old self (and for everyone that's curious - YES - that icon of the stoner looking dude with the long hair and the glasses that take up most of his face IS me at that age. I thought it looked cool. And like most long haired stoner dudes I got it cut shortly before Sophomore year of college. But it still gets shaggy)

Well...one good thing

Looks like Yassir Arafat might die. That's something. Although he's been pretty damn irrelevant as far as Israeli politics are concerned since 2002. If Israel was trying to do anything with Judah and Samaria he'd be a problem, but most of the efforts are concentrated in cleaning up Gaza so Muhammed Dahlan can run it.

And yes by cleaning up I am referring to blowing up every fucking member of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Oh one last thing about the election

To everyone on my friends list still bitching about it - it's over. Get over it. You've been bitching for the last four years and that lost us the election. Yes, that's right. It's your fault. The Bush campaign should have been a fucking joke. It should have been the Carter administration of Republicans. It's not like Reagan where the economy was great and his only opponent ran on a platform to raise taxes. It wasn't like Bush/Dukakis where Democrats elected the blandest politician they could. Kerry is a personable guy. Intelligent and well spoken. Gratned there's an anti-intellectual bias in America that makes us suspicious of someone that carries himself like he's TOO smart (the egghead label) but that wasn't the issue.

The issue was the attitude among liberals stolen from the leftwing assholes that went "only a moron from bumfuck, Idaho would think of voting for Bush" and surprise, surprise - the independents, moderates and basically undecided voters that were thinking about voting for Bush reacted with "fuck you too" and actually voted for Bush. Of course the other issue was terrorism. It's never a good idea to answer a question "so what are you going to do about these motherfuckers that are planning on killing us" with "Bush is bad. He took us into a war that we didn't need to fight" - because not only is it an evasion, but it also makes you sound like a moron. Even doing the wrong thing is doing something.

2002 could be chalked up to this whole "well why do they hate us? Maybe we should understand that. If only we blow up Israel and force Starbucks to stop colonizing Syria they will all love us and cuddle us and make fuzzy wuzzy bunnies together" attitude that was confused with the Democrats (or the fact that many liberals had that attitude and didn't vote Democrat because they knew that their Democratic representatives and senators were more inclined to support active military roles in dealing with Bin Laden and Co. - nihilistic_kid still takes that approach in this election, but he's a commie so you can't really account for taste.) 2004 is just sad because it could have been a victory.

Hey, I want to bitch and moan and shoot Republicans too - well some of them, but I also want to win elections. ANd the latter takes precedent over the former. So fuck it, we lost. Figure out why and move on.

I guess it's that whole midwestern "shut the fuck up, get over it and move on" attitude.

Hmmm

He's not quite dead yet

Sorry for those that hate Monty Python - oh fuck I'm not. I love Monty Python (well except for those television episodes after John Cleese left - those were lame)

Moral Values

22% of those that voted for Bush cited moral values. That's been bandied about. But considering that only about half of Americans voted for Bush we can cut that down to 11%. So 11% of the country thinks that gay marriage is such an abomination that they have to ban it in the constitution. Or they really dig that backing Israel in whatever it does move (something that pretty much siphoned off the Jewish vote to the point where kerry couldn't just rely on a traditionally Democratic electorate)

Forty years ago what percentage of Americans supported anti-miscegenation laws?

Renaissance Art debate

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/books/10/29/books.carlin.reut/index.html

Ok, Wal Mart is not carrying George Carlin's book becasue the cover parodies The Last Supper?

Take that! All you elitist fucks that think Wal Mart is the bastion of inbred hicks. Sure they might be that but they stand up for their Renaissance Art. Don't fuck with Leonardo Da Vinci if you're standing next to a Wal Mart. Yeah, we take our gay Italian painters seriously here. If you don't like Leonardo Da Vinci, get the fuck out of my store. And the same goes for Donatello, Michalangelo and all the rest of Medici's pet artists. Wal Mart is here to protect the classic art from the hands of the really funny in the 70s but not so much these days comedians.

Ok. All right.

Well Arafat's dead. That takes some of the sting out of Kerry losing the election. Of course Arafat was a bit player by the end, more of a symbol than a person. He was irrelevant but he still wielded some degree of power. Abbas couldn't work with him. Qureria was a bootlicker and he was showing signs of straing. Muhammed Dahlan fucked off to Gaza and is carving out his little fiefdom (ever since he caused riots by actaully ordering the arrests of Hamas operatives, Israel has been grooming him to take over in Gaza after they pull out. That's why they've been killing off the leadership of the Hamas with a near reckless abandon. Makes Dahlan's job that much easier.)

of course Arafat was an easy enemy and it was always easy to blame Arafat for every damn thing when most of it was an unwillingness to stop terrorists. By the time he was trapped in his compound he was irrelevant. He no longer ordered terrorist attacks (well nothing that you could approve) but he liked to have them happening on his watch as a "if you think I'm bad just see what will happen if these guys take power" trick.

But he's dead. Ladadadada. Arafat's dead.

I would be pouring champagne but I still gotta move.