Books read in 2013 # 30 - Best Book Inspired by The Man in the High Castle

30. Mirage by Matt Ruff - Take This Waltz, one of the worst movies I saw in the past few months paradoxically has one of the best movie moments I've seen in years. As the alcoholic sister-in-law Sarah Silverman falls off the wagon and when the horrible protagonist asks her what happened, she replies: "I'm an Alcoholic! This is my natural state." with that "Well Duh" voice that she uses. I'm not sure if that is something that alcoholics or drug addicts can relate to, but it did speak to a constant fragility that is needs to be perpetually maintained lest everything falls apart.

I thought of that quote - as well as the Hobbes view that a state of nature is one in which life is brutish and short - often in this book. Quite simply, this book flips the War on Terror on its head with Christian Terrorists crashing airplanes into the Twin Towers of Baghdad which is the largest city in the United Arab States on 11/9. Like Under the Dome the reasons for why aren't so important as the world that is explored in the absence of standard social order.

There are many great bits that take on Islamophobia by presenting Muslims laughing at crazy Christians and sermons like "Is Christianity a Religion of Peace?" as well as ChristianWatch.com being created by the same character who founded the Library of Alexandra (the equivalent of Wikipedia), complete with a flashback to that character laughing at Christians singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and giving a half-hearted apology to his Christian roommate who doesn't accept it. There are also subtle digs such as noting that in the Christian terrorist's apartment were found Left Behind, Martin Luther's The Jews & Their Lies and "other books of Christian hate literature." The fact that the main character puts the Luther's vitriolic anti-Semitic book in the same category as the annoying, but basically harmless Left Behind books still makes me laugh.

Still, the book is not just a "well let's see how you like being judged this way" attack on the Pam Gellers of the world. UAS mirrors USA in many ways in being a relatively stable democracy with criminals and religious zealots free to speak their minds but in the absence of the kinds of conflicts that have characterized the Middle East, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are relegated to mobster and senator respectively. Kurdistan actually exists and Israel is in Germany (so all the Muslim Arabs can admire Israelis as the cool Mossad agents). Qaddafi is still the leader of Libya but since Libya is part of UAS, he's just a crazy governor with big plans (similar to when Governor Perpich was called Governor Goofy because he was always trying to spearhead a major project like the Mall of America - of course, this was before Minnesota got Governor Shithead Ventura). There is some explanation as to how the UAS was formed including the Miracle of Alexandra where everyone worked out their issues in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but the main point is that UAS won WWII.

Not to be outdone, the chapters that give the reader an image of a stable fullscale democracy that encompasses the Middle East, the American chapters creates a vision of a land mass which is fractured and run by different factions. LBJ was the Saddam Hussein who wanted to invade everything. The CIA is the Al Qaeda with David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh as heroes. In one scene the invading UAS generals cannot keep things together, not just because they are trying to ban alcohol but also because the advice to smoke pot incites the racism of the occupied powers (always nice to see someone invoking the old myth about pot making white women have sex with black men that actually was in the anti-pot propaganda). There are some 1=1 correlations such as Texas being the Saudi Arabia and Britain being Iran (complete with David Irving as the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury trying to obtain nuclear weapons).

Slightly unfortunate is the fact that Ruff is taking a page from Philip K Dick by making most of the plot revolve around people going "this isn't how the world is supposed to be" and trying to figure out what's going on. Doesn't entirely matter since the reason for why it's like it is not as important as exploring what the world could be if just a few things changed. And at very least there's no ONE thing that made things different (such as American falling apart during the first Adams administration like it very well could have done).

Books read in 2013 # 31 - The LAST Faye Kellerman book I will ever read

31. Milk and Honey by Faye Kellerman - I called my mom tonight and I started to hate it by about 10 minutes in. Usually I give her time to speak, but I couldn't do it. Actually having a conversation with Mom is pretty impossible. She just talks at me and there's really nothing I can do to stop her from babbling about whatever is on the news or some bullshit gossip magazine. About 20 minutes in, I realized WHY I was hating this shit more than usual. Socrates wasn't sitting next to me. This was the first time I tried to talk to my mom without my cat trying to sit on my computer. Gambit is NOT going to be sitting anywhere near me for a long time. Sadly, when I tried to hang up on my mom I actually said that I couldn't talk to her because of Socrates and I got "Don't take it out on me" which is a perfect example of Mom missing the fucking point. I am not taking it out on her. I just can't listen to her babble without Socrates.

This is the book that I was reading on Wednesday when I took Socrates to the ASPCA Hospital. As he was on oxygen, I had to wait for more tests - including the good news that he was neither diabetic (rather surprising) or experiencing kidney failure - and then the bad news that he was dying of lung cancer. I talked to the people next to me who also had a white and gray cat that they didn't know what was wrong. Some guy was yelling at them about his grandma's dog who was giving birth to stillbirth puppies ("I have had my hand up her pussy! You people are the ones who put people in jail for abusing animals and you aren't helping me!") And I was just sitting there with Socrates' carrier - the carrier that I used to take him from Minnesota - and which was probably too small for him. It happens so gradually, but he went from the annoying fucking kitten that wouldn't shut up to the fat affectionate cat. I didn't even know that he was particularly fat until other people pointed it out. He was always smaller than Toby (and later Patches) so it didn't really register that he was getting fat. I probably should have been worried when he stopped screaming at the bedroom door, but I was kind of relieved.

Anyhow, this is a murder mystery and Orthodox Jews love it because the main character is a police detective who gets an Orthodox girlfriend and decides to go Baal Tshuva. I thought he converted but then halfway through this book it's mentioned that he had a Jewish mother (even though he was raised Southern Baptist). There are several mysteries including whether his messed up army buddy from Vietnam actually raped the prostitute (he didn't), who the wandering child belongs to (a family of beekeepers) and who killed the four people that include the mother of the wandering child (the crazy mother or the retarded brother - sort of in combination I think). I think there was another mystery that comes up but I didn't care.

Basically, this book hits all the beats and spends a lot of time with manufactured emotional back stories that come up when it seems to drive the plot. If I had been in the mood, I would have probably been more interested.

Instead, this is the book that I read when my cat was dying. It's not the author's fault that I hate the book so much. In fact I'm happy that it's not a book that I would normally love (similar to the way that I would listen to Seal when I depressed because I was living with roommates that demanded that I get rid of Toby when I first got him. I moved out but afterwards, I couldn't listen to Seal without remembering that bullshit) because I would hate it regardless.

The term Politically Correct is getting dangerously close to returning to my vocabulary...Allies

Because I am avoiding Facebook, I have the rest of the internet to look at. So I end up looking at Tumblr and Requires Hate because THAT'S a healthy way of dealing with missing an adorably needy cat who isn't sitting right here on the couch next to me. And again, I find things to bother me and make me want to see terrible things happen to people.

I do this. I shouldn't do this. I actually look for things to bother me and even upset me. Mostly just bother me (looks like most people now either agree that Ed Kramer is a pedophile - even if the lame excuses for still going to DragonCon proliferate).

Current annoyance - the slam on ALLIES - particularly allies of the LGBT community. Oh no, straight people are coming to the Gay Pride Parades. They aren't criticizing the police and soldier uniforms as tools of oppression. They are stating that they are allies but they are also making it very clear that they are straight!!! Yeah, go ahead and march in those parades but you don't have to BE GAY - oh no - you are just tourists to someone else's fight against oppression. You don't have to deal with dating a loser boyfriend who keeps fucking other dudes and smoking crystal meth. You don't have to pretend to like Glee. You don't have to watch the lesbian movies that involve a bunch of granola lesbians sitting around singing folk songs and pretend that you just watched great cinema because AT LEAST it's a movie about lesbians that is written for lesbians as opposed to Bound which is a male fantasy jackoff movie. And as an ally, you can outright like the movie Bound without the disapproving lectures.

Ok, so maybe those aren't the kinds of problems that gay people always face (just the ones I know) but you get the point. It's the standard YOU AREN'T IN THE GROUP SO SHUT THE FUCK UP trope.

Seriously, people think like this. Who cares about the homophobes and closet cases who are still fighting against gay rights? Who cares about the gay bashers who are lurking in bars waiting to pick up the Matthew Shepards of the world and show them that their internalized hatred is justified? Yeah, forget about teenagers who are still growing up in homophobic homes and attempting to pretend that they are straight and breaking under the pressure. Hell, fuck Dan Savage for discussing why bisexuals aren't accepted by homosexuals and how if they want to be accepted, then maybe they should come out. He HURT PEOPLE'S FEELINGS by saying that shit and that COMPLETELY eliminates all the good that he did in the It Gets Better campaign (K. Tempest Bradford defriended and blocked me on Facebook for defending him. Her last statement was "maybe it's a bad thing to hurt people's feelings" - pretty much why I disregard most of what she says as toxic bullshit).

No. The homophobes aren't the problem. The institutional homophobia isn't the problem. Laws that don't recognize gay marriage and legislators that see adoption by homosexuals as the more evil than murder and pedophilia aren't the problem.

The problem is really ALLIES - well-meaning people who believe in gay rights and march in parades. Those are the people that should be attacked.

Fucking internet.

This Week's Whiny Bitch Award goes to Robert J. Sawyer

I will admit that I have yet to read Robert J. Sawyer's books. I bought a few at Arisia after I saw him speak on panels. He seemed fairly intelligent and erudite. I also saw that he's one of the last people to believe that Ed Kramer is innocent. By reputation, he strikes me as a mid-level science fiction writer who has some good ideas but is not nearly the trailblazer or giant in the field that would engender slavish devotion or readers excited for his next book. Of course, I never thought much of George R.R. Martin before Game of Thrones either so it's very possible that he really does deserve honors and accolades.

Today, he decided to write an editorial about the Canada Council for the Arts not giving him a grant:

And yet that same week, the Canada Council for the Arts turned me down for the 10th time for a grant to write a novel. The Council’s “Grants to Professional Writers — Creative Writing” are valued at up to $25,000. One might argue that I don’t need the money anymore (although I certainly did when I first started applying). But economic need is not a granting criterion, and bestselling writers of other types routinely receive grants.

(Back in 1993, a churlish fellow claimed I wasn’t “grant-worthy.” I shut him up by applying for and receiving an Ontario Arts Council grant.)

The rest of the article involves him bitching about how he REALLY deserves the grant because most of his books are written in Canada. He does try to get into the whole genre vs. literary buggaboo that comes up every three months to the boredom of everyone, but for the most part it's all about Robert J. Sawyer truly deserves that grant. He's applied for it TEN times and damnit, they still don't give it to him. In fact, he not only believes in his inalienable right to a $25,000 grant but he also feels the need to post it twice to his increasingly whiny FB profile.

I suppose there's something to admire in that kind of self-love. After all, who fucking writes an editorial that says "I deserve this award! Give it to me!" Then again, it's rather undercut by the fact that he posts it on FB for all of his FB friends and fans to go "Oh that's so right, Robert! The Canada Council for the Arts is a bunch of circle jerks. And fuck Margaret Atwood. She's an overrated hack."

I would post these thoughts in his comment section, but the man is an unmitigated disaster so there's that watching a car crash quality to his posts.