The city of Dresden was at the core of Kurt Vonnegut's sarcastic old heart, and so it's no surprise that his posthumous collection of short stories, Armageddon in Retrospect, deals so heavily with the experiences he had as prisoner of war and witness to the utter destruction of what he calls the most beautiful city in the world.  What strikes me as the best part of the collection, and what really made me wish more of the personal Vonnegut were available to the public, was his letter written to his family from a red cross camp in 1945 detailing what had happened to him since he'd been declared missing in action.  I've come to regard him, as I'm sure a lot of people have, as a personal friend over the years, that grumpy old uncle that knows better than the bullshit around him, and I wish there was more of that for me out there.  Maybe that's selfish.

The stories themselves are so-so.  I always though Vonnegut was a better novelist, and I always thought his short story ideas were better than the stories themselves (which is one reason why Breakfast of Champions, with it's quickfire half-ass story outlines littered throughout, is so good).  "Guns Before Butter" was probably my favorite, and the one that best captures I think what he was going for with these stories.  The rest of the stories read like late-period Vonnegut essays-- more humanist than literary (which is what he wanted to be, so I don't begrudge him for it), rougher around the edges, not quite so brim-filled with laughter at the world.  Instead, we get much more somber stuff.

All told, this is not a quick cash-in, which is obvious from the heartfelt introduction and the inclusion of lots of color illustrations.  These stories deserve a place on the bookshelf if you're a fan.  I give it three and a half points.

Also, if you work in my office or near my office, feel free to sit on our likely-bug infested loveseat and read some of it, as I left it in there as our very first "office book."  I'm thinking of bringing up some more short story collections I've got laying around for when we don't want to work but we want to look like we're working.  English department!
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That new batman movie is much better than a "summer movie" should be, and rewards deep thought.  I won't dork out over it, but if you like things that are grim and at the same time kickass, you should go see it.  I give it four and a half points.

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Fish tacos are pretty good.  Three points.

I feel hollowed out this morning.  I stayed up late, too late, until the gray light seeped in through the blinds.  I had to fight to stay up that long, and I don't know why I did other than sleep seemed a little terrifying.  I think grading makes me feel this way; the never-ending stream of writing that was compelled out of students feels so fake.  Earnesty and good grammar are both rare commodities.  And I like these kids, as much as I say otherwise over and over.  To see them faking a voice, posturing for a grade, to know that I made them do it-- well, like I said, I can't sleep at night.  Holden Caulfield would hate my guts.

Add to this the fact that one of my best friends is moving away and you get one ugly feeling.

I've always been something of a Grand Theft Auto apologist.  This is in part, I'm sure, because GTAIII came out when I was a college sophomore, and before that we would play the original over our dorm's network.  Ironically, or perhaps not ironically, we played stolen copies of the game.  The long and short of the series is that, aside from being a technological marvel, it's a great deal of fun, which is where the cognitive dissonance arises.

You see, when I come to the defense of the series, my primary line of argument is that it's satire, a raunchy purple dildo that's been used to bludgeon all the problems inherent in the American way of life.  It's a great argument, with plenty of evidence to support it, as long as the audience sees it that way.  But we don't.  Walking down the streets of fake New York with a rocket launcher is, to call forth my sixteen-year-old self, fuckin' awesome.  In this way, the series is kind of like a more unwieldy version of Fight Club: the audience is too entranced by the violence to realize that the makers are presenting it as a stupid and deeply flawed way of life.

Grand Theft Auto IV, in many ways, works to change this.  By making everything more realistic, and by creating a main character that doesn't exactly revel in the life he leads, Rockstar shifted the dynamic for me as a player.  I found myself more concerned with staying in the bounds of acceptable behavior, because throwing a grenade into a busy intersection was no longer just good times.  I shot at tires instead of heads.  I took taxis home when I was drunk.  I was always sure to wear a helmet on a motorcycle.  Sure, I still stole a lot of people's property, but in the motherland, we call this a redistribution of wealth.  This, perhaps, is the game's greatest accomplishment: bringing a moral compass to the series.

But I wonder if it was just an accident.  Yes, there are individual components of the game that do (and have always) work as satire, and now there seems to be some measure of weight to the story and its consequences.  Jason Sudeikis' version of Rush Limbaugh was pretty brilliant, and maybe even important, for example.  Niko and Roman's relationship is compelling, even though I thought Roman was more than a little bit of an ass.  But underneath these trimmings there's still racism, sexism, and homophobia that seem more glorified than skewered.

I'll give you an example: there's a character, Bernie, who lived in Niko's homeland and is now living in America and openly gay.  Niko doesn't judge him, and actually rescues him from some guys who are beating him up just for being gay.  Now, this looks like a rather important moment where the game makes a clear stance on how it feels about homophobia.  The problem is that this is precluded by 2-3 minutes of following Bernie on his morning run watching for someone to harass him, which boils down to 2-3 minutes of "Hey, faggots sure run funny!"  The game invites you to laugh at the man and then tasks you with chasing down and killing the people who are tormenting him.  So what's the message?  I guess it depends on what you're willing to forgive, and which side you're already on.

Don't worry, though.  I laughed at Bernie too.







(This is just an aside, but if you feel anything besides embarrassment at going to a fake strip club and getting a fake lap dance, then maybe you're not as much of a grown up as you thought)

All  I could do was wonder if I was going to be on the news for this.  One minute I’m going through a bag of trail mix, picking out the chocolate chips, waiting in line to deposit a hundred thirty dollars in birthday checks.  I’m noticing the guy in front of me is sweaty in spite of the cold, mildewed air in this bank that time forgot, where all the tellers have retired twice already and the faux wood is chipped off the corners of the particle board counter-tops.  I’m thinking what a lousy life it must be, being a guy who sweats so much.  And then he falls over.

            Next minute I’m straddling him like it’s prom night pressing rhythmically on his chest.  He’s not so fat that my knees don’t touch the ground, but I’m still thinking it’s his fault as I notice the way the fat under his chin pools and reverberates my efforts back at me.  His lips are like sausages, and as I breathe into his mouth I hear the calls of “Faggot!  Faggot!” from the stupider kids in the life-saving course.  When the reporter sticks her microphone in my face, I see them in their living rooms saying it still, but knowing in their hearts that I’d just made something of myself.

            “It was instinct,” I’m saying to a woman in a blue blazer, her wrinkles hidden by pancake makeup.  “I took the course for extra credit my senior year, and it just kind of came back to me.”  My palms press into his chest.  My checks have fluttered to the ground around me.  The one from grandma.  The one from Aunt Lisa.  I worry about them being stolen for a second, but the crowd around me just stares.  I go in again to breathe into his mouth, my fingers gently closing his nostrils, and then I’m back at the compressions. 

I realize I probably should be next to him, not straddling him.  I realize that I’m pressing harder than I should and not counting.  I don’t tell this to the reporter.  I smile at her with my aw shucks ma’am heroism.  I consider shouting for help, but there are cell phones in hand already.  I say “Come on” between grunts, heightening the drama for the crowd and maybe for the emergency dispatch if they can hear me.  The reporter has her microphone in my face, so my every exhalation and soft curse can be heard by the whole metro area at five, six, and ten.  I hope my mom is listening, grandma, Aunt Lisa.  They’ll buy a dozen copies of tomorrow’s paper.  I’ll show it to my children.

But this guy isn’t cooperating, and I start to hate his limp face.  I blow extra hard into his mouth, and the reporter says, “Even in moments of quiet desperation, our local hero maintains his composure.”  I tell her that I do my best.  I start to count compressions.  I stop long enough to read my watch without trying to appear like I stopped.  Of course, I don’t know how long it’s been.  Is he brain dead?  Press. Press.  Breathe.  Is he going to fucking thank me after this?    Press.  Press. Press.  Come on, dummy.  The reporter’s face has fallen, cracking her makeup and her painted-on smile in a dozen places or more.  I keep pressing.

I keep pressing.

A man in a red windbreaker taps me on the shoulder and I move away.  They don’t pronounce him dead here, because that’s too much paperwork for them.  They take him to the hospital.  The reporter looks into the camera and says nothing.  The camera light goes off.  They pack up and go home.

I'm still here, writing and grading and eating too much fast food.  I've been informed repeatedly that this blog is kind of depressing and I seem kind of depressed.  Well, yeah, that's true some. Consider your armchair diagnosis an armchair success.  But then, I'm not blogging when I'm hanging out with my friends on campus dodging paper-grading. I'm not blogging when my wife and I are playing Rock Band or laying on our big new couch that we can both fit on with just our feet touching.  I'm not blogging when I'm reading a good book, or when I'm writing something that I intend to print out and keep somewhere special, safe from fires and bear attacks.

A blog should be depressing.  It's someone saying to anyone who will listen, "I'm important enough for this to matter to you!"  Isn't that kind of sad?  Even the word itself has the community-theater-improv-sad-sack-attempt sound to it.  Blog.  Buh-log.  A blogger is just a person with a flaw, whether that flaw is the desperate need for praise (represented by number of comments) or self-assured narcissism (again, comments).  I think some self-awareness about this is healthy, and I count myself in on this.  The internet is just the frayed edges of society getting a chance to be raw together in the sun.  It takes all the high school cafeteria table divisions-- the jocks, the nerds, the stoners-- and it looks at them through the wrong end of the binoculars.

My flaw is that I need the clickety-clack of the keyboard to feel better about myself sometimes.  So what if it bums me the hell out?  Tomorrow I'll see a tree or a spiderweb or a really unfunny bumper sticker, and it'll be just fine for awhile longer.

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(Now he talks about some movies)

There is no reason for me to like Enchanted.  I am a grown man with a serious and complicated outlook on life.  I teach at a college.  I write books.  But a dopey smile was inescapable.  I wanted the Hot Girl from the Office to marry Patrick Dempsey.  There are serious ramifications to this.  I need to think for a minute.

Lars and the Real Girl is a movie you should see.  It goes like this:  Lars is sad for a big reason.  He finds out about these sex dolls that are fully customizable and orders one.  He proceeds to treat it like his real girlfriend, and his brother and sister-in-law, and the whole community, have to deal with it.  It sounds like a setup for an awful comedy, like Weekend at Bernie's with an anatomically correct, fully-articulated sex toy, but it's quite the powerful little indie film.

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(Now he makes a correction)

In retrospect, that binoculars line doesn't make a damn bit of sense under any kind of scrutiny, but that's also what a blog is about.

            I always eat my dinner with a stack of napkins and three plastic forks.  Between each bite, I set the fork I’m using on the table, tines down, and I form a counter-clockwise triangle with the other two.  I chew sixteen times on the left side of my mouth, and then I turn the next fork in the triangle tines up.  Then I chew sixteen times on the right side of my mouth, then I wipe my mouth with a napkin, fold it over twice, and stick it into the crack between the leaves of my kitchen table.  That’s when I can swallow.

            No.

            Arthur eats dinner with a stack of napkins and three plastic forks.  Between each bite, he sets his current fork on the table, tines down, forming a counter-clockwise triangle with the other two while he chews.  Then he turns the next one he’s going to use over, tines up, wipes his mouth with a napkin, folds it over twice, and sticks it into the crack between the leaves of his kitchen table.  Then he swallows.

            His eating is marked by soft humming in the back of his throat that he isn’t conscious of.  Mostly he looks at the wall across from the table in his little one bedroom apartment, the one that leads into the kitchen, the one he’s covered in sticky notes.  On each, in neat, tightly controlled pen, is a date and then a series of numbers in sets of three then two.  Seven eight four, one nine.  Seven eight three, two four.  Nine nine eight, five two.

Most of Arthur’s meals fall in a certain range of colorlessness.  Tonight he’s eating boiled chicken with rice.  Yesterday was pork with instant mashed potatoes.

The phone rings.  Arthur finishes his napkin ritual and swallows, then lets it ring two more times for an even four before reaching for it.

“Hello,” he says.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize it was dinner.”  She did.

“It’s okay, mom.”  It wasn’t, but if he said as much he would get a lecture about compulsions winning out over willpower.

“How’s work?”

“Good.  I’ve got to go into the office tomorrow.”

“Are you going to be able to?”

“Think so.”

“Are you taking your Paxil?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why why why.”

“Artie, you need to take your meds.  You spend hours every day.  You count steps.”

“I don’t count steps.”

“You do.”

“No, they just need to be even.”

“It’s just as bad.”

“Mom, can you say goodbye so I can hang up on you?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Mom.”

“Goodbye, Artie.”

“Goodbye.”

Arthur doesn’t like to be called Artie because he likes everything about himself to be even.  Arthur has six letters, Artie has five.  Being even is a way to avoid catastrophe.  If that means he has to cut off a button on his shirt, then he cuts a button off the shirt.  Things in threes are the only exception.

The phone call means that his dinner has ended even though he’s only taken twenty-six bites out of forty.  He gets up with his plate and puts his dinner down the garbage disposal.  Then he returns to the table to collect his plastic forks and napkins, all of which go into the trash can on the back wall of the kitchen.  This is done in twenty-two steps, which he counts so that his mother won’t be a liar.

I should tell you that as I’m sitting down to tell this story at an old typewriter that used to be my dad’s, I feel like writing it down just makes it the more horrible.  When I type, I type in bursts, three then two, three then two.  Its so und sl ike thi s, except there’s no way here on the page to show you the sound of the spacebar, which sounds the same as the other keys for all that it represents nothing.  Everything I do is marked with some measured rhythm—steps, eating, showers, light switches, and now typing.  If I accidentally hit the wrong number of keys, I have to start the page over.  The same for if I make a mistake.  They’ll never publish a story that didn’t get typed up just so.  Rhythm keeps me at arm’s length from the regular world most times, which is the reason I write in third person.  And I left that paragraph in at the beginning so I wouldn’t be a liar and so I could write this part so I could tell you that my isolation is why I’ve decided to write about myself in third person, but it’s really me.  It has to be clear that it’s me, but you and I can’t connect because that’s not honest either. 

If Arthur is ever caught up in a lie that he could have prevented, then the weight of God presses down on his chest like his sternum might snap, and he’s corner-bound for at least an hour or two, and he’ll come out of it with scratch marks all up and down his chest.

A dictionary is the world's most complicated circular argument.  The only thing it ever quotes is itself; it is entirely self-contained and has absolutely no bearing on real language.  A dictionary is the kind of thing only an asshole could love, someone obsessed with pedantics and semantics.  Someone who would point out that pedantic doesn't have a plural and isn't really a noun.  The worst part, though, is that it innoculates language against natural evolution.  I want free-range language, words running loose.  If anyone ever asks you to define a word for them, punch them in the mouth and then use it in a way that makes sense enough to you.  

"My hand hurts!  Your face doesn't!  Solipsism!"

That's communication, baby.