This has nothing to do with books, boobs, or boardgames.
Our country has mass shootings regularly. VICE magazine has been chronicling them. At a certain point, I became numb to the stories of people dying for nothing at all, beyond some crazy person with a gun and a bone to pick walking into a crowded area and making complete strangers pay for whatever crazed, hurtful, personal vendetta they have. As fucked up as it sounds, I just accepted it as a flaw of my country and figured we'd get it right eventually.
On Sunday, June 12th, at 2 in the morning, we witnessed the most horrifying mass murder of our country's modern history. As the gay club Pulse in Orlando Florida was preparing to close, as the bartenders stopped serving drinks and bar backs cleaned tables and got ready to shoo everyone out for the night, one man leveled a semi-automatic weapon at the 320 people in the club and began wreaking the most horrific bloodbath we've ever seen.
The Columbine High School massacre taught me what grief and helplessness and bitter anger meant in my formative years. Sandy Hook made me sick inside; it still does. The Virginia Tech shooting made me question everything I knew about humans and their ability for violence. I read the news; this has become a fucked up commonplace occurrence.
Something is broken in this country I love. I used to be the person yelling the oft accepted line, "Make guns illegal and only lawbreakers will have them!" The scariest part about this is that Omar Mateen, with a history of violence, abuse, and a brief stint on the FBI's watch list, bought his assault rifles and ammunition completely legally.
This time, after all the shootings I've watched and cried over, I openly wept. At my desk, in my bed, sitting on my couch trying to watch movies, I bawled and my heart broke. I lost the ability to think of much outside the moment when I heard that 1/3 of a club was slaughtered. I'm scared to go to the Solstice Parade in Fremont this weekend, or even the Pride Parade that is one of my city's crowning achievements and a source of joy and exuberance every year. I love gay safe places in Seattle like Pony, or R Place, or Neighbors. My thoughts are laced with this crippling fear that this can happen anywhere, at any time, for no fucking reason at all. And the worst part? I'm not wrong in being scared.
This was a hate crime. A hate crime against a group of people that already know what it's like to be beaten, raped, publicly ridiculed and discriminated against on a daily basis. This man may have cried "ISIS" but his agenda of hatred and violence is purely American. I don't know how to go about my life anymore.
The thing is, I understand hate. I've hated. I hate the men that beat one of my best friends at his front door for no other reason than they thought he was a "fag." I hate the man who took my best friend from me because of his addiction. I hate the men that convinced a beautiful woman that she wasn't worth anything beyond her drive for the next hit. I can't say killing wouldn't be on my mind if I met these men again, and I struggle with this every day. But this? This blind hatred that didn't care who died at all? I don't understand. I almost wish I could.
I'd give up on humanity, give up on the United States of America, if not for the few people that still give me hope.
Edward Sotomayor Jr. died from being shot in the back while he pushed his lover to safety through a back door. Joshua McGill, while fleeing from the club, saw a wounded man, took his and a bystander's shirt to use as bandages, and bearhugged the bleeding man in the back of a cop car until they reached the hospital. DJ Ray Rivera helped a woman escape from behind his DJ station after the shooting started.
I cling to these stories. I cling to the idea that there is still goodness in this world. I weep for those that believed this and were proven wrong. I need to know that there is something, anything, fucking anything I can do to stop this from happening again. I hear people saying, "This is why we need guns" and I weep again.
No one should have this power over me and my fellow Americans. No one at all.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Sunday, December 20, 2015
On Books: Water Music by T.C. Boyle (also I stalk authors)
I’ve never been much good around celebrities. Upon meeting Ryan Benjamin, comic book artist for Batman Beyond, at Emerald City Comic Con a few years ago I practically climbed into his booth while frothing at the mouth. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that when I met the author of My Favorite Book of All Time, I was a smidge less than smooth.
My favorite book of all time is Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
Before I tell you how I stalked this man through the streets of Seattle, finally ambushing him in a dark alley, I should tell you a little bit about My Favorite Book of All Time.
Set in the eighteenth century, Water Music is a historical-ish fiction detailing the first white man’s travels to the Niger River in Africa. This man would be Mungo Park, one of the book’s two main characters. Boyle got his mitts on Park’s publication, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed Under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association,
[... seventeen pages of descriptors because eighteenth century], and refashioned it into a profoundly visual, vivid, often raunchy portrayal of the explorer’s journey loosely based on his writings. Mungo Park, a genteel surgeon from Scotland, and Ned Rise, a shifty whore-mongering con man from the grungy streets of London, skirt death over and over again until finally meeting in the most unlikely of places: pre-Western influenced Nigeria. Ned Rise totally isn’t real, but there’s enough truth and solid research peppered throughout the book to make you second guess practically everything. This book smacks of the gritty action novel, and is still a subtle mockery of traditional 18th century writing style. That might be why I love it so much. This novel will make you laugh, cry, and nauseated all within a few pages, but still has enough literary depth to really sink your teeth into.
So. Now that I’ve gushed about My Favorite Book of All Time a bit (and trust me, I’m being mercifully brief), you might understand why my friend Savannah and I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading to promote his (at the time) new book T. C. Boyle Stories II at the Seattle Central Library. I sat enraptured through the whole thing. Finally, the reading over, a line formed to buy the new book and get it signed. I abhor lines, but for the right author I'll do it. I joined the herd, purchased the book, and then confused the hell out of him when I gleefully presented my clearly very worn copy of his first book, Water Music. That probably should have been his first clue that I was bonkers. Anyway there were a million people behind me and most of them were staring and lines make me stressed so I blurted out something stupid, gathered up my suddenly embarrassingly ratty book, and fled.
Once outside I smoked a cigarette, gathered my wits, and informed Savannah that NO. We CANNOT go home now. Not like this. I HAVE QUESTIONS DAMMIT. The library was almost closed, so with some quick sleuthing I figured out what door he'd most likely exit through. My friend was such a good sport. We hung out in that alley and chain-smoked until finally, ages later, the frizzy-haired leather-clad punk genius emerged with his beautiful wife on his arm. Bursting from the shadows much more alarmingly than I intended, the man immediately shielded his wife from me. That should have dampened my enthusiasm, but it did no such thing. I began happily rambling about the papers I'd written on his book as both travel writing and postmodern historical fiction, how much I loved that he clearly was making fun of 18th century literature, blah-blah-blah-fangirl, and fortunately he began looking less scared and more interested. After I finally slowed down and let the man speak, he pointed out that Water Music really was more a picaresque novel than anything (holy crap how did I not notice that before), and that it was partially inspired by his studies in British lit. He mentioned how he was happy somebody wanted to talk about a book that wasn't World's End (OH but I love that book too), then we moved on to how much we both love Don DeLillo. He really was far more generous with his time than he should have been.
I glowed.
(It's not just the crappy photo.)
My favorite book of all time is Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
Before I tell you how I stalked this man through the streets of Seattle, finally ambushing him in a dark alley, I should tell you a little bit about My Favorite Book of All Time.
Set in the eighteenth century, Water Music is a historical-ish fiction detailing the first white man’s travels to the Niger River in Africa. This man would be Mungo Park, one of the book’s two main characters. Boyle got his mitts on Park’s publication, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed Under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association,
[... seventeen pages of descriptors because eighteenth century], and refashioned it into a profoundly visual, vivid, often raunchy portrayal of the explorer’s journey loosely based on his writings. Mungo Park, a genteel surgeon from Scotland, and Ned Rise, a shifty whore-mongering con man from the grungy streets of London, skirt death over and over again until finally meeting in the most unlikely of places: pre-Western influenced Nigeria. Ned Rise totally isn’t real, but there’s enough truth and solid research peppered throughout the book to make you second guess practically everything. This book smacks of the gritty action novel, and is still a subtle mockery of traditional 18th century writing style. That might be why I love it so much. This novel will make you laugh, cry, and nauseated all within a few pages, but still has enough literary depth to really sink your teeth into.
So. Now that I’ve gushed about My Favorite Book of All Time a bit (and trust me, I’m being mercifully brief), you might understand why my friend Savannah and I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading to promote his (at the time) new book T. C. Boyle Stories II at the Seattle Central Library. I sat enraptured through the whole thing. Finally, the reading over, a line formed to buy the new book and get it signed. I abhor lines, but for the right author I'll do it. I joined the herd, purchased the book, and then confused the hell out of him when I gleefully presented my clearly very worn copy of his first book, Water Music. That probably should have been his first clue that I was bonkers. Anyway there were a million people behind me and most of them were staring and lines make me stressed so I blurted out something stupid, gathered up my suddenly embarrassingly ratty book, and fled.
Once outside I smoked a cigarette, gathered my wits, and informed Savannah that NO. We CANNOT go home now. Not like this. I HAVE QUESTIONS DAMMIT. The library was almost closed, so with some quick sleuthing I figured out what door he'd most likely exit through. My friend was such a good sport. We hung out in that alley and chain-smoked until finally, ages later, the frizzy-haired leather-clad punk genius emerged with his beautiful wife on his arm. Bursting from the shadows much more alarmingly than I intended, the man immediately shielded his wife from me. That should have dampened my enthusiasm, but it did no such thing. I began happily rambling about the papers I'd written on his book as both travel writing and postmodern historical fiction, how much I loved that he clearly was making fun of 18th century literature, blah-blah-blah-fangirl, and fortunately he began looking less scared and more interested. After I finally slowed down and let the man speak, he pointed out that Water Music really was more a picaresque novel than anything (holy crap how did I not notice that before), and that it was partially inspired by his studies in British lit. He mentioned how he was happy somebody wanted to talk about a book that wasn't World's End (OH but I love that book too), then we moved on to how much we both love Don DeLillo. He really was far more generous with his time than he should have been.
I glowed.
(It's not just the crappy photo.)
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
On Boobs: Tinder – The Drinking Game
When I first downloaded Tinder, I didn’t intend to find my
boyfriend of two years; I just wanted an amusing way to get really drunk,
really fast. It worked. These rules were drafted primarily
regarding the straight males on the app, but during my extensive studies (translation: drunken ramblings with fellow single people playing this game) I've learned that with a little
tweaking they pretty much apply across the board. So, here are the rules:
- Drink if you can’t tell which person in the main photo is the right one. Finish your drink if none of the other pictures clear that question up.
- Drink every time you see someone with a drugged-up tiger. Seriously, there are tons of them and I don't understand. Is going to Thailand and manhandling a glorious yet wacked-out predator now a thing?
- Drink when the main picture is the person standing on top of a mountain. Huzzah you’re outdoorsy, or at least you were that one time on a sunny day two Septembers ago.
- Drink if the person has a drink in their hand for the main picture. Finish your drink if they've got a drink in their hand for every picture.
- Drink when it’s clear someone has been cropped out.
- Drink every time the person is wearing a hat. Finish your drink if the person is hatted in every picture. Pro-tip for guys: We know why you do this.
- Drink if they don't post a single full-body shot.
- Drink if something in the picture clearly shows that this photo is out of date, e.g. an Avatar poster in the background or people planking.
- Don’t drink if the main picture is a full shot of just the one person doing something they clearly enjoy (that isn't drinking) and they don't seem concerned about their flaws. Message them about a common interest and then go on the best date of your adult life. Probably don’t tell them why you had a Tinder to begin with.
People are often smarter than we give them credit for, so if
you're trying hard to hide something or project a particular image we'll know and it's kinda funny. If you're on Tinder, don't do any of these things and prepare to get giggly wasted making fun of everyone who does.
Friday, December 11, 2015
Now that I don't have your attention...
Since your expectations are now all nice and low, I believe it is time to fire this baby back up.
I must warn you, I may deviate from the aforementioned blog topics of books, boobs, and board games. I'll try to incorporate something about these things in those posts, or at least throw up some links to reviews I've written on Good Reads, but I've got some ideas I'm testing out that I may just throw up here for shits and giggles.
P.S. I GOT AN EMAIL FROM NICK HARKAWAY. MORE TO COME.
P.P.S. If you haven't read his stuff, go do it. Like, now.
P.S. I GOT AN EMAIL FROM NICK HARKAWAY. MORE TO COME.
P.P.S. If you haven't read his stuff, go do it. Like, now.
On Books: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
So I've finished piles and piles of books since starting this blog, and have I done a review of any of them?
No. No I have not.
It seems like every time I finish a book, I feel like I should digest it a bit more, ponder the themes, and maybe brush up on a few bits before I tackle it in writing. This, it seems, is a grievous error, since I never seem to get around to the actual tackling.
So tackle I must! And Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is a great start.
I love Neil Gaiman. He's got this fantastically whimsical writing style that still manages to jar with his casual descriptions of violence and harsher realities. In Neverwhere he takes a secret, mystical underworld of London, called London Below, and throws in an extraordinarily boring and doofish businessman named Richard.
Richard meets Door (yes, that's her name) bleeding on a sidewalk and, to the chagrin of his flaming bitch of a fiance, takes her home and tries cleaning her up. The next morning, after some craziness with a bird and a rat and a mystical marquee character, Door disappears and Richard goes invisible. Taxis don't stop for him, his apartment is rented out right in front of him, his flaming bitch of a fiance barely recognizes him after he chases her down, his job doesn't exist anymore. As Richard rejoins Door and the marquee, he is drug through the sewers and the subway tunnels of the mysterious London Below, meeting strange creatures and running from psychotic killers.
It's not Neil Gaiman's best, but bear in mind I read American Gods first. That said, the main characters in this tale are multifaceted and interesting, it's hard to know for sure if you've got the good guys and the bad guys pegged until the very end and I loved it. The protagonist, or at least that's what I'll label Richard as, is a lovable bumbling idiot who's afraid of heights; his charge is a generally terrified and mildly clueless teenage girl, and everybody else is suspect. Especially with this whole magic business, Neil can lead you by the nose for a chapter or two and then POOFfuckingmagic into a startling conclusion. There were a few moments where I thought he went a bit far with the POOFfuckingmagic but 99% of the time it was masterfully done. Amid all the action, London Below as written by Gaiman is at times carefully described and at others left as a blank canvas where you can fill in your own scary crap, making the whole backdrop of the story fraught with tension.
So yeah. Believable narrative, good flow, interesting characters, and a couple plot twists that actually twist. This one goes into the books-I-will-militarily-foist-on-my-friends pile.
No. No I have not.
It seems like every time I finish a book, I feel like I should digest it a bit more, ponder the themes, and maybe brush up on a few bits before I tackle it in writing. This, it seems, is a grievous error, since I never seem to get around to the actual tackling.
So tackle I must! And Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is a great start.
I love Neil Gaiman. He's got this fantastically whimsical writing style that still manages to jar with his casual descriptions of violence and harsher realities. In Neverwhere he takes a secret, mystical underworld of London, called London Below, and throws in an extraordinarily boring and doofish businessman named Richard.
Richard meets Door (yes, that's her name) bleeding on a sidewalk and, to the chagrin of his flaming bitch of a fiance, takes her home and tries cleaning her up. The next morning, after some craziness with a bird and a rat and a mystical marquee character, Door disappears and Richard goes invisible. Taxis don't stop for him, his apartment is rented out right in front of him, his flaming bitch of a fiance barely recognizes him after he chases her down, his job doesn't exist anymore. As Richard rejoins Door and the marquee, he is drug through the sewers and the subway tunnels of the mysterious London Below, meeting strange creatures and running from psychotic killers.
It's not Neil Gaiman's best, but bear in mind I read American Gods first. That said, the main characters in this tale are multifaceted and interesting, it's hard to know for sure if you've got the good guys and the bad guys pegged until the very end and I loved it. The protagonist, or at least that's what I'll label Richard as, is a lovable bumbling idiot who's afraid of heights; his charge is a generally terrified and mildly clueless teenage girl, and everybody else is suspect. Especially with this whole magic business, Neil can lead you by the nose for a chapter or two and then POOFfuckingmagic into a startling conclusion. There were a few moments where I thought he went a bit far with the POOFfuckingmagic but 99% of the time it was masterfully done. Amid all the action, London Below as written by Gaiman is at times carefully described and at others left as a blank canvas where you can fill in your own scary crap, making the whole backdrop of the story fraught with tension.
So yeah. Believable narrative, good flow, interesting characters, and a couple plot twists that actually twist. This one goes into the books-I-will-militarily-foist-on-my-friends pile.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
On Boardgames: Hive
I've been playing the game Hive (designed by John Yianni and published in 2001) for ages, and I still love it.
With average play time lasting around 20 minutes, it's a fun game to play while you're waiting for the rest of your boardgame buddies to show up. It's also simple enough to play whilst intoxicated, and the heavy, colorful tiles seem designed around this. Or, you know, Yianni designed the game for children (although I'd like to argue that the two groups react to losing this game in similar fashions).
This is a game for two players, composed of 22 bug tiles in black and white. Each player gets three soldier ants, three grasshoppers, two beetles, two spiders, and one queen bee tile, and each type of bug tile has different rules that govern its movement. Players place tiles one at a time, with the main rules being that you cannot place your tile adjacent to your opponents' tiles, you cannot break apart the "hive," and the tiles need to be able to slide in and out of the spaces they are moving to, with a few exceptions based on the move actions available to each tile.
The goal of the game is to completely surround your opponent's queen bee. Once that happens, the game immediately ends and you may commence swearing at that punk kid who just smugly beat you at the game you've been playing for ages.
I like to think of this game as a combination of checkers and chess. Once you get the hang of it, it's easy to start planning two, three, even four moves ahead, and you have to carefully balance both the defense of your queen and the harassment of your punk kid opponent's. The pieces move almost like chess pieces, such as the queen moving one space in any direction and the grasshopper moving directly over pieces in a straight line, but the options for movement can get pretty limited since all pieces must stay connected. With that in mind, it's important to plan how you'll control the board, or "hive", early in the game. The rules may be simple, but the strategies get more complex the more you play.
If you get bored with the base game, there are expansions available that add additional bug tiles to the mix, such as the ladybug, mosquito, and pill bug. Or, if you don't want to purchase or heft around the actual tiles, that stupid punk kid can stomp you at the Android or iOS version of the game.
With average play time lasting around 20 minutes, it's a fun game to play while you're waiting for the rest of your boardgame buddies to show up. It's also simple enough to play whilst intoxicated, and the heavy, colorful tiles seem designed around this. Or, you know, Yianni designed the game for children (although I'd like to argue that the two groups react to losing this game in similar fashions).
This is a game for two players, composed of 22 bug tiles in black and white. Each player gets three soldier ants, three grasshoppers, two beetles, two spiders, and one queen bee tile, and each type of bug tile has different rules that govern its movement. Players place tiles one at a time, with the main rules being that you cannot place your tile adjacent to your opponents' tiles, you cannot break apart the "hive," and the tiles need to be able to slide in and out of the spaces they are moving to, with a few exceptions based on the move actions available to each tile.
The goal of the game is to completely surround your opponent's queen bee. Once that happens, the game immediately ends and you may commence swearing at that punk kid who just smugly beat you at the game you've been playing for ages.
I like to think of this game as a combination of checkers and chess. Once you get the hang of it, it's easy to start planning two, three, even four moves ahead, and you have to carefully balance both the defense of your queen and the harassment of your punk kid opponent's. The pieces move almost like chess pieces, such as the queen moving one space in any direction and the grasshopper moving directly over pieces in a straight line, but the options for movement can get pretty limited since all pieces must stay connected. With that in mind, it's important to plan how you'll control the board, or "hive", early in the game. The rules may be simple, but the strategies get more complex the more you play.
If you get bored with the base game, there are expansions available that add additional bug tiles to the mix, such as the ladybug, mosquito, and pill bug. Or, if you don't want to purchase or heft around the actual tiles, that stupid punk kid can stomp you at the Android or iOS version of the game.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
On Books: Lexicon by Max Barry
I am a shameless lover of action novels.
There. I said it.
Now that we have that out of the way, Lexicon definitely satisfied my love of things-that-go-boom, but it also managed to tickle my inner language nerd and my mild obsession with science fiction. Not as much as I'd hoped, but also not enough to stop me from recommending it to my sci-fi loving friends.
Max Barry immediately drops the reader into an airport bathroom where Wil is having a very bad day. His very bad day involves being savagely ambushed at a urinal and having a needle rammed into his eye while fielding really random questions.
From there the book doesn't let you down for a second. It moves along two narrative arcs, one providing the background to the main "antagonist" (Emily) and the other following a seemingly random buffoon (Wil) that is thrown violently into a world he knows nothing about.
The basis for this book is that there are certain people, called Poets, who have been trained by an enigmatic secret organization to effectively hypnotize people through the neurological effects of the spoken word. The mumbo-jumbo used to explain this is a bit vague, but the premise is logical enough for sufficient suspension of disbelief. Barry also throws in a lot of catch phrases that lend his story a teeny, tiny bit of credence, such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and some basic concepts behind the Lexical Approach. But like all science fiction, don't pick at it too much or it all starts sounding ridiculous.
The two characters the book focuses on, Wil and Emily, both have intertwining stories and the way the two narratives play off of each other gives each character additional depth. They're both highly sympathetic and I was left in tears more than once as Emily's story unfolds.
Then there are car chases, subterfuge, conspiracy theories... All classic elements to an action thriller novel with a smidgen of sci-fi thrown in. If you're looking for a fast summer read, this is your book. I can't say it's a classic, despite having some masterfully crafted characters and a unique premise, which was a bit disappointing. The setting seemed to leave lots of room for speculation over the power of the spoken and written word, but the extent of it seemed to function simply as a plot device.
So yeah. Go read it.
Also I'm back blogging, so expect more regular updates.
There. I said it.
Now that we have that out of the way, Lexicon definitely satisfied my love of things-that-go-boom, but it also managed to tickle my inner language nerd and my mild obsession with science fiction. Not as much as I'd hoped, but also not enough to stop me from recommending it to my sci-fi loving friends.
Max Barry immediately drops the reader into an airport bathroom where Wil is having a very bad day. His very bad day involves being savagely ambushed at a urinal and having a needle rammed into his eye while fielding really random questions.
From there the book doesn't let you down for a second. It moves along two narrative arcs, one providing the background to the main "antagonist" (Emily) and the other following a seemingly random buffoon (Wil) that is thrown violently into a world he knows nothing about.
The basis for this book is that there are certain people, called Poets, who have been trained by an enigmatic secret organization to effectively hypnotize people through the neurological effects of the spoken word. The mumbo-jumbo used to explain this is a bit vague, but the premise is logical enough for sufficient suspension of disbelief. Barry also throws in a lot of catch phrases that lend his story a teeny, tiny bit of credence, such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and some basic concepts behind the Lexical Approach. But like all science fiction, don't pick at it too much or it all starts sounding ridiculous.
The two characters the book focuses on, Wil and Emily, both have intertwining stories and the way the two narratives play off of each other gives each character additional depth. They're both highly sympathetic and I was left in tears more than once as Emily's story unfolds.
Then there are car chases, subterfuge, conspiracy theories... All classic elements to an action thriller novel with a smidgen of sci-fi thrown in. If you're looking for a fast summer read, this is your book. I can't say it's a classic, despite having some masterfully crafted characters and a unique premise, which was a bit disappointing. The setting seemed to leave lots of room for speculation over the power of the spoken and written word, but the extent of it seemed to function simply as a plot device.
So yeah. Go read it.
Also I'm back blogging, so expect more regular updates.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)