Issue 203

News: The Results of my Roald Dahl reading.
It's been a strange, eventful semester, with problems ranging from having a Queeg-like professor in one class to having to take some time off for mental health reasons, but that's not what I want to talk about here. For a while, although I haven't actually written anything about it here, I decided to spend some of my spare time re-reading the 14 major children's books of Roald Dahl (excepting "The Vicar of Nibbleswicke", "The Gremlins", and "The Minpins,"), often on audiobook (to ensure a steady pace and some balance with my other reading queues), with supplements from printed books (with Quentin Blake's illustrations whenever possible; His books aren't the same without them). I started during some weekends reading/listening to some of the shorter books (7 of the books can easily fit on a single CD each, incidentally)

I may as well give some impressions of ten of the books I've read, with some of my opinions enclosed. If I didn't find one for the other four, just rest assured that it was because I didn't think of a catchy enough title for each of them:

#1) The best: Matilda.
This is not only my favourite book by Roald Dahl, but it may probably be my favourite kids' book, (sorry, Tom Sawyer, and Phantom Tollbooth). Maybe it's because of the fact that, apart from the neglectful parents, finding an understanding kindergarten teacher, stopping my cruel teachers through telekinesis, and, of course, the telekinesis, it's pretty much the story of my early life. But that's not just it. It's simple wish fulfillment fantasy which just happens to truly reach its apotheosis in this particular form. Dahl's writing for kids truly reaches its greatest level of refinement in this book, just as Hemingway's reached its own in "The Old Man and the Sea." It's a love letter to reading, and a story about child abuse which doesn't weigh itself down in sentimentality, horror, or just plain meanness to any real degree. If "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is like his "Seven Samurai", "Matilda" is his "Ran."

#2) The worst: The Giraffe, The Pelly, and Me.
It was a tough call trying to choose between this and The Magic Finger, but the Magic Finger is merely short and unremarkable. I chose this because, even though this is one of those books he wrote that could fit on a single audiobook CD, it still feels like it's long as Hell. It's about a boy who meets up with a giraffe, pelican, and a monkey, and they start up a window-washing company. They wash a Lord's windows and they move in with him. That's it. It feels like Quentin Blake sent him a drawing of a boy standing next to a giraffe, a pelican on his head, and a monkey in the pelican's beak saying "The Ladderless Window Washing Company" and told him, "Write a story about that," and failing to do so, wrote this.

#3) The most overrated: The BFG.
Apart from the fact that the name recalls a weapon from "DOOM," the story doesn't really go anywhere for much of it, and, unlike some other books, it's not really that fun; it's just some explorations of human (and giant) nature that's not particularly deep. The BFG isn't particularly endearing, even with his dialect, and given that he's half the size of the other giants, his name "The big friendly giant" doesn't make much sense, and the climax of the "Story" includes the most inexplicable cameo by the Queen of England since Axe Cop and Light and Dark: The Adventures of Dark Yagami. The worst thing is that it seems to be his third most popular book, right behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda.

#4) The Most Underrated: The Twits.
What can I say? It's simply a fun little book. Sure, Dahl might have used it as a way to vent his prejudice against bearded guys like me (and possibly another group he has been known to be prejudiced against), and sure, there's not much of a proper plot, and sure, the Twits have no redeeming qualities, but the book still remains a contender for the most fun I've ever had reading a book. The early, prank-centered section of the book is hilarious; especially listening to Simon Callow read the character of Mr. Twit, and it's simply amazing to see how the Twits are so mind-bogglingly stupid that the minute they return to see their furniture upside-down, they stay upside-down until they shrink into themselves. And, because Roald Dahl included a questionnaire for hairy-faced men in the early chapters, I'll answer it.
I wash my face twice a day, once after I wake up and once during my bath. I shampoo it during the bath. I don't use a hair dryer (unless you count a towel) or hair tonic, although I might consider it, and I trim it using scissors in a mirror.
 
#5) The most WTF: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
The book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hasn't held up as well as the movies, but I think a lot of the flaws I found in the book are directly tied to the fact that it contains a sequel hook for this book, and boy, is it a messed-up book with very little of the charm of its predecessor. But there's still quite a few things about this book that are just bizarre, and not in a good way. Like how the first half of the book seems to rip off two of Kubrick's films: (Dr. Strangelove and 2001). Or how Charlie's grandma is suddenly American. Or how, while they try to flesh out the grandparents, Dahl couldn't think of anything better than chew toy of the universe. Or how Willy Wonka has an elevator to "minus-land." Or...

#6) The Book I'm ashamed to admit I accidentally ripped off for a story: George's Marvelous Medicine.
The book itself is a pretty good short novel. A boy tries to fix his nasty grandmother by making her a new medicine made from all the medicines in the house. She grows to a gargantuan proportion and, in an attempt at replicating the effect, shrinks to nothingness. Where I come in is that, for my fiction tutoring class, I decided to rewrite a story I had written earlier which involved a girl who bludgeoned another girl to death with a turkey leg (I ripped off one of his more adult stories in the process, but that was intentional.) The book comes in because, after rewriting the story, one of the details I added included a scene where she tried to remove the blood from the kitchen floor using any chemicals which she thought might be useful, which is, incidentally, the M.O. that George uses when trying to create the Marvelous Medicine. My tutor complained about it (more on grounds that it might not end well: Bleach and ammonia create mustard gas), and I decided that, later, I would word it better when finishing it.

#7) The darkest book even by Roald Dahl's Standards: The Witches.
This is one of Dahl's longest works, but it's pretty dark even by the standards of Roald Dahl. Even in the case of Matilda, The Trunchbull is never shown to have killed a kid. She may have killed Miss Honey's dad, and she may cause permanent damage to kids for mild offenses, but she's never stated to have killed any kids. The witches, on the other hand, seem to live for killing kids. Hell, their plan essentially amounts to genocide of all kids.  And even then, when the protagonist gets turned into a mouse, he's never turned back. Unlike any of his other books, this doesn't really have a happy ending. The happiest thing about it comes when 500 witches (turned into mice) get decapitated. Not only that, but the protagonist's grandmother states that, as a mouse-boy,  he had less than ten years to live, and he's actually okay with this, because they're going to spend the next couple years doing one thing and one thing only: killin' witches.

#8) The best early draft of a film treatment masquerading as a fully-drafted novel: The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
This is one of his shorter works, and it's okay, but I don't remember reading the book as a kid, but I do have the DVD of the film. Reading the book, it just feels like a dry run for the film version. Wes Anderson evidently put a lot of meat on the bones of the script, from fleshing out the world to putting a lot more personality into the characters, and even giving it the ending that the book never had.

#9) The most Jarring book in the Roald Dahl canon: The Enormous Crocodile.
Unlike the other 14 books I read, it's not really as much an illustrated novel or even a short story. It's really a picture book more than anything else. Its plot is simple: a crocodile wants to eat a child, and whenever it tries, whatever animals he's told of his plan try to stop him. An elephant then decides to throw him into the sun. It's repetitive and its darkness isn't really couched in humour, like his other books. Huh.

#10) The most fitting end to a career: Esio Trot.
This isn't one of his best works. It's not even as dark as some of the other books, and its story is simple, but in the end, it has a certain charm that isn't found in one of his other books. A man falls in love with a woman whose tortoise won't grow. So he slowly replaces him with other tortoises until she's satisfied and they marry. And then, the original tortoise starts to grow when given to a new owner. Somehow, it has its charms, and it all works. I might have put it in the most underrated spot, but where would I have put the Twits if I did? I wound up liking it so much that I seriously considered bringing it into my last tutoring session and reading from it.

Tract Review: Why Should I? Because Rondo Hatton won't leave you alone until he tells you about God's plan for your life, and spend more time on what he plans to do for your life if you don't accept God now.

Issue 201

News: The Ten Best Books of (the many I read in the second half of) 2011.
Well, it's been a total of two months since I last posted, so I've decided that I'll write another list of books: this time, I'll cover the ones I thought were the best I read in the last six months of last year. Admittedly, the selection pool this time is much shallower than last time; I've had much less time to actually read, due to my new life in Columbia: I've had to turn in a 5-page story every week for four months, so I had much less leisure time to just read. For what it's worth, in my reading queues, I have two books which I hope could put into the next year's queue: The History of Love by Nichole Krauss, and The Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

10. I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb.
For some reason, I wound up getting interested in this book during the summer even though I didn't get it in the previous year plus it was out. Anyway, when I was in Door County, I actually found a copy of the book in a bookstore in Bailey's Harbor. When it finally came up in my reading queue, I wound up enjoying it, as I knew I would; in the way Josh Lieb portrays his main character as being dim to everyone else, but is, in reality, an evil genius, he recalls, of all people, Jim Thompson's Lou Ford, the sheriff who seems a bit slow on the uptake, but is, in reality, a genius prone to going off on tangents related to people who are obscure to the target audience (well, at least more teenagers know who Captain Beefheart is than pulp fiction readers in the 1950s knew who Emil Kraeplin was.) The reason I put it so low on the list? The ending. In the end, instead of giving a speech explaining why the main character wants people to vote for him, he goes off on a big speech talking about how he's realised that all elections are just one big popularity contest. True as that may be, Josh Lieb has been building up a big climax, and all we get is this speech? This has to be the most disappointing ending to a book that I've ever read.

9. Silas Marner by George Eliot
I first read this book when I was a kid who loved the way Wishbone did it, but for whatever reason, I decided to revisit the book in October. I must admit that the big reason that this book made the list at all was because it was there for me at the right time: around the time I rediscovered it, I had to find a way to make a photo-roman: a selection of images that tells a story, and I was at an impasse; my previous two assignments were difficult enough, but to add to that, I had to create a big story; I decided to create a very loose adaptation of this book. Silas was a private accountant, Eppie was a dog, and Silas did end up getting his money back.

8. The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson.
A couple years ago, I saw a film called The Men Who Stare at Goats, and, as it turned out, it was based on a true story chronicled by a journalist named Jon Ronson. Recently, he wrote another book, in an area I find very interesting: mental illness. He wrote this relatively short book about psychopathy, and looked in a lot of places; from old psychological experiments, to Bob Hare and his split with the psychiatric community, to a young McMurphy type who is a psychopath, to the Scientologists who want him freed to possibly psychopathic CEOs to 9/11 Truthers who claim to be the Messiah. He ends up with more questions than answers, but even still, it is very informative.

7. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
I have a great variety of sources that I consult to see just what books I should put into my reading queue, and one of them is from the Art of Manliness, which has a list of 100 books every man should read. I've read 72 of them, and one of them is Into the Wild. What I found truly interesting about this book is the fact that Krakauer is able to spin the tragic story of Christopher McCandless in a way that is somehow both detached and sympathetic; Krakauer, as an outdoorsman who would, a couple years later, climb Everest, can definitely feel what McCandless sought in the Alaskan wilderness, but, at the same time, he knew that he was a fool for trying with so few supplies.

6. Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
I have a book recommendation service online and, for a couple months, the program had decided to put this in my recommendations list. I decided to give it a miss until I decided to listen to the audiobook, and I was quite impressed, although if not for the fact that I had been assigned another multi-generational Latin American woman family saga (Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban) made me realise how good it was. The characters are interesting, a lot's at stake, and the plot was interesting.

5. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I'd been thinking of reading this book for a while, and when I decided to actually get it, I was really amazed. I had read three of Garcia Marquez' books this year (the other two being Memories of my Melancholy Whores and One Hundred Years of Soliutude), but this is really his best work. It's no wonder that the year after he had this published, he got the Nobel Literature Prize. In fact, I am seriously considering, if I ever end up as a filmmaker, adapting this into a film, and not just any film, a Spaghetti Western. The deconstruction of conservative values and unsympathetic main characters do seem like they would work well with the genre.

3 and 4. Look Me In the Eye by John Elder Robison, and Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet.
The Autism Spectrum: its forms are legion. That's one thing that really makes autism spectrum disorders interesting to me (apart from the fact that I have one), and certainly what makes reading about Autism Spectrum Disorders interesting; it can have very different effects on the lives of different people. For instance, in John Robison's story, he wound up as a high school dropout who made a living working on electronics and touring with KISS. Meanwhile, there's Daniel Tammet; he has a savant syndrome, and broke the world record for reciting the digits of pi, and runs a language learning software. And then, there's Christian Weston Chandler, and the less said about him the better. As for the books, on the one hand, it's easier for me to identify with Robison (no doubt due to the fact that Tammet is both gay and Christian, and I can't see the point to memorising pi to several thousand digits when 39 digits is enough to calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the known universe with a margin of error the size of a hydrogen atom.) On the other hand, Tammet does have an extremely clear and concise writing style that does the job of describing what goes on in his head extremely well.

2. The Essential Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer.
I think I've mentioned before that I consider Arthur Schopenhauer to be my favourite philosopher. If I haven't, well, now you know. There's not much material that's new to me; indeed, there's quite a bit of overlap with Penguin's Essays and Aphorisms. But the fact is that there's not a lot of Schopenhauer's writing that's publicly available in book form (at least not in a form that you don't have to pay far out the ass for), but this is definitely one of the better compilations.

1. The Instructions by Adam Levin.
It's a book I've been wanting to read for a while, primarily because the sheer size of its paperback edition struck me. But then, I looked into the plot synopsis. In essence, it's sort of like Lindsay Anderson's If, if that were set in a  Chicago-area primary school. And the idea of a revolutionary drama set in a public school is an idea I have long considered toying with, but after reading this book, I know that I can find a way to make such a story work without having the story remind one too much of Columbine.

Chick Tract Review: Here Comes the Judge. So, it looks like Jack's come full circle. In one of his early tracts, he put a "Here Come de Judge" reference (which shows how long he's been in the game), and now it's the title of his latest tract. It's a really incoherent tale of corruption. A judge hires a man killed for reasons never fully explained, and frames his wife on both murder and drug charges. For some reason, the governor has a guy put a hit out on the judge through video monitors. It's like The Wire, but even less coherent. But then, the judge's butler goes into his hospital room and talks to him about Jesus, including the bit about Revelation. After being rebuffed, the judge finally gets killed.  Overall, it's a goddamn mess of a tract.

1. You, too, can be a rebel with neither a cause nor an effect.
2. Never take anything the Ultimate Warrior says seriously.
3. There is no such thing as a “Siamese Pecker.” Nor should there be.
4. Just because Debbie Gibson and Tiffany have made a movie together does not mean they'll finally make the video of them going gay that Bill Hicks suggested they do 20 years ago.
5. Just because Bill Hicks' material has aged better than any comedian who dealt with topical issues 20 years ago has any right to doesn't mean that he is a physical manifestation of some God.
6. It is too late to seek out Billy Mays and have gay sex with him.
7. If David Icke is right and the world is secretly ruled by lizard men, they must be headquartered in Los Angeles.
8. Some people apparently can sleep without showing any signs of life.
9. People tend to take the news that you have a history of going into fugue states and threatening people's lives pretty well.
10. Regardless of what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon may imply, The Chinese are still subject to the laws of gravity.
11. No self-respecting American film studio will ever pick up a film made in Esperanto, specifically designed to make as little sense as humanly possible entitled Death To America, no matter how steeped in cinematic history the script may be.
12. Charlize Theron is the only real African-American star in the film business today.
13. Telling white people who have done good things for you that they are a credit to their race will not get them to think critically about race relations.
14. If Trent Reznor can win a Grammy for singing a song about fisting, who knows how long it'll be before necrophilia becomes mainstream.
15. Film was at its best in the 1970s.
16. Happiness is smoking hashish out of a human skull.
17. The platform of the Republican Party is not “The Gun is Good, the Penis is Evil.”
18. Back up your hard drive.
19. It is, in fact, possible for an author to completely screw up even the most basic aspects of Earthly existence.
20. It is still possible for a thirty-year old Jewish Princess to become the very embodiment of lolicon.
21. Just because something really absurd happened in real life doesn't make it automatically believable fiction.
22. Owning a Hutu machete is not braggable.
23. Somdomy of the dead stall be the whole of the lawr!
24. Sometimes, theatre directors really just don't care.
25. To some people, any sentence spoken in German is indistinguishable from the words “Sieg Heil!”

Issue 200

There will be four parts to this piece. The first part will be a response to something I've recently discovered, the second part of this will be the latest installment of my list of favourite books, and, as a breather, I will include a review of Jack Chick's latest tract, and the next 25 in my list of life lessons

Part 1: William Lane Craig.
You may not know this guy's name, but apparently, he's considered a leading evangelical theologian. Granted, he's not responsible for any bestsellers on the order of Rick Warren's Purpose-driven life, people have recommended his writings to me in the hopes that I would believe in God again. From what I've heard, he's as well-respected as C.S. Lewis. I recently discovered that he wrote an Op-Ed piece on the morality of the accounts of genocide that are described in Exodus. He actually defended the genocide of neighboring tribes because, in his words, "the death of these children was actually their salvation." This is not a paraphrase. This was not taken out of some crucial context where Lane Craig almost immediately shoots down this strawman. If you copy those words into Google, and click "I'm feeling lucky," you will get the article in question, and there's a very good chance that you will be as shocked by this as I was. Even the Lutherans who made my formative years a living Hell at least had enough sense to know that there's something very wrong with that argument. And it gets better. In his view, it was okay to kill the Caananites because they were guilty of disobeying God's laws, and were basically bad people. When you kill innocent people (like babies or other children), they go to Heaven. From this, I must ask: when isn't it morally right to kill people? I must reiterate that William Lane Craig is not just some wild-eyed Fred Phelps wannabe who goes around the country spreading a gospel of hate, shouting down everyone he sees as being hell-bound reprobate just because they're not him or his extended family. This man is a well-read, well-published, sophisticated modern theologian that people accuse atheists of ignoring because it's more fun to pick on the whackos. Given the fact that he's fond of claiming that the existence of "objective moral values" proves the existence of God, I must ask where are the objective moral values in his own values system? He says that, if there is no God, everything is permitted, but with God, at least murder is permitted. I'd like to close this with a link to a song by John Lennon. It's not Imagine, but it's from the same album and it expresses my views of this man's moral system.

Part 2: The  best books of (the many I read in the first half of) 2011.
I tried, a few weeks ago to try to see if I could get a shortlist of books I could use to create my annual list of "The best books (of the many I read in) 20XX." Including the audiobooks I've been listening to, I must have been reading no less than 100 books over the course of the year. But the shortlist had no less than 40 books as I was starting it. As of right now, there's 47 books on it, including the book I'm reading right now, World War Z. So, I decided to divide the list into two parts divided at a rather convenient point: July 1, 2011. Granted, the first part of the shortlist was still rather ungainly (28 books), but I've still been able to whittle that down to a managable number. So, without further ado, here are the top 11 books I've read in the first half of 2011.
11. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
While the book's pacing is quite glacial, especially in comparison to the many film versions that have been obstensively based on this book, what really struck me about the book was the fact that it had a very different tone from the movies. The fact was that the book really has a great sense of tragedy that seems to be missing from the film version. Viktor Frankenstein tampers in God's domain by reanimating dead tissue and escapes responsibility by fleeing from his creation, and his monster, named Adam being the well-read (seriously; he reads Plutarch, Milton, and Goethe) monstrosity that he is, cannot be expected to be able to fit in society. Given how well-known the character of Adam is, the sheer amount that got lost in the sands of time is simply staggering. Since I've frequently mentioned the films, I should probably recommend the original 1931 James Whale film for its fame, the 1957 Hammer film for its thrills, the 1974 Mel Brooks film for its humor, the 1994 Ken Branaugh film for its fidelity (and its unintentional humor), and the Andy Warhol version for its utter insanity.
10. Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
I have not bothered to read Seth Grahame-Smith's other works in the Pride and Prejudice with Zombies series. As a man who has a lot of stuff he'd like to read, and as a man who thinks that Mark Twain's assessment of Jane Austen was too nice (her wit is nonexistent; all praise of her character-building ability are rendered pointless when one reads Dostoevsky, whose novels routinely contain almost the entire spectrum of thought and behaviour; and everything else about her works is insufferable to the point where playing Russian Roulette seems like a be a valid, sanity-preserving alternative whenever my mother drags me to an adaptation of her works), reading those books just hasn't been that high a priority. With this book, however, I knew I had to read it, especially after Linkara gave a shout-out to the book in one of his reviews. I've been interested in Lincoln most of my life, especially after all the times I went to Springfield with my family and toured Lincoln's world. What's really impressive is how, not only is the plot interesting, the supernatural events are linked to the events of the real world in such a way that it's almost likely that there was a big coverup to hide the fact that vampires walked the Earth, but the fact is that Seth Grahame-Smith gets so much of the history correct. Granted, he may get the dynamics of slavery a little over-simplified, but in this regard, he's almost as good at historical fiction as George MacDonald Fraser was.
9. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
When I was a member of Newspeak Dictionary, I had somehow managed to get through several years on a board devoted to politics and dystopian literature without having read Brave New World, and only having read 1984 once. For whatever reason, in February, I decided to give it a look. It was really much better than I thought it would be, and Aldous Huxley is brilliant in the way he not only builds this world where humans are born through cloning, humans are conditioned to be sex-crazed from preschool age on, and art is limited to interactive pornography, he is also brilliant in the way he is able to link those with contemporary culture. Of course, on occasion, the book shows its age: Huxley refers to the interactive skin flicks as "feelies", no doubt as an analogue to "talkies," a term that was still in parlance when the book was written, in 1931, and even the music that Huxley talks about seems to be an extension of the big band music that was popular when the book was being written. He does, however, manage to pull off the "false protagonist" device pretty effectively, even if it's not as clear as it could be when Bernard stops becoming the main character and John does.
8. Barney Ross by Douglas Century.
When the Borders stores were closing, I decided to pick this book up. I was impressed with it. I wouldn't think that I would be interested in this story of a real-life boxer, but there was really a lot to be interested in: this nice Jewish boy from Chicago starts a career as a boxer, retires after a particularly bad loss, joins the War effort, fights in Guadalcanal, gets addicted to morphine, recovers with the help of Hashem, and even tries to advocate a relatively sane drug policy. For what it's worth, his grave is in the Rosemont Park Cemetery. I'll be sure to find a good pebble for his grave before I visit.
7. Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
Unlike every other item on this list, I had to read this play for an Intro to Drama class in Oakton. I'm now in the process of writing a big essay about it in another class at Columbia. Despite the fact that I read it for class, I really loved it to the extent that I had to include it on my list. Why? Because this play is composed in such a way that it's almost perfect. Why? Just read it.
6. The Visit by Freidrich Durrenmatt
All right, I must admit that, after calling one play "almost perfect," it does seem odd putting another play immediately above it, but just hear me out. Another book I bought when the Borders stores were closing, this play is really just one that really appeals to my sensibilities even more than Tennessee Williams' does; the play is a meditation on the nature of capitalism: a small town is in the throes of poverty when a favourite daughter comes back and offers the town $1 billion on the condition that they kill a man who wronged her in her childhood. How long does it take before the town finally kills them? How much is it possible for us to laugh at the way the townspeople try to deal with the offer? Durrenmatt is one of my favourite authors for two reason: one is that he's that rarest of creatures, a postwar German novelist who doesn't talk about the Nazis, and the second is that he's basically German's Kurt Vonnegut.
5. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
It's very hard for me to explain just why I love this book. The fact is that it covers a lot of subjects, and does all of it in this very wry sensibility. All I can ask is why do I not read more Vonnegut?
4. Popular Crime by Bill James.
I first read about this book in an issue of Wired that was lying about my workplace. What really struck me was the fact that not only was this guy attempting a truly far-reaching history of man's fascination with crime, but the fact that he had decided to create a scale of evidences that could establish guilt. I have had no interest in his previous work, since I don't care about sports (at least I don't care about the ones that involve balls), but this book I just had to get. I wasn't disappointed. His book covers 200 years, and, although he does often gloss over serial killers, he's only got 400 pages to cover. One thing that really did disappoint me was that he didn't include a full version of his checklist of the evidence that he kept talking about and applying to criminals. Perhaps the reason this was done was because he was a little uneasy about the consequences that applying the list to the modern justice system would be. After all, he created a scale where 100 points was guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and that was sort of like the old, medieval system, where one or two well-chosen pieces of evidence was incontrovertible proof of guilt. However, according to Bill James, even the most glaring smoking gun, DNA Evidence was only worth 80 points on a possible 100.
3. J.D. Salinger by Kenneth Slawenski.
I heard about this book soon after it came out. My parents checked it out of the college library for me, and I only got around to reading it by the time we took the train ride to New York. It's rather fitting that I spend much of the time going to New York reading about one of my favourite New York authors. With regards to the biography itself, it really does put a lot of Salinger's writings into their proper context. He even manages to summarise stories that were either unpublished, or stories that Salinger never bothered to put into book form. And, furthermore, it even puts what I did know of Salinger's life into an even better context. His habit of seclusion really made a lot of sense when you realised how much his life was ruined by paparazzi trying to intrude on it, much to the point where he actually gave out a red herring on the jacket cover of Franny and Zooey. Slawenski even made clear just why Salinger stopped publishing; after his Glass family stories were met with a collective cry of "They changed it, so now it sucks," he just got tired of it all and stopped publishing.
2. Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
I read this in audiobook form (mainly as a result of some speculation that one section of Thirty H's was a shoutout to the book) during the big blizzard that happened in February. Even without Jules Feiffer's illustrations, I loved this book. On the one hand, it's a book that's rather heavy-handed with its "learning can be fun" message, but, unlike a lot of pieces that are this heavy-handed, Norton Juster really does make this book really fun to read; its characters are zany personifications of different concepts, and words and numbers are things you can eat. And now there's going to be a 50th Anniversary edition published in hardcover and that's definitely something I'd like for Christmas or my birthday.
1. Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This is just the single best novel I've read all year. You're probably aware of the novel's plot, you probably know how much wit is packed into it. Just go out and get it. I've already got two copies; one in paperback with an introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides, and one in hardcover that I got in a Barnes and Noble Leatherbound Classics edition.

Part 3: The Awful Truth (Tract Review)
And, once again, Jack Chick puts out his conspiracy theory of everything, and it's funny as all hell. From unintentional shout-outs to Pinky and the Brain, a scoffing Dudley Moore, he quickly goes into blaming Catholicism for all the world's woes (seriously; he believes that Islam, Communism, and Naziism were created by the Catholic Church to enslave the world). Perhaps most insanely, the Catholic Church apparently ordered the death of JFK because he chose the Constitution over Canon Law. I should probably do my own dissection of this tract, but I've currently got too much work at Columbia to try it.

Part 4:

1. Myxomatosis is not funny, except when it is.
2. Bruno Mars' “The Lazy Song” does not contain Insane Clown Posse levels of sex and violence.
3. Queering doesn't make the world work.
4. Catholic Priesting doesn't make the world work.
5. “Queer” is not a verb.
6. If not for prison rape, some people would never get laid.
7. Rape is never funny, except when males are the target.
8. If you are only attracted to men when they're unwilling, that still makes you bisexual.
9. U2 is the most overrated band on Earth.
10. The Zombie Apocalypse is the most viable political system known to man.
11. The Zombie Apocalypse will only work if the dead first rise in Colma, CA.
12. Calling yourself a lesbian trapped in a man's body does not entitle you to any of the benefits afforded to either gays or transsexuals.
13. This still applies no matter how many times you will admit to seeing D.E.B.S., But I'm a Cheerleader, or Heavenly Creatures, or how many times you've read Annie on My Mind.
14. Deutsche Kultur ist durch Amerikaner sehr interessant und unterschätzt.
15. Sam Shepherd once killed a man with his butt cheek power.
16. Some people really are that stupid.
17. Speaking with all the gentility that can be expected of an OxBridge professor can still be construed as rabid radicalism if the other guy disagrees with you.
18. “Fagpoles” is not recognised as a word by any reputable source.
19. Nobody who is easily offended or in any way surprised by the presence of the word “nigger” has any right to be reading novels about The South.
20. Cali is not short for Caligula.
21. Getting strung out on Heroin, listening to Joy Division, and throwing machetes at nothing in particular is no way to spend a Tuesday.
22. Even if you regularly get intimate with strippers of the same sex, flirt with same-sex coworkers and offer to marry a particularly butch one when Illinois legalises gay marriage, you can still consider yourself completely heterosexual if you occasionally go out with a boy you never look in the eye and align yourself with Team Jacob.
23. Sex and Death are both two things which happen only once in a lifetime.
24. Nothing improves the quality of one's music like dying.
25. Don't trust the judgment of anyone who seriously believes that the addition of an infant to one's life will solve any of their problems, with the possible exception of fertility.

Issue 194

News: Three Books I've read to be turned into films. Trailers reviewed here.
The Adventures of Tintin. Relatively recently, I rediscovered the Tintin comics (specifically, Crab with the Golden Claws, Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham's Treasure), and around the time I started college, I learned that there would be a film based on some of the comics, with filming apparently imminent. What was surprising is that, around the same time that I graduated from Oakton, three years later, only now has the trailer finally been released. I must admit that, while I really hate it when classic cartoon characters are given an unusually realistic look (see the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks reboot, and then see the 1980s series for a good reason why). What really surprised me was that, from what I've been able to see from the trailer, the filmmakers seem to have put a lot of effort into making the CGI that many studios seem to prefer to the "Hand-drawn" style these days look a lot like Herge's original drawing style. As for the casting, I was pleasantly surprised when they announced Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from Hot Fuzz as the "twin" detectives Thomson and Thompson, and I can't see any major problems with the casting. So far the only cons I can think of would be that Professor Calculus isn't in the film (he was introduced in Red Rackham's Treasure), and that Steven Moffat has evidently decided that the best books to adapt into a sequel would be the two volumes about Tintin and Co.'s adventures in Peru, because I personally think that, of the official 21 volumes that the Herge estate acknowledges, they are the two weakest, due to the climactic moment, which, apart from being a blatant rip-off of the eclipse scene in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, makes less sense in the context of real history (especially jarring considering Herge's commitment to accuracy,) since the real-life Incas were certainly not the kind of people who thought eclipses were signs of the gods like medieval Europeans. My personal pick would be the two volumes dealing with the moon mission; they actually contain some of the strongest plots of the series, with a story arc long enough to sustain a feature-length film, and, on top of all that, would provide a good place to introduce Professor Calculus. Release Date: Christmas 2011.
We Need to Talk About Kevin- Shortly after I read this in November 2009, I discovered that there was to be a film adaptation of the novel. I was apprehensive about the way that the plot could be handled, as I had a fear that the story would be handled as a straight horror film, about a bad seed who hates everyone and everything and decides to take it out on the people in his class one day. The fact is, that the novel is fundamentally a family drama that just so happens to include some genuinely horrifying scenes. There is actually no trailer on Youtube, but there are three short clips, each less than two minutes long, which showcase the style: Simply put, the film feels quite spare, quite possibly a reflection of people trying to recover from a disaster, and also reflecting the relative tranquility of the scenes in the book that aren't horrific. At this point, of the three films I've put here, it's the only one I can find that critics have already seen and been able to post reviews of, due to its being screened at Cannes, and its rating: 92% positive. That said, the ranking will probably be lower, but as of right now, there is only one negative review, and that one was written by somebody who hated the source material. Release Date: None at the moment, but in Britain, it's apparently hitting screens on September 2.
Mr. Popper's Penguins: I only learned about this film's being released this weekend. There doesn't seem to be anything too spectacular about it, though, and I don't really have too many emotional ties to the book at this point. Release Date: June 17.

Film Idea of the Day: Skating Away. A Burned-out composer and a PTSD sufferer on the brink of mental disaster form a friendship (just how they meet, I'm not sure, but I would think that their meeting has something to do with an attempted assault committed while flashing back.) My current climax has the sufferer blowing himself up, and the Composer finally getting some of his creative spark.

Film Review: Moon. I can only speculate that this could very well be part of the reason Moffat hasn't decided to adapt the moon albums of the Tintin series into film. The fact is, that both of the films are amazingly accurate looks at what life would be like for people who go on lunar expeditions (in the Tintin case, the accuracy was especially exceptional due to being published in the days before space travel). However, unlike those albums, Moon tends to have a feel very similar to 1970s Sci-fi films, especially 2001 and Solaris. In the proper plot, Sam Rockwell plays an astronaut who is harvesting Helium for a company on earth, and he meets his clone. I wish I could go into further detail.

Link of the Day: A Death Note Fanfic read aloud.

Issue 191

News: My Newest Play will be Performed.
A few years ago, I wrote a short story, entitled "Trust Me" that was based on Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale." The plot of the story was that three policemen are on the trail of a serial killer who calls himself "The Lord High Executioner." They question a homeless guy, and he directs them to go to a bridge. When they get there, they find a suitcase full of brand-new $20 bills. The most senior officer takes some of the money and drives off with it. Meanwhile, he and the two officers set up plans to kill each other: The senior officer spikes two wine bottles with arsenic for them, and the other two decide to shoot him. Both plans succeed, and it turns out that the homeless guy was behind it all along. A few years later, I decided to try and work out some of my writers' block by adapting that story into a one-act play for my college's PlayOn festival. I changed some parts of the original story, mostly filling up some holes I found I had put into the story (like how the elder cop managed to figure out how to get back to town after stranding his inferiors), changing the place names to actual Nebraskan city names (I had originally set the story in the town of "Fidgit." For the record, there are two truly difficult parts of writing: 1) Actually bringing yourself to get started [This is why I have come to only update this blog twice a month], and 2) Naming characters and possibly places), and adding a minor subplot relating to racism against Latinos, with regards to Officer Alvarez, a police recruit just out of the academy, and the most sane officer of the three. And, finally, it turned out that the play was actually chosen to be performed at Oakton's Third Annual PlayOn festival. In the first festival, I had written an adaptation of the Confessional scene from The Seventh Seal, that I hoped would be part of a larger adaptation of the film, updated to 1918 and the Spanish Flu Pandemic. However, the next year, I submitted two plays, and I thought that both of them were problematic; The first one was a monologue that was too difficult to perform, as the climax hinged upon the mononoguist being able to sing (Lip-synching is not an option, as it is supposed to be sung along with another recording) "Largo al Factotum" from Rossini's Barber of Seville (an aria notably difficult to sing) while miming raping an invisible woman, even going so far as to orgasm while singing the last "Della Citta." The second one was an attempt to try and adapt another short story that I didn't think would translate well on the stage, and I think I was right. Fortunately, this one worked out well. The only thing I think would be logistically problematic is how we would be able to create the police car on the relatively small stage of the Black Box theatre it would be set in. Unfortunately, I would not be able to see it, as during the time the play was playing, I would be in Wisconsin.

Quote of the Day: "The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!"
____________Ko-Ko, The Mikado, a Gilbert and Sullivan lyric quoted in the end of the play.

Issue 190

News/Review: Phantom Tollbooth: Book v. Movie.
A few weeks ago a big blizzard struck, as any midwesterners reading it would know. (What much is there to say about the blizzard itself? There was a massive amount of snow and I had to shovel it.) Just before the blizzard struck, I managed to get a book both in dead tree and audio editions, after discovering that Thirty H's apparently included an allusion to it an episode with a .58 child in Chapter 6. and most of the time I spent shoveling it, I had spent listening to the audiobook version. That book was Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Quite honestly, I think it's one of the best kids' books I've ever read, and my only regret is that I hadn't read it as a kid myself, and after listening to the interview with Norton Juster on the audiobook, I regret not having read it as a teenager, either, since, according to him, many people have written to him talking to him about how they read the book as children, teenagers, and as adults, and that it seemed like a different book each time. As it turns out, there will apparently be a new hardcover edition for its fiftieth anniversary in November (something I'd like come December), and I find it very likely that when I write my "Best Books of the Many I read in 2011" list next year, I am almost certain that it will be in the top five at least. And so, in honor of this, I must inform you that there is actually a film adaptation from the early seventies directed by Chuck Jones, which recently received its first DVD release through Warner Archives. But unlike some other films which took a ridiculously long time to come to DVD (like Wise Blood or The African Queen), there is a very good reason that it took this long: Simply put, it's bad. It's not a faithful adaptation at all. Needless to say, I've written two previous posts about film adaptations of books that changed some things significantly from their source material, but unlike Watchmen, where Zack Snyder did what he could to keep the film at a manageable length, and the 1959 version of the Brothers Karamazov, which attempted to reduce an 800-page novel into a 2 1/2 hour film by stripping away almost every subplot not directly related to the murder of Fyodor at the expense of many major characters. This film, directed by no less an animation god than Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame, has no excuse. The film's character designs are pretty good, even if they do deviate significantly from Jules Feiffer's illustrations (at this point, my main qualm about this aspect of the film is the fact that Tock the Watchdog's watch seems to be tucked into some sort of pouch on its body, and apparently downplaying the fact that he is supposed to be a "Watch Dog" with a real watch on his body. The fact that his voice actor is pretty bland doesn't help matters.) The film's major problem is with its pacing. It seems to be good in the opening scenes (where Milo manages to say the opening paragraphs of the book to a friend over the phone, thus finding a pretty good vehicle for putting the exposition in without the use of a narrator. However, after the scene in the Doldrums, the film begins to dramatically change from the book. Namely, in the book, after leaving the Doldrums, Milo and Tock head straight on to Dictionopolis, and then, after learning of the story of how the princesses Rhyme and Reason were cast out, decide to quest for them (with The Humbug, another character from Dictionopolis who lost much of his distinctive character in the film, drafted into joining by King Azaz the Unabridged), with several episodes following on the way. On the other hand, the film features Milo and Tock managing to encounter many of the people they found in the book long before they managed to get to Dictionopolis (on the one hand, there's nothing that wasn't in the book, but on the other hand, there was no 0.58 child anywhere in the mix). Needless to say, by the time the film finally gets around to giving the film its backstory about two-thirds of the way into the film (That's right. Important backstory that is supposed to set up the main plot of the book doesn't even get introduced into the film itself for about sixty minutes into the film's ninety-minute running time) there isn't much left for Milo, Tock, and the Humbug to do. It's like making a remake of Rain Man where most of the antics Charlie and Raymond get into happen in Cincinatti before they finally go to L.A. Yes; It would have been as poor a film as the real version is a poor depiction of autism. One more problem I have with the film is the treatment of the ending; in the book, as Milo drives away after reuniting the Mathemagician and King Azaz the Unabridged, they both remind him to remember the importance of words and numbers. This restarts the argument the two had been having about which one is more important that led to the imprisonment of Rhyme and Reason. With the disappearance of the Tollbooth from Milo's room, and the note that came with it, it implied heavily that the book's plot would happen again with some other bored child in Milo's place. In my opinion, this was a pretty effective twist ending. However, the film does not give any such implication. It's just a more simple "happily ever after" ending. Granted, the tollbooth still vanishes, and it even goes to the kid Milo was talking to on the phone. Unfortunately, by leaving out that little scene, Chuck Jones has managed to strip the scene of some crucial context making it poorer than the book's version. Simply put, if Chuck Jones had decided to keep the Book's structure, and maybe bite the bullet and add a few more scenes to make it longer than 90 minutes, it would have been a better film. However, he didn't, and I had enough material to rant about for quite a while.

Tract Review: There's two new tracts on Jack Chick's website, but they're both new versions of old tracts. One is a new version of "This Was Your Life," entitled "You Have a Date." The main differences are that the protagonist is now female, and instead of telling dirty jokes, has apparently had a lesbian experience as a teen. In addition, Jack seems to have realised that claiming whispering is a sin (as he did in previous versions of this tract) is idiotic. The other new tract was a new version of "The Attack" changed with a plug for a new book which no doubt regurgitates many of these arguments.

Issue 188

News/Film Idea/Review: Some notes on Holocaust Films.
In my last entry, on the best books of the many I read in 2010, I mentioned that I had put 25 books in the shortlist. Two of the books that didn't make it onto my list were Holocaust memoirs. Specifically, those memoirs were two classics of the genre: Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, and Elie Wiesel's Night. I have to admit that there's a reason I didn't include them in my list beyond the fact that I found Bruce Campbell talking about the making of The Evil Dead more enjoyable than their harrowing experiences im Lager. The fact is that, I can't help but think that while they are basically true and don't feel the need to nit-pick like some people do, the medium of the memoir has advantages and disadvantages, and one disadvantage is particularly crucial: they are ultimately one-sided. The way I see it, if books and films are to be used to show people the horrors of the Holocaust, we should be forced to see ourselves not only in the shoes of those who got killed, but also the shoes of those who did the killing. To go further into this, I will examine what is probably the most famous film about the Holocaust, Schindler's List. In the film, the villain Amon Goeth is portrayed as being utterly, outrageously cruel. One would be tempted to call out Spielberg for portraying him as too unrealistic if one didn't know that Spielberg actually toned down his evil for film. The problem I have with it is that, unfortunately, Goeth wasn't exactly representative of Concentration Camp workers. When off-duty, many of them would seem pretty normal people, and not necessarily the type of people who would routinely kill people for a day. This is what Hannah Arendt meant by "The Banality of Evil." This is a thought that should frighten you, because it means your best friends or even you could very well be capable of committing genocide without emotion. It is also essential for understanding why the Holocaust happened in the first place, but, surprisingly, very few of the films that take place in the camps try to deal with that idea. In essence, I feel that not including that theme in a film (or other art form) about the Holocaust is ultimately irresponsible, even when a big name like Spielberg does it. Even when Roman Polanski, a filmmaker known for being gloomy and pessimistic (at least when you look at his film career, as opposed to his personal life), made a film about it, he seemed to avoid this issue like Spielberg did. Of course, considering he lived through it all and lost most of his family, it sort of makes sense he would focus solely on the victims. To remedy this, I have come up with three possible ideas for a Holocaust film if I ever make it to Hollywood, in order of likelihood that they will be made (most likely last.)
*Death Dealer, based on the memoirs of Rudolf Hoess, an actual Commandant of Auschwitz. Considering that a lot of the criticism of Boy in the Striped Pyjamas seemed to focus on making a Nazi sympathetic, this is probably the least likely one to be made.
*Eyewitness Auschwitz, based on Filip Mueller's autobiography. It is about a Jewish inmate who survived the camp for three years because of his skill in working the crematoria, thus blurring the line between victims and villains. Definitely more moral ambiguity, but I doubt that a film like this would be made.
*The Wave. This is the one I think is most likely to be made, because, simply put, it's already been made several times, most notably as a Television special in 1981, and a German film in 2008. What do I think I can add to the story? Before I tell you that, I should tell you a little about Miltonian criticism. In his book, Surprised by Sin, Stanley Fish attempted to explain the sympathetic portrayal of Satan by saying that by making Satan seem likable, Milton helps simulate the Fall of Man on the reader. In very much the same vein, I hope to extend the power of the Wave to the level of the audience by using cinematic techniques that mirror those used by Leni Riefenstahl in her amazingly made propaganda piece Triumph of the Will. That film managed to boost allegiance to the Nazi party whenever it was played, and even allegedly scared a film critic into joining the Nazi Party. If we are led to be in as much awe of the movement as the students are, the big reveal will be even more shocking.

Issue 187

News: The Beat Books of (the many I read in) 2010.
Well, I've seen a few more films in theaters than I did last year. All things noted, however, I read a lot of books in the last year. How many, you may ask? Well, my original shortlist for this one happened to be 25 books. It took a while for me to be able to narrow it down to ten. And here's just the ten I felt were the best I had read, and no, none of them had been published in 2010.

10. Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser.
For the benefit of all of you who don't know, Harry Paget Flashman was the bully in the Victorian schoolboy's novel Tom Brown's Schooldays. This novel covers his life in the years after being expelled from Rugby school for drunkenness, wherein he joins the army and manages to gain some clout by shooting the top off a bottle (by complete accident), and gaining a heroic reputation (culminating in meeting Queen Victoria) in India despite being a total coward. The thing that really interested me was that it was apparently so historically accurate that, upon publication, several reviewers (particularly Americans) assumed that they were genuine. It's the first in a series of twelve novels, and I have yet to read the other eleven, but I can only expect more of the same.

9. If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell.
On the prodding of a classmate in my recent film class, I decided to read this book. I hesitated, because of the fact that I never went in for the "private lives of the stars" sort of books. However, unlike most of the stars who've had books written about them, Bruce, at least at first, had a pretty hands-on role in the making of many of the films. He includes a setup for some of the camera tricks devised for the Evil Dead movies and even a recipe for blood used in the original. The classmate who recommended this to me also suggested I try and make that fake blood and see if it's edible, but I haven't. That said, considering that all the ingredients are edible, I think it is, but doubt that it would be appetising.

8. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
This movie is probably one of the most frequently adapted novels in history, but, surprisingly, very few of those adaptations even bothered to take the original plot structure from the original. The more I looked into the adaptations, I found only two filmed versions that kept the original idea: 1971's I Monster, which changed the protagonist's names, and the Wishbone adaptation that squished the story into 15 minutes and made the main character a dog. And by main character, I mean Gabriel Utterson, who is, for some reason, left out of almost every adaptation. Why? After all, it's a perfectly good idea to let the audience figure out what had happened slowly, and at least make an effort of making it seem like the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person was a twist. The fact that so many adaptations decided to establish early on that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same is just as idiotic an idea as making a version of The Sixth Sense where everybody knows up front that the Bruce Willis character is supposed to be a ghost. Of course, like with Flashman, I had read this on audiobook, and there were some flaws with both of them: With Flashman, the footnotes were not read (the ones which reinforced the massive amount of research Fraser put into them), and for this one, the narrator mispronounced Jekyll's name. As much as I like Spencer Tracy, I blame him (and his 1940 film of the book) for the popular mispronunciation of Jekyll as Jeck-ull. According to Stevenson, it was Jee-kull. Rant over, on to book 7.

7. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and the Dhammapada.
What else is there to say about The Prophet? Behind Lao-Tsu, Shakespeare, and King David, this book is one of the most-read collections of poetry in recorded history. And, the fact is, his musings on the condition of living still hold up pretty well. He has succeeded in becoming timeless. I also include the Dhammapada in the same category because its subject is the same as the Prophet, but it was written by an actual religious figure. In short, it's probably one of the most solid-seeming religious texts, in my opinion.

6. Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.
Well, this is a book about the making of a great man, namely, Theodore Roosevelt. This is the first part of a three-volume biography of Roosevelt, and this volume covers his life from birth to getting the news that President McKinley got assassinated, and it's surprising the amount of positions he managed to get before the age of 42, from published author, to secretary of the Navy, to war hero, to NYPD Commissioner, to personification of masculinity. I read Theodore Rex, the second volume, and I didn't find it as interesting as the first volume, and I have yet to read the last volume, Colonel Roosevelt, (due to wanting to get paperback edition to match my copies of the first two).

5. Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
The plot of this play is very hard to summarise: When I told my dad about it, I only managed to cover the subplot about Prior Walter. Indeed, much of the plot could be accurately be described as "gay guys talking about politics." Surprisingly, despite all of this, it manages to work as the most epic work written for the stage since Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. Why? You'll just have to read it, or, possibly, watch the HBO miniseries based on the play, to find out.

4. The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman.
I discovered this book based to TVTropes due to its being categorised as a "weird american thing." In essence, this book is an almanac of completely made-up facts (in fact, many of the facts given are half-true). Considering the complete insanity of many of the facts (things like otters being called lobsters and being driven to extinction by new lobsters, or an escalating war of strange precipitation between Milwaukee and Richmond, VA) makes one wonder about the kind of world in which it is true. This is, once again, the first in a projected trilogy, and only the first two published yet. I have just started to read the second book, and it's actually a worthy successor to the original.

3. Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Due to the intricacies of my reading queue, I waited a while to start to read this book, but when I actually managed to get into reading this book, I was surprised by the conversational style of this book. The tone of the book seemed almost exactly like I was having a conversation with the man himself, and it really felt like what you'd expect when you talked with an orator. And I even managed to gain more insight into the beliefs of the nation of Islam, and even the bizarre nature of the genetics that the story of Yakub and the creation of the other races (other than Black). The afterword by the ghostwriter Alex Haley even gave more insight into the man's life and the book's creation.

2. The Ice Man by Philip Carlo.
For a while, I was on a big kick of reading books about hitmen, in the hopes that I could create a hitman story of my own. It didn't work out. Along with the two books written by Joey Black (an actual hitman), this work formed the non-fiction part of my research (I really wished I could find more non-fiction books focusing on the lives of hitmen, but there you go.) This book is about a man named Richard Kuklinski who claimed to have killed over 300 people and worked for all of New York's five families (since he wasn't Italian, he couldn't "get made" into any one family). The fact is, that, despite many questions that have been raised about the veracity of many of Kuklinski's claims, it's actually a very compelling story, and even on this level, it's still a must-read. Surprisingly, despite the fact that this is the story of a career killer who talked about killing people with no discernible emotion, this actually contains one of the most touching scenes I've ever read: while meeting his second wife's family, they take him to a Thanksgiving dinner, and Richard, for the first time, manages to discover for the first time, the phenomenon of being loved unconditionally by a family (his own was abusive, and his father even killed his own son Florian.) Naturally, this shift in tone does not last long.

1. Requiem For a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
Yes, Hubert Selby is one of my favourite authors, and I read his four major novels, and, apart from Last Exit to Brooklyn, this is probably his best known novel. It's also one of the most disturbing novels ever written (but surprisingly, not even the most disturbing one written by Selby, that honour going to The Room), and, especially in this book, the bizarre nature of his typography (ridiculously huge indentations for paragraphs and replacing apostrophes with slash marks) enhances the disturbing mood created by his books by disorienting his reader, so that, if the acts being described don't disturb the reader, the confusion will ensure that his novel has a profound effect on the reader. The movie only concentrates the 300-page novel into a 100-minute film, and very effectively, I may add.

Film Idea of the Day: The keyboardist for a band ends up falling in love with an angel. This love forces him and his bandmates into a battle between them and the forces of the Almighty. The plot is, in essence Scott Pilgrim meets His Dark Materials, and should ideally include satire that covers everything from religion to the Twilight saga to eagle feather law.

Film Review of the Day: Black Swan. Like the film version of Requiem for a Dream, this was directed by Darren Aronofsky. Although I haven't been keeping abreast of his career since Requiem, it did seem like a big stylistic leap between the editing-driven, visceral Requiem and the surreal horror of Black Swan. That said, he did apparently release two films between Requiem and Black Swan, but I haven't seen them. Despite not being what I would have expected from the man who made Requiem for a Dream, and the subject matter (Ballet) not being something I'm particularly interested in, it was quite good. It really helps that there was a scene in which the two main dancers have sex with each other. Hot girl on girl action does tend to improve a movie, at least in my estimation.

Quote of the Day: "When a prosecutor loses a case, do you think he's happy that an innocent man walks free? No, they're angry that they've lost a chance at the governor's mansion."
_____________Hubert Selby Jr., The Room (actually a paraphrase of something in that book. If I were able to find the correct words, I would have posted them.) Food for thought for anybody who watches Nancy Grace regularly.

Link of the Day: My Film Teacher's Blog.

Tract Reviews: Uninvited. Jack Chick returns to the subject of AIDS, and makes claims that should be obviously false to anybody who has studied AIDS since the name was adopted in 1983. There are facts that should be obvious to anybody with two brain cells to rub together that Jack ignores. Here are some of them, for the benefit of anybody who doesn't want to read this tract.

*AIDS is no longer quite the Death Sentence it once was. If identified early enough, it can be kept in control with anti-retroviral drugs. I could just be talking about being HIV positive, though.
*If a six-year-old girl gets raped and left for dead, shouldn't she have had more extreme problems to worry about than possibly becoming a lesbian? Even disregarding physical problems, shouldn't she be scared that it could have happened again, thus ruining her trust for other people for at least several decades?
*Come to think of it, while it would be an oversimplification to state that homosexuality is wholly genetic, there's very significant evidence of genetic influence in sexual orientation. And it certainly does not come about just because they got molested as kids.
*AIDS does not just happen to gay people. In fact, there's also a significant amount of people who got it from heterosexual contact.

I really wish I didn't have to say these facts, but apparently, I do.

Shout out: Another guy has started to follow the blog, his name is life.experienced.

Issue 185

News: Amazon puts out a book on pedophilia. Should it stay up?
There has been, particularly in recent years, panic has been rising about the possibility of pedophiles in our midst. Let me give you my take on the whole phenomenon: whoever wins, the human race loses. If those who panic win, eventually, it comes to pass that the mob mentality completely takes over, and sooner or later, it leads to a lynch mob mentality against anybody who shows even the slightest interest in any child but their own. Already, it has led to parents increasingly sheltering their children from other people. And if the pedophiles win? Do I even have to tell you why humanity is screwed if they win? The latest incident in the war on pedophilia is that people have discovered an eBook which was reportedly a how-to guide of how to seduce children. The news was leaked on Wednesday, a day so slow that Michel Houellebecq winning an award (and not even an international one) was front-page news on Wikipedia. However, rather than succumb to the mob mentality, I actually tried to look up some reliable information of what the book was about. For all we knew, it could have been a guide for teaching pedophiles to have relationships that didn't cross the line into sex. Of course, it took a few days before I could manage to find somebody who actually read the book (the Amazon review pages, when they were up, did not seem to have a single person who admitted to actually reading the book), and when I did, the hype was pretty much verified. It did include a guide for having sex with children. However, that said, I think that breaking the story to the media was a very bad idea; first of all, before they finally took it down, the ebook went from having a sales rank in the sextuple-digits to #114. For comparison, James Joyce's Ulysses is currently #322. In short, the media story gave this guy even more attention than he could have ever dreamed of, and far more than he deserved. Even if he ends up getting jail time, I wouldn't end up being surprised if he ended up with a book deal from a bigger publisher (as long as he writes about the ordeal of getting banned, and not more of the same.) The second reason is that, generally, if one work is banned, sooner or later, more people are going to lobby for banning things they don't like, and eventually, we'll live in the world of Fahrenheit 451 because everybody will have found some offense somewhere. In case you think I'm exaggerating, PeTA has been asking that books they don't like be removed. Granted, PeTA are, by this point, a joke, and it's less likely that those books will be removed. But the slope is already getting slippery. Whoever wins, the human race loses.

Film Review: Mary and Max. Simply put,this is probably one of the best films about Autism I've ever seen. I've seen films about autism that aren't exactly that good on their own terms despite being excellent portraits of Autism (films like Adam and Mozart and the Whale regrettably fall into this category), films which are good, but portray autism inaccurately (like Rain Man), and then there's works like Sonichu which suck hard, and fail to portray much of a portrait of Autistic spectrum disorders. That said, I did find it particularly interesting, particularly in the fact that it blends tragedy and comedy, veering between the two almost constantly.

Quote of the Day: "Do you have a pet kangaroo? When I was born, my father left my mother and me on a kibbutz. She shot herself with my uncle's gun when I was six. Do you like chocolate hotdogs? I invented the recipe for them and can send it to you."
_______________Max from Mary and Max.

Link of the Day: Brass Eye's take on Pedo-Hunting.

Tract Review: Love that Money! Yet another tract about how angels and demons are fighting over people's souls, with the twist that this takes place in the latest economic downturn.

Issue 172

News: My Five Least Favorite Books.
Here is the impetus for writing this book: recently, my worplace decided to pose us in the position of the Last Supper, and I decided to portray Judas (although it turned out to be more of a combination of Peter's position with Judas' elbow, oddly enough), and it came out that some members of the crew actually believed that the figure to Jesus' immediate right was Mary Magdalene, and I ended up blowing up at the person who talked about it. After that, I was browsing TVTropes and stumbled upon their page for the Turner Diaries. I knew then that the next blog entry I wrote had to be about the worst books of all time. So, here's my top five, and, astonishingly to some, Jane Austen's works are not on this list, because, while I do dislike them with a passion, their major flaw is that they are utterly dull to anybody with a Y chromosome, and not facepalmingly stupid.
5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Well, the title bucks art historical convention and calls Leonardo simply "Da Vinci", even though it's not his actual surname. It's all downhill from there, with regards to historical accuracy. Just to take one example: The vessel for holding the wine is actually in the picture, but it's not the gilded and bejewled common cup of legend; they're all individual glasses that could have been used by anybody in that time period. Admittedly you can only see it if you're looking at an ultra-high-quality picture, but once you did, Teabing's claim that the Grail is in the picture in the form of Mary Magdalene (actually John the apostle, incidentally, and has been identified as such for many years before most of the other disciples in the picture). For a book that claims to be 99% accurate, I am not impressed.
4. Twilight by Stephanie Meyers.
I am almost certain that somewhere in the Middle East, there are some people who will use this book as an argument against giving women education. In essence, you have a woman who is driven to stalking the one person who doesn't love bomb her as soon as she moves to her new town. And it turns out that he's a vampire, which to Stephanie Meyer, seems to entail simply drinking goat's blood, being androgynous, and sparkling in the sunlight [Well, I'm okay with toying with the symptoms of vampirism, like with Cassidy in Preacher, but narrowing it down to those three?], and worst of all, the vampire has graduated from High School literally dozens of times. WHY IN PLUPERFECT HELL WOULD HE NOT JUST PASS FOR YOUNG ADULT FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE? HONESTLY!
3. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
Well, in either book or movie forms, this has to be one of the worst tales in any medium, and there are enough plot holes in either form to fill the Royal Albert Hall. While general consensus is that the book is much better, I admit that I stray from the consensus here for several reasons.
A) John Travolta's Terl is way too entertaining.
B) In the books, the climax is literally 1/3 of the way through. The film's climax, as muddled as it is, is at least in its proper place near the end, probaBLY because it was supposed to be the first half of one long movie.
C) Blatant Ethnic Stereotyping. That is all.
D) Johnny is even more questionable. Johnny is considered a hero after vanquishing the evil Psychlos by destroying their planet, except that, in the book, they're only evil due to another race's mind control. Nobody rethinks Johnny's motives.
TIE:
1A) Left Behind. I've done enough on this subject. I don't need to run over why this is on my list.
1B) The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce.
Surprisingly, Pierce is probably the most competent writer on the list. However, what he does to merit the lowest position is to write what is probably the most evil novel I've ever read, especially since it's apparently supposed to double as a how-to guide for a White revolution. What truly astonishes me is that Pierce goes into how crime and punishment under the Order would work after they take Southern California, and it's astonishingly brutal: apparently the only punishment for any crime, whether commited by or against whites (for instance, owning a restaurant that serves all races) is summary execution. This is presented as unambiguously good, even though it's clear that they're clearly worse than The System could ever be. Somebody should probably write a book about how a real-world government would face such an insurrection.

Review of the Day: Since I recently finished reading the first four books of Hubert Selby Jr, one of my favorite writers, I decided to review his books.
Last Exit to Brooklyn. I read about the book in Junior year of high school, but couldn't make it past Tralala, but eventually I made it to the end last summer. It was actually pretty good. Admittedly, I'm not sure whether it should count as a novel or a collection of short stories, but, either way, it's one of Selby's best.
The Room. This is the book I finished reading recently. In fact, it is even more brutal than Last Exit was. In fact, Selby himself couldn't read it after writing it. If you thought a teenaged prostitute getting gang-raped by a dozen drunken sailors was brutal, you haven't seen anything yet.
The Demon. Well, this is his most subtle work of the four I read, less overtly terrifying and more subtle, explaining the motives behind Harry White's increasing evil in scenes less overt than his previous terms.
Requiem for a Dream. Well, Darren Aronofsky got the essence of the story, and a lot of the little things in the novel down to their essence in 100 minutes, but the novel is much less emotionally satisfying, and I think that, in this case, not giving the audience much closure is best, since it's probably best for the reader to imagine what is happening in the end.

Issue 163

News: The 11 Best Books of (The many I read in) 2009.
Well, Usually around this time of year, I usually post a list of capsule reviews of films I liked that were released in the previous year. Unfortunately, I didn't go to the theatre a lot last year. I liked most of what I went to, but there were a lot of movies I wanted to see that I didn't get to see, and so far, I've seen none of those, and then there were some I'd heard of that were so horrifying that I wouldn't even torture my mother with them (I'm talking to you, Lars von Trier's Antichrist.) However, I've read a lot of books, and since it's been a while since I've reviewed a book here, I've decided to make a list of some of the best books I'd read in the past year. I read dozens every year, and here are 11 of my favorites.
11. Mental Floss' History of the World: An irreverent Romp through History's Best Bits.
If it doesn't live up to its title, it sure comes damn close! Admittedly, it makes some mistakes, particularly with regards to its remarks about absinthe (the Thujone content in most absinthes isn't really enough to cause hallucinations or death), but it makes up for that by actually contributing more to my understanding of Hegel (due to one paragraph on p. 240)than my attempts to read Hegel.
10. Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
It is a worthy successor to The God Delusion, but still is less appealing to me. While it does present a pretty thorough survey of evidence for evolution, it falls short of its predecessor for a few reasons, including the fact that it devotes the entire first chapter to explaining terminology that he only uses once or twice outside of that chapter, and that he sometimes puts digressional footnotes about how he dislikes things like how the city of Peking is now called Beijing (his age is beginning to show.) This is the only book on the list to actually be published in 2009.
9. Novels in 3 Lines by Felix Feneon.
Few people could have seen the republishing of this coming: century-old news blurbs about events in France, but despite the unusual nature of the work, it is probably one of the most curious discoveries I'd made all this year; it is actually a surprisingly longitudinal discussion of life in 1906 France done in over a thousand two or thee-line blurbs. In terms of brevity, it makes Hemingway seem like Joyce.
8.Paris Spleen and Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire. These works constitute the collected poetry of Charles Baudelaire.
What else is there to say? He treaded where few poets treaded before and his works still maintained interest, particularly when he talked about lesbians in his poems (at one point, he apparently seriously considered naming Flowers of Evil The Lesbians.) However, it appears that, as a prose writer, Paris Spleen will inevitably have more influence on my style.
7. Lamb: The Gospel according to Christ's Childhood Pal Biff by Christopher Moore.
This book really makes a fairly plausible attempt towards figuring out what happened in the "Lost Years of Jesus." Well, since the gospels are silent on everything from Jesus' brief time in Egypt to his baptism (except for a short time where he was debating with priests in the temple at the age of 12), an angel resurrects Jesus' best friend Levi that is Called Biff to write a book to fill in the missing gaps, and what happened to Jesus between the ages of 13 and 30? Simple; Biff and Jesus moved to Asia, where they lived in a palace with a Taoist master, went to a Zen monastery, and poked Untouchables in India. Naturally, he spends little time on JEsus' ministry, but does, of course, focus on the Crucifixion, which is, of course, the climax of the entire story. As it turns out, he gave Jesus a sleeping potion that would mimic death, but this plan is thrown out when a centurion slashes him.
6. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
I read about this book on a list of the ten most disturbing books of all time. It is set as a series of letters from a woman to her husband about the story of how their son Kevin became a killer (he became a school shooter with, of all things, a crossbow.) I won't give away the final twist, but I will say say it does hit hard and everything all falls into place with it. With regards to the PS material in the back, the way I interpret the book is that it is that Kevin somehow knew that he should never have been born and that every event in the book, particularly the final twist, is part of a big plan to make his mother regret ever having borne him. Oh, and Flaxid and Flassid are both considered equally valid by the Dictionary.
5. Essays and Aphorisms by ARthur Schopenhauer.
Well, as Huysmans said in A rebours (a book that would have made the list if I could find a copy), "Schopenhauer had seen the truth!" What else can be said? Well, there is the matter that it is several excerpts from his final book, Parerga und Paralipomena, and probably doesn't have the most judicious selection of excerpts, including several aphorisms, but apparently leaving out the famous story about the porcupines' dilemma. For better or for worse, though, it is probably the only selection of this work in translation that isn't exorbitantly expensive.
4. The Yosemite Murders by Dennis McDougal.
I've read several books about serial killers, but this is without a doubt my favorite. While Carey Stayner may be more obscure than, say, Ted Bundy, but his story is probably more interesting than most, particularly in that it reads like a story from a Greek Tragedy; Carey's brother Steven gets kidnapped, and he grows withdrawn as his family focuses on Steven, but as soon as he returns, he gets jealous of the increased attention Steven gets and the fact that Steven gets away with things he can't (like smoking, drinking, and swearing; in a Mormon home, no less), and this eventually warps him for life and he eventually kills 4 people to gain some attention of his own. I'm surprised that nobody's tried to adapt this story into a movie. I suppose I'll have to do it someday.
3. Ham on Rye, Factotum, and Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
Okay, so it's three novels in one position, but they're still part of one story (and for that matter, are only three novels of five that tell it) the story of Henry Chinaski, Charles Bukowski's author avatar. And, for better or for worse, Bukowski has been a major inspiration to me and my writing career; while every creative writing teacher asks their students to write about their experiences, Bukowski actually managed to take time out to write his experiences, only publishing his first book at 40, and becoming able to write professionally at the age of 50. I recieved a volume of his short stories, but I haven't read it yet, though I intend to soon; hopefully after its companion volume comes in the mail.
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Do I really have to explain why this book is on my list? This is probably the greatest novel of all time, and in fact, one character in Slaugherhouse-five actually claimed that everything there was to know in life was in it, and the exaggeration is only slight, as anybody who has read it knows. If you're going to get it, be sure to get the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky (For that matter, this advice applies to any other novel by Dostoevsky, Gogol or now, Tolstoi.) The fact that the other translations are still in print is one of two reasons it's in the second place (the other one will be revealed in the Number one spot.)
1. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Well, the fact is that this book is as complex as The Brothers Karamazov, except more accessible to people, and much shorter (the other reason it was only at number 2). For this reason, I suppose it lends itself to adaptations better than Brothers Karamazov. At any rate, I got into the graphic novel just before the movie was released, and I finished it in a few hours, and I actually watched the movie with the original book fresh in my mind. What else do I have to say?

Film Idea of the Day: A community holds a marriage lottery. eligible males and females are arbitrarily matched, and anybody who tries to defy the lottery is punished. A couple tries to defy it, and leaves the country for Mexico. A hitman tries to follow them, and they are protected by an eccentric who plays the organ. Ideally, the hitman and the organist would both be played by Klaus Kinski, but I suppose that's the difference between the Ideal and Real for you.

Film Review of the Day: Avatar 3D. I went to see this in 3D, and I admit that the visuals are much better than the story. The story is derivative, but at least James Cameron admitted as such early on, noting that he was heavily influenced by stories about America's genocide of the Natives. Some plot devices, such as the imaginatively-named Unobtainium, though, do detract from the story, such as it is. Doug Walker said of it, "Pretty Visuals+Lame Story=Pretty Lame." However, the way I see it, the story isn't that bad, even if the visuals do overshadow it.

Quote of the Day: "Baby," I said. "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."
________________________Charles Bukowski.

Link of the Day: This guy reads the Twilight Series so we don't have to.

Chick Reviews: Crazy Wolf- An Indian woman named Mary gets Saved, and has a shaman put a hit out on her. The shaman turns into a werewolf, but an angel changes him back and she Saves him. Surprisingly, the kids in the village informed Mary about the hit, but not so much to warn her as to gloat about it.

Issue 162

News: It bears repeating.
Several issues ago, I remarked that a scene in Left Behind was one of the things which truly made it one of the most horrible works I've ever read (although an infamous Harry Potter fanfic seems to have replaced it at the top.) However, I think it bears repeating that the scene is one of the worst I've ever read in a book for several reasons, which I will detail here. The scene has reporter Buck Williams doing his job, a very rare occurrence, and interviewing the scientist (Chaim Rosenzweig, who, as we later learn, dabbles in everything from botany to nuclear physics, to Romanian government) whose fertilizer has turned Israel into an agricultural center on par with the Midwest. This has somehow not only led to peace in the Middle East, but has apparently led to at least some states being annexed by Israel. And it all goes downhill from there, because during the interview, a gaggle of Russian bomber planes carrying all of the country's nuclear weapons (enough firepower to end life on earth several times over) soars overhead. The authors never explain why this should occur, but it is implied that it is done out of spite. Sure, there may be no valentines between Russia and Israel, but somehow I doubt that even nuking Israel once is in the cards. For that matter, doesn't Israel have nuclear weapons of its own? And hell, even if Israel was defenseless and Russia's nukes didn't end life on Earth, using all those nuclear weapons on a coastal nation like Israel is bound to have a lot of adverse effects on the Mediterranean. Maybe the entire Mediterranean would be unfit to fish in, and that could cost a lot of livelihoods of a lot of Fishermen in Italy, Greece, or other Southern European countries, and maybe, since the UK and France have nuclear weapons, and in this case, Russia would have wasted all theirs, a nuclear war between the EU and Russia could happen. However, all this is averted when the hand of God appears and destroys the planes, leaving the Israelis unharmed, and some harmless powder rains from the sky (the Authors being oblivious that powder falling from the sky after a nuclear explosion is most likely Nuclear Fallout.) However, all of this could be forgiven if not for one thing: It doesn't change anybody's mind about God. Really. Here is one of the most unambiguously miraculous events possible, and according to the text, nobody seems to bat an eyelash, and churches don't seem to have grown.

Film Idea of the Day: Gaia's revenge. Possibly the most intentionally stupid film idea I've put on this blog. Simply put, "don't pollute, because if you do, the planet will ******* kill you."

Review of the Day: My Immortal. Holy Crap. The fact that this story even exists makes me weep for humanity. The utter disregard for the Harry Potter Canon (incidentally, the lead three characters from the books, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, are renamed Vampire, Diabolo, and B'Loody Mary Smith, and have apparently defected to Slytherin), its own self-contained continuity, and even spelling and grammar aside, this would still be the most idiotic thing I've ever read because the plot is 1/3 descriptions of the main narrator's wardrobe, 1/3 sex scenes that read like Beavis and Butthead wrote them (like "he put his thingy into my you-know-what"), and 1/3 Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way (our author surrogate, whose name is rarely spelled correctly, and who is not related to Gerard Way, although she wishes he was because he's hot) being "Goffik," attempting suicide, and attending the same My Chemical Romance concert several times.

Quote: "I laffed statistically."
___________An actual quote from My Immortal.

Link of the Day: If you really want to read My Immortal, here goes.

Issue 159

News: Kirk Cameron/Ray Comfort's "Origin of Species."
In roughly a week, apparently on the 19th, Ray Comfort (a New Zealand evangelist so laughably absurd that it's hard for me to believe that he actually expects people to believe him), and Kirk Cameron (actor) are sponsoring a book handout of Darwin's "Origin of Species," in a special edition published by Ray Comfort's publishing company Living Waters. What makes this edition different from the many other editions published by Imprints like Signet, Dover, Penguin, Vintage Classics, and even Barnes and Noble Classics? Or the many etexts of the book? Well, it turns out that this is an abridged version (all other versions are unabridged), and in the place of the missing chapters, is a 50-page introduction by Ray Comfort. In the introduction, according to Kirk Cameron, is information on Darwin's dated views on women and race (please remember he was living in Victorian times, and not in the 2000s, and that even by those standards, his views were pretty advanced), the "undeniable link between Hitler and Darwin" (Jesus, where to begin: First of all, there is no evidence that Darwin had much of a significant direct influence on Hitler, second of all, even if there were, it should be clear to anybody who took the time to look into the theory that Hitler would have understood Darwin no better than he understood Nietzsche, Third: Are you really telling me that you can divorce the Antisemitism of Adolf Hitler from the Antisemitism of Christian Europe?, and Finally: None of this actually negates the truth value of the theory), and scientists who believed in God (it should be noted that of all the scientists Kirk Cameron mentioned in his video, only two were alive to read Darwin's book, and even those two likely had more nuanced views than Kirk implies, and even then all those scientists just had their names listed; no quote mining, just listing.) And, according to Kirk Cameron it presents a clear Gospel message; and they say that Intelligent Design isn't religious. And on Thursday, it will apparently be given to students in the top 50 colleges, and it seems likely that a lot of these copies will likely be discarded because "our future doctors, lawyers, and politicians" they hope to reach will likely realize that these editions (since they're abridged and the introduction is little more than drivel) are worthless. They seem to think that this will change the minds of people who have (apparently to them) never heard of intelligent design. Of course, the fact is that they have most likely heard of it, and if not from people like them, from shows like Family Guy or the Simpsons, which ridicule it. And apparently, Kirk Cameron appears to be hoping to see Darwin's works being banned. The fact is that book banning does not work that way. If a book is banned in a college, it really only means that their library has removed it from circulation. And, of course, there is no way that one of the libraries of a top college will accept it as a book in the first place, so there is no way it will be banned.

Band Name of the Day: The New Earth Army.

Film Idea of the Day: Already Written: a couple celebrating their 25th anniversary go to a diner and confront their inner demons.

Film Review of the Day: The Men Who Stare At Goats. This is one of the most quirky films of the year. It concerns a journalist who meets a soldier who claims to be telekinetic, and a soldier in a special Hippie division of the Army. He can allegedly kill a goat with a thought. Believe me, the movie finds a way for the premise to make sense. Incredibly, much of it is actually true. Go see it. I would think that the sheer oddness of the premise is enough to recommend it.

Quote of the Day: -Lieutenant Colonel Django used funds from the project's black budget to procure prostitutes...
-That's a lie!
-...and to get drugs for himself and his men.
-That... well, the hooker thing is definitely a lie.
_____________________________My favorite part of "The Men Who Stare At Goats"


Link: Here is the full text of Ray Comfort's version of Origin of Species (complete with introduction and missing chapters)