Friday, February 01, 2008

To The Stilled Earth Speak: I Flow

Morning weigh-in: 167.5#, 10% BF
 
Smackdown: When the S/N! guys are being funny they are really good, but when they drop the humor and get serious -- or, God forbid, angry -- they truly become the best on the net. Go read this -- it's long, but read it all. (Meantime, surge this, and this. Motherfuckers.) I remember arguing with some boob -- actually, he was almost a caricature: right-wing talk show host, named (not ranked) Colonel, lives in a golf course condo development, 35 years old but looks fifty -- and he actually quoted that "We're Winning!" line. He also told me he couldn't serve in the military, because his role was as a cheerleader. I told him he was the ugliest cheerleader I ever saw, before he got swamped by a whole bunch of other peeps giving him a piece of their minds...
 
Quiet Society: Went out after dinner last night, felt like seeing some familiar faces so I went to Which Brew. The place was packed, but except for bartender Kateryna (and one passing acquaintance, but she was reading) there was no one there I knew. Eventually the place cleared out, Perry came in and Christina closed her book, and the three (four) of us had a decent bull session. (Perry grew up in Long Branch, and actually was/is friends with my HS music teacher. I already knew that, but it also turns out that Christina grew up in South Brunswick. Small world.) Busy is good and all that, but I really do prefer the quieter nights.
 
Reading: Anyway, while I was alone in the crowd I began mulling over Male Fantasies, my latest chew-toy. Maybe it's because I don't know all that much about the more esoteric Freudian arcana, and maybe it's because the book is a translation from German -- I've had my "WTF? moments" before, reading translations from the original German -- but I'm starting to think the guy's arguments are a bit of a stretch. It kind of reminds me of those Jack Chick tracts, "Where will You Spend Eternity?" and such like. Pure craziness, but the stories aren't word salad, they do have a narrative, until... some point or other in the tract, some dialog maybe, is footnoted, so you look down at the footnote and find a Bible quote to give the point some authority -- and the quote is a total non sequitur, no connection I can find to the point being made.
 
That's what I keep getting in Male Fantasies: the arguments are closely reasoned and reasonably persuasive, but the examples of proto-Fascist & Freikorps literature the author uses to illustrate and develop them don't quite seem to fit his narrative. The examples are full of stilted prose (see "translations" above), and are devoid of earthiness, and of all but the most cartoonish sexuality: it's more like they just remind me of things like ERB's Tarzan books, or Lord of the Rings -- wait, what?
 
Anyhoo, gym last night; dinner was more of that pot roast before I went out. Tonight I'm picking up some bike rack doo-dads (installing that'll be tomorrow's project), then hitting the towpath. I have a feeling I'll be alone out there. Sunday is the Superbowl, and the Superbowl of Chili.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go Giants!!!

Don said...

Here's something I wrote about that smackdown guy, way back when.

Oh, and GO GIANTS!