iPod Song of the Day

I have nearly 5,500 songs on my iPod, and while I try to limit listening to the pure random of all of those tracks in favor of playlists I have made, I do try to listen to a sampling of random shuffle before I make the switch. So I'm going to start a new feature on here today for the one song that stands out in the proper shuffle setting. The first song is Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake."



The video is typical from the '80s, weird, goofy, and all fun. The song, though not as good as some other Duran Duran tracks, is still pretty solid with a pretty cool sounding chorus and standard issue keyboards and horns. As for the lyrics, I haven't the faintest clue as to what they're about. When it comes down to it, most lyrics by bands like Duran Duran are about girls, breaking up with girls, longing for girls, etc. This one doesn't seem to fit, though, and seems more along the lines of those for "Wild Boys," another awesome track. Ah, well, the point here isn't to dissect a track, but to showcase a cool one.

Self-Imposed News Blackout

I've been really behind in my reading for what seems like the last several years. Reading books that usually took no time to finish seems to stretch into ungodly lengths, and don't even mention keeping up with all the magazines I subscribe to. Add on top of that the New York Times that I receive every day, and, as you can imagine, it adds up to a lot of reading material to devour during a given day, week, month.

When I leave for any amount of time, naturally, I suspend my paper delivery. And while I can still buy the paper when I'm at home, I still feel less a sense of obligation to read it thoroughly or on time, and I feel much more relaxed with regard to my reading schedule, if you want to call it that.

I'm not sure why I had never thought of this before, but why can't I suspend it for a time even while I'm home? There's nothing that says I can't still be here and not have it delivered for a time, right? Right, so I figured I'd try it for a few days to try to finish a book that's been lingering on my nightstand, and just to give myself a break from it all. How would this turn out?

It turns out that, I didn't miss being out of the loop all that much. While I did feel a certain sense of unawareness, and even out of touch with the world for a bit (I really do not look at news sites on the web. I can't stand reading them, and would much rather have a newspaper in my hands than staring at at screen.) and somewhat ignorant of events, I soon felt a little sense of relief. It was nice not feeling the obligation to have to read the paper every day. I wouldn't want to do this all the time, but the break did serve its purpose and allowed me to catch up and finish my book and just live a little easier.

The other thing I noticed, though, was that I was out of the loop enough to have any sort of anger at the affairs of the world subside substantially. I think you have to be a truly devout critic of the president to hate him 24/7, but it's really hard to muster up any sort of animus towards him when I wasn't reading the paper on a daily basis and, primarily, the editorial page, that lambastes him daily.

I don't think I want to live without the news on a such a frequent basis, but I do believe I will be taking these respites even when I don't leave town more often in the future.

RE: Death Celebration?

I wrote in a previous post about the outpouring of joy at the death of Jerry Falwell not to long ago. My point in that post, if I had one, was that I didn't personally see that as being a good thing to become comfortable with doing. V., whose excellent blog I have a link to on my sidebar, resent me an email discussion I had with her when President Reagan died, and the similarities between my post and that email are pretty striking, and it appears that I had much the same problem then as I did recently with Falwell's death.

However, what caused me to revisit this was not only rereading that email exchange, but also a conversation I had with a coworker regarding the same issue. It was pointed out to me that unless you had to live under the persecution that Falwell and his ilk advocated, then it's hard to really gauge what type of reaction one would have to such a person's death. I guess the adage about walking in one's shoes is truer in this regard than I had thought.

On the other hand, though, there's also the issue of whether or not you're sinking to the level of that which you feel persecuted by when you engage in a celebration of their death. Isn't that the point when someone tells you that if you do such and such, then that person has won? I'm not really advocating one side or another here, but I find it interesting to think about the fact that certain things that would seem to be questionable in one context aren't in another.

I had all but forgotten about the Verve's song "Bittersweet Symphony" until I recently watched a documentary on the British music scene in the late '90s called Live Forever. They briefly played it during a montage of images, and it just reminded of how great the track really is. I remember when it was released that it somehow got adopted, as certain songs do, into the sports world, and, I could be wrong, but I seem to recall it was played during a Nike commercial as well. Regardless, it's a great track that has an unmistakable sound to it. It's one of those songs that gives me goosebumps just hearing the opening.

Oh, and the video is pretty cool, too.

Something I find increasingly troubling is the ease in which people refer to the fact that someone has died as being a good thing or that they are glad that it has happened. Jerry Falwell, a lightning rod of controversy, died last week, and while I don't think I ever agreed with any of his vitriolic statements that were racist, homophobic, and just plain awful, I can't say that I'm "glad" that he's dead.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I feel that death is too sacred of an event, if that's the right terminology, to actually partake in any sort of frivolity from the fact that it has happened to someone who is actively disliked. I also find it hypocritical to say, if one subscribes to the notion that death is something that can be wished upon someone and celebrated after it occurs, that some deaths are off limits while others are more than fair game. For instance, in this country September 11, 2001 is so ingrained into the psyche that any criticism is off limits, and, yes, I'm referring to Ann Coulter's hideous remarks regarding the deceased spouses of the "widows" she slandered in her latest salvo against the left. These people were victims of a crime, and no one is arguing that, but to posit that it's unacceptable to make any sort of disparaging comments, not just about the victims but also of the day itself, while openly embracing the death of someone from the other side of the aisle is absurd. Were all of the victims of that day truly innocent people? Who knows, but what I do know is that Jerry Falwell wasn't a serial killer, mass-murderer, or brutal dictator known to have slaughtered millions of people. No, he wasn't any of those things at all. He was simply a man with a limited vision of the world that was misguided by religion and an open proponent of hatred and intolerance all in the name of God. Does that mean his death should be celebrated? Probably not.

At the end of 2006, two artists, one notorious for being a recluse and the other just as notorious for his strangeness, returned with new offerings for the public’s consumption. Of course I’m talking about Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch respectively. The works, Pynchon’s new novel “Against the Day” and Lynch’s film “Inland Empire,” were greeted with fervent speculation and enormous anticipation. What were either about? Was Pynchon’s novel really nearly eleven-hundred pages long? A three hour Lynch film and shot on digital video? Are you serious? For most ravenous fans, this sounded like a veritable feast, an excessive bounty from two of the more deliberately contemplative artists of our time. The span between new works for both was long, almost a decade for Pynchon and five years for Lynch, especially when one considers that artists routinely put out new products on a yearly basis in most fields. Then, as with most niche artists, the anticipation and exhilaration sputtered out after an initial wave of fury. Sure, the more intense fans are still dissecting the works to this day, which is to be expected from a massive tome such as Pynchon's and a lengthy feature film as with Lynch.

However, what you don't seem to find is active criticism of the works themselves by the professed fans. Both met with critical acclaim from a majority of reviewers, but they also had their fair share of detractors as well, some pretty intense in their criticisms of the artists, especially Pynchon. One could chalk it up to the animosity resulting from having to speed read through a mammoth book like, "Against the Day," quickly enough to compose a coherent and thorough review, or the ass-numbing amount of time one had sit in a darkened movie theater trying mightily to digest what appears to be a personal compendium of Lynch's most inner weirdness. Either way, I have sympathy for someone under a deadline, and I can understand the rush to judgment that may result from a quicker than recommended reading or a long, long viewing of a film. What I don't agree with is the unblinking acceptance and total reluctance to be critical of the works by the fans. In what I'd like to term the necessity of "killing your idols" in an effort to truly dissect a work and place it within the pantheon of the works not only of the artist themselves but also of the greater artistic community at large. To me, that seems like the only truly honest way of assessing any work of art, and regardless of how painful it might be to be critical of someone whom you adore, it only seems right to be as unflinchingly honest as possible.

To illustrate my point, I'd go so far as to claim that neither Lynch nor Pynchon edited anything out of these works. If they did, I'd be incredibly surprised. Lynch seems to have just shot scenes and compiled them together into one massive film leaving little on the cutting room floor (Lynch apparently shot many, many hours of film, so the fact that he whittled it down to three hours and it still retains this quality is astonishing), and Pynchon appears to have just dropped his manuscript on the publisher's door with a note stating that any alterations would be unnecessary. Any film or book of the lengths these two produced is bound to have stretches that seem irrelevant or tedious. It's just that these two works seem to have more than average. However, if you read any of the numerous blogs or fan sites devoted to these artists, the criticism in this regard is rather muted or absent altogether. Like I said above, it might stem from the many factors, but I for one feel like the above are criticisms are necessary to contemplate. The idea of swallowing hook, line and sinker from a beloved artist just isn’t that appealing to me as a consumer and appreciator of art. Criticism, in my mind, is a good thing to engage in. Not only does it help you as to be critical as a consumer, but it also, in some roundabout way, may influence the artist. In this wireless age, it’s not unheard of for artists to lurk within the communities of those dedicated to them to glean some form of feedback. A recent example, albeit not the most perfect one, is that of Anne Rice and her feud on Amazon’s comment section.

My ultimate point is that even though I’m all for the freedom of an artist to present whatever work they’ve completed in the form they so desire, but at the same time I also feel that they should be responsible enough to recognize that when they produce works of such grandeur that they are asking for a time commitment by the consumer, and that you shouldn’t feel as if it always boils down to, “Well, I just don’t get it, so it must be me.” That type of thinking only floats for so long and it’s really not that productive, because how often does one feel compelled to actually follow up on what may be the root cause of the problem that prohibits understanding? Probably not all that often, which is especially true when one is dealing with Pynchon, who crams so many obscure references onto every page that, it’s possible, one could devote years to reading just one of his books. I commend those who do take this task seriously. What I don’t feel like is justified, though, is to put one’s self down for the purpose of consuming art, or feeling like it’s an act of betrayal to criticize a work by an artist you adore. That, I think, would go against the spirit of the entire enterprise of art itself.

Musings on Current Events

Over the past two weeks, two events have occurred concerning our government that have been and continue to be particularly troubling. I'm referring to the Supreme Court's recent decision regarding the ban on "partial birth abortion" and President Bush's reluctance to accept any sort of spending bill to fund the continuing saga in Iraq that includes language regarding a date to start withdrawing troops from what as been long evident to most people as a lost cause in the region.

First the spending bills. Bush promises to veto any bill that makes its way to his office. Both the House and the Senate have approved their respective bills and both majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid seem poised to enter a battle with the president, which is what I as a Democrat would hope they would do. One aspect of their strategy, which I agree with, is to make the war the president's and his alone. If he should veto the bill, and there's no reason to believe that he won't, then it serves notice to the American people that both he and Vice President Cheney are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the war for what it is, a lost cause that never should have been entered into in the first place.

I find this troubling for many reasons, but the primary of which is that the longer this goes on the more it seems like we're entering into an unreality of sorts. I don't deny that the president and his enablers actually believe that we're doing the right thing by staying in Iraq. In some twisted logic, the belief that by fighting the enemy (al Qaeda, Islamofascists, etc.) on their home turf we are avoiding the fight with them here at home, which makes perfect sense only if one doesn't consider the fact that we weren't actually attacked by anyone or group that resided in Iraq. Now, after what has occurred there, what the president is saying is without a doubt true. Iraq has become nothing more than a breeding ground for future terrorists who would attack the United States.

What's also troubling is that after four plus years with little or nothing to show in terms of progress, the president insists that 1. there's so many positive stories emerging from Iraq that go unreported because the media is fixated on the tragic death spiral that consumes Iraq on a daily basis 2. the surge will work if given adequate time. Neither of these scenarios seem likely or correct in terms with the actual reality on the ground. I'm sure some of our tax dollars are being used to build schools and other important projects that will, hopefully, go towards rebuilding the basic infrastructure of the country, most of which I'm sure is being handled by Haliburton. Yet, the fact of the matter is there are bombings daily throughout the country that continue to take massive amounts of human life and that, I'm sorry to say, takes precedent over any manner of uplifting human interest development that might be occurring concurrently. Finally, the troop surge is nothing compared to the amount of troops truly necessary to contain the country. It's not even worth it at this point to make an analogy about band-aids and mortal wounds.

"Partial birth abortion" is the crude terminology for what is medically known as intact dilation and extraction. The procedure is rather gruesome in detail, so regardless of whether you choose to refer to it in the technical terminology or the politically charged layman's term, it doesn't lessen the notion of its inherent brutal nature. Knowing what the procedure entails could sway any supporter of abortion rights to the other side, but I don't think it's necessarily an issue that's common enough to really warrant the debate. In fact, the procedure is so rarely done that it's almost an afterthought with regard to larger debate. The circumstances that surround the necessity of such a procedure occur so infrequently that the ban may not be something to become truly troubled about, especially when one considers that many states are promoting exceptions to the rule that would allow the procedure to occur under special circumstances.

So why am I troubled by this? I'm not so much opposed to banning a procedure that happens pretty infrequently. In fact, I'm sure it gives the pro-life camp a small victory to taut that may or may not serve as fodder for the greater debate over abortion. No, I don't really care about that. What I do care about is the fact that all of the decisions regarding abortion are made by predominantly male-centered courts. Unless I'm missing something regarding basic biology, I don't think males can reproduce without the female to bare the child, right? My thinking is that if it should reach the point where there is a national referendum on abortion, then the voting should be solely for women only. If the majority of women decide that abortion is a right they can live without, then so be it, it should be repealed. Why males have such a huge say in this issue is beyond me.

A flickering match point excels softly into the aether.

Transcending the emotional into an equally mortified existence,

It becomes necessary to transform into a spectral entity that subsists

solely on the random grief of strangers who flock for the sole purpose

of experiencing the momentary gladness of being.

An entire being composed of thought and sadness.

A flickering luminescence haunts an antiquated framework.

Incandescence flows in a solitary manner

unbeknownst to those most faithful to the cause.

I become confident that I know

the most effective course to steer the fragmented ship of emotions

that have ravaged the mindful tenants of this most respected and treasured

of foes.

After morrow becomes a moot point.

War Plans?
Today's edition of the Guardian has a troubling article regarding the Bush administration's advanced plans to bomb Iran, which refuses to cease the uranium enrichment that may or may not be for the purposes of creating a nuclear weapon; in fact, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has gone so far as to claim that the work is so far advanced at this point as to be "irreversible." To be more specific, the article is about an article, a coming piece by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. Of course, the piece was greeted with denials from the White House who insist that no such planning is under way and that it is in fact absurd to even suggest such a thing, and Hersh continues to stand by his reporting that, as usual, was gleaned mostly from unnamed sources.

Now, herein lies the problem. Someone is not telling the truth, right? How is it that this operation, which has been hinted at before by Hersh in previous New Yorker columns, has been in the planning stages for so long, but at the same time is being sprung upon an unknowing public that has neither the stomach for another war nor removed the bitter taste of the previous run up to our current situation in Iraq? It just doesn't make sense. It's apparent that our leaders are very adept at the art of saber rattling. Cheney has been doing pretty much as long as he's been in office, and Bush himself is no stranger to the tactic. However, as much as I'd like to say that this all stinks and Hersh is revealing a dirty secret that no one wants to acknowledge, I can't do that. I just don't buy it.

As I alluded to above, this isn't the first time Hersh as written about this subject. Looking back, this operation has been in the works for a better part of the last year, a year in which Bush and his various henchmen have alternately either pushed for tougher sanctions, more diplomacy, or military threats, sometimes, it seems all at once. Hersh, though, was writing about it after the Israeli war with Hezbollah and earlier. In fact, one can go back as far as January 2005 and read a Hersh article about impending military action against Iran.

I've written about it before, but I have a hard time trusting articles that rely on so many unnamed sources and former officials. The New York Times is just as guilty. You can count on one hand the number of named sources that appear in either the Times or New Yorker. Unnamed sources seem to reveal anything, a lot of which seems overly dramatic and that hardly ever comes to fruition.

I guess what it comes down to is that it's easy to get blinded by either mistrust or hatred regarding politics. You can say, "That damn Bush and Cheney," all you want, but at some point it reaches a critical mass where it's too easy to absolutely never read between the lines or see through the doom and gloom scenarios that these various unnamed sources and star reporters like Hersh traffic in. Hersh made a comeback of sorts with the Abu Ghraib scandal, and, like any reporter, he's probably searching for the next big story. Our secret war with Iran seems to be what he's settled on.

An Important Death

Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was the 3000th casualty the United States sustained in the war with Iraq.

I find it incredibly funny watching professors and my co-workers take magazines from the shelf to read while eating. Why? Because I have observed, surreptitiously, other people taking those very magazines into the restroom with them.

Today's chronicle of rudeness.

1. To the old lady at the library,
When someone is at the circulation desk waiting for an attendant to check out materials to them that are on hold, please don't feel like you need to put the books you plan on checking out on the counter right in front of them. This being the same old woman who the staff said is such a "cool lady." No, she's not cool. She's a rude asshole with poor taste in reading.

2. To the young guy coming into the library,
It's usually customary to say, "Thank you," to the person who holds the door open for you. It's not as if you're crippled, elderly, blind or suffer from any other malady, so show some manners next time.

3. To the butcher at Giant Eagle,
Please don't run me over with huge cart you're pushing filled with packages of fresh meat. In fact, it's probably a good idea to say, "Excuse me," to the person you are pushing out of the way, the same person who happens to be looking at packages of meat that they might purchase. Guess what? You just lost a sale for your store!

4. To the girl driving to a red light,
The big, solid white line is where you're supposed to stop, not the white lines of the crosswalk that I happen to be using to cross right in front of you.

As the occupation of Iraq enters, what seems to be, its final stages before erupting into an all-out civil war that threatens to engulf the entire region in one way or another, the situation in this country seems to remain steady as she goes. An election won, a new year begun, and it seems like the more things change the more they stay the same. The President seems reluctant to accept any advice or criticism from outside of his loyal circle, and would rather make boisterous statements about being the "decider" on all issues regarding the war regardless of which party is in power. The Vice President, in all of his ominous glory, would rather spar with Wolf Blitzer over the appropriateness of questions regarding his pregnant, lesbian daughter and proclaiming that nothing will stop the "surge" from advancing. Is it just me, or didn't we spend the entire last year, and most of the previous three, hearing exactly the same thing? If someone can tell me what the point of democracy is, then I'd love to hear it.

From the misguided stunts of the anti-war movement to the increasingly erratic behavior of the citizens of this town, Pittsburgh has it all wrong on a number of fronts. Perhaps it's because of the New Year’s infancy and my own expectations for some newfound civility and common sense in this town, or maybe it's just a case of the winter blues. Whatever the reason, I'm about to unleash a torrent of criticism on Pittsburgh in this post, so turn away if that's what you're not here for.

Anti-War Follies
First, anti-war protesters here in Pittsburgh routinely target the recruiting office right here in the heart of Oakland for their demonstrations. This is not without precedent, and I would agree that recruiter tactics are, without question, somewhat underhanded in nature. However, the latest stunt by the demonstrators left a bad taste in my mouth and more than a little perturbed at, what can be best described as, a desperate attempt to seem relevant and part of the larger anti-war movement. Earlier this month, the so-called Pittsburgh Organizing Group "successfully disrupted the military recruitment machine in Pittsburgh yet again." What made this different from the usual protests is explained as follows:

One difference about this picket, as compared to past ones, was the call for people to bring whipped cream pies (because recruiters should be afraid to show their faces). A number of individuals, young and old, responded to the call and showed up, pie in hand.

As far as I can tell, attacking recruiters in this crude manner has little or nothing to do with their practices and will lead to little or nothing more than a brief mention on the nightly news and the newspapers. Now, I'm not someone who supports the war in Iraq, or occupation as it should be referred to, but I don't think that this is how one should go about the process of voicing that opposition. Attacking soldiers, regardless of their position, is a cowardly act plain and simple, and it's not as if the recruiters are civilians, which wouldn't necessarily make this acceptable.

What else bothers me about this type of action is that I feel that it's just another attempt by Pittsburghers to feel as if they're part of a larger movement, which I just don't think they are. People here want it both ways, and that's just not possible. What I find puzzling about this town is that there seems to be this resistance to anything that's cosmopolitan in nature and outright offense taken when someone from outside of the area remains unimpressed with the scene here. On the other hand, the anti-war movement here would lead you to believe that they're part and parcel of a larger, more impressive machine. This is misleading, to say the least. When one looks at those in attendance, you don't see or hear from any Cindy Sheehan types. No, quite the opposite is apparent. To quote, reluctantly Donald Rumsfeld, these are simply the "dead enders" of the movement. These include the tattooed and pierced set of the "cooler than thou" crowd who I find incredibly puzzling in their desire to portray themselves as an all inclusive group, but are more than likely to act as the antithesis of the highbrow cliques they seek to counteract.

I heartedly endorse protesting the war. In fact, I think it's necessary, but I feel that it's somewhat diluted when you're main proponents are infected with poorly thought out ideas of what's right and how best to draw attention to the cause. Also, the amount of hypocrisy involved within the ranks of those who comprise the group is a little more than offsetting as well.

The Road
Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, The Road, takes a fairly basic premise, an apocalyptic event ravages the world and leaves few survivors, and tries, mightily, to make something of it. The plot, centered around a father and son who are among the survivors and are simply trying to stay alive, is rather scant in terms of traditional narratives with arcs and resolutions. Perhaps that's not the point of the book, and I doubt McCarthy would say that it is, but his previous novels have taken other barebones narratives and made something of them, so it's not foreign territory to him as a writer and shaper of worlds. One could argue that this book serves as a loosely termed bookend to his previous novel Outer Dark, but in that novel the quest the two characters set out on had a definite purpose. The father and son here simply have to survive with what's left of humanity, but this leaves the reader with little knowledge of what the ultimate purpose of the narrative is supposed to be.

A lot of the criticism can be attributed to McCarthy's style as a writer. His novels seem to be comprised of episodes more than definable chapters. In previous books, Outer Dark and Blood Meridian, this style worked to his advantage and the reader didn't necessarily feel as if they were reading a disjointed narrative. For one reason or another the time lapses worked in these two novels. However, in The Road and No Country for Old Men the narratives seem lacking in one thing or another, in the latter it seems as if the plot advances forward illogically at several key moments which had me wondering if some pages were missing from the text. In the former novel the problem isn't so much that there are jumps in the narrative, but that the narrative is almost too static in nature. The events do not build upon each other in a cohesive manner, which leads to the reader feeling as if they could pick any random point in the book to start reading and not feel as if anything has been missed. There's only so much plot that can be made out of two people walking from town to town looking for supplies and avoiding the "bad guys."

This is not to say that the book isn't without its highpoints. In fact, the ending of the novel is pretty powerful especially for McCarthy who seems to be an expert and conveying emotional detachment in his characters and lacing his novels with a sense of distance. The novel certainly would have benefited from more episodes that work on the level the ending does, which leads me to believe that the novel may have better served as a novella or short story. McCarthy is a master craftsman, but I'd like to see his novels in the future utilize traditional narrative structures instead of the fragmented nature he's been relying on lately.

I've been a comic book reader for many, many years. Sure, when I was younger I just looked at them and didn't bother to read the word balloons, and after a hiatus for a good portion of my school age years, I resumed buying them in middle school and all the way through college. At any given time, I was buying ten or more books a month, and, as one can imagine, I amassed quite a collection over those years. However, once the shop I bought my books went under, I stopped buying as well. Luckily, it just happened to coincide with the last issue of, what is possibly my favorite book of all time, Preacher, so I didn't just have to stop cold turkey. After that, I spent my time acquiring all of the older issues from the legendary runs that I coveted from before I restarted buying comics in middle school. Thanks to eBay, I was able to complete the collection. All of this to say that I've read my fair share of comic books. Most of them could be considered your typical superhero fare, but a good portion of them are not, as in Preacher, Sin City, and Sandman. All of these fall into what one would term the more mature end of the spectrum and aren't confined to the PG type action typical of most superhero books. What's happened over the years since I stopped buying comics on a regular basis is that writers of superhero comics have been given more leeway with regard to the type of action that can occur within the confines of their books. By this I mean that writers don't have to abide by the old standards of keeping comics family friendly fare and are able to use their freedom to explore more issues that are real life in nature and how those types of events might impact these characters.

The most controversial and somewhat disturbing trend in comics today is the repeated and widespread use of rape as a plot device. Some of the criticism I've come across appears to make the case that the use of rape is nothing more than a weak plot device grasped by a desperate writer. How this came about is anyone's guess, but, while not agreeing with its constant usage, I can see how comic writers feel the need to adapt to the changing world around them and the fact that the well for many characters has run dry many times over. (My first encounter with it appeared in the excellent DC mini-series Identity Crisis.) It seems to me that it's only logical that writers of comic books today might feel the need to inject some real life drama into the characters' lives in which they are shaping in order to maintain a continuous narrative that isn't replete with only those cosmic threats and tired, villainous schemes that are parodied so easily.

There are many things troubling about this trend. First off, it risks making light of a crime that occurs more and more frequently in our society. Why risk turning something so serious into a stock event all for the simple purpose of creating an edgy feel to your book? Second, why has rape of all things become the plot device of choice for today's writers? Perhaps, just as it seemed somewhat absurd to believe that heroes of the past had difficulty defeating the Nazi armies of World War Two, it might seem equally absurd to think about heroes of today fighting a terrorist threat. In other words, superheroes should, logically, feel threatened or at least challenged by an equal or greater threat to their own abilities. While this occurs most often in superhero books, it also doesn't leave too much room for maneuverability plot wise. By inserting a mental element that threatens the lives of the characters in a way that has been previously unexplored, it allows writers to create challenges for heroes on a more personal level rather than confining those challenges strictly to cosmic threats.

What I fear will happen is that writers may become complacent and rely on the simple shock value instilled by having such a horrendous act occur to a beloved character. It's not uncommon for books that are lagging in sales to resort to such publicity stunts, which is not to say that books that do sell don't also suffer from such trends. I guess point I'm trying to make is that I would hate to see a medium that I dearly love reduced to utilizing horrific events to propel a storyline or to simply create shock value within a book.

Cormac McCarthy's novel Outer Dark is one of his earlier works that foreshadows his apocalyptic tone adopted in Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West. The book is puzzling in many regards, but it seems to fit into McCarthy's scheme to portray characters without resorting to what one could call a clear sense of judgment, even for those who act in what is clearly morally ambivalent or totally devoid ways. Of course, any work that involves the product of an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister as the main plot point isn't exactly what one would term conventional in any sense.

However, as with his other works, McCarthy isn't simply set on centering the narrative on such a repugnant action and going from there. Again, shock value seems to be the least of his concerns; he's much too talented of an author to resort to such triteness. He also doesn't seem to be concerned with exacting vengeance upon these derelicts. On the contrary, one could argue that he shows incredible sympathy or at least remarkable restraint by not allowing the two main characters, Rinthy and Culla Holme, to suffer from some horrendous fate or everlasting torment. That's not to say that they don't suffer, but it would have been easier for McCarthy to exact some form of swift justice upon these two loesome individuals. For some reason, though, it does not, and that's one of the peculiar aspects of the text.

The text also features three nameless individuals who, for lack of a better term, serve as the primary force of moral clarity on one hand and outright evil on the other. They are reminiscent of the Judge in Blood Meridian, but they float in and out of the narrative too infrequently to get a true sense of their motives. What exactly they are trying to accomplish by their pursuit of Culla is unclear. What is clear is that their actions at the end of the novel provide one of the more gruesome scenes I've encountered but one that is no less puzzling for its appearance in this text. Some accounts of this event seek to paint religious overtones to explain its occurrence. I can't say for sure whether or not I agree, but I can say that it is a disturbing action that surely serves more than just to bring the quest of the narrative to a screeching halt.

I can't think of any other writer in recent memory who has created such portraits of worlds both familiar and strange in an effort to relieve any sense of comfort in their inherent notions of stock stereotypes as McCarthy consistently does in his early novels. The outright sense of horror and outrage combined with an inability to harshly condemn and pass judgment upon those whose actions seem repugnant to most creates a dilemma for the reader to try to ascertain what the right way to feel about the text is. The only other option is outright passivity, but I don't think McCarthy or anyone else would feel comfortable with that type of reaction.

Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West is without a doubt one of the goriest, bleakest, most blood drenched books I've ever encountered. That being said, I have to point out that this isn't all purely for shock value. No, the book has a literate tone to it that seems to originate from a different time and place. McCarthy's ability to write about characters who range from the illiterate and borderline mentally defective to the most well-spoken and wordily has a lot to do with that tone and his unique voice regarding the nature of humanity.

What I find intriguing about the book is that McCarthy's tone isn't one of moral outrage and he doesn't try to compensate for the harshness by injecting some highly moralistic character as a counterbalance to those who engage in acts of depravity beyond most people's ability to comprehend. Rather, McCarthy adopts a highly neutral stance in order to strip bare the high-handed romance of the "Wild West" and portray the country for what it sometimes resembled, a literal hell on earth. To say the book is a "horror" story is not too far of a stretch, but not in the sense that Stephen King writes horror. It's a horror that's all too real and it's personified in the looming character of the Judge, who is without a doubt one of the most terrifying figures in recent literature.

The book isn't for everyone, and the gore factor will sway most people to give up early, but if you can stomach that, you can see one of the better writers today create a world both wholly strange to us and all too familiar.

I've had Aphex Twin's double album Selected Ambient Works volume 2 for years, and I've probably listened to it, and the second disc's first track more than I can possibly recall. As you can see, the album has a mythology all its own due to its unique packaging and lack thereof any song titles. I find all of that interesting, but it's not the reason why I like the album so much.

For lack of a better analogy on how to describe the sound of the work, let me say that Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) has been said to have composed it after a series of lucid dreams in which he heard the music, which he tried to compose upon reawakening . Listening to the work, you can tell that it just might have been like that. The music, ambient in nature without any real percussion, sounds as if it's from another dimension. In fact, the sticker on the outside of the package quotes a reviewer who states that it sounds like the kind of music the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey would make if it made sound. To me, that's one of the greatest analogies out there.