perpetual memory loss

I finished Haruki Murakami’s new novel 1Q84 a few weeks ago and I have been letting it settle in my brain for a while before I wrote about it. Clocking in at over 950 pages, 1Q84 will take time to read. Luckily, it is time well spent and it is a thoroughly enjoyable story. 1Q84 takes place is a Tokyo in 1984 and follows the lives of the two protagonists, Aomame and Tengo. Murakami alternates the chapters between Aomame and Tengo. Their stories are intertwined although the reader is unsure how or even why. Like Murakami’s other books, this book could be categorized as magical realism. (If you are not acquainted with that term think about books/stories like The Metamorphosis, Beloved, The Master and Margarita, and The Alchemist. These are story’s that take place in the real world, our world, but yet are intruded upon by the supernatural (Beloved and The Master and Margarita), unexplained events (The Metamorphosis), or with the bending, merging of realities (1Q84).) For some people this isn’t their cup of tea, but I find that books of this ilk can be both incredibly entertaining and packed with meaning.

Tengo is a typical Murakami male character and almost a stereotype of a Japanese male: introspective, honorable, and taciturn. (In some ways he is very similar to Toru Okada from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.) Tengo, like Toru, is a lackluster 30 year old who has enormous potential (he’s a brilliant mathematician, martial artist, writer, and pretty much anything he puts his mind to) but yet hasn’t quite found his niche in the world. He teaches math part-time and in the other time he is an aspiring novelist. At both he excels but not too much, and he seems content to just slog along in his life. Aomame, on the other hand, has her life mostly figured out. She’s a physical trainer at a high-class Tokyo gym and in her spare time assassinates men who have repeatedly and harshly beaten their wives. For the most part she likes her life and she is very good at her chosen professions.

For the first few hundred pages Murakami is content to let the reader get to know the various characters, and slowly but surely set up the story. Very early on the reality between 1984 and 1Q84 become inter-meshed and you spend large swaths of time, like the characters, not sure which reality is which. The story lines come crashing together, however, around the end of the second book, about 600 pages in, and before that you are left to wonder how these people are connected. But by the end of the second book many questions are answered (although there are still a lot of loose ends, more on that later). In the third book Murakami adds another character to the book, the tenacious and vile Ushikawa. Alternating between the three, the book alters slightly is style from the previous two, as Ushikawa is investigating Tengo and Aomame trying to find out what we already know. All while Aomame and Tengo are trying to find resolution for their prior actions before Ushikawa can find them.

That’s about as much into the plot I can get without giving out any significant spoilers. Throughout the book though Murakami touches on a number of themes, but for me the major themes were: the negative effects of religion on people (I take it as religion as a whole while others think just he’s only speaking about cults, but in reality the only difference between cults and religions is popularity and societal acceptance), relationships (father-son and family-friends), and love.  It took me about a month to read this book (around two hours a day on my commute to and from work) and that it was a very enjoyable time. I loved the story line, the characters, and being immersed in this world. Then again I like long books. Especially, if the authors are good about keeping the story going and not dragging it along. This book is a prime example of how to do that. I was never bored or skipped forward and I actually missed my stop on the train a few times because I was so immersed. As I mentioned above the story ends with some loose ends, which I think is fine because the major questions are resolved, but if you like every little story line explained in full and wrapped up with a little bow, then well you might get agitated at the end.

Lastly, I checked this book out on my kindle but there was no way I’d finish it in 3 weeks so I turned off my WiFi and was able to make it to the end. So if you have a kindle and ever check out a book on it just turn off your WiFi and you won’t have to worry about the book disappearing before you’re done.

In honor of these incredibly ridiculous hearings:

(picture via animalwebguide.com)

Can you spare some change?

This morning when I woke up I opened up (figuratively) the morning paper to see what the hell is going on in this crazy world of ours.  When lo and behold I see that there was some craziness that went down at St. John’s University here in NY.  If you don’t know St. John’s is a Catholic University, and yesterday one of the Chaplains was arrested for sending smut to what he thought was a 13 year old boy.  (Side note it would have been much cooler for him to get caught on the show To Catch A Predator.)  Money quote:

When NYPD investigators showed up at the cleric’s on-campus apartment in Murray Hall yesterday, Plock argued that he sent his X-rated videos only to consenting adults, a law enforcement source said.

“His face is clear in the video. It looks like he filmed it in his bathroom at St. John’s, and he sent it to someone he thought was a teenager,” the source said.

Damn this stuff doesn’t really surprise me much any more, and instead of making some kind of cheap joke about priests and little boys (way too easy to do, and I like my jokes to be a bit more challenging).  Instead I will take this opportunity to throw down a bit of history.

In case you don’t know celibacy among priests was a personal choice, and was not a mandated by the church.  The push for a mandate for celibacy among the clergy began in AD 304 at the Council of Elvira, however, it wasn’t until the Lateran Council in 1139 that The Church really endorsed and enforced the rule.  It is impossible to know whether there were problems among the clergy after this with homosexuality and pedophilia, but some saw a link between celibacy and these behaviors:

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The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a hilarious, but deep book.  Although I have never read Faust this book is influenced by it.   The Master and Margarita deals with what happens in Moscow when the devil comes to town for a visit.  The devil comes with his gang of miscreants that include a humongous talking black cat, a pirate, a naked witch, and Korovyov the choir master.  They descend upon Moscow wreaking havoc wherever they go.  However, since Muscovites don’t believe in God or Satan, they have to find some way to explain all of the strange occurrences that are befalling the city.  This was a great book to read after The Brothers Karamazov, because one of the themes that Dostoevsky explores in it is the struggle between science and religion.  In Dostoevsky’s work, one of the prevalent fears throughout is the loss of faith of the Russian people–especially in The Demons.  He sees that nihilism is becoming too prevalent among the Russian people, and Dostoevsky worries about what may happen if this trend continues.  Bulgakov’s book is written in the 1930′s when the ideals of communism are in full force, and many of Dostoevsky’s fears have been realized.  Despite seeing the unbelievable and the supernatural the citizens of Moscow refuse to believe, and they actively try to dispel any notions that Satan is real.  The devil and his retinue are hilarious, and yet, very scary.  This is a devil that seems real.  He is intelligent, conniving, and ruthless; although his gang is even more ruthless, and at times have to be restrained by the devil, but not often.  These characters absolutely love creating chaos and mayhem, and although it can be a bit unnerving it is nevertheless an extremely enjoyable read.

The Master, however, is one of the few who dares to not only believe, but to write a story about Pontius Pilate.  His story of Pontius Pilate and Jesus is like nothing you have ever read before, and is highly entertaining.  It is this story that gets him into trouble, and eventually garners the attention of the devil.

Margarita, is the women who loves the Master.  She loves him so much, in fact, that she is willing to do anything for him.  She goes through her own heroes journey in the book, and proves that she is willing to move heaven and hell for the love of her life.

Bulgakov masterly interweaves history with fantasy throughout the novel.  The book at the same time is a scathing review on Soviet life under Stalin.  It was censored in by the Soviet Union, and was not published uncensored until late in the 20th Century.  Like I mentioned above what is this book really comes down to is a realization of the fears that Dostoevsky perceived to be coming more than fifty years before this novel was published.  Unlike other Russian novels, which are extraordinarily verbose and lengthy, The Master and Margarita clocks in at 335 pages.  So if the long novels are too daunting for you than this is a much shorter novel, and more readable than Dostoevsky.  It was an enjoyable read, and a very good book, but for me it still not as good as either The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, or The Idiot.  But then I am also a bit of a masochist and I really enjoy long, long well written novels.  And now for the excerpt.  During this scene the devil and his evil gang make their official entrance onto the Moscow scene in the form of a magic show at the Variety Theater.

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Oh man!  There’s things that I see sometimes that just scare me and this is one of them.  Some of these religious nut cases, have decided that God’s Law supercedes the Constitution.  I don’t even really know where to start here, they want to repeal the 22nd Amendment so that one of the worst Presidents in the history of the US can have another term to further destroy our position in the world.

The important thing to understand about so-called “term limits” is that they are man’s law, not God’s Law. The God who parted the Red Sea is surely not worried about so-called “term limits”. When you vote your faith you let Almighty God take care of the details.

Presidential term limits are not in the Bible. And they were not in our Constitution until added by an activist congress in 1951.

Hey let’s not stop with term limits, let’s re-institute slavery, force women out of the work place and take away their votes, let’s create a monarchy (because it doesn’t say anything in the Bible about Republics and Presidents),  and let’s just ship all gays to an island somewhere.  I hope that this whole website is some cruel joke, but I really doubt it.  Some people won’t be happy until we have a Christian theocracy here in America to combat the Muslim theocracy in the Middle East.  I am actually speechless right now.  This shit is just sad.

I should begin by stating that I absolutely love Dostoevsky, and Russian Literature.  This is the fourth major novel of his that I have read.  The other three are Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Demons (also alternately titled The Possessed ).  This novel I would rank after Crime and Punishment and probably just in front of The Idiot.  Although The Demons is a good book is lags well behind the others.  Reading Dostoevsky is daunting.  Every time I start on page 1, and realize that I have 700+ pages left, I feel that I will never finish.  His books are long, methodical, and incredibly verbose.  For many people this is unacceptable, and they can’t stand reading books that long.  I, however, really enjoy long, well written books.  In this day and age of instant gratification, even in modern novels, it is nice to read a book that takes its time.  Like his other books, this one starts out slowly plodding along like an old horse.   It is his prose and his ability to write consistent, believable characters that makes his books so enjoyable.  He is a true master, and I learn something new about writing every time I read his work.

The Brothers Karamazov, in my opinion, is a much more lofty and mature work.  It is rightly considered his greatest work, because it is his most ambitious.  It seems as if he took everything he learned from his previous novels–including the grand themes from each–and combined them into one glorious masterpiece.  Dostoevsky’s greatest strength is how he writes his characters.  He is able to take the reader into the mind of these fabulous–and many times dark–characters.  In Crime and Punishment the whole novel is about the inner workings of the mind of a murderer before, during, and after his murder, and subsequently into his path to redemption.  Dostoevsky was able to expand on that, and other themes that he had explored in previous books.  He brings in his ideas of God, science, nihilism, corruption, good and evil, and many others from The Idiot and The Demons.  Like in The Idiot, an epileptic character plays a major role in this novel.  The Brothers Karamazov is about so much more than parricide.  The book was published during 1879-80, and during this time science really started to conflict with religion.  Dostoevsky uses this book, in part, as a treatise on the fundamental questions of the relationship between religion and science.  Can they co-exist?  Does God exist or is he just a construct of man?

These are some of the questions that are raised in the book, and these questions help to drive the story.  One question posed is if God doesn’t exist, and is just the creation of man, then there is no sin.  Sin only exists if God exists, and therefore, if God doesn’t exist, then everything is legal, and nothing is prohibited.  Dostoevsky writes convincingly in favor of each stance, and shows a real knowledge about both topics.  (Dostoevsky, in fact, knows deeply about both topics.  He was sentenced to death for his radical socialistic views–a sentence which was rescinded.  He ended up spending four years in exile, in prison, in Siberia.  It was here where Dostoevsky renounced his radical and subversive views, and became deeply religious.  It was also here in Siberia that Dostoevsky’s was in the company of the worst sort of people: murderers, rapists, robbers, and other corrupted men.  It is through his close proximity to these people that allows him to write about these characters so convincingly.) These ideas of religion, science, and reason are characterized by the three sons of Fyodor Karamazov: Dmitri, Ivan, and Alexey (who is the hero of the novel).

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A leaked memo from the Obama campaign–via 23/6–dealing with the ground rules for tonights Hillary/Obama love-fest:

Looks like Obama is taking off the kid gloves:

Well I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let’s talk about 9/11.

The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors – the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we’d be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.

Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership – the people who murdered 3000 Americans – have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That’s the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism.

I love it.  After watching Guliani’s campaign I am sick and tired of 9/11 being thrown around like it’s some edgy catch phrase.  I’m also sick and tired of the GOP trying to scare up votes.  And lastly, I’m sick and fucking tired of knowing that somewhere out there Bin Laden is still alive and planning god knows what.  I want to see his carcass hanging from the GW bridge.  Check out the full story here.

Some people tend to think that dick and fart jokes are base and the lowest form of comedy.  I still find them to be highly entertaining and hilarious however.  So in honor of dick and fart jokes, and to show that they are not the lowest form of comedy, I am going to share some of the best dick and fart jokes from Dante’s The Inferno. In his description of the punishment allotted to flatterers Dante says:

Thither we came, and thence down in the moat

I saw a people smothered in filth

That out of human privies seemed to flow;

And whilst below there with mine eye I search,

I saw one with his head so foul with  ordure,*

It was not clear if he were clerk or layman.

*The literal translation of ordure from Italian is shit.

The next one is perhaps my favorite and it is an encounter that Dante and Virgil have with some demons in Hell.  Here the leader of the demons, Malacoda, orders his minions to help Dante and Virgil.  As they prepared to do his bidding they gave each other a signal.

Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about;

but first had each one thrust his tongue between

His teeth towards their leader for a signal;

And he made a trumpet of his rump.*

*Actual Italian translation is not rump but ass or asshole.

I love the imagery of one set of demons giving a Bronx Cheer while the leader farts back at them.  The last one is an excerpt of the punished souls blashpheming God.

At the conclusion of his words, the thief

Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs,*

Crying: “Take that, God, for at thee I aim them.”

* Figs is a hand signal where the thumb is pushed out between the index and middle fingers while a fist is formed.  It combines the female vulva and the male phallus and means “Fuck You!” or “Up You Ass!”

Well there you have it dick and fart jokes in classical literature.  If it was good enough for Dante then it can’t be all that bad.

Just read this informative and slightly disturbing article about the sex trade in Afghanistan.

The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs. He paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex.

Customs meant to keep women “pure” have not stopped prostitution. Girls are expected to remain virgins until their wedding nights, so some prostitutes have only anal sex.

Check out the rest of the article, and then thank god you weren’t born into a life where you had to start prostituting yourself out at 11 years old.