Books 28 and 29 of 2018

One of my favorite genres is the drug revelation memoir. I love reading authors attempting to describe going off the rails. I think of Walter Benjamin writing about hashish, or Aldous Huxley waxing philosophically about mescalin, or Castaneda's descriptions of peyote trips, or Burroughs, etc.

One of the coolest and most interesting thinkers and describers of such experiences was Terrence McKenna. And McKenna and his ideas are a large part of Lin's book. In fact, the only parts of the book which are at all interesting are when Lin is summarizing McKenna. Which leads me to ask why the hell anyone would read this book when they can just read McKenna or watch him on YouTube.

Because--no offense to Mr. Lin--this is the most boring book I've ever read about this topic. Or any topic. It's pointless. It's meandering. It says nothing new. Even the passages about depression and feeling alienated are dull...and another of my favorite genres is the descent into madness memoir by people who feel isolated and alienated and depressed.

How can a writer with any skills at all write tedious and wholly unimaginative descriptions of DMT and salvia divinorum experiences? I simply can't get my head around it. He smokes DMT and spends pages describing feeling distracted and paranoid and moving in and out of a tent he built in the corner from a blanket. He can't make a salvia experience at all tangible or interesting? Even Miley Cyrus can do that.

Nobody cares if you felt suspicious for six hours straight after she shared her DMT with you. How many pages can you spend giving her the hairy eye-ball while she wonders what the fuck your problem is? What did you see or feel inside that realm? That's what's interesting. McKenna and virtually every other writer creates edge-of-the-seat, earth-shattering descriptive passages of breathtaking wizardry about DMT. Lin's passages sag like over wet noodles. I remember as a novice writer in the Temple University MA program how Toby Olson complimented my description of a mushroom experience and pumped me up with lavish praise during a workshop, only to say "but anyone can write a good trip, it's almost cliched."

Mr. Lin--anyone can write a good trip. Why couldn't you? I read something by you before and that was better than this, but not better enough that I would want to read whatever you published between then and now. And after having read this, I definitely do not want to read whatever you published between that and this, because this was so bad. Sorry, dude.




Thank goodness Ms. Due provided a cleanse for the above atrocity. This is a fine selection of creepy fiction, and runs the gamut from traditional ghost stories which are finely crafted and inhabit an interesting niche to more action/adventure sci-fi thrillers. I particularly liked the one about demons in a Florida swamp who take over infants for a while in the summer--has a nice sardonic tone and delicious Twilight Zone moral! And best of all are the rather intense post-apocalyptic stories at the end. Definitely should go on your Halloween reading list.

UPS Can Suck It

When did UPS become DHL? They left a note on my door last Monday saying they would attempt delivery again after five Tuesday. I rushed home from work and nobody showed up. They attempted delivery Wednesday at one in the afternoon when I was at work, so I went online and paid five dollars to change the delivery to my work. They tried to deliver to my house again at noon on Thursday and left a notice saying my package would be held for pickup for five days. I tracked the number and it said the package had been returned to sender. I called UPS and they assured me the package would be rerouted to my work. They attempted delivery Friday at my school at seven pm. I called UPS again and they said they would deliver Monday. I gave specific instructions about leaving it in the office if I was unavailable and that the school would be closed after four. Nothing Monday. Nothing Tuesday. I called last night to check and they said they would deliver today guaranteed. Nothing. I came home and they had attempted to deliver it to my house at two o'clock in the afternoon while I was teaching at school. I called again this evening and blew up at some poor woman who had nothing to do with this mess. The postal service is much better than this, even when I have to go down Pennsylvania Ave to my Post Office and wait in line! Don't even get me started on Comcast...

Netflix

I had only one positive reaction to Superman Returns; having endured such banality I assumed I'd at least be spared an equal dose for a while. Hollywood couldn't possibly produce a duck like that again in short order.

Wrong. Remember the duck that was shot and put in the freezer and lived? And then had cardiac arrest and was defibrilated and lived again? That duck had a lot in common with the returning Superman, and has just as much in common with the new Bond. At the risk of being labeled a film fuddy-duddy who can't suspend his disbelief long enough to enjoy a goofy action flick, I pronounce Casino Royale (with Cheese) abysmally stupid:

Men can jump forty or fifty feet through the air in a single bound. Over and over. They leap like fleas. The first chase scene was something out of Spiderman or The Matrix. And it was boring, almost as boring as the 45-minute Texas hold 'em match that makes up much of this trainwreck.

More than $100 million in cash apparently fits into a tiny metal brief case, even though earlier in the same movie $100 million took several large trunks in a convoy of vehicles to carry around.

James Bond is a new 007 now, today, at this minute. M muses that she wishes Bond were around during the Cold War, thus rendering completely senseless the only bit of the Bond franchise with any remaining dignity--its chronology.

Of course I must note that the new Bond actor is appealingly gritty and dark and is certainly the beefiest Bond ever. Daniel Craig had a curious affect on the libido of the other person inhabiting my house, who was unaware there was any incoherence in the script at all, and who spent 30 minutes after the finale rewinding and rewatching dripping bathing suit scenes.

I could hook her up with more sensibly written real pornography.