Peeping Tom

In case you're wondering, I did finish reading Tom Wolfe's latest book, "I am Charlotte Simmons". It stinks. He should have called it, "I am Peeping Tom Wolfe". It's a wank from start to finish.

On his website, this novel is described as a "much-anticipated triumph by America's master chronicler immortalizing the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed college life of the '00s". Hardly. If you ask me, this book chronicles a senior citizen's creepy obsession with the sex lives of young people. At the end, Wolfe has a dumpy, tenured relic of a professor force a moral reckoning upon the characters but it's a weak attempt to give the novel a point. The "Man in White" is lost in the revels of self-indulgence. It's kind of sad but fascinating in a train wreck kind of way. As an aside I found it interesting that Wolfe and Bush are great fans of one another. Figures. They'd make quite a duo at a karaoke night club.

Excerpt from page 270:

" The machine, called a StairMaster, allowed you to run — if you could really call it running — without taking your feet off a pair of huge pedals. It was a bit like standing up and "pumping" on a bicycle. There were many girls...Some wore plain, sexless gym clothes, T-shirts, sweatshirts, running shorts, and sneakers. More, however, came dressed as...girls. Super-low-cut sweatpants they had! And short T-shirts! And lots of nubile young flesh and belly buttons in between! From the back...was he seeing a little buttocks décolletage, a little cleavage...Right in front of Adam, a girl with long blond hair pumped away on the StairMaster in low-waisted lavender nylon running shorts and an abbreviated, royal blue basketball jersey. She didn't have large breasts, but with each rotation her nipples pressed out against the thin nylon of the halter, and her belly button winked this way and that in the long expanse of bare flesh. Four machines down the row, a girl wore black tights, which gripped every curve and crevice of her loins like a second skin, and a flesh-colored athletic bra. The tops of her breasts bobbed up and down like flan. You have to look twice to make sure she had on any bra at all. The sight aroused Adam. His own loins were on the qui vive, as if something were about to...happen in this so-called fitness center...The push of a button, the flick of a switch...and they would stop pretending anymore and plunge into a full-blown rout, an out-and-out orgy, and rutrutrutrutrut..."

Obviously, it's ol' Tom who's rutrutrutrutruting.




wolfe books fiction writing

Tombstone Stories, Reno

I've taken a lot of photos of graves in the Nevada outback. They are scattered throughout my Nevada Journal along with other quirky pictures from the region. The graves in the desert are generally from the 1800's and have mellowed into colorful, anonymous history. The wind and grinding sand have rubbed names away but not the sense of a journey with high hopes and strong bonds.

This memento beside Interstate 395 near Reno's Hilton Casino marks a different end along the road that came later, after the pioneers and explorers carved a path through the west and vanished along it. These stones mark the end of a hopeless journey that, as the story goes, no one took to nowhere.

SF short

The Cobert thing interrupted the regular ebb and flow of things around here so it's merely coincidence that I'm posting the link to another video at this point. This is a short one called "They are made out of meat". It's based on a story by Hugo Award winning SF author Terry Bisson. I find it wonderfully quirky. Perhaps you might enjoy it as well.

Bush's reaction to Colbert roast

Bush during the ass kicking Colbert gave him at the Correspondents Dinner via IFLIM. Now, until these current updated links are pulled like the others have been, this about covers it.


RE-UPDATE:
The Google links are not accessible half the time but these links have been good from the start:
Colbert video part 1Colbert video part 2


bush reaction colbert roast cspan colbert video

Thanks Colbert

RE-RE-RE-RE-RE UPDATE ... keeping up with the Colbert video is a task. The links keep getting removed but for the moment you can see them here:

Google Video post

The Google links is not accessible half the time but these links have been good from the start:
Colbert video part 1
Colbert video part 2



Was Stephen Colbert's Cspan monologue merely edgy dinner theatre or is our collective voice finally beginning to break free of the spell cast by the retrogressives? To the extent that the answer is up to us, like Colbert on Saturday night, we've got to kick so-called "political correctness" to the curb. It's cowardliness masquerading virtue. Still, always good to give credit where credit is due. Colbert broke the Perfect Silence at the White House Media Whores Dinner. Here's a place you can thank him.



stephen colbert white house correspondence dinner cspan thanks colbert

Right-wing conspirators

First in a series. Meet the conspirators who are manipulating America, dismantling our Constitution, Bill of Rights and working, step by baby step, to replace our Democracy with extremist, fundamentalist religious rule.

Howard F. Ahmanson Jr is a multimillionaire who, among other things, owns the company that produces and oversees the Diebold electronic voting machines. Where campaigns fall short, it's Diebold to the rescue. These machines are designed so that they don't produce a back up paper trail that would verify voting results. These machines are easily adjusted to show whatever outcome the Conspiracy wants. Naturally Bush allows Diebold to police themselves. Cosy little arrangement. The Orange County Register reported in 2004, he "no longer consider[s] [it] essential" to stone people who are deemed to have committed certain immoral acts." On the other hand, Ahmanson also told the Register, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things. But I don't think it's at all a necessity."

This is yet one more reason why I am so disgusted by religion.



Howard F. Ahmanson rightwing conspiracy diebold voting fraud