The Book-a-Week Project, Week 8

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Bobby Henderson

I don’t understand why people are religious. I mean, I understand what makes people want to believe in myths – fear of nature, fear of self, fear of death – but I don’t understand how people are able to deceive themselves to the point where they can say, “I don’t care that this belief is unfounded, illogical, and obviously wrong. I have faith and that is all I need.” Because generally, having faith in something that has absolutely no basis in reality is a sign of psychosis. Believing one can fly and jumping out a window is crazy, but believing one can talk to a magical ghost spirit in the sky and that he guides the basketball when you make three-point shots during county semifinals is totally fucking reasonable?

I do lack faith. It's true. Most of the reason for that is that I have the capacity for critical thought and I enjoy using it. Turns out most folks are able to think deductively, observing evidence and making judgments and inferences based on that. Yet, oddly, depending who you believe, somewhere around 85 percent of Americans believe in capital-G God. And oh-my-fucking-god MORE THAN HALF believe that God created humans in their present form. Fifteen percent believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Thirty percent believe in evolution guided by God, so they're only half stupid.

Seriously think about that for a few seconds. Most people in this country believe that a magical fellow WHO LIVES IN THE SKY pointed his magic finger at the planet he just made and went DING! and there was a magically made person who could talk and walk around. He had remnants of a vestigial tail and shared 99% of his DNA with certain non-human primates but that was just put there as part of an important test by God. Because even though Adam could talk to God and spent a fair amount of time hanging out with him, God could foresee a time when he wouldn’t be kicking it quite as often with us humans and would have to give us a test to make sure we were still down with the program because if we weren’t he’d essentially throw us into a Sarlacc pit of suffering for eternity.

It also means MOST PEOPLE believe that all prehistoric fossil evidence is just a sly ruse by that clever magic man that you have to see past to prove your faith and show that you’re willing to believe in his utter bullshit for absolutely no reason because otherwise his feelings will apparently be hurt and he won’t admit you to the super-fun theme park in the sky where you can do anything forever as long as it’s not a sin, which means you can’t fuck, drink, listen to the Rolling Stones or Ween or really probably anything but Christian rock and gospel, read books about witches or science, cuss, or dance. Plus you have to go to services practically every night, and since basically every Christian priest is up there (even the one who fucked your son?) and feeling especially self-righteous now, they drag on like forever. Which frankly doesn’t seem like that great of a deal, especially considering you spent the last eighty years on Earth acting like a completely ignorant dumbshit just to get there. Did I mention you can’t even masturbate? Nope. Not even that.

I’m happy to argue with creationists when I’m drunk and riled enough, but it inevitably comes down to that claim of faith, which is basically the same as the greasy bully from grade school saying with a smirk, “I said I didn’t steal your pen,” and you saying, “Yes, you did! I can see it in your goddamn hand right now!” and him just shrugging with that smug, dumb smile on his face and walking away. I always expect those nuts to at some point double over, wracked with laughter, and say, “Oh shit! I can’t believe you think I’m actually that stupid! Of course I don’t believe a grumpy old elf created all living things! Come on, man!”

But they never do.

Jesus, what was I talking about? Right, that book. It’s the story of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which has proofs for its existence remarkably similar to those used by proponents of Intelligent Design, which is basically Creationism served cold with an artificially-flavored sciency dipping sauce. Henderson argues that since ID is being touted as “just another possibility and shouldn’t we expose these kids to all the possibilities, no matter how absurd,” FSMism deserves equal space. It’s a silly book, filled with the same a priori logic and specious reasoning as ID, so it serves its purpose perfectly. Henderson has a good sense of humor about the whole thing, but isn’t above mean jabs when he feels them appropriate. Plus he promises a Beer Volcano and Stripper Factory in his version of heaven, so fuck it, I’m in.

He’s got a website, too. The best thing there is the open letter to the Kansas Board of Education, along with responses.

If you insist on believing in God, please at least consider this final warning from C-3PO: “In his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years [eternity].” Is it really worth it? I bet Boba Fett doesn’t think so.

Next? Well, it’s Pastoralia by George Saunders!

The Book-a-Week Project, Week 7

Lunar Park
Bret Easton Ellis

Poking out from the rat-gnawed vaginas, raped children, and delusional psychotics of Bret Easton Ellis’s novels is a great sense of humor. All of his books are well-crafted, dark satire. As the main character of Lunar Park, Ellis turns the humor toward himself. His illustration of himself as (surprise!) a coke-snorting, vodka-sucking egomaniac with two young (and medicated) kids, a new wife who’s already tired of his bullshit, and a mistress (who also happens to be writing her masters thesis on him) is pathetic and hilarious. His jabs at the public’s perception of him are truly funny. One example: The novel he’s attempting to write in Lunar Park’s world is titled Teenage Pussy.

Lunar Park has some Stephen King in it, too. Ellis’s home houses demons besides self-loathing and addiction – the kind of demons with bloody claws and slime trails. The book depends heavily on the horror genre, and he pulls from it with skill.

Lunar Park is stylistically very different from anything Ellis has yet written, but he’s good at what he does and the book is tightly managed and engrossing.

Next up: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson. Good night.

No Shit?

www.PresidentBushIsAFuckingMoron.com

Oh, You Like Them Talkin’ Animals?

Then check out this ad for the very shitty Avia running shoe company. You should probably also go to the site of its creator, 72andSunny, and look at their other works of wonder.

Westside, bitch.

Don’t Argue

Go here, then click “VIRGIN MOBILE ‘STUMP FIGHT’”.

I know it’s not actually for a good cause. I too hate it when corporations encourage their customers to switch to online billing under the pretense that they want to save the environment, rather than admitting the obvious god damn fucking truth that they don’t want to pay for printing and postage.

But it is a very entertaining advertisement. Oh, and Happy Arbor Day, you dumb piece of shit!

The Book-a-Week Project, Week 6

The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas: Stories
Davy Rothbart

Were I Davy Rothbart’s high-school or community-college creative writing teacher, I’d be proud of him after reading this slim collection of stories. I would say, “Davy, you have talent, and if you keep working hard, you will one day be a good writer.” For most of the stories here, I would give him a B or B+. One would get a C. I would highlight sentences such as, “Elena and I clamped onto each other desperately as though we could ward off the world and its sickness,” and write in the margins, “Try to be more original here.” In several other places I would write, “SHOW us what he’s like, don’t TELL us.”

Every story is narrated in first-person. Davy is unable to write in any voice but his own, which makes for clunky dialogue and characterization. He shoots for capital-M meaningful conclusions to every story and they all feel forced. Someday he may be a good writer, but that day was not the day he wrote these stories. Most likely this was published to capitalize on the success of the book-length compilations of previously unpublished material from FOUND Magazine, which he created. It shouldn’t have been. The notes and letters in FOUND are great because they are frequently touching and sweet without trying to be. Rothbart should have learned more from them.

Perhaps the reason I can be so sure the quality of his writing is shoddy is that it’s probably similar to what I would write, had I the creativity to actually imagine a story I didn’t directly experience. So it’s probably similar to what I’d write if someone hand-fed me the characters and storyline, then let me have at it.

Next week: Bret Easton Ellis’s Lunar Park. And watch your local bookstore’s shelves for my upcoming The Solo Skateboarder of Nebraska, Ohio: A Reimagineering of Davy Rothbart’s Classic Stories.

You suckers.

The Book-a-Week Project, Week 5

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks

[For the record, I actually did finish this last week. I’ve just been damn busy. What? You wanna throw down, bitch? Let’s get it on then, poopsie!]

Zombies are great. Rather, films and books about zombies are great. Zombies themselves like to eat the living, among whom I count myself, and are therefore not great. The concept of a zombie is ridiculous – a human afflicted with some sort of blood-borne disease that causes illness and death, then reanimation and a ravenous hunger for living (usually human) flesh. At the same time, the zombie is really only an exaggeration of the worst aspects of humanity. Emotion, critical thought, and memory disappear, replaced by a desire to consume those who still possess those abilities.

Wait. The worst aspects of humanity? Hell, that’s most humans. Have you ever been in a New York subway car during rush hour? Death has already found everyone in that shuttle to hell, they just don’t know it yet. And by the time they figure it out, they’re gonna be real hungry.

Max Brooks is also the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, which goes into great detail about the “zombie virus” and every conceivable technique for making it through the zombie apocalypse. In the world of World War Z, published after that ten-year struggle, Brooks’s Survival Guide was the primary civilian manual for protection from the undead. Brooks travelled around the globe to China, Israel, Cuba, and just about everywhere else to interview business magnates, military commanders, K-9 handlers, and anyone else crucial during that period.

Every conceivable aspect of the war is covered: how the virus emerged; how it spread; how it was managed (or mismanaged) in most nations by politicians, civilians, filmmakers, religious leaders, entrepreneurs, and the military. Every voice sounds authentic to the nationality, gender, and age of the interviewee. There are heroes, cowards, profiteers, and people whose minds buckled and cracked from the horror.

The entire book is a pleasure to read. Every detail is fascinating and, as good zombie literature (and film) should, it uses zombies to cast critical light on the nature of the living. The film rights have already been purchased. It would be great to see this realized as a mockumentary interspersed with footage of the war.

I hope Max Brooks continues to fill the conspicuous void of quality zombie fiction. He’s doing God’s work. Highly recommended.

Next: The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas by Davy Rothbart (of FOUND Magazine).