Monday...

It's Monday night, "officially" Tuesday morning, I suppose. It is just past 1:05 am and I'm not asleep. After some kind of stomach bug (or something...) I picked up late last week and probably made a whole lot worse by drinking more than I should have Friday night, I think I'm finally (mostly) fully recovered. Though I'm not sure I'll be completely over the reflective embarrassment of being "that guy at the party" for another several years or so.

But now I'm a little less than sleepy after sleeping for the whole weekend and sleeping for a whole chunk of today. I went to my 8 am class, but then I came home after trying to have some breakfast and not being able to finish it; not to mention the fact that I didn't know if I'd be able to keep it down for the two hours of physics, and the 3 hours of lab. You know that feeling, where you don't feel nauseated but your stomach has that uncomfortable feeling like if you move the wrong way your stomach starts doing the Melbourne Shuffle. So I came home and slept. Good choice. I feel better now, though I have some homework I need to finish for tomorrow's 8 am...

What I really wanted to mention though was that I watched Good Night and Good Luck. earlier tonight and it reminds me of today's political landscape. I suppose that was part of the point; though the film is in black and white it was released in 2005, a time during which "terrorist" was a term used as often as "communist" was in the film and it's setting. This is probably one of those films that should be on one of those "must-watch" lists. What's most ironic is that we've turned away in the conversation today from "terrorism" and back to "socialism" as a label. By "we" of course I mean Fox News, the GOP, and the Right mainstream media. The only Journalist I've seen who comes close to actually fighting the bull and getting through to the reality of the situation as Edward Murrow did is, believe it or not, Jon Stewart. Any conservative reading this automatically thinks "of course. You're young, misguided, being brainwashed by Stewart, not getting real news." but Stewart does something that Anderson Cooper and John King and Wolf Blitzer and certainly not Hannity or O'Reilly don't do, and that is to call everyone out on their bullshit. Why do smart young people watch Stewart and Colbert and consider it news? Because they're saying what we're all thinking: How could there exist such a radical lot of people spewing stupidity, hatred, and fear and not be getting called out on it?

Brief Update

So right now, besides writing this and still not being asleep, (and by "right now" I mean "over these past several weeks") I've been reading A Song of Ice and Fire. It has me engrossed, and I'd finish the leaked version of the latest book, A Dance With Dragons sooner, except it isn't the entire book and I don't want to have to stop in the middle and wait a bunch of days for the book to actually be released.  The series has absolutely everything a fantasy novel could possibly have.

I've also been working on a little project, The Bank of Man, which is still in the early stages of development. You can check it out, get a bit of an idea of what the look and feel is, etc. at http://jvaldivia.com/bankofman/.  There's still plenty of work left to do on it, but I think that at the rate I'm going I should have it up and live on its own domain by the end of the summer.

In addition to this handful of things I do to keep myself entertained and mitigate the boredom that I go through pretty often sitting alone in this big house (playing guitar, reading, minecraft, Braid, Osmos, doodling, trying to write music, etc.), I've been slowly doing work on my radio station's automation system. I've laid out most of the plan for it. All that's left is to finish selecting some of the music that's in the rotation and then it can start going live. I'd rant a little about the crap I've had to swallow since I became Program Director, but I'm too tired. Maybe in another post. And I definitely won't rant about the stuff my mother and father are putting me through until I've calmed down from it. All I can say right now is that they're being childish and this divorce bullshit of theirs could have been resolved, finished, and each of them gone their separate ways 3 years ago.

I guess I'm just trying to cut myself out of the big mold we all come in. We're like a board game with figures... they all come together in a big mold you have to cut apart. I'm trying to be the plus in the world's minus. I want to be the white to the world's black, the butter-side down to the world's top-side butter. I want to be different... but just like everyone else.

The point is I want to choose. I can't believe I have a destiny. I know I probably do, and I know that I can't change it... but I'll be damned if it's something I won't enjoy. Fuck that! I will destroy the universe before I'm doomed to do something I won't enjoy.

On House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves.

Wow. That's all that comes out without a lot of effort. Simply an astonishing book. I finished it a couple of weeks ago -- during the first week of the New Year -- and it was absolutely worth every crazy passage, every insane dead end, every labyrinth, unanswered question, every word, every space.

You never really pay attention to that, huh? It's always about the words, the letters, the shapes. But without space, without emptiness, you can't have form. And I think that gets at the heart of the book: space. Danielewski (or Zampano, if you prefer) pays a lot of attention to space: the hall, the pages and pages about echoes, the house itself defying what it means to define space. If you haven't already read it, I recommend you go and pick up a copy somewhere and read it. It is such an intricate piece of work that you can't help but appreciate it. Make sure, though, that when you pick it up it's with the mindset that you will play Danieleweski's games. It takes a sensational amount of participation on the reader's part to get the big picture. What this means is that you'll be spending a lot of time looking at footnotes.

Any analysis beyond the fact that it's masterful because of the way it immerses you is just spoiler.

Go forth and enjoy.

And keep on reading.

A Long Journey

Book: House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

Progress: 312/709 pages (44%)

Attempt : 2nd

All I can say about this book is "wow". I'm not even halfway through and it's definitely one of my favorites. Reading this novel has been an experience wholly different from any I've had with the written word before.

There are many reasons why this novel is unlike anything you've read before. Hopefully the following anecdote presents at least one of these reasons to you, since I can't find the words for it.

This is my second attempt at reading House of Leaves. You should know that this book relies quite a bit on footnotes to get the entire experience across so in order to not be completely lost from the outset, one has to make an effort to go through all the footnotes (since they contain content that is essential to the novel).

On my first attempt at reading this novel, I got as far as Chapter IX. If you've read House of Leaves before, you know that the second narrator (who lives in the footnotes and is interacting with the novel as he -- the second narrator -- is reading it) never calls it "Chapter IX", he calls it "The Labyrinth". And it is. The first half of the chapter is about labyrinths in general, and the second half is commentary on the main story line. In order to glean this, however, the reader is forced to navigate the footnotes, often reading into dead ends (irrelevant information that stops citing footnotes in the footnotes and sends you back to where you started) and frequently forcing the reader to physically alter the way they're reading the book (flipped upside down, sideways, there's even a section that is printed in mirrored text!) I'll be damned if you don't start calling this chapter "The Labyrinth" also.

This entire novel is like this. It forces you into the experience much more than any other book I've ever read. And not just by these physical interactions. The book offers so much more than I've described. You really have to read it for yourself. And it's definitely on the list of Books I Think Everyone Should Read.

This book has been a really interesting journey so far, and I'm sure it will continue to be.

A new school year.

Welcome back to school, self. The classes seem interesting enough so far. No car this year :\

Oh well. Blah.

Class has drained my brain... @_@

New Stuff

So since I'm not going to see pretty much any of my hard earned cash, I said "whatevs" and indulged myself by buying an iPod Touch. This post is a product of the device and I really like that it plays music, too! I didn't know you could do that XD

I'm currently just sitting around enjoying my weekend. I'll be in Mexico midweek so I'm really excited =D

Work still sucks but it's not quite as bad as before. I actually get to do things sometimes. I play guitar every chance I get and am working on improving my grasp of fundamentals and becoming a better musician in general. I mean anyone can play a guitar but it takes more than that to be a good musician.

Enjoy your weekend! I will.