December Thoughts
December Thoughts
An update of things I've been doing.
This weekend I feel socially drained. I have no desire to go anywhere or do anything. We had plans for today and last night. Our town’s tree lighting, the Christmas parade this morning, and a boat light parade this evening. We skipped and will skip all of it. I don’t feel like it and neither does my wife and daughter. Maybe because we stayed up late watching Attack on Titan, whatever it is, I’m feeling overwhelmingly tired.
Yesterday, after a busy week at work my Christmas vacation started. I took a few days off so we can go check out the Harry Potter stuff in Orlando and maybe stock up on some Slytherin Supremacist gear. I’ve never gotten around to reading the books and just watched the movies for the first time last year when my kid got into Potter stuff. It’s surprisingly good for kids' stuff and it has grown on me. I might even bother reading through the books eventually.
Besides going to Universal Studios I need to knock out some end-of-the-year cleaning around the house. My garage is a mess, half of it is my gym while the other half is a giant pile of random shit that mostly needs to be thrown out. I also have to put up Christmas lights and the tree, which we decided to do once we get back from Orlando due to not wanting the cat to destroy everything while we are out of town. It’s also raining, and gross outside, and I don’t feel like Griswolding all over the damn place in the rain. Most importantly I want to use my free time to write, both on the novel and here, something that has been difficult with the busy holiday schedule of the last few weeks.
Airs of dissatisfaction
One thing I’ve noticed these past few weeks is that there seems to be an overall malaise going around. Nobody seems excited about anything; everyone seems to be just going through the motions. Halloween, which I usually enjoy was a bit of a letdown, even my daughter was disappointed, and she’s always a ball of positivity. I know I’m not the only one, friends both in person and online seem to feel the same. There’s a general air of dissatisfaction.
On Thanksgiving morning we went to the movie theater and watched the new Disney movie Wish. It was a complete turd, a vile piece of shit, easily Disney’s crappiest movie of all time and I had the displeasure of watching Adventure Planet earlier this year. It was so bad that my wife, who has an extreme level of tolerance for garbage movies, kept on making excuses to go to the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to watch the damn thing.
wrote up a good review, Wish-A Pseudo-Review, which honestly is more effort than that movie deserves. But that’s not my point. My point is that nobody cares. Everyone knew Wish was going to suck. The same goes for Napoleon. I was interested in it for about a day, wanted to go, saw that it was ahistorical garbage, and forgot about it. I don’t know one person who even bothered with it. So many in our sphere have exited the mainstream cultural sphere or just downright don’t give a shit. Everything being put out by the mainstream is garbage, worst of all, it’s garbage that is hostile to what most of us believe and uphold as truth. Why even bother?It’s dawning on me that we have entered or are about to enter on a mass scale the final stage of cultural grief, acceptance. There is no longer a mass American culture, with maybe the sociopathic Swiftie craze which comes off as some sort of Jungian subconscious pathology as an exception, that all of us share. Nobody cares about new movies, new shows, new anything. Everyone seems to be logging off, tuning out, and not giving a fuck about the greater world outside their immediate sphere, and honestly the more I think about it the better I feel about it.
Books
I read three books since my review of Pallas. I don’t feel like writing reviews for them so I’ll give a quick summary overview instead.
The Bat by Joe Nesbo. I was feeling in the mood for some dark detective fiction so what better place to go to than Scandinavian Noir. Unfortunately, the first Harry Hole novels don’t take place in Scandinavia but in the South Pacific. The Bat takes place in sunny Australia and Cockroaches in Thailand. The other problem with The Bat is that it’s overall a mediocre book. The Hary Hole stuff gets a lot better later in the series, the third one being the starting spot.
After my re-read of Nesbo, I picked up Last Evenings On Earth, a collection of Roberto Bolano short stories. Bolano might be the best writer of the early 21st century, and I think his two big novels are outstanding, with 2666 being a complex and difficult masterpiece. His short stories are also great, the guy had a fantastic style and captured the vibe and alienation of his era. Pick this up if you are a Bolano fan and want stuff that reads like The Savage Detectives in a smaller dose.
Finally, I was feeling that near future suburban malaise that is best presented by J.G. Ballard. I think I was driving around listening to Joy Division, and for obvious reasons to fans of Joy Division and Ballard, I was reminded that there remained a few Ballard novels that I needed to read. So I spent a few days reading through Millenium People. It’s another of Ballard's suburban insanity, similar in vibe to High Rise and Super Cannes, both novels at the top of my Ballard list. Millenium People deals with a middle-class protest movement centered around a London suburban community called Chelsea Marina. A bunch of middle-class professionals realizes that they are the new underclass, corporate pawns, and go on a chimpout over parking meter rates and homeowner association fees. In the middle of all of this, you have a Raskolnikov figure that elevates the movement to artistic terrorism. Like all of Ballard, Millennium People is a good read, but if you haven’t read any of his other work I recommend starting with High Rise or Super Cannes.
Right now I’m deep into Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island. Like all his work it’s pornographic and depressing, written with an excellent style that only a French pervert could achieve.
I also just found out that Miyazaki released a new movie, The Boy and the Herron. It came out midsummer in Japan without a trailer, posters, or any sort of promotion. So far Japanese reviews are calling it a masterpiece, and I found out it will be released in the U.S. next week on the 7th. So, I’m hoping that the Japanese manage to continue putting out good animated movies now that Disney/Pixar has become a turd factory.
Anyway, I’m off to do some writing. Until next time.
We stopped being excited when movie/show/animation creators decided to self-insert their experiences in stories where there should be none. Western mainstream cinema is like that even when tackling other cultures. I turn to independent works and those of Europe and Asia to be fully immersed and older films always please.
I can absolutely relate to bring checked out of popular culture, although I remain very excited for Christmas and its festivities.
Talking to my sister a little while ago, she was shocked that I don't really watch TV (except a kid's documentary series for my son). I used to be a rather big devotee of comedy and films. None of it appeals now. Sub-par, morally dishonest crap. Sister was horrified though, "You don't have Netflix? And you don't have Amazon Prime? What do you watch?!"