Brian’s Comments (group member since Jul 24, 2007)

Brian’s comments from the The Subversives group.

That's the insidiuos evil that is the OBC. Sometimes, they put it on things that are obviously good to tout their literary street cred, only to slap it on some hormone-driven sob fest for lonely desperate housewives.

Anna Karenina was in there. I've read it. Reading Tolstoy isn't selling out.

If you picked up the book on the recommendation of a friend and they happen to be on the OBC's list, that's one thing. If you go about reading books because they're on the OBC list, that's another, eviler thing altogether.

Consider yourself under a Papal forgiveness edict.

Cheers,
Brian

Here's mine:

I am really Oprah, wearing heavy make up and a false beard. I started this club as a magnet for those opposed to my book club so I can round you all up in one place and force you to read Toni Morrison books until your eyes bleed and you submit to my Supreme Symapthetic Authority.

Everyone in the audience today gets a free brainwashing!

Moprah Day is a front for the organized smuggling of guns into Florida for the start of the Glorious Culturally Bland Revolution.

Bwuahahahahahaha!!!

Let the Moprah Day celebrations commence!

Post your fabricated Oprah conspiracy theory here.

There are guidelines:

A)All conspiracy theories here posted are entirely fictitious. Under no means are they to be mistaken as fact.

B) Keep in mind we probably won't read them if they're long.

C) Comments alluding to race or sex in a perjorative way will be removed. I think the skinheads had a book club, but they burned it.

D) There is no D.

I think, in celebration of the approaching Moprah Day (August 15), we should do a roll call of all The Subversives out there who still consider themselves active.

It's not a Papal bull or anything. Lurkers may continue to lurk.

I have, by the way, been to Randolph Street in Chicago and seen from afar the headquarters of the enemy. They are adobe-colored and squat and for some reason (perhaps because Oprah suffers from some kind of horrible dyslexia...she's so courageous to continue despite it...dammit! I'm getting sucked in!) her name is spelled backwards on the sign.

I'm also starting a new section called "Oprah Conspiracy Theories." The more colorfully preposterous, the better. Feel free to get inventive. Nothing hurtful, though. We don't need to be on Fox News as part of the "blogosphere." Which I think is what happens when people in millions of tennis shoes join in mortal combat in a major arena. In Idaho.

My own roll call: I abandoned the last novel in the middle of editing it and started a new one, which is about four thousand times better. I'm in the process of editing this one now, hopefully to distribute to a stalwart corps of volunteer editors by the end of July.

In the meantime, here is the latest preposterous salvo by our corporate foe:

http://www2.oprah.com/obc/omag/booksh...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/bus...

More stuff about Ayn Rand.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate her. And I loved "The Fountainhead."

I think her anthems towards self-achievement are clarifying and welcome in the abstract realms of thought, that no single system of thought or interpretation should go unchallenged by the efforts of an individual who sees the flaws. I'd characterize my own approach to Oprahism along similar lines, if only because it makes me seem more Popely and less like some random jerk.

I don't think that self-interest alone drives the economy, or society. It's a big one, but I think it should be tempered to a certain degree by social awareness and communication between the actors.

Otherwise, all we've got is the Nash equilibrium, and that's a terrifying world to imagine.

Novel News: First Edit's going relatively well. I'm currently held in place by economics, hence the lengthy digression against Rand.

Brian

Mreehah!

First draft is done.

Two weeks of no fiction writing.

I edit starting in the godless month of September.

The topic of this post is courtesy Aaron Sorkin.

http://www.nationalreview.com/100best...

Here you guys go. It stands to reason the National Review, full of guys who see themselves as the intellectual heirs of Churchill, would put him at the top of their list.

In these remarks, I don't mean to degrade neoconservativism. Only neconservative self-perception, which I think could use a little deflating.

Enjoy...

Damn skippy I never sleep. Clowns will eat me.

Moprah Day was Aug. 15.

Perhaps more advance planning will be in order the next time around...hmmmmm. My greatest weakness.

I started the last chapter of the novel last night, so I'm in full-on battle mode. I can smell the end, taste it, and not just because I fell asleep on my keyboard with my mouth open.

I've never been this close to the end of a lengthy manuscript before.

The BOGIFMLA assures me today is an appropriate day.

Oh, you thought I would forget?

We never forget, here.

Anyone else doing Nanowrimo out there?

I strongly recommend it...http://www.nanowrimo.org, for the uninitiated.

It's a huge boost to your self esteem. Not that a guy who proclaims himself the Pope needs a huge boost to self-esteem, or that I've actually received mine yet, since here we are, with two months go go towards Nano 2007, and I still haven't finished the first draft of my Nano 2006.

Stupid biting off more than you can chew philosophy.

Why can't I just slack off like a normal person?

And what are the life-changing issues, if you care to share?

Okay, so this year's Nano is tentatively titled "Flaming Neon Wonderland Daydream," and it's in the same vein as all the cranked-out stuff I write on here.

Basically, I'm sort interested to see if I can sustain a collage of these ideas for 50,000 words or longer (Chapter Seven: The Secret Monthly Annals of the Alternate Future History). I'm not hoping to publish it seriously, unless one or more of the Congregation are literary agents/have literary agent friends who think it has potential. It could wind up as a horrible re-writing of "The Areas Of My Expertise."

Hopefully it will provide only a minor diversion while I edit the first draft of the first novel and ship it off to literary agents across the fair land.

Okay, so I'm for adding it to the read shelves, as well as Ulysses, because it was banned.

Anyone opposed?

Ria,

You don't like the platypus?

As Pope, I hereby excommunicate you, then recommunicate you.

Would an Okapi or a spiny anteater or some sort of wallaby be more acceptable to you (perhaps a Tiger Beetle)? I kind of picked the platy at random.

It's one of the better ones.

I'm still kind of angry that Hemingway only gets "The Old Man and the Sea," and Dostoyevski gets six novels. I'm pretty sure that's how Hemingway would have wanted it, but I'm a little miffed that British people have such a low opinion of American authors.

They compensated by having two Faulkner novels.

Plus, you would think Dickens would get more love than just "Great Expectations."

I carry a bazooka with me into the jungle all the time. I started this practice in 1973 (a full ten years before I was born), as related to me by a disembodied myself from a future alternate timeline, after discovering unfortunate encounter with a bazooka-toting scientist would end my life in 2709.

Since this revelation, I've traveled the jungles of the world, hunting bazooka-toting scientists down with ruthless, efficiency, disembodied alternate me said. For my efforts, I was inexplicably awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in Alternate Year 2006.

This culminated in moving my alternate future death to AY 2012, when a time traveling future-me-hunting-bazooka-toting-scientists encountered past-me-hunting-bazooka-toting-scientists and put a simultaneous end to the quantum dynamic, as well as the future alternate timeline and my last best hope of winning a Nobel prize.

Thus, I am the only person in the entire alternate future history to unwittingly commit suicide by bazooka.

The Guardian's Top 100:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/arti...

Published in 2002.

Off to find tea and crumpets.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/...

The greatest 100 Science books of all time, according to Discover magazine.

Kuhn's book (see group bookshelf) got honorable mention, as did Hawking.

My own favorite "The Cartoon Guide To Physics" didn't make the cut.

The tiger beetle falls into the animal kingdom, along with all other insects. So I guess, yeah.

I had always kind of divided the biological world into three categories: That which you can eat, that which you can't eat, and that which you could eat but would probably kill you.

Take that, Linnaeus.

I always sorta thought Paul Drake was just really, really blond.

Anyone see the remake of Johnny Quest using CGI in the late 1990's? Not ashamed to admit I was addicted...I was 13 years old, then.

At about 3 a.m., I automatically rule out all channels but the AP or the Comedy Central, because nothing else seems quite as entertaining when you're punch drunk sleepy as "real naked girls!" or "The World's Most Extreme Animals!!!!"

I'm beginning to wonder which videos feature the fake naked girls, and whether you just think they're naked or they're actually surreptitiously clothed. And nothing makes you want to fall asleep/kill yourself faster than Doug Stanholz going "Show us where babies feed, it's natural!" over. And. Over. And. Over.

And then there's the part when Most Extreme made the tiger beetle the fastest animal in the world. Horsesh*t. They just needed the ratings...everyone knows it's the spike-tailed swift. But they did point out that sharks are the most sensitive animals in the world, and illustrate their point with poorly designed glowing green graphics. So I forgave them. What would you do?

Although sometimes AMC will show Goddard films after midnight, which is cool, but I've only stumbled on "Le Petit Soldat," and it was just the one time. Normally it's the standard Carey Grant movie or "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for the umpteenth time.

Ah, late night cable television. Nothing will leech your love of humankind from your body faster.

Books I could not locate to add to the "read" list.

"Them"

John T. Reed