Author Archives: Murphy

White Oleander Review

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The story begins with the Santa Ana winds. The girl’s mother tells her that women who kill their lovers on a night like this will blame it on the wind. Naturally, her mother is about to kill her lover.

You’d think that would be enough of a story. But not for Janet Fitch. That’s only the setup for the main story. The main story is about the daughter, Astrid. Astrid is left to fend for herself in a series of horrific foster homes. And in those places, she goes through a very dramatic coming of age transformation. Yes, we know all about coming of age stories. But the usual problems of that time are thrown on their head. How different is it to become your own person, separate from your parent (s), when your mother is a murderer?

This story was really good. It has all the terrible sensational things in it (occult references, murder, forbidden sex), but somehow for me, it worked.

One of the redeeming features was the constant references to beauty. The murderer mother was a poet. Astrid cut her teeth on fine art. It was bordering unbelievable to me, how much this girl knew about authors and artists. But perhaps there are such people, such 14 year olds, that can know about Kandinsky and have well-formed opinions about him.

The other thing that made this story really great for me was how much it was rooted HERE. HERE, as in Los Angeles. She described exactly exactly how things are here. She talks about the wind, which anyone who is not or has not been here does not know about. The wind is crazy.

And she talks about the apartments in Hollywood, and the wildness just not very far North. She talks about how different people shop and dress differently. The author knows this area, this strange area that is Los Angeles.

The story is a good one, I recommend it.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

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This is a new show on Bravo. 5 gay guys get together to spiff up a clueless straight guy, and give him a makeover.

It is hilarious! I love this show. I tell you what, the sarcastic over-the-top gay culture is really MADE for TV. I mean it! These guys learned their moves from imitating the imitations of female glamour from Hollywood, so they are practically cartoon-like in their ability to quip and move things along.

Yes, they are extremely catty sometimes. But they aren’t actually mean, they don’t want to make anybody feel bad. They are there to make their straight guy’s life better.

I would have thought that some of the straight guys would have gotten the willies, what with the gay guys pawing them and making little flirty comments, but they all seemed very comfortable and having a good time.

I have to say, I look at my house differently. What would Carson say?

Wank on, my son!

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ThisisLondon

“Far from making you go blind or your palms go hairy, self-abuse can protect against prostate cancer, scientists claim.
In fact, the more you do it, the better it is for you. Men who pleasure themselves regularly between the ages of 20 and 50 have a far lower chance of developing the disease, a study found. “

Men have felt this intrinsically for a while. But this study shows that benefits of choking the chicken are not for the casual salami slapper. 5 times a week is the threshold they cite.

I think though, men could slip it often enough. Make it a priority, I say!

Courrielez moi!

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Blogcritics.org: ‘E-mail’ banned

From the “The French are bored again” file, France has voted to ban the use of the word “e-mail” because, well, they just don’t like it anymore. In its place they’ve chosen to use the term “courriel,” a combination of “courrier electronique” in an effort to apparently sound even snottier than they already do. Yes, that’s right, the government, specifically the “Culture Ministry,” actually put forth an initiative to remove the filthy, foul, and, most importantly, foreign-tongue derived “e-mail” from the entire French language.

I am THRILLED! I think it’s fabulous that the French have a whole division of their government devoted to snootisms.

I was getting tired of the word e-mail too. Now i have an official french word for it! I can throw it around and be FABULOUS.

but how does one conjugate it?

How business is done- The Voysey Inheritance

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Anybody remember Enron? Any body remember all those OTHER companies that were caught with their accounting pants down? Man, what was going on? What made them think they could get away with it?

There is no way not to think about Enron when listening to The Voysey Inheritance. Here’s the story: Daddy Voysey gives his son, the one who is going to take over his investment firm for him, some papers that show how the business really works. That is, the business has not protected the capital other have invested in it. They continue to pay the dividends to the investors, but the capital supposedly producing the income no longer exists. And Daddy Voysey tells the horrified son that his father started the business that way, and handed it on to him. So, he hands it on to his son the same way.

Okay, this is Victorian England, but does it matter? How different is now? Hmm…Voysey jr. has to think about what to do. What’s the true justice? To go to jail? or stay and try to amass the capital again, keep on paying off the interest to the people who are relying on it? Going to jail won’t restore the money to the investors.

This story also explores what makes people trust others. Why did so many people keep giving Daddy Voysey the money? THis is a great story.

The cheese stands alone

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SO, I’m buying this condo. Wow. More on that later. I’m terrified, and on top of it, my real estate agent is insane and rubs EVERYONE the wrong way.

For the most part it doesn’t bother me. I’m used to working with all kinds of strange people, the only thing I care about is whether they can do their job well, the job I need them to do so I get what I need: the condo.

She can be as weird and irrational as she wants, just so long as she knows things like, what these papers are and what needs to be done when.

So, I get a call from her asking me to sign some papers. More papers. Lots of papers. I ask, “What are these papers about?”

“You wil have to sign a lot of papers to buy a home. You should get used to it.”

I wasn’t expecting anything else, but I would think that someone who had more years experience in Real Estate than my years on earth would have a general idea what the papers were about.

She blows me off. “Just papers…” she says when I ask her again.

Have I watched too much X-files? I do not sign papers without reading them!

So, I’m in her office signing papers. I am reading all the papers. There are a lot of papers.

She is mocking me for reading all the papers. “I never read every word.”

My jaw is very tense when I say, in that special voice I learned from my mother, “Well, I do.”

“Why?” she asks, obviously questioning my judgement.

“Oh, I’m very meticulous.”

Talking with my mother later that day, I tell her about this. Mom tells me that she doesn’t read all the papers either.

“I know I should,” she says. “But I knew that I was doing it with your father, so I wasn’t so worried about it.”

Worried. Oh my god, I can barely sleep at night, thinking of this huge responsibility, and wondering what if this happens, what if that happens.

I do feel all alone. It’s me, it’s only me, buying this place. What if I lose my job? What if the real estate market crashes, and I am stuck with huge overpriced payments? What if I can’t do it?

My mom wasn’t worried when she was going through this. She had someone else in it with her. She was so not worried that she didn’t even read all the papers.

Why is that? She had this confidence in my dad, the ‘other guy’ who would somehow make it work out.

I only have me to have confidence in. I only have me to put my trust in and rely on.

I remember what it was like to be married, and have the ‘other guy’ there as part of a team. I know it would be less scary if I were doing this purchase with someone else.

And yet, I know that I have a very good track record of being responsible and handling my business-good as anybody! So why would I feel better if there were another person with me?

Other people seem to be mysteriously better able to handle things, to think of things, to come through for their peeps. _I_ , however, let myself down every day.

I forget to hang up the towel after I’m done showering. I constantly put off a hundred little tasks and chores that I REALLY mean to do. I leave a mess of papers and don’t file my papers. I constantly cheat on my diet, and I’m never able to go to the gym as much as I really know I should.

I’m lazy, stupid, far less careful than I wish I were.

But in spite of that, I will make a much bigger effort not to let someone else down. If someone is expecting me somewhere, I will make a huge effort not to stand them up. I would make a much better dinner for someone coming over for dinner than I would for myself, coming home from work to eat dinner.

And other people are far more kind to me than I am to myself. I am sure that none of my friends thinks my hair looks as bad as I KNOW it looks. They see me in a totally different light.

Well, I treat them better than I treat myself. Like I was just saying, I try harder for my friends. I take extra care for them.

Maybe this is why it is better when someone else is with you. In the best circumstances, that other person inspires you to do better for them than you would do on your own. And they do the same for you.

As for myself, I know myself too well. I know how easy it is for me to screw up.

I’m sure, or at least I will be sure once the papers are signed, that I will do fine with this new condo owning responsibility. But it just got me thinking…

Oh, for the 90’s!

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SO, I’m reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Geniusby David Eggers. I’m not done yet….

You know, I am always most excited about a book when I’m not done with it yet. Maybe I should always write the review about 3/4 of the way through. I would be a lot more excited than at the end, when I have already started another book.

Anyway, one of the parts of the book is how he is making a magazine in the ultra-hip San Francisco of the early 90’s.

Oh my god…Oh my god…Oh, the San Francisco Bay Area in the 90s…Was there ever a Nirvana or Shangri-La like that one? Oh, how wonderful it was!

I moved there in 95. It was ELECTRIFYING ! It was INCREDIBLE! everything was possible. the world was about the be flipped like a pancake, taking us from the gooey-sticky, bubbling side to the beautiful, crisp brown smooth side!

Start-ups, all kinds, money coming from the SKY (aka venture capitalists). I think I would have gone the entireity of my life and not known what a venture capitalist was, if I had not moved to the Bay area.

Oh it was wonderful! We were riding the wave, and the wave had no end. There was no limit.

Of course there was no limit! I thought I told you that we won’t stop thought I told you…What…why are you stopping?

Because it did. All those highly paid consultants that were my friends, the ones who swore they would never “drink the kool-aid” and become an employee are now employees.

IF they are lucky.

random navel gazing

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Maybe I should read books twice. Maybe that would be the thing…Take notes and stuff. Nafisi, the professor in Reading Lolita in Tehran rad books again and again, making notes.

She’s a professor. One of those people who get to tell others instead of being told.

Well, maybe she has the right idea.

The thing about books is that they have a beginning a middle and an end. They are contained. They are a system, a closed system.

And a closed system is one that can be experimented on. You know what’s there, you can work within the system, and it remains.

Once, a long time ago, I closed a book because I was working too much within a system. I had been a very very very religious [in the meaning of unfalteringly regular, as well as the other meaning] Bible reader.

And I had done this for years. For several reasons, all of which someone or other will fault me, I stopped.

The reason I told myself at the time, and I still believe that it is the main reason, is that if the Bible is true, and I choose to believe that it is, it is a system that is fully integrated with the universe.

And if it is fully integrated with the universe, any understanding I have about ANYTHING [because anything and everything is part of the universe] will enhance my ability to understand and interpret the Bible.

I could feel in my bones, like a draft of wind or a change in air pressure, that I was not interpreting the Bible right.

And I knew without a doubt that I knew less than nothing about the world around me. I was 21. I consider this precocious of me.

So I thought, I need to work on the one part and get back to the other. Because I had a feeling that I was propping up a failing system.

And since I believe that the failing system could not be the Bible’s system, the system that was failing was my understanding/intrpretation of it.

So I needed to work on my understanding.

NOW, this is only an anecdote to illustrate my point about books. The Bible is a book, after all.

so, do I need to dig deeper into the books? OR back off the books?

This begs a question. What purpose are the books?

If the books are part of my lifelong quest for enlightenment, then they are important. That takes me back to the conclusion that I need to maximize my reading and the quantity/quality conundrum I mentioned before [previous post].

If the books are just for my amusement, though, then all this is nonsense. I should just read the books in whatever way I like.

If, however, the books are purely for my amusement, I am become a hedonistic pleasure-monster.

Which doesn’t make sense, because I seem to only enjoy books that challenge me.

And this leads to ontological and epistomological tail chasing.

It’s a moot point. We don’t know.

Which could lead back to that book I put aside when I was 21.

Some people do this. They choose a religion, accept it as a closed system, and devote their lives to it. Inside a hermitage or not.

“This” they say “is the source of the answers. I will bend myself to the answers this system provides.”

This seems like a good idea. It has the appearance of truth. Perhaps in many many cases it is the truth.

Except it is dangerous. I believe, as I did when I was 21 and even earlier, that true religion cannot be a closed system.

Because, who would be closing it? WHo would say, ‘We understand everything now, no more!’

It would have to be people. People who came to the conclusion that they understood everything.

That would be impossible. It’s not that I believe everything cannot be understood, I just cannot concieve of a human mind being able to do it.

Therefore, closing the system will result in it’s falsehood.

I love truth too much to do that. I will risk a lie, risk being wrong, in an open system. I feel like there is a chance in the open system. But the closed system is a lie from the beginning.

All this, because I am thinking about my reading habits.

I think too much.

Scratch me, and I bleed philosophy. I never stop.

White Oleander

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I am still pondering this book.

It occurs to me that I am a gluttonous reader. I read these amazing, complicated books. I LOVE their texture and the feelings and the beautiful words I am reading.

But then…I don’t stop and savor them enough. I read one, and I like it…But If I finish one early in the day, I’m on to the next one by night.

Perhaps I am too greedy for these books. I don’t stop and linger.

When I am eating a truly delicious dish, I like to savor it.

But my reading does not work like that.

I miss my university classes.

I would take a class again, just for the joy of discussing the books. But the fact of the matter is, I cannot go back to literature classes at the jr. college level. They are not enough. I have more questions and ideas than would fit there anymore.

Well…So I miss those literary cud-chewing sessions. And I don’t know what to do with my observations and thoughts.

Journal them?

ta da! Here i am!

I had been making a concerted effort to write short reviews of the books I read.

But then, my brother Mark mentioned that he preferred a more personal approach on my blog.

Hmm…Yes. So do I. You know what though? It’s harder to be personal. I end up rambly and not particularly proud of what I write.

It requires a lot of discipline to be personal. and practice. So maybe this is practice.

Stream of consciousness shift here…My co-worker practices his keyboard (piano) 4 HOURS A DAY!

holy crap!

I told him I was ashamed, because I try to make an effort to just play one song a week. I have this whole big beautiful piano, and I squander it.

He said, He is in a band, Jazz fusion, and the sax player is so good, he is ashamed to do a solo after him. He is VERY inspired to practice.

Hey, this does wrap around. See, he is inspired to do his best because he is in an environment that challenges him.

Me, I was more challenged in my school environment. Because somebody there notices, cared, and I paid more attention to what I was reading.

It is important, I think, to foster environments that drive us to excellence.

Oh man. That’s the tough part. Good friends are hard to find.

So.

i have finished White Oleander. I feel like there is so much I would want to think about and talk about in it.

And I have already begun A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I’m 95 pages into it, having started it yesterday.

i was reading it, and in between reading it, I was watching Zorba the greek.

I wonder if there is a mental equivalent of a vomitorium?

No, my appetite is endless.

But there are SOME books that are too steep a climb to go swiftly.

Ulysses.

I’m working very slowly on that one.
I’m on pg 122. 700 more to go. I read it in between the other books I’m reading.

Which is probably the wrong way to do it. I should sit down and savor and ponder and try to GET all the little references and stuff.

But life doesnt’ let me separate and savor. It zips by, the hour gets late and then the alarm clock goes off.

More work and more meniality, and bills and catboxes and plans for the catboxes of the future.

I will tell myself that it is better to read 10 books too fast than read one slow and miss out completely on the other nine.

I can’t help it anyway. I love to read.

I also have this feeling, like, I have to study, I have to get the basics down before I can get to the important question. Start working, with the right tools and theorums and laws, on the important, significant questions.

I obviously don’t have the tool now, because I don’t even know the question.

unconventional

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A book review should include certain facts. You should include a mention of the author, the tittle, and a brief overview of the story. Probably it is bad form to give away the entire story, but it can be acceptable, or even necessary in certain contexts.

There is also another idea. An idea from the late victorian era, championed by Walter Pater and others, said that a review, or a critique, was an art form in itself.

I’ve talked about this before, because the idea resonates with me. Let me explain the idea in my own words.

Say, there is a work of art. A poem, a book, a painting. It is art, it is beautiful. Someone experiences it, and wants to tell other people about it.

There are two ways to do this. Let’s call the first way the movie review way.

People read a movie review to find out whether the movie they are considering seeing is something they really want to see. It is really funny or thrilling or whatever it’s supposed to be?

But there are some problems with movie reviews: they are subjective. Maybe that person who did the review didn’t have the same sense of humor as you do. Maybe you would love a movie they hated.

Here’s another idea: Have you ever been to a really good movie with smart great people, and then gone out for coffee or drinks afterwards and discussed it? That’s happened to me, and we talked about the movie, and talked about the ideas of the movie…After a while, if it was a really good conversation, we would have left the movie behind altogether and started talking about the ideas.

This is the beginning. Basically, a piece of art can be a launching pad. Yes, you need it to get started but once you are launched, you may never need to refer to it again.

I feel like music does this exceptionally better than most forms. It is so abstract, you are forced upon your own soul. Pieces that are labeled “Symphony No. 5”. Just what the music means to you. Not a name, not a suggestion.

What happens to me in a classical music concert is that I pay close attention to the music until I start to drift on ideas, images, colors or movement. It is an amazing source of inspiration. I feel like i could paint, or choreograph or do things I’ve never done before.

Now THAT is what I’m talking about!
What if I could write a review about how a book makes me feel and the ideas it makes me think without ever referring to the specific story of the book?

That would be a really great book! And I would have to be a really great writer. Or maybe i would become a great writer in the process.

All this to say, I read White oleander yesteday. In some respects, it was a very trite book. And in some respects, it was beautiful. In the way that I have been describing, it is perfect. I am filled with ideas that are connected to so many other ideas.

After reading this book, I am left thinking of Georgia O’Keefe and William Pater. Beethoven and summer storms. all the capitals of foreign countries that I have ever seen.

It makes me think about the troublesome people I have known, the ones whose stories I am not sure what to do about. It makes me think about the soul and the meaning of life and what that means to different people.

It makes me think about how big the world is.

All of that, and I haven’t said anything about what the book is about.
I havne’t really said what I think about those varioius subjects either.

Here is the main problem with the idea of Aestheticism, the piece of Pater’s philosophy that I have here described. How do you connect with the people that you are talking to?

It is a great responsibility, understanding one another. Most people deeply deeply want to be understood by others. But then, we are responsible to try and understand others too.

Some people, you have to do your homework to keep up with.