What I wrote after I finished part one of Gogol's Dead Souls

First and foremost: is this translation right for you? I read somewhere that Garnett is comparable to eating a healthy salad while Pevear and Volokhonsky are akin to a spicy dish. And that's exactly what you'll get here: more subtle humor in a very tidy package.

At any rate, Dead Souls is different from most anything most immediately because Gogol uses it as an opportunity to teach the reader how to look beyond the text and between the lines to discover why things are in the book and how they relate to the story - he compares one man's living room accents to the man himself, for example. For long stretches, he maintains a healthy dialogue that is never boring, condescending, or excessive.

It's also through this method that Gogol pushes the reader to realize that good characters can't be merely honorable and without blemishes, because such people are boring and, furthermore, nonexistent. The story's "hero," Chichikov, is hardly introduced at the beginning and is therefore easily comparable to a sleazy businessman with some clever plot to become rich and famous. It's not until the final chapter of Book One (the only one that Gogol truly finished) that we really get any background on him, which is when we learn how he got to his desperate situation and we realize that, while he is truly a "bad guy," his motives aren't entirely selfish, that he is desperately trying to build an estate to bequeath to his future progeny. And it's this kind of mixture that Gogol spreads across the town of N.: characters that probably don't exist in real life, but highlight some positive and negative aspects of contemporary Russian society.

And that leads to the last important aspect of Dead Souls: Gogol's sometimes-strained love for Russia. These characters show problems in Russian society, but he explains that most of these are universal (at least amongst the Russian person). Gogol's main argument is against the ever-present theme of contemporary Russian literature: the battle between East and West Europe. In short, we see the influence of an outsider (Chichikov) and that of the countries themselves, especially the infiltration of French culture in Russia's aristocracy.

But what is most remarkable is how Gogol pushes the reader to realize all these things while maintaining the levity and complexity of his short stories (though nowhere near as outlandish as "The Nose"). It's a bit sad that Gogol destroyed much of what he had composed for Book Two, but what is there is undoubtedly a classic.

Sell: A Novel

EXPOSITION: We see our main character – a financial analyst on a cable television show that is designed to both inform and entertain – provide the latest information about the stock market. The economy has begun to nosedive after a series of poor long-term decisions by money-hungry executives have left multiple companies in multiple industries destitute. [Keller?] then gives his predictions for the market's future and whether or not his viewers should buy or sell stock. Keller professes his belief that a major corporation will be an oddity in this bear market by returning record profits over the next quarter. He repeats himself.

BACKGROUND: Keller never thought he'd be a financial analyst. We discover that he instead wanted to be an evolutionary biologist, largely in herpetology. We also see where his dreams began to take a back seat, where Plan A becomes Plan B, C, D.

ACTION/DEVELOPMENT: Keller deals with coworkers at his first job. When the opportunity presents itself, he seizes it, which also leads to the dismissal of the other members of his team, which worked on lobbying the government for studying human encroachment on amphibian habitats. As a result of this incident, Keller becomes the CEO of the research center. As required by his new position, Keller must interact with the higher-ups in the industry. He follows trends and looks for opportunities to obtain greater funds. He becomes skilled at persuading his representatives in Congress that herpetology research is more than funding the construction of a multi-million dollar bridge to a town inhabited by 50. His success leads executives at a cable finance network to hire him as an analyst on financial trends.

CONFLICT: We return to Keller's prediction. He was wrong. Thousands lose money as stock for the company sells now for $2 each. Media investigations, questioning, interviews ensue. People are angry, some on the Internet calling for Keller's head. A satirist uses the scandal to fill an easy ten minutes of programming. Keller is eventually compelled to confront him on the fake news show.

CRISIS: Keller is put in his place by the comedian. He goes home and reflects on his past, his dreams, his hopes for the earth: humanity, the plants and animals on it, and the well-being of the planet itself. Keller looks to where he could have gone wrong: a Wikipedia page shows that the company for which he advocated viewers to buy stock from has been accused of ignoring state laws that forbid construction on wetlands. This has even lead Fish and Wildlife Services to place a specific species of frog on the critically endangered species list; few exist outside of zoos.

RESOLUTION: Suicide? A change of heart? A public apology on air? A return to his ways because they earn him a gratuitous amount of money?

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #7

G - GOD

In searching for what to write, I was distracted by looking up interesting animals in response to the trailer for the upcoming film "Earth." As the Space Traveler (aka Unk, aka Malachi Constant) says in Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan," "I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all," and that is why (I believe) everything is here as it is today. It's kind of amazing that I'm here, right now, able to type this out on a USB-connected keyboard (as my laptop's fried due to some water), which transmits – as a series of electrical pulses translated to mean one letter or a space or whatnot – to the computer, which inputs it into this textbox, which is here due to HTML, which is a handy shortcut for Firefox to read the page's information and display it visually. When I click "publish post," all of this is sent across the country to a server, where it can be accessed by any other computer in the world. Amazing.

Anyway, that same series of electronic signals landed me on the Wikipedia page for the Rhynchosaur, an extinct little reptile that kind of looks like a naked mole rat. The article says that it disappeared from the earth at the end of Carnian period (somewhere near the middle of the Triasic – when the first dinosaurs were coming into existence) possibly because their food source had gone extinct at some earlier point. At least we still have their cousins today – crocodiles and birds.

I just turned on Cut Copy's "In Ghost Colours" (which I think I'll claim as 2008's best album when I write my feature for the newspaper) as I wrote that. If you haven't picked it up, I wholly suggest it. I bring this up because... it's really good. How can we have good music? Why are some sounds good and some bad? Why is it that what one person considers a good song could be regarded as garbage by another? Why do pop songs all start to sound the same once a new, successful pattern has been established (boy bands, vaguely dancey songs about being dancefloor sluts, the millions of bands trying to recreate the Beatles)?

Well, besides having an easy shot at a spot on MTV and lots of money, it's all about patterns and finding the best ones that manipulate emotions or build the best bridges. I'm talking about fractal geometry. Think of a tree or a river, branching off into different directions and sometimes forking. The reason that they aren't perfect, exponentially growing forks is that they are the victims of a series of accidents, as we all are. Fractal geometry (which I encourage everybody to read up on) applies to bubble formation, cancer cell growth, broccoli, mountains, a microwaved CD, and so much more. I mean, modern movies and video games rely on this technology to create realistic worlds for the individual to escape into.

So how does this all relate to God or gods or a flying spaghetti monster or the all-powerful Atheismo? Either that bastard has been the tried and true method for everything and has left it for us to figure out as some sort of signature or specific marking or, through a series of accidents, nature has stumbled on something that works and has, thus far, gotten us to the point of humanity as it is today – space exploration, morning routines that no other animal could dream of doing (flossing? come on.), different modes of governing ourselves (and the resulting political and military fallout associated with that), the Internet, and so, so much more.

I've already joked to a friend tonight that my view of birth and death and the future is a bit robotic and stale, so I'll get that joke out of the way. BEEP BOOP. GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS, MR. ROBINSON. I WOULD LIKE TO PROCREATE AND PROLONG THE SPECIES WITH YOUR DAUGHTER BY INFUSING MY SPERM INTO HER FALLOPIAN TUBES, THEREBY ACCESSING HER EGG AND THEREFORE CREATING A FETUS, WHICH IS COMPRISED OF ALLELES FROM BOTH MINE AND YOUR DAUGHTER'S DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID STRUCTURES. I BELIEVE THAT, AS I AM STILL ALIVE AND HAVE NO MAJOR DISEASES AND HAVE REACHED THIS POINT OF INTERACTION, I AM QUALIFIED TO MATE WITH YOUR DAUGHTER DUE TO MY SUCCESSFUL GENES THAT HAVE SURVIVED THE TRIALS OF REMOVAL FROM THE GENE POOL. BOOP.

It all just makes sense to me and that's what so marvelous about life and all of the extras that come along with the package. Allow me to close with another line from "The Sirens of Titan:"

"The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody."

Massabloggachusetts, Pt. 1

Vacation... here we are. There's no more work for a whole week, which perhaps is the nicest part of it all. It's nice to be able to settle into days that peak somewhere in the 80s and have more or less zero humidity. It's so nice here, the family (my mom's best friend since first grade) doesn't even have air conditioning. And yet, it's more or less the same temperate feeling that Virginia has, without the pains of the average summer. Granted, the winter will be god-awful, but hey, I'll be back in one-inch-cancels-everything Virginia.

The drive itself was fine. Whatever, it's a long car ride. Final Fantasy 4 on the DS, Stephen Colbert, and tons of music kept me surprisingly occupied for all 11 hours. Colbert's book isn't all that great, to be honest. It's more or less a more comprehensive look at the character on The Colbert Report than anything. Fans of the show aren't missing out, but then again, they're the ones who bought the thing in the first place.

But anyway, we spent our first day at the beach. On the ride over there, my brother said that he saw a frog in a lily-padded pond off the road. I looked out... and it was a turtle. Strike one, dummy.

Being at the beach was a bit blah when you're the only person your own age that you know. You also notice how pale you are, how out of shape or fat you are, and many other physical deficiencies to top off the lovely ice cream treat that made you look like that in the first place. But I combated the first one, didn't worry about the second, and defeated boredom with a camera in the tide pool (see the photos here) and a good, healthy dose of Sarah Vowell.

Vowell makes me proud to be a nerd - so what if you're visiting Salem to learn about witch history (witchtory?) and mocking that tourist trap, too (we haven't done that yet... this year)? So what if Al Gore is a nerd? So what if the guy walking past your little beach campground has a stunning babe around his arm, which, by the way, is twice the size of an average baby? Nerds rule.

Sarah Vowell quotes a post on Slashdot.org:

Geeks tend to be focused on very narrow fields of endeavor. The modern geek has been generally dismissed by society because their passions are viewed as trivial by those people who "see the big picture." Geeks understand that the big picture is pixilated and their high level of contribution in small areas grows the picture. They don't need to see what everyone else is doing to make their part better.

Maybe that explains why my mom yells at me for not seeing the big picture. The big picture is made up of big pictures. So while it may not matter that some girl sitting across from you on a beach that you'll never see again may not be into you, it lends itself to a whole world of issues and ideas and problems. That's not to say I'm letting it affect me, but that's just how it works for me... unfortunately.

Of course, maybe there's a reason why I'm the only one in the family who goes to the library to get reading material for vacation. And it's not required material, either! It's for fun! It may escape my siblings, but hell, I love it.

One other point: after watching the horrifically-depressing-but-advertised-as-a-laffapalooza film "The Bucket List," I think I actually understand a famous Vonnegut quote beyond its face value: "If I should every die, God forbid." It was running through my mind throughout the entire movie, because it humanized death (as if it weren't human enough already). Death is something that happens. Don't make it out to be such a big thing... have fun with your life, it's the only one you've got (maybe).