Still, my edition came with an additional Afterword by Chuck Palahniuk in which he reflects on the book's success and the processes of its writing. Slightly too long in parts, but essential reading for anyone who takes an interest in such things, and especially if you consider yourself a writer too. We can all take heart that the short story that became the seed of Fight Club was apparently written during a bored afternoon in a no future job somewhere in post-industrial America. (It's Chapter 6 of the finished novel in case you're wondering).

Think about that as you bite into your blueberry muffin.

O bom, o mau e o bizarro, Kim Jee-Woon
Superprodução do cinema coreano transpõe uma trama típica de westerns americanos (alguém me disse que o termo ‘western americano’ é redundância, mas...) para a Coréia colonial e traz como enredo a disputa de três lendários homens cujas aventuras são popularmente conhecidas. Correndo atrás do mesmo mapa e do mesmo tesouro, o embate entre os três vai se desenrolando enquanto todos ao redor vão sendo dizimados. Bonita fotografia, piadas engraçadas e cenas de luta que nos desafiam a imaginar como aquilo possa ter sido filmado. Destaque para o figurino, cenários e objetos que misturavam elementos dos westerns clássicos como roupas de couro, botas e chapéus com elementos orientais como armaduras. Empolga e é bem divertido.

Casa Negra, Shin Terra
Até agora fica a dúvida se Shin Terra quis fazer uma comédia bizarra misturando técnicas de filmes b com suspense, ou se quis ser sério e errou na mão. Um funcionário de uma empresa de seguros cai na besteira de se identificar durante uma conversa telefônica com uma cliente. A partir daí começa a ser perseguido por um casal sem escrúpulos que não mede esforços para conseguir dinheiro através de apólices de seguros. O personagem Jeon Jun-oh é um tipo tão caricato e inocente que pareceu confirmar o estereótipo do homem-bobinho-oriental que está sempre sorrindo e fazendo reverência. Os 40 minutos finais são de gargalhar de tão inacreditáveis.

Choke, Clark Gregg
Nova adaptação cinematográfica de um livro de Chuck Palahniuk deixa uma sensação de idéia mal-cumprida ao final da projeção. Roteirizado e dirigido pelo ator Clark Gregg e apesar da presença de Sam Rockwell e Angelica Houston como protagonistas, o ritmo com que a trama se desenvolve é tão constante que a virada do personagem quase nem é sentida. Cenas desnecessárias como a do pedagogismo cristão sobre amar ao próximo não parecem coisa de Palahniuk e sim de um diretor tentando explicitar o conflito, que já sabemos, está perturbando o protagonista perturbado. Trama interessante: Cara viciado em sexo trabalha num museu sobre a vida colonial norte-americana e faz pequenos trambiques para conseguir o dinheiro necessário para manter a mãe num sanatório. Com a piora no estado de saúde da mãe ele tenta arrancar dela a confissão de quem seja seu pai, buscando assim alguma explicação para seus desequilíbrios. Sam Rockwell é sempre bom de ser visto e as piadas são bem bacanas.

De repente, o inverno passado, Gustav Hofer e Luca Ragazzi
Documentário abordando o cotidiano de um casal homossexual que mantém uma relação estável há 8 anos sem nenhum resguardo burocrático para a união. Na Itália onde vivem um projeto de lei é criado para legitimar a adoção para casais homossexuais e inicia ampla campanha de contestação por parte do Vaticano e congressistas ligados à Igreja. Colhendo depoimentos nas ruas, em passeatas de orgulho cristão até a parada do orgulho gay eles demonstram como o preconceito enraizado impede o debate sobre questões como essa. Reflexivo e bem-humorado debate a questão sem ser piegas.

Delta, Kornél Mundruczó
Filme feito de silêncios e sugestões mais do que ação propriamente dita, fala sobre o retorno de um homem a sua cidade natal, à beira do Danúbio, uma idade pequena onde todos se conhecem. Nesse retorno ele é tratado pelos homens do lugar como estranho, tornando-se assim ressabiado. E no encontro com uma irmã cuja existência ele desconhecia, o forasteiro encontra o apoio que precisava para pôr em prática a construção de uma bela casa num terreno que pertencia a seu pai. A comunidade passa a vigiar de perto a confusa relação entre os irmãos, deixando claro desde o começo a sua desaprovação. Apesar de falar sobre a questão do incesto, Mundruczó não o torna explícito evitando com sensibilidade a cena do beijo. Terá sido um escolha poética de supressão da cena óbvia ao algum receio de chocar demais? A fotografia ampla privilegia a beleza natural do Danúbio e algumas cenas de ângulos menores são dirigidas com primor.

From Publishers Weekly
With a first page that captures the reader hook, line and sinker, Palahniuk (Choke; Lullaby) plunges into the odd predicament of Waytansea Island resident and ex-art student Misty Marie Kleinman, whose husband, Peter, lies comatose in a hospital bed after a suicide attempt. Rooms in summer houses on the mainland that Peter has remodeled start to mysteriously disappear-"The man calling from Long Beach, he says his bathroom is missing"-and Misty, with the help of graphologist Angel Delaporte, discovers that crude and prophetic messages are scrawled across the walls and furniture of the blocked-off chambers. In her new world, where every day is "another longest day of the year," Misty suffers from mysterious physical ailments, which only go away while she is drawing or painting. Her doctor, 12-year-old daughter and mother-in-law, instead of worrying about her health, press her to paint more and more, hinting that her art will save exclusive Waytansea Island from being overrun by tourists. In the meantime, Misty is finding secret messages written under tables and in library books from past island artists issuing bold but vague warnings. With new and changing versions of reality at every turn, the theme of the "tortured artist" is taken to a new level and "everything is important. Every detail. We just don't know why, yet." The novel is something of a departure for Palahniuk, who eschews his blighted urban settings for a sinister resort island, but his catchy, jarring prose, cryptic pronouncements and baroque flights of imagination are instantly recognizable, and his sharp, bizarre meditations on the artistic process make this twisted tale one of his most memorable works to date.

Download Link 1

Download Link 2

Download Link 3

PASSWORD: www.rapidbyte.org

from RapidByte

From Publishers Weekly
Palahniuk's grotesque romp aims to skewer the ruthless superficiality of the fashion world and winds up with a tale as savagely glib as what it derides. Narrator Shannon McFarland, once a gorgeous fashion model, has been hideously disfigured in a mysterious drive-by shooting. Her jaw has been shot off, leaving her not only bereft of a career and boyfriend, but suddenly invisible to the world. Along comes no-nonsense, pill-popping diva Brandy Alexander, a resplendent, sassy, transgendered chick, who has modeled her body rearrangement--the breast implants, the hair, the figure--on what Shannon used to look like. Brandy suggests veils, high camp and no self-pity. Shannon wants revenge[...] Adding to the plot's contrivances are the relentless flashbacks, heralded at the beginning of almost every paragraph with "Jump back to..." and the author's pretentious device of using a fashion photographer's commands ("Flash. Give me adoration. Flash. Give me a break") to signpost the narrator's epiphanies. Palahniuk writes like he's overdosed on Details magazine. Though the absurd surprise ending may incite groans of disbelief, this book does have fun moments when campy banter tops the heroine's flat, whiny bathos.

Download Link 1

Download Link 2

PASSWORD: www.rapidbyte.org

from RapidByte

Amazon.com Review
Some say that the apocalypse swiftly approacheth, but that simply ain't so according to Chuck Palahniuk. Oh no. It's already here, living in the head of the guy who just crossed the street in front of you, or maybe even closer than that. We saw these possibilities get played out in the author's bloodsporting-anarchist-yuppie shocker of a first novel, Fight Club. Now, in Survivor, his second and newest, the concern is more for the origin of the malaise. Starting at chapter 47 and screaming toward ground zero, Palahniuk hurls the reader back to the beginning in a breathless search for where it all went wrong. This time out, the author's protagonist is self-made, self-ruined mogul-messiah Tender Branson, the sole passenger of a jet moments away from slamming first into the Australian outback and then into oblivion. All that will be left, Branson assures us with a tone bordering on relief, is his life story, from its Amish-on-acid cult beginnings to its televangelist-huckster end. All of this courtesy of the plane's flight recorder. Speaking of little black boxes, Skinnerians would have a field day with the presenting behavior of the folks who make up Palahniuk's world. They pretend they're suicide hotline operators for fun. They eat lobster before it's quite... done. They dance in morgues. The Cleavers they are not. Scary as they might be, these characters are ultimately more scared of themselves than you are, and that's what makes them so fascinating. In the wee hours and on lonely highways, they exist in a perpetual twilight, caught between the horror of the present and the dread of the unknown. With only two novels under his belt, Chuck Palahniuk is well on his way to becoming an expert at shining a light on these shadowy creatures.

Download Link 1

Download Link 2

Download Link 3

PASSWORD: www.rapidbyte.org

from RapidByte

JESSICA SAYS:
Here is what I knew about this movie going into it: It's based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk. That's it. Sometimes that's a really nice way to go into a movie (or book for that matter) because it prevents the sentiment that my mother utters after every single movie when you ask her what she thought--"Well, it wasn't what I expected." I have read Fight Club, which is also by Palahniuk, but haven't read Choke. So, I expected it to be dark and twisty, with a little social commentary added in for good measure. To borrow from Mom, "It wasn't (totally) what I expected." It was dark and twisty, but I missed the social commentary. Side note: anytime I quote my mother, be sure to read it with a pretty strong Midwestern accent (specifically Saint Louis).

A quick plot summary--Sam Rockwell plays a recovering sex addict, Victor Mancini, who works at a colonial reenactment site. His mother, played by Angelica Houston, is a patient in a mental hospital who no longer recognizes her son. Victor begins to fall for his mother's doctor, played by Kelly MacDonald, as he sets out to find out who his father is.

Kudos to the casting director of this film. I don't think there is another actor out there that plays sleazy, but likeable as well as Sam Rockwell. I'm kind of in love with Anjelica Huston now. As I left the movie, it dawned on me that I don't think I've ever seen any of her movies before. I am in the process of adding her films to my Blockbuster queue right now. This film was filled with scenes that turned on long, silent close-ups of her face as she processed emotion and information. I was in awe. Plus, I got kind of mesmerized by her looks--she's attractive, but not in a traditional sense and I could never quite put my finger on what made her striking. It's like the individual parts are kind of odd, but the sum of the parts works. Last but not least, I was so pleased to see Joel Grey, star of Broadway and father of Baby Houseman (a.k.a. Jennifer Grey--"Dirty Dancing"). He's such an odd little man and he worked that beautifully as one of the recovering sex addicts in therapy with Victor.

Have you ever seen a movie and thought, I bet this is a really good book? That's how I felt with "Choke." That's not to say I didn't think the movie was good; I did. I just felt like the book probably said things the movie didn't even attempt to (the missing social commentary I referenced at the beginning of this). I laughed out loud several times, which is how I judge how funny something is. Even better, it was pretty moving, too.

Just a warning: I was unprepared for how much sex there was in this movie. After reading this, you will already be aware it's about a sex addict. I was not. All the sex scenes felt appropriate and were relevant to the plot, just...you know...this isn't one for the kids.

This is worth seeing for the full Friday night price. Just don't see it with anyone whom you might be uncomfortable watching people do the 'around the world.'

ALISON SAYS:

Who knew broken, depressed sex addicts could be so funny? I sure didn't until I saw this movie. I have never read any of Chuck Palahniuk's books, though after reading some of his info on Wikipedia, I've just added some of his work to my library account (yes, I have a library card and actually use it). Here's a few choice pieces:

When Palahniuk "attempted to publish his next novel, Invisible Monsters, publishers rejected it for being too disturbing. This led him to work on his most famous novel, Fight Club, which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him."

"Palahniuk would also become a member of the rebellious Cacophony Society* in his adulthood. He is a regular participant in their events, including the annual Santa Rampage (a public Christmas party involving pranks and drunkenness) in Portland. His participation in the Society inspired some of the events in his writings, both fictional and non-fictional. Most notably, he used the Cacophony Society as the basis for Project Mayhem in Fight Club."

"Choke" is the latest film adaptation of Palahniuk's work, and it's definitely worth seeing. It has a stellar cast, all talented and all funny. There's a depressing realism to the misery that is their lives, but you still love being along for the ride and keep hoping they'll find some semblance of happiness. Sam Rockwell dazzles as a guy you sort of want to hate, but can't help being charmed by. I can't believe I just wrote "dazzles." Brad William Henke masterfully portrays the sweetest, most cuddly chronic masturbator you'll ever meet. Clark Gregg should be proud of himself for his directorial debut with this film, not to mention his hilarious performance as Lord High Charlie and the fact that he wrote the screenplay.

LA Viewers: Worth paying full price at The Grove or Sunset 5.

Translation for non-LA natives: It is worth paying money to see this movie in the theaters. It will make you laugh and you get to see boobs (if you’re into that).

Sidenote: This is not the movie to bring your small children or your mom to. Or to bring anyone who might be weirded out by somewhat explicit sex scenes.
*Jessica has no idea what the Cacophony Society actually does, but you had her at "pranks and drunkenness."

from Chuck Palahniuk,

"We all die. The object is not to live forever.  The object is to create something that will."

Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors.  And Choke was, up until the publishing of Snuff, my least favorite of his books.  But, dude, I'd take a bad Palahniuk over a good most authors any day.  

This was a weird review to write, because I liked the movie.  I enjoyed it.  But it wasn't great.  And I couldn't figure out why.  It wasn't a Chuck Palahniuk movie -- even though he totally has a cameo along with Clay "Sheeeeeeee-it" Davis from The Wire -- and so it was hard to differentiate the two.  I was just buggered out by the whole experience.  I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for my review, and rightly so.  

Ah well.  His next novel, Pygmy, sounds amazing.  It's back to the social terrorism like Rant and Haunted and Lullaby.  And I've heard rumor that they are working on doing an animated version of Invisible Monsters, which is one of my favorite Palahniuk novels.

What actually made me want this book really badly was the New York Times review featured on the cover which stated that this book was:

Wickedly astuste... starts out with an eye for literate social satire that suggests Martin Amis or Zadie Smith... winds up in a Chuck Palahniuk paranoid daydream.

Zadie Smith and Chuck Palahniuk. A dream coupling.

Transmission is a witty satire of the corporate world and globalization. It shows us the reality of life for a visa worker, particularly in the technology sector as it is about to boom. But let me back up a second. The story starts with Arjun Mehta interviewing abruptly for a job in the United States, receiving it without much effort and then being transported into a different world. A world... much less glamorous than the one he was expecting. Especially since he is a master hacker and virus writer. Once he makes it to America and lands a shitty job the tech sector starts slowing down and Arjun loses his job, he releases the Leela Virus. He does this in the hopes of saving the company and getting his job back. What he ends up doing is breaking down technology all over the world, the markets, records and even ElderQuest. A nice gaming reference.

Transmission had a really interesting play between perspectives.  Though it didn't feel like it was hard to distinguish between each perspective nor were the shifts forced in any way. The three main characters were so different from one another though, that it allowed for you to develop a strong attachment to one of the three while being able to really dislike the other.

What made me really enjoy this book, oddly, was the ending. They weren't kidding about the Chuck Palahniuk paranoid daydream. Because of the Leela Virus that Arjun had released Mehtologists popped up whose sole purpose in life was to analyze his actions, potential reasons why he created the virus, etc.

I think the ending could have gone on for another 80 pages with the Mehtologists and the paranoid theories and speculation and I would have kept reading. The ending was brilliant.

My only outstanding question was about her family. My curiosity was piqued by the comment "My brother brought over a stack of Chuck Palahniuk paperbacks." This was a good sign. But asking about her family was also my way of weighing her oddities against my own. Oh, and did she have the goods!

So, with her permission, I present today's guest blogger post.

Ashes to Doughnuts.

By: Suzanne C. Haggerty.

My dad has to be the weirdest relative that I have ever met. And there is a whole branch of the family tree that I've never made contact with, likely filled with aunts, uncles and cousins, since my dad's father skipped out before he was even born, which probably explains a lot of the weirdness.

Anyway, after my parents divorced when I was a teenager my dad really found himself. He found that he was a happy hermit, perfectly content to live alone and spend all his money on CDs, stereo equipment and big televisions. He wasn't into the Dad Thing that much, but he had always been pretty distant so that wasn't a huge deal. I drafted him to play saxophone with the band at my wedding, and we saw each other maybe once a year until he hit his extreme hermit status around 1998.

He was a band director in a small town in north Mississippi. Actually, he was band director in a bunch of small towns in Mississippi, but never bothered to keep me informed where he was from year to year. He didn't take very good care of himself. Truth be told, I always knew that one day I would get a call from the police letting me know he was dead, which made it easier the day that a detective called me at work to tell me he was dead. There was a scene in a movie, I think maybe "When Harry Met Sally," in which the female lead admits that she pretends that her parents are dead so it won't be so hard to take when they do die. I think I had a similar defense mechanism going on.

I had him cremated. (Step 2 in making myself a semi-outcast amongst certain relatives. Step 1 was not having kids.) I decided to scatter his ashes in New Orleans, since he loved to visit the city and loved its music.

This is where it gets funny.

It was the year after 9-11, so I knew it probably wasn't a very good idea to just go to the shore of the Mississippi River and scatter ashes. Of course, I woke up hungover and hungry, because that's how one wakes up in New Orleans, and really just wanted the ashes out of my possession at that point. So my husband Bill and I headed to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.

At this revelation, people either look a little aghast and say nothing at all, or say something like, "Oh, you poor thing." My favorite reaction, though, and the one that makes me know I will totally get along with somebody, is when they burst out laughing and say, "You took your dad's ashes to Dunkin Donuts?!"

I was hungry, and Dad wasn't averse to a doughnut or two himself.

We got the ashes scattered into the river. I played lookout on top of the rip rap while Bill climbed down and dumped them. Not real ceremonial or anything, but that's what you get when you drop dead and leave burial duties to your agnostic daughter. I've already told my mom she's getting scattered along with the ashes of however many dogs she manages to accumulate between now and then. I think the best part was when the steam calliope pipe organ let loose across the river, startling both of us and giving renewed vigor to the hangover headache.

At this point you're either smiling or aghast.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times.

Despite the soothing title, readers know better than to anticipate a kinder, gentler novel from the author of Fight Club. On its surface, Lullaby is a fable of supernatural horror, one that concerns a newspaper reporter researching sudden infant death syndrome who discovers a fatal poem in a children's anthology, a verse that kills the listener whenever someone recites (or even thinks) its lines. While trying to destroy every copy of the anthology, he succumbs to the temptation to inflict the poem's evil power on those who annoy him (which, in Palahniuk's universe, means plenty of casualties). Such a plot outline barely hints at the range of the author's thematic obsessions, which here include consumerism, necrophilia, radical environmentalism, class-action suits, identity and free will, sensory overload ("Imagine a plague you catch through your ears") and the never-ending horrors of real estate. Characteristic for Palahniuk, the novel's setup is more subversively engaging than the follow-through, though his writing remains so deliriously rich in ideas and entertaining in its stream-of-conscious riffing that conventions of character, plot and plausibility seem like comparatively empty anachronisms.

Download Link1

Download Link 2

Download Link 3

PASSWORD: www.rapidbyte.org

from RapidByte

From Publishers Weekly
Palahniuk's audacious ninth novel tells the story of Cassie Wright, an aging porn queen who intends to put an exclamation point on her career by having sex with 600 men in one day on film. The story begins with Mr. 600—the pornosaur who introduced Cassie to the business—as he describes the other 599 actors awaiting their moment on screen. The perspective then shifts to Mr. 72, an adopted Midwestern 20-something who is one of the many young men claiming to be Cassie's long-lost son. Mr. 137, a has-been television star hoping to revive his career, wants to ask Cassie's hand in marriage so that the two can star in a reality TV show. But for a novel centered around a gargantuan gangbang, there's surprisingly little action; the small amount of narrative movement takes place backstage, where the characters attempt to get a sense of one another while waiting for their number to be called. There are sharp moments when Palahniuk compassionately and candidly examines the flesh-on-film industry, but mostly this reads like a cross between the Spice Channel and Days of Our Lives.

Download

I'm not even involved in thaat much stuff.

This is so dumb.

I missed my workout this morning because I just couldn't get out of bed and guess what?! Now I have to make it up tonight! Stupid stupidness!

OK, so it's really not that big a deal, but I just want to be a butterfly "just wingin' over things and nothin' deep inside!"

I haven't had time to read Choke and therefore see the movie. I haven't read my new Rolling Stone which actually doesn't look that great anyways so whatever. Aaaand I've barely had time to come up with crap to write about.

I would say time management is the problem, but if you knew how meticulous I am about my iCal you would know why that's impossible.

Maybe I will come up with something later. But maybe I won't.

I think there were a lot of things in the book that are, like, classically difficult things to try to adapt for the stage or screen the biggest of which is the narrator thing which Palahniuk uses in all of the books of his I can recall which I'm sure totally sucks. The director had some choices on which way he could go with that - he could have a narrator (like in Fight Club) or he could choose to try to integrate the parts of the story that the narrator provided into the dialog (I'm sure there are lots of successful examples but I'm too brain dead to think of any). Either one is a gamble, I guess, and I swear I wouldn't want to have to make that decision or the job of a director in a MILLION years but I'm really sad to say that this gamble was a total bust. The dialog ended up sounding forced and most of the information that propelled the action of the book was lost in the movie so you ended up having no idea why the characters were doing what they were doing. I have to say, however, that the reason for this was probably not due to the decision to avoid the narrator. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that ALL OF THE MESSED UP PARTS OF THE BOOK WERE MADE SOFT!!!!

I'm going to give Gregg the benefit of the doubt and assume that the studio took control and forced him to make a kinder, gentler Chuck Palahniuk movie because it's the only conclusion I can come to. I mean if someone reads a book about a guy who's a sex addict who chokes himself to extort money out of people, who was raised by the woman who kidnapped him while high on multiple hallucinogenic drugs - what kind of movie would you assume the reader would want to make?

Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't assume that the people in this movie would be calm and casual about their problems. In fact, of all the Palahniuk books that I've read, CASUAL is not a word that would ever leap to mind when describing them. Desperate. Strung out. Messed up. Violent. Dirty. Graphic. Disenfranchised. I think the Noah Baumbach movie I just saw fills that bill better than Choke did. The "Doctor" isn't crazy anymore, thinking she's from the future. Now she's just stressed out. His mom isn't drug addled with blood dripping from her nose anymore. No, now she's Angelica Huston looking her sexiest in years. Sex addiction isn't REALLY an addiction. I mean look at Sam Rockwell! He looks so happy and cheerfull. He doesn't exhibit any of the distaste for any of his ladies that he does in the book. And that whole choking thing? It's just a quirk. It doesn't really require any real explanation.

I know it's hard to pack a book into a 90 minute format. The people who do a good job figure out what the book it trying to say and say that in 90 minutes and don't worry about the rest. This thing threw a whole bunch of details that are meaningless without context against a wall and hoped they'd stick.

The girl who plays the woman who wants to be raped was awesome though. Totally awesome.

For a full review visit Static Multimedia "Choke" Film Reviews Item

I saw Choke last night and I had low expectations because as you know, movies based on books never do it for me. And, for me, whatever Chuck Palahnuik writes is descended from heaven, so how can anything ever live up? Plus, there’s something about his writing style that just can’t be translated to movie form. Except if you’re David Fincher and you can put in stylistic weirdness that sets the mood.

However, I feel the best work that could have been done was done. Firstly, the casting was perfect. Sam Rockwell continues to be my new creepy husband, and I thought Denny was great, although he was a poor man’s Seth Rogan.

The adaptation was good as well, and it literally followed the same story and sequence, with dialogue taken directly from the book. Like I mentioned, despite following the story pretty closely, there is just something that is lost from the author’s style. Like in the books, he doesn’t reveal too much about characters, and they are characters that you never think would exist in real life, so seeing them in the flesh almost ruins the affect.

I thought the scenes filmed in the colonial theme park were some of the best of the adaptation, and the film did capture the total absurdness of the whole ordeal.

But, here is my major gripe: The ENDING WAS CHANGED TO MAKE IT MORE HOLLYWOOD. Something about Chuck’s books (yes, we are on a first-name basis) is that when they end, the story is often not wrapped up and the turn of events often goes to bleak. However, since their was a “romantic storyline” in this movie, I guess someone told the director they needed to use that. Also, Page Marshall’s delusion was totally changed; in the book, she believes she is sent from the future with a mission to be impregnated so that she can bring the embryo back to her future so she can cure a plague. She later escapes and she and Victor form a weird, bizarre relationship. In the movie she’s just a stressed out medical student who lives a happily ever romance with Victor, or so we are told. Fucking Hollywood.

It would be interesting to see the movie through the eyes of someone who has never read of or heard of the novel.

Speaking of movie adaptations, Blindness opens next week. I’m excited because you know how much I love apocolypse scenarios. It will also be interesting because in the book, none of the characters are actually given names.

So far I am really enjoying Choke.  It falls into a category of what I'd like to call Deviant Literature, that is, novels and stories about characters who live lifestyles or do things that a moral audience might take particular offense to.  I've read a lot of books that I would classify in this type of genre.  Examples that come to mind immediately are some of the Bret Easton Ellis books (Less Than Zero, American Psycho), J. T. Leroy (Sarah, The Heart is Decietful Above All Things), and Dennis Cooper (Frisk, The Sluts).  All of these listed novels would be what I call Deviant Literature and have been met with varying degrees of criticism and success.  I would argue that Ellis and Palahniuk have both had a general degree of popular success and acceptance (brought about partially due to the success of the movie versions of their best know works).  Leroy brings a degree of interest in the fact that he isn't even a real person but instead the imagined persona of Laura Albert (which when you read all about the charade is pretty deviant in and of itself).  Cooper writes some seriously twisted shit, his books were almost hard for me to read, and I am sure there have been some people who have just been utterly disgusted with his work.

I like the Deviant Literature.  I like the rawness of it.  The blunt look at human nature and psychology.  I am sure that almost all the books above have been called pornography at some time or another.  I know for a fact that at least one, American Psycho, has regular attempts at banning from public libraries (and if that is the case then Frisk and The Sluts are probably both very contested).  I would not call these books pornography, even if the stories they tell are often very graphic sexually and/or violently.  The reason why I would not call any of them pornography has to do with the fact that I don't believe them to be written with the intent to cause sexual arousal but instead are meant to be commentaries, satires if you will (albeit not the most humorous type of satire), looking at people as manifestations of violent and sexual tendencies.  Of course one can draw a line wherever they please and make a case for their stance.  Look at Sade's work.  He has been dead for almost two hundred years and there is still very heated debate over whether many of his writings are just twisted pornography or if they are actually works of literary merit.

Personally I would kind of like to teach a course on Deviant Literature, partially because the debate on the nature of the various works would likely be very interesting.  If I was going to teach a class I think I would probably start with some Sade, then touch on authors like Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Ellis, Cooper, LeRoy, and Palahniuk.  I think there are very comparable themes that can be found in the works of all these writers and some good discussion could be made.  I would be curious to hear what people think about why these books manage to last and continue to be talked about.  Again, Sade's writing has been described as one of the most depraved and disturbing stuff ever written and yet a fascination with him persists.  Is it the forbidden fruit theory, or is it that people are are actually more interested in the content of these works than our moral personalities want to admit?  Something worth thinking about.

Considering I am a long way off from teaching any classes I will satisfy myself for now with Choke.  Let me know if anyone has read any of the above books, I'd love to hear your thoughts on them or on Deviant Literature as a whole.

Grade: B-

A raíz de este vídeo que encontré en www.freshcreation.com pensé en esa definición.

El diseño es parte de todo, absolutamente todo está diseñado, para algunos incluso nosotros mismo tuvimos un diseñador.

¿Qué es un buen diseño?

Indudablemente coincido con el hecho de que los buenos diseños han de durar pero, básicamente, porque es la prueba irrefutable de dos aspectos importantes, [uno] es útil, ¿alguien conoce "algo" inútil que haya durado? (tal vez nosotros mismos, jejeje). Y [dos] debe ser algo que apetezca conservar, tener, mirar, tocar,... Usar al fin y al cabo.

La diferencia entre los buenos diseños y los iconos es que éstos últimos proponen algo que va más allá, hacen reflexionar sobre el modo de usarlos, cambian nuestros hábitos, las relaciones con otras personas y a nosotros mismos. 

Para cada uno hay un diseño y objeto más afín pero tratad de ver 

¿qué habéis conservado a lo largo de los años? 

Espero saber de esos objetos que os han acompañado durante tanto tiempo.

[Podemos tener una curiosa lista de objetos de "diseño"]

Recuerda sin embargo esta escena de la película "El club de la lucha"

"Las cosas que posees, acaban poseyéndote. 

Solo una vez que lo has perdido todo eres libre de hacer lo que sea"

- El club de la lucha, guión de Jim Uhls, dirigida por David Fincher, novela de Chuck Palahniuk -

Click this link to check it out:

The Radio Dan Show: Saluting Paul Newman

I just got back from seeing the movie CHOKE. Chuck Palahniuk is a genius his stories and character development are amazing. He takes all of the normal trash ideologies society has pushed upon us and stripped them from his characters. He has mastered the ability to take what society has deemed wrong and irreprehensible and make them real. When I say making them real I mean he takes people we normally look down upon because of our refusal to associate and dig deeper. He makes us love the misunderstood. It's a beautiful thing we can all take a step back and reevaluate our culture and our place within it. Sam Rockwell did an incredible job playing Victor. Definitely going to be picking this book up in the coming week or so to understand the development of the story more thoroughly. This has inspired me to start writing a lot more a department I've been lacking in as of late. I've only been writing about my own life and my own thoughts. After seeing this movie and reading a lot of fiction lately I want to start writing some fictional stories. I will post on here. I don't know exactly where the creativity and inspiration will come from but I am a college student so there should be plenty of that around!

The Pilo Family Circus, young Aussie author Will Elliott's first published novel, won the ABC Fiction Award in 2006. Following the character of Jamie, a young man in his twenties living in Brisbane and working a dead-end job after completing an Arts degree at uni, the narrative takes a massive detour from the normal world after Jamie almost runs over a clown on his way home from work one night. After some fairly unpleasant interaction with that clown and it's colleagues, Jamie is given a choice: become the Pilo Family Circus's newest recruit, or die.

The story becomes more bizarre and outlandish from there on in. Jamie enters a world that is dark, twisted, and filled with comic-book violence, where any move he makes could easily be his last. He meets his fellow clowns: brothers Doopy and Goshy (who never speaks apart from making horrible whistling noises like a kettle, and is in love with a plant), Rufshod (who loves nothing more than being injured, preferably close to fatally), an older, somewhat melancholy clown named Winston, and Gonko, the leader of the clowns. And last but not least, Jamie meets JJ - the clown that he becomes when he puts on the facepaint, who is nastier and more cunning than all the rest.

And the worst part is that JJ wants Jamie dead.

Read this! I've never found anything quite like it. The Pilo Family Circus is truly incredible, and Will Elliott is definitely one to watch.

Less Than Zero was Bret Easton Ellis's first book, published when he was only 21 and still in college. Apparently he wrote it during an 8-week coke binge. Probably not the most advisable way of writing a manuscript, but I guess it got the job done.

Less Than Zero follows the life of Clay, a rich young college student who has returned to his hometown of Los Angeles for the winter break. There's no real plot as such, just a series of random events and experiences, mostly involved with parties and drug-taking, but with this novel Ellis has perfectly captured the essence of how it feels to be young and lost in life. It's fairly bleak - there's no redeeming ending to this one - but because of that it feels more truthful.

Eat Me by Linda Jaivin is naughty, erotic and hilarious. The first chapter has a couple meeting in the fruit and vegetable aisle of a supermarket, and then proceeding to use the produce on each other as sex toys, after which they replace them back in the displays. After reading this, you'll never forget to wash your fruit and veggies before you eat them :D

The novel follows the lives of four close female friends, their sex lives, and the stories they tell each other about them. As most of Jaivin's novels do, Eat Me pokes fun at traditional erotic literature conventions and is arousing and alarming in equal measure.

My Summer of Love by Helen Cross has now been adapted into a film, which I've seen, and it doesn't do the book justice at all. If you've seen the movie, you should read the book. It's so much better.

Set in the fictional Yorkshire market town of Whitehorse, and the surrounding area, it tells the story of an intense relationship that develops between Tamsin and Mona, two 15-year-old girls of different social classes. Mona narrates the story, and you can almost hear her voice with its Yorkshire accent. Although it is, first and foremost, a story of teenage infatuation, the book is filled with darker themes, ranging from eating disorders and paedophilia to violent assault and even murder. 

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a collection of short stories supposedly told by members of a group of writers who have locked themselves in an old building for three months in order to write the perfect story.  Each individual story is brilliant and disturbing in its own way. One story in particular from this collection, entitled Guts, is renowned for causing people to faint when Chuck read it during his promotional tour.

Haunted is classic Palahniuk, filled with strange, twisted and darkly humorous tales, from the story of the girl who refused to speak after looking into an antique case called the Nightmare Box, to the account of the woman who lost her lips to frostbite. An incredible read, but maybe not for the faint-hearted or those with a weak stomach...

In this post, I'd like to address a disconcerting tendency I've perceived in individuals of an age roughly equal to my own, namely a liability to believe that Gothic Fiction is 'lame', 'shit', 'lame shit', or of some other, similar nature that renders the genre unworthy of attention. What misguided individual originated this at once horrifying and laughable idea I cannot guess, though I suspect Chuck Palahniuk on the grounds that the besmirchment of quality literature and the advancement of its opposite is in his interest, that information is irrelevant, for this mysterious propagandist and his disciples have no evidence in which to ground their slander, whereas I am prepared to weave a virtually impregnable defense of overwrought Victorian melodramas.     

If you're a regular reader of OMGABAT, or have happened to notice that more of my posts fall into the category titled 'Dracula' than do into that titled 'Music', you may be anticipating the mention of a certain work of Bram Stoker's, but indeed in this you are mistaken, as the tirade into which I am about to boldly forge concerns an entirely different macabre tale of ancient, decaying edifices and dead who yet tread the earth, one which, unlike the forementioned vampire yarn, never spawned a decent movie-- Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. 

I hear you scoff even as I write this, youth of today. "Have you finally forfeited every iota of reason you once possessed?" You'd ask, perhaps not so eloquently, "surely this 19th century romance cannot contend with the work of edgy Gen X scribes and their terse musings on such provocative subjects as booze, drugs, and whores?" In response to this challenge, I turn your attention to Chapter 13 of the book in question, constituted by Isabella's letter to Nelly Dean imploring to be rescued from the tyranny of marriage to Heathcliff. An exchange between Isabella and Heathcliff's adoptive brother Hindley, in which the latter articulates his desire to see Heathcliff killed, proceeds as follows:

'Look here!' he replied, pulling from his waistcoat a curiously- constructed pistol, having a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel.

This book features a handgun with a knife on top of the barrel. This isn't a musket or any sort of firearm for which a bayonet might be an appropriate accoutrement, it's a pistol, secured to which is a knife that I imagine is at least as large as it is itself. A knife-gun, or a gun-knife if you prefer. Can a mortal intelligence conceive of a more badass machine?  "I know what you're thinking, punk. Did I fire six shots, or only five? Doesn't fucking matter, I'm going to cut your throat open!" Though her imagination was tempered by the level of technology extant during her lifetime, Bronte prefigured this: 

Moreover, while I doubt Mr. Palahniuk could hold his own in a Fight Club, Emily Bronte, having lived during a turbulent age in an area frequently beset by riots, was a fucking sharpshooter, and was more than capable, should the need arise, of knifegunning a foe into oblivion. My befuddlement as to why I can't find a hard-boiled gunslinging poetess with whom to settle down is a diatribe for another day.

Perhaps I'll fortify my argument with examples drawn from other staples of the Gothic genre at a later date, but, in the meanwhile, I challenge all who remain unconvinced of Wuthering Heights' hardcore nature to produce a piece of prose which more effectively elicits from its reader the interjection 'oh shit, you're so fucked' than does the inquiry posed by the young Linton as he travels to meet his father for the first time: "Is Wuthering Heights as pleasant a place as Thrushcross Grange?" The poor little shit has no idea what he's getting himself into, they've got knifeguns up there.

-- Gothicus Maximus

Once they get there, they realize it's nothing more than a prison. They are locked inside a house with enough food to last the month but it wasn't the paradise they were expecting. Haunted is a collection of short stories within a longer story. The short stories are of how each character came to be in the house, and the longer story is what they do when they are there.

Believe me, it's gruesome! I was reading this book through squinted eyes hoping nothing would come out and get me.

They compete in a twisted game of "who can survive the worst amount of pain and suffering" so that when they leave the house they will be the one with the most gut-wrenching but heroic survival story.

If you want to read a thrilling novel about the lengths that people go to - then this is the one. Though I recommend reading this on an empty stomach, because you just don't know what will come up.