cheech

there is a 7/17/03 addition below
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I'm a few pages away from finishing my first HP Lovecraft story....yeah, I picked "The Call of Cthulhu". Yeah, because it's a Metallica song. Gimme a break, I'm reading, there is an intellectual element to it.
I'm also gonna have a go at reading Choke by the guy who sorta seems to be the patron demon of the site, Chuck Palahniuk. I was intrigued by a review of the book he wrote about Portland Oregon, which I posted about in Lifestyle, and then this new book Diary has an interesting review in Publishers Weekly:

"The novel is something of a departure for Palahniuk, who eschews his blighted urban setting 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.

Doubleday's marketing plan for Palahniuk is appropriately surreal-- 'street team guerilla marketing' will supplement the usual advertising and author tour routine..."

Hmm, what do ya think they mean by "street team guerillas"? Do you think they kidnap you and beat you? Shoot you with dart guns? Rape you with an team of ibexes (ibeces?)?

Excuse me; I'm off to have a
baroque flight of imagination . . .
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7-17-03 -- well, I've read about half of Choke and...I still want to read these two other recent books, but I'm not sure this one is my "bag". Chuck's a picker of negative/angry things to ruminate on, I guess, and that's fine to a degree...but there's some situations in here...I don't wanna say they're too unrealistic, because it's fiction, but...the way some of the things go seems a little...not the direction I would take were I writing Choke which I guess I can't cuz 1) it's already written, I'd get sued, 2) I'm not so arrogant as to say I could do a novel, 3) but if I was all arrogant and talented I think my novel would be a little more fun, if not all positive n such but a bit more credible, less ummm pointedly oddball and sleazy.
Morgan wasn't kidding; the guy really does call his penis his "dog". That's so silly I can't be bothered by it, though. It makes me guffaw. For a short while in elementary school some kids used the term "bike" but I think that's just so they could go "Do you wash your... bike ...with a hose? (teeheehee)" 9-year-olds have some great wit. For years I wondered where the hell "bike" coulda come from 'til I saw an athletic equipment ad; there is a brand of athletic cup called Bike, and the brand name is emblazened across the cup....
The Lovecraft story was pretty great. He has an old-style vocabulary and turn of words that is often poetic, sometimes a bit over-the-top stodgy but overall good (it was written in I dunno the 1910s or 1920s so...) and while some might feel a need for a horror story to be all charged-up in this era I like the gradual arc of the story. I guess I'll read more of the collection.