It was a good day today.

I sat at my desk properly caffeinated, with the sound of the new Coldplay album in my ears as I extricated the lovely white goo from the center of maple frosted long John. I am basking in the glow of one of the best compliments I have ever received.

One of the girls in the office cut her hair last night. I told her it looked good. Later she told me, "AC, thanks for always making me feel good about myself."

If I can leave this world and people say that when they remember me, it will have been a good life. Those people that have done that for me have been the people I would do anything for and always valued what they had to say because they had added something to my life. That is very different from those people in my life who simply criticised me in the name of mentoring or helping without the authority that a real relationship provides.

Thanks for reading.

AC

Tom Waits reads Charles Bukowski

I've started reading a little Bukowski lately and I really like him.
Here's one of his poems read by Tom Waits.

Thanks for reading,

AC

The Penguin Poet

I found an interesting poetry blog called Penguin Poems and wanted to share it with you. Good stuff.

Thanks for reading.

AC

Literary Steel Cage Match between Upton Sinclair and Somerset Maugham. Throwing folding chairs will be permitted...

I originally called this post "Of Human Bondage and Main Street-Reviews and Literary Theory of the Difference Between Novels and Essays.", and then I realized that would bring almost no hits, and sounded like some of the essays I wrote in college, so I added a little zing to it.


I recently read two very good novels: Main Street by Upton Sinclair and Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. My wife and I have this big list of all the important books, one should have read in college, and since we are in our forties we have some catching up to do. I have read "important" novels on the list in the past, but it didn't really strike me until these two novels why novels are as important as essays or other types of non-fiction. What I saw in both of these novels, and possibly expressed clearer by Sinclair's work especially was that novels are not only able to express complicated ideas through narrative, but they are able to illustrate these ideas in a more complete way than non-fiction and other genres. Now, some people will say that novels lack that classical form of an essay where you present evidence in an organized way in order to prove your thesis. While it’s true that novels don't always present truth in a didactic method, they can still effectively argue to prove a thesis.

The difference is that novels explore truths more completely by putting their characters in the midst of trying to live out what they believe. Not only that, but their beliefs are challenged by other characters in the novels who operate under different paradigms. Through the passage of time in the novel, we see characters changing their beliefs in response to their experiences. In this way, the novel has an almost organic feel to it. It does not seek to convince you of something based on reasoning alone, but instead uses the narrative as a vehicle to experiment with how different paradigms would play out in different situations. Now, because the novel does not rely on the same careful reasoning based on gathered evidence to prove its point, it has to convince the reader on a gut-level that the narrative resonates with their own real life experiences; the novel has to present a believable story, or any chance of proving any valid truths are lost.

We see a perfect example of these paradigm shifts in Main Street by Upton Sinclair. The main character is Carol, a liberal, self proclaimed reformer who naively believes she has all the answers to turn a small town into a progressive paradise. Sinclair was a very serious Socialist, with an extensive history of being heavily involved in politics. What I liked as a reader about this book was that there were some very sarcastic comments about the liberal naivete of Carol. She was elitist and condescending as she was oh so sincere about helping the little people. It’s an interesting novel in that you don’t really like the main character, at least not until later in the book, so her comeuppance is enjoyable on a purely nasty level.

When Carol marries a doctor from the small town of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, she thinks she finally has her opportunity. When she arrives though, she sees how it won't be as easy as she thought. As she comes into contact with every part of society, from the banker to the socialist handyman, she fails at every endeavor to better the little town. She becomes involved in so many projects to help the poor and the deserving people, and either is thwarted by the pillars of polite society, or just screws it up herself.

One of the very interesting parts of this novel was how the point of view changed from Carol to other people. We saw how others wanted to improve the town in their own way and how they saw Carol’s endeavors. By the end of the book, Carol has changed to the point that we like her and care what happens to her. At least I did.

Now, between the two books, Of Human Bondage is the more enjoyable book to read. There were times when Main Street was a definite slog through the marshes. What’s so amazing about Of Human Bondage was that it starts out with the main character losing his mother and father and being sent off to live with his aunt and uncle. Even with this non-joyous start, and with the hero moving from failure to failure and never really having success, I could not put this book down. What was so incredible was that when I got to the last chapter of the book and got to the ending, I was so happy. It ended so well, and it was like the last three pages where Somerset Maugham summarizes, illustrates and explains the characters life in such a way that I felt so very contented that I basked in the goodness of a great book for several days, like a great meal. By the way, Somerset Maugham is the author of “The Razor’s Edge”, which is another remarkable book and worth the read. Don’t judge it by the Bill Murray movie version, its much better than that.

Thanks for reading,

AC

Jack Kerouac's 30 Essentials for Spontaneous Prose

Jack Kerouac's writing was very unique and his prose especially has a certain quality
that you won't find in other authors. It's similar in some ways to Walt Whitman, but
to me, it has a desperate, hungry feel, as if each word were a meal to starving man,
He called it the Spontaneous Prose Method. Below is a list that he published of
30 essentials necessary to write in this method. Even if you aren't a writer, you
will find this interesting.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

This was from"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials"
from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, 1958, 1977, 1983.

Thanks for reading

AC
 

The Zombie Hunters

I started reading a very good web comic called The Zombie Hunters recently. Its very well done and the art is fantastic. I really recommend it. You need to start from the beginning, because it has a long story line. I like the newer art better than some of the first chapters of the comic, but I'm no visual artist, so I have no room to judge someone else's work or how their direction changed over time. I just wanted to make sure you knew that it was really worth it to stay with the comic.

I have always liked Zombie Movies, or anything Post-Apocalyptic. I'm sure there are thousands of essays about why those genres seem to appeal to so many people and I'm really not in the mood to explore that idea ad-nauseum.

My personal theory is that they are so popular because they put us in the situation where we can dream of throwing off all the bullshit of polite society and go back to simply surviving by our wits and strength and actually fighting for our lives. That's in place of the kind of political campaigning many of us do everyday as we try to keep our jobs intact or deal with teachers and classmates in college or high school.

I think it also appeals to throwing off a lot of the responsibilities of mowing our lawns, paying our taxes, keeping the oil changed in the mini-van. In a post apocalyptic zombie world, the lawn and insurance is the last thing you live for and you really live in the moment. You have no to-do lists, other than keep the clip full of ammo, the chainsaw full of gas and the door barricaded.

That, and I think we all would like to be able to loot...you know like a huge garage sale with no haggling over anything. By the way, The Zombie Hunters has an I HEART LOOTING T-Shirt on sale, its pretty cool....

(This weblog does not condone or encourage the illegal looting of homes or business of any kind, unless there was actually a Zombie emergency, in which case, it is our humble opinion it would be permissible....mkay?)


Thanks for reading.

AC

Why Beatnik For Jesus?

I guess I ought to explain why I picked the title "Beatnik For Jesus"...

Growing up in a small town in the 70's, I was pretty protected from any real counterculture. I mean we had some hippies here and there running health food stores and teaching at the community college, but they never darkened the door of my white bread existence. Just some strange creatures I caught site of now and then, like some type of shy cultural Chupacabra.

I remember one day my dad took me to some kind of small shop and there was a man there wearing a red beret and acting kind of odd. Not abnormal, or anti-social, he seemed like he knew how to fit in, but didn't really need to do it all the way. The red beret was the perfect touch. He was out of place in our town, but certainly not as dangerous as those godless hippies I had heard about.

When we left the store, my dad told me that the man in the beret was a beatnik. My dad grinned and explained they were mostly harmless, but just saw things differently than others.

I didn't really think about beatniks any further until I was working at the call center while I was going to college. I had picked up a copy of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac and couldn't put it down. It was incredible. I didn't approve of all the characters did, but I approved of how they lived their lives in such a way as to not accept every thought given to them. I liked how they did not let life just swallow them up but instead tried to devour all the joy, truth and love they could out of life.

I read more about Kerouac and his misfits. I found out he was a Roman Catholic, a Buddhist and had views that were all over the place, conservative one minute and liberal the next. Besides that, the idea of the Beatnik was utterly connected to much of the bebop, hard-bop and straight ahead jazz I adored.
Here's a line from "On the Road" that caught my eye,

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh..."

I read some more of the Beat writers, like Allen Ginsberg famous rant-poem "Howl". These lines really spoke to me.

 ...who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality...

 I remembered Orwell's ideas about truth and reality being determined by the party in his book 1984, and how telling the truth is a revolutionary act in the face of universal deceipt. Ginsberg's idea of an enforced Absolute Reality running down those that would try to escape it seemed to mesh with this. It's crazy and on the edge of rejecting all of the norms of established society, but I also remembered someone else with crazy ideas and rhetoric that tried to turn the world upside down: Jesus Christ. I remembered how he had so angered the religious leaders of his day that they sought to kill him, even though he never sought to tear down the government and sought love and peace and truth and sacrificed his own life so that others could spread his messages of forgiveness, redemption and love against a religious world that sought to keep people guilty, condemned and confused.

 The Beatnik movement started as a vibrant sub-culture that questioned societal norms and sought truth. It was not centralized, it was not inherantly liberal or inherantly conservative, it just was. Of course, later like every movement from hippies, to punk to hip-hop, it became commercialized so kids from the burbs could pretend they were different by picking up the uniform de jour from the mall so they could annoy their parents.

Still, for me, it was the first label I felt fit me. I'm not a complete redneck, I'm not a Liberal, but I'm not a Right-wing nut job, I don't know how to be a yuppie, at least not well. I'm an evangelical who goes to a fundamentalist church, but I don't agree with everything they say. I'm looking for truth, justice and world system that's neither paternal nor oppressive. I don't want to adopt a label that put me in a box like so many of them do. Beatnik for Jesus finally seemed to express how I felt in this world.

Thanks for reading,

AC

The Beaver

A couple of weeks ago I rented this from Redbox. It looked smart and offbeat. It was a
great movie. It didn't end super-happy, (which is kind of unrealistic in real life), but it
ended well. Without giving away any spoilers, Mel Gibson's character finds a way out of
his crippling depression through the use of his "prescription puppet", which is a beaver with
a cockney accent. What's interesting is that the thing that saved him, becomes something
equally as self-destructive. It made me think, it touched me, it was a good movie. There are
some parts that are definitely not good for kids.

http://www.thebeaver-movie.com/

Thanks for reading.

AC

Check out my friend IHCC and his blog "I Hate Call Centres" .

Just a heads up for the timid reader, his writing style is very "direct" when it comes to
how he feels about working in a call center.

Thanks for Reading,

AC

Swimming in Slacktivity

Totally without motivation... I've had rough spots before, but the last week has been something really out of the ordinary. I don't want to work. I mean, if it wasn't for the wife and the mortgage, I'd probably be checking out my options as a hobo. Somewhere between hobo and hipster, but definitely some sort of slacker sub-group. I stare at my computer screens and just can't pull it together. It's not like I work in a bad place. My boss is nice, my coworkers are pleasant. The president of the company is a good person. I'm about as un-oppressed as possible. Still, its taking everything I got to write an email or issue a quote or enter an order. I'm hoping that by writing about it, I'll get my head straight. Thanks for reading. AC

"A Secret Life" By Stephen Dunn

I saw the following poem in Garrison Keilor's book "Good Poems".
I really identified with the need for a secret life,and thought this
belonged in an anonymous blog.

A Secret Life

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.

1st Post...about this blog

So for 3 and half years I blogged on Call Center Purgatory about my experiences working in a bad call center.

Since that time, I found a good job at a company that cares about their employees. It's not perfect, but the difference between the two companies is like Heaven and Hell.

When I stopped writing Call Center Purgatory, I knew I would eventually want to have an anonymous blog again, so I claimed this site before it was gone. For those of you that are not Christians, or are turned off by Christian blogs, no need to worry, I don't intend to blog about Christian topics all the time. My faith is part of my worldview, but it's not all that I want to write about. I appreciate non-Christian literature and music and media, so please keep reading.

Lately I have been feeling that kind of malaise I felt at the call center when I knew something was not right, that kind of deep malaise that doesn't go away after a vacation. I knew it was time to start blogging again...

Please stay tuned.