Improbable Book of the Week (4)

Serpent and Dove: X-rated letter's from My ex who still believes he is Marilyn Monroe reincarnated (Volume 1) (and there are SIX volumes!),

by Raven Beckwith

Don't ask.
I haven't read it, anyway.
But here is the opening sentence, for your reading pleasure:

My dear goddess Laura:
I have been searching the Internet for most of the day since last writing you on how to make a locking key chastity belt which is your first command on me.

(Chastity belt: now there's a term I never thought I'd see written in this blog!)

You know... come to think of it, it could be a piece of humour, of satire, for all I know. In which case it might be quite good.

Do let me know if you read it.

Virtually dead

I just noticed the last post was the hundredth. And while we (our group) aren't big on anniversaries, I am just glad we didn't get to hit the 100 mark with this following musing...

A few hours ago, the story hit the internet about a mother who apparently "tweeted" about her two-year-old son's drowning-in-progress, updating her 5000 Twitter followers about the rescue procedures... and, eventually, about the little one's death.

OK, "drowning-in-progress" is a bit harsh and probably very unjust. She posted a "tweet" about her son being found in the pool, and she asked for prayers. (That actually sounds like a very good idea especially if the person in question actually believes in the power of prayer.)

Unfortunately, the rescue efforts failed: five hours later, the little boy was pronounced dead. And the mother, it seems (I wasn't one of her followers, and now her "tweets" are protected), promptly updated her followers about it, posting her son's photo.

Now, everyone is up in arms. The internet is abuzz with this sad story, journalists are filing their reports for tonight's news.

But what these media don't know is that there was another such story - how true, I don't know and so I can't tell - just two days ago. Someone posted on an astrology forum that her teenage son had just committed suicide.

Now, I am not a member of said forum and I am not familiar with the person in question; in all fairness, neither is the member of our group who informed me about this today (after the Military-Mom story broke). She doesn't know this person, none of us here do. But judging by the responses of the members on said forum, pretty much everyone there took the post seriously.

If it is true... what does it say about people? About the times? About our place in the virtual reality?

Let me tell you: I have always abhorred people who judge others' grief by their own (more or less weepy or exhibitionist) standards. I know from personal experience that everyone deals (or they should) with grief in their own manner. And I know (again, from personal experience) that the deepest grief is often wordless, tearless, apparently emotionless.
I also know that grief makes people behave in the most unpredictable ways - and doubly so if they are under some sort of medication. Also, in the case of "Military-Mom", I don't think it was particularly horrendous that she asked her followers to pray for her son. It's not what I would have done - or even thought about it - but I am not her, and she is not me.

But I must admit I do find it eerie, to put it mildly, that anyone could have the "composure" (for lack of a better term) to even think about their internet pals in such a moment. Or are they - virtual friends, images on the screen, words and LOLs and OMG - really the only ones that person can turn to?

There seems to be something profoundly wrong with these people and their perception of the world. And personally I don't think the internet is helping them as much as they probably think it is. It is a net - and they got caught in it, confusing it with "real" life.


I have to go now - something urgent came up (a good thing, don't worry ;) - but I'll be back to edit this and add further thoughts.

Meanwhile, stay well, my friends.
And keep your eyes on the real people around you.

Google's Goggles ogling at you

Just when you thought that typing for information (instead of opening a book, let alone going to mysterious places like the one featured in the titillating intro to our last post) without even having to care about proper spelling anymore was the non plus ultra in accessing information, it turns out Google has anticipated the ultimate whim and desire of the semi-literate - but doesn't it always? - and is now about to offer a word-free search:

Google Goggles

Cool, huh?

Now ask yourself: who, except maybe people who for some objective and particularly painful reason really cannot use words in their search, would ever need that?

The answer: in time, and thanks to Google (among other pillars of our culture and society), pretty much everybody.

The Code

Being a musing about an 
amusingly museless author
and his non-amusing success

(And if it weren't enough, it all takes place in a museum!)

Renowned bestseller writer Bram Down staggered through the vaulted archway of the mysterious building.

It was apparent that nobody had visited the building in a very long time.

He opened a door: behind it lay a great hall lined with shelves, each with big, fat books on it. A ray of sunlight mysteriously filtered through one of the windows through which the outside could be observed.

Warily, he approached a shelf and took out one of the books: it was written in code. He opened another one: it was also written in code.

But then, as he examined book after book, a pattern started to emerge before the appealingly world-weary eyes of the respected playboy: the first book in the row had an A imprinted on it; and the one next to it, a B.

A rush of excitement flushed through the synapses of the brilliant tennis player; hastily, he examined the positions of the rest of the books on the shelf. They matched perfectly. The order of the books aligned perfectly with the exact succession of letters of the English alphabet!

Want to read further?
You know where you can go... :)

Fear not: this is not about a certain writer's countless fiction-disguised-as-fact-parading-as-fiction tit-bits and other tits - sorry, bits - of "theory".
In this case, exposing the litany of factual errors would be like beating a dead horse. (The man could not get the title artist's name right, for crying out loud - what do you expect?)


No: it's about how badly it is written.
And that is relevant. Because anyone can dream up an improbable phantasmagory - or even just plunder other people's theories - and anyone can demonstrate ignorance. It is human - it is to be forgiven.


But bad writing really is unforgivable. It lowers the standards of culture at large. It demeans not only literature itself but the very people who, in their ignorance, praise it.

But where to start...?
Where he started: right at the beginning, with the opening two words (now that is a feat - that's almost like screwing a person's life a minute or so after s/he is born).

Rule # 1 of writing is that, save for certain specific exceptions, you do not describe your characters' attributes or reflected status directly, i.e. by plainly saying what or how they are, especially in the eyes of the other characters in your fictional world: you indicate it, indirectly, through the character's words, gestures, other characters' reactions, the circumstances, etc.

But at least he didn't waste anyone's time with false impressions about the quality of the writing ahead - I'll give him that. Time is money; especially mine.

However, what really got me was this: a monogram consisting of no less than 14 (fourteen) letters. 
If you are going to introduce an oxy-moronic "monogram" like that, at least make it worth the reader's while or money. For example, place the hero(ine) in a whimsically charming inn in the Viennese Woods and in a jacquard bathrobe with a "monogram" saying: Am Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän Gasthaus.
Now that would be a a bathrobe worth reading!

Why am I writing about this now?
Well, I am tempted to retort: because.

But the reality is, I am writing about his now because our illustrious writer's masterpiece made it to nro. 1 of a certain short- (very short) list:

THE FIVE WORST BOOKS OF THE DECADE
(presumably, in English)

Oh, I can almost hear you:

"Well, ha ha, say what you will, he is laughing all the way to the bank!"

Maybe so.
But if money is all you've got... it ain't much, my friend.

Moreover, the money he is laughingly collecting is yours.
And he is laughing at you.



IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ENJOY:
The Emperor's new clothes are the latest fashion

An American, (not) pure and (not) simple

On November 2nd, 2007, news of a horrific crime shook the ancient and usually placid town of Perugia, Italy. A British student, Meredith Kercher - one of the thousands of students who attend Perugia's prestigious university and para-universitary courses - had been found dead in her bed, with her throat slit, after apparently being forced to engage in sex.

Soon after the murder, Kercher's roommate, an American student from Seattle, Amanda Knox, and her then-new boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested on suspicion of murder. Weeks later, another suspect, a semi-vagrant African, Rudy Guede, was also arrested on the same charge.

Early today, shortly after midnight (CET), two years and 33 days after the crime, Amanda Knox was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years of prison.
Raffaele Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.
(Rudy Guede had been sentenced to 30 years a while ago.)

Meredith Kercher, b. 1986 - d. 1. XI. 2007

If you are at all interested in this story, you probably know all about it, anyway (or it should be easy for you to google out anything else you might want to know).
And I am not writing this to rehash the grizzly details of the story, much less to speculate about the motives, or indeed about the trial of the deadly trio.

I just want to register - as shortly and succinctly as I can - my surprise at the coverage of the trial in the USA media and, in some cases, their reaction to the verdict.

It seems that, in the eyes of many American media outlets (exceptions are a given, of course) and the public they feed with news, Amanda Knox is to be presumed innocent even after having been proven guilty, not because of some serious misgivings regarding the presentation of the evidence, but simply because she is - an American.

Of course they didn't put it like that (although some came dangerously close), but all the "circumstantial evidence", if you'll forgive the expression, points to it quite clearly.
For one thing, nobody seems to be hollering against Sollecito's conviction, even though the evidence against him was actually weaker than against Knox. But then, he's an Italian... which, of course, shouldn't matter IF this were really about wrongful conviction. But it is not: it's clearly about nationality.

And, frankly, I am surprised.
If the USA were a geographically small country, with just a few million (or less) inhabitants, I would understand (if not condone) such a bias: after all, each of its citizens is, in a way, an "ambassador" in the eyes of the world.
(Of course, in principle the same goes for the citizen of any country, anywhere - but "big" countries have an immense advantage in numbers, so they shouldn't worry about the occasional black sheep tarnishing the image of the country abroad.)

Amanda Knox is not an "ambassador" of the USA.
She is not even the "ambassador" of that fabulous city that is Seattle.
She only represents herself.

But the USA, after all these years of active participation in an increasingly shrinking world, still appears to have worrisomely parochial-minded media. After all, if the venerable New York Times, respected around the world (whether justifiably or not, I am not entirely sure) for its "liberal", humanistic, globally minded reporting, indulges in (admittedly personal) musings like this... what are we to think about other, smaller, publicly less prominent American media and the image of the world they seem to be presenting to their readership? (And precisely this - not the Kercher murder per se, much less Amanda Knox, is the main point of this writing.)

Most revoltingly (and ridiculously), many reports seem to question the Italian justice system, implying that its investigative methods, technology and judicial system in general are inadequate, primitive, perhaps corrupt - not based on any previous cases, mind you (or if so, they fail to mention those previous cases), but simply because it is not American.
Furthermore, they seem to ignore the fact that Italy is a part of the EU, which is by now much more than just an economic and loosely political framework, and that in many areas the EU's laws are (not always fortunately) much more stringent than those in the USA.

Don't get me wrong: God knows that the justice system of Italy is faaaaar from being perfect.
Sadly, the same goes for the USA justice system.
Even more sadly, the same goes for the justice system in any country.
However, in the Kercher murder case there is little evidence that anything substantial went amiss at any point of the investigation an the trial itself.

But no, certain USA media outlets - and, unsurprisingly, a sizeable part of the public - seem to prefer to view Italy in the light of a moth-eaten stereotype born out of Hollywood-spawned flicks on "Little Italy" (New York, USA).
And Amanda Knox's performing cartwheels during interrogation (yes, you read correctly) is presented not as possible indication of a deranged mind (brought on by severe stress, if you will), but by her being - an "athlete"... (In other words, a healthy young all-American gal in distress, faced with stuffy Italian policemen and corrupt members of the Italian judicial system.)

Let me tell you: such biased reporting has the potential of "tarnishing" the image of the USA much more than Amanda Knox and her wrongdoings ever could. Specifically, it presents the USA public as close-minded, provincial and blissfully (or not) unaware of the reality in other countries around the world. Heck, I am starting to suspect that even many of the NYT readers still think the USA are "the best country in the world" (whatever that means)! And how could they not if their media feeds them distorted images of the world?

No: Amanda Knox was not on trial - or convicted - because of her behaviour. Not even cartwheels - no, not even the cartwheels! - brought her to where she is today.
(Although they might have been a good reason for psychiatric treatment...)

It was holding the knife with which Meredith Kercher was killed.
It was her covering her ears to block out Meredith's screams.
It was the fact that her defence - and she did have more than decent, high profile representation - couldn't demonstrate anything that would counter the all too damning evidence against her.

What very few, if any, American media seem to mention is the fact that had Knox been tried and found guilty in the USA, she could easily face the death penalty.
Not so in the EU.
And so, there is hope, after all.
If she really is "not an assassin", as she claims, then in time proof may be found and justice will be (re)done.

Meanwhile, she can do cartwheels in her cell.
And she can breathe air, drink water, eat, think, read, feel love, feel hope.

None of which Meredith Kercher can do ever again.