As long time readers of Culturology (that is, Nick (and maybe Neal)) may recall, one of my favorite things about popular culture in Germany is the way they re-title movies, presumably, in order to fit in with German idiom. The classic example of this is 2008's In Bruges, which was titled See Bruges... and Die? in German. Where the English title was subtle and understated, the German title just went ahead and put it all out there. Another great example from that era (you know, back in like, 2006-2008, when movies didn't all suck?) was 3:10 to Yuma, which became, in German, Death-Train to Yuma.

So, on this trip, my most recent return to Germany, I am already defaulting to looking around to see what kind of titles foreign movies have in Germany. But it's been such a shitty year for movies that even the German titles are a let down. One exception might be Get Him to the Greek, though, as it's German title is just Man Trip. And further evidence that Germans want to be able to tell what a movie is about based on its title alone is Avatar's German sub-title, which I like to translate as Avatar: Sallying Forth to Pandora.

So why don't Americans want to know what movies are about? This of course ties in with the internet-era monstrosity that the notion of "spoiler alerts" has become. That somehow, if we know what a movie is about in any specific way, or know what is going to happen in it, then we can't possibly enjoy it. This is juvenile and foolish. So, then, even though we're the juvenile and foolish ones for feeling like the essence of a movie is (the sanctity of) its plot, it's the German titles that come off as stupid, and the Germans as the foolish ones for needing to know in simple fashion why they should bother going out to see a movie.

Though, the American movie industry still seems to make boat-loads of money despite not producing much shit that's actually worth watching, and then sometimes terrible movies (say, The Aang Legend) actually do way better abroad than they do in the States. So we're each and everyone of us--any of us with the social and financial wherewithal to go see movies at all--special little snowflakes of stupidity.

Collection and series such as Best American are great because they curate my whole experience and take the work out of subscribing to thousands of journals and blogs just to find something decent to read. I get to read across a range of authors and themes. However, as of late, I have a serious bone to pick with the editors of these collections: every story I read is depressing as hell.

Have any of you seen Wendy and Lucy? Imagine a film festival where every entry was like that.  How about an endless loop of the last 10 minutes of Nights of Cabiria and The Bicycle Thief? That's what these  anthologies seem like: a broken record of hopelessness and heart ripping grief.

I know that some amount of conflict is necessary to drive a story. Obviously a 100% positive narrative would not make a compelling story - but why does every anthologized short story that I read leave me with a pit in my stomach? Lee Gutkind's Becoming a Doctor, a collection of creative nonfiction written by doctors, almost had me crying myself to sleep. Three of the first five entries in The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories made me feel so dejected that I lost my appetite.

In my high school Spanish class, we read a lot of Mexican literature, There too, all the stories followed the same pattern: tragedy besets family (vital livestock/family member dies), youth goes on a journey to better his circumstances, tragedy befalls youth again, tragic end. I wish I could find the book we used so I could quote some of the examples to you, but I recall one story where a cow was killed by a snake, another with a recurring comparison of a man's hands to worms, a long drawn out tale documenting the aftermath of a grand mothers death. There was just no positive message anywhere. In fact, these may be the most terrifyingly depressing stories ever.

Editors - I'm not asking for a cute romantic comedy (I have bittorrent for that) - but would it kill you to include a few chuckle worthy tales in your neatly collected volumes? Can't the guy get the girl every now and then? Does fire/war/pestilence/disease/CANCER have to ruin every narrative? Why even bother foreshadowing or irony when your peer authors have already extinguished any possibility of optimism?

The Bottom Line: Who decided that short stories can't end in anything less than general malaise?

But I do want to mention, I suppose to Nick & Neal, that I can take a hint, guys. How, now on the side bar, under "Current Features" I'm no longer listed on my own, but instead lumped in with "and books." Now, certainly, most of the (non-comic) book-related material on the blog comes from Culturology. But not all of it. But is there really enough stuff about books on Audioshocker that it deserves to have it's on little link there like an annoying shadow cast by the awesome obelisk of Culturology?

And well, I guess I'm not really gonna add any content other than that little snippet of griping, 'cause I don't have a whole lot else to say for myself, except that Hesse's Siddhartha, in the original German, is great reading. And South Park, dubbed into German, is a fun way to bone up on one's language skills.

...the first block i walked i only had to fight one street tough, who didnt even get in my way.  the next block i fought two street toughs, the next block i fought four.  the next block i had to fight eight, and i did some math and knew at this rate i would have serious problems.  cause they were all low level street toughs they were easy to fight, but with too many of them i was getting bruised and bloodied from getting whaled on from all sides.  plus i thought i might be hallucinating from the pain, i was seeing weird bright shapes and this nightmare version of jesus, in a purple robe like a kimono with lightning shooting out of his nail holes, he was hanging back at the outside of the fight, watching, and i didnt know yet whether he was for or against me.  so i knew i would have to face the street tough leader.

I CHALLENGE YOUR BOSS, i exclaimed.  as he emerged from the shadows of an alley i could recognize The Chief because he was so many feet taller than the rest of the toughs.  he had war tattoos all over his face and he was carrying a weapon that only a dungeons and dragons freak would know what it was, it was like an axe head at the end of a long pole.  he took off a ceremonial ninja star from a chain around his neck and threw it fast at my arm, where it shattered my japanese watch.  YOU MOTHERFUDGER, i shouted at him, not like i was losing it but just real cold, YOU DONT EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH ITS ON.

i went into a defensive crouch, i could feel my stamina was at an all time max.  The Chief charged at me and threw a body punch, i just clenched my gut and felt his hand break against my rock hard abs.  but he just laughed and fucking bent my left knee inside out with a low leg sweep.  christ that hurt, but i kept my concentration and when he thrust at me with his weapon ihead butted the pole in half.  grabbing the axe head i RAMMED IT into his collar bone, i felt it stick in the bone and i could see he was bleeding pretty bad from his aorta but he stepped back and prepared for one more onslaught.  i tried to stand up onto my left leg but the inside of my knee felt like a handful of bottle caps.  the weird shapes were whirling all around my headcackling at me.  oh man, i thought, this is looking bad but i got to stay PSYCHED TO FIGHT.

i saw the purple robe next to me and without even thinking about it, HELP ME, NIGHTMARE JESUS, i said.  without saying anything he jumped up into my arm, folding his body into the shape of a flying kick.  right when The Chief charged me i threw Nightmare Jesus full on into his face, and when the lightning from his foot stigma touched The Chief's head he torched instantly, like holding a lighter up to a dirty mattress.  when the smoke and screaming were gone all the other street toughs had run away, i knew i had beaten them for good.

i was in front of the unitarian church now, but Nightmare Jesus blocked my way to the door, and i understood that the price of his help before was that it had to be me versus him.  this was the most spiritual fighter i had ever faced and during our combat space and time lost all meaning.  i blacked out for the whole fight and dont remember a thing, all i know is when i woke up he was on the ground in front of me looking like a can of sardines someone had dumped out on the pavement.  i picked up his barbed wire crown and put it on my head, IM THE KING NOW, i said inside my mind.

i looked behind me and no opponents were left standing, just unconscious or dead bodies, and one pair of blood footprints leading from my burned out car to in front of the church.  plus the second pair of blood footprints right out front from where i had to fight the j man.  i went down into the basement.

when i limped into the octagon i knew i was too late.  the referee was about to put the division championship belt around Mad Leroy, the thousands of people up in the stands were cheering and a whole symphony was playing crowning music.  but then everyone saw me and it got completely quiet.  Mad Leroy looked at me really intense for a whole minute and, oh shit, i thought, hes going to fight me.  cause now i knew i could face anything but he was on top of his game right now, and id lost too much blood plus the one knee and most of my hand.  but then Mad Leroy just kneeled down in front of me.  everybody in the crowd and the symphony all just stood up, they didnt even cheer, it was a silent salute.

thats when i learned about myself what they were all trying to tell me.  that i was the baddest ass one just for making it there that night.  the referee put the belt around me and i felt like my heart was cracking open like an egg, and like a great mighty bird of violence and championshipness hatched out of it and filled me with its wings.  i am the one.  i can put myfoot through the whole worlds head, not anyone could stop me.  i will beat them all down.

THE END

EPILOG

a lots changed since that night of fighting last week, i know ill never have an awesomer fight so im staying out of the octagon for good.  im a sensei now, and my foot to head move that made that guys head explode in the alley is studied by all the mixed martial arts academies.  i only fight people with my mind.  and ill train any younger fighter whos strong enough, not just a strong body ... but SMART ENOUGH to know how to say ILL NEVER QUIT, ILL NEVER GIVE UP NO MATTER HOW TOUGH.

So I suck. But for those of you who pay attention to the podcast, you know that I was working at Time Inc. More specifically at Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, and People in business operations (basically all things digital). I was probably the oldest intern in the corporate internship program, one of perhaps 5 pursuing an MBA, and certainly the only one with an engineering background.

When I got the job, Nick and I both cracked up. Why? Because I'm not exactly InStyle or People's demo, my official background is in mechanical engineering, and Nick and I have had poor luck with Time Warner companies in the past. Perhaps you've read Nick's Sneaking Into Comics series about his quest for a gig at DC Comics?

The point is - total long shot! Crazy, right? Maybe not. Time Inc. digs long shots. Grady Smith, an editorial intern, made waves on the interwebs earlier this year when he posted a video on YouTube petitioning EW for a summer internship. It was awkward, rushed, and a bit manic, but it worked! You can catch up on all of Grady's summer work right here.

So what did I do? Who did I meet? What great advice can I pass on to you? Well, without totally violating the covenant of "thou shalt not blog about your internship": Free magazines are sweet! I can now flip through and process an entire issue of People in 5 minutes.

But seriously, Entertainment Weekly is a remarkably forward thinking magazine. Cyndi Stivers, the Managing Editor of EW.com, was extremely gracious and allowed me to badger her for an entire hour about how EW was approaching social media, ePub, iPads, mobile apps, her experiences at other publishers, and even silly things like captchas for comments. She and everyone else I met was genuinely excited about -- rather than scared of -- digital. The folks in digital marketing and sales are doing big things too. It's all about "what can we do?" and not "this is what we do!" Coming from engineering, I found it remarkably refreshing.

And you know what else? I have never seen more efficient 'all-call' meetings. Every Monday at 10am, the publishing staff would corral into a small conference room, turn on the speakerphone, spend 2 minutes catching up and then spend the next 28 getting down. to. business. It is a well oiled machine. Numbers, charts, recognitions, goals, new opportunities, guest presenters - everything gets covered in those 28 minutes and everyone is jazzed about it too. Efficiency consultants (and engineers) could learn something from EW's Publisher Ray Chelstowski.

But back to me! I spent the summer doing research and benchmarking for future products, new tech, expansion opportunities, and potential acquisitions. Marketing, mobile websites, apps, ads --  I looked into a lot of stuff. I also got to help test the new EW Must List iPhone app before it launched in July. If you haven't taken a look at it, you really should. It is a great example of why EW and I were a good fit, we both believe in curation.

I wrote a big long thing about this in May, and no one read it - so I'll make this easy. Thanks to the Internet, we have access (free or paid) to an infinite amount of content. Of course, not all of it is good. In fact, separating the wheat from the chaff is probably the hardest part of getting your hands on good content, and that's why you need a curator. That's why you trust specific blogs, it's why you get excited about Netflix recommendations, and it's why you need EW to find & deliver to you the best wheat. More importantly, time is money. Curation is where the money is.

If there was anything that I was frustrated by, it was "scale." Scale was the kiss of death for most of my big ideas. "How come we aren't doing promotion X? It'd really appeal to our readers!" "We don't have the scale." Perhaps, scale is certainly an important consideration in cost/benefit analysis, but it reminds me of why I was dying to get out of engineering. I was tired of hearing "No, that just isn't done." Of course, I was an intern with limited knowledge of previous endeavors and research - so scale could very well have been that important. Bottom line, I don't like how quick people were to invoke it. If you never try anything new, you'll never achieve scale either!

Obviously I made PowerPoint decks, wrote reports, read reports, compiled spreadsheets, and did a lot of Googling. All interns do that. You are never going to get out of that no matter how creative you are. I invented scrollpop/AudioShocker Shoutouts ads in my freetime, but then I went right back to updating slides. But there are some really fun things like focus groups, lunch with the CEO, brownbags with other division heads, etc that you'd never get access to outside an internship program. A big firm offers you a lot of resources that you'd be crazy not to take advantage of. (Of course, it's also easy to become a number, so watch out for that)

Now you know what I was doing for the past 9 weeks. I'm actually a little sad that I couldn't stay longer and work on more stuff. Next up? I'd like to get more into marketing, maybe at an interactive agency. Any ideas?

SUPER FOOT TO HEAD

so a while ago i kicked ass in a mixed martial arts competition, someone wrote about it in a short story called Foot To Head. i never read it cause i dont read about my own fights ... i fight them. but i know that storys nothing compared to the contest i went to last week, where i whipped so many people before i even got there. so check it out.

there were some other fighters but the big ticket item was me versus a guy called Mad Leroy for the division championship belt. Mad Leroy is just this mad, tough, tough, bad dude. he used to be an offensive tackle in this independent pro football league that was illegalized for being too intense, and you know how some guys get a barbed wire tattoo around their biceps, Mad Leroy just fucking wears a piece of barbed wire around his arm. theres rumors that he sharpens his knuckle bones and i still dont know if thats true, but one thing i do know is he is SERIOUSLY HARDCORE. that night i wanted to fight with him so bad.

first i had to get to the venue though. it should have been easy, they set up the octagon in the basement of a unitarian church near my neighborhood just twenty blocks from my apartment. normally i would have walked there but i took my car because it was extra hot that night plus i wanted to save my leg strength. but part of the way there my car got a flat tire, in the middle of this really bad neighborhood. my neighborhood and the church neighborhood are kind of bad but all right, but theres ten blocks in between that are seriously dark and evil, like the worst neighborhood youve ever imagined. FUUUUUUDGE, i shouted, i didnt really say FUDGE but i think my grandma is reading this short story because i told her it would be pretty hardcore. anyway, i said FUDGE, not because i was scared but because the flat tire was fucking up my being on time to the fight. i could have just driven on the flat but i once heard about a sensei who said face every challenge HEAD ON, NO HALFWAY MEASURES and i didnt want to bend the axle. i looked at my watch, which is always right because its a handcrafted old watch i got from an old japanese trainer who was a serviceman in wwii because i seriously beat down his nephew in a fight. the watch said i had exactly fifteen minutes to get to the octagon.

i jacked up my car and already i knew there was going to be trouble, because three street toughs were in an alley giving me the eye, and then the biggest one said to me hey little man, you having some car troubles there. ive got a slim build and i was wearing a baggy shirt but i was ripped underneath that, make no mistake, but they didnt know that. i knew there was going to be fighting cause of this electrical feeling i got. its like my brain came apart from my mind and started doing all these violence equations. two of the toughs started walking towards me on different sides and just as the first guy got too close to me i knew when to kick him in the abdomen so that he rolled over a garbage can and landed on some broken bottles. as part of the same move i wheeled around and hit the other guy with my open hand in his face, hard enough to give him something to think about later, by driving a bunch of his front teeth up into his soft palate. OH OH, LOOKS LIKE YOU FUDGED WITH THE WRONG MAN, i said to the third one, the smallest one, and he just turned and ran back into the alley. it was a blind alley, which he shouldve known, but cause he panicked i guess he didnt know anymore. too bad for him.

like i said before, the other guys short story about me was Foot To Head, i dont know why he named it that. maybe because of fighter energy flowing all the way up my body from my foot to my head or something. what i do know is this short story is Super Foot To Head because of the incredibly powerful way i put my foot to that guys head in the alley. imagine if you put three pounds of medium rare ground beef in a hollowed out honeydew melon and then shot it with a shotgun. IT WAS EPIC. when it was over i was just standing at the end of the alley breathing with busted up head meat dripping off my shirt, i was so much in the fighter zone. i looked at my watch, i had seven minutes left til the match. it was just the beginning.

when i walked out of the alley i could smell there was already more trouble cooking, cause there was an eighteen wheeler pulled up next to my car and two crooked truckers were boosting my cars tires and trying to siphon off my gas. i knew from the news earlier that there were a lot of crooked truckers on the streets that night as part of some crime wave so i was mentally prepared for them, though when the first one saw me he threw a tire iron at my head that busted my nose and only added to the challenge. it was a pretty bad hit, it was like watching a pigeon get hit by a car zero inches from my face. but the taste of my own blood only added to my anger and focus.

the other trucker dropped the siphon and came at me, i started out pretty good when i landed clean hits on him with my elbow and head. but then when i was blocking a punch he pulled out a sixteen inch jungle knife from nowhere and with a loud swish he SLASHED OFF the four fingers of my right hand. AAAUUUGGHH POOP FUDGE, i was yelling, and because i was so loud and in extreme pain the guy thought he could get away, but i grabbed his shirt with my left hand and even though it felt like sticking my arm in a garbage bag full of bees on fire i still hit him a couple times in his head with whats left of my right hand. his neck made a crunch sound like when you bite into a fresh piece of corn and as he crumpled to the ground i knew he was probably knocked out ... or worse.

the guy who threw the tire iron now was trying to get back into the truck to escape, unlucky for him im left handed though, i picked up one of the wheels on the ground they had been trying to boost. SUCK ON THIS, i yelled to him, as i chucked the wheel at him and hit him low, right where the gonads attach to the body. i had tried to hit the trucker in the mouth which would have made the suck on this line make sense, but i still horked it at him pretty good, there were pieces of his pelvis bone sticking out the small of his back when i went to make sure he was unconscious from the pain. one problem though, cause of the siphon there was gas everywhere and when the tire bounced the rim sparked on the pavement and VVROOOOM the car and eighteen wheeler ALL BURST UP INTO FIRE. NOOOOO, i said, but i still had to get out of there to get out of the way of the explosion.

now i was going to have to walk to the competition which meant fighting street toughs block after block. i could take them but it was going to be bad, cause now my right hand wasnt good for anything but hitting and cause i got some gasoline on me id have to watch out for fire. worst of all, my japanese watch told me i was already twenty minutes late for the match. i knew Mad Leroy didnt want to go home without a fight either so he wouldnt let the judges call a forfeit right away, still i had to get there quick or hed win the title by default. i thought about a different sensei from the one i talked about before though, he said IF YOU BLOCK MY WAY I WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES.

TO BE CONTINUED...

So what can we take from all this? Well, so far, two quotes in particular caught my eye:

"All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant."

This obviously appeals to the serious artist in me, as a major strain not only in my own work, but in conversations with my colleagues, is about concentration, and the value of concentration. And whether it is appropriate, in an ADD-raddled age, to still expect one's viewers/listeners/readers to, like, actually pay attention to what you've produced. This ties in to the question I was asking last week, where I was concerned that I read graphic novels too fast--that there's something there that I'm not taking the proper time to savor (I try to appreciate the art, and notice great layout and pacing when I see it, but in more standard fare, I'm often at a loss for what I should be noticing).

There's an interesting tension that arises in a lot of creative works, around repetition. I suppose especially in music and poetry, where there are refrains or formal patterns that repeat themselves. But it comes up a lot in comedy as well, via catch phrases, running gags, call-backs, etc. And even in comic books as certain frames or set-ups are repeated in certain ways to provide continuity through and across multiple books (I know that as I work on writing Time Log, I'm always looking for spots where I can set up a situation that directly mirrors another one that has already happened in the story (and maybe that really only makes sense in time travel writing, or maybe I'm just an amateurish hack (or all of these things)). But then, even once we've admitted repetition as a central element in cultural creation, some number of artists will immediately want to claim that there really is no such thing as repetition, since, as Thoreau states, change is always happening, so at best repetition is a kind of recycling uncanniness. And all of our lives are just hauntings.

"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."

And see there, isn't that nice? It sure is. But you can see that even reading just the first ten-thousand words of Walden allows me too much chance to indulge my artistic self, which is totally inappropriate for the usual wielding of the awesome cudgel of cultural criticism that I flail around with here.

But... I'm going to keep reading Walden, and dammit, I'm going to finish it eventually. I can see now how ridiculous it was to try and read this in 11th grade, on the time table of a high school English class. There's no reason to motor through this stuff! I mean, the fact that I've come around to deciding to read it myself certainly clues in the fact that I'm looking to be inspired by it (I'm trying to think of what, if anything, I was inspired by in 11th grade... maybe... you know, I don't really remember what I was reading in 11th grade, outside of stuff required for class. But I've always self-identified as a reader, so I must have been reading something...), so will probably continue to find quotes that I like.

And I think part of the problem is that I've been trying to read it as an e-book, rather than as a paperback, and that definitely isn't helping. In fact, I'll probably wind up taking the time here one of these days to go ahead and find an actual copy of the thing, 'cause then it'll be way easier to read.

Luckily I've got just the scheme to buy myself a couple more weeks to finally read it... original short fiction, written by my brother Nate, will be appearing for the next two weeks. It's a story which also serves as a great epilogue to Nick and my awesome Tournament Movie Tournament from back in the Spring. So stay tuned next week for Part I of... SUPER FOOT TO HEAD!

Which isn't to say that I do all that much consuming of youth culture. In fact, I don't really partake of any of it. Except for stuff that Nick turns me on to. Things like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Would I have been aware of the fact that Nickelodeon had made a cartoon show that was pretty good? Probably. Would I have watched it? Probably not. But, luckily, Nick had the foresight to get me to actually watch the show, and I quite enjoyed it. Not enough to read up or argue about its mythology, or to go to any comic-cons dressed up as a character or anything, but was happily watched all three seasons (and happily skipped the movie when it came out). Which brings us to this week's entry in the I Know What You Bookclubbed Last Summer Booklove Bookclub: Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese.

There is some embossed gold foil circle stamped onto the front cover of my paperback copy of this graphic novel, so I knew, even before opening it, that it must be good (it won a Young Adult Literature Prize from the ALA). Which is also nice to know ahead of time, when you've gotten a recommendation from Nick--that other people also think it's good, and it's not just another Irish Jam (not to use the same example as last week, but I've honestly blanked on any of Nick's dud recommendations (and in fact, am mostly now thinking of him giving me Casanova, which I think I might even like more than he does, so I'll let this runner die out (and start picking on Molly instead))).

And ABC is quite good. A little bit of it was kind of off-putting to me (more on that in a minute), but it does exemplify what I think must be the appeal of much YA literature, as read by actual adults (people, you know, like me, in their late twenties):

--a semi-complicated structure which then resolves itself quickly and neatly

The back-cover copy already let's us know: this book has three main characters, how are they ever going to be related? The reader will have the pleasure of finding out. And of course, the reader does find out, and rather swiftly at that (though, I have to note here, I think maybe I'm not a great reader of graphic novels; how long is it supposed to take to read a page of a comic like this? To read a whole section?). Though, in terms of these characters resolving into each other, I was a bit curious as to where the base-line reality lies in this thing. As I was talking about with The City & The City, it's often the case in fantastic tales, that it doesn't really matter how crazy the world it takes place in is, so long as that world is self-consistent. In the case of ABC, is Jin's world the same as Danny's? That is, in Danny's world, is he actually still just Jin, seeing himself as a white American kid, or did the transformation actually happen?

And, as a point of comparison, Audioshocker 2009 You-Don't-Suck-Award nominee, Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply probably stands as an example of a book with a similar structure which is resolved in a less YA-y way. The main distinction being that, though there are multiple characters that turn out to be transformed or disguised versions of themselves in other plotlines in ABC, the tale itself is told in more-or-less linear fashion, whereas in AYR, not only is there some character-crossing (some identity theft), but the tale is much more chopped up, and less obvious in its time-line (until the reader finally figures out what's going on (who is who and when they are).

--rather directly stated meanings/morals

I don't think there's anything wrong with being obvious. That's probably what makes YA literature enjoyable for grown-ups too; we don't always want to do the work of figuring out what a book is really about. The "transforming" idea, how emigration and life as a minority is always an act of transforming oneself, whether those codes come from within your community or from without, finds a happy home in the literal/actual acts of transformation undergone by these characters. So when that old lady at the herbalist early on in the story warns a young Jin about the loss of his soul and transforming, we understand it as a metaphorical turn about where one's identity comes from. And then when he actually transforms into Danny, it's given a fine fantastical resonance (as opposed to, say, the more alienating metamorphosis of poor Gregor Samsa into a giant beetle).

--a wrap it all up ending

Just for the record, it's my guess that the happy, fully concluding manner of ending literature for young people is probably a newer trend. Seems like once upon a time, authors were willing to traumatize their readers a bit more (mostly, as I look back on my own childhood (which is already too soon to get at what I'm trying to imply), I'm thinking of dead dogs here). I just wasn't thrilled with the "your best friend was my son, a monkey, and he hates humans now, so go win him back over" ending.

So, as for what I didn't like as much about this: (and this probably just reveals my usual biases) what's up with Tze-Yo-Tzuh? Or, more specifically, sending the monk and the monkey to go give gifts to Baby Jesus broke past the barriers set up by of my weak agnostic notions. Just a little much. I mean, I suppose it stands as a fine archetype of East-meeting-West, but the notion that we can get through globalized culture-mashing modern existence by recognizing that we all have the same Creator just seems... ugh, I dunno, just a little much. Given the amount of in-fighting between sects of the Abrahamaic religions alone, I don't know, I suppose I would have preferred something more secular to bring it all home with, that's all. I realize that it's a work of fantasy, but grounding it in a bit more reality at the end might also be useful to the kids that have the most to gain from reading it.

NEXT WEEK: Thoreau's Walden (and I fucking mean it!)

IN AUGUST: We'll get the month of my birth off on the right foot (to head) with some original fiction, then go from there.