Haha, right?
That's exactly how I felt by Kafka on the Shore. I thought it was a really dreamy, surreal journey. Very unique kind of feel. I remember really liking it, to the extent that I thought he might be my new favorite author. But subsequent works I've tried to get into haven't roped me in like that book unfortunately.
Not surprising at all. He has the vibe of a 8 year old telling me,"by the way, did I ever tell you about how much I love MINECRAFT!," over and over again. I suppose the thing that gets me is that I've never seen an author inject a personal interest in something in their work to this degree. I've read a few authors where you can kind of get a feel for certain things they like, but they usually aren't so obvious and overt about putting those interests on blast. It's just jarring to me.
Haha, and here I was thinking that I did horribly. I saw someone on a random reddit thread say they did it in 400 and something.
As I was typing this out I rechecked the thread and they we're playing the full PC version with assist mode on. Apparently the PC version has the original playable within the game at some point. A quick Google search put the average at 1000-1200 or more deaths for the Pico-8 version.
So, damn. That makes me feel pretty awesome lol. Thanks for the kind words, you made my day!
After the past twenty years, coming of age during the Bush W years, I've tried hard to resist becoming a misanthrope. But good, goddamn is it harder than ever before. I thought it was bad (and it was) when W. was the president growing up, but the amount of insane and woefully misinformed and hateful people in this country has reached a fever pitch I never could have imagined back then. It's truly awesome in the most negative sense of that word.
Sheldon S. Wolin talked about the fact that the US system was a "managed democracy" and a form of "inverted totalitarianism" in his book Democracy Inc about twenty years ago. In a managed democracy the pretense of democratic voting is maintained, but the system is so heavily managed as to render voting ineffective and largely irrelevant. The US voting system is so heavily gamed that to expect the average US citizen to have any power through the ballot box is laughable.
For me it was getting into counseling to find the underlying cause of my addiction, which was my grief. There's many ways addiction is percieved in mainstream society, with the biggest focus being on addiction being a "disease". I'd avoid such thinking since, I believe, it only serves to exacerbate the problem. If you're told that your addiction is a irreversable illness than you'll attack the symptoms without getting to the root cause.
Ask yourself why you feel the need to drink to excess, what is it that you feel you are missing in your life? We tend to utilize addiction as a way to cope with uncomfortable realities in our lives. If we can figure out what that uncomfortable truth is, we are better equipped to make better, healthier decisions on how we chose to cope with that feeling.
I recommend checking out any of Lance Dodes' books on addiction, which focus on a evidence-based approach to confronting and coping with addiction. Good luck. Feel free to DM me if you ever have any more questions ;)
The worst part about finishing a book is trying to decide what to read next. It sometimes takes me DAYS to decide on something to read. Anyone else?
Is this a book whose message I agree with or want to explore right now? ...Do I really want to read for 300+ pages.... Do I really want to read for 200 pages? ....Should I go with something high concept, or settle for trope-y genre fiction? ....Let's look at reviews on goodreads...the average is 4 stars, but this person says this book is a GIANT waste of time, do I want to chance it? ....I really like 's books, but am I tired of hearing the same voice and themes explored? ...I'm reading too much fiction, I need to read some non-fiction. ....Non-fiction is just some author spending 300 pages trying to sway me to a particular point of view, or their just explaining on concept verbosely and repetitively for 300+ pages.... Maybe I'll just read a comic, eh all these series are just spins on older, better drawn and written ones.... I'll just grab ten different books from the library, one of them has to be good, right? ....All ten of these books look like they're just a damn waste of time! Why do I need to muse on the history and sociological implications of the toothbrush for 400 pages?! ....Maybe books are just overrated, why do I think I need to read anyways? ....What am I really getting from all of this reading? Is someone awarding me a prize at the end? Is this like those old book competitions in school where I win a pizza party after reading 200 hundred books? Aaaaaaaaagggggghhhh!!!
Call me crazy, but this is why I have been thinking about getting into hobbies where I can make my own tools. I like to journal, and have a fountain pen with ink, but it occurred to me that I could just make my own ink and paper. So much of what we do nowadays for enjoyment is via manufactured things. It's an unfortunate by-product of a consumer society that even the hobbies that we partake in are themselves a consumptive act. That's not to say that we should all forgo any kind of external products and just make everything ourselves, I too like a good book, piece of vinyl or comic like anyone else. But it is definitely something to consider the degree to which our lives revolve around some type of product consumption. I think that we'd all benefit from taking some time to consider finding hobbies that don't rely on buying some type of product.
wolfinthewoods
joined 1 month ago
That does sound equally as torturous.