The internets

The beauty of the Internets these days is that, as many drawbacks as it has, it puts an amazing amount of information at your fingertips that would never get to you in a lifetime b4 web 2.0.

Apparently I massively insulted Johanna Sinisalo, whose works I have read translated into English whenever I could find them and tried my best to describe as freaking brilliant, deeply layered, and wickedly incisive in a review I got asked to do on the fly and got paid a massive $5 for. 

My writing can be opaque and obscure.  It often gets misread.  For my lack of skill in using words to convey what I mean, "Olen pahoillani."

Thanks to FinnishPod101.com for their great language videos.

If the translation of Sinisalo's books is truly distorting, that's sad, but they still come across as freaking brilliant, deeply layered, and wickedly incisive.  I find it hard to believe that the translation is highly problematic because they're such a great read, even in the translation to English. 

In French too.  I had to see, since a diligent search revealed a preference for that translation and that I can confirm with my piece meal polyglot skills despite no solid Finnish friends that would appreciate a perceptive deconstruction of their Finnish masculinity.  Really not that different, from what I can tell, except the French title, Oiseau dr Malheur might be a huge compliment, alluding to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.  That book that made 13 bearable for this teen queer, that magnifique ode to the Imp of Perversity.  Or not- it's what popped into my head on seeing the title, thoughts formed by the French canon gleaned through the tutelage of a African American French teacher who studied at the Sorbonne, one of the best teachers I've ever had on all schools of life- professionalism, translation, exactitude in writing, fairness, collegiality, comportment- hands down.  Madame, I hope I do you no wrong here, but yes, I've let my translation skills become shamefully rusty.

In the British to American translation, Birdbrain comes off as deeply feminist and brave as truth-telling.  And Troll: A Love Story/ Not Before Sunset comes off as incredibly queer and witty, even if that was not the intention or effect in the original, in its American English translation.  Seriously, anything I might have done to make anyone *not* read these books or the amazing short story "Dollface" despite all the awards they've won is a heinous disservice, cos this writer is one of the best feminist and SFF writers out there right now, no mistake.  Read her.  Can I be more clear?

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Fire In the Belly

Spring brings everyone out of the woodwork.  We meet our neighbors again.  Go places.  Do things.  Try to catch up, make up for lost time.

Deadlines, headlines, fresh bullsh*t, annexations, power moves, sloppy footwork, out of nowheres, sideswiped, blindsided, sluggish with a hint of snow, allergies, smudges under the eyes, nodding off on the train... It must be April on the way.

People die in April, like they do in early winter.  It becomes a rhythm you get used to, when everyone is dying.  And then it slows, and slows some more, and people are astonished at death again.  But the rhythm's still there.

That makes it a perfect time to read "Fire In the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz," by Cynthia Carr.  580-some pages is daunting, but the man was fascinating, brilliant, and burned fast as hell in the too-short time he had.  His autobiography is the first thing to read, but this bio's got art and stories and a sense of history and moment.  Remember Jesse Helms, the NEA, and FDA, all that ancient history?   Yeah.  Gonna take a while to plow through but I'm not stopping 'til I'm done.

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Speaking of generations

Great crowd scenes up front, as well as concerts:  Stones in the Park 7/1969 and  Some Girls tour, Texas.  The latter reminds me of Foxes, the Jodie Foster Cherie Currie movie...

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Suburbia (1983)

This review of the Penelope Spheeris film "Suburbia," one of the few movies I remember vividly from those misspent teenage years, really nails the 80s for Gen X.  1000misspent hours, indeed. 

Millenials feel they're in a similarly overwhelming dystopia, but those in NYC and SoCal don't realize those cities were like presentday Detroit, no one remembers stagflation and long gas lines, and the looming threat of thermonuclear war that was more real than it now seems, in the era of Red Dawn and Footloose remakes. 

The way WWI, the Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the repressive 50s and McCarthyism, the Vietnam war, and everything else that was era-defining in the past seems either faded or overhyped.  Only in retrospect.  You had to be there, and if you were lucky enough to survive, you remain jaded about all teens and twenty-somethings to come and their sulks and rebellions.  Generational gaps are endlessly funny things. 

I love reading intergenerational discussions on the interwebs of who had it worse and who's more annoying.  The idea that anything changes is so micro-focused.  The glaciers melt, the mountains crumble, and the core belches.  Stars burst into life, fade away and radiate.  One thing I love about 80s punk and new wave was a baseline awareness of this bigger picture peeking through so many songs- Atomic!

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Shaking off the blahs

The Metrodome is now a small section of riser, a pile of rubble, and a bunch of tall cranes against the sky.  The streets are no longer covered in two inches of ice, and the roofs are no longer buried under two feet of snow.  I am trying to pull out of hibernation mode to glimpse my own shadow.

I'm reading Dust Devils on a Quiet Street by Richard Bowes in ebook and The Flamethrowers in book book.  Of course the Bowes is brilliant, and the latter is much more interesting than the other NYTimes list book I just read.  Motorcycles, conceptual art, and Italian leftists- what could go wrong?

Finished Once a Runner by John Parker and, after wading through the purplish prose and laddishness of the beginning, see why it's a runner classic.  The unfocused feel of the first half mirrors the protagonist's mind, and by the end the writing is tight and knifeblade sharp, like a runner in the race of his life.

I really want to read the Tapir book but I put it somewhere in my house where I can't find it.  Scouring the corners is my weekend plan, along with taxes.  And maybe looking at dogs, as well as spectating at flyball dog's tournament if I can fit it in with swim class.

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