Oprah and the Road

So, Oprah's book club has selected Cormac McCarthy's new book The Road as it's new book. Quite a departure, considering it's a tale of a post apocolytic world in which cannibals roam the streets. Nice stuff for the weepy baby boomer set that makes up her audience.

My favorite are the reading questions so that middle aged women can discuss the horror of the book.

Here is how I imagine the conversation going...

Discussion Moderator: Cormac McCarthy has an unmistakable prose style. What do you see as the most distinctive features of that style? How is the writing in The Road in some ways more like poetry than narrative prose?

Karen: It’s, well kind of grunty. It’s so different than the writers in Redbook.

Leanne: Yes I agree, but it’s not like poetry. Nothing rhymes. There are no nice images of leaves of grass or flowers.

Donna: I like how it’s a family story with a man and his son.

Low roar of nodding and approving. Ok, next question…

Moderator: Why do you think McCarthy has chosen not to give his characters names? How do the generic labels of "the man" and "the boy" affect the way in which readers relate to them?

Donna: Maybe if he gave their names they wouldn’t be quite so universal. Or maybe he thought that they wouldn’t be calling each other Barry and Vick. I don’t know.

Karen: This is just like men to objectify people and not name them. They have more of an identify.

Leanne: My brain hurts, I didn’t notice, I just didn’t want them to be eaten.

Moderator: How is McCarthy able to make the post-apocalyptic world of The Road seem so real and utterly terrifying? Which descriptive passages are especially vivid and visceral in their depiction of this blasted landscape? What do you find to be the most horrifying features of this world and the survivors who inhabit it?

Donna: I didn’t like all the gray and no food. What would we do without Applebees?

Leanne: I think the lack of bathing would be unpleasant!

Karen: It’s like an old black and white TV show, that’s creepy! (low roar of agreement again).

Moderator: McCarthy doesn't make explicit what kind of catastrophe has ruined the earth and destroyed human civilization, but what might be suggested by the many descriptions of a scorched landscape covered in ash? What is implied by the father's statement that, "On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world," [p. 32]?

Karen: Wow, that’s deep. I don’t have any clue.

Donna: Was it terrorists, I bet it was terrorists.

Leanne: I wonder if Al Gore had something to do with his global warming and all. That sounds dangerous, why does he support it so?

Karen: Maybe it was aliens? But where did they go? It reminds me of Tom Cruise in war of the worlds, do you think he stole it from that movie? Maybe he did, there was ash in that movie.

Donna: How did they bury those monsters in the ground?

Karen: I think it was aliens who conspired with global warming to … Oh Desperate Housewives is on, I’ve had enough of this.

Not Everything Should be About 9/11

I, like many Americans, watched in horror on 9/11. Thanks to television, we got to see if all unfold live. However, I want to now say we need to move on, even if just a little tiny bit. Not everything is about 9/11. 9/11 has created a sense of paranoia in this country that has allowed everyone to overreact about everything.

In response to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force fiasco, one of Boston's city fathers said...

"Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City," police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press

Does that mean if we discovered the 9/11 hijackers had breakfast at a particular Denny's that we could overreact to everything because only a mile away, the 9/11 hijackers had breakfast just a week before they borded planes...?? I mean, come on! Use some fucking common sense, check Google, and get your dignity back. I said the other day that Boston was officially the dumbest city in America. I can't believe they are proving me right so easily!

Now that it's nearly six years later, I vote that unless you lost a close, immediate relative (spouse, parent, sibling, grandparent) that you can no longer use 9/11 as an excuse to: 1) suspend rights, 2) act stupid, 3) pass a law.

Asshole of the Week

This week the award goes to the Pequannock Township school board. Why? Are they not teaching math and science up to standards? Nah... Did they cut gym class and now all the kids are obese? Nope... They've just moved us one step closer to being a police state. They are randomly testing ALL students at the high school to see if they've been drinking. What a bunch of horseshit!

Let's Just Rip Up the Constitution

If I had a kid in that school, I would forbid him to submit to the test. The school district has no right to pry into the lives of its students in such a fashion.

We've become so paranoid in this country that everything that might harm us or our children needs to become illegal. Being free isn't always safe. Kids might drink, their freedom and privacy is more important than catching them. My wife worries that in 25 years global warming will be a big deal, I worry more that we won't have any rights.

I squarely place blame for this on the shoulders of the baby boomers. They sold out their ideals, they want to shrink wrap everything and make the world a bland place where no one is ever hurt or upset. They are turning their kids into evil little consumerist facists. News like this scares the hell out of me.