I have a feeling that when I’m older and reflecting on my experience as a young man, there will be a vital point in the story when I exclaim, “And then I found The Feminine Mystique!” It’s bewildering to consider that the work — which launched the modern feminist movement almost 20 years before I was born — could relate in any significant way to my own life. In fact it’s more than just significant; the application to and explanation of my own life is monumental. But I’m not alone there. I think Friedan’s work applies to our entire society. My new theory is that many of the forces affecting women in the ’50s and ’60s now affect both genders equally.

I’m only halfway through the book, so I can’t summarize the entire thing yet. I’m trying to get in the habit of posting little bits as I read, instead of trying to cover the whole whopper once I’m done. (That’s been difficult since I’ve realized I’m kind of like an Ent — those tree-like creatures from Lord of the Rings. Treebeard’s saying went something like, “It takes us a really long time to say anything at all, so we don’t say anything unless it’s worth taking a really long time to say.”)

Yesterday I took my little sister to the mall to pick up a DVD and look for anything related to Alice in Wonderland. She’s really, really excited about the upcoming remake — and it makes me sad to think that this younger generation won’t be as critical of these so-called “films,” these CGI landfills. But I’ve complained enough about that, and I’m trying to be a good big brother. (Also, she has a stellar taste in movies overall.)

We went to FYE for the DVD and then to Hot Topic for the Alice products. I used to like Hot Topic in high school, but back in the ’90s it was quite a scarier place. Yeah, they still have the Slipknot t-shirts, but they also have Super Mario and Spongebob. And right now, the whole front section of the store is devoted to a Disney movie that hasn’t yet been released. Granted, it’s also a Tim Burton movie — but I doubt there will be anything too horrific about it.

Three days ago I received an email from a reader concerning a post I wrote in July 2008 (you may want to read that post before this one). He was confused about the logic I used when discussing the virginity of Henry David Thoreau, which in turn was related to skepticism over the sexual activity of Chris McCandless (protagonist of the book and film Into The Wild).

I asked the reader to post his email as a comment on the original article, but then I figured I would just put it in a brand new one. His note made me think that I hadn’t expressed myself very well, so I want to elaborate. Here’s his email:

I left off last time explaining how Zeitoun is the only “new release” book I’ve ever read. I zoomed through it in eight days, since I had checked it out from the local library (the book was sold out everywhere from Christmas until about a week ago — but I hadn’t had a library card since I was a kid, so that’s fun). My main reason for reading the book was to get a sense of what happened to New Orleans and the people who called the city home. Even though the book was written from the perspective of a single family, I thought it would still feel epic in scope (it didn’t).

I did enjoy learning about the Zeitoun family though. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Syrian American man who settled in New Orleans after about a decade of living and working at sea. A friend introduced him to his wife Kathy, a Louisiana native who was raised Southern Baptist but had converted to Islam on her own. Kathy has a son from a previous marriage, and she and Zeitoun (as everyone calls Abdulrahman) have three daughters together. In my opinion, Eggers’s focus on this quintessential “American” family is the strongest aspect of the book. The result was that I learned more about Islam than I had ever known before.

You may have noticed from my discussions that I don’t read much modern literature. I think Palahniuk’s Fight Club and Choke might be the only works of narrative prose (i.e. – fiction or creative nonfiction) published within the last 25 years on my bookshelf at home. (Correction: I also have Nick Horby’s novel High Fidelity, Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction work Into The Wild, Tao Lin’s short story collection Bed, and one or two others.) There are a few reasons for this. First, I’ve been trying to catch up on many of the “classics” that I missed out on while skirting the reading requirements in high school English classes. More often than not, I managed to patch together a project without reading the entire book — and N64’s “Goldeneye” seemed much more important at the time.

The second reason is more complex, but it relates to my skepticism over the value of contemporary publishing. I’m sure there’s a long catalog of works that try to explain the reasons for the degraded efficacy of modern literature: people watch too much TV and movies, play too many video games, aren’t educated enough, or are tasteless, unrefined cretins. That’s without even mentioning the publishing industry’s concerns over lagging profits. Of course, the assumption there is that the publishers deserved whatever success they had enjoyed up until recent times.

Thanks to the wonderful serendipity offered on a regular basis by the Internet, I recently found an amazing Vimeo channel called Tryptophanatic Netvision. Or I should say, the channel found me. Kaliptus, the channel’s creator, added two of my creations to the list of mind-bending videos. So you can get an idea of what it’s all about, here’s the channel description:

Welcome to Tryptophanatic Netvision, where the screenings you are about to witness may reveal some of the deepest secrets of the universe! If you are ready for consciousness expansion, use this channel as a tool. The contents herein vary in style, quality, and nature… ranging from psychotropic animations to mystical videos, tripadelic motion graphics, mind warping experiments, occult surrealism and lots more. This Netvision is geared to alter your very being to a higher level of super hue-man exaltation & inspiration. “Caterpillars” beware!!!
This is “Butterfly” territory.

I don’t usually announce (or even pick) a New Years Resolution, but this year I came up with one that suits me well. While most people choose to do something (and let’s be honest — it’s usually an attempt to work out more), I will be restricting myself from doing something. What’s the something? Writing really long posts on this blog. It’s not that I intend to write less; it’s that I want to redirect my efforts into different types of writing — namely essays and short stories. And since I’m working full time right now, I only have so much time and mental energy for this sort of thing.

I’ll probably being much as I did before, but only the shorter work will appear here. In other words, any time an article goes beyond 600 words, I’ll post it as an essay on Supraterranean or attempt to publish it elsewhere. That’ll make this more of a blog and less of a column (currently most posts run around 1,000-1,400 words!).

In early December 2009 I submitted my lengthy essay “Indecision Over Michigan” to the Cooperative Press, a branch of the group Michigan Writers that helps emerging writers publish a chapbook in the literary genre of their choice. It’s a program intended to educate new writers on the entire publication process. As it says on their website, “Selected authors share the publishing costs and marketing responsibilities with Michigan Writers in return for the prestige of being published by a press that prints only carefully selected manuscripts.”

I thought it sounded like a great idea, and I was totally willing to foot the $250 for the actual printing of the books. I even rushed to cut my essay down from almost 12,000 to just under 10,000 words, to stay within their submission guidelines. I printed and mailed the literary spawn, and I waited patiently. Then on Sunday night I got an email notification that my essay was rejected. They received 14 submissions and had picked three for publication.

I’ve come to dislike New Years Eve very much. Not only will it never live up to my romantic vision of the night, but lately it’s become a source of frustration that I’d rather avoid altogether. I suppose part of it is about forcing ourselves to look back at the year we just finished, and to look ahead at the year to come. But people don’t genuinely reflect on the past year’s worth of experience and try to extract some meaning from it. And as far as the year to come, people usually announce some half-assed “resolution” that they have little intention of fulfilling (though, due to the shallow nature of most resolutions, it doesn’t make much difference anyways). Example: the gym was jam-packed tonight, but I hardly ever saw anyone there during the last two months.

Anyway, I’ve been attempting to gain a sense of closure on the decade. But due to complications offline, I haven’t had much chance to think (let alone write) lately. I first struck out to discuss my favorite music of the decade — albums released between the years of 2000 and 2009. So far I have an audio slideshow of my 50 favorite albums, and a PDF of my favorite 200. I intended to provide more explanation, but simply haven’t gotten around to it yet.

The imminent release of Tim Burton’s (epic failure) remake of Alice in Wonderland has me thinking about that story. What’s that? I’ve already offended you? You think it’s going to be wicked awesome? Well, you should stop sniffing glue. Have you seen the new official trailer? It looks like a CGI monster snotted all over some film and they called it a movie.

Phew. Now that I got that out of my system, let me get to the point. I think the long-running appeal of absurdist stories like Alice in Wonderland (based, let’s not forget, on the book by Lewis Carroll) is related to a few themes that aren’t often acknowledged. The Wizard of Oz is a similar example. In each case, a young woman bored or frustrated with her surroundings dreams (or hallucinates) that she travels to a land where things are more exciting and unpredictable, but a land that’s also more dangerous and terrifying. (Also note: the 1986 cult classic Labyrinth, featuring David Bowie and an early performance from Jennifer Connelly).