The World According to ME! ME! ONLY ME!

First, some things about how this blog is going:^[1] I'm working on the god damn footnotes. C., over at his blog, has started doing footnotes "right." He links between them, so the footnote in the text^[2] links to the bottom of the page and the neat little icon (↩, which I stole) links back up to the text. I will now do this.

I had started moving this blog over to github so I could write code for the footnotes and make them fancy -- I am a Professional Rails Developer, after all^[3] -- but maintaining both sites is just ridiculous. The github looks like trash, too, since there's no styling; it's just raw text. This right here is what I was doing with the footnotes, for those who want an example. Mouse over them. Fancy, right?^[4]

"Enough of this uninteresting garbage," you say.

I've recently acquired three new books:^[5] The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson, The Sirens Of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster as revealed to Bobby Henderson.^[6]

His Noodly Appendage has risen.

I haven't started reading any of those -- gimme a sec -- but I do recommend The Jefferson Bible. It's a Bible that Jefferson put together himself. Effectively, he went through a few translations of the New Testament, removed all of the miracles / angels / demons / supernatural elements, and pasted verses together chronologically. What's left is "the good parts," or -- what I suppose, as I haven't read it yet -- a 100% human Jesus telling people to stop being assholes to one another. I like my magic tricks, don't get me wrong, but I'm interested to read a more grounded-in-reality Bible.

"Woah, this is still pretty boring," you moan. "And they're not magic tricks, jackass."

I'm reading The World According To Garp^[7] by John Irving. Ahem. If you'll just allow me --

I am about halfway done. This book is fucked up.^[8] It's thoroughly good, though. I don't like it quite as much as AHWOSG but it's definitely up near Cat's Cradle-level quality.

Warning: spoilers for the first half of the book below

"Garp" is a book about a woman, Jenny Fields, the Mother of Feminism. She hates men and their "lust," and one day she decides she wants to have a child. She won't get married or even go through with a "traditional" courtship process^[9] but she's lucky enough to be a nurse during wartime. A man known only as Garp is shot down in an airplane, and he's mentally incapacitated by the event. He regresses to childhood, going backwards through mental development, eventually only being able to say his name. He does get fairly constant erections, though.^[10]

Jenny decides to have a sexual relationship with Garp. He's unable to speak or comprehend much of anything, but she -- erm -- "relieves" him^[11] when he gets his boners. Jenny decides she wants a child around the same time Garp can only say "Aaa," having lost the other sounds of his name. Before Garp dies from his wounds, he gets an erection again, and Jenny rapes him.^[12]

Jenny conceives a child from this liason; she gives birth to the boy and names him "T.S. Garp" -- you see, papa Garp was a Technical Sergeant. Garp gets a slot in a prep school in which his mother works as a nurse. He graduates with a focus in writing^[13] and he soon moves to Vienna with Jenny in an effort to see an "artsy" part of Europe.

While in Europe, Jenny writes her memoir, A Sexual Suspect. It is hailed as the first feminist text: Jenny is not afraid of being an asexual-except-that-time-she-raped-a-handicapped-dying-guy-so-she-could-steal-a-baby-from-him, independent woman. A cadre of women adopt Jenny as their role model / leader and she becomes incredibly wealthy. This wealth allows Garp to work on his own writing; he completes his first work, "The Pension Grillparzer,"^[14] in Vienna.

Upon completion of "The Pension Grillparzer," Garp proposes -- via letter -- to a girl he knew from his days at Steering, Helen. She accepts^[15] and moves in with Garp upon his return to New England. They "learn to love each other" and make a baby.

I cannot write any more here's a list of shit that happens after all that or even before that, depending:

1. Garp repeatedly sees an older prostitute in Vienna, Rachel. She gets syphillis and dies.
2. Garp catches the clap from a whore in Vienna. He's treated for it and considers hitting on the doctor's daughter, but then he's all, "Dude, her dad treated by diseased dick, there's just no way."
3. Garp cheats on Helen with a few babysitters.
4. Garp and Helen get into an open marriage / swinging scenario with another couple because the man -- a co-professor at a university with Helen -- is sleeping with a student. The idea is to get him to want Helen instead (or something) which is somehow more acceptable to all parties. Helen calls it off after a while.
5. Garp runs down a child molester in some sort of park while he's running. He becomes a bit of a local hero as a result.
6. Garp and Helen have another kid.
7. Helen appears to be developing feelings for a graduate student of her own, Michael Milton. I predict a scandal.

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[1] This is going to be pretty boring and I'm just complaining about shit I do voluntarily, so you can skip this part.↩

[2] Are you bored yet? Move along. I won't be offended.↩

[3] This is funny because I'm really not very good at computer science.↩

[4] I don't think I'm going to continue on the github unless one of you wants to style my site with your super-duper (dooper?) CSS skills. Holla @ cha boi.↩

[5] YAY! Ian ♥ reading!↩

[6] My Mom, who sent me to CCD every Monday night^[*] from K-8 and then a Catholic high school, bought this for me for my birthday. Shout out to Moms.↩

[7] Recommended / given to me by J. Yes, I do prioritize her recommendations. Fight me. NOT YO BLOG NOT YO RULEZ.↩

[8] Compared to what I usually read, which is to say it's more controversial than books about child wizards and talking animals.↩

[9] This means "date for a while before committing to raising children," or at the very least, "not rape."↩

[10] Parents, take your children out of the room.↩

[11] HANDJOBS. I CAN'T NOT SAY IT, OKAY. HANDJOBS.↩

[12] It's rape. Yes, she's only capable of doing it because she's a Strong Female Character, but it's still totally 100% rape.↩

[13] I've here skipped a good chunk of the book that deals with Garp's time at the Steering School. It involves Garp fighting a dog, wrestling, and getting a blowie-jay by cannons filled with used condoms.↩

[14] This is a short story involving a family who visits hotels and restaurants to classify them, giving them rankings. The eponymous pension features a bear that rides a unicycle. Irving includes a large portion of it in a book-within-a-book framing device.↩

[15] The portion of the book I skipped makes this seem not totally out of left field, though it's still strange.↩

[*] Admittedly, we would listen to blink-182 sometimes. It wasn't all bad.↩