2019 in review

2019 was a pretty good year for literacy for me.  I need to remind myself of this from time to time.  I didn't read quite as much as I wanted, but I read a lot of great books and had a lot of good discussion about them with friends.  This is something that I want to continue to do and do more of in 2020.

This year I compiled the index for a friend's book, Cavaliers and Economists, and published two essays on tor.com - one about Jack London's dystopian novel The Iron Heel, and the other about Isaac Asimov's use of encyclopedism in Foundation.  I posted a bunch here, as well.  Finally, I started working on some fiction writing projects.  I don't have anything ready to go public yet, but it feels good to work o this, as well.

Looking forward, I want to continue to get involved in the local writers' community and continue to get my work out to a reading audience.  I think next steps really are about making connections with other writers and finding ways to make use of my experience and training in education.  

Dies the Fire

I picked up this book thinking that it was something else.  I had heard about S.M. Stirling's novels of the Change and thought that Dies the Fire was the first book in the series.  The book I wanted is Island in the Sea of Time, which is about an island on the eastern seaboard that it transported from the late twentieth-century to the seventeenth and the inhabitants are forced to figure out how to survive.  Cool sf premise.
This novel is the first in a spin-off series that narrates what happens to a different part of the United States.  An EMP has knocked out all of the world's electronics, forcing the inhabitants of this world to re-invent means of survival and re-discover many technologies and society.  As governments and civil order collapse, people coalesce into factions with competing drives.
The novel opens with Mike Havel flying a charter plane into rough Idaho backwoods.  He must land his now non-functional plane and hike the family in his charge our of the wilderness.  Havel is a capable ex-marine with a talent for bringing out others' skills.  Mike and this family make up the core of the first group in the novel.
The second main group is Clan Mackenzie, headed by Juniper Mackenzie, formerly a musician and high priestess of her coven.  Both groups gradually build their populations and adapt to their new world.  They re-discovery skills in archery and sword craft.
The two groups end up forming an alliance to fight against the Protector, a self-styled feudal lord who has taken over a nearby city.  All through the novel, the groups are in constant danger from roving bands of raiders, the Protector's army, other groups hungry for resources, and starvation as they figure out how to marshall the resources that they have and become more efficient in farming without powered equipment.
Stirling's skill lies in descriptions of combat.  The novel is littered with fight scenes and imaginative battle plans.  The novel is also notable in a certain lack of exposition.  Stirling does not let the reader know more than the characters do.  We see the perspectives of other groups, but we don't know what is going on outside of that.  Stirling doesn't reveal the true cause of the Change, nor does he reveal more of the outside world, aside from the gossip and speculation of characters in the novel.
The novel was enjoyable to read but I am not terribly interested in reading more in this spin-off series.  It runs a little closer to swords and magic fantasy (without the magic, of course), than I normally like.  I will likely check out the first novel of the Change in the main series, however.

Visual Kindred

While reading Octavia Butler's Kindred, I learned that it had been adapted into a graphic novel.  After searching this out online and seeing some of the artwork, I decided that I needed to have this version of the book as well.  After getting it home, I paged through it, glancing at the representations of the book that I was currently reading, but I decided that I wanted to shelve it for a while before reading it.  I wanted to come back to it with a fresher perspective rather than, essentially, reading it twice in a row.
I recently did pick this up and was very happy with this adaptation.  I really enjoyed Butler's novel and I think that this work really does it justice.  The artwork is very careful to show the passage of time on Dana and Kevin.  Their faces and forms change of the course of the narrative to reflect the trials that they endure.
Need Okorafor write in the introduction that this graphic novel serves both as a way into Butler's work for the uninitiated and as a new way to read this novel.  I definitely found this to be the case.  The visual aspect of this book represented both the horror of the novel and the moments of compassion that Dana is able to find with others.  This is definitely a book to pick up.

Devil Master/Where Angels Rot/Hammr/Subtype Zero

Growing up near Cleveland, I went to a lot of small and local punk shows, but last night was the first time I took the opportunity to see a smaller metal show.  Over the last few years I have gotten to see a lot of bigger acts in big venues and it felt good to be in a smaller crowd, closer to the actual band.
Now That's Class is a small club nestled in between Cleveland proper and Lakewood.  They frequently host local and regional punk, indie, and metal shows and have a skateboard ramp inside of an old double storefront.  Walking in, the place reminded me of countless dive punk bars I've been to in the past to see shows.  My buddy paid $5 for our two beers, and it felt like home.  The walls were covered in stickers and graffiti and one shelf behind the bar was a veritable shrine to Rodney Dangerfield, complete with something that looked like a cookie jar shaped like Rodney's head, a vinyl copy of "Rappin' Rodney" and the No Respect board game.  The first band was just performing their sound check as we entered.

Where Angels Rot tended to have good energy and played black/death metal to a handful of people.  They were young and the drummer had a very big kit that he seemed a little lost behind.  They were at their best when playing the slower, almost dirge-like interludes that peppered most of their songs.  But when they kicked into faster tempos the double bass drums tended to muddy and lag.  They played well individually but need more time together to gel as a group.  The guitarist stood out as the talent in the group, taking on both lead and rhythm duties in the four-piece.

The second band, Subtype Zero, played incredibly well together and were a lot of fun to watch.  They played a thrashier, shreddier metal that had hints of Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies groove to it.  The two guitarists traded leads, the bassist added harmonics to the composition, and the drummer was much more at home behind his set. 

Hammr is a 3-piece grind metal group.  The members are a bit older and fit well into their roles.  Their brand of metal isn't one that I normally listen to, but it was a lot of fun to watch live.  The highlight of their set for me was watching the singer switch out his bass for a guitar after the first song.  He had initially strapped on the bass and played through their opener but then set it on top of his stack, I thought to change a string or tune.  But then he grabbed a gig bag as though he had forgotten it and got out another guitar.  The band played the rest of the set with the bass atop the amp and playing two guitars.

The headliner for the night, Devil Master from Philly, put on a great show beginning with setting up.  My buddy and I had been watching a dude in a long leather duster through the whole show because he looked like someone from '80s goth metal band Christian Death.  I missed the beginning of the set up because I had gone to use the restroom and buy a beer, but when I got back I saw Christian Death stringing artificial cobweb from a nail on the wall to the microphone in the center of the stage.  The band packed the tiny stage with its 6 members, the largest band of the night.  The band played a punk-infused black metal, a crossover I had not heard much of before.  Among other highlights of the show was the keyboard player who made no facial expressions and barely moved the entire show.  For many of the songs, his hands were placed atop his keyboard, fingers draped over the front of it.  It was a strong performance choice, but fun as hell to watch amid the frenetic dancing and gesturing of the rest of the band.

The show was great and here it is, nearly 12 hours later and my ears are still ringing.  All four bands reminded me of what I loved about going to shows in Cleveland when I was young.  The small venue started out rather sparsely attended but was packed by the time the headliner wrapped.  A few people moshed just in front of the stage and a few feet in front of where I stood and there was an overwhelmingly open and welcoming atmosphere.  This is a place I want to go back to see more shows.

Quick notes on 2 books

In the last couple of weeks I finished reading two different books.  I didn't have a lot to say about either of them, so I figured that I would go for a combined post on the two.  These two don't really have anything in common aside from when I read them.  Here it is: notes on two books.

 I picked up this copy of Psycho by Robert Bloch at The Book Shelf.  This book store is a nonprofit that benefits Project: Learn, an adult literacy program that services my county.  I like to shop here because they turn over used books pretty quickly and I can often find oddballs like this book.  I have known for years that Hitchcock's film was based on a novel but I had never come across it before and it had never really dawned on me to seek it out.
Honestly, the film follows the book pretty closely.  I was surprised that Hitchcock didn't take more liberties with the plot.  He changed some aspects about Norman's personality and the specific nature of his affliction, but the content and tone are very similar.  This is a quick read and it is very pulpy.
I remember hearing that Hitchcock had bought out copies of this novel across the country in an attempt to keep the public from knowing the ending going into the movie.  Apparently Hitchcock took spoilers very seriously.
What I like best about this copy is that it was a promotional re-printing for the Gus VanSant remake of Psycho starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.  This copy must have been languishing on someone's shelf for quite a while before I got my hands on it.

The other book is Jonathan Ames' The Double Life is Twice as Good.  My wife suggested this book to me as something she had enjoyed and I might as well.  The book is a collection of Ames' varied work: personal essays, short fiction, and journalism.  His voice is fairly consistent throughout, meaning that his fiction reads like his reportage and delves into very similar subjects, such as drug use, visiting prostitutes, and spending time with celebrities in public.  Ames' personal writing style is engaging, but he retreads similar territory and many of his pieces seem to be more about himself than about his subjects.  This style is similar to that of David Foster Wallace's journalism but much more sparse.
The book worked as a breakfast table read.

Chili and Cornbread

I like food.  I also like cooking to share with others.  I don't tend to use a lot of recipes but usually just go with what I have on hand and what looks good to me.  Chili is one of those things that you can make a lot of different ways with a variety of ingredients.  Here is one version that I recently made.  This one includes a step with garlic-stuffed roasted peppers that I don't always use but really gives your chili a depth of flavor.  The preparation for the peppers can be done in advance.

Tempeh Chili and Cornbread
Ingredients:
1 head of garlic
2 jalapeno peppers
1 poblano pepper
1 medium onion
4 carrots, peeled
4 ribs celery
1 package tempeh
assorted cans of beans
assorted cans of tomatoes
1 can of beer
some vegetable stock
assorted spices including chili powder, cumin, allspice, cayenne, etc.

Process:
Roasted peppers
1. Peel and trim all garlic, julienne half and mince the rest.

Hollowed pepper with julienne garlic

2. Cut off tops of jalapeno peppers and remove ribs and seeds.
3. Stuff julienne garlic into hollowed peppers.
4. Coat poblano pepper and stuffed jalapenos in olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Roast at 350 for about 30 minutes or until skin begins to bubble.
 

5.  While peppers are roasting, dice the onion, carrots, and celery.  Crumble tempeh into small grounds.
6. Heat some olive oil in the bottom of your biggest pot.  Once the oil gets to temperature add garlic and onions.  Once these begin to caramelize, add salt, pepper, and remaining seasoning.  Get your onions and garlic nice and coated with the seasonings. 

7. As the onions and garlic begin to turn translucent, add tempeh in.  You will want to get the tempeh coated in oil and seasoning (you may need to add a bit more olive oil here) and continue to sautee until it begins to brown.  At this point, add in your diced veggies.
*note: you pretty much always want to start out your dishes by sauteeing your onions and garlic first.  This will mellow out the sharper flavors of the vegetables and the caramelization will add a sweetness that contrasts well with the other flavors in the dish.  In this case, the caramelized garlic and onions with the roasted peppers will contrast any spiciness you add to the chili.

8.  Once the vegetables begin to soften a bit, you will want to deglaze them.  The idea here is that the heated oil coating the vegetables will continue to sautee them until you "wash" the oil off.  For chili, I like to do this with beer, but depending on the dish you can also use wine, sherry, stock, vinegar, or citrus juice.  Once the beer is in the pot, I like to stir it all up and let it braise for a bit before adding in my other ingredients.  Once the foam from the beer settles, bring to a boil and then reduce heat to let this simmer.

9.  Have a beer for yourself!  Cooking is thirsty work.

Bubbly skin peppers

10.  By now your peppers are probably done roasting.  Allow these guys to cool down a bit before trying to handle them.  You are going to want to remove as much of the skin as you can.  You should see the skin bubble up and it is pretty easy to remove.  I like to just get in there with a paring knife but you can also either cover the peppers or put them into a paper bag.  The steam from the cooling peppers will help to lift the skin off.

Poblano with skin removed and minced jalapeno/garlic

11.  After removing the skin, cut out the top and clean out the ribs and seeds from the poblano.  Dice the rest of this one up.  Mince or finely chop the stuffed jalapenos.  This combination of peppers is not terribly spicy, particularly with roasting them.  The garlic will impart a rich, sweet flavor to the pepper and to the broth of your chili.  To make a spicier chili, roast a habanero in place of one of the jalapenos or mince a raw jalapeno to add to the vegetables above.
Reserve these peppers for now.



12.  By now your veggies are starting to marry flavors with your spices in the beer broth and it is time to begin bringing this thing together. 
Occasionally I will make my chili from fresh tomatoes if I find big juicy ones that I like or if I don't have anything better to do in a day.  But typically I will opt for canned tomatoes.  This is quicker and you won't notice a huge difference in flavor.  For this recipe, I used 2 big cans of crushed tomatoes and one normal sized can of diced.  This gives the finished chili a bit more texture.
I also use canned beans for this because it is a lot easier and, again, you won't really notice a huge difference in flavor.

A variety of beans is good both for texture and flavor.  In this version, I used one can each of black beans, kidney beans, great northern beans, and pinto beans.  The earthy protein of the beans grounds the chili and balances out the other flavors. 
Dump all of the cans of stuff into your pot, stir it up, and top the whole thing off with stock or more beer.
13.  This whole mess needs to simmer for at least an hour.  Ideally, you should keep this on for 2-3 hours.  Depending on your tastes, you can add in some tomato paste at this point to help thicken up your broth. 
14.  This is also a good point to make your cornbread.  I don't have a good recipe, so I made this one that I found on Minimalist Baker.  This recipe is really great.  I made a couple of minor variations on this, but it is a delicious recipe as-is.  The bread is moist, just the right amount of crumbly, and sweet.  I am not much of a baker but I found this recipe easy to follow. 

Delicious cornbread

15.  Once your cornbread is in the oven, fix up your toppings!  I like chopped cilantro, green onions, and sour supreme to go with my chili.  Avocado and hot sauce is also really good.

More on Heinlein

So, I am going to bast through this one because I am feeling pretty ambivalent about it and I want to get this done before I change my mind.  This novel, like others of Heinlein's I have read, has some interesting aspects to it and is a generally good sci-fi novel but also presents some elements more difficult to swallow.  Really, it is difficult to separate these difficult bits out because they are thoroughly baked into the entire narrative.
Here it is: The Day After Tomorrow is about a small military base in America attempting to resist an occupying force (Panasiatics) after they have defeated the American military and taken down the government.  Heinlein doesn't describe the war, he is just interested in the aftermath.
The base is well-hidden under a mountain and those remaining have access to a new scientific discovery called the Ledbetter effect.  This idea is pretty cool because it exploits expansions of the electromagnetic spectrum that link it to nuclear and gravitic forces.  The colonizers have no idea that this power exists and the Americans seem to be able to do pretty much anything with this new power.  This is the first cool idea.
The second cool idea is that those remaining decide to create a fake religion in order to organize a resistance against the Panasiatics.  They see that religious institutions are left alone and they exploit this to open churches across the country and recruit patriots to fight with them.
So far, so good.
Heinlein consistently dehumanizes the "Panasiatic" enemy and describes ways that the Ledbetter effect can be used to single out individuals based on race.  They can "tune" the effect to work only on those he calls "Panasiatic."  They also use the effect to shield the churches, barring anyone not white from entry.  Heinlein specifies this exclusion, essentially erasing other people of color from America, or at the very least excludes them from participating in the resistance.
The characters in the novel also use a variety of slurs against the "Panasians" that don't bear repeating.
In a previous post, I wrote about the morality that I perceived in Heinlein's work and the difficulties that I have with it.  In this book, he extends these problems.  He celebrates individualism at the same time that he wants everyone to know their place.
I do enjoy many elements of his work and believe him to be a sci-fi visionary in many respects.  This element keeps popping up and it makes it harder to enjoy otherwise meritorious novels.

Foundation, Part 3: Foundation and Empire

Foundation and Empire, the second novel in the Foundation series picks up more or less where the first novel leaves off.  This book follows much of the same plan that the first one does and, like any good sequel, it expands on the themes of the original.
Asimov picks up on the long arc of history that he set in motion in the first novel.  That is, the Foundation continues to consolidate influence as the sole remaining scientific powerhouse as the Galactic Empire continues its fall.  Now at a greater remove from the events in the first novel, Seldon, Psychohistory, the encyclopedists, and even the Foundation itself have taken on mythic tones.  As the empire falls apart, lines of communication and trade likewise deteriorate.  This isolates planets on the periphery of the galaxy that then revert to feudalism.  Where another author might summarize much of the above, Asimov creates separate scenes, interspersed through time and space to demonstrate these plot lines.  In a way, this helps to develop the drama of history, but it also undercuts it by revealing the artifice of the narrative.  The events that Asimov writes about are so far distant in time and space that they have to be -- essentially -- sped up.  Each of the narrative slices provides a peek into one time and place before shuttling off to the next.  This creates an exaggerated urgency because he can collapse events that might take place fifty or one hundred years apart to make them seem more causal, more immediate.  Whatever the actual events of history, Seldon's immediate influence has shifted.  While in the first novel, Seldon's holographic appearances were eagerly anticipated, Asimov reveals that two of the subsequent appearances had no audience.  In this sense, Seldon and psychohistory have become more totemic.
Then, two weird things happen.  First, people start talking about someone called the Mule.  There are all kinds of rumors about the Mule and about the powers that he has.  The other thing is that two of the characters meet a space clown named Magnifico.  If you are a reader like me, you will have noticed that Asimov goes to great pains not to describe the Mule and you will further suspect that this space clown actually is the Mule.  This turns out to be the case.  Also, the space clown Mule/Magnifico can essentially read people's thoughts and alter their emotions.
There are some cool scenes of the empire in decline.  As technology declines, colonists are forced to turn back to the soil and bartering.  The Mule wants to rebuild the empire but is frustrated in the end because he is unable to locate the mythical second Foundation that is located somewhere on the opposite side of the galaxy form the original Foundation.  The two separate Foundations are set up in the first novel but the second one has been kept more hidden.  Some of the characters speculate that the scientific first Foundation is countered by an emotional second Foundation which would be ideally suited to fighting against the Mule.
I lost track of where Seldon is in all of this.  Honestly, the space clown threw me a bit and the Mule seemed like a pretty dumb character so I glossed over parts of this book.
As sequels go, this isn't bad.  The book does play around with some of the same themes that made Foundation interesting and it extends other ideas.  However, this book also loses even more focus on the encyclopedia which is the thing that drew me to these books in the first place.

Found Writings, Part 4

What follows is a review/analysis that I wrote about a book of poetry that I found in a second-hand book store called Punk Novel by someone named Bad Al.  This book is really something.  Difficult to describe, difficult to read, difficult to write about.  You can see some of the tool marks in my writing as I try to find a way to write about the book honestly but still be charitable (a little, at least) to the author.  I have never seen another copy of this book anywhere and no one I know has even heard of it.  I will try to dig it up and repost the cover here.  If I can't find it, I am not entirely convinced that I didn't just dream it up.
While looking into this a bit, I came across this quote, "Rock and Roll poetry by (probably) Shel Silverstein", which is about the only information that is available for this book on Amazon.
I did not, and probably could not, edit the original post.

Punk Novel

“So this ain't a novel

so what

look how ya grovel cause ya

think it's something hot.”

Punk Novel is a book that I bought a number of years ago in a used book store.  I knew nothing about it, had never even heard of it, but the title and the fact that it was 2 bucks was enough for me.  The book is by Bad Al and it is something of a concept poetry book although I already get the sense that I am giving it too much credit.  Let me be clear, Punk Novel is not good.  It doesn't make a lot of sense and even the author seems to be amazed that the thing was published.  The dedication reads, in part, “I want you to know that only three people in the whole fucking publishing business liked Punk Novel for any reason whatsoever.”

I call this a concept poetry book, but I might also call it a printed concept album.  The title page looks like a track listing of 13 songs (complete with run time though it is uncertain whether the time is meant to represent the time it should take to read the “song” or the time spent composing it) are split across 2 sides.  This format calls attention to the blurred lines between lyrics and poetry.  This is probably the most interesting part of Punk Novel.  The work itself is typeset in a Courier look-alike font and several pages contain collage artwork, which makes me think that this first existed as a zine.  

The poems are not good.  They are simplistic and I would say that some of it resembles slam poetry more than anything else, but I don't want to give the impression that this is as good as slam poetry.  Now, I will say that there are a lot of really dumb lyrics to punk songs.  Sometimes this is on purpose and conforms to a larger theme in the punk aesthetic and sometimes the idiocy is genuine.  But these poems contain a grating combination of idiocy and arrogance.  Bad Al seems to be pretty impressed with something but I can't really see what it is.

One poem, “Hemorrhoid,” is a story song about the community service psychologist that Bad Al's mother and sister go to in order to fix their contentious relationship.  The psychologist wants to see Bad Al, who he thinks is at the heart of the problem, “'Cept this punk don't wanna be shrunk.”  Bad Al recounts all of the tricks that he plays on the psychologist when he goes in.  He reveals what he takes to be “textbook” pyscho-babble but it is a bit it is more or less like an episode of Frasier.  The jewel of this poem, though, is Bad Al's chorus which runs: “MAYBE YOU CAN SHRINK A HEMORRHOID/BUT MAH HEAD'S A WHOLE OTHER THING.”  At the end of the poem, Bad Al reveals to the psychologist that he has been pretending the whole time and the psychologist is amazed at how smart Bad Al is.  Of course.

Perhaps the best lines in the book are the chorus to “Mother,” the first track on the second side, which runs:

I GOTTA TAKE MAH MOTHER APART

PUT HER BACK TOGETHER AGAIN

FEET FIRST

STICKIN' UP OUT OF THE HEARSE

BRAINS LAST

I GOTTA MOVE FAST

MAH MOTHER'S FUTURE'S BEEN HER PAST.

I don't know what this song is about.  Parts of it seem to make fun of “mother's” friends for being old and sometimes it seems to be about killing his mother.  But then again, there are elements that suggest that mother might be abusive or drug addicted.  Thing is, Bad Al is actually better when the poems are more dissociative.  This poem, odd as it is, is more affecting than many of the other poems that either express a unified message or present a narrative.  

Contrast “Mother” with “You the Jury,” which is about how much jury duty sucks.  This poem is pretty unified in this message but one gets the impression that the whole idea from the song is meant to be an ironic twist on either Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury or the movie adaptation of the same name, starring Stacey Keach.  In any case, the narrator of the poem is dismissed from jury duty (Bad Al does allude to Spillane in “Geronimo and Hollywood”).  So, one wonders what the problem is.

My overall impression is that Bad Al steps over decent lines and couplets in order to extend thoughts that don't really need to be extended.  Take this from “Jury Duty”:

“Me and The Knife they called him

before they hauled him in,

me and Rutherford Brown

was how they introduced him as they accused him

of buryin' two inches of ice-cold steel

into the commonweal,

me and him,

me and Rutherford The Knife Brown

made eye contact,

made a sort of pact,

signed a sort of soul contract.”

The first four lines are repetitious and could be reduced to two.  The lines “buryin' two inches of ice-cold steel/into the commonweal” is actually clever.  It is a decent couplet that expresses the dual conceits of crimes committed against individuals and communities at the same time as well as Bad Al's complicit in the community.  Fair enough.  What kills it, though, is the “contact,” “pact,” “contract” triad.  This is not necessary and pushing the stupid rhyme into the third line buries a decent couplet and a decent idea in a long stanza that doesn't end up meaning much.  This happens elsewhere, but you'll forgive me if I don't quote more examples.  

I am convinced that, at this point, I have put way more thought into this book than anyone else has (potentially author inclusive).  I don't recommend this book if you are even able to find it.  I will happily lend my copy to anyone interested in perusing the pages as long as you send me postage and promise to give it back.  There is something a little endearing about this book and I definitely want to have it as a part of my collection.  

Bad Al, in case you ever see this; I'm sorry I didn't like your book, though I doubt you'd be surprised that I didn't.  I can say that I did have fun writing about it and, based on what little I know about you, I think you would take this review in the spirit it's offered.  

Foundation, Part 2: Re-reading Foundation

I meant to sit down and write this post after I finished reading the novel about a week and a half ago but I got caught up in some other writing projects and this fell to the wayside.  What this means is that I meant to give a more in-depth summary and analysis of Asimov's classic Foundation but what you are going to get is more nebulous.  I still have some notes from what I was going to write before, so I am going to work from that.
This may get sloppy and I know that I am going to miss some of the details.  I am okay with that.
This was my third reading of this novel.  The first time I read Foundation was in graduate school when I was working on the encyclopedic novel.  This novel is not encyclopedic, but it does contain thematic elements of the encyclopedia.  This is something that drops out of other novels (as I have written elsewhere) but is pretty heavy in the first one.
The second time I read this novel was with my sci-fi reading group.  We would alternate between reading classic sci-fi and newer novels.  Foundation filled the bill for a classic sci-fi novel that many in the group wanted to read, so we took it up.  I don't remember much about that conversation now, but I probably spent some time talking about the Encyclopedia Galactica.
This third time I am taking it up is with a view toward reading the entire series.
Foundation opens with a couple of really fascinating premises: the science of psychohistory and the aforementioned Encyclopedia Galactica.  I have written about the encyclopedia elsewhere, so I want to focus on psychohistory here.  This science blends sociology, group psychology, and statistical analysis into a science that may be used to predict future events.  The idea is that a properly trained psychohistorian can take a set of data about a current culture and its broad trends and use this to judge the likely outcome of certain events.  Hari Seldon is the most gifted practitioner of psychohistory and he uses it to predict long-scale historical events, including the eventual downfall of the current galactic empire, the dark ages that will follow the fall, and the eventual rise of the second empire.

The science of psychohistory is interesting because it seeks to quantify human action on a macro-scale.  Asimov explains away individual action by relying on probability and using civilization-wide sample sizes to make predictions.  This means the psychohistory relies on the broadest of trends, making individual contributions much too small to be a factor.
In order to show actions on this broad scale, the narrative must make leaps into the future.  This is not an uncommon device in sci-fi, but it takes special care to pull it off.  The author must keep certain thematics steady enough draw along plot and must be careful to re-establish context after each jump forward in time.  Each jump requires new characters as well.  This means that there are a lot of balls to keep in the air at once to pull it off.
Asimov does this with varying success.  The idea of psychohistory and following the plotting of civilization is compelling enough to draw readers along, even as they may have difficulty keeping characters and events straight.  Hari himself remains a constant throughout the narrative despite dying early on in the timeline.  He does this by preparing holograms of himself that are designed to appear at specific times in the future to help guide civilization along its proper course.  Seldon realizes that he must simultaneously nudge civilization in the right direction while also keeping it ignorant of his plan.  This is an unresolved problem of the whole scheme because people begin anticipating these emergences of new information, these "nudges" from Seldon.  Asimov never gets deep enough into the mechanics of psychohistory to deal with this kind of anticipation.  There must be a profound faith in Seldon's prescience for this to be carried off at all.  And this seems to be at odds with the tenets of psychohistory itself.

Ultimately, this is a really enjoyable book.  It is compelling and there is a lot going on.  Asimov is always a big idea author and I am generally ready to forgive the small details that don't always add up.  I tend to think that his characters are generally weak, but again, his are novels of ideas and not character studies so it is easy to set this to the side and enjoy the novel as thought-experiment.

Found Writings, Part 3

What follows is a blog post that I wrote back when I thought that this was all going to be about punk rock.  It is more about my early initiations into punk and the music that I liked.  It is a bit more personal take on the music than some of the things that I have written, but I stand by pretty much all of it.  Here it is, without any edits:

Post 2 – The introduction

Green Day/Bad Religion (1993-4)

My first punk rock show was Bad Religion in Cleveland in the early/mid-nineties.  I don't remember which tour.  It was either the Recipe for Hate or Stranger than Fiction tour.  At this point I had already been listening to punk for a while after my older brother had gone to some shows with his friends.  We mainly listened to early Bad Religion and the first couple of Green Day albums.  We had to listen to dubs of Kerplunk because the album was nearly impossible to find at the time.  Within the year, their catalog was widely available.  

It was about a year later when I did get to see Bad Religion at the Agora in Cleveland and they would return every year just before Thanks giving for many years.  Each show, they would play a mix of their classic material and songs from their newest album.  This band has been important to me because of the people who they are.  Not only were they around from my very first awakening to punk rock, but the band – and lead singer Greg Graffin, in particular – showed me that there was a place for intelligence and that smarts, properly applied, are revolutionary.  Punk rock is a criticism and an outlet for anger.  I was angry because I never felt that I fit in with my peers.  I was a smart kid and didn't know how to express this.  Graffin's witty lyrics and political engagement stamped me and set a standard for the way that I still listen to music.  As a dude I worked with in a pizza shop once told me, “we can't all be politicians.”  True, but what we can all do is mean something.  This new standard for music that I came into had no patience for self-indulgence and trifling.  I wanted serious and I wanted meaningful.

These new desires for serious and meaningful might seem to be at odds with my love of Green Day, and particularly in conjunction with Bad Religion.  But I have come to associate the two bands so closely because I came to them at roughly the same time and because these two bands were so different from the Def Leppard, Guns 'n' Roses, and Slaughter that I had been listening to before (I still love G 'n' R, but for different reasons now).  What I saw in Green Day was engagement with emotion.  I don't know if I realized this at the time, but when I look back what I think I identified was unironic investment in emotion.   At the same time that I needed the intellectual stimulation of Bad Religion, I needed my stupid teenage hormones legitimized.  The world is full of platitudes about how a kid will understand things when he grows up and people telling kids they don't understand.  This is bullshit because every teen knows that their emotions are 100% real.  An adult can look back and recognize that these emotions are fleeting but in the moment they are the most real thing.  Green Day's emotion was a perfect counter to Bad Religion's logic.  I now fully recognize that what I saw as originality in Green Day was heavily influenced by the emotional engagement of the Descendents and the witty banter with boredom of the Ramones but at that time, this is what I knew and I have a strong nostalgic draw to these two bands.  

I don't remember the date, but I did get to see Green Day not all that long after the show I mentioned earlier.  This would have been after Dookie hit big and Green Day put on a show at Blossom music center outside of Cleveland.  The big draw was that Green Day would play a show that anyone could go to and to prove this they charged $3 a ticket.  This concert happened after a free show at the same venue had been cancelled.  I went with a group of my friends and my brother's friends and nearly everyone I knew was there.  I don't remember much of the show aside from it being a huge event and a couple of my friends and I spent a lot of time pulling up pieces of sod to hurl into the crowd (I also found $5).  I wasn't as interested in this show because by then I had already been to a number of club shows in Cleveland in much smaller venues.  Outdoor venues like Blossom could house in the tens of thousands and removed the personal connection that had been so important to me.  I have only been to a few big venue concerts and festival shows since then because of this.  I always felt more connection to the bands than to the people seeing the bands with me.

Lovecraft Baby

H.P. Lovecraft is a difficult author to write about right now for a variety of reasons.  For one, his work was relatively obscure for quite some years outside of pulp circles and he has only recently garnered major critical attention.  But this attention has brought other, less savory elements to light, leading to number two: his work is incredibly racist and xenophobic.  This isn't the focal point of the majority of it, but it is an undercurrent through most of his works (https://lithub.com/we-cant-ignore-h-p-lovecrafts-white-supremacy/ is a great take on this particular topic).  Third, and not insignificantly, he was not a great writer.  He was imaginative, certainly, but he had a lot of difficulties getting his visions onto the page.  His writing is so heavy and repetitive that it is nearly impenetrable at times.
I am not interested in defending Lovecraft's legacy (or arguing against it for that matter), but I have two observations about his work that I think are significant.  One is a mainstay in his writing that, I think, is redeeming in his writing in some measure.  The other is something that makes me like his writing even less.  All of this came about during my latest reading of his work, a collection titled The Call of the Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories.
A lot of Lovecraft's stories are about isolation and trauma.  He writes many stories about a lone survivor who witnessed something that they are unable to assimilate into their normal frame of reference.  These witnesses are likely to have been present as violence was visited upon a friend or partner.  These witnesses often have difficulty reconciling their experiences with what they know of the world.  Knowledge of a certain kind sets them apart from others, and they often are distraught that others will now understand what they have experienced.  I actually find this element of Lovecraft's work to be sympathetic.  He understands the terror of isolation.  The trauma that his characters experience marks them in a way that we now understand trauma to mark certain people.
The other side of this is that knowledge is generally a bad thing for Lovecraft.  His characters go insane from their knowledge.  They kill themselves because they learn of things that others do not know and they make great attempts to hide knowledge themselves.  The whole mythos of Cthulhu rests upon the idea that knowledge of the the ancient alien race is enough to drive one insane.
One of the reasons that I like science fiction is that most of it wants to push the boundaries of what we know.  It can help us to look into ourselves to ask what is possible.  It can also look at the world around us and ask why it is this way.  Lovecraft isn't a sci-fi writer per se, but his weird fiction shares some elements with sci-fi that I came to it with some expectation of a similar ethos.  It wasn't there.  This collection of short fiction sought to teach me that the world around me was dangerous even to want to know about.  It tried to teach me that going to new places and exploring new ideas is dangerous.
I gave Lovecraft a few chances and I'm done.  He doesn't fill the bill for me because he wants to keep me fearful and small.  He can keep to his own small world with his likewise small-minded folks.  I want bigger ideas.
And better writing.

Here is a song by a band I really like about Lovecraft.  I do like this song (which is way creepier than anything Lovecraft wrote):
Lovecraft Baby

Return of the Screw

This post is a continuation of my analysis of ambiguity in Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.  I will pick up with some textual analysis here.  Please refer back to part one of this analysis for introductory material and context.

In the governess' second encounter with the ghost James uses  triangulated lines of sight to create confusion and disrupt straightforward narrative.  This scene needs a bit more set-up, so please bear with me for a moment.  On a rainy day, the governess enters a room to pick up her gloves when she sees someone standing outside of the window looking in.  She recognizes this as the same person she had seen earlier.  Shocked at the sight, she rushes out of the house and around to the same window to, apparently, try to confront the man but she is unable to find him.  Outside the window, she has the urge to position herself where she had seen the man and peers back into the house.  As she does so, Mrs. Grose enters the room and sees here exactly where she herself had seen the man moments before.
This scene has always been puzzling to me because of the governess' reaction.  There are several things going on.  First, she sees the apparition and immediately attributes motives to it that she cannot know.  She also admits that she cannot clearly see the face but she is convinced that it is the same person she had seen on top of the house, even though she could not clearly see the face then, either.  Her impulse to run outside and then stand where the man stood is unexplained, and then, after this, she wonders why Mrs. Grose should be so startled by a similar image.
James uses the scene to continue to develop the governess' in/credibility.  She provides detail with great confidence that the reader may be prepared to accept on an initial reading, but that is really unsupported in the text.  For example, she claims: "On the spot there came to me the added shock of a certitude that it was not for me he had come there.  He had come for someone else."  She also admits that though she is seeing the man just through a pane of glass, his appearance to her is not with "greater distinctness" than her view from the garden when he was on the roof.  In the following chapter in conversation with Mrs. Grose, the governess calls the apparition a "horror" and expresses her belief that the children are in danger.  Again, these assertions that she makes are not supported by what actually happens in the text.  James uses dense, overwrought language to mask what is actually happening.  The governess seems to be purposefully abstracting her descriptions, so much so that it can take several readings through a passage to make sense of what she is trying to express.  I believe that the difficulty of the text is a deliberate choice that James makes to develop ambiguity in what is actually going on.

The third encounter that the governess has with the ghost is, again outside in the garden near a pond.  This time, though, the little girl Flora is with her.  James plays the similar trick of providing some narrative exposition from the governess' perspective, but he turns on his technique.  Instead of just relying on the reader's interpretation, James produces a second witness-of-a-sort.  James suggests, via the governess, that Flora also saw the ghost.  However, we have only the governess' word on this as we never hear directly from Flora.

The governess describes a few more encounters with the ghost that are similar to those already described.  In the meantime, the governess learns the story of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, two servants who were involved with each other and had died premature deaths.  She becomes convinced that the ghosts that she has seen are these two and that they have been interacting with the children Miles and Flora.  Further, she believes that the children are lying to her about their interactions.

This all culminates in the final scene.  The governess has sent away Mrs. Grose and Flora.  She is alone in the house with Miles when she has her final encounter with Quint.  The ending passages are filled with the same sort of confusing text as the rest of the novella.  The governess uses elaborate description to create distance between action and narration.  For example, "I seized, stupefied, his supposition--some sequel to what we had done to Flora, but this made me only want to show him that it was better still than that."  Every action is qualified and described ornately.
The governess believes that she sees either Miss Jessel or Quint outside of the window and clutches Miles to her chest.  Here is the final paragraph:
"But he had already jerked straight round, stared, glared again, and seen but the quiet day.  With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall.  I caught him, yes, I held him--it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held.  We were alone with the quiet day, and his little hear, dispossessed, had stopped."

The governess wants the reader to believe that she saw either Quint of Miss Jessel outside of the window, there is some disagreement in the text which it is.  She intimates that Miles also sees the apparition.  This struggle, is meant to be her wresting Miles from the ghost's grasp, but he dies in her arms.  It is possible that he has died of fright, that he has been taken by the ghost, of that he has been smothered by the governess in her own panic.  The text leaves open the question of what actually happens.  Are there ghosts or does the governess just imagine them?  We don't know.  Do others actually see the ghosts or does the governess merely believe that others see them and are hiding this knowledge from her?  Again, we don't know.
The point of the story is not to solve the story but to create these moments of confusion.  The reader is confronted with deciding what can and cannot be known in the narrative.  This, like much of James' other work, points back to reliability and individual perception.  Whatever happens, the governess has her perceptions of what is going on and we are only able to base our judgments of the events on this version.  The construct of her narrative will always mediate our perception of those events.
To extrapolate from this: even if it is possible to have an objective view of events (something I do not believe is possible), the retelling, or narrativizing, of these events will always be colored by individual perception.  The reader cannot know what happens in the story and this is not just because the governess may or may not be telling the truth.  My own interpretation of the story is that the governess purposefully dissembles and describes events in a roundabout way for some reason of her own.  I don't believe hat there is enough in the text even to determine why she may be doing this.  I also believe that James does this purposefully be focalizing the narrative through the governess and by creating levels of mediation from the action.  He abstracts events from narrative through the frame and through the governess' own language.  This is an exercise to demonstrate the fundamental unknowability that is at the center of the story.

Spooky, spooky Henry James

I have found myself defending Henry James on many occasions in my life.  His work is subtle and often delves deeply into the inner lives of his characters, working to suss out the intricacies of who knows what and how characters perceive one another.  His work is generally profoundly psychological in the sense that he can recreate thought processes on the page: a rare talent for any writer, but something that James does consistently throughout his fiction.  I have taught The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller in a handful of classes in my teaching career because they are both shorter works that still convey the breadth of James' talents (Edith Wharton's short story "Roman Fever" pairs well with Daisy Miller for anyone interested).  Both of these stories can be hard sells, but I have always been able to convert a few students to seeing their merits.
The Turn of the Screw stands out from James' other work because, as far as I know, it is the only ghost story he ever wrote.  But it is typical in the way that he uses triangulated perception to create ambiguity in the text.  That is, James funnels characters' observations of one another through one another.  He nearly always shies away from providing exposition on a character's actions, preferring instead to allow one character to describe or think about the actions.  This means that the reader always gets these perceptions second- or third-hand, creating a distance between the action of the story and the reader's interpretations.  Each distancing creates greater ambiguity that the reader must wade through in order to put together the narrative or to make judgements about characters and actions.
In The Turn of the Screw, James uses a series of techniques to distance the action of the narrative from the reader and, thus, to create ambiguity in the text.  The greatest question that is left is whether or not there is actually a haunting.  From here spawn several other questions that James refuses to answer.
Here is a basic plot outline: James uses a frame narrative to introduce the main story.  In the frame, a group of people are sharing ghosts stories on Christmas Eve when Douglas reveals that he knows of a story involving two children and a ghost.  Douglas defers telling the story by claiming it is someone else's story and that he must send for a manuscript containing the story.  Douglas builds suspense on James' behalf.  After acquiring the manuscript, Douglas tells the story of the governess of Bly.
The governess is charged with caring for Miles and Flora.  At Bly she sees a couple of ghosts and then hears the story of Quint and Miss Jessel's deaths, two former servants at Bly, and reasons that they must be the ghosts that she sees.  The governess freaks out Mrs. Grose - another servant at Bly - and the two work each other up about the haunting.  Things continue to escalate until Miles eventually dies in the governess' arms, whether he dies of fright at the sight of the ghost or because the governess smothers him is left unknown.
What I want to focus on here are the encounters that the governess has with the ghosts and how she attributes these sightings to others around her as well.  In each of these encounters James builds tension in the story by creating doubt as to what is going on.  He does this by subtly leaving out certain attributions and by strategically ending scenes so as to give the impression of conveying one perspective, but that actually relies on the reader completing the idea on his/her own and believing that it is in the story.
Early in the novella, the governess walks through the gardens surrounding Bly thinking, "One of the thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone."  She continues to imagine a sort of meet-cute with a handsome stranger in the garden.  While in this reverie, she is surprised to actually see someone: "What arrested me on the spot -- and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for -- was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real.  He did stand there!"  But rather than meeting someone face-to-face, the governess reveals that the stranger she "meets" is standing far off on the top one of the house's towers.
This scene begs a bit of analysis because it is a good encapsulation of what James does throughout the story.  First is the odd sentence construction.  The governess perpetually writes in these circuitous sentences that are filled with subordinated clauses and digressions.  These sentences serve to distance the reader from the action because they are filled with reflection.  They keep reminding the reader that they are not reading a progressive narrative (one that develops in time with the action of the characters), but a retroactive narrative in which the narrator has the ability to layer in their own take.  The phrase, "as charming as a charming story," builds on this same premise; the governess is distanced from the immediate action that she narrates.  The next bit is more telling, she has a sense that her imagination has become real.  However, she had just described the circumstances of her imagination and the reality does not match it at all.  She imagines turning a corner and running into a handsome stranger face-to-face, but in reality she sees someone very far off and cannot see his face.  So, the governess describes a scene in this halting manner, but is distanced from it by time and her own memory.  She then tells the reader that what she imagines seems to become real, even though the reality is quite different from what she experiences.  This has the potential to leave the reader taking the governess' word while still keeping the knowledge of the description of what is actually in the text.  These are the seeds of confusion that James plants early on.  The control over his prose is so masterful that he uses details, down to sentence structure, to sow the beginnings of ambiguity throughout the story.

This is getting to be a bit long, so I am going to leave off here and continue in a second post.  I have two more passages to analyze, so be sure to tune in next week for the spooky continuation of my analysis of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.

Primal Screamer

It has been couple of weeks since I finished this book, but I will try to give it a fair rendering here.
My key interest in reading this novel is in the author, Nick Blinko, who was the driving artistic force and vocalist in the British punk band Rudimentary Peni.  I have been listening to punk for a long time and have met a lot of people who are likewise interested, but I have run into very few people who know or like this band.  Rudimentary Peni was a "Crass band" in the sense that they were lumped into a broader category of anarcho-punk that emerged in England the late '70s and early '80s.  Blinko's band is cacophonous and, at times, deeply disturbing.  The songs will often over-dub Blinko's voice many times on the same track, singing, chanting, whispering, speaking.  The instruments often drone in a way to underscore disharmony.  Blinko's lyrics can be political, but they are largely gothic.
Rudimentary Peni disappeared in the '80s, but I have always remained interested in Blinko's work.  Beyond the music, I was drawn to the artwork on the albums.  Nick Blinko himself drew all of the artwork, and it is intense.  The cover of Primal Screamer was designed by Blinko, using his own drawing.  His artwork is dense, predominantly monochromatic, and simply ink-drenched.  Everything that I have seen of his is intricately drawn and shows deliberation at every step.  He draws skulls, screaming faces, and knives into his hatchwork.  The blackened areas show deliberate and closely-knit crosshatching.  He draws endless overlapping contours to fill in space.
I have been so taken with his style that I have adopted many of his techniques into my own drawing.

 To the left are two of my partially-completed drawings.  Another one of my drawing is below.  My style tends more toward the geometric and layered.  I don't add the same gothic elements that Blinko does, but I feel an affinity toward it nonethesame.  I am very much drawn to the detail and neatness of Blinko's work.  Instead of screaming faces, I draw tiny boxes and cross-hatchings in mathematical progressions.

Getting back to the book, it is a semi-autobiographical novel written from the perspective of a psychologist treating Nathaniel Snoxell, a young man who bears a strong resemblance to Blinko.  The novel is written as case-notes, or a treatment diary of Snoxell.  The psychiatrist becomes interested in Nat's artistic awakening, eventually spurring his own awakening.  Blinko's writing is most impressive when he seeks to psychologize Nat's artistry and particularly his place in the punk scene.  Nat and Blinko are outsiders in an outsider genre.  Their music fits only because it doesn't really fit anywhere else.  Their aesthetic isn't quite right for the counter-culture they engage.
The novel is worth the read, the music is haunting and definitely worth the listen, and the artwork is beyond memorable and, for me, moving.  This is a novel that might be best enjoyed by those who are already familiar with Blinko and/or Rudimentary Peni, but I would encourage anyone interested in outsider art, in a forthright self-reflection, in genuinely macabre interests, and so on, to check this out.

Found Writings, Part 2

What follows is an analysis/love note that I wrote about the Generation X song "Kiss Me Deadly," a song that I still think is probably the best punk song of all time.  It moves around a bit and might not be my best criticism, but I think parts of it still have legs.  I made some minor edits to the post for clarity.

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Post 1 – Kiss Me Deadly

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the topic for the first post.  Even though I have already posted once, that was just a general introduction and was just about setting up the context of the blog.  This one is the important one, though, because it establishes who I am and what this is going to be about.  I thought originally that I would write about my first punk show or my first punk album.  I was also very tempted to write about The Clash.  I don't think that any of those things are quite right.  For this post, I am going to write about just one song.  This is my favorite song and it is one that I listen to every day.  

The best song I have ever heard is “Kiss Me Deadly” by Generation X.  This song has everything: great lyrics, buzzsaw guitar, complex layering of lead, rhythm, and bass guitars, an unostentatious solo that absolutely rocks, Billy Fucking Idol on vocals, and a great hook.  It begins with a slow guitar plucking out a descending melody that will repeat throughout the song.  Idol sings the first verse and chorus to just the opening theme on guitar and the drums and guitars kick in during the second verse.  At this point you really just need to go listen to the song, even if you know it.  

Generation X formed around 1975, which puts them before bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, and The Damned that are typically taken to be the first British punk bands.  Many of these bands were assembled by managers rather than forming organically out of groups of friends, which would be the norm later on.  Gen X has a big spot in punk rock history because of where the members came from and where they went.  Lead singer Billy Idol had previously been in a proto-punk band Chelsea and would go on to his successful solo career.  Gen X originally performed “Dancing with Myself” that Idol would go on to re-record and release to become a hit.  Bassist Tony James had played with eventual Clash members Mick Jones and Terry Chimes in a band called London SS, and would go on to play in Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the Sisters of Mercy, and eventually with Mick Jones again in Carbon/Silicon.

“Kiss Me Deadly” is a good illustration of the difference between the beginning years of punk rock and what it has become.  It is up-tempo but not particularly fast.  The music is fairly complex, displaying a level of composition that, with rare exceptions, would not resurface for some time.  What I like most about the song, though, is the way that it is heartfelt and uplifting while also being gritty.  Each verse describes a short story about growing up and being a punk in London.  

  The structure of the lyrics is quite poetic and is more complex than most punk songs (which tend to follow the verse/chorus/verse/chorus model but occasionally will also include a bridge).  After three verse/chorus exchanges and a solo, the song enters a bridge, which is a musical interlude in a different key than the verse and chorus.  Sometimes, but not always, bridges will include different patterns of lyrics: typically they will recall elements from the chorus and will have a different phrasing than in either verse or chorus.  What makes “Kiss Me Deadly” more clever than most is that the lyrics for each of the choruses differ slightly and these different parts run together in the bridge.  Musically, it is also interesting because the solo is performed in the bridge's key whereas solos are normally performed in the same key as the verse/chorus.  If this doesn't make sense, listen to the song again and pay attention to the key change after the third chorus.  The change is signaled by Idol's singing the last line of the chorus differently.  His voice almost sounds flat in comparison to earlier verses but this is because he has pitched his voice lower to transition into the bridge.  

At the end of the bridge, the song moves into an extended version of the chorus that brings different elements from earlier in the song together.  Each of the three choruses begin the same: “Having fun/Since I was six,” alter the third line, and end, “Kiss me/Deadly/Tonight.”  So the first chorus runs: 

Having fun

Since I was six

Hidden flick knife flicks

Kiss me deadly tonight.  

The third line for the next choruses are “Discovers teenage sex,” and “Violence for a fix.”  These altered lines each relate to the verses preceding them.  The extended verse at the end of the song pulls together these lines from each of the choruses:

Having fun

Since I was six

Having fun

Well hidden flick knife flicks

With violence for a fix

Discovers teenage sex

Try shooting up for kicks

Kiss me deadly

Of course I'm not the only one who loves this song.  “Kiss Me Deadly” plays in SLC Punk at the end of the movie when Steve-O leaves Heroin Bob's funeral even though Steve-O disdains British punk earlier in the movie.  The band Fifteen plays a modified version of the riff from the chorus in the opening to the song “Helter Smelter,” a song about blowing up cars and making everybody ride bikes.  Jeff Ott, the singer, comments that it “Sounds like Generation X,”  The rest of the song and the lyrics have nothing else to do with “Kiss Me Deadly” or Gen X (this is not an uncommon move for Fifteen, though.  In “No tion” (sic), the song after “Helter Smelter” on the album “Buzz,” the song opens with a copy of the opening to Operation Ivy's “Room without a Window” and, likewise, the rest of the song has nothing to do with OpIvy).  Green Day has been known to cover this song in concert (you can find videos of this on youtube if you look).  

Aaron Cometbus also writes about the song in #54 of his zine Cometbus.  In this issue, Cometbus is invited to go on the Asian leg of one of Green Day's tours (for those who don't know, in addition to writing the fantastic zine Cometbus, Aaron Cometbus also plays drums in a lot of other bands.  Some of the bands he has been in are Cleveland Bond Death Sentence with Paddy from Dillinger 4, Shotwell, Crimpshrine with the above mentioned Jeff Ott, and Thorns of Life with Blake Schwarzenbacher from Jawbreaker and Jets to Brazil.  Cometbus has performed with Billie Joe from Green Day and they have released many albums as Pinhead Gun Powder, so the invitation to travel with the band would not be unusual).  At the final party that Cometbus attends on the tour, he describes Mike Dirnt putting “Kiss Me Deadly” on at the end of the party:

“Over the speakers came the notes that never fail to give me goosebumps: the opening chords of the greatest song of all time, 'Kiss Me Deadly' by Generation X.”

In that moment, Cometbus describes the nostalgia that washed over him as he danced with Billie Joe and remembered their friendship over the years, marveling at the idea that, despite Green Day's wild success and his own relative obscurity, this song brought them back together.  

This is also what this song does for me.  I remember listening to this song with my friend JJ when we first discovered Gen X.  We traded the same CD back and forth hundreds of time because it was pretty hard to find at the time.  Eventually, when I moved away, I gave him that copy of the CD and went years without hearing that song.  I hadn't dubbed the album before I gave it to him.  But when I was in college, we talked on the phone and Gen X would come up.  More than once I asked him to put the album on while we talked so that I could hear their music in the background.  To this day I associate Gen X with one hot summer in Ohio when we drove around smoking cigarettes and listening to music that, twenty years old at the time was brand new to us.