Books. Do You Read Them?

Well, here I am reading Let The Right One In. And, just in case you didn't know, it's a book translated from Swedish just like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

So then. What if these books hadn't been popular enough in their home country? What if they hadn't managed to garner enough attention to warrant English translations and U.S. publications? How would I have come into contact with them? Beyond wild coincidence or some Swedish language class or further forays into "it was meant to be" tosh, I simply wouldn't have.

Extrapolate how much stuff we're missing out on that's happening outside our "territories". Man, once again, I imagine how much more thoroughly I'd be able to live if I had me some immortality.
How much do I know about Swedish pop culture? Not much. It's outside my cultural territory. And only a simpleton would imagine the Swedes didn't have a pop culture at all. They have references, and in-jokes, and stock characters, and I don't have any part of it. But I wish I did.

Everyone is missing out on a lot of stuff around them. I don't think most people give it much thought, and most of those that do just take it as a fact of life and don't lament it. Maybe it's easier to get by that way.

What was the last book you read and when? Be honest now. I mean more than just skimming. And I definitely don't count any one that you were assigned or required to read. I'm asking you what was the last book you read purely by choice.

Dream: Poor C2

The only problem I really fear about immortality is losing my mortal friends.
I mean, even now I occasionally feel sad when I think about people I might not see with any kind of regularity after we part ways. It doesn't happen often but it still happens. And I've only lived about two decades! Extrapolate if I lived centuries. /(⊙Д⊙)\

These are truly issues that keep me up at night. ╮(╯ヮ ╰)╭

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I was in a large indoor multipurpose gym room practicing wushu. Or I would have been if I had my shoes.

Standard issue wushu footwear.

Unfortunately, I'd managed to misplace them and D-girl and Z-girl were helping me look for them under benches and in the lockers. I went to the front desk to check the Lost & Found bin but they didn't have them either. There I encountered two other friends and another acquaintance(!): F-boy, C1 and C2. F-boy and C1 are friends but I'd only consider C2 an acquaintance. The funny thing is C1 and C2 are twin brothers, nearly identical in fact, but I never got to spend that much time with C2. Oh wells.
F-boy proceeded to tell me how the food court sold really good hot dogs and also reasonably priced gasoline.

In real life, I wouldn't trust any hot dogs sold at a place that sold gasoline.

We all go back in the multipurpose room and at this point the entire building started to sway. The whole thing was made of glass now. The walls started to crack and shatter and we all ran for the exit. I thought to myself, "Well, good thing I'm not wearing FeiYues. They have thin soles. Not much protection from glass." It didn't occur to me that barefoot wasn't a more attractive option.

From the outside we watched as the towering structure came down in sheets and shards. It was actually quite beautiful. Only after gravity had finished its work did we realize C2 hadn't made it out. We thought it fitting to create a large glass statue of him, made out of the very building that had struck him down.

Life and Zelda

As I've said before, I hold this blogging thing very dear and I seriously consider what you guys say to me.
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Case in point, one of the comments from the previous post on immortality came from D4 saying, "It's not like you'd run out of things to do or learn, more of you'd just get "tired" of things to do and learn."
To that I couldn't really find the words to formulate my rebuttal for a while. I didn't disagree, but I felt something lacking from that reasoning. As I re-read it, -E- posted a comment pointing back to one of his earlier posts. When I initially wrote my entry I hadn't been thinking about that phrase, 'plus ca change' but as I poked around I noticed that it fit.

D4 had a point; after a couple lifetimes of living a guy might grow weary of doing, well, just about anything really. For example, I know I get tired of watching TV, even quality programming, after an extended stretch of time, and I'm not even close to immortal. Imagine a person having seen so-called 'fresh, exciting and new' shows come in every few years.

But have you ever played any of the Legend of Zelda games? Or how about a fighting game? Or an FPS? Or just about any genre of game? But I like the parallel to Zelda particularly well because, look, every game has the same plot. But guess what? They are all different enough in game mechanics, look and feel that I have never gotten the feeling, "Man, I've already done this. This isn't fun." Would I play all of them in a long marathon? No. I'm sure to get bored. But after playing one, having some time pass and then playing another I enjoy the new incarnation for its own sake.

An immortal could conceivably get bored of 'stuff' after a while but, as a human being, I don't think s/he would remain that way for the rest of his/her existence. Immortal or no, that's a human being. It doesn't matter how long that person has lived, time passes at the same rate, no? The ents and elves and dwarves might feel that a human's life passes in the blink of an eye but for a human, of any kind, every hour should still be an hour.
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It strikes me that this is all just rhetorical speculation of the kind I wouldn't tolerate in a debate concerning more down-to-earth topics. But for discussions of this nature, e.g. super powers, zombie outbreaks, etc., I let those prejudices go.

Immortality and Poor Writing

You remember Aesop's fable concerning the fox and the grapes? Hmm?

Sour grapes, that's what that looks like to me. What does this have to do with poor writing? Well, quite a few times I've read a story or comic, some article of fiction, and I find a character who has the property of immortality but he has been struck by ennui. His thoughts are written to follow something along the lines of 'I've seen it all, I've done it all. What else is there? All the people I've ever known have grown old and died before me. Fie upon this everlasting existence and woe is me for who could consider this living when there is no possibility of dying?'. To which I must retort:

In this day and age, I find the idea that anyone can legitimately believe themselves to have 'seen it all and done it all' offensively absurd. Some wags like to think themselves clever by saying vaguely Zen-like adages such as "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I refer them to my above rebuttal.

The internet. I believe the technical term for it is "fucking awesome". Nothing that has come before can compete with how far and fast this thing can spread ideas and information.

"Nothing like it"? No, you can't say that. Telephones, telegrams, a sophisticated postal system, these things were certainly like it, and just as revolutionary in their days. But these things were obstructed by borders and, more importantly, by distance.

This thing, the internet... I don't even know how to impress upon you how much more it is than anything people had 50 years ago. In the span of one day, I will (and you can, too) bump virtual elbows with thousands of people, collectively chuckling at memes and commenting on YouTube clips, funny images, etc. How many people do you personally interact with in a day? How many of those do you engage in conversation? Let's even take internet out of the equation. Before internet, how many people did a person interact with in a day? We are social animals, but even on a weekend at a party with friends, I'm confident enough to place that number well under 3-digits.
Ok, enough of that. Any more and this post will be fully derailed from the original intended topic. haha.

I believe I make my point clear. There are people in every age who look at the wonders man has wrought and think to themselves, "Well. That's it. There's nothing else to see and nowhere else to go." Immortality is wasted on these people. But then, this character probably didn't choose to have the ability. He usually doesn't when the writer's intention is to make him 'a bored guy'. He'll spend his time wishing he could be a normal guy. O TEH IRONY! Be careful what you wish for ooga booga booga!

Fuck that. If I was immortal I'd do it all. Take a look at this list, damn you. I'd master it all! War and Peace? I'd read that shit. In its original language.

In a nutshell, I believe what we have here isn't a case of being 'cursed with awesomeness', it's a case of casting pearls before swine.