The blurb on the front, from some guy, says that D.B. Weiss "does for video games what Michael Chabon did for comics."

And I speak as both a geek and an English major when I tell you that he, in fact, does quite a bit more.

I first heard about this book in Freiburg, where gaming magazines and my monthly Wired were the only English texts I allowed myself. I actually read more videogame magazines in those few months than I ever have before or will again.

There was a side article, in something. Maybe XBN. A gushy blurb about Lucky Wander Boy that noted its similarity to the work of Haruki Murakami.

Having just finished reading my fourth Murakami book, I was sold. But I was also cheap, and forgetful.

Several months and one transatlantic flight later, I looked over at Jonas' desk (after the requisite swiveling) and saw Lucky Wander Boy crowning my roommate's Tower of Unread Masterpieces.

With little motivation and the room to myself for the weekend, I dove into Weiss' debut work earlier today. I'm only about two-thirds of the way through, but since I'm sure to be gushing about Good bye, Lenin! around this time tomorrow, I thought I'd write about Lucky Wander Boy now.

There are a lot of good things about this book; foremost among them is Weiss' clever marriage of a modernist Japanese prose style with American tropes. This stops his work from having the universality of a Murakami (who, despite frequent references to hippy-era American popculture and traditionally Japanese character archetypes, is accessible everywhere) but there's a microbrewed charm to his choice of subject matter. From page 69:

"Skiing," she said.
"Platform?"
"Intellivision, of course."
It was all I could do to restrain myself from backing her into the water cooler and pressing my mouth to hers.

D.B. Weiss is writing about videogames and their gamers, and unlike the illiterate punks who killed me a zillion times in Counterstrike years ago, he's writing well.

The prose is light and infrequently punctuated, and the similarity to the equally-spare style of many Japanese works is intentional: Weiss name-checks numerous Japanese authors throughout, and the narrator is well-versed in Japanese culture.

Though noticeably American.

The author treats bombastic diction and pretentious writing (not necessarily the same thing) with sly irony. He approaches sentiment cautiously and honestly. He tries to use videogame terminology (and sounds!) for more than their inherent comedic value, and actually pulls it off.

He seems to be familiar with cyberpunk, but his infoporn dumps are more cerebral than the glossy I‑wish‑I‑could‑draw descriptions in most of the stuff I've read.

"What is this?" I found myself mumbling.

This isn't trying to be the next Great American Novel, and if it were trying, I'd like to note that its lack of well-meaning but distracting sexual politics makes this a better choice than Kavalier and Clay, one recent recipient of that title.

This is a novel about something simple, and what it means to a relatively small group of people. And what it means to all of us. As another guy points out on the back cover, Weiss has constructed a modern mythology, a very wonderful and modernist thing for him to do.

And in his choice of building materials—an important part of our culture nonetheless derided as trash or pigeonholed as frivolous—he's meeting culture snobs on their own terms.

From page 32, another sentence for my book of unlikely sentences:

It's difficult to ignore the similarities between Donkey Kong (the creature) and the demiurge of Gnostic heresies.

It's hard to describe the effect that reading this quite unique book has had on me tonight; I'm only vaguely familiar with the classic arcade games that constitute the bulk of the novel's videogame references, but still I feel spoken to.

Some passages are so good, so apt, that I find myself short of breath: and that sounds hyperbolic even to me, because it's a very rare feeling. That said, there are also some weak moments, especially towards the end of the book.

So that's me, gushing.

Went to the Lawrence International spring formal last night with a bunch of people. A good time, I think, though I definitely drank too much, as several Lawrentians and one unlucky busdriver can attest.

Continuing the Monday night tradition we began with El Mariachi last week, tonight Jinx and I (and Freshman Matt, and Jagger) watched The Spanish Apartment, a film so rife with what I can only assume is unintentional awfulness that I couldn't take it seriously.

I hope/assume that Comatose Caitlin, who owns the movie, has never been that foolish. To take something so absurd seriously.

There were a few good elements, however, and one of the more amusing ones was the broadly-drawn national stereotypes. The German character acted like Germans I know, spoke careful English like Germans I know, and even seemed to think (to the extent that any character in this movie "seemed to think") like Germans I know.

It was hilarious, and, I assume, intended to be satiric. And while I'm less versed in other stereotypes, the scruffy guitar-playing expatriate American and the charming Italian with his stumbling English are types I've seen often enough in real life. That they were artless caricatures only adds to their appeal, as long as everyone gets the joke.

Even without the cheap thrill of a glossy multilingual melodrama, today would have been a good day. I ate dinner with some fellow German students (including an abstracted-looking Kora) and talked to Prof Peterson about Good Bye, Lenin!, an excellent German film which I'm angling to borrow from him. It was a good lunch: even Prof Peterson's knee-jerk sexism didn't bother me.

Don't watch the Good Bye, Lenin! trailer, by-the-way: it will spoil the movie for you quite a bit. I want some sort of law prohibiting trailers from including scenes from late in the movie. The last thirty minutes, let's say, are off-limits.

I talked to Graham, who, by the time the conversation was over, had ended up in an odd bind.

I also talked to a German security guard who, in the casually rational way that Germans deal with all problems, told me he'd go help Graham.

I talked to K. Elizabeth Bates, whose novel "Dancing Toward Home" rocked the Honors committee. I thought some of the content was a bit sentimental, but apparently I'm alone: even the irascible Prof Goldgar was, I'm told, moved.

I've always thought that Miss Bates was a better writer than me (even though she never learned the difference between "then" and "than") and it's nice to think that my criticism, in some tiny way, has helped her get where she is today.

I also talked to my parents, who told me that my supposedly-hot brother Matt has made a big impression on the folks at "In-Fish" (as my dad, the King of Clipping, calls it) and might get some articles published, which would be cool.

I beat him to it, anyways. If you count Lawrentian filler, a handful of SHNS newspaper articles, and that sentimental essay I wrote for The Lake Country Journal in high school. I gave him math and science, but English is my domain.

There was other news from home. I'm not keeping it vague to faux-hide some problem, mind. You'd just find it inconsequential, Dear Reader.

So there were a multitude of good conversations. The storms I had in my head (to steal a phrase from Slug) for most of last week seem to have left, and my sickness too is waning.

Graham gmailed me the song "Brainerd, Minnesota" from the Fargo soundtrack, and having that song is somehow very fulfilling.

It's all so very uplifting, but I still need my sleep.

Woke up this morning feeling lightheaded, the cumulative aftereffect of alcohol and generic cough syrup.

The Cops and Robbers party last night in Alan M. and company's room wasn't as fun as I'd expected, probably because people had no central place to congregate and spent most of the time migrating in herds from room to room.

(Or, in one odd case, having a private gathering in the room's only bathroom. And believe me: I of all people should know antisocial when I see it.)

Let that be a lesson to you: all good parties have either a central location or gobs of people.

It could also have been that I was sick, of course. But the general consensus seems to be that the party was enjoyable, impressively set up and conceived, but, somehow, less than historic.

For whatever vague reason.

Sidenote: I went as D.B. Cooper, legendary skyjacker. My costume was barely recognizable, but even after saying what I was outright, I met with blank stares.

Since only Sockless Pete and Jagger—to their tremendous credit—knew what I was talking about, I should probably start picking less intentionally esoteric costumes.

I lay in my middle-bunk bed for a few hours after I left the party, wired from non-drowsy cough syrup. I heard muffled conversation in the next room as people came and went. I looked into Jubb's crazy drunken eyes as he gave me some of his trademark late night kudos from about a foot away. As the night wore on, I watched the wooden board above my head begin to look vaguely like the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Then I slept. And I'm prettymuch better now. I'll probably sleep tonight, though, just to be on the safe side.

Today was productive, as college Sundays must be. I watched Spiderman with Jubb, Alan M., Jinx, and Jagger, righteously deriding the "you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us" scene when the time came. Good movie, though.

The real highlight was the several hours I spent at the library slogging through a postmodern German short story featuring, among other things, a talking mule.

Also, I took the Personality Test at SparkNotes.com and discovered to my surprise that I am no longer an Artist (Dominant Introverted Abstract Feeler), the personality type I've consistently scored as for the past four years.

I'm now a Mastermind (Submissive Introverted Abstract Thinker), and a remarkably cold-hearted one at that. This is where I mention the Forer effect and dismiss this entertaining Myers-Briggs ripoff.

Still, it's interesting. That I've become more of a thinker, I'll accept; I've made a conscious effort to be more objective and less sentimental. But I've always thought I had a rather strong, albeit reserved/misanthropic, personality.

I know some people don't get that, but I consider many of those same people idiots anyways, so that's never been much of a problem. It's seeing it on a supposedly objective test, in black and white with a .jpg image, that gets to me. It's something to consider, now.

Took part in a 46-player play-till-you-bust Texas hold'em tournament last night at The Politician's cousin's boyfriend's house. My usual strategy of half-feigned igonorance was enough to carry me to the third of seven poker tables, where my actual ignorance caught up with me and I went out in sixteenth place.

The other Lawrentian's fared better; Jonas was ranked tenth, Freshman Matt was seventh, and, three hours after I'd stopped playing, The Politician finished second and took home the $55 prize.

Hey. Still in the process of moving out of brainerd.net, but almost everything should work at this point.

I'm told I should add something new to my site for this occasion, and so I give you this: post-specific permalinks.

In case you haven't noticed, each post is accompanied by a time, right next to the date on top. Clicking on the time will bring you to the post's very own page, which you can link to of course. It's very handy if you want to show someone something specific.

Here, for instance, I've linked to the 207 informal.

Another good thing is space. I've got at least five times the space now, so I can finally put up a decent amount of pictures at some point in the future.

Lastly, I've removed my last name from every post. You know who I am, or, if you know what I look like, you could figure out who I am from some of the pictures of Our Bold Hero. I'm not averse to people knowing my identity, but at the same time, I don't feel the need to advertise it on the Internet.

Seventh to choose, we nevertheless got what we wanted: the biggest room on campus, in the best dorm, on the best floor.




Our first choice. 770 square feet of glory.

A triumphant two square feet bigger than the suite currently occupied by Sockless Pete and Colin, this room is a testament to long-since proven housing abilities.

For the third year in a row, Jonas and I are the reigning kings of housing. Having ridden on our coattails this year, Jubb will once again occupy a room far above what his class standing should dictate.

Add The Politician, and you've got a good room. A fun, well-located room. With triangular windows! And two bathrooms! Yes!

Forgive the excess enthusiasm; suffice it to say that I've been acting like a fool for a little while now. There's just something about housing, and my AP-fueled success at each year's nailbiting selection process, that makes me feel like a puppy on crack.

Outta Time

Late to German class today. Again.

My normally unreliable alarm went off at the designated time, but I decided to stay in bed for another five minutes. At the very least, I've now learned a valuable lesson about the difference between real time and psychological time.

Those extra forty minutes of what I can only assume was sleep are regrettable, but far from unusual. I seem to have a problem with getting up for early classes.

While so-called psychologists might call me "lazy", I choose the cowardly way out. I blame time itself. Hear me out.

Campus time is wrong, dead wrong. I used to think that my chronic lateness was just an obvious consequence of my unspoken belief in an instantaneous transportation device—I often leave when I'm supposed to be arriving at my destination—but this problem doesn't dog me later in the day.

Incidentally, if I had one wish, it would be for an instantaneous transportation device.

So I checked the official time. The anal-retentive that I am, I've long since set my various clocks to the exact time. As I suspected, they're accurate.

The average clock in Main Hall is at least five minutes off, which certainly explains my lateness. But the professors accept this chronological discrepancy, they adjust their watches to Lawrence time and leave on.

Not I. They're robbing me of sleep, at least five minutes a day. I no longer rise early to watch the latest rerun of "Gilligan's Island" and catch the proverbial worm. I have it down to a science, the art of the quick shower and the narrow escape.

I don't nap; that chunk of sleep is all I get, and since I can't seem to fall asleep before the night has returned to triple digits, I'm going to sleep for as long as possible.

If I had my all-black outfit, I'd correct this in some sort of daring midnight raid. Change the clocks, correct the error. For now, I'm like a conscientious objector, albeit a really fastidious one. We all know whose side time is really on.

After watching The Princess and the Warrior, we sat around in Freiburg, talking. The Suburbanite did most of the talking, actually. I watched my fingers and pretended they were ten angry snakes.

The Pancake Man and The Urbanite answered the question in the usual manner. I'd given it a lot of thought as well.

The Suburbanite: "And what about you, Dan?"

Our Bold Hero: "Probably a small apartment in a big city, with a nice view of the alley."

My interlocutor smiled at that. If you can't picture the scene, The Suburbanite's smile isn't quite earnest and it's not quite affected either. There's a casual honesty to her, at least when she's talking about Minnesota. Just watch when she talks again.

The Suburbanite: "Yeah right, like you could really leave Minnesota."

The easy reaction—what I did then, quietly—was to snicker at such Regionalism. Though I grew up out of town, I certainly felt estranged to the hunting-and-fishing culture around me.

I didn't enjoy going to the cabin to see my relatives. I've long since forgotten how to clean a fish or drive an outboard, though I still remember how to start a campfire.

There were, of course, a few reasons for this. My friends weren't outdoorsmen and I'd rather spend time with them than with my family. This is still probably the case, though now I think that Manney has taken a shine to canoeing and I know that Graham would probably enjoy fishing.

I also enjoyed many strictly-indoor activities and I will always hate most wintersports.

Maybe it was because the outdoors (this Minnesotan's prosaic word for "nature") was associated with so many things I didn't enjoy, but in any case I ended up disliking it.

And, because I associate the outdoors with Minnesota (known throughout the country for its myriad lakes) I disliked Minnesota as well. As the above conversation illustrates, I plan to move to a big city at some point and leave my small town roots behind. Even the Twin Cities seemed too Minnesotan to fit my plans.

But natural contrariety has often led me to defend underappreciated views, and just as growing up in an NRA home spurred me to support tougher restrictions on handguns, spending time in pro-metropolitan environments like Europe and Lawrence has made me reconsider.

Yesterday, while Jubb clung to a rock wall under a bridge, no doubt waiting for some delicious and unsuspecting child to come along, I went into the woods. Like the kooky transcendentalist which I most certainly am not.

This wasn't the first time. In Germany, that magical land I mention every ten minutes or so, I finally had the chance to go outdoors without having unwelcome activities or company foisted upon me. I wandered (wanderte) on the Schönberg, a hillish mountain near our dorms, every other Sunday or so.




Yeah, that's the place. But I'm writing about Minnesota.

I'm looking forward to being there again. I might even take a cue from my younger brother Matt and learn to do all those things a guy with my opportunities should know how to do. Probably not, though.

It doesn't really matter what I do this summer actually. It doesn't even matter where I end up living, even, because my Minnesotanhood is in me, like a congenital disease of some sort, and I can't escape it.

I'll always say "pop" and call that children's game "duck, duck, grey duck." I won't think of fish as just a cheap and bland source of protein for students.

And, on a less superficial level, the attitudes and beliefs I now have are a product, and could only have been a product, of my Minnesotan upbringing. I see value in activities and opinions people from other areas of the country—I'm thinking specifically about the New Englanders and West Coasters I've met—would disdain.

And when I disagree with the beliefs that surrounded me as a child, I understand that the opposition isn't crazy or stupid just because they're not metropolitan. One of the greatest benefits of a small-town upbringing is the ability to spot parochialism in urbanites. Northern Minnesota is a fine place to get an education in parochial attitudes.

So even though the end here, the return of the prodigal son and all that, is disturbingly hokey, I still have to express less-shame, even pride, at being Minnesotan, because I was and am. At worst, Minnesota is like a bad camp; you go and afterwards, you have that experience with you forever.

What's more, I actually enjoy some of the activities northwoodsmen are supposed to enjoy, even if I suck at most of them. So it's back to the woods for me, soon enough. I have a bad feeling that I'll be standing up for my state for a long time.

And Yet, I Create Nothing

Someone needs to observe that the main page at Graham's blog has been replaced by a blank page. Other sections of the page are still accessible if you type in their URLs.

I had a number of theories, but since I just lost that post and don't care to re-type them, I'll just wait to hear the official word.

[Update: the missing page is due to a technical error, officially explained at his page. It will be a while until the page is restored.]

So last night our little Jonas finally became a man, in the strictest legal sense of the word. As was the case on The Politician's birthday, attendance yesterday was sparse; it was, after all, a Sunday.

Still, we managed to collect a fairly good group, with guest appearances by a few people who knew about the party and had pressing homework.

After the three-hour season finale of "Survivor: All-Stars," it began. Well, not immediately after. But not at the same time or beforehand, that's for sure.





From left to right: Freshman Matt, an increasingly-intoxicated Jonas, Jubb with girly shot and kung fu grip, The Politician, about half of Our Bold Hero, and Jubb's drinking buddy whose name I haven't yet decided on.






After midnight we hit the bars. The Politician, Jonas, Sockless Pete and I went to three bars, with varying degrees of sketchiness.





Here's a scene from The Firefly, my first and favorite Appleton bar. The Viking Room, or VR — our campus bar is sometimes actually pronounced "Ver" — is a close second, oddly enough, because it's not filled with townies in their mid-forties like the other bars.

And they have free pool. I rock at pool, at least when you compare it to the other things I do.

Let the record show that Jonas felt most at home in the "Apple Pub," the most crowded and sketchy bar we visited.





Here's Jonas in the last bar, Jekyll's, holding the remains of a Long Island ice tea.
He's drunk drunk drunk drunk. Go us!

Having one of my infrequent bouts of wanderlust. I hardly ever end up anywhere though; I just feel restless.

I think I can feel every neglected muscle on the right side of my body. The left seems content to stay put.

Here for Reading Period. Satisfied with that decision.

Oh, and you know you work for a college newspaper when none of the editors cares if the paper actually gets distributed and, it follows, read. When our distribution staff doesn't do its job, it's not "someone else's problem."

So it continues to bother me that people make an "intuitive" leap from smoking causing cancer to secondhand smoke causing cancer.

They do it all the time, and Volvo Democrats like The Pancake Man, an überliberal and would-be filmmaker I met in Freiburg, aren't the only culprits. Almost universally, my skepticism has been met with shock.

Of course, it is fun to be right and an iconoclast.

The latest newsletter from the oft-polemic Skeptic's Dictionary deals with secondhand smoke. I'd also recommend watching the mostly excellent "Second Hand Smoke" episode of Penn and Teller's show, available on DVD or (ahem) shared on my campus network space.

Here's an excerpt of the Skeptic's article, since I know you despise following links:

Secondhand smoke

In the last newsletter, I mentioned that Penn and Teller were challenged at James Randi's Amazing Meeting 2 last January regarding their Bullshit! episode that claimed the studies on secondhand smoke were bogus. I said I'd look into it. I did and P & T are right. Almost everybody who claims that the scientific evidence supports the claim that passive smoking causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths a year cite a single source: our own Environmental Protection Agency's 1993 report.

The EPA's data show no significant link between passive smoke and lung cancer. Even after lowering the standard from p=0.05 to p=0.1 (i.e., from a one in twenty to a one in ten chance of a spurious correlation), they were still able to get a relative risk of only 1.19. According to John Brignell, "risk ratios of greater than 3 are normally considered significant. One might even stretch a point and go down to 2, but never lower" (Sorry Wrong Number, p. 129). Yet, the EPA has not backed off. Neither has the World Health Organization, which published a study in 1998 that concluded: "Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] and lung cancer risk." The WHO study also noted that there was only "weak evidence" for a risk of lung cancer from spousal or workplace ETS. Yet WHO put out a press release that contradicts their own conclusions.

There have been other studies on secondhand smoke but the evidence goes against the EPA, which likes the work of Elizabeth Fontham, whose data has been questioned for treating ex-smokers as non-smokers. If there is a causal connection between passive smoke and lung cancer, it is a very small contributing factor.

Penn & Teller had somebody do the math. There is a 25% higher risk of dying of lung cancer from passive smoke. For those exposed to ETS, the death rate from lung cancer is 1 in 80,000. For those not exposed, it is 1 in 100,000. Looked at another way: For every million people exposed to ETS, there will be 12.5 deaths from lung cancer; for every million people not exposed to ETS, there will be 10 deaths due to lung cancer. This is statistically of no significance. [See episode 5 of their excellent DVD: Bullshit!]

So there you go.

Oh, and speaking of bogus claims, I just found another article debunking claims made in "Bowling for Columbine" by director and populist fabulist Michael Moore, the left's answer to Ann Coulter. They're both on the Wishy-Washy Moderate's "Traitors to the Cause" list.

Twelve pages, a new record.

Six a.m., another new record.

How odd that, of all the guys I spent the last eight hours with, Representative Man, our chortle-happy Editor in Chief, is the least irritating.

[This should also be available here, on the official Lawrentian website]

Now, some Lawrence students are quick to judge other departments. They might take issue with Economics for its brazen refusal to allow grade inflation; they might shun Biology for creating heathen evolutionists. They might even choose to hold a more random grudge, against, say, any department ending in "studies."

But I come to you today with news of a real menace. A department allied with an ancient enemy of all that we, as Americans, hold dear. No, I don't mean Satan; I'm talking about Britain, the notorious "redcoat menace."

I have a list, of names and classes and days of the week, provided by my sources at the Registrar. And this list confirms that Tories have overrun Lawrence's theater department. How do I know?

Because there is no theater department at Lawrence University! Instead, we have a "theatre arts" department!

"Theatre" is, of course, an old Briticism that we — the true Americans — have long since thrown away, a spelling that could not grow on our fair soul and died beside its ignoble comrades, "centre" and "metre."

But there's no stopping your average Tory from aping the Brits. He (or she, remember that Prof Privatt is one of them as well) loves the academic pretension of a deliberate archaism, craves it with every "fibre" of his being.

What's a would-be theater major to do? Lawrence has no facilities to accommodate him: witness "Stansbury Theatre," note the "Cloak Theatre" and shudder. It's no wonder that Lawrence accepts (to quote the course catalog) "students with a wide variety of theatre experiences." These fellow travelers are the only ones who could benefit, in this country, from a "theatre arts" degree.

With the possible exception of Lawrence's "martial arts" department, the "theatre arts" department is the most dangerous on-campus threat to our life and our liberty and our pursuit of happiness. With the possible exception of our "culinary arts" department, it's the last place you'd expect a traitor to be.

Since I assume that "theatre arts" is under the supervision of the overarching "art" department, I will contact them immediately, requesting the immediate Americanization of all Briticisms and the hiring of a new staff trained in theater.

In the meantime, I urge you all to resist; our forefathers died so that we could change the terminal -re into -er, and I would die rather than let these impudent loyalists change it back.