i have been listening to my oldies station non-stop.

i just want to walk around with this song playing on a loop and pretend like all the bullshit revolutions of the 60s never happened.

*don’t believe me?  well let me give you a little perspective.  in 1955 when rebel without a cause came out the people branded as social misfits were COOL.  james dean only made 3 movies and is a hollywood icon. that’s how cool misfits used to be.  now take a good hard look at the whiney, weak, anemic, ambivalent, entitled non-entities around you agitating for “change.”  the ones who have taken us back a century and made listening to music a stationary activity again.  yeah. “progress” huh?

seriously.  you could have been reading it all this time!  it is right in front of your face every day.  you just won’t let yourself see it.

so this is my deal.  i love that an author has gotten publicity, hate that it happens to be for this kind of story, think the media commentariat are morons when it comes to understanding fanfiction, and now that i’m seeing people i know reading these books, i’m going to rant.

these particular stories are not something new and interesting to talk about. it’s like discussing the merits of a shakespeare play you’ve only seen performed by eighth graders.  WASTE OF TIME.  here’s something to really talk about: i’ve encountered fanfic writers who are hands down better than anyone i’ve ever seen published in this era.  they are seriously skilled.  out of control gifted.  you have to sift through a lot of bullshit (sorry tweens, you’ll get there in a few years) but they are there doing unreal things with words.  the character names are predetermined but every other detail is their own creation.  their stories not only bear no resemblance to the source material, they surpass it by leaps and bounds.  their writing THRILLS me.  do you know how rare that is?

from the reviews i’ve read of e.l. james and the excerpts i’ve been able to tolerate, ugh, there’s no way she’s one of these writers.  because the ones i’m talking about could never be called cliche.  not even by the most jealous feminist professor.  so, while i’m proud of an author for getting her work out there, i’m also sad. just really deep down disappointed. because this is what critics have seen and it hasn’t done the medium justice.  it CAN’T have because the best writers i know would be too good ever to allow someone to disparage them for starting out in, ew please that’s pathetic, fanfiction.

my own fics are trite, i’m the first to admit that.  they’ve been well-received by my limited audience and i had fun with them, but i’m not anxious to make them available in a bookstore near you.  i would become a literary agent just to get some of these other writers published, though.  you have to trust me.  uh, not to brag but i’ve read A LOT of books, including horrible romance novels that i start because i find their tropes hilarious and can never finish because they make me want to punch an english teacher somewhere, but i’ve read a lot of legitimate literature beyond reproach too.  and i would never subject myself to asinine, amateurish drabble just to be entertained.  i put the book down and REFUSE.  there is NO need to read that stuff.  there is no need to suffer through bad prose if all you’re looking for is an indulgent diversion.  you don’t have to do that to yourself.  STOP doing that to yourself.

have you read the sookie stackhouse books?  have you experienced how flat and insipid they are? not just compared to true blood but as novels regardless? okay, prepare to have your mind blown by this monster of a fic by a young woman called nyah. (it can keep you occupied until alexander skarsgard returns to our lives).  it’s only rated T so if you’re in the mood for shameless erotica, you’re going to have to do your own digging around in the realm of M.  caveat emptor: you may have nightmares.

[20 minutes later] so i just re-read this one-shot by the same author and it KILLS me how much i love her style.

yet fifty shades of grey is the catastrophically low standard that has been set for this kind of writing.  cruel joke of a world!  anyway, i have a point and it is this: bad guilty pleasure literature is obsolete.  it’s been obsolete.  don’t read it.  just make the extra effort to sift through to the good stuff and you will be so satisfied.  never again should anyone have to cringe in the process of escaping into a story.  so, good job, general public, for discovering fanfiction.  try a LITTLE harder to find what’s worth reading and, i swear, national morale will improve overall and we’ll forget about the fact that life is real and stupid.

also, when you realize that you can now read fanfics instead of checking, double-checking, triple-checking the same blogs and facebook all day, please write me a thank you note by hand.

– so says yury in doctor zhivago when he must decide to send his soulmate away with the man he most despises.

see, that would be an acceptable argument for bad judgment.

having student loans is NOT.

we need to stop listening to the marxist rhetoric of our current populist movement.

i told him that if solzhenitsyn and pasternak are writers, i can’t possibly be called one.  their writing is necessary to humanity.  what they suffered for their writing gives them a label i’ll never be worthy of.  if there’s only one word “writer” even other nobel prize winners like faulkner and hemingway don’t deserve it.  nothing hemingway wrote had to be written.  there’s no higher purpose to it.  but what solzhenitsyn did.  and pasternak.  well.  if there’s just the one term “writer” and it has to be applied to a huffington post blogger and little word salad maker me, we need to invent another word.  ”evangelist” would be perfect but lord, look what we’ve done to that label by adding the prefix “tele.”  luke and john are probably like, “why did i even bother?” no, there’s got to be a way to make a distinction between sentence-makers and writers between writers and authors between authors and…what?  what are we going to call them?

hmm.

i’ve had the phrase “loneliness begets loneliness” bopping around in my head since high school and it has always bothered me that i’ve never remembered where i picked it up. sometimes i’d guess, but i just didn’t know for sure. so it turns out i wrote it down (of course i wrote it down somewhere) and the source is both surprising and the most obvious thing in the world: f. scott fitzgerald.

who else would it have been?  i had a bigger crush on him probably than that friend of my brother’s i spoke to once and believed i would marry. (a crush in a literary capacity, of course.  not a creepy one.  my creepiness was reserved for believing paul newman was my soulmate.)  yet it doesn’t really sound like something he would have said.

anyway, now i know.

dreaming is an equal opportunity activity.  anyone can imagine a new reality, anyone can be creative.  the distinction is that not everyone actually creates.

only a few people make something out of nothing in a way that improves lives.  attacking those few who happen to be materially successful with their achievements is irrational and will only hold us all back.

i don’t get it.  i CAN’T get it.

i want to talk to these people who think that siring a parasite and sending it to a good school is enough of an ambition in life to justify their existence.  what is the point of having children unless you anticipate those children accomplishing something?  but if being famous is not important……what exactly are you hoping for those little aliens?  DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR OWN LIFE.  stop passing the buck and be a worthwhile person yourself.  being a good parent is NOT an acceptable vocation.  being someone who does nothing noteworthy and is known by no one is not NOT an acceptable dream for the future.  why are we letting 86% of the young population get away with having aspirations of mediocrity?