Book Review: Margaret Atwood "The Year of the Flood"

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood




A prequel to "Oryx and Crake" this book follows the pre-Flood years of two characters and the hazy period of time following. Frighteningly prophetic with our potential futures; genetic-splicing, environmental collapse in the face of better-efforts, clearly delineated caste systems this book is a peek into a frightening future just as "A Handmaid's Tale" did decades earlier.

This book freaked me out. Having just moved back to San Francisco, I was near finished. Grocery shopping with products labeled "organic" left me feeling uneasy. Walking through the Haight was a good backdrop for the pleeb-state sections of this book or the arcades of major Japanese cities.

Recommendation: re-read "Oryx and Crake" before or after. I'm not certain "Year of the Flood" works as a stand-alone. There are many references to animals and organizations that are explained in "O&C".

View all my reviews >>

Jumped The Shark

Good afternoon...

The Werewolf Hotel has temporarily changed locations. They have moved operations to their Japan campus and can be located here:

Oukamiotoko no Hoteru

Please have a pleasant stay.

All I Wanted Was A Lousy Diet C*ke!

Last night I watched Comedy Central's Roast of Pamela Anderson: Uncut & Uncensored. Largely because the beautiful and exquisite Courtney Love was on stage acting up like the punk-rock girl that thought she would've made a better Lucy in her high school production of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. She's a national treasure and I'm not kidding.

So, this show was basically all about how Pam is a bag of STDs, her V is so big she uses a trampoline for a diaphram, and how her boobs will be donated to the Smithsonian when she dies even though she's Canadian. Then they'd sparkle a little praise about her commendable involvement with PETA. It was funny and I think Pamela Anderson is a pretty swell gal mostly because she says what's on her mind, is committed to what she believes in, and comes off like a caring person.

So, throughout the show, since it was TV-MA and "Uncut" and "Uncensorsed" I heard EVERY cuss word in the English language (C*** included.) Bea Arthur was in attendance! She heard it all, ask her. Also, Pam's nippies were beaming through her sheer black blouse. Fine by me. They don't scare me.

Now, Lisa Lampanelli gets up there and she's doing her bit about big c*cks and p*ss*ies and b**b**s... so her joke ends with her, for some reason, needing a soda and she says Diet [insert brand of sodie-pop here]. And they bleeped it!

. . .

They bleeped Diet C*ke? After nearly torching the FCC with firebreathing curse words they bleeped out Diet C*ke.

When did products and corporations become worse words to use on air than curse words? I swear to you, while wearing my jammie-jams, eating a Tr*d*r J*'s J*-J* and drinking a tall glass of water I laughed.

Products, corporations, and their intellectual property are sacred territory now. More so than our genitalia, our reputation, and our privacy. These words require more protection than people who reside around failing infrastructure.

Pretty Soon This Will All Be Different

I have a few weeks left. Then, The Werewolf Hotel is going to relocate for a while. There will be a new address and, I'm sure, a very different look. More or less.

In the meantime:

I keep a playlist on my iTunes for songs I become obsessed with for a period of time. I delineate it by the year. It's a fun way to record songs that are important to me, that mean something, that recall an experience like a night out or someone I met. This weekend I added Rufus Wainwright's Between My Legs to that list. It's been on heavy rotation, slowly climbing my Most Played list.

But there's another contender. A beautiful tune that I don't available to me yet because it hasn't been released. Isn't that frustrating? Understandable, yes. A reminder that in these days of instant gratification there is still do not open until Xmas situations.

Juliana Hatfield has a new album coming out the very day I leave for Japan called How To Walk Away. Her new song Shining On is currently being played in my myspace profile and hers! I have to say, the first time I heard it I was inspired. I like when art does that. Doesn't make you jealous, doesn't make you wish you had done something different; it moves you to be creative yourself.

Occasionally I'll wonder to myself: What will be the next song that really gets under my skin.

This one is it. Look for Shining On.

Another thing I love to do is look in the background of pictures. Reading book titles, recognizing CD spines, things like that. Often I take pictures of my own bedroom for future examination. It's a way of pack ratting without packing.

SPIN Magazine took this idea and ran with it. Here's Juliana Hatfield in her living room, surrounded by belongings, with a description for each one.

Notice that she has a copy of Wind Up Bird Chronicle. We share the same story.

Here. Is. Your opportunity...

...to witness majesty in action. Kate Braverman will be reading at Cantina in San Francisco this coming Saturday evening. This is very exciting; she has never failed to impress the few times I've seen her read.

Information:

Babylon Salon, San Francisco’s rollicking reading and performance series, presents a night of literary mayhem…

When: Saturday, June 14, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Cantina SF (basement level)
With Performances by: local authors Ann Ryles, Corinne Loveland, and S.J. Sasken; Farallon Review editor Tim Foley; and 2008 O. Henry winner, NEA Fellow, and Executive Director of Kore Press, Shannon Cain

And Featuring the incomparable Kate Braverman, award-winning author of novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction.

Read Michelle Richmond’s interview with Kate here on Fiction Attic.

Braverman’s groundbreaking novel Lithium for Medea imbues a raw, dangerous world with her startling lyricism. Her latest work, the Graywolf Press award winning Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles, brings the same sensibility to memoir. The result is a genre-bending challenge to the form.

Cantina SF is conveniently located at:580 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA 415-398-0195(www.cantinasf.com) Plentiful parking below Union Square. Up one block on Powell, left on Sutter; or Powell Street Bart Station, walk past Union Square one block to Sutterthen left, 1/2 block on right. (580 Sutter)

-Free Admission-

Come at 7:00. Reading and performance begin promptly at 8:00. Complimentary eats. Cash bar exotica.

Babylon Salon is a reading and performance series sponsored by alumni of the University of San Francisco MFA in Writing programYour hosts: Timothy Crandle, Timothy B. Rien, Lindsay Tam Holland, Maury Zeff and Laurie Doyle.

I'm Impressed Press

In three hours a press was born. A press is like a match.com profile; everyone has one but so few get updated.

I wrote a few short vignettes and bound them into an 8 page booklet called "One of the Strangest Days" IIP-001. I love serialized things, assigning objects numbers and a place in line. Perhaps I ought to be an airline ticket agent. I think not.

This is the mission plan: I'm Impressed Press will be (1) a free publication given to friends or anyone. (2) Anything and Everything. (3) Whatever I want.

Here's a sample for you:

Running Up That Hill

Alex and I were walking down 16th Street towards the Mission to get to BART. She walked her newish red Schwinn and we had just finished drinking some drinkie-drinks at Il Pirata after a tedious day of working at our jobs.

As we passed the SFPCA a woman was running towards us. She wasn’t dressed for running, and by that I mean that her outfit was more suitable for a squat in a comfy office chair. Her run was smooth and had the appearance of ease; a little too easeful for climbing a steady but noticeable incline. But something was wrong with her mouth. It was… removable. As she passed I saw her pop out her lower teeth, play with them and pop them back in.

Alex and I looked at each other. Could the day get any stranger than this?

I *Heart* Canadians

And, right now, South Park is high on my list.

Before I left for Vegas I caught the show where Canada goes on strike and the turn-around phrase of "I'm not your buddy, friend!" "I'm not your friend, guy!" I'm not your guy, buddy!" stayed with me from SFO to the Flamingo. During a cloudy afternoon we sat by the pool and wouldn't you know the douchebags behind us started in on this exchange. I didn't know realize it had cult status.



I wonder what Canadians have to say about their portrayal through South Park.

What I Did With My Summer Vacation

Yesterday I took a plunge that can be more humiliating than getting an STD test with your primary care physician.

I sold some old CDs.

I've done this a million times before, I've even been on the other side of the purchasing counter. I know the drill. I know not to take selling the Christina Augilera & Ricky Martin duet single (do you even remember that? When I found it again - I thought it must have dropped in from an alternate universe) personally but there's still that twinge of shame, guilt, and desire to explain why you once had a copy of Santana's Supernatural (I got it for free!) or 3 or 4 Groove Armada albums (again, free).

I wanted new music but, now more importantly, I wanted to release myself of these deadweights. Ten years ago I surrounded myself with walls of CDs; I loved their security and comfort; the way the binding colors blended (ever line them up according to the visible light spectrum? I did), monitoring the growing width of my Throwing Muses section, the geometric splice and slice when they were shelved alphabetically and then by year released. I thought for sure I would eventually have a closet devoted to their storage.

With MP3s and development of three digit gigabyte storage capability hanging onto the remixes of Destiny's Child's Bills, Bills, Bills is no longer a priority. I still own it. In digital form on my computer. And, if anything were to happen to that computer and the greatest hits of Whitney Houston disappeared into the 0/1 ether I can be okay with that. I don't need to archive the popular culture of late 20th to early 21st century music. My CD collection will not end up in the Smithsonian when I die. Atleast not one with the Go soundtrack.

There are some dinosaurs that I will never, ever get rid of even if the only time I ever listen to a CD is when I'm taking a shower or going to sleep.

I'll still need a closet space to hold all the CDs I will never get rid of, that's for sure. And I still buy them on a semi-regular basis. I once vowed to never by music in digital form while there was a tangible version somewhere. The idea of buying an album without touching it, reading liner notes, closely inspecting cover art was horrifying. But I found a great subscription site and I moved forward, deeper into the millenium.

Anyways, I slept easier last night knowing that the corpses of CDs I haven't listened to in almost 10 years have been buried in greener pastures with the hopes that someday some brave soul will dig them up, give them a spin, and shoot 'em with a laser.

Oh! And BTW I did improve my collection yesterday with the purchases of the following: Aimee Mann: @#%&*! Smilers, Cyndi Lauper: Bring Ya To The Brink; The Knife: Deep Cuts; and The Go-Go's: God Bless The Go-Go's (pulled from the brink of used CD extinction).

North Korean Toddler Colonies

Over the past few days Stanford has rekindled my fascination with North Korea. Ever since Mayumi turned me on to an atrocious video done by the BBC depicting the devastation and political propaganda of this bizarre country I've been intrigued; with their monuments, the way they present themselves, the ghost-town Pyongyang, the "non-existent" Ryugyong Hotel and the phenomenal spectacle of their shows. 

Who they're meant for (the few visiting journalists or the North Korean denizens themselves) is anyone's guess. I imagine the performers believe they are presenting the awe that is their nation. 

And indeed they have. But is their intention to bewilder? The enormity of the production is staggering. But the truth behind the facade is a too monstrous to forget.

Watch this.

I wish I could link you to the original bit I saw but I'm beginning to watch the Vice expose found below.

Here.

Twenty Four #02

Folsom Street, San Francisco

Unicorn

Twenty Four #01

My sister has been sending me mass emails lately. Some of which haven't been that awful. My favorite ones are those that promote regional pride.

You know you're from New England when...
You know you're from Massachusetts when...
You know you're from Medway when...

etc., etc., etc.,

They're funny, sometimes true, and if after reading a declaration I'm confused then I get a sense that I missed out on some kind of cultural heritage that would otherwise brand me as an outsider. For those no longer living in the region these lists can be nostalgic and almost enough to punch to break your lease. (Then again, who wouldn't trade places with you, am I right?)

The best part is when you read a list like this and recognize the same statements made about New Yorkers, Philadelphians, San Franciscans, etc. Like that wee lad at some baseball game holding his middle finger out and shouting. He changes teams more times more times than a narcissistic Hollywood C-lister.

Here we go. Today's 24 siting comes from a list as previously mentioned. And, I apologize, but it's one of those facts that I can't even pretend to understand. But, what's great about it, is that it's self-referential. A very "meta" beginning to this new segment.

24. Sorry Manny, but number 24 means DEWEY EVANS.

Thanks!

Introduction to Twenty-Four

The past few weeks have been a wash of ridiculous ideas. There's something about being catapulted out of graduate school that makes you want to complete every possible (and near impossible) task you come up with. And, if you happened to graduate from an art school, then most of these tasks involved the current obsession in modern art: the Obsessive Compulsive art form.


From the 20 million beads sculpted by hand into installation pieces (thank you, Liza Lou):

To the chronicling, documenting, administrative handling of shredded car pieces into a skyscraper filing cabinet (and thank you, Sam Yates):

What we have is Art's obsession with Obsession. Anything that is meticulously done for a period of time unseemly for any "normal" person; anal-retentive organizational skills; the enlargement, exaggeration, parody, sarcasm, length, width, & height stretched to the borderlands of recognition is in vogue.

Add a pinch of magical realism and you have a new segment to The Werewolf Hotel: Twenty-Four.

To get it out of the way 24 is my favorite number for two reasons. (1) I was born on July the 24th. (2) It's divisible by many fantastic numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, & (like any whole number, itself) 24. I find that when this number pops up it's a sign, an omen, a message. I don't proport that it's always the case but it still seems to have personal properties I prefer to pay attention to.

Including its inverse: 42. The first time I really caught that number's eye I remembered to pay very close attention and I can't say why just now.

Perhaps, when the time is right, any other 24-Fanatics will pay attention with me. OK?

Evan Schnair & Stanford Chen read at Small Press Traffic

Like any urban conglomerate the Bay Area is fertile ground for writers and the schools that harness that talent. Small Press Traffic has put together an evening of readers from the varying graduate writing programs that bejewel the 37 degree(ish) latitude.

Friday, May 16th, 7:30 p.m.
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco, CA

Directions & map:
http://www. sptraffic. org/html/directions. htm

This exciting evening showcases Emergent Innovative Writers from the Bay Area's diverse community of writing programs and features:

Lorelei Lee from San Francisco State

Evan Schnair & Stanford Chen from California College of the Arts

Cynthia Posillico and Stephen Boyer from the University of SF

Ariel Goldberg from Mills

Paul Ebenkamp from St. Mary's

Unless otherwise noted, events are $5-10, sliding scale, free to
current SPT members and CCA faculty, staff, and students.

Get this on TV now

After watching an outtake of Inside Edition featuring Bill O'Reilly flipping out and subsequently learning that CBS had YouTube put an end to the entertainment I needed to find something to wipe the brackish taste out of my mouth. That's when I searched for Kate Braverman.

The first video is one of her and a couple ladies (I think the one on the left is Katie Moses, author of Wintering) during one of Braverman's Fusion City nights. She used to throw these readings at Edinburgh Castle in San Francisco. Here we have Braverman reading aloud Plath's poem, Lesbos.

I uber-heart Kate Braverman. To me, she's equal parts Courtney Love, Galadriel and Catwoman. Then sprinkled with freshly-grated brilliance and served with a mint infused cocktail.

Laura Palmer

I don't know. I think it speaks for itself.

Song of the Day #10

Again, this SotD should've Song of the Weekend last weekend but I was too Cylonese to figure it out. Actually, I probable would've been able to figure it out but I'm a beta model and not one of the Top Five or anything so figure it out yourself.

Regardless, once again I'm late in the game. I'm sure you all know this one and I'm sure it's more tired than jelly bracelets and Vampire Weekend.

Remember the days: walking around Union Square singing this song, driving around the city from bar to bar singing this song, hearing it over Ben 'N' Nicks with beer and burgers, Erica buying her first CDs in 6 months.

Song of the Day #09

Number nine. Number nine. Number nine. This should’ve been SotD a few days ago but lately there have been burdens. Burdens of immeasurable size. The proportions of which are similar to dark matters clusters. After watching this I feel more confident than ever that I’m a Cylon. OOIOO is an off-shoot of the Boredoms; this video is adorable and the music is pretty stellar. Kick start. Round off. Play it.

Bands You'll Never See On This Mirror

Star Meat #9

Throws Like A Girl

The Gash

Non-Native Invasive

Song of the Day #08

I’m a little late in the game for this series. But for the past month or so I haven’t watched much else. I’m taken – like the last cookie in the jar. I was looking for a song from the show (ritual percussions like Taiko, indistinguishable lyrics in a hybrid of Celtic) that maybe had clips. What I did find was this fan video.

This show offers what we’re lacking from our American diet. High stakes morality and ethics, a clear and discernable threat, the ability to question what’s at stake without appearing treasonous or unpatriotic. On top of that – it’s in space(!) and in a time when our entire present culture is unfootnoted and an illusion in their cosmology.

Also, the following selection is the champagne smash for tonight's Season 4 premiere on the Sci-Fi Channel.