Closing Time - Joseph Heller

These are a few epiphanetic  (love making up words) sentences from what I thought was as good an attempt at a sequel to Catch 22 as could be. Given the dark-as-death humour of C22, it was imperative that Heller would seek to carry forward in a similar vein. Closing Time is a scathe across the Western economic situation as well. Quotes (only spoken sentences are double-quoted):

"...do you think in my checkered history I ever really wanted to do any of the work I found myself doing?"

Money does matter, more than almost everything else. 

 Almost everything in nature, from the smallest to the grandest, seemed to him to move in circles and to return to the point at which it had originated, to perhaps set out again. 

Splenetic (referring to Charles Dickens)

Doctor Faustus - Thomas Mann

Apocalypse - Adrian Leverkühn

Triage (the game that is only too real in this book by the end - closing time, literally)

(It takes a fertile imagination to have the chaplain passing heavy water. Hilarious.)

"...but sometimes there is more money in this world than anybody ever thought the planet could hold without sinking away into somewhere else."

"It's easy to win debates as a nihilist...because so many people who ought to know better absurdly take positions."

He (Michael Yossarian) did not envy people who wished to work much harder to get much more, but had to wonder afresh why he was not like them. 

Joey Heller

(Allegory between Dante's Divine Comedy - specifically Inferno - and PABT. At the end of the book I saw that this chapter is mentioned in the acknowledgements.)

"...Years later I read where Camus said that the only freedom we have is the freedom to say no. ..."

(Milo Minderbinder can't, he sheepishly admits, destroy the world, but he can make it inhabitable.)

(Book Seven passed without much epiphania :) )

...blessings of living alone.

Phone

Music

Opinions - lack of

Reading

Whatever can change, will; and anything that doesn't change, can't. 

And in several more seconds that failing broadcast signal faded out too until there survived only in a primeval void of human silence the insistent sibilance of that simmering and irrepressible electrical interference. 

William Saroyan

Hemingway

Faulkner

Eugene O'Neill

Tennessee Williams

James Joyce

Joseph Conrad

Dickens

Jerzy Kosinski

V Woolf

Arthur Koestler

Plath

Gustav Aschenbach

Kafka

Proust

(A little further Marilyn Monroe is seen, "restored in every detail to lifelike death.")

"Everything that's alive lives on things that are living..."

"...everything living is made up of things that are not."

Dennis Teemer could look at civilization, he liked to joke in pessimistic paradox, and see the world as just a microcosm of a cell. 

To live or not to live...

But he (a spokesman for the homeless) turned out to be fake, a spokesman from a public relations firm. 

ALTERNATE MENU

Fricassee de Fruits de Mer

Les trois Rôti Primeurs (my very own Indian roti! :D )

Tarte aux Pommes de Terre

Salade à Bleu de Bresse Gratinée

Friandises et Desserts

Espresso

What was wrong between them was that nothing between them had ever gone wrong. 

END OF QUOTES

Midnight Ravings

Not ravings per se, but then again what thought isn't rave? Clearing one's throat provides a moment to structure one's upcoming thoughts, and actions. 

Technology runs on energy. Case in point:

I saw one of those YouTube videos of a person describing their shopping of clothes. Not right now, quite a while back, when living in NOIDA sec 39 in 2010-11. The wired broadband I had then was about the same speed I now hold in my hand literally. Moore's Law, manifested again?  :)

Having activated Do Not Disturb for my number, I now know it works. I don't get any solicitation calls at all. Even those pesky real estate SMSs have dwindled down over the past few months. I guess they or their softwares learn to avoid numbers like mine. It gives me a sense of self-righteousness over what is fast becoming a weep-if-you-aren't-rich society. But enough philosophical discoursing. Time to try to sleep. 

Time-Pink Floyd

6-hourism!

Developed countries

Partial remembrances

I might have forgotten quite a few things- in fact,more than I wanted to forget- but a sense of wonder should always remain in me. 

Murakami (translated) echoes Bukowski

I think I saw a Bukowski quote along similar thoughts. Of course, lots of intent and context is lost in translation, but that doesn't preclude new intents and contexts from being derived, or, simply, becoming. 

Early morning

Surprisingly clear sky, hence the horizon-only pic. 

Also, the playing order as I recall it:

A Pillow of Winds- pink floyd

Drop- another vertigo rush

Mellotron Scratch - porcupine tree

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

It's a good movie. 

On The Road in Noida

Media industry

Hadn't watched advertising in a while...book my show's ads are cool.

The first First from iPhone direct:

One thing I like about winters is that I have many pockets. 

Fear of a Blank Planet

An excellent song; the lyrics are worth ^c-^v for context:

Sunlight coming through the haze
No gaps in the blinds
To let it inside
The bed is unmade,
Some music still plays

TV, yeah it's always on
The flicker on the screen
A movie actress screams
I'm basking the shit flowing out of it

I'm stoned in the mall again
Terminally bored
Shuffling round the stores
And shoplifting is getting so last year's thing

X-Box is a god to me
A finger on the switch
My mother is a bitch
My father gave up ever trying to talk to me

Don't try engaging me
The vaguest of shrugs
The prescription drugs
You'll never find a person inside

My face is Mogadon
Curiosity has given up on me
I'm tuning out desires
The pills are on the rise

How can I be sure I'm here?
The pills that I've been taking confuse me
I need to know that someone sees that
There's nothing left, I simply am not here

I'm through with pornography
The acting is lame
The action is tame
Explicitly dull
Arousal annulled

Your mouth should be boarded up
Talking all day with nothing to say
Your shallow proclamations
All misinformation

My friend says he wants to die
He's in a band, they sound like Pearl Jam
Their clothes are all black
The music is crap

In school I don't concentrate
And sex is kinda fun, but just another one
Of all the empty ways of using up the day

How can I be sure I'm here?
The pills that I've been taking confuse me
I need to know that someone sees that
There's nothing left, I simply am not here

Bipolar disorder
Can't deal with this boredom
Bipolar disorder
Can't deal with this boredom

You don't try to be liked
You don't mind
You feel no sun
You steal a gun
To kill time

You're somewhere
You're nowhere
You don't care
You catch the breeze
You still the leaves
So now where?


Courtesy http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/porcupinetree/fearofablankplanet.html


Not all songwriters are so forthrightly bored. I mean, yeah, Cobain, Morello, (in fact Deftones' Bored is also a great song), but the concept album is very effective in achieving the sense of alienation and escapism. If I were a professional or freelancer reviewer, I would gladly listen to any number of artists and provide my perspective. But I'm not, so there. :)