Spring Cleaning (Is It Spring Yet?)

We're going to make this VERY brief. It's 2:13am, I'm drunk, and I am not about to get super ranty.

So, I finished a bunch of books so far this year, and I've been very lazy about getting drunk. This is not to say that I haven't been drunk yet this year. The issue is that I've gotten TOO drunk and not been able to accurately discuss these books.

I have two more books to discuss here:

Pastoralia by George Saunders

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbably by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Let's discuss Pastoralia:

This collection of short stories was pretty great. They're all super weird, which I was not suspecting. The first story takes place in this weird, futuristic museum where these people pretend to be cavemen. There's another story that has this weird airplane strip club and a dead aunt that comes back to life and just wants to fuck. There's another that reminded me a lot of Scientology. I laughed a lot while reading these stories, and also felt really alone and sad inside.

I am not doing this collection justice, nor am I making an sense. I finished this book over a month ago and I'm also exhausted and wasted.

Let's cover the main parts here: Pastoralia was great. I'd recommend it drunk or sober and I've talked about it a bit, both drunk and sober. This boy I like, he also read this book recently and I tried to make him talk to me about it, but pretty much failed. I blame it on the fact that I don't think he cares much to talk to me in general though and that this has nothing to do with the book. GEORGE SAUNDERS THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT.

Anyway, I'm excited to read more of you, Georgie Boy. A+.

Onto Black Swan or The Impact of the Worst Fucking Book I've Read This Year. Oh man. I fucking hate this book. Not worth my time or energy, that's for sure.

The theory itself is very cool and makes total sense. Basically, this dude is all, "You can't predict shit!" His theory is based on the fact that throughout time, everyone always thought there were only white swans in the world. And then one day, OH HELLO BLACK SWAN. And how all of life is like this, that you cannot predict anything because there's always something that you hadn't planned for, some big life changing fact. Yeah, I agree with that. We are not very good at guessing what comes next. Life is unpredictable. Okay, cool Nassim. He talks about how we use history to try to predict the future, but that history is not a good indicator of this. He uses this analogy about turkeys. Like, if for 355 days, a turkey was fed every day, on the 356th day, the turkey would assume that it's going to be fed again. Except that it's Thanksgiving so this turkey is going to be totally murdered. The turkey doesn't know this, this is an unexpected event, yadda yadda. Okay cool, Nassim I'm on board. I get it. And yet, 400 pages later, he's still using these little anecdotes and stories to try to convince me of this theory, even though I was on board from the beginning.

Imagine being at a party, and you're stuck talking to this lame ass dude. Let's call him Nassim. Nassim only has one thing to talk about, and while you agree with him, he just won't shut up about it. He goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on about it. He finds about 200 ways to tell you about it. This idea is not like, SUPER REVOLUTIONARY EITHER, but he spends HOURS trying to convince you of something you basically already agree with because you're not a fucking idiot. That's what reading this book is like.

At one point in the book, Nassim is like, "Hey, if you're not interested in the technical aspect of this theory, skip ahead!" And I was like THANK FUCKING GOD. Any time he suggested I skip part of his book, I did. Because I was miserable. All I wanted to do was find an excuse to leave this party and stop listening to him talk because OMG I GET IT. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT NASSIM, PEOPLE LIKE TRYING TO PREDICT SHIT. PEOPLE LIKE TO PRETEND THEY KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. PEOPLE LOVE TO BE RIGHT. AND BEING RIGHT ABOUT SHIT GET'S PEOPLE OFF, THAT'S WHY THEY DO IT.

OMG, readers, I'm sorry. This book makes me get super capsy, so let's cut this short. I've already lost one friendship over this book (RIP, Andrew. It was good while it lasted.), I don't need to lose anymore. (Side note: If you want to remain friends with me, only recommend good books. Don't be an asshole. Life is too short to read garbage).

Suffice to say, I will not be talking about this book while drunk (I'll mostly be yelling) and I will never ever ever recommend this book. This book is my Jake Gyllenhall. We are never ever ever getting back together, like EVER.