Budaeli

The one time I ever really impressed a teacher was when my Junior year english teacher asked our class what freedom meant. My answer was the first thing that came to mind, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” It’s a line from Janis Joplin’s song “Me and Bobby McGee.” Turns out, that’s exactly what he was thinking too.

There are very few people in America who really know what freedom means. Is it what Joplin sang? Perhaps. If movies, literature, and song have said many times, is that the people who really have the power to do whatever they want are those who have either escaped responsibility or have had it taken away. And yet, with a good job, a decent education, and hard work, we can try to get every material thing we want or any comfort money can buy.

But ask yourself: “What would I do if I had no job, no home, no possessions, no obligations, nothing but the clothes I’m wearing?” If you were in that situation, it’d probably take some thought. One thing would be true, though: you could do anything you want. Couldn’t start a family because you didn’t have any time outside of work? Haven’t done much traveling because you had chores to do and other things to save up for? Well you’ve got a lot of time to do some real living, here’s your chance!

I won’t be the first to point out that The Declaration of Independence – the document that created the United States of America, says that we have a right to “the pursuit of happiness.” It’s a funny phrase, if you think about it: if happiness is what we all want anyway, shouldn’t it be that we have a right to happiness? Trouble is, happiness – that feeling of being able to walk down the street and spontaneously break out into a grin if for no reason than the feeling of being alive – happiness is not something we all get to have. It’s something that requires an effort. Being happy doesn’t just come from nowhere, we must work for it. We must pursue it.  And somewhere, somehow, in the middle of chasing that happiness, occasionally that feeling just appears. Chances are you won’t notice it – but sometimes there is a realization that everything is all right. You may notice a grin on your face, or a sudden urge to dance. That’s happiness, the elusive goal.

The pursuit of happiness, that is the real freedom. All of those things in your life that you could lose, it may hurt for a while, but they can all be lost. That already makes you free. That’s the kind of thought that makes me smile.

I used to say that cheesy dance music was my guilty pleasure, as if it was something I wasn’t supposed to like. But that doesn’t make any sense: why should we have to present a different image of who we are to everyone else, one that is so different that we have to laugh off any incompatible interests and hobbies?

From now on I will tell people that I like cheesy dance music. I’m a sucker for a dance beat.

It’s not my favorite style of music. Far from it. I listen to a wide swath of styles and eras. If anything, my favorite would be either mid-60s pop music (see my three favorite songs) or 90s indie-alternative…or late-70s post-punk, it’s hard to pick a favorite. But if I’m feeling down or a little tired, all I need to do is put on XM radio’s BPM station or some dance songs from my library, and I usually feel much better.

Why must we call something we like our guilty pleasure?

Do we really need to impress others with only the aspects of our life that we think others will approve? Sometimes, it’s those quirky interests that define who we are: that I like dance music provides a clue as to who I am as a person. Rather, we should be as proud of these features as our more mainstream ones. It’s the odd bits that make someone interesting: think of all the people you admire in history, did they do crazy things without caring what others thought? Albert Einstein never dressed up regardless of the event, Nicola Tesla measured the cubic mass of his food before eating. And think of the quirky interests: Issac Newton was into alchemy; Charles Dickens was fascinated by morgues, cemeteries, and the dead; Quintin Tarantino loves bad action movies from the seventies. There’s better examples that I can’t think of, but you get the idea.

Instead of guilty pleasures we should embrace all of our interests. It’s okay to watch Saved by the Bell, collect war camp paper money, enjoy shopping at dollar stores, be a fan of some little-watched sport like diving, eat Haggis, or any of the millions of things people do that isn’t considered ‘normal’ by most people. We should not be afraid to let others listen to our music collection, or peruse our bookshelves, because these are the things that define us.

Arguing about where the last comma in a sentence is kind of thing people debate then they don’t have any real fears or pressing decisions in their life.

The serial comma, or the Oxford comma, is when you put a comma before the last item in a list in a sentence, usually before an ‘and’ or ‘or.’ For example, “I like apples, pears, and bananas.” The other way to write a list is to not have a comma for the last item in the list: “I like apples, pears and bananas.” This is supported by the AP style book, and thus my boss – so it comes up a lot at work.

The argument over proper usage get so heated, I’ve seen yelling matches and one of those pathetic wrestling matches between two overly-hip twentysomethings with no muscle mass. The band Vampire Weekend wrote a song about it (“Oxford Comma”) – even the Wikipedia article is overly complicated, though not as insane as the article for Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

The fact that people fight over this is insane. And yet I can’t help getting involved: I support the serial comma fervently, and back my point up with the fact that most people do anyways (and occasionally friends who are better at debating). Essentially by having a comma separating every item in a list, there is less confusion about the last item.

How does one decide which is the best way? Simple: look at what everyone else is doing. If most people – especially the trend-setting writers – are using the serial comma, then let’s just agree that it’s the right way. Language is fluid after all; and the general idea is that proper usage has more to do with being understood than following old rules.

Good. Now we can stop fighting over this and just use the serial comma. And argue about more important things, like the best movie of 1998, the coolest character in The Sopranos, or whether it’s OK to text message a breakup.

I’m not so much a news junkie as an information junkie. I need data, and massive amounts of it. And with the major news events over the weekend: hurricane Ike*, Lehman Brothers’ colapse*, the suicide of David Foster Wallace*, and Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Pailin impersonating Tina Fey – I kept myself on the bleeding edge of every development.

While weblogs are great for keeping track of cultural developments, tech news, and news analysis; getting ahold of the actual events still needs traditional media outlets. And let’s face it: print news is dead; getting updates through the internet is the best method. Updates come fast and strong. So keeping on top of events as they happen is easy now as you can check anytime, instead of waiting for the morning or evening editions. Plus it’s easier to find stories that may not have been considered highly newsworthy, but important nonetheless.

This post is a guide to how I get my news. My sources are a little intense and may be overkill as the same stories will get repeated over and over at each news source, but they all provide a unique enough perspective to cover all the bases and give a possible edge in knowing the whole story. In fact, one could read only a few of these sources and still be better informed than 95% of the population.

Each group is numbered by importance, meaning how frequently they are checked. Group one is for top stories and Group 2 is for business news. Group 3, which is international sites, is really only for additional coverage to catch any news that fell through the cracks at the other sites, and to get a better view of the world situation. Group 4 is some extra tools which can come in handy, and are fun.

Group 1: General News

BBC – The best source for general international news. The BBC is much less country-biased than any of the U.S. media sites and places emphasis on news that’s more important worldwide. Which made it very surprising to see my hometown mentioned as a top story when it was under water last June. If you can only check one site, make it the BBC. Here’s BBC’s mobile site.

CNN – You could switch CNN for MSNBC and get the same effect, but I prefer CNN’s video setup, so this is on the list. CNN is for national news; international news gets little play. Sure, they may put as a top story the goings-on of Britney Spears or some other crap, but you need a source for American news by Americans. Here’s CNN’s mobile site.

Yahoo! News – Yahoo News is arguably the best topical news site around. And with Yahoo’s troubles lately, I’m surprised they aren’t leveraging it more: this site is almost as good as BBC’s site, has great AP pictures, and blows the pants off of Google News.

The New York Times – All of the NY Times’ national and international news is repeated elsewhere, but what you get here is the depth of the story, and about everything. It’s hard to explain but it’s often more enjoyable to read articles from the Times, because they often cover stories in special ways. There’s a reason why the best bloggers link to Times articles.

Local news – Everyone needs to know what’s going on locally. Not only will it affect you faster than national or international events, you have a bigger role and can become more involved with local issues. I suggest finding a good TV station and the best local newspaper. Here in Boston, I check WBZ TV and The Boston Globe. In addition, I also check news from my hometown.

Group 2: Business News

The Wall Street Journal – Here are some reasons why you should keep up with business news: you have a job and work for a living, you are investing in financial tools for retirement or supplemental income, you like money. In other words, business news is important. And The Wall Street Journal is the source for finance, economic, and personal finance articles. They also provide good political coverage. One downside to the WSJ is that to get the best use out of it, you’ll need a subscription to access most of the articles. But it’s worth it if you want to really know what’s going on in the world of business and finance. WSJ also has great blogs with additional coverage.

Bloomberg - Think of Bloomberg as a supplement to The Wall Street Journal, with an emphasis on markets (and a stylish site design). Also, they tend to have the fastest updates on market news. I was getting updates on Lehman’s demise at Bloomberg’s site first.

The Economist – The Economist is the best-written news magazine. The analysis and opinion offered by The Economist is top-notch and well-informed. It may be off-putting to someone who doesn’t believe in open market capitalism, but that may require a deeper study of economics. It costs to access The Economist, but it’s absolutely worth it. Most people however may not get any use out of it, not to mention get bored by the articles; but it provides the best coverage of international business, finance, and politics anywhere.

Group 3: International News

Al Jazeera - Here in America, the name Al Jazeera conjures up images of Osama Bin Laden videotapes, grainy videos of executions, and anti-American bias. But in reality, Al Jazeera is an excellent news source. Their coverage places importance on events that hardly ever get covered in the U.S.

The Christian Science Monitor - Don’t be put off by the name, these guys are a great news source. In fact, since the Monitor is run by a non-profit, they can afford more international reporters than most other major news outlets.

Der Spiegel – Much like Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel has a different international slant on their news than what you normally get in the U.S.

Reuters – A quick scan of Reuters’ homepage will give you a good idea of what’s going on in the world at the moment.

The Guardian – A fiercely independent British newspaper.

The International Herald Tribune – Essentially international edition of The New York Times. So it’s good to see what’s more newsworthy elsewhere.

Group 4: Suppmlemental Sources
These are a few sites and tools I recommend in addition to the other sites.

The Big Picture blog – It started out as a side project by a web developer at the Boston Globe, and is now one of the most visited blogs. That’s because the large-size, stunning pictures are presented in a way not seen anywhere else.

Mobile News/Bloomberg iPhone apps – This is how you get news on your iPhone. Mobile News is from AP and Bloomberg is…well, Bloomberg.

The New York Times Twitter feed – The Times seems to have the only Twitter feed that gets regularly updated with important news i.e. stuff that’s worth getting quick updates.

Newser – I found this site only a few days ago, but it’s already a favorite. Newser is a news aggregator, but is so polished it’s the first one to actually be useful. First, articles are displayed with a large graphic, and as you scroll through the list of articles it gets longer so you don’t have to go to another page (like when going back through old blog posts). Next the linked articles are summarized so you can get the gist of the story without having to leave the site. So far, every summary is a great executive summary, to save time in case it’s not worth reading the actual article. If you’re content with having someone else picking the news for you, Newser may replace going to all the other sites (it won’t for me).

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned anything about sports. Thats because I couldn’t care less about sports news, with the exception of the Olympics – and that’s over already. You’re on your own for that.

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* These articles are from yesterday, so they may already be out of date.

On Monday, United Airlines’ stock plummeted from around $12 to $3. At first glance it was perplexing because it just dropped and United’s holding company, UAL hadn’t announced anything big enough to cause a 75% drop in price. Well…they announced something that would have, in 2002.

Silicon Valley Insider has a great analysis of exactly what happened, so go read that and come back here.

Something about this story feels like a piece of luddite science fiction. Just because the Chicago Tribune didn’t put a dateline on a story in 2002 that a corporation with enough problems of its own gets its stock hammered because some software was doing exactly what it was designed: dishing up popular stories to people who want to read such things. Suddenly United’s stock is very cheap for no logical reason. So much for rational investing, no? Actually, it shows that markets move according to the best possible information. But when that information is dished out by inflexible software programs, how efficient is it really?

There is so much information available to any one person, and so much potentially useful information, that we need tools to help us sort through that information. We can no longer rely on individuals at newspapers to decide what’s newsworthy, because even they can’t sort through all the information. Instead, we must use tools that can remove the signal from the noise. To give us the information that we need, that’s important, that we need to know.

But every website, every company, every entity online has their own systems for managing this information. And even in a single organization there can be several to hundreds of different ways of sorting information: by topic, popularity, etc. These tools don’t exist in a vacuum – the internet has no dark matter. So when Google crawls a website at an ungodly hour when all two visitors happen to be reading the same old story, the page gets cached and changes Google’s search results. Later in the morning, when a reporter at Bloomberg sees the page pop up on their Google Alerts, the wrong story goes out on the wire all because of the randomness of human action interfered with logical code.

This kind of thing is an informational flaw, a data mutation. Kinda like a biological mutation. Only cooler, because it’s easier for us to toy with information than with living organisms. This could cause all kinds of mutations, from viral videos to bands becoming suddenly popular to a spontaneous political movement to leaps in technological advancement. All because of the interaction of automated systems.

I feel that I am qualified to write about motivation because most of the time, I don’t have any.

A reasonable thing to do would be to sell, donate, or just get rid of an old TV 15 months after the new one arrived; but my unused TV is sitting in a room filled with random possessions of two other people. It would also be reasonable, knowing plenty about economics and how credit cards work, to not screw oneself over by not paying credit card bills for a while, but that’s exactly what I did (they’re paid off now, thank you). I still haven’t called the gas and electric companies to switch the bills over to my name, don’t actively look for a date, didn’t renew my driver’s license for nine months until the day before I was supposed to fly home, don’t recycle pop bottles*, and probably won’t vote in the upcoming election because I’ve figured out that the cost to cast that vote isn’t worth it for me. That makes me one lazy man, and qualified to talk about the energy behind doing things.

If I’m so lazy, how do I get anything done? Because I figure out ways to do more in less time. Not to get more work done, but to have more time to slack off. The unfortunate side effect is that to most people, I don’t appear to do anything. Trust me, I’m powering up and winning the game. Just look at this blog.

Budaeli, what you’re reading, has been dormant for most of its existence. Currently, this is the longest stretch of continuous writing, beginning on July 31st. There are several very key reasons for this, all being motivation for me to keep writing, but none of them will be obvious. If I’m so goddamn lazy, what keeps me writing? My laziness knows no rational bounds. It can’t be for anything obvious, like money or vanity right?

Always remember that necessity is not the mother of invention; laziness is the mother of invention.

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*I leave them on top of my garbage bags so the scavengers get them and make some money on my behalf.

Randy Pausch‘s deep and human lecture, his last, introduced me to the concept of the head fake. If you haven’t seen his speech, go watch it now.

A head fake is where an action looks different from the act itself. Pausch’s lecture was about achieving childhood dreams, but it was really about something else, and turned out to be for someone else altogether. That head fake is probably the most tear-inducing one in existence.

In sports, a head fake can be a play that tricks the opposing team into following someone who they think has the ball so that they miss the person with the real ball who doesn’t normally have that job.

In film, a head fake can be a plot where the audience completely misses the real protagonist or what’s really going on, often resulting in a crappy movie.

In blogging, you could be reading a post about one topic when it’s really about something else altogether. Or the entire blog is about a something else. Like Budaeli. :)

The best scene in Tom Robbin’s novel Another Roadside Attraction involves Tarzan’s attempt to get Jesus to stop reading the Torah and cut back on his ascetic adherence to spiritual thinking. While he failed, the most important part of the story involves the little angel sent by God to watch over Jesus (you’ll just need to read the book to know what I’m talking about).

During the conversation, Tarzan embarrasses Jesus by saying that the son of God is a lot like Pan.

Technically, Pan is the Greek god of nature. Above the waist, Pan looks like a normal man with curly black hair, but with horns. Below the waist he looks not unlike a goat, with cloven feet. He was invoked for fertility, and was often sporting a judicious erection. He love to play the flute, and even had the balls (boy did he!) to state that he was a better musician than Apollo, the god of music. Symbolically, Pan embodies the essence of man: half intellectual, half wild animal. Jesus was embarrassed because he wanted to live a spiritual life devoid of his carnal instincts.

I think the concept of Pan was created by people who wanted a way to personify the duality of being able to invent mathematics and build great buildings and write poetry and play music, while at the same time wanting to set things on fire, get into fights, and have wild amounts of sex. To be human is to do all of those.

And yet, we seem to want to go to one extreme or the other. Some of us want to think great thoughts, create great machines and great works of art. Others want none of that. I take that back: we think we’re one or the other, but do both anyway. It’s how Christian ministers can spread the fiery word of the Gospel, but still want to drive fast cars and bone the secretary. It’s how Shakespeare can write the beautiful verse…about a drunk hedonist who corrupts a future king. And it is the definition of Richard Feynman.

How are able to seamlessly integrate such disparate goals, celestial and earthly*, without much issue? Is there even a difference? Duality of anything, to me, seems like a gross simplification. Especially for philosophical constructs that we all accept without question. Take morality: there is no such thing as good or evil, but we’re taught it because it’s the easiest way for a child to understand the world without a wooly explanation, and to help us comprehend some of the more horrific acts we have committed. Yet, how do we tell what is done with bad intent? We’re the only creatures who seem to act upon selfish impulses beyond mere attempts at survival.

In Pan, we can visualize the marriage of the part of us which is very much a part of nature, and the part of us which wants to be more than that. In truth, it’s all the same. We’re all great horny musicians.

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*Completely off topic but worth sharing: some dude at Microsoft said in a podcast that the human mind is still at version 1.0. It was developed on the savannah of Africa and hasn’t changed much. We’re wired to fear creatures that look like the predators we used to have, to enjoy procreation in hopes of having enough offspring to continue, to crave foods high in sugar for the energy and to eat as much as possible because tomorrow may have less food, and to yearn for the company of other humans because we can better defend predators when in groups. Thousands of years later, everything we do is still defined by these rudimentary specifications. Think about that for a moment: you, with your stocks and your smartphones and your sneakers are still acting like you’re trying to survive against impossible odds in the wilderness of Africa.

Sure, there’s already a post about the Beijing Olympics. But I’m not a big sports fan, so my take on the US gymnastics teams, for example, shouldn’t be taken as my absolute opinion. For example, I didn’t know that the men’s team lost some of their best members yet got a medal; while the women’s team was considered the top contender, only now everyone thinks the Chinese team is the best in the world.

But do know a little more about culture and economics. And China is on display right now. The Olympics organizers are working fiercely to hide the negative and unpretty aspects of Beijing and China, but there’s a lot of people in the world who care enough about the welfare of poor and disadvantaged Chinese that it can’t be completely hidden.

In the US, China is presented in the press as a competitor to America, a rising power that will overtake us much in the same way as Japan was presented in the 80s…and except for Blade Runner  and Neuromancer, that didn’t quite happen. In fact, Japan has been battling deflation and awful credit problems ever since.

Will China turn out the same way? Probably not. But we in the US both overestimate and underestimate China’s future in the world*.

Overestimating China

It’s easy to oversimplify the Chinese economy and think that all those big numbers mean that it’s over for the dominance of the American economy. For one thing, it appears that our economy is faltering at the moment – but take a step back; most people think of the economy in the short-term. Hell, the media looks at the economy short-term, so reports of unemployment, a collapsing housing market, and a bear stock marketing are played up as being the end of our way of life. What’s really happing – and the most fiscally prudent way of looking at it – is that our economy is restructuring. When unemployment goes up every once in a while, that’s a good thing. Companies are correcting their overstaffing and trying to streamline their business. Having the price of homes drop significantly in certain markets is a good thing, because they’re overpriced as it is. Rising food prices is a little worrying though; cheap food is always a good thing. But, for most households food is still a very small expense compared to income. Our grandparents and great-grandparents had to spend a larger portion of their earnings on food than we could ever imagine.

The reason I’m not worried about the American economy is because it’s very likely the most efficient economy in the world. American workers are highly productive (though I know a few people who could challenge that assumption), and most of us enjoy an incredible amount of material wealth. We only think we’re suffering because some people always seem to have even more. But look at it this way: even the poor have televisions and fairly cheap food. I’m not discounting the very poor who don’t even have those luxuries, but that’s a problem without a fix**; a very large swath of average-earning people in the US have access to things which are essentially luxuries (extensive education, sophisticated labor-saving devices, enough forms of entertainment to keep people constantly occupied, etc).

Conversely, the Chinese economy is very inefficient. There are aspects that are improving, like transportation infrastructure and education; but the economy is still very dependent on agriculture and manufacturing, which stopped being major components in the US long ago. There is a staggering number of people, largely hidden from foreign observers, who are just barely getting by growing crops and livestock; while others are just a step better working in what would be called a ‘sweatshop’ over here.

But the biggest thing holding the Chinese economy back is a free flow of information. I may overstate the issue because I find information management fascinating, but what makes makes for an efficient allocation of resources is an unrestricted flow of information about the location and strengths of resources. That’s what makes the American economy so efficient: an investor can do pretty well relying on free resources like Yahoo Finance and a plethora of finance blogs and resources, without having to spend anything on the really expensive institutional tools. Or that anyone with some sense and an internet connection can find enough free information to start a successful business.

Underestimating China

Most of these issues are short-term, and can be easily fixed over time. Providing things go in a general path, Agriculture will be come a smaller part of the Chinese economy, and the flow of information will get better. Think of China today as America in the late 19th century. The opportunities to make a lot of money are great and that the only direction most people have to go is up. The difference is that China is much, much bigger; there’s no frontier (it’s an area that has seen civilization for thousands of years), so there isn’t an easy-to-grasp place where people can go and start new lives***; and that  many of the restrictions on people’s freedoms are artificial (the government restricts information, people are limited in what they can do and where they can live, etc.).

But – and this is a big one – the relative lack of economic development in China also means there’s many people who not only dream of a better life, they have the drive to achieve it. All those kids growing up on poor farms see that they can have it better, so they get an education or just go out and start making money. It’s that hunger that really grows an economy. I bet there’s a lot of boys and girls with that hunger that will make China a force to be reckoned with in the future. There’s plenty of people in the US with that certain hunger, but most haven’t experienced the lack of wealth that many of their Chinese counterparts have, the kind of poverty that makes some people achieve great things.

There are a few developments which could derail China’s growth. For one thing, if China had an efficient economy as the US, there simply isn’t enough resources on Earth to accommodate that. China also has a pretty uncooperative government for the type of growth that people want. The sort of openness that has pushed China this far, can be easily be hampered by a government too concerned for the survival of itself to give its citizens the freedom they need to be even more successful. It’s those kind of fringe groups that the Chinese government is restricting provide the foment necessary to keep the culture fresh and dynamic. One only has to look at China’s history to see what happens if it’s taken to an extreme: when during the late Ming dynasty (I think), China slowed down its trade and communication routes with the outside world, which led to their falling far behind European economy and culture, creating the situation of upheaval in the early-20th century and which led to the establishment of the current Communist government.

So will China be as big and powerful as America, or will it derail and morph into something else? I don’t know, it could go either way. China has lots of people hungry for a better life, but a frightening restriction of information. It’s a good time to be Chinese and smart.

*It’s an odd feeling using one word – ‘China’ – for 1.3 billion people.
**What I mean is that no one has ever come up with a successful way to eliminate some people from suffering economically.
***This is something I find fascinating about American history. By having a place where a person could go where there’s literally nothing but what you can make of it, was a powerful force in America. It’s what made us emphasize the individual, to encourage risk-taking, and to enforce those same freedoms into law for the future. But if there’s no physical frontier, where is a person to go and start over? The best suggestion I’ve heard is entrepreneurship: there’s always an untapped or underutilized market somewhere, and you can be your own boss and make your own rules. Hopefully we’ll start colonizing space, and then that will be the real frontier.

Not many people read books for entertainment anymore. There may have been a slight uptick when Harry Potter was still new, but most books sold now are textbooks, self-help and business books.

For all of those who haven’t picked up a book for pleasure, I understand completely. The number of different forms of entertainment available, not to mention the sheer quantity just waiting to be consumed – is staggering and nearly impossible to comprehend. With movies, engrossing television shows, fistfuls of music recordings, video games, phones with games, the web, online forums, and any number of hobbies now available thanks to the wealth of most Americans – who’d want to use their imagination to bring mere words to life?

But for those of us who do read novels, short stories, plays, poems, and the like for enjoyment – we’re a hard lot to sell books to. It’s because we’re also sharing our time with other entertainment, in addition to living our lives. What’s a publisher to do?

What seems to have happened, I think, is that publishers are picking books for publications that will be read by the largest reading demographic group. And the largest group…is women. Most new books appear to b geared toward woman.

Equality, feminism, sexism, and all that aside; most women tend to like stories in a certain way that don’t normally ring with men*. I wish I could put what makes these stories different, just that I can sense it. They don’t affect me the way that stories normally written by men affect me. And it seems to be true with other men.

I first noticed it when I started reading more science fiction by female writers. They just…didn’t give the details that I was used to reading and wanted to know about. It reminds me of when I was young and was at my uncle’s house; her daughter (the only girl cousin I have, out of 6 on both sides) had a toy Volkswagen Beetle. And as my brothers and I were playing with her, each one of us went to the toy car and tried to open the hood, but it wouldn’t move. The hood was not made to be opened. Because it was a pink Barbie Beetle. Girls who would want to open the hood of a toy car don’t play with pink Barbie Beetles.

But this isn’t about the differences of the sexes, I’m talking about literature. There is something I call Masculine Literature. It’s literature with a masculine bent. It’s nearly impossible to describe, but I know it exists. It doesn’t matter if the main characters are male or female, it’s something deeper. Unfortunately, hardly any new fiction is masculine. It’s feminine. And I just can’t wrap my mind around feminine literature most of the time. So I’m stuck reading old stories, because I can’t find any new masculine fiction.

Off the top of my head, here are examples of masculine literature: Invisible Man, Ham on Rye, Madame Bovary, A Season In Hell, “The Waste Land”, Ulysses, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, White Teeth, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Fuck Up, and Vanity Fair.

*I’m only talking about Western Civilization, specifically in America; so your mileage may vary.