A Gilded Planet

Imagine what it's like to be the book critic for GQ . Now imagine yourself writing these words: Every year, I read over a hundred books. This means I polish off somewhere between two and three books a week. I'm not saying that to brag (okay, I am), but I really believe that anyone can make time to read. Chances are you wish you read more, since everyone feels this way (except me, I’m amazing).  Of course you included those parenthetical interruptions in an attempt to be amusing. It's funny to express a high opinion of yourself because bragging is generally considered to be rude and annoying. Now imagine you write the rest of the listicle without including a line like "getting a job as a professional book critic" as a good way to get yourself to read more. You are Kevin Nguyen. This is what your life is like.  

Charles Murray is a white supremacist who built his academic career on pseudoscience claiming to prove that black people are intellectually inferior. His kind - the reactionary pedant - was best described last year by Rick Perlstein. For some reason, PBS found it worthwhile to publish a truly idiotic BuzzFeed-style quiz developed by Murray : Do you live in a bubble?  There exists a new upper class that’s completely disconnected from the average white American and American culture at large , argues Charles Murray, a libertarian political scientist and author. Take this 25-question quiz, based on a similar one published in Murray’s 2012 book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010,” to find out just how thick your bubble is. Well, how about it? Are you disconnected from the average white American and American culture at large? Slippery professional bigots like Murray get away with this kind of chicanery all the time. Murray has hoodwinked PBS into merging t...

What makes blood shine in the sunlight? I write of the poisons first in my life, then in my poetry, last in my computer. I wrote about ingrown hairs and diamonds before. I got paid for that. Everything that pays is false. Poison is the only truth. I developed magpie behaviors at some point in my life, maybe back when I used to pace around the pool for hours on end. I always liked walking. It’s a healthful activity. It’s medicine. Too much of it is poison, and that’s how I cooked my brain. I’ll steal a metaphor from here, a stylish phrasing from there. Add it all up and it’s some stroke of genius. It takes a genius to go to war and a fool to make peace. A rambling weird piece of nonsense is just what the doctor ordered. She ordered it from room service and took a nap, only waking when the knocking outside her door grew desperate. A doctor knows something about poisons. Place the pellet under the tongue and let it dissolve. I try to assemble thoughts and everything falls apart. They rac...

Snow Crash  by  Neal Stephenson  would have worked a whole lot better as a video game. There are countless fight sequences, chase scenes, and detailed descriptions of weapons and gear. Some of levels - ahem, settings I mean - are remarkably imaginative and would be very fun to play around in. Though many gamers don't go in for this kind of thing as much as I once did, the interactions between Hiro and the Librarian as well as some of the more colorful side characters would have entertained and inspired me quite a lot in the manner of backstory/literary/historical content heavy games such as Deus Ex and Alpha Centauri that I loved as an adolescent. Unfortunately, Neal Stephenson made Snow Crash a novel, not a video game, although apparently his original goal was to publish it as a 'computer-generated graphic novel.' That sounds like it would have been a much more fascinating project. It also would have obviated the need for Stephenson to type up so many badly written ...

A few years ago I shared a list of Wikipedia pages I've created. Well, I've written a bunch more since then and so I thought I'd do a bit of an update. And I may ask myself, Robbie, what are you doing with your life? I'm just having fun with it. Here they are: The Faraway Nearby - A book by one of my favorite authors Rebecca Solnit. In this one she combines memoir, literary criticism, travelogue in another dazzling hybrid. White Girls - Hilton Als' very peculiar collection of essays about notable white girls, including Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor and of course Michael Jackson. The Funkees  - The Funkees were an afro-rock/funk group that came out of Nigeria in the 70s, contemporaneous with Fela Kuti but with tighter songwriting. Day Wave - Day Wave is an indie rock band. Shhh don't tell Wikipedia's schoolmarmish editors but the members of the band are close friends of mine from school days. Gabriel Joaquim dos Santos - This dude is a supe...

Chris Evans Chris Evan is perfect for the role of Captain America because just like Captain America, Chris Evan is an utterly boring shell. He's a hollow white male mascot with nothing to say. Therefore he's a perfect avatar to represent diversity in Hollywood circa 2016. Sam Worthington Speaking of avatar, Sam Worthington starred in Avatar. The highest-grossing movie of all time. Everyone saw  Avatar , right? I will remind you, Avatar (apparently) starred Sam Worthington, at least if we're going to believe IMDb.com. How would you describe Sam Worthinton? Can you remember anything about him? Anything at all? Well, here's one thing I can say about Sam Worthinston. By virtue of his being a total non-entity, Sam Worthington is the only actor capable of making Giovanni Ribisi believable as a dynamic, menacing villain. Giovanni Ribisi. From Friends . Aaron Taylor-Johnson The new Godzilla movie was going to be great until Bryan Cranston died 15 minutes...