4/3/06
I just wish I knew why I feel so down this evening. It hardly has anything to do with having serious stomach troubles on Sunday night.

Guess it all started when I decided to read a book that maribou lent me. It's a compilation of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. First and foremost, the comic embodies despair. It's not depressing but it's just full of despair. Needless despair. Plus the way Pekar ends his stories is usually him getting on mass transit. Maybe he's trying to convey that these issues really don't bother him but that style of storytelling is like masturbating with aluminum foil. Reminds me of when I was a kid and would watch The Jeffersons. The episode's story would come together and after the commercial the credits would be playing and I'd be left thinking "What the fuck?"

Now my opinion of Pekar's work is tainted by the fact that I started reading it when I had a splitting headache. I began reading his work thinking it'd be worthwhile and it just ended up feeling like some mouthbreathing cuss of a person was pestering me for a quarter and wouldn't take no for an answer. Heck, back in the heyday of the early to mid nineties where black and white comics boomed like it was 1967 all over again I figured Pekar wouldn't be getting all of this acclaim for nothing.

The emperor has no clothes. The guy does a comic blog and he's not very good at it in the first place. Maybe it's the fact that R.Crumb contributes his work which puts asses in the seats and it's pure inertia and peer pressure which keeps folks from being critical of the workk.

Since I finished Ghost Brigades, I figured I'd start reading The Brief History of the Dead. Either whatever's fussing around in the back of my head coupled with American Splendor sitting like a bitter lead weight in the pit of my stomach just made The Brief History of the Dead come across as being genuinely sad.

Here's the kicker, I was planning on re-reading Earth Abides but after my original reaction and breakdown after reading about Ish's last years I don't think I'm that stable.

Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi is a solid B or B+ when it comes to grading the story. Basically Scalzi shows the other side of the coin when it comes to the special forces, a.k.a. ghost brigades, training just like Old Man's War covered the indoctrination of the Colonial Defense Force's army.

Scalzi gives more information about his universe and humanity's position within the greater scheme of things. The story he presents is compelling even if one character comes across as a well-meaning Bond villain giving a soliloquy to the doomed protagonist. What keeps Ghost Brigades from being an A like Old Man's War is the final chapter. Unfortunately discussing the final chapter is spoiling the entire book. To be cryptic, it just seems to be a cop-out. The only person whom I respect and reads heptapod.org and is going to read Ghost Brigades hasn't gotten around to it because Ghost Brigades is on hold at the local library and maribou is currently plowing through Coyote.