Great writing

From "Europeans Write: Are You Americans Crazy?"

The rationale for the federal bailout plan is that these companies are too huge, too intertwined in so many areas of the economy, to risk them going under. It's like the Italian government saying that the Mafia is too big and thus too important to the Italian economy (read: jobs, contribution$) to let them fail, so we'll just prop them up, look the other way while the looting and violence takes place, and roll along on our merry way.

Yes, of course, these corporations are huge, sprawling, multi-headed behemoths, but the politicians never want to examine how they got to the point of untouchability. How many times have we seen how deregulating industry has resulted in economic and/or social disaster? Anybody remember Enron? The S&L collapse of the '80s (in which a compromised McCain was right in the middle, by the way)? And now Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? And Lehman Brothers? And AIG? And Morgan Stanley? Et al.

The ghost of the 1930s Great Depression is hovering over the present crisis. Indeed, so fast is the house of cards tumbling down, with more major corporations expected to follow, that the politicians, regardless of party, are falling all over themselves to create an institutional feather cushion to catch these failing enterprises as they crash toward insolvency. These are socialism-like measures, as was true in FDR's New Deal days as well, designed to forestall another Great Depression and maybe even revolution. Except these socialist-seeming solutions are not designed to aid the bulk of the population, the middle-class and poor, but to provide aid and sustenance to the wealthy titans of industry. The rest of us will be expected to pay the bill, probably more than a trillion dollars when all is said and done, since the plan also may include bailing out troubled foreign banks who dived into the giant profit-making machine in the U.S. (This massive federal bailout is being considered at the same time when the cost for America's current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is approaching the trillion-dollar mark.)

...Great writing.

Great writing tied into human experience

This is the opening to an Onion AV Club article that is just fantastic:

"During a recent vacation, I became strangely addicted to the slow-motion train wreck that is A&E's The Two Coreys. In my favorite episode, Corey Feldman, concerned that his tragicomic bud Corey Haim has become a hopeless pill-popper, convinces Todd Bridges and Pauly Shore to confront the lesser Corey about his substance abuse. As Bridges and Shore contemplate the task at hand, they're overcome with a profound sense of life's ridiculousness. How on Earth did they get there? What unspeakable crime did they commit in a past life to merit this karmic mind-fuck? I'm pretty sure at least one of them was Hitler, or at least a high-level Nazi. Even Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman found the prospect of a semi-intervention featuring Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman mind-boggingly insane. You know your life has spun out of control when Pauly fucking Shore is lecturing you about responsibility.

I know the feeling. There are times in everyone's life when the randomness of fate smacks you dead in the face. Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace are/were masters at chronicling the often ugly, sometimes sublime preposterousness of the way we live. They allow readers to take a step back and see the things we all take for granted in a new, disorientingly foreign light, to see the bizarre in the familiar and the familiar in the bizarre."

To me, this is a truly interesting point and a connection that I find absolutely fabulous. Truly great writers (DeLillo, Vonnegut, and Palahnuik, who was not mentioned here but without a doubt belongs) can make the bizarre seem familiar and the familiar seem bizarre.

However, he goes about reaching this conclusion by watching a very unfamiliar scene unfold (albeit on TV). It's really really interesting to think about how people with such different interests and experiences live a totally different reality than us and it can be jarring to be a guest to view human experience from a totally different lense.

Two examples really pop up in my mind where this exact thought has popped in my head:

1) Way back in high school, at a Five Iron Frenzy (very very talented and amazing but ultra-Christian ska band) show, the opener got in a really terrible car accident on the way over. They had a fill-in opener and the show went on smoothly, but when Five Iron Frenzy got on, they asked the audience to pray and take a moment of silence for the band and their families. I'm far from religious, but the power in that room was intense and felt palpable. Essentially the black sheep in a room full of white lambs, it was really amazing to watch people engage their God and to charge the room with emotion and hope. I understood why religion has played such a formidable role in history and could see why it was such a vital part in people's lives.

2) Concert last weekend. I went to see Counting Crows (who rocked the house) open for Maroon 5 (who inexplicably closed). Counting Crows were fantastic but the crowd was not into at all, they didn't know the songs, and they were rudely talking over the quiet songs. I don't know how many times I heard Adam Durlitz called Sideshow Bob (from the Simpsons). That's all fine and well, but the thing that rocked me was when Counting Crows were over and I was forced to stay a few Maroon 5 songs to see how bad they could really be live. Well the answer is that bad, but that's not what I' m writing about. The audience, which was 95% young girls and couples, really really loved Maroon 5 and knew every word to every song. Not just the big ones. It was amazing to behold. I was struck by how different (See: had bad taste) these people were from the people I encountered on a daily basis and chose to associate with. It wasn't as profound or jarring, but I was struck by the self-selection and asburdity of the situation. I felt like an outsider, like I didn't belong there...

Anyways, that's all I got. Interesting stuff.