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Sep. 12th, 2002 09:52 amI thought some of this might end yesterday.
I suspect that most of you think I'm talking about something going *kaboom* or somesuch. Rest assured, I'm not.
Rewind about 11 years. I'm trapped at a rest area on the New York Thruway about 45 minutes south of Albany on the night before Thanksgiving because my car's electrical system has crapped out. I'm waiting for a friend of mine to come up from Long Island to rescue me with a new alternator for my car when I see someone from school. I explain my plight and he hands me a copy of Catch-22 so that I might have something to do.
I finally got around to reading it about two years later. All the time I was reading it, I was frustrated, irritated, and angry. With my living situation, my job, people all around me. Then I finished the book. Yossarian escaped the madness and as cliched as it sounds, it was like a weight had been lifted from my back. I felt better. There was hope in the world. So we have a precedent that occasionally, books can strike a resonance with me and *really* hit me. The feelings that Yossarian had, I identified with them, and I made them my own. And then I knew that same freedom that he did.
Back in 1998, I started reading a comic called Transmetropolitan. For those of you not familiar with it, it's a story about a reporter trying to take down the President. He's got his reasons, and as time progresses, he's given more reasons. He lives in a world where the powers that be are doing everything to ensure that they keep their power simply for the sake of having it. By the book's normal schedule, #60 was supposed to come out yesterday. The final issue. And hopefully, some resolution for me. It didn't.
I can't really claim that Transmet has made me any more cynical than I normally am, but I can't help but wonder about a lot of things because of it. I wonder if perhaps the current administration really did have credible warnings about the 9/11 attacks. I wonder whether they dismissed any such information as the leaked plot of (to steal some references) a Tom Clancy novel or the latest Bruckheimer bomb.
And occasionally, I wonder if they consciously chose to just let it happen.
Yes, I realize that a comment like this has just dropped me in the camp of every conspiracy theorist that believes in the grassy knoll. But remember folks, I'm not accusing, just wondering. There's plenty of stuff to wonder about on all sides of the fence.
Would I be wondering about all of this if Transmet #60 had in fact, come out yesterday like it was supposed to? Can a book affect a person this much? A comic book?
An idea?
I suspect that most of you think I'm talking about something going *kaboom* or somesuch. Rest assured, I'm not.
Rewind about 11 years. I'm trapped at a rest area on the New York Thruway about 45 minutes south of Albany on the night before Thanksgiving because my car's electrical system has crapped out. I'm waiting for a friend of mine to come up from Long Island to rescue me with a new alternator for my car when I see someone from school. I explain my plight and he hands me a copy of Catch-22 so that I might have something to do.
I finally got around to reading it about two years later. All the time I was reading it, I was frustrated, irritated, and angry. With my living situation, my job, people all around me. Then I finished the book. Yossarian escaped the madness and as cliched as it sounds, it was like a weight had been lifted from my back. I felt better. There was hope in the world. So we have a precedent that occasionally, books can strike a resonance with me and *really* hit me. The feelings that Yossarian had, I identified with them, and I made them my own. And then I knew that same freedom that he did.
Back in 1998, I started reading a comic called Transmetropolitan. For those of you not familiar with it, it's a story about a reporter trying to take down the President. He's got his reasons, and as time progresses, he's given more reasons. He lives in a world where the powers that be are doing everything to ensure that they keep their power simply for the sake of having it. By the book's normal schedule, #60 was supposed to come out yesterday. The final issue. And hopefully, some resolution for me. It didn't.
I can't really claim that Transmet has made me any more cynical than I normally am, but I can't help but wonder about a lot of things because of it. I wonder if perhaps the current administration really did have credible warnings about the 9/11 attacks. I wonder whether they dismissed any such information as the leaked plot of (to steal some references) a Tom Clancy novel or the latest Bruckheimer bomb.
And occasionally, I wonder if they consciously chose to just let it happen.
Yes, I realize that a comment like this has just dropped me in the camp of every conspiracy theorist that believes in the grassy knoll. But remember folks, I'm not accusing, just wondering. There's plenty of stuff to wonder about on all sides of the fence.
Would I be wondering about all of this if Transmet #60 had in fact, come out yesterday like it was supposed to? Can a book affect a person this much? A comic book?
An idea?
