Can Ebooks Save Literature?

So, I was sitting on a patio this afternoon reading a rather large book and listening to some entrepreneurs at the next table discussing their book distribution start up.  I felt a little bad for them, as they were saying things like "Who wants to buy a book from Amazon?" and "Amazon books just come in a brown box, if we have cool packaging people will pay more!"  As someone who buys a lot of book I couldn't help but think: 1.) Me, and everyone who reads a lot, and 2.) Who the fuck cares what kind of box it comes in.  The other thing that hit me, as my arm started to get sore from holding the book and I placed it on the table to read without having to support the weight (I know I need to work out more - fuck you), was how odd it is to still be reading full books in the age of Ebooks.

I still read books, with paper and ink, I read Ebooks once in a while, but I prefer real books.  I'm a luddite and I know that when I'm old I will be a dinosaur for it, but I can't help it, and Ebook just isn't as satisfying to me.  But I totally understand the appeal of Ebooks.  They are lighter, cheaper and more convenient than conventional books.  You can buy them from anywhere, you don't need any more storage than your tablet or Ereader, and they don't weigh down your backpack when you are travelling.  So I totally get them, I just don't like them.

This afternoon it struck me that one of the best things about Ebooks is that the ones that are older than 100 years you can get for free.  Free I tells ya!!!  And I got to thinking: could this be what saves old books?  I'm a guy who really likes to read old books.  With few notable exceptions I like to read books whose authors have been dead for a long time.  I will post someday about my theories as to why, but it's not the point of this post.  So, with all these free classics floating around people must be gobbling them up, I say to myself.  Sitting outside, enjoying a beer, my mind starts wandering, I've totally given up on my book at this point, are people reading more classics now?  I thought, maybe the classics will have a renaissance,  maybe people will start discussing why Raskolnikov felt he could kill that old bat, and why Inspector Javert couldn't just let Jean Valjean alone.

So, in a bit of a state, not only due to having been drinking beer for a change, I paid my bill and headed up to my apartment (I was at the Welly just downstairs from my apartment), and flipped open my laptop to search what we the most downloaded Ebooks, regardless of whether paid or free and discovered that the top two on Amazon are both "50 Shades of Grey"!  Goddammit.  Ok, it's official.  I give up on society.  I mean I guess women need to masterbate (ha! my computer thinks masterbate  isn't a word) over something, but jeeze....

To a great man.

So, this isn't what I am very good at.  I think, if you'll permit me, I am good at a few things.  I think I can lighten the mood at a gathering with a relatively well time jab at someone (oftentimes myself).  I think I can offer advice in the standard situations, the absent boyfriend, the judgmental girlfriend, the overbearing parents, and maybe even as we get older, the rambunctious children.  I think I, as a reasonable man (get off my case), am a decent dispenser of half decent advice.  But in situations like this, I find myself out of sorts.  How does an otherwise healthy, lively, and genuinely nice guy, of 40 years, find himself dead?  The short answer is: I don't know.  Well, I suppose I know what happened...after spending the evening with one of my best friends, Ryan, I have been filled in on the details.  But HOW does is happen?  Let's start off by saying: It shouldn't, and I need to change the subject.

Roy was a real nice guy, and that's not a title I just throw around.  There are a lot of friends I have that are decent human beings, but not too many of them are real nice guys (sorry dudes, but yo now it's true).  I got to know Roy while I was working at a place uptown.  He was like a surrogate family member to a family I happened to hold in (the highest) high regard, and I got to know him through them.  Over the years this fine gentleman charmed me, not only through treating me to drinks, but also through treating me to his outlooks on life.  As an avid reader I connected with him right away; there are very few bartenders in town who can debate the finer points of Kilgour Trout's philosophy, while also discussing Ignatius J. Reilly's popcorn consumption - Roy was one of those few and he took the time, regardless of how packed his bar was, or how packed my section was, to discuss it in detail, always with a luminescent smile.

We spent times in various bars in north york with friends discussing literature and travel, and while admittedly, I wasn't his best friend - there were many who spent more time with him than me, or had known him longer - I aways felt a warm spot for this guy.  He was 40, very well read and very well travelled and 100% enjoyed the life he had carved out for himself (how many among us can say the same?).

Ryan and I talked about Roy tonight, for most of the night.  We talked about what it was that people took pride in, where their life was concerned.  What was it that really drove us?  For some it's an afterlife, for some it is living life to fullest, and for some it's about leaving behind children who carry on one's legacy.  But as we talked, it felt like to me, that in the last seconds of my life, I would like to look back on it, and say "Yup, that'll do!".  Not that I hope to have the greatest life ever lived, but that I hope to have a a life that I was proud to have lived.  In my world view you only get a second to reflect before it is all in the past (becoming a was instead of an is), but if I was him, in that last second, as it slipped away, I would have looked back and said: "Yup, that'll do!".

I hope Roy found peace in the end.  And I hope that my good friends who are going to miss him take a bit of solace in that peace.  And at the end of the day they remember a gentleman who took life seriously enough to make the most of it, but never too seriously that he got bogged down in it.  I look forward to raising a glass with you all this week to a good, scratch that, a great man.  See you soon.

On Going Batshit Crazy

I recently went to a performance of The Double by Dostoevsky at a theatre in Toronto.  I'm not a huge theatre fan, it isn't normally something I would spend my time/money on, but since I am a big Dostoevsky fan and my wife and I happened to see an ad while exiting a local bar, I thought, what the hell.  We got to the theatre separately, I was a few minutes earlier because I had to pick up the tickets and me wife needed to walk my parents back to their car.  My parents aren't invalids or anything but it seems nice to make sure they make it back to their car when they come down to the city to spend time with us.  Once I had picked up our tickets and used the restroom my wife walked in and we got settled in our seats to what was a very unique and entertaining take on The Double.

For those of you not familiar with the story you can check here or you can take my word for it that the story is about a man, Golyadkin, who while going crazy, sees a double of himself outperforming him in society and generally making his own life miserable.  The hero spirals into madness and eventually is carted away by his doctor.  The original is quite dark with glimpses of humour, but the performance was quite humorous with glimpses of darkness.  We both enjoyed the performance thoroughly and spent much of the next day recounting it's finer points and chuckling about poor Golyadkin's reaction to his situation.

Cut to this evening and I was at a party for one of my good friend's birthdays.  He is 33 today and seems to be having a great time of it.  I reconnected with another friend of mine that I haven't see in a few months and we started catching up.  She informed me about her Grandmother who is in the process of losing her mind.  Now, I likely could have been more sympathetic; in fact I think I may have downplayed it too much, and subsequently acted a bit like an ass - I do that sometimes.  This aside, it got me thinking about a topic that I often find myself pondering: what is it like to go crazy?  And is it even possible to have an anser to that question?

I've thought on more than one occasion, often prompted by literature and movies about the prospect of losing my faculties.  What would it be like?  If it like being really drunk?  Does one have moments of clarity in one's madness?  Is it frightening?  Is one able to distinguish when they are "snapping out of it" as one can when truly waking up from a bad dream?  These are all questions that I really don't know the answer to, but am endlessly fascinated by.

I'm going to put forward a thought that I think will be unpopular, maybe even more so than my usual thoughts that land me in hot water with friends and family, and that thought is this: if I was given the opportunity, I would like to go stark raving mad for a few years.  Now, I am 100% sure that one can't choose to go crazy, in fact the very thought may be a contradiction in terms, but if it weren't a logical impossibility I think it would very interesting to - temporarily - go crazy.

The experience of it happening may be completely lost on the sufferer while experiencing it, but it seems to me those moments of clarity would be so rich, and shocking, when they came that there wouldn't be another experience to parallel it.  Also, the matter of "being taken care of" for a few years at an asylum, with only books and one's thoughts to keep you company could be a very interesting proposition as well.  With any luck one wouldn't land at a Cuckoo's Nest like facility but would spend time in a safe environment where the staff cared for them.  Given this condition I think it would be a very interesting experience.  And given the famous people who have ended up this way, it seems that I would be in good company.

5 Best Things About Coming Back From A Long-ish Vacation

My wife and I just recently got back from a great 3 weeks away.  We were in Russia, Ukraine and Poland.  It was fantastic, I think I gained 10 pounds from dumplings alone and don't even get me started on the amount of moonshine I had, I'm surprised I can still see.  But one of the purest pleasures of traveling which we have all experienced is stepping in the front door to your own home for the first time in a while.  For me, the below are the top five things I love about coming home.

5.) It smells like home.

One of the subtle things I like about traveling is that different countries smell differently.  It has to do with the plants that grow there, and the kinds of food people eat, it's proximity to water; all these things add up to give different areas of the world different smells.  Sometimes they can be jarring and according to Isaac Asimov we aren't supposed to talk about it.  Anyway, these foriegn smells make that first step into your own home all the better.  I have no idea what scents my wife uses to keep our home smelling the way it does, and fuck knows I certainly don't freshen the air, but our place smells great and it's very nice coming home after being away from it.

4.) Water from the tap.

Depending on where you are coming from this may not be an issue, but after brushing my teeth with bottled water for a few weeks I absolutely love the convenience of being able to use the tap.  Now, some people would say that you will be fine just brushing your teeth with the tap water in most places, but with so little vacation every year who wants to risk being sick for it? And that doesn't even mention having a big glass of water to drink right from the tap - love it.  The first thing I do whenever I get back from a trip is take a pint of glass from the tap and down it.

3.) Your own bed

I don't think this one needs elaboration.  Unless your bed sucks, it is 100% better than any hotel bed, even really nice hotels.

2.) Literacy

Although it's fun getting off a plane in an Arab country, or Asia, or in my most recent case Russia, and not being able to read the words written everywhere - it is a really interesting feeling to be surrounded by signs and ads that you don't understand.  But it also REALLY makes you appreciate being able to read so easily when you make it home.  When walking around your home town you take for granted being able to read everything around, but for the first day or two back, you notice how convenient it is again.

1.) Home cooking

Food in other countries is interesting and often delicious, but nothing beats the food coked at your home.  When I was growing up my mom made (and still does) killer lasagna, and now my wfe makes a ton of great food and when we are away I miss it.

Anyone else who has some interesting points about coming please share them with me, I would love to hear other people's points of view.

Steve Jobs RIP

So, Steve jobs died today.  I was at a concert and the opening act mentioned it - something about Steve Jobs being the only reason he had been able to do the things he did.  At first I thought it was a poorly thought out joke, I turned to my buddy that I was with, and he said: "Is that true?  Cause if so I would expect that my phone (iPhone) would be blowing up..."

I googled it.

It was true.

Let me say here that when a guy dies in the prime of his life (professional life in this case) it's unnerving.  Jobs was a guy who changed the tech industry.  He fostered the release of products that literally changed the way we communicate.  A friend, and coworker, of mine has on her email signature from her phone "iphoned".  Super cute and gets down to the fact that the iPhone (among Apple's many other innovations) was a game changer, and in this case a verb unto itself.  So I think anyone would be remiss in not recognizing that Steve Jobs was a cultural icon that will be sorely missed by investment bankers and hipsters alike.  Kudos to him.

What I take issue with in the story - and you know I need to take issue with something - is that throughout my twitter feed I saw comparisons of Jobs and Edison....ya, the Edison who invented the lightbulb.  Now, as I have said above, Jobs was a giant of a CEO in the tech industry and was likely a driving force behind the smartphone revolution.  But, what we miss from this, and are misled into thinking by comments comparing him to Edison is that he didn't INVENT these innovations, just helped them through the corporate red tape to bring them to the market.

Are we so blinded by business success that we confuse CEOs with inventors?  There are very few CEOs who have invented something of use in modern society.  The people who invent new products and create groundbreaking innovations are frequently engineers and scientists who are grossly underpaid and under appreciated.  Businesses help to provide the funding and bring visionaries together to create new products, subsequently they own the rights to the patents for those products, but PLEASE, let's not forget, the Steve's Jobs of the world (or Eric Schmit's) don't create innovative products, they work with people who do.

Something to keep in mind while setting up your shrine to Jobs this week.

Life In Mexico

Now, I know what you are thinking.  Mexico, as a travel destination who gives a crap.  I'm not super interested in girls going wild, nor am I interested in drinking myself into a come on tequila.  More sympathetic, I could not be.  As anyone who knows me can attest I usually prefer my travels to be a little more cultural...or at least I like to be able to tell myself I am pursuing culture while I get wasted in far flung lands.  So, when the wife suggested Mexico I stifled a chuckle.

Well, she explained to me how a beautiful migration takes place into the gulf just off Cancun.  Not only do scantily clad ladies show up and shake their bits for attention but other foes of life also show up and make a much subtler exposition.  The whalesharks show up in the waters off Cancun in the summer and drive a whole industry of nature lovers to brave the waves off of party central.

I guess I should explain that normally when I travel I like nature.  I am a real fan of going and checking out landscape.  I love to go to places that look nothing like anywhere I have been and just soak it in.  I have never been the hugest wildlife watcher.  I have seen whales in the pacific and grizzlies in Yellowstone, but it has never really been something I sought out.  But I have, for a few years, wanted to swim with whalesharks...something about the "gentle giants" - 30 - 40 ft fish that would swim by without a care in the world always attracted me.

So, we set off to Mexico, with a  few good friends in tow, and had a look.

I can safely say that swimming with the whalesharks was the #1 travel highlight of my life.  There is something about a creature the size of a bus swimming by you and feeling completely safe that, for lack of a better word, blows your mind.  These fish are easily big enough to tip the boat over that you showed up in, but are so uninterested in you that it leaves you with a sense of awe....sort of like how a person wouldn't be interested if there were 5 or 6 squirrels hanging around them while they had lunch.

Living in the city you are constantly surrounded by things that are dead - the sidewalk, the street, every building you see - and there is something really refreshing about being surrounded by life.  If you are lucky enough to be surrounded by 10 tonnes of fish, who want nothing more than to enjoy a snack with or without an audience, you may get a sense of why nature, and life is so special.  And hopefully, it will give you just the tiniest sense of wonder.

Earthquakes and the Mayans

Ok, so we just felt a minor earthquake here in Toronto. Buildings shook a bit, and people got a little nervous. Which is fair. We had a similar earthquake last year, which was a bit stronger, but again just a minor earthquake...more of a tremor really. When these earthquakes happen in Toronto (and I suspect anywhere that earthquakes aren't common) people start in with the whole 2012 nonsense. To which I love to point out that nobody listens to any Mexicans predictions on the future but for some reason a lot of people get wrapped up in the predictions of a long dead society.

Now, I just got back from Mexico and checked out a bunch of the Mayan ruins with my wife and our friends. The buildings were nice, and the bas reliefs were cool. But, while we were there I couldn't help thinking that if the Mayans were able to predict the future, why didn't they see their own demise coming? I mean, I think a couple of people in central America speak Mayan still, but no one would claim they are a thriving culture anymore. But once someone (I have no idea who by the way) starts talking about how the Mayans predicted in 2012 that the world would end, a bunch of people totally bought into it.

Earthquakes happen. They happen all over the world. Ditto for tornadoes, volcanoes and mudslides. They are not more common then they ever were (although there is evidence to suggest that tornadoes might be, which could be associated with climate change, but since that is a hoax, it must be a Mayan apocalypse) but with the increasing amount of connectivity amoung people now we are more aware of them. Don't believe, check out your Facebook feed today - the Eastern Seaboard is alight with #earthquakes.

Just a little food for thought.