After Eugene dumps our narrator, and casually announces he is marrying another girl, causing our narrator to flee from London back to her home town in the US.  She quietly obsesses over her lost love, eventually landing a job on SNL rip-off “Taped but Proud” as a writer; only to have Eugene reappear in her life: sickly wife and child in tow.  Eventually they engage in an affair because our narrator refuses to fall out of love with him.  Everything is all well and good, until it becomes mind-numbingly clear to the narrator, that she is not Eugene’s only extra-marital conquest.  When she finally has the juevos to stand up to this fop, he is instead crushed to death by his own bookshelf.

All in all this is maybe one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, even though the plot synopsis sounds sort of ‘chick-lit’ty.  Steve Martin gave it a beaming review (which yes, is sometimes how I pick up books), and well, it’s well deserved.  A lot of the humor is about academia.  And having been in college for almost a decade, I feel that I can relate to that.  All in all, I feel that it’s a solid book, give it a read.

“I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly”. – Alex Garland; The Beach

Most people who have ever done any back-packing or travelling can agree on one thing: tourists fucking suck. Hell, you can just stay in a tourist-laden area for long enough, and you’ll probably be able to agree. They’re loud and obnoxious, and most of them have some sense of entitlement, but unfortunately a lot of people rely on them for money and survival. Hence the impetus of Alex Garland’s first novel, The Beach. We meet a couple of young, attractive, European backpackers in Thailand that are willing to follow a map that has been given to them by a crazy, suicidal man named Daffy Duck, which allegedly leads  to a hidden island in the Gulf of Thailand. Yeap, they’ll listen to people who’re named after cartoon characters just to have that unique, pure, unadultered-by-tourists vacation. Of course, these people will tell you that certainly they’re not tourists, but it is hard for some people to see their own reality.

But, unlike everyone else that’s ever reviewed this book, including Nick Hornby, who sums it up as “a Lord of the Flies for Generation X” on the book jacket (That bastard, he’s so good at perfectly saying exactly what I want to say. Damn you Hornby, I’ll get the best of you one day!), I’m going to get through this review without one single reference to William Golding’s classic novel. Now for a brief run-through of the nitty-gritty. After some pretty tough obstacles, the narrator, Richard and the young, sexy, French couple Etienne and Francoise make it to the beach: an Eden-like oasis, inhabited by a virtually self-sufficient community of fellow travellers. Led by the dictatorial Sal (like Sylvester the Cat), and her boyfriend Bugs (like Bunny), whom along with slit-his-wrists-in-Bangkok Daffy (Daffy Duck), discovered the island six years ago, and have been living in a commune like setting with other, invite-only guests. Eventually the trio is accepted into the commune, since Daffy was kind enough to give Richard the map before the wrist-slitting act. Everything is all well and good, but since the novel is told in retrospect, you know from pretty early on that Richard a) makes it to the beach b) lives long enough to want to leave the beach and c) successfully makes it back to jolly ol’ London. So obviously, shit has to hit the fan for Richard to want to leave.

Eventually the community suffers pretty severe food poisoning, and the camp divides into multiple factions, since everyone knows Keaty, Richard’s best friend more or less, is to blame. Then there’s the shark attack, which kills two of the three Swedes, and sends the third one into a crazy frenzy. And of course, because bad things come in triplicate, Richard had previously given two other travelers a copy of the map. They show up on the island, but are caught by the heavily armed Thai marijuana farmers that live on the other side and shot up to hell. Everything comes to a head during the Tet festival, where the island-dwellers celebrate the anniversary of the community’s foundation. Richard is almost killed; the other community dwellers rip apart the dead bodies of the drug-farmer-killed travellers while in a moonjuice/marijuana frenzy; the Swede that survives the shark attack steals the only boat; and the Richard and his closest friends complete their plot to escape the island for good.

Sure, that’s just the cliffnotes version, but The Beach isn’t driven so much by plot. It’s more about the characters, and how they interact with each other. It’s an interesting take on the anti-Utopian novel: well written, lots of pop culture, and easy to relate to by most people of a certain age. How a normal person can be so wholly manipulated by another to violate his own personal beliefs. How people are willing to make ridiculous sacrifices to protect their own personal interests. That even in a bubble, societies will form and the inherent personality-related problems will develop, but eventually the conch shell breaks. (Damn, almost made it) It shows the psychology of being all alone, and makes one question what their own reaction to such foreign situations would be. Is protecting a secret island worth a person’s life?

“Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley” – Alex Garland; The Beach

I have a math professor this semester that is not from this country.  Having split my college career between computer science and petroleum engineering, this is certainly not a first time occurance, and it is undoubtedly not the last.  This is a math class that I don’t really need for my major at all; just sort of counts toward that magic ’12 hour’ full-time student mark that keeps me in financial aide.  Nothing exciting, and more or less I’m using it as something of a refresher course on how things work.  I haven’t been in a math class in a minute or two.  Imagine my surprise when I got my grade back on my first test.  No big deal, I didn’t study alot, and was running a fever of about 102 during my battle with the incomparible swine flu.  As I was reviewing my latest failure as an academic, I did notice something afoot.

One of the questions asked “at what point(s) is the function discontinuous?”  After carefully examining the problem I answered the question “always continuous.”  Which, for those of us that speak English seems to be a reasonable answer, right?  Of course, my analysis of the function was right: the function is always continuous, but my professor disagrees with my wording – instead insisting that the proper answer is “never discontinuous.”  Wait a minute, what?  Unless I’m mistaken double negatives aren’t used in proper English.  I’ve commited my fair share of transgressions against the English language, but my English profs would kinda thwap me over the head for that one.  When I went to ask my professor about how “always continuous” and “never discontinuous” were different, she stared at me and said I did not answer the question.

When I asked for further clarification as to how always and never were not antonyms, she blinked at me and asked what an antonym is.  Upon explaining that always and never are opposites, just as continuous and discontinuous are opposites, the two phrases would logically mean the exact.same.fucking.thing.  And, one has the additional benefit of being better English!  My professor looks at me again and tells me that I did not answer the question she asked on the test, and then my brain sort-of breaks.  I have no problem explaining to an apparent-college graduate what an antonym is.  I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong.  I have no previous problems with my professor.  I do have a problem with a professor whom cannot explain to me how or why I am wrong.  Obviously we are in an argument over semantics, and I still can’t fathom how I’m wrong.  But if my prof were able or willing to tell me something other than I did not answer a question, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Until I woke up and realized that ‘holy shit, I’m living with this guy?’  He wasn’t a bad guy or anything, he certainly didn’t hit me, or tell me I was ugly or anything.  Actually, he took care of me pretty well, and supported absolutely everything I ever did.  It sort of seemed like he thought the sun shined out of my ass, which certainly isn’t much of a problem at all when ya think about it.  Nope, the problem was me.  Though years later when said guy reappeared, I realized that either I had terrible taste or the guy had really flipped out and gone nuts.  Not to toot my own horn, but the guy really did flip out, in that crazy “I can see the  future” sort of way.  Apparently if you start taking massive amounts of methamphetamines that’ll happen.

Back to my problem though: years ago I realized that I have this phenomenal ability to become boring with absolutely anyone in a very short amount of time.  It wasn’t that I didn’t love that guy, I definitely did (at least I think), but eventually the shiny-ness of the situation wore off.  Almost every single relationship I’ve ever had has ended in a pretty similar way – One day I get tired of them and leave.  It’s not that I mean to, and it’s not about how much I do or don’t like em, but it just goes that way every time.  Sadly, I’ve yet to figure out how to fix it.