WickedCestus

This seems like it would be especially difficult with Idle Thumbs since they introduced a bunch of stupid jokes right at the beginning and then constantly referenced them for a long time.

I found out about Idle Thumbs because there was a prominent Wizard joke on Giant Bomb, and everyone kept mentioning that it reminded them of Idle Thumbs, so I thought "what the heck is that", looked it up, and then didn't listen to a single episode. Two years later, I remembered the name out of nowhere, listened to all the episodes, and have been following ever since. That was...episode ~160ish era so I guess it's been over 2 years. Hope this informs your future marketing strategies.

I still listen to the Catacombs of Paris review every few days. Makes me laugh like nothing else in the world. "These people died from taking pictures of people who died from taking photographs of the tour guide!" in that strange Minnesota-esque accent pops into my head all the time.

I totally agree with what Sarah was saying RE: the gender politics of the stories in this collection. I guess the simplest way of putting it is that I got a "boys will be boys" sorta feeling. Like, men are inherently more self-destructive and violent, but "hey, that's just the way we are!", and therefore male-female relationships are frictional and doomed. I'll admit, I'm young (21) and very naive, but I just found that perspective turned me off, and combined with the stuff I mentioned previously about the writing style, put me off the book relatively quickly. That being said, as I expected, listening to the podcast (and having more time to cool and reflect) definitely has given me more of an appreciation of the stories. You made a lot of great points in this episode, and I was able to see the beauty of some of the stories by looking at them through your eyes instead of my own, which I guess is the idea of this sort of podcast! So thanks for that. While I still don't think I'll go on to read more of Carver, I can at least say "hey, I understand what that guy does, and I understand why it doesn't work for me but works for others". Love the pod! Really excited for next month's book; I've been meaning to read that one for a while.

Danielle on the Beastcast was awesome!!!

Alternate title: Slowly-Turning Floppy Bomber

This was the second book I've read in the What We Talk About When We Talk About series. Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was my first, and so far my favourite. I have yet to read What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, What We Talk About When We Talk About War, What We Talk About When We Talk About Birth, What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop, What We Talk About When We Talk About The Tube, What We Talk About When We Talk About Cancer, What We Talk About When We Talk About Breaking In A Virgin (????), What We Talk About When We Talk About Brazilian multinationals, What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk, What We Talk About When We Talk About Creative Writing, What We Talk About When We Talk About Clone Club, What We Talk About When We Talk About Food, What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson, What We Talk About When We Talk About Death, Money and Heart (I guess this one's a collection?), What We Talk About When We Talk About Revolution, What We Talk About When We Talk About Alan, What We Talk About When We Talk About leadership, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Movement: A very short introduction of the Feldenkrais Method. (All of these books exist according to Goodreads). Seriously though, I had a lot of trouble enjoying this book. Maybe it's partially fatigue after coming out of an American Lit course where at a certain point I started to say, "If I read one more short story about a white man that ends with him realizing/not realizing he's a complete asshole, I'm going to scream". Short stories generally have fairly open endings, but I thought Carver's stories take this to a new extreme. I found the endings absolutely unsatisfying in this collection. My only point of comparison for Carver is the story Cathedral, which, as I just mentioned, made me scream, but I was at least glad that it decided to have an ending. The stories in this book end with parting sentences that always feel slightly too cute for my liking. I'm always left thinking, "well, Raymond, you thought that was cool, didn't you". I was actually kind of mad at this book when I finished it, but I've cooled off after thinking about it for a few days and reading a bit more about it. I think most of my dislike comes from the perpetuation of the idea that this Hemingway-inspired "simple is best" style of storytelling is the best/only style. After taking some creative writing courses, I'm maybe slightly bitter about the one dude in every class who feels the need to talk about Hemingway every ten minutes to remind us that yeah Hemingway still exists, and also is the only guy who ever wrote anything any good. I just find this style extremely boring. I had this same problem with Philip K. Dick as well; I just find it too plain for its own good. It's super readable, but it just leads to me just barreling through the book in about a day while thinking to myself every thirty minutes, "wow, I don't care about anything I just read". I think I'm going to have to lump Carver in with Hemingway and Bukowski in my "classics that I just don't get" category. I'm very much the kind of person who emphasizes the style of writing over most other things, so that might explain it. The stories are so short that I never felt like any of the characters had time to distinguish themselves. The characters all seem to have only one defining personality trait, which is "they're being mean right now". My favourite story in the collection, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", was the only one that gave the characters any time to breathe. I enjoyed listening to their back and forth, and their personalities and relationships were effectively communicated indirectly. That story gave me a brief glimpse of what this style of storytelling could do, but I don't think any of the others capitalized in the same way. Anyway, I hope you guys disagree with me, because it's always super interesting to hear everyone's positive takes on books that don't click for me! The episode on Man In The High Castle made me think a bit differently about that book, which I disliked initially, although it only managed to turn my strong dislike into a mild dislike. That's still something though! Looking forward to the podcast!

Based on the Japanese in "Hidden my game by mom", I assume that the poor translation is simply poor translation, since the JP title is grammatically OK (as far as my understanding goes). Plus, the poor translation makes the in-game hints quite difficult to parse! It's impossible to tell though, I guess, since the difference between "one person on a small team thinks their English is better than it is" and "let's just guess what the English might be and make it silly" is hard to perceive. A lot of the funniest Japanese people I've met like to use ridiculous English all the time as a joke even if they know better. Love the game, thanks for introducing it to me.

Huh...I just watched that IU video "Friday" for the first time and I realized that the Peppertones make a cameo appearance as strange French dudes! Weird coincidence. Also, K-pop MVs have become real weird, haven't they? I really like that Primary video.

Yeah, learning Korean is definitely on my "maybe someday" list. I learned Hangul one day a little while ago. It's one of the most easy-to-learn language systems in the world, according to basically everyone. So, I've got that and I heard the grammar is pretty similar to Japanese, which I've been learning for a few years. However, the pronunciation of Korean seems really difficult to me. Also! I don't know if this counts as K-pop, but there's a Korean indie rock band I really like called the Peppertones. They've got a real cool style.

It always takes a couple of tries, but there's some gold to be found in Poetweets. Although it seems like the algorithm is definitely skewed towards more recent tweets - dunno if that's intentional or not. Will hunting by WickedCestus In all matters big and small Noise! seriously, you are a fridge Something was any help to me at all Throw me around a bridge I Will eat tsukemen again As gm. I know a guy. he's real good Power wash my brain I forgot they are my favourite food And we are merely in a dumpster Robots trying to predict the future Which do you think is better? No no no no no. actually I'm unsure Will appreciate you much much later

I had a similar experience. The only artist who has stuck with me for a long time is IU. From my limited perspective, it seems like the music she does is quite different than the other things going on in K-pop and her voice is just amazing. I actually just the other day went back and was listening to old SNSD tracks (think I fell off after 'The Boys') and I still found I liked quite a few of them. It seems like most groups have moved towards making party anthems rather than the stuff I liked though...but if I'm wrong about that I'm open to suggestions!

Isn't it a bit redundant ? PS: does anyone else sometimes feel like this entire forum is a joke that they don't quite get?

That's a great post, marginalgloss. I can totally relate to being unable to remember her stories very well soon after, which I always attributed to my poor memory, but it might just be because the plots are secondary to the overall mood / character feelings of the stories. Although, having said that, I think I will remember this collection more than the other one I read (I believe it was Dear Life?) - a few of these stories particularly struck me on my first reading: namely, 'Passion', 'Trespasses', and 'Tricks'. It's also super interesting that the settings felt homey and and familiar to me, while "awfully distant and strange" to you. I think that says something about how well she is able to capture her environment. I've certainly read stories set in far-away places that felt comfortable to me, like they could have been set almost anywhere, so it's a testament to Munro that she is able to give her stories the feeling of a specific location with such skill.

Sorry, I should clarify: I find the long 16-player-plus Loser's bracket formats to be confusing. With a GSL group of 4, it's always clear (to me) what each match means, who the player will face next, how far they are in the tournament, etc. I like the clear distinction between Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, etc. instead of moments where there are 6 players left in the tournament, but 4 of them are higher and 2 are lower. This year's SSL Season 1 (the other major Korean SC2 Starleague) used a Loser's bracket from the Ro16 onward. When I look at the results pages for GSL Season 1 and SSL Season 1 I find the GSL format infinitely easier to follow. Hope this makes sense.

I always disliked Winner/Loser bracket in SC2 because it confused me and always felt weird. I'm really glad that basically all SC2 tournaments now use the GSL group format and then do a regular single-elimination bracket for Ro8/Ro16. Makes life much easier and reduces unnecessary games.

I'm having the same sort of experience Sarah described when reading Man In the High Castle, since I live just outside of Vancouver and recognize a lot of the places mentioned in this book. She even name-drops my town! I'm relevant! I'm about halfway through right now and I am once again absolutely flabbergasted by Alice Munro. I read another one of her collections last year but it was in the middle of some weird times so I can't really remember it. She is so charming and effective in such an indescribable way; I am having trouble putting into words why I enjoy her writing so much. I have a particular soft spot for stories about family, which most of her stories are, so that probably helps, and her characters are so understandable and realistic that it immediately pulls me in. I guess I have nothing particularly important to say other than wow I love this book!

Really enjoyed the last two "couple streams". Cool to see new faces in Idle Thumbs content (I know Sarah's on the book podcast too but still). I am also way into the constant extreme emphasis on internalization metrics. Always important to quantify such meaningful concepts.

I remember on Idle Thumbs recently there was an e-mail about how their levels were a lot better than other podcasts. At least, I think that was Idle Thumbs.... Lots of podcasts are really bad about that, though. I remember Giant Bomb having that problem with their videos a while ago.

While I don't think all of his books are this egregious, he is definitely an ideas-over-style kind of writer. I remember reading his short stories in high school and finding them fascinating, but his style of writing totally lost me in this novel. I am far more receptive to well-written decent ideas than poorly-written good ideas, which made it difficult to enjoy the book, despite thinking parts of it were fairly interesting (while other parts were incredibly frustrating).

I did not, sorry! Don't have that capability.

I am so bad at this! I got turned around twice before finding the second station, and then drove across the "great plains" twice in random directions until I ran out of gas.... I love the feeling of the driving and the environment is so sparse but beautiful. Wish the music had popped up a few more times. I'm gonna keep going at this until I beat it. I wanna know what paradise is!!! EDIT: I did it!!!! Took me about an hour. What a great game!

I liked your discussion of this book! I found it such a hard book to think about, since I liked the beginning and ending sections a lot, but found the stories generally inconsistent. I thought the style was great, but I would've liked more focus on the main characters. Chris, I understand your wariness to present initial opinions that you might not be 100% sure on, but I think the discussion is better when you guys stick to a claim or idea and hash it out together. Being too wishy-washy on your thoughts leads to certain topics falling dead before leading to any actual discussion. I actually thought some of your ideas were quite interesting, or at least decent prompts for discussion, but you seemed to give up on a few of them before even finishing the thought. I think you guys did well considering the strangeness of the book, but just something to watch out for. Anyway, love the pod! None of these books so far have been on my radar at all, and it's really nice to be pulled out of my comfort zone.

I want a supercut of every time Chris says "Slyboots". It killed me every time.

Lots of 20-somethings live with their parents also, and who the heck wants to drink with their parents.