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what the voices in my head tell me to write

Sunday, June 18, 2006

my thoughts on Jpod

I bought this book on Thursday and finished it about an hour ago.

Admittedly I liked it a lot more than "Girlfriend in a Coma" and "All Famillies are Pyscotic" (which I didnt finish) but I still think large parts of it sucked. Perhaps because I liked Microserfs so much.

The whole appearing in your own novel sounds like some Victorian thing almost. But appearing in your novel as a scary asshole is really bizzare. The first sentace "I feel like a character in a Douglas Copeland novel". Admittedly I could identify with that at times. Some of it reminded me of Illuminatus with the self referential stuff going on though.

The characters in Microserfs were much warmer and well rounded that Jpods recreations. Todd in Microserfs == John Doe in Jpod but you can relate somewhat to Todd. He moves forward in his life, has a child even.. John Doe wants to be totally normal and average admittedly but he is just wallpaper. Karla in Micsoserfs == Kaitlin (sp.) in Jpod. No comparison. Karla has a real life. That Chyx thing. Kaitlin just makes a machine that hugs you and rants about autisim. Then she takes some creative writing course so we get her coursework interspersed with about 20+ pages of literally random crap.

The whole chinese gangster just showing up and getting on really well with everyone and everyone just apparently thinking "this guy is a people smuggler, drug runner and thats just the stuff I know about but he seems like a really nice guy" just is bizarre. What would most people do when finding out about such a person... call the cops. I know its meant to be a point about how amoral everyone is but it just doesn't work.

Dont get me wrong I did quite like it belive it or not. There are some genuinely funny bits. A lot of stuff I could actually relate to especially in the work side of things. Some of the less random interpersonal relationships too were well done.

To be honest it felt like someone was making easy money.... especially if they get 20+ pages of literal randomness printed and got paid for it.

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