The cat’s outta the bag. I’m a reader. I read. I read about things that interest me. To make matters worse, I’m a goddamn RE-reader. There are books in my collection that I’ve read four, five, six times even. I do the same thing with television shows, but, well, that’s different. I think I’ve read The Talisman by Stephen King/Peter Straub a total of 9 times in the past 20 years. Nine times.

I’m not a particularly fast reader, either, which I think makes it even that much more grisly. When I sit here and think about it (while never ceasing to type, mind…I am THAT awesome) it really comes off as a huge waste of time. A huge one. The re-reading, I mean. Not the reading. When I sit and think about the books I could—I SHOULD—be reading while I’m re-reading Fight Club or Chuck Klosterman IV, my mind sort of boggles. I could be reading Gravity’s Rainbow, finally. Or! Even better, I could finally sink my teeth into something new and amazing that I’ve never heard of. Etc. Anyway…I got tired of that sentence before I finished it. Can you tell?

The point being, I recently re-read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (A Low Culture Manifesto) by Chuck Klosterman. I really could not have enjoyed it more. I could not be more at home with the decision I made. What initially started as a bar-tryst with the first few essays (my ‘real’ book was trapped at home…’Visual Shock’ by Michael Kammen…yeah, still slogging through that one) turned into a bar-tryst followed by a lazy weekender, and boom: I had read the whole thing. Herein lies the beauty of reading a book full of short little vignettes (the shoryu-ken of guys like Klosterman): you (I) tell yourself that you’re just gonna read to the end of the current story and then put it down. But when you get to the end, you see that the next essay is entitled ‘Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth’ or ‘Being Zack Morris’ and, well, that thought sort of finishes itself. Or, if you’re a Dudeson, it Finnishes itself, but you get what I mean.

I’ve sprayed soda out of my nose at you inre: Chuck Klosterman before. I’d apologize for not being more original, but I desperately want you to like him. I desperately want him to like the things that I like. In fact, I can think of nothing more awesome, more chillingly romantic than picking up some not-yet-released book of his and opening to an essay bemoaning the breakup of Nine Inch Nails. Or waxing philosophical on the insurgence of crossover/hybrid Star Wars memorabilia. Is this weird? Is it weird that I want to read a favorite author’s thoughts about any random favorite hobby or pastime of mine? Is it weird that I want you to like what I like? For some reason—at this moment in time—it is very important to me that you like Chuck Klosterman. Actually, I think he’s a pretty hard dude to like (personally) as I get the impression that he views you (and me) as the contents of a big social petrie dish. But his work. His books. Required.

To further assist me in making my point (is: You Will Love This), I’ve transcribed the first page of this book. The first page of the prologue. It is one of the most perfect single pages of criticism and/or writing I’ve read in a long long time, and if you don’t love it, the silver lining is that you will absolutely hate it.

There are two ways to look at life.

Actually, that’s not accurate; I supposed there are thousands of ways to look at life. But I tend to dwell on two of them. The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyone’s life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we don’t realize it.

There are many mornings when I feel certain that the first perspective is irrefutably true: I wake up, I feel the inescapable oppression of the sunlight pouring through my bedroom window, and I am struck by the fact that I am alone. And that everyone is alone. And that everything I understood seven hours ago has already changed, and that I have to learn everything again.

I guess I am not a morning person.

However, that feeling always passes. In fact, it’s usually completely gone before lunch. Every new minute of every new days seems to vaguely improve. And I suspect that’s because the alternative view–that everything is ultimately like something else and that nothing and no one is autonomous–is probably the greater truth. The math does check out; the numbers do add up. The connections might not be hard-wired into the superstructure to the universe, but it feels like they are whenever I put money into a jukebox and everybody in the bar suddenly seems to be having the same conversation. And in that last moment before I fall asleep each night, I understand Everything. The world is one interlocked machine, throbbing and pulsing as a flawless organism.

This is why I will always hate falling asleep.

Highly Recommended.

Oh, and:

- Hateball