MussoLOLen is Always Right! |

When I chose to leave graduate school to pursue my financial independence, I promised myself I would maintain my vigorous reading habits and read at least several pages of a book everyday. Doesn’t matter what book written by which critic or which author, as long as I read something to keep my mind sharp and critical. One of the few friends I made in grad school told me flat-out that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with my plans. When I asked why, he said something about how the changes in my priorities will leave me too tired to crack open a book after work. I wanted to prove him wrong because I hate it when people tell me what I can and cannot do, but eleven months later, I have to concede defeat and admit that he’s right. Which I also hate doing. (Incidentally, that friend stopped talking to me after I told him about my decision to leave UP. Not a single word from him after that conversation. So sorry I’m no longer smart enough to be your friend, Marius.)

Even though I have complete control over my work hours (12 noon until whenever), work habits (breaks every hour), and office attire (whatever I slept in last night), I do have the workload of someone with a “real job.” When the day is done my brain cannot tolerate anything more intelligent than a well-written sitcom. I do still read actual books, but very rarely and only in coffee shops; I find that my mind is too inattentive to read more than several sentences when I stay in my bedroom. Once, I tried reading Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, because Marxists make me feel bad about spending my money on clothes and makeup. While I had no difficulty making sense out of the language used (yes!), I did have to keep pausing after every page just to kind of let the information sink in.

I live in constant fear of becoming a bimbo because I feel that my academic intelligence sets me apart from everyone else. I know how arrogant that must sound, but let me clarify – I don’t mean to say that my perceived intelligence makes me think I’m better than anyone else. I simply feel more comfortable knowing that I can easily form an erudite opinion when I watch movies, read books, and when I encounter current events. If not, at least I have a theoretical paradigm to consult and help me decide. These days, I wouldn’t be able to articulate why I think a particular novel is good, much less discuss its underlying themes in great length. As for my lifestyle, I’m way too bourgeois to classify myself as a “Marxist”; I’m still sharp enough to see through the veil of ideology covering my eyes, but I don’t do anything to pull it off my head anymore. Hell, I bought a condo, didn’t I? I’d rather learn how to do my own makeup because current events depress me, and I have no idea who I want to vote for in the coming Presidential elections. God help the Philippines.

Clearly, I want to be happy, but I also want to stay “smart.” To slow down my descent into bimbodom, I’ve decided to impose a belated new year’s resolution: I must start and finish at least one novel for every month of 2010. Since my weekends are also spent working, I no longer have the luxury of time to spend hours on cultural theory. I am, however, an insomniac with several hours to kill before I finally fall asleep. This is when I will get my reading done.

My reading list so far:

Blindness by Jose Saramango (I finished this a few days ago)
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Porno by Irvine Welsh (Anne’s, borrowed a few months ago)
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
All the Names by Jose Saramago
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

I realize that a random reading list of novels won’t exactly help me reclaim my “intelligence”, but hey, at least I’m reading actual books again. If there are any novels you think I should read, feel free to comment with your recommendation! But please, no American writers. I’ve decided to minimize my consumption of American culture because I already spend countless hours watching their TV shows and movies; I don’t need to become any more colonial than I already am. Yes, I am aware that Kurt Vonnegut is American, but Slaughterhouse Five is one of the few unread ones I have on my shelf. Might as well get started. :P Also, no Murakami and Gaiman – I’ve already read everything they’ve written.

I love bargains. Don’t we all? During a shopping trip at St. Francis Square, I thought I struck gold when I unearthed a hardcover copy of Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus for only 300 pesos. The inside jacket cover promised me a story that involves “Working in a world where a college degree qualifies her to make photocopies and color-coordinate file folders, twenty-four year old Girl is struggling to keep up with the essential trinity of food, shelter, and student loans.” A fictional story on the perils of being a young twenty-something in the modern working world! I’ve yet to encounter anything like this – for only three hundred bucks. What a bargain, right?

Worst. Book. EVER.

Well, let me tell you something about bargains. A bargain is when you pay a low price for an item whose awesomeness makes it worth ten times the price you originally paid for, you cheapskate. When the said item lets you down, no matter how dirt-cheap you got it for, that’s not a bargain. That’s downright robbery.

Not only did Citizen Girl rob me of 300 pesos; I shall never get back the four hours I spent reading this crap. A member of the white-collar working class no longer has the luxury to sit around in two-day old pajamas reading some piece of shit book. I’m willing to let those four hours slide but if I don’t get my money back, whether literally or in the form of karmic currency, someone’s walls shall be painted with my menstrual blood. Soon.

Does you want menstrual art on ur walls?

I suspected that Citizen Girl might be a chick lit novel since the cover art proclaimed that the authors were the ones who penned The Nanny Diaries, another one of those chick books turned movies. But I figured – hey, with a premise like that, there’s no way this book is chick lit. Two pages into the first chapter, I was eating my words in silent defeat.

There are two infallible ways by which you can detect chick lit from good old-fashioned literature. First, the horrible writing style, which I shall explain in a little bit. Second, if the story is more plot-driven than character driven, wherein the plot consists of a whimsical series of events that do not follow the rules of logic, then what you have in your hands is chick lit.

Oh god, the writing style. Think of the ditziest blog you know and have it hump a badly-written Cosmopolitan article (which is not to say that GOOD Cosmopolitan articles exist). That’s what Citizen Girl reads like. What makes the offspring different from its parents is that there are four-syllable words and feminist theories sprinkled here and there so the girls who actually like reading this crap can feel like they’re so smrt. Can someone please hand me a gun?

Just to show you how BAD this book is, I have rewritten the first paragraph of this entry according to the writing style the authors have employed.

I love depreciated acquisitions. Don’t we all? Is that my crush I see online on YM? ZOMG! During an interactive shopping trip at St. Francis Square, I was blithely astonished when I disintered a hardcover copy of Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus at the nominal price of 300 pesos. OMG he’s messaging me. OMGOMGOMGOMGOGMOGMG. The inside jacket cover promised me a tale that involves HE is messaging ME! Ask me out pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease. “Working in a world where a college degree qualifies her to make photocopies and color-coordinate file folders, twenty-four year old Girl is struggling to keep up with the essential trinity of food, shelter, and student loans.” I’ve been burned by love before but I know how to open my heart to every new possibility. I AM READY TO LOVE YOU! Letmelove you oh please letmeloveyou. A boolean, fictional account on the perils of being a young twenty-something in modern day capitalist society! Does he like me? Does he? Mustnotoverthinkmustnotoverthinkmustnotoverthink. I’ve yet to alight upon anything like this – for only three hundred pesos. OMG HE ASKED ME OUT. What an economical find, right? Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee heeeeee.

If you like what you read, then grab a copy of Citizen Girl. The writing style gets even better. And by “better” I mean “worse”. What amazes me is that this crap not only sells — it gets movie deals too! If I spend the every single day of the next two years churning out chick lit after chick lit novel, I can retire a millionaire by the time I’m twenty-five. Sounds like a new life plan!

Citizen Girl tries to make up for the paper-thin characters by filling the plot with all these ridiculous events. First, our protagonist Girl (seriously, what kind of writer names their female protagonist Girl!?) gets fired by the Boss From Hell after enduring an entire slew of evil stepmother-like treatment from her. (Did I mention that Girl has a 14-year old brother named Jack? After Jack Kerouac? ZOMG beatnik literary reference! What a deep this book is!) Of course she meets the man of her dreams at a job fair and they get together in two weeks. Why these stupid books always involve the female protagonist falling in love with someone even though this in no way contributes to the story’s development completely baffles me.

After that, a bunch of crap happens which I won’t bother listing down because I need to hit the gym in ten minutes. I will add though, that Girl does find a job eventually only for her to quit in the end because she gets asked to run a porn site. Since Girl is a feminist, and porn is “rape” spelled backwards, managing an adult website was something waaay beneath her moral standards. I think the message of the novel has something to do about never compromising what you believe in, but I’m not really sure. What Citizen Girl really taught me is that if you write bad fiction about single working women in their twenties, you’ll make more money than you’ve ever dreamed of.

Oh, and you’ll never guess what her boss’s name is. Yep, you guessed right. Girl’s boss is aptly named Guy. This book, what a clever!!

The inside cover jacket says that Citizen Girl “Captures with biting accuracy what it means to be young and female in the new economy…an entertaining read that is startlingly relevant.” I don’t know about the entertainment factor, but Citizen Girl is about as relevant to me as paparazzi shots of Lindsay Lohan’s McDonald’s breakfast, or what used to be a McDonald’s breakfast, floating in the toilet seat of a club in New York’s Meat Packing District. Which is to say, not very relevant at all. As for its accuracy, pfft. Unless I’m the only 21-year college graduate in the world who didn’t land a job where business trips involve a designer shopping spree and a complete makeover in LA, I can safely say that the events in this book are about as accurate as…aw hell, I’m not even gonna bother with metaphors anymore.

Maybe I’ll sue the publisher for false advertising. Or maybe I should fly to New York and hunt these wimmin down. Then when I find them I’ll shoot them in the head so they’ll never write a single book again.

The Bell Jar by Slyvia Plath is the most apt and the most dangerous book for me at this point in my life. I first read it when I was fourteen and pseudo-depressed; therefore I couldn’t appreciate it very much but I thought it’d be a clever present to give to my first boyfriend anyway. Now that I’m twenty and my teenage angst has metamorphosed into existential angst, this book is hitting me where it really hurts.

“Of course, you have another year of college left,” Jay Cee went on a little more mildly. “What do you have in mind ater you graduate?”

“I don’t really know.”

There’s a lot of other things in The Bell Jar that echoes my sentiments and outlook of life at the moment, but that particular scene damn near made me jump up and scream, “THAT’S ME! THAT’S ME!” At first I entertained the thought of being a high school teacher, but do I seriously have the patience to deal with teenage girls and be some sort of wholesome role model for them? I think not. I HATE HATE HATE doing research so even if my major is geared towards that, I would really loathe having to do research for a living. I can write, I suppose, but bleh. There’s absolutely nothing I can picture myself doing for money! Except maybe the band, but I’m not betting on that to get me rich. So career-wise, I’m drawing a blank here.

My brain can’t take any more academic torture, but the thought of graduating and having to join the working class is bothering more than I’d like. It feels like from that point on, I’ll no longer be able to do what I want because I’m too busy doing things that I should so that I can get enough money to someday do what I want. I don’t even know what kind of thing it is that I should do so that I can have the resources to do what I want. If I can ever get around to doing what I should (i.e. graduate from college and get employed, ugh ugh). I hate that these days, it’s the people who sacrifice their own happiness and dreams in order to attain society’s definition of success that are most admired. But enough of these thoughts.