23.2.09

Chuck Klosterman and his book things.

Well, since I'm relatively terrible at updating and what to update with, I'm just going to go with a few questions Chuck Klosterman presents in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs*. If you don't know much about the book, it's basically a series of essays commentating on society and pop culture. It's really quite a good read with a lot of footnotes and witty banter. Anyway, here ya go. Some interest for you.

1. Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician.
Let us assume he can do five simple tricks-he can
pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin
disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the
Joker card, and two others in a similar vein.
These are his only tricks and he can't learn any
more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it
turns out he's doing these five tricks with real
magic.
It's not an illusion; he can really conjure
the bunny out of the ether and he can move the
coin through space. He's legitimately magical,
but extremely limited in scope and influence.
Would this person be more impressive
than Albert Einstein?


2. Let us assume a fully grown, completely
healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves
shackled to the ground while his head is held
in place with thick rope. He is conscious and
standing upright, but completely immobile.
And let us assume that-for some reason-every
political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty
International) will be released from captivity
if you can kick this horse to death in less than
twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-
toed boots. Would you attempt to do this?

3. You meet your soul mate. However, there is
a catch: Every three years, someone will break
both of your soul mate's collarbones with a
Crescent wrench, and there is only one way you
can stop this from happening: You must swallow
a pill that will make every song you hear-for the
rest of your life-sound as if it's being performed
by the band Alice in Chains. When you hear
Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it
will sound (to your ears) like it's being played
by Alice in Chains. If you see Radiohead live,
every one of their tunes will sound like it's being
covered by Alice in Chains. When you hear a
commercial jingle on TV, it will sound like Alice
in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower,
your voice will sound like deceased Alice vocalist
Layne Staley performing a capella (but it will only
sound this way to you). Would you swallow the pill?

4. Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish
marine biologists capture a live Loch Ness Monster.
In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear
hunter in the Pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch
in the thigh, thereby allowing zoologists to take the
furry monster into captivity. These events happen
on the same afternoon. That evening, the president
announces he may have thyroid cancer and will
undergo a biopsy later that week. You are the
front-page editor of The New York Times:
What do you play as the biggest story?



Well, that's all I want to put up, because those are the questions I find most interesting. There's really twenty-three, and they're all pretty good. I hope it is okay to have just copied those questions here? I don't know much about blogging etiquette, but I don't think this was plagiarism since I sited all that stuffs, right?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I really like reading your blog. Also I think it's ok that it is acceptable blog procedure to copy and paste stuff into your blog if you say where it came from.

mr.noy said...

Thanks, Mike! I'm going to try to be interesting to the interwebs. But hopefully not try too hard.

Anonymous said...

Yes. No. Yes. The President