stranger than fiction ch 7 pg 92 to ch 13 pg 159

ch 7 frontiers pg 92

This story is all about steroids.  Chuck had a couple friends in highschool that were super duper into body building.  They'd buy chunks of egg white and drive from Sacramento down to mexico to buy steroids.  These friends of his were HUGE on the steroids and all protein diet.  Chuck was mostly brought along to be contrast.  Or so he says.  I assume he'd largely be welcome most places with most people as he's a good hang.  I wonder if he's ever hung out with Paul Holes.  Can you imagine hanging out with Chuck and Paul?  Anyway, there was this one specific night when Chuck and his two friends were hanging out with some other friends and there was a cougar on the loose in Sacramento.  But Chuck's friends are body builders and they ain't afraid of no cougar.

Fast forward to the late ninties when Chuck's dad dies and he starts losing weight.  His doctor prescribes him steroids to help with the weight loss.  This is also around the time that fightclub the movie is coming out.  This is germain to this conversation because he made a deal with a friend that if she got to meet Brad Pitt, she'd let him help disect some medschool bodies.  One of these bodies was a teenager the size of a much older man due to big time steroid use.  He had an enlarged heart and a pace maker.  His heart couldn't keep up with his steroid use and he kept having heart attacks until he died.

Chuck was feeling real good with the steroids.  He didn't get all that into it.  No crazy high protien diet or excessive exercise.  But still, it made him feel like such a man and it was good.  That is, until his testicles started shrinking.  He was straight done with steroids at that point.

ch 8 the people can pg 99

This chapter is about time Chuck spent on a subamrine.  He loves navy slag, things like baboon ass and what not.  No big surprises.  life on the submarine is real crampped.  Sometimes you gotta re-inforce your matressw ith towels if the guy that sleeps in your bed on the other shift is a bigger guy.  But everyone's working real hard to make life good for everyone else on the sub.  The navy was real worried that chuck was gonna make the whole story about gay sex.  Chuck hadn't thought about it until they brought it up.  Chuck's just not that kinda guy.  but submarine life can drive ya crazy.  Self harm is a big problem.  Life on a sub can be hard.  But not everybody wants an easy life.

ch 9 the lady pg 109

This is a fun supernatural chapter.  Chuck's friend has a farmhouse he claims is haunted.  Chucks friend claims there's a lady that's always screaming in the basement or rattling the photos or whatever.  Chuck thinks the guy's just an exagerator that wants the attention of someone that lives in a haunted house.

Chuck has similar feelings about a friend of his that claims to be a psychic.  She's always gasping in the middle of your story and declaring you shouldn't be near cars for a few years.  Reminds me of professor trelany from harry potter.  Chuck decided to do some science and stay in his friend's haunted house for a a few weeks to see if he could experience some supernatural phenomena while he was there.  

To raise the stakes even more, he had a party with his other friend who's a psychic and a bunch of her friends who also claim to be psychic.  There's a fun sort of thing where one of them tells him that his father's ghost is there and he's sharpening an axe.  This sorta rings a little true cause there was a thing when he was a kid where he got a washer stuck on his finger and his dad thought the only solution was to cut his finger off.  He ended up sharpening that axe for  a long time but when he swung he missed.  The ended up soaping up his finger really good and getting the washer off.  But the fact that there was no possible way this lady could have known that story gave Chuck a bit of the tingle that night.  

Chuck never had a sighting of the lady at his friend's haunted house.  Never heard any screaming.  Didn't have any rattling photos or anything.  But even so, chuck's a little more open minded about such things than he used to be.

Ch 10 in her own words PG 119

This chapter chuck hangs out with Juliette lewis. She's got a fun list of questions.  She's talking about fun movie scenes she's been in.  Sucking Robert Deniro's thumb.  Feeling like her performance just straight up sucked one day on Natural Born  Killers when she had her period.  About how when you're acting all your reactions have to be HUGE in comparison to how normal people live.  Uncontrollable sobbing, deep down belly laughs.  She doesn't do that sort of stuff in real life, but there's TONS of footage of her doing such things.

CH 11 why isn't he budging PG 132

Andrew Sullivan is a gay man that grew up Irish Catholic.  He's inspired by saints, people that won't back down from doing what's right when if it Costs them their life.  Living today like it might be your last.  That attitude attracted him to people that were HIV positive.  Live like you're dying.  Lot a of drama, but it keeps but from being boring.

Hes a writer and he talks a lot about linelyness.  He rejexta the idea that people not in a romantic relationship must be lonely.  Friendship is a lot more valuable than romance when it comes to not being lonely.  Lots of married people are lonely.  He talks about how he's got a lot of uniqueness that makes it hard to be part if a group.  He's Irish catholic English gay.  Lots of internal conflict on those things in one person.  

He, as Chuck has previously said, talks about how writing is a thing you do alone.  When you do it for a living, you're alone a lot.  He talks about politics.  How due to all homophobia his simple existence necessitates that he be political.  As a youth he thought he might want to be an elected official.  Now as a famous writer he does all sorts of political stuff, talks, fundraising, etc.

CH 12 not chasing Amy PG 141

This chapter is about minimalist writing.  Mostly Amy Hempel.  She's his favorite minimalist writer.  Minimalist writing is very dense.  One might read the same sentence over and over to get the rich dense meaning out of it.  Amy's best book is out of print.  Chuck bought a copy at Powell's for $75.  He's a big fan.

I'm intrigued.  I'm not gonna spend $75 but I'm considering buying it on kindle for $11.99.

CH 13 reading yourself PG 147

This one is currently topical because Chuck us hanging out with Marralyn Manson.  He's into tarot cards.  He says its hard to do a tarot card reading on yourself.  Hence the chapter title.  Lots of talk about loving to be despised.  He's writing an autobiography.  Lots of confidence that thus record and tour will be a success despite many challenges.  He says he's spenr so long trying to change the world but found he can only change himself.  He's obsessed with death cause he was such a sickly kid.

fight club ch 5 through ch 8

ch 5 pg 41

our narrator was on a plane and he arrived without his luggage.  His electric razor was on and his luggage was vibrating and policy is to remove any vibrating luggage in case it's something dangerous.  The security guy says 9 times out of ten it's a razor.  The other time it's a dildo.  No mention of anything actually dangerous.  So he gets a cab home.  But home isn't really homey anymore.  It's an empty firey shell.  There was an explotion and there's nothing left.  It didn't damage any other units because the units have a full foot of cemement wall between them.  Lots of talk about the posessions our narrator lost.  So many hour spent looking through catalogues to find the exact right dishes or lamp or whatever.  Our narrator calls Tyler cause he needs a place to stay.  Tyler says he can move in, but he needs a favor.  "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."

ch 6 pg 47

In this chapter we cut to the narrator already with a black eye and stitches in his cheek.  He was supposed to do a presentation for microsoft, but his boss does it instead cause black eye.  Walter, the guy from microsoft says "I'd hate to see the other guy" and the narrator says he fell down some stairs.  Now we're talking about fight club.  All the rules.  The ones that get broken a lot are 1 and 2 because fight club keeps growing.  What started with just Tyler and the narrator they now have to limit to the first 50 people.  Tyler starts announcing that people should start their own fight clubs cause this one is too crowded.  You go to the hospital after fight club and you say you fell down some stairs.  The narrator can wiggle half his teeth now.  The narrator keeps bumping into guys from fightclub at work, conferences, etc.  All he can do is nod at them.  Fight club is only at fight club.  At work, you see that guy, but he's not the same guy.  You can't describe it in words.  Even if you could, the first two rules are to not talk about it.

ch 7 pg 56

The narrator has been living with Tyler for a month.  Tyler says he's been there six weeks.  So the narrator moved in kinda right after Tyler did.  I wonder where Tyler lived before this.  Tyler has endeavored into a sexual relationship with Marla Singer.  It's all the narrator's fault.  The narrator called Marla to make sure she wasnt' going to the support group he wanted to go to.  She says she's committing suicide via pills.  This isn't a real suicide attempt.  This is a cry for help.  The narrator's response is wonderful "So you're not going out then?"  So he goes to the melenoma support group.  Marla calls back and Tyler answers.    Hearing about the suicide attempt, Tyler calls the cops and rushes over to help out.  Marla says calling the cops was the wrong thing to do and now they gotta leave.  Tyler brings her home and keeps her up all night with sex.

ch 8 pg 63

The narrator is sent home by his boss cause he's got too much blood on his pants.  He hasn't purchased any new clothes since his apartment blew up.  He just has the two pants and six shirts that were in his suitcase that the airline brought to Tyler's house.  The narrator tells tyler they need to make soap because he needs to wash his pants.  Tyler tells the narrator to send Marla to the store to buy some flake lye.  They render fat to get glycerin.  If they combined this glycerin with nytric acid, they'd have nitroglycerin.  Then talk of how they can take that nitroglycerin and use to to destroy things.  Boys, why is it that their favorite thing to play is killing?  When Marla gets back Tyler has disappeared.  This whole situation has had a significantly negative affect on our narrator's state of mind.  It reminds him of when he was a kid and his parents were never in the same room.  They were always telling to tell something to the other one cause they couldn't stand each other.  He writes agressive haikus and faxes them to everyone in the office.  He claims he's all Zen, but it takes about one second of observing his actions to see he's not.  As they're making soap Tyler kisses the back of the narrator's hand and sprinkle's Lye on it to give him a chemical burn.

stranger than fiction pg 39 through pg 91

demolition pg 39

Chuck's at a demolition derby in Lind Washington.  This is eastern washington wheat growin land.  Not a lot of water.  Not real profitable.  This isn't just any demolition derby.  It's a combine demolition derby.  You know that scene in cars when they go tractor tippin' and the idea is the tractors are sheeep and then the combine is the angry bull?  Those things,the giant machines the types of which regular city folk have never operated anything near as large.  The closest I've ever gotten to something like that is when I rented a uhaul to move.  Imagine doing a demolition derby in one of those, but way bigger and harder to operate.  A combine isn't just a car that picks up wheat.  It's a real piece of heavy machinery.  

Linn is a struggling town in a lot of ways.  fifteen years back they were coming up with fund raising ideas and the combine demolition derby was the winning idea.  Gets bigger every year.  Now it's 100% what the town is known for.  If you've heard of Lind Washington and you don't know someone that lives there, this is why.

It's a dangerous thing, some folks have gotten hurt pretty bad.  But the Lion's club that hosts the event doesn't make anyone sign waivers or anything.  It's just understood that everyone's doing this at their own risk.

These are the old combines.  They haven't been in use for years and this demolition derby is the only time they get out of the barn all year.  The first couple rounds of the Derby are pretty smooth.  Full slot of combines, no one gets hurt, everyone is having a good time.  But the later rounds when folks have to get their combine fixed up ASAP to give it another shot are rough.  There's supposedly a 30 minute limit on fixing your combine between rounds.  But if there aren't enough combines to do a round, they just wait until enough of them are fixed up enough to go.

The theory of the last round is supposed to be that the winners of the previous rounds go at it to crown a champion.  But there aren't enough winners that are in shape enough to go another round.  So it ends up being 3 winners and the other 6 are just combines that are in good enough shape to go for it again.

This chapter kinda reminds me of the wrestling chapter.  Year after year these guys come back here for this one activity.  They're all gonna be in big time pain tomorrow.  Brings em together.  Keeps 'em a tight knit bunch.  They need this sort of thing to look forward to every year.  Farming wheat in the dry eastern washington land is hard.

my life as a dog pg 55

Chuck starts out talking about how largely anonymous life as a whiteguy is.  Chuck dresses up as a dog and his friend dresses up like a bear and they go have some fun in Seattle.  They go into the seattle art museum and they sell them tickets, but then they kick them out.  They wander around a mall and they get a lot of attention.  The kind of attention he never gets as a white guy.  Attention like security follwoing you around and walkie talkying your location.

confessions in stone pg 61

Chuck's talking to different guys that have built castles.  Most of them in Washington State.  Likely cause Chuck lives in Portland.  Probably there's lots of castles elsewhere in the country but he's not talking about them cuase he doesn't live there.  Lots of cool talk about castle building.  A lot of people just build canstles out of cement.  They look like castles, but they have a lot of temperature and moisture problems.  One guy described them as just really big basements.  

The way cooler way to build a castle is to start with a rebar inner core, build useful things like plumbing and electricity and computer networking cables.  Then you put insulation around that and you build stone walls to make it like a castle.  You build it up like that floor by floor.  The coolest way to heat a castle is with pipes int eh floor that are heated by a boiler.  It heats the stone real nice and it keeps that heat real good.  It'll stay relatively warm for three days after the hot water goes.

The bigger deal you've gotta factor in before you do anything is what the local building permit process is.  One of these guys built a castle in Washington and found it to be a bit of a challenge.  He wanted to make it 40 feet tall, but the highest you're allowed to build a house where he lived was 36 because that's how big the fire ladders can go.  One guy ended up building his castle too big and it was declared a commercial building and he had to completely redo the way he was gonna have wiring, plumbing, etc. so that it was all conduits.  But in the end, he was much happier with it.  There's a lot of good reasons that building departments make you do things a certain way based on the size of your building.  Idaho is much more wild westy.  You start building a castle there and they pretty much let you do whatever.

Lots of cool talk about what life living in a castle is like.  One of the big things is that none of these guys ever seem to finish the castle, so you're living in a building thta' salso a construction site.  One guy had his whole family basically living in 1,000 square feet of their HUGE castle because he wasn't ever able to get the rest of the castle built up to the point where it was inhabitable.  It was cool to have parties in and what not, but it wasn't great for living.  Also, you're an attractive nuisance.  People are always tresspassing if they can see you from the road.  That's why a lot of these guys finish the first castle and kinda get sick of it and then build another castle situated so it's not visible from the road. It's a lot less annoying when there aren't a bunch of people poking around at the building you live in.

fight club ch 1 through 4

ch 1 pg 11

Our narrator narrates how Tyler got him a job as a waiter.  I suppose that was a while ago because now Tyler is holding a gun that's in the narrator's mouth.  Not the sort of thing that one expects a person that got you a job to do.  The narrator talks about how he knows how to make explosives and napalm and other such destructive things.  He knows this because Tyler knows this.  They're at the top of the world's largest building.  People are in the floors below them breaking windows and throwing things out of them.  They (whoever they are) have placed explosives and are trying to topel the building onto the National Museum below.  This is going to happen in 9 minutes.  More time passes, other things are repeated, we're down to 3 minutes.  Our Narrator says this is all because of Marla Singer.  They've got an odd triangular thing going.  The word one immediately thinks of is Lovetriangle.  But the narrator explains this isn't that.  It's more about ownership and posession.

ch 2 pg 16

The narrator is hugging a man named Bob.  Bob is HUGE and has blonde hair.  He is male, but due to a side effect of years of steroid usage, he has developed breasts.  His artifically high testosterone levels had the side effect of his body creating estrogen.  They are at a support group for men with testicular cancer.  Marla Singer is also there.  This upsetts our narrator because she's a faker and this makes him feel bad because he's a faker.  He goes to lots of support groups for people with mostly terminal diseases.  He got the idea to do this from his doctor.  He was in there begging to be prescribed sleeping pills because he couldn't sleep.  He claimed he was in pain, his doctor said if he wanted to see real pain he should go to a brain parasites support group.  That's real pain.  He started going to them and when he went to this testicular cancer support group and was being hugged by Bob, he broke down and cried.  He was able to sleep that night.  He kept going and was successful in crying and sleeping for two years.  But now Marla's here and she's ruining everything.

ch 3 pg 25

The narrator flies around for business a lot.  He describes it as a small life.  Everything you get on the plane is small.  Everything at your hotel is small.  In addition to being a waiter, Tyler is a also a movie projectionist.  He's a night guy.  He only likes to work night jobs.  The narrator is a day job guy.  [eric thought] I don't know anyone that likes working nights.  Everyone I know that has ever worked nights has always thought of it as a temporary thing until they could get a promotion to the day shift. [/eric thought]  The narrator works for an auto company as a recall coordinator.  His job is to go around the country to assess accidents due to parts that should probably be recalled.  The company usually has to give out financial settlements for these sorts of accidents.  But every now and then they have enough of these kinds of accidents or the settlements are large enough that they calculate that a recall is the cheaper option so they do one.  Tyler has nightmares that he's missed a switch over.  You're in big trouble as a projectionist if you miss the switch over.  Speaking of trouble, he likes to splice single frames of pronography into the films he projects.  The narrator and Tyler met on the beach when they were on vacation.  Tyler took some logs and stood them up so taht when the sun hit them right, the shaddow was a perfect hand.  Perfection for a minute.

ch 4 pg 34

The narrator is at the brain parrasites support group.  Marla is there too.  One of the people that have been coming a while is not there.  Her sister is there and says she's passed away.  The narrator is pissed off.  He should be really feeling his feelings about this news. But he can't because he feels like a fraud because Marla the fraud is there.  When it's hug time, he grabs Marla and says she's gotta go.  He needs this and it doesn't work when she's here.  She's not having it.  She's staying and if he says anything she'll tell everyone that he's a faker too.  They split the week up so that they don't go to the same meetings.

Stranger than Fiction pg 1 through 38

Ch 1 Testy Festy pg 3

Chuck writes here about his experience going to the Rock Creek Lodge Testical Festival in Montana. We're 15 miles south of Missoula. A wide variety of folks competing in creative sex act performances.

ch 2 where meat comes from pg 8

Chuck is in Waterloo, Iowa for the Regional Olympic wresting trials. Lots of folks with ears malformed from being rubbed on the mat so much. Wrestling is not a glamorous sport.  Especially the part where you're trying to cut weight.  People have died of dehydration trying to make their weight class.  It's pretty painful.  Not a lot of people in the stands cause that kinda pain is hard to watch.  Lots of comradery in wrestling.  When you've gone through pain like that together it really binds.  But very few of them make ti to the alypics and even if they succeed there, they still eventually move on to normal jobs in the real world.

ch 3 you are here pg 27

Chuck is at a writers conference.  There's lots of stuff at this conference going on.  But the thing he talks about the most is the process by which agents, producers, production assistants, etc. are willing to sit down with a writer for a fee and have them pitch their book.  How for most of these people this book is their only real creative endeavour and it's basically their life story on the page.  So in a way, it's not a creative thing they're pitching, it's their life.  If they can't sell someone on this book does it mean their life didn't have value?  This sort of conference didn't used to be so common.  The people that used to be there to get pitches used to be movers and shakers.  Now-a-days they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Even if you sell the person you're talking to on your book, it's likely they've gotta sell to someone else who's gotta sell to someone else before you get to someone that's a decision maker that can make your dreams come true.  Lots more people these days are aspiring writers due to extra time, technology, experience and education.  But maybe even if you don't get a shot this attempt at turning your life story into a book is a worthwhile endeavor.  Because you've been more reflective and considerate of your life.