• 46 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: September 13th, 2023

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  • stay there for decades

    Yeah. I read that book 20 years ago, and I can still vividly remember someone microwaving some meat and discovering that it was their own ass cheek, or a cis woman being accused of being trans and being sexually assaulted, someone falling into a spring at Yosemite, and of course, “Guts.”

    He has a schtick with memorable twists, similar to Fight Club. I think Choke was the only novel of his I remember not really having a giant record scratch moment - Lullaby, Invisible Monsters, etc have huge twists. Like discovering the orgy heaven at the end of Haunted which really just serves to punch you in the gut - absolutely all of the fucked up things that the characters were doing to try to be famous was absolutely pointless, because everyone on Earth is killing themselves anyways.

    The only fiction authors I can think of that have given me the same level of intense shock and revulsion would be Ágota Kristóf with the Notebook trilogy (which is spectacular and everyone should read) and Samuel Delany’s Hogg (which no one should read under any circumstances.)


  • The short story collection/sorta novel Haunted by Pahlanuik ends with the discovery that the planet Venus (I think? Might have been Jupiter) is essentially an eternal awesome orgy heaven, which everyone will eventually end up reincarnating on when they die. So everyone on earth essentially decides to kill themselves. Stores have to start locking up suicide kits because people will just take them in the store and die before paying.

    That entire thing is fucked up. I read it somewhere around sophomore year of high school and existentially traumatized me. There are stories in there that somehow 4chan shock image level in just written words.




  • There’s an evolving strain of US Catholicism, exemplified by weirdos like JD Vance, who like the aesthetic of Catholicism (especially the Deus Vult thing) without really caring about any of the actual Catholic beliefs. It’s more like they have a childish misunderstanding of Catholicism as just being a more serious Christian. Which is not uncommon a misunderstanding in the south/Midwest, oddly enough - the desire for fundies to create a coalition to fight abortion in the 70’s/80’s really ended a lot of the more typical anti-Catholicism of the south.

    Similar to the “American Orthodox,” which is the same idea with more of a Russian flavor.




  • andros_rex@lemmy.worldtopics@lemmy.worldWashington DC
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    2 months ago

    Did you know that recruiters LIE?

    Imagine being broke and struggling through college. You get an email from a recruiter - they have access to the university’s entire mailing of course - telling you that all you have to do is show up to a few weeks of boot camp, and do drill on the weekend.

    You’re 18, and don’t know that recruiters are not just allowed to sell you up the river, but encouraged to. It seems like a nice alternative to student loan hell debt and living off jars of peanut butter.

    I do ASVAB prep occasionally, which I have mixed feelings about, and have a client who I’ve just gotten to being able to borrow when subtracting. Do you think he’s equipped to make an intelligent choice when a recruiter promises him the world?