Three things I read this week

The meg, capitalism beats communism, Dune explained

With the recent release of the 2nd installment in the Dune saga, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the masterpiece that inspired the film. Dune is one of the most exciting novels I’ve ever read, so good that decided to read it twice. I also indulged in several of the sequels but found them to be largely forgettable.

Sadly, some people who’ve tried to read Dune have been put off by an opening chapter that hits like an artillery salvo on Christmas morning. To ease that transition I’ll explain the first scene so you can get started with this book and eventually come to understand why this meme is so freaking great.

The Gom Jabbar is a test of mental fortitude. A member of the Bene Gesserit, a cross between the Jedi and a sect of Buddhist monks, holds a poisoned needle against the test taker’s neck. The taker then puts their hand into a box which causes horrible pain without inflicting lasting damage. The test measures how long a person will keep their hand in the box, thus determining their mental fortitude and mastery of mind over matter. There is also a strong element of fear. If the student flinches, they may force their neck into the needle leading causing instant death.

Paul Atreides displays exceptional mental fortitude, and his freshly revealed abilities set the stage for his impending hero’s journey. The first chapter throws a lot at you, but after the Gom Jabbar test is over Dune’s storyline begins in earnest and the plot is relatively easy to follow.

I hope you’ll read Dune, it’s ruthlessly enjoyable. I’ve heard that the movies are good too, and I’m glad for that. For me though, Dune will always and forever be a book. When you read an exceptionally well-written story you create its world and characters in your head, and these imaginings are so much more vivid than anything even the best Hollywood directors can produce.

1 - The Meg

The first third of Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror was within tolerances, the rest of the book had all the charm of burning chicken feathers on a muggy afternoon. Any reasonable person would have dumped this lemon flavored brain clot into the nearest medical hazards disposal bin. However, like the time some guy’s foot washed up on the beach, we don’t do proper disposal around these parts.

There’s nothing you can’t critique in this literary abomination but I’m going to hone in on the aquatic falsities. For a book about a gigantic shark boogying around the ocean, the author has an embarrassingly poor understanding of how water works.

• The mental defects protagonists want to trap the meg in a giant tank and sell tickets to spectators. However, great white sharks are famously maladjusted to cages and have a long track record of dying when held in captivity. What makes them think a meg would be different?

• One woman swims from 90 feet to the surface almost instantly and, quote, continually blew the air out of her lungs to get rid of nitrogen bubbles. The bends doesn’t fucking work like that! Any dive deeper than 30 feet requires a safety stop to allow the nitrogen bubbles in your body to dissipate. Thankfully the meg eats her 20 seconds later, putting to rest any other medical concerns.

• One scene has a bunch of surfers getting towed into waves at Jaws, one of the world’s most famous big wave breaks. A bloke is sitting on his board waiting for his friend to come back with the jet ski when he sees the meg surface and swim towards him. He starts paddling and manages to catch a 50-foot wave and escape. No! When a surfer gets towed into a wave they use a short board with straps. Paddling into a 50 foot mega-bomb demands a 10-foot plus board, it’s physically impossible to paddle into a big wave with a tow board like the one the guy had with him.

• After escaping from the meg on their jet ski, the surfers pull up onto the beach and start high-fiving each other. But you fuckwit author, the beach in front of Jaws is all melon sized rocks! You wouldn’t drive a jet ski onto it unless you were chasing an insurance claim. Check out this footage of a jet ski getting sent to motorsports heaven on the “beach” in front of Jaws.

• A ~200 foot boat is anchored in 15-20 foot seas. Down in the galley the crew are having a leisurely dinner, shooting the shit like it’s calm sailing at Good Times Bay. Like fuck they are… A ship that size in waves that big, people are clutching the table with one hand and gnawing at a food bar with the other. There’s no casual chicken dinner in those seas.

• Over in Hawaii they restart a 1950s era nuclear submarine in an afternoon. Granted I haven’t used my nuclear engineering degree in a while, but I recall that it takes more than an afternoon to get everything ship shape. There’s also no fucking way the Navy just keeps that tin can floating around in the event of what, a nostalgia related emergency? Cool it there Dick, you never know when we might need one of these humdingers. Those sneaky Japs are planning something big, I know it.

In short, this book shouldn’t be read by anyone. If for some inexplicable reason you happen to see it a bookstore, please buy it and then burn it so that nobody else must suffer the same fate as me. And last week when I claimed to be talented at picking out books? Lies, filthy lies. Somebody hand me my involuntary retirement.

2 - The evil tiger

I’m immersing myself in the habitat of the Siberian tiger; an exceptional book is transporting me to the far east. I have a full review planned, but for the time being here is what happens when a particularly malicious tiger decides to eat a human. Gore warning, skip this if you’re squeamish.

What Alexander Pochepnya found is something no parent is equipped to see. Fifty yards into the snowy forest lay a heap of blood-blackened clothing in a circle of exposed earth. It looked more like a case of spontaneous combustion than an animal attack. There was nothing left but shredded cloth and empty boots. Nearby, a watch and crucifix lay undamaged on the ground. The remains of Pochepnya himself were so small and so few they could have fit in a shirt pocket. It is normal for a tiger to leave extremities as the tiger did with Markov, but Pochepnya was gone, and this was—like the ransacking of the outhouse—unprecedented.

-Book that shall be named shortly, stay tuned…

3 - Capitalism,

I love this short anecdote about capitalism kicking communism in the urethra. This is from Michael Malice’s The White Pill (see my review here).

After touring the Johnson Space Center on September 16th, 1989, Yeltsin took an unscheduled visit to a Randall’s supermarket in Houston, Texas. Photos exist of him being awed by the boxes of Kool-Aid popsicles and the overflowing bins of onions. He was told that the store stocked thirty thousand items, while the typical Soviet store ostensibly carried fewer than a hundred but in practice often had bare shelves. It would have seemed like ridiculous pro-American propaganda but for the fact that Yeltsin was witnessing it all with his own eyes. Average Americans could buy things out of reach of the wealthiest Soviet citizens. The conquest of bread had been won by the West.

As Yeltsin flew on to Miami he clutched his head in his hands, his brain rewiring itself from decades of being told things that were simply not true. He also understood that those saying such things couldn’t have been just “misinformed,” not to this extent. They were knowingly, brazenly lying, or at the very least completely indifferent to the facts. “They had to fool the people,” he realized. “It is now clear why they made it so difficult for the average Soviet citizen to go abroad. They were afraid that people’s eyes would open.”

Boris Yeltsin at the grocery store

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