Doorstoppers

Discrimination is wrong, bottom line. But is it so wrong to discriminate against a book based on its size? Books that are so huge that you could beat someone to death with them are ever so affectionately known as “doorstoppers”. Not only are they five-hundred or so pages long, but they’re also printed on gigantic sheets of paper. Shit man, you could probably use the pages as window curtains if you so desired. Or if you wanted to give somebody a blanket party, you could rip out one page and beat the guy with the rest of the book. For books that are less than 200 pages and printed on smaller pieces of paper, the same kind of discrimination is true. People automatically assume that shorter reads are going to be literary flops. Not just flip-flops, not just belly flops, but big fucking flops when it comes to sales and popularity. The point of all these size jokes is not simply for a cheap segue into penis length. Those kinds of jokes are way too easy to tell and I will not sink below to that level. Ah, to hell with it, the bigger the book, the smaller the author’s penis! Authors with shorter books are growers, not showers. There, are you happy? The real reason for discussing the topic of doorstoppers is to decide whether or not judging a book by its size is unfair to the author. I say yes, it is unfair, because doorstoppers are still capable of having a quick reading speed. A lot of celebrity memoirs are written with a quick style and they’re big enough to give the faces on Mt. Rushmore reading material. In fact, there’s a book on my blog that could very well qualify as a doorstopper despite it only being less than 300 pages long. That book would be “Once Upon a Nightwish” by Mape Ollila. It’s a biography of a heavy metal band and it doesn’t use an overwhelming number of slick descriptions. The same thing is true about “Hitman” by Bret Hart when it comes to descriptive language. The difference is, “Hitman” reads so slowly that it takes god knows how many minutes to get through one single page. You won’t see that book on my blog anytime soon. The point of this blog is to send the message of not judging a book by its size. In other words, don’t have page envy. My self-published book “Red Blood, White Knuckles, Blue Heart” is only 176 pages long and it’s printed on six-by-nine paper. It’s a grower, not a shower. Thanks for listening to this very sexualized blog entry about a topic that never gets discussed in the classroom. Usually whenever book size is brought up in an educational setting, the response is akin to something like, “Too bad!” It’s even worse when reading pace is mentioned.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I’m not the goddamn weak link!”

-Daniel Bryan-

"Once Upon a Nightwish" by Mape Ollila

I’ve been a Nightwish fan since 2002 when my brother introduced the song “She Is My Sin” to me. When lead singer Tarja Turunen was fired in 2005, I’ve always encouraged people never to side with one particular camp. Being a supporter of both sides of the Nightwish equation, I can safely say without fail that Mape Ollila’s biography of the band is easily the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read. I could have watched Jeffrey Dahmer chowing down on a corpse or the cast of iCarly getting foot-raped by Dan Schneider and I still wouldn’t be as disturbed and frightened as I was when reading the last hundred pages of this book. I wasn’t disturbed by the crazy antics of the crew such as sticking their dicks in light sockets and getting drunk off their asses. I wasn’t even disturbed by the early on infighting that took place within the band. Those things I can handle. I’m speaking exclusively about the last hundred pages, where Tarja’s South American husband Marcelo Cabuli is portrayed as being no different from oysters at the bottom of the Deep Water Horizon. I’ll leave it up to you guys to figure out what that last phrase means. I’m not saying the portrayal was just, but I’m also not saying it wasn’t. Even after reading the different ways in which the band was falling to pieces such as cancelling shows due to “low payments”, skipping rehearsals, and a general change of attitude on Tarja’s part, I refuse to become a headhunter for any one particular side. Instead, I’m just going to keep on saying what I’ve been saying since 2005: just listen to the wonderful music the group plays and shut up. Isn’t that what it’s all about to begin with? The music? Tuomas Holopainen, the keyboardist and songwriter, seems to think it’s about the music. And when arguments with Tarja and Marcelo began to get in the way of creating music, he had to make a decision that wasn’t the most agreeable among fans: he terminated her. It was a sad moment for everybody, no matter what “camp” you as a fan were from. Since losing Tarja in 2005, the band had been scrambling to find a new singer and finally did in Anette Olzon, as evidenced in her work on the 2007 album “Dark Passion Play”. And that’s exactly where the story ends: 2007, as that was the time Bazillion Points published the book. I’d like to think that there will be another installment of “Once Upon a Nightwish” since a lot has happened since 2007, but in all honesty, we’ll just have to wait a few more years. To be honest yet again, I’d probably be frightened and disturbed once more if a new book was published since in 2012 Anette left the band on her own terms. I’d like to think that Anette’s decision to leave wasn’t laced in poisonous hatred. But that’s a story for another day. What did I think of this particular book that I’m speaking of now? Great stuff. Very well written. Mape Ollila is an awesome author and should have never been taken to court by Marcelo Cabuli. Never!

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“An obese girl enters an elevator with me, all dressed up fancy, a green butterfly on her neck. Terribly sweet perfume deafens me. She’s going to dinner alone. That makes her even more beautiful.”

-Nightwish singing “Song of Myself”-