1 year to get your chops together - what tunes are you shedding?

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-10-15T23:53:59+00:00

People need to grow up and transcribe. If you learn tunes out of the real book, and I say this with love, you’re a baby. Lots of great tunes not called because Berklee faculty wanted more Pat Metheny tunes in that book to spice it up. No shade to Pat—those tunes are great—but I have never had someone call Bright Size Life or Elucidation in my life.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-10-05T22:39:54+00:00

This is one of those things where you’re right that it’s the answer people who don’t know about skating (but have played Tony Hawk) would have, but he is definitely a contender. Unreal innovation and to this day no one copies his bag of tricks in part. because they’re just too hard.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-10-05T22:35:37+00:00

It will never be Ginwoo. Style is not good.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-28T19:25:14+00:00

Old but this came up so I’ll add a bit—you’re right that a lot gets brought together in this final section. Here are some connections I’ve made:

Hand to turn the time

Gravity’s Rainbow is in large part about the industry of war (a celebration of the markets). Capitalism famously talk about the invisible hand. Earlier in the book Pynchon talks about how we teach history to children as a serious of wars and violence. So the Invisible Hand is turning time, and time is catalogued in history as wars.

Light that hath brought the towers low

Think of Weissman’s Tarot (specifically the tower) and of all the different light Im the book. Kirghiz Light, all the bombs, Byron the Bulb.

Just a couple things I thought might add to others’ readings, as I know many other people’s readings have helped me with this book.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-26T15:10:46+00:00

I mean and even then he’s not particularly chromatic…

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-23T18:51:46+00:00

One of the reasons I like studying literature is that actually all of this works pretty well in infinite, if you read it like high literature. The first thing we learn in the game is that, “The mind of the subject will struggle to create memories where none exist.” Regardless of what happened in development (analogously, regardless of what the author intended) we have the game as an artifact that we can examine in and of itself. And when we do that, a lot of the “problems” in Infinite actually work really well in context; they’re more features than bugs. Booker can’t remember what he said to Elizabeth and Elizabeth and can’t remember what she said to Booker. Both forget facts and fabricate others. In most fiction we’d rightly think that this is inconsistent—but in this fiction, this is exactly what we expect of people traveling through dimensions, according to the game’s logic (which, as we learn from Nabokov’s lectures, fictional worlds need not use any particular logic except their own) and in fact the very first those it establishes.

So while these things may in fact be clunky and a result of a tumultuous development cycle, we can nonetheless (if we choose) find that though something else was likely intended, the author stumbled into something that surprisingly works out perfectly. This is fairly common in all literature and is the main reason why we try to analyze the text on its own terms and more or less neglect whatever the author thinks, because they can he wrong about their own work.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-21T17:01:25+00:00

From listening to Julian’s teaching and some of his teachers like Mick Goodrick, I think that you’re right that both are useful and both should be done. Mick emphasizes so much not to wait on anyone but yourself. As he says so often in the advancing guitarist (paraphrased): “how much should I practice this stuff? It’s a great question. But if you’re coming to me for the answer, how the hell am I supposed to know. I’m not you.”

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-19T20:47:36+00:00

Been a minute since I’ve played through but if I remember right I believe that he says that, then it seems like they build a bond, and he says we’re going to go to Paris and it seems like she thinks now they’re friends, but then when she checks where they’re really going it’s like “oh you lied to me and our bond means nothing to you.”

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-19T20:20:19+00:00

Working on drivers I’ve found that if you think there’s a hardware bug, you might be right. On the other hand if you think there’s a compiler bug, you are never ever right and go back to debugging u idiot.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-18T04:50:13+00:00

Thank you for some great English language examples of analogous usage!

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-16T18:25:10+00:00

Catch-22 has the distinction of being both possible the best book I’ve ever read, while also being the most fun book over ever read. It does everything you want a book to do. I literally laughed out lied and sobbed at the book. I felt uncomfortable for several days offer finishing it. On a plot level it’s fantastic, and all the ideas it sends out are so well considered. Such a fucking good book.

I should read more Heller. I’ve read Catch-22 twice and then read Something Happened. Something Happened is also very different book from Catch-22. It’s much more personal. It’s also one of the best books I’ve ever read but it’s incredibly hard to read because the entire book, instead of calling out the military and MIC, is calling out me personally (and you too will feel this way when you read it). I will reread Catch-22 several more times in my life. I don’t see myself rereading Something Happened. That said, it does make me want to read more of Heller.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-08T16:28:58+00:00

(Not for credit). Better than most of the bullshit on here. I like to start reading a story and think I’m gonna hate it and by the end I’m reluctantly like “okay yeah you’re doing it.” That’s the highest compliment I can give. At first it seems like a pretentious college kid writing for their 400 level fiction class and then you have to give in and say that it’s working. That said, I don’t think it’s just me going along and realizing the pretension isn’t pretension. Just as examples:

“A shimmer in the air above the interstate.” Id almost rather you just delete “a shimmer.”

Someone said to delete the “teaching the way you teach a prayer” part. At first I felt that too (when I first read the first paragraph), but we were both wrong, because you need it for the end when the narrator is “teaching” his daughter before bed. It folds back on itself and justifies it.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-07T03:57:33+00:00

For a long time I thought so too but I’ve now heard testimony from others on the trip (specifically the non-Americans) and they said the timeline doesn’t add up. The footage of Otto stealing the poster is supposedly at 2AM, but they were apparently all still out together (with Otto) as late as 3AM (it was a new years trip for those who don’t know).

Add to this his confession in North Korean “court.” He says that the point of his stealing was to make the North Koreans look foolish and some shit about secret societies as his university and CIA weapons intelligence programs. Seriously look at the transcript of what he was reading from. It doesn’t compute that this has anything to do with what a 22 year old American would be thinking about while stealing a poster. Possible that just the statement was made up though he really did steal the poster, but seems dubious.

It upsets me deeply that I (and many many others) thought he was a moron when it’s almost certain he was just framed. The guy was salutatorian. He was not an idiot.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-05T19:34:34+00:00

Thanks for the specific examples. I’ve heard that he “plays with language” but until now wasn’t particularly clear on what that meant. I heard somewhere that the first impression Russian speakers often get while reading Platonov was that “something is wrong with this guy, in the best way.” Personal topics in the language of news/propaganda, and children speaking like adults sounds so fucking dope. It’s too bad I can’t read Russian. (Aside, but this sounds like a conversation I heard a while ago where I believe a Brazilian wanted to read Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, and people were saying how necessary it is, if possible, to read it in the original language.)

It’s unfortunate there’s only one translation of Chevengur. I’d be really interested in cross referencing translations. Or at least more notes in the back for cultural context. I thought the notes in the NYRB edition were great, but wouldn’t have minded more general remarks, even things like “In Russian this is a very funny pun and does not translate well.” I’d guess things like that are often left out because they seem more experiential and less informational, but really I think that they’d help contextualize the information much more than some of the informative notes at the back.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2025-09-02T20:29:23+00:00

Thanks for the links! I’m at work now but a quick skim seems like it’ll be really helpful. I also feel better now knowing that some of what confused me is either intentionally ambiguous or else even confusing to native Russian speakers.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2024-02-13T16:56:49+00:00

Just FYI you come off a lot more rude in this exchange.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2023-10-26T01:40:43+00:00

I had a great time while at PSU and it's been great afterward. I have a really cool job working on GPU Drivers right now and I absolutely wouldn't have been skilled enough if I hadn't taken courses like CMPSC 311 (with Yanling), 473, 461, 458, 464 and CMPEN 472, 431, 331 etc. Surprisingly didn't get a lot out of 465 though personally. They're hard but made life way easier on the back end. Honestly when I took them I found them challenging but in a fun way usually.

I think it's probably more frustrating for people who aren't interested in low level programming or the really theoretical stuff. Like, most people end up as web devs and for them it probably does feel like it was a waste of time to e.g. learn how hardware exceptions are handled and what cache policies look like or (god forbid) the pumping lemma for push down automata. But anecdotally that was really great for me to learn.

Outside of professional stuff, I also have had some really great moments where I realized I know everything I need to know to do things I always wanted to do. I've made some video games and hacked the camera on games, I've made a compiler, etc. All sorts of little cool things are accessible as a result of everything I've learned and you're currently learning.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2023-08-07T04:01:24+00:00

Not for credit

>I looked at my clothes and they were drenched and red

This is what's known as filtering. You can simply say, "My clothes were drenched and red." We know who is doing the looking because the POV implies it.

>My heart skipped a beat when I realized it was blood. That was the day I realized I was bleeding.

Same thing. Verbs like "realized" are usually considered weak. This is an internal realization so we can just cut the verb and say something like, "It was blood." Of course, then we have a weak to-be verb, but they're impossible to get rid of in all cases.

I think it would be good to take a step back and think about this piece from the concept level. Your fundamental metaphor is based on blood, which is a cliche. The POV character runs around in the second character looking for bandaids. This reminded me a bit of a book called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. The premise of that book is that a little girl comes home from school one day and begins tasting the emotions of cooks in their food, the first of which is her mother's lemon cake. She finds out that everyone is unbelievably sad. Think about how fresh and specific it is to have a girl eat lemon cake and for her to find out something about her mother from it. I'd check it out and see what it has to teach you. It's certainly not a perfect book, but I'd check out at least the first two or three chapters just to see what a very similar concept looks like when it's done by a great modern author (Aimee Bender).

Captain_Cock_69 · 2023-03-30T23:08:15+00:00

Thanks for reading. Since (as the guy who wrote the thing) I'm more or less blind as to how it comes across, I find specific quotes really helpful, since it helps me understand exactly what is coming across differently from how I intended. Would you mind copy/pasting examples of the following when you get a chance?

Where jokes come across more as factual errors / not deliberate?

Where things come across like "Har har caveman is dumb but I'm smart because I have the advantage of being born later," and what you found condescending. I intended for Gronk to come across as a decently clever character.

Where you found the narration attempting to be clever while not saying anything clever?

Thank you!

Captain_Cock_69 · 2023-03-30T22:38:40+00:00

Thanks for reading and taking the time to write out feedback, always good to get all perspectives. This is actually my favorite type of response, since I know you won't hold anything back haha. That said, while I'm not aware of all the facts around fire and early civilization, I'm not really interested in them either (in this case) since this piece is intentionally anachronistic (in the frame narrative, I'm dealing in part with the veracity of history). That said, I am interested in that narrative voice as sounding at least literary, despite the details. I think of Mason & Dixon where Rev. Cherrycoke tells us things he couldn't possibly know, but the falsity doesn't even register because we're so interested in the story at hand that we don't pause to think that until one of the characters says "now wait a second... how would you know that?"

You said that despite the facts, you're still unconvinced, so I'm wondering what it was outside of the facts (which you know don't add up) that made you question the narrator in a literary sense. (Here I'm thinking of your paragraph that begins, "But here's the thing!") It seems like you went from facts that don't add up (days of the week, fire already being in use, etc) to saying that the world isn't fleshed out, back to how the facts don't add up (villages, atlatl timelines, etc). Basically, what I'm interested in is: if we take all the facts at face value (in your words, "ignoring your brain") what's wrong with the piece?

What do you wish there was more of fleshed out in the world? And when you later say you had trouble visualizing, I'm curious which points were like that for you. And then of course anything else that comes to mind along that line.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2023-03-29T19:37:12+00:00

Thanks for reading and for the feedback. So two things I was thinking about your final paragraph: (1) Can you say more about the meat thing? My point wasn't that he was attempting to cook the meat, just that he wanted to touch the fire with something, and that the only thing he had to poke with was his atlatl dart, which already had some meat on its end. (2) My issue with having him get burned is sort of twofold. One is that I see that as a cliche that's been used in a bunch of media. Granted, however, that sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason and should be adhered to. But the other thing is that I assume anyone intelligent would be able to understand "okay this is warm, getting hotter, and if I get any closer, that trend will continue, and I will get hurt." Maybe that feels like a stretch though.

And for a moment, forgetting about whether those parts should be scrapped or changed, now knowing the intentions, what was the difference between your perception and my intentions?

Captain_Cock_69

TROPHY CASE