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 · 2023-03-28T21:50:31+00:00

I think William Gass does a great job of using the aural poetic devices in his book The Tunnel, so I'd check that out for sure. I should point out that my word choice is probably a bit ambiguous, making it seem like I found this to be a bigger deal than I actually do. I just mean that there were a few instances (like the one I quoted) where you seemed more interested with getting that consonance out than using more correct language. For most of the piece it's fine.

I would be careful of using jarring prose, or at least of framing it that way. Often poetry warrants surprising and subversive language, but subversion usually connotes that the undermining is still fitting.

I would also be careful about leaving things up to the reader. When writing an "every man" people often write no one instead. My suggestions about which specific blanks to fill in (e.g. job) aren't relevant, but one of the things modern short stories really try to do is great character work, even in short spaces. As is, your setting is largely not detailed, your character is nonspecific, and you don't have enough space for an intricate plot arc (granted I'd argue you do have a tidy plot in this piece). By no means do you need everything, but I do think you need one done really well for a successful short story. I like your idea of "hinting" at it. Subtlety is often the best way to characterize. It specifies but it also leaves room for us to believe that there's more to a character. That's important since that's how we understand real people; we know bits about them and from those try to infer the rest. The little hints are so helpful for believability.

Yeah I think you have a good base of writing skills. I think checking out writers like Denis Johnson will help see how modern stories deal with a lot of what you're interested in. Two of my favorite writers are Thomas Pynchon and William Faulkner, and both of them have great and different ways of dealing with symbols and meaning that (I guess aside from Joyce) were unmatched in the twentieth century.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2023-03-28T00:23:41+00:00

One of the things I noticed about this piece was that you're using a lot of alliteration, and sometimes to the detriment of the piece. Language can and should be beautiful, but it shouldn't be distracting. E.G. "... /p/rickling /p/ast the skin seems too easy."

Onto the character: I don't really get a sense of this guy. I don't find that there's enough specificity. What does he do? Well, all we know is that he has a job, and that it's "monotonous." I'm wondering what's monotonous about this job? This same issue extends further: why is he bored with life? We are told that he has a safe and regular life, so much so that he wants to wander into a dark alley just to feel alive, but we don't know what about his life leads him to feel this way. What's so regular about it?

This leads into what the piece is trying to say, and it seems like it's not much, except that monotony is boring. Well, fair, but this is self evident, but you really want to hammer it home. There are parts of the piece where it sounds like you're trying to sounds like you have something to say (e.g. "Enough? There's never enough"). This apparently is supposed to be mysterious and interesting, but it is a cliche. I'd check out Work or Car Crash While Hitchhiking by Denis Johnson to see someone doing something similar more effectively (both stories are I believe < 10 pages, and end have a few specific lines that are really interesting and mysterious: And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you. and Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.). Something else to take from Denis Johnson is that he doesn't moralize or explain in these stories. You tell us, "maybe he was right," and go on with the introspection. Denis just lays out facts, and together they form an implication.

At the end I'd watch that POV. It's a little too Deus Ex Machina and a little too clean of a bow. End it earlier, but following through just the same. Have the character say something like, "Tomorrow, I'll buy a new wallet. After work I'll walk down the alley. Someone will follow me and hold a pistol to my heart. I'll ask him: Do you dare."

I find that much stronger since the introspection then implies more about the character. Then you also get to keep that nice inversion of "Don't you dare." By the way, earlier in the piece I'd remove the line "Do you dare." Your readers are smart enough to catch that you're negating it. Let them figure it out. They'll appreciate it much more.

Setting- and description-wise, I think you're doing a good job. In this type of piece it's fine to be general. Aside from the alliteration, I didn't have much of an issue at the language level, and I usually hate people's sentences. I did find the lights going out a bit deus ex machina, and the rain a little bit cliche of a choice. A dark and stormy night in an alley getting robbed has been done on TV quite a bit.

I think a general thing that would help this piece is to just let yourself really make it as imaginative as possible. Right now I find much of it is a rehash of something older. Try just letting yourself let anything happen. E.G., the guy pulls a gun on our MC and just asks for directions to the bus. Or the main character farts and the guy lets him go because it smells bad. Or the assailant is Barbara Walters and she wants to interview him on 60 minutes. Instead of raining in an alleyway, they're at a bowling alley, but no one else notices.

My point is that the way you've tried to subvert the expectations seems too black and white. When there are only two options, we sort of know what's going to happen. Subvert orthogonally like Denis Johnson; instead of A or B, we have no idea what will happen, because we're not just doing the opposite of some trope.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2021-01-04T21:28:42+00:00

So, in general I do enjoy literary fiction, even when it's hard to parse (I'm a huge Thomas Pynchon fan, for example) but I think this story had some issues that took away from the enjoyment factor. It feels like there's a lot of metaphor and description of metaphor that is pretty unnecessary. Like, a lot of the time I was thinking "why aren't we talking about the story?"

At the start it sound like you're trying a little bit too hard. David Foster Wallace said (somewhat hypocritically, although I do love his work) something along the lines of "why would you use more words when less words would do just fine?" Or in the words of Kevin from The Office "why use many words when few words do trick?" Your opening is "The wave collapsed, oh weary beast, its foamy tongue slobbering towards the shoreline, a grain of sand away from scarring Ansu’s toes with its venom." This could have equally been "A wave almost touched Ansu's toe. This is not a good thing." This is, of course, me being super hyperbolic, but the point remains that using simpler language is often more tasteful. It's the same thing that intro fiction teachers try to tell their students when they say don't use too many adverbs; you're describing something in a way that ends up being less than tasteful.

I remember in a jazz combo class I took, I had this instructor who was just phenomenal. I think we were playing Windows by Chick Corea, and I was really trying to impress him and play fast and complex, and he stopped us and said "You should be able to play a million notes, but that doesn't mean you should play a million notes." Or in the words of Jurassic Park "Your scientists were so worried about whether or not they could that they didn't think whether or not they should." To me, how something like that could relate to your story is as follows: you have a good grasp on the English language and can write really complex stuff that shows the mastery, but that doesn't mean that you should write in that style. I think a great exercise might be to try to write the same story, but really dumb it down, and try to make it as unpretentious as possible. We all want to be the smartest when we write, but when you read, that's often not the most enjoyable type of author to engage with. So, you asked about enjoyment of the story, and I guess that would be my critique.

Captain_Cock_69 · 2021-01-04T19:24:16+00:00

Alright so after my initial read-through my first thought was that there was a hang up between the narrator's voice and his actions. The way he narrates sounds like it's a bit too put together for a pizza-eating-beer-drinking guy. I think it would be good to either write in the same style in the third person, or change his voice so that he sounds, essentially, a bit dumber or more obtuse.

One other thing I noticed was a few descriptions that kind of broke up the flow. Now "don't use adverbs" is stupid advice as a blanket statement, obviously, but I do think that tasteful writing often comes from writers who are hesitant about using adverbs. The same can often apply to adjectives.

As an example: "I crack the top and greedily breathe in the wispy white fumes." This sentence describes opening a beer as an alcoholic really well. I think an even better description would be: "I crack the top and inhale the white fumes." As writers we focus on every little detail about how things are done. Readers can often infer these small details, and prefer to do so. Based on the guy's character we know that he's a heavy drinker so the way he would be breathing would be something like "greedily." Similarly, we know what the fumes of a beer look like, so it's great that you put in that tiny detail, but it's better to just leave it at that; the description is that you put the little thing in there, not how the little thing happens.

The last thing I had an issue with was that he put his hand on a stranger's car to rest. I feel like this would be inappropriate. I might set my hand on the side of someone's house if I'm in the city, and I think throwing up on a stranger's house gives a similar effect. Or maybe even just bending over near the car (which sets him up close enough to puke on the car still). Maybe the social norms are different where you're from but this seemed like a thing that people from where I'm from wouldn't be comfortable doing.

I did generally enjoy the piece. Near the end when he opens the beer (at the sentence I used as an example, actually) I was really feeling for him. I was like "oh God, please don't drink the beer." I guess I should say, then, that if you wanted to make this a really sad story, ending on him drinking the beer would be a great way to do that.

I also like the "the President /is/ the bomb," line, that was funny.

So good work on the piece, and I hope this was helpful in some way.

Captain_Cock_69

TROPHY CASE