Beach Sloth

YOUNG AMERICANS by Jordan Castro 

                ‘YOUNG AMERICANS’ is a deeply sad book. There’s a lot of ambiguity as shown in the use of ‘or something’. It is as if Jordan Castro has no idea what’s going on half the time. Confusion reigns over Castro’s life. Part of him wants to improve yet he remains even indecisive about self-improvement. He states as much in the poem WILLING: 

“i’m not sure how willing i am

to get better

to change”

What’s nice is how the last two lines lie on another page, divorced from the ambivalence of the first part, indicating that two separate desires exist outside of each other. Later on in ’10.10.11.5:30AM’ he states he needs to “get my stupid fucking life in order”. This is the part of the book that deals with the isolation of a dorm and of college in general. Despite being surrounded by plenty of people there’s the simultaneous sense of being completely alone. 

These poems are wretchedly beautiful. While one may not be able to fully sympathize with Castro’s plight one can have a sense of understanding. Isolation is a huge part of the book, something that finds everyone. Through Castro’s isolation or seeming distance from the world there’s a need to fill that gapping void with words. With these words Castro tries to reach out and find someone or something. Parts of the book read like an attempt at self-motivation, if not for Castro, then for the reader, to avoid the fuck-ups of life. 

                The blankness of the book reinforces this loneliness. Mixture between the all CAPS LOCK titles with the diminutive all lower case shows a conflict. While Castro would love to be certain of something that goal is unachievable. Rather he is constantly trying to fend off his isolation. Many of the poems remain highly observational. Anger is shown by his desire to tear off most of the limbs of everyone on Earth. Due to his internet addiction he wants them to comment on his blog to complement him and his work. Hence there’s this problem between wanting people, hating them, yet needing them. It is hard to find a balance between those options. 

                Drugs are a huge part of the book. By using drugs Castro is able to disassociate himself from his surroundings. Pooping in a public place becomes easier that way (and indeed there’s an unusually large amount of pooping going on in these poems). There’s a strong temptation to simply say “Jordan Castro is ‘the shit’ of Alt Lit”. The temptation is very strong. Once more though by simply sitting there going to the bathroom nothing is expected of him. The same explanation goes for the drugs. Avoiding interaction is possible through either one of these actions. Existing on drugs lets Castro observe the world without being expected to engage in any specific way. In fact he even feels more worthless when he calls everyone, trying to engage the world, and only has one person answer their phone: the drug dealer. 

                 How it ends is with a series of extreme levels of sadness. Castro states to be as specific as possible. Avoiding hurt is an important (perhaps the most important) part of life. By remaining completely clear and completely unambiguous about meaning, there’s less chance of being hurt. Whether or not anyone will ever do that remains unknown. That’s fine. That’s okay. It is hard to be clear sometimes. Being clear can hurt. And life can be full of hurt though it doesn’t always need to be that way. That’s the purpose of ‘YOUNG AMERICANS’: to realize the hurting parts and to minimize them for they will always be there. 

SELECTIONS FROM JORDAN CASTRO’S TWITTER

                Jordan Castro is having a trill year. Lately he’s been traveling across the country doing a reading tour with Megan Boyle, Sam Pink, Scott McClanahan, Mallory Whitten and the savory Salisbury Bushnell. ‘Shoplifting from American Apparel’ showed off Jordan Castro’s acting chops. In his spare time he runs his very own Ohio based band aptly named ‘The Ohioans’. Recently he busted out the big beautiful book of ‘Young Americans’ chronicling the life and times of a young, virile man growing up in America. Honestly Jordan is virile as fuck, despite his best efforts to rip off his own dick. 

                The set begins with an emphasis on his age. Jordan Castro graduated high school. Many consider this a true accomplishment, a testament to getting through the worst part of life. In fact judging from the last tweet about the first day of college there is really solid framing effect for these tweets. Megan Boyle does a really good job of showing how Jordan Castro’s mind works during that time of ‘pure freedom’ from school, away from old friends and hoping to make new ones. 

                ‘just want to write a book so good that all of my behavior is excusable’ is the best tweet in the whole collection. If there’s one tweet that deserves to be re-tweeted out of the bunch it is this one. Writers typically refer to their own work as a justification for their actions. Sometimes shitty writers are also shitty people. Book quality has nothing to do with it often. Yet the idea is common enough that Jordan’s take is particularly funny. Besides he recently put out a book, so perhaps this tweet also has a ‘prophetic’ quality to it. Maybe Jordan knew, subconsciously that he would be out a book to extreme critical acclaim. 

                X-men get a lot of attention in this tweet series. Clearly Jordan Castro loves ‘the fuck’ out of that perennial all-American comic book series. One of the most notable aspects of American culture is the fear of a massive, all powerful government. Usually this government hates mutants for reasons that are convoluted, boring, and poorly explained. Yet the explanation doesn’t really matter as long as some cars transform into robots, some web is slung, and at least one awkward love scene is shown. Jordan explains how he lost control of his left leg due to the overwhelming power of the X-men movie. 

                The tweets about loneliness are great. Rummaging around people’s homes in broad daylight searching for happiness is commonly referred to as ‘hanging out’. Crying uncontrollably on the floor while looking really good is typical for anyone between the ages of 16 to 32. After 32 it gets easier, hopefully. If someone is worried about the terrible direction their life is going they should read these tweets since these tweets would make anyone feel less alone in loneliness.

raccoonsarenotafraidofpeople:

Raccoon Remix.  2012.

                Raccoons make amazing remixes. Few would guess a raccoon would be behind the greatest video remix of culture. Culture is all around up in this massively distorted video/audio project. At times completely incomprehensible it is a pulsing being of pure energy. More than a video the Raccoon Remix is the world viewer through the less of those smart enough to pull back and escape. Watching this video requires complete and full attention. Despite the amorphous nature of the video a few common themes appear again and again.

                Zachary German appears many times in this video. This is due to his blockbuster hit ‘Shitty Youth’ which came out fairly recently. Sure other alt lit writers appear: Tao Lin, Steve Roggenbuck, Megan Boyle and Jordan Castro make guest appearances. For some reason Zachary’s face interests the raccoon the most. Zachary’s face bleeds into and out of its surroundings. Does Zachary German’s face represent the end times? When the world ends will the final words be Zachary German’s infamous phrase of ‘Kill cops. Why not? Look at them. They’re horrible. I don’t know.’

                Law enforcement is shown more frequently however. Putting the bad guys away is what law enforcement does. Every time somebody is smoking up (and there’s a lot of footage of that in the video) law enforcement arrives to save the day. Whatever raccoon created this remix is clearly a fan of America’s hard working police force. Dangerous drug fiends litter the streets of America. It is up to America’s law enforcement to pick up the trash. Besides this there is real Manson footage, various evil doers and other assorted pieces of trash. 

                Speaking of trash politicians take up a large chunk of the footage. This includes the recent footage from the 2012 election along with earlier politicians. Bill Clinton makes his way into the infinitely growing jam. George W. Bush, America’s beloved former leader, makes a rare post-presidential appearance. Even older presidents wedge their way into this mega-mix. In fact there is a surprisingly calm moment where a speaker discusses how to be an intellectual. It is simple: just realize everything is hopeless. People laughed at him. But he was probably right or hopelessly pessimistic. 

                By the end of the video the graphics change dramatically. From the macro level of world events, drug busts, and bursts of violence is the micro world of cell biology. Here the cells take over. There is no stopping it. The end of the world will be full of evil micro biology perpetuated by raccoon remixes. Consider this remix a basic sample of what’s to come.

Giving Up: DON’T

                People give up each and every day. Some writers have choice words for those who give up. One Steve Roggenbuck says ‘If you give up, fuck you’. Today a great plague has hit the alt lit nation. It is a brand new craze of bleak introspection: come on, do the dejection. Life can be hard. Sloths understand this as they crawl from one point to the other, never getting to where they need to go. Rather sloths hang upside down on trees condemned to achieve nothing. But while such a model has worked for millennia for the sloths, it is a poor strategy for humans to take. 

                Sam Pink appears to be giving up. Out of somewhere he states ‘life sucks dick’. Sam Pink went on a reading tour with other great writers across the beautiful, bountiful and buxom baby called America. From this place of sadness Sam talks about those uncouth youngsters throwing rocks at him. The pants he had split apart like a new pair of pants. Most of Sam’s sadness may be pants related. His heart gets torn out over and over again until there is nothing left. 

                But there is something left. The outpouring of support is amazing. People are right. When sadness falls it can be heavy indeed. No one can pick themselves up out of depression alone. Friends are necessary to pull that heaviness off, revealing the sunshine once again. HTMLGiant has a stub dedicated to this post, to encourage others to encourage Sam Pink. A few have been directly hurt from this announcement. Mallory Whitten is currently having her head ‘belly slammed’ by Jordan Castro and Megan Boyle. Save Mallory Whitten’s head. Buy Sam Pink’s books wherever un-reputable books are sold. Also buy Megan Boyle’s book. Megan Boyle is the coolest person on planet Earth. 

                My experience with Sam Pink has been uniformly positive. I have seen videos of his readings shown to me by Steve Roggenbuck. Everybody loves the guy. Shaun Gannon did a rare dedication to Sam Pink in one of his poems. Reading a Sam Pink piece is a unique, life-changing experience. How he filters reality is amazing. The outro he wrote for Scott McClanahan’s “The Collected Works of Scott McClanahan Volume 1” is fantastic. Check out Scott’s book too. It is really, really funny, downright bizarre yet oddly believable. Scott McClanahan’s work is like discovering West Virginia without the inconvenience of actually going there. 

                General theme of giving up: just don’t do it. Live. Breathe. It gets better. Depression hits the world each and every day. What can be the hardest thing is to embrace the good. Not everything is going to work out. Sam Pink has been doing this for a long time. Literature without Sam Pink would be an even sadder thing. Embrace Sam Pink. Give him a virtual hug right here.

Jordan Castro: The Man, The Myth, the Quicker Penis ripper-offer

               Jordan Castro is the most accomplished member of the ‘twenty under twenty’ writer’s list I’ve encountered. Certainly he’s been around for a while despite his recent graduation from high school. His books include “think tank for human beings in general”, “Assuming Size” and his most recent effort “Cute”. “Assuming Size” appears to have been the biggest one as it took on the size of a ‘sellout’. Besides his books he maintains a blog and writes articles, poems, and short stories for places such as HTML Giant and other assorted venues. 

                Due to living in the crushingly boring place of Ohio, he has many additional interests besides writing. Jordan appears on the DVD ‘Muumuu House’ reading some of his poems. In the film you’re treated to another one of his talents: specifically that of musician. Following in a proud tradition of bored High School students, he has multiple bands and music projects, the most recent of which offers its entire album free of charge on bandcamp. 

                None of this would’ve come to my attention had Jordan not engaged in a little shameless self-promotion. Authors are known to do this: Pynchon appears in the Simpsons, Hemingway sold beer. Well we’re in a more shock-and-awe kind of culture so bigger statements are needed. Jordan decided he’d need to pull something big, something people would notice. How about his own penis? To avoid a potential ‘penis picture’ problem he threatened to earnestly try to pull it off. Now we were transcending regular gimmicks and moving into Vincent Van Gogh territory. Vincent Van Gogh, that terrible wimp and coward, only cut off his ear. I highly doubt he would’ve had a tweet go viral about it. More likely Van Gogh wouldn’t have had as many twitter followers as Jordan Castro due to poor Wi-Fi access in late 19^th century Europe.

                I’m proud of everyone who made this possible: First for Jordan for having a heart to heart talk with his girlfriend about their future relationship (potentially penis-less) before he put it on twitter. All those twitter followers of his who made this possible. Jordan stated if 100 people retweeted it he’d do it. So either his followers really love him or hate him, and in the end those are two remarkably similar emotions. People rallied to the cause of seeing him attempt to pull off his own dick. Honestly, I’m not too worried about him succeeding: he said earnest try, he never stated will. Oh, the joys of the English language how wonderful (and protective of the male genitals) they truly are.

                Spoiler Alert: He did not succeed.

Origin Story Number Three: