Snuff
Chuck Palahniuk
Doubleday

Last week I was really taken by Mark Morford’s “Notes & Errata” column, which discussed the Internet’s effect on declining reading rates. According to Morford — although this is not really an original idea — the format of information on the Internet has, perhaps irreparably, hindered our attention span, making us unable to handle the longer format of books. This is why independent bookstores are closing and people are getting dumber, even as they think they’re getting smarter.
It’s not all neo-Luddite alarmism, though Morford says, “I am moderately sure a brain thusly amped on the wicked energy drink of the Web can, through honest time spent, through forcibly yanking the Ethernet cable out of your cerebral cortex, be re-rewired, untrained, readdicted to the deeper juice.” This can happen, as you might imagine, by turning the computer off and tucking into a sufficiently difficult book. A book that will force you to slow down your attention span and to think more deeply about a subject than might be comfortable.
Snuff is not that book.
In fact, the reason why Palahniuk is so intensely popular is that he writes in bite-sized chunks of information, just like the Internet. This style is what made Fight Club feel so revolutionary when it was published in 1996. The idea of combining a narrative with loosely related bits and pieces of facts (like how to make a bomb) made the book feel more relevant and in-line with a culture that was gaining speed at a rate no one could measure. But now, 12 years later, this style of writing is becoming a bit tired. Practically narcoleptic.

(more…)

One day, back in the 1950’s, Marilyn Monroe performed fellatio on an unidentifiable man… and captured the full 15 minutes on 16 mm film!!

The footage, which shows Marilyn Monroe on her knees pleasuring a man who’s face is never shown, was discovered 10 years later by Keya Morgan, who was doing research for a documentary. J. Edgar Hoover found out about it and tried to pin it on John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy. He was un-suck-cessful (ba da bum).

The FBI confiscated the original footage - but not before an informant made a copy of it, which is what was just sold by his son, Morgan said.

“She’s smiling, she’s very charming, she’s very radiant, but she’s known for being radiant,” he said. “She moves away, and then it [the footage] stops.”

Monroe never directly looks into the camera, but she had to have known it was there as cameras in the 1950’s were noisy and bulky.

Joe DiMaggio was said to have offered $25,000 (according to declassified information), but today the film sold for $1.5 million to a wealthy New Yorker. Fortunately for Monroe, he has decided not to share it with anyone else.

“He said he’s just going to lock it up,” Morgan said.

“He said, ‘I’m not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I’m not going to sell it, out of respect.’

There are still good people in the world.

Lindsay Lohan recently recreated Marilyn Monroe’s famous”last sitting,” for an upcoming feature in New York magazine. Check those freckles! Girl looks like she should be modeling for Abby Winters. Now pardon me while I fap.