Pisac u najam by Zoran Zivkovic

First of all, the title and the last name of the author aren’t written exactly like this, but I have no idea how to write it with the right characters, sorry about that. 

He’s a Serbian author and this is his first work that I’ve read. I liked it very much. It’s a small book, 139 pages the one in my hands, and written with rather big characters, but that’s no problem at all, I enjoyed very much reading it. I thought it was nice, intriguing and funny. The ending was a little hurried and not completely explained, but that can’t erase the nice moments and laughs it caused me while reading it.

The protagonist is a writer, we follow his thoughts and what he does. The whole book’s plot starts and finishes in one day. He is obsessed with receiving messages and checking them immediately, and he’s also obsessed with saving every single e-mail into different folders.

He lives alone and hasn’t written anything in a while, he’s stuck. He has a cat that he ‘rescued’ one day: he was walking and this little kitty did his big cat-eyes at him and he brought him home. Since then, they have learned to live together and of course the cat is not as ‘little’ anymore.

The story starts with our writer receiving an e-mail from someone who won’t give his real identity but conceal himself under ‘a fan’, Ammiratore. He asks him to write something for him and give him all the credits. Our writer (who goes by the name Felix as his cat when online) is outraged, but keeps replying with calm and politeness. 

Usually Felix doesn’t receive many letters all at once, but today seems to be an exception. After his ‘fan’, four other pen-friends fill his day. We read each e-mail with him, read his thoughts, and then his replies. From time to time his cat disrupts his thoughts doing something, like walking on his desk, sleeping on his notebook - which is not a big bother since he usually uses the big one.

Whenever he gets irritated his cat shoos the anger away. We learn of the difficulties he went through the first days of their living together, when he didn’t know how a cat releases energy from time to time running around playing, how the cat keeps sharpening his claws on his furniture, how he once fell off the window scaring him to death, how they have slowly become inseparable, so much that he now loves his cat dearly... it’s adorable how he talks about how he doesn’t want to wake him up when it sleeps on his notebook, how it has slowly become the center of his world and the master of the house...

the pen-friends stories are rather bizarre and sometimes funny.

Altomare is another writer, who thinks  the outmost of himself and he’s probably jealous that his work isn’t recognised as much as Felix’s , Banana is a flashy big woman who approached him one day and started sending him her impressions upon reading his books before sending him her own attempt at writings, which means various different episodes based on dreams she dreamed on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday (other nights’ dreams don’t matter to her); the episodes are all so different that it doesn’t seem a book at all, and she’s waiting to dream the dream that will link them all together.

There’s P-0, also a fan of course, who sent him a pastiche after the other, based on his own books (basically he started from the original, changing many things but keeping the soul of it, more or less) and then there is Pandora, an old woman who lives in the same building: they met at the veterinary, she has a very old dog and they started talking and then they exchanged e-mails, and she also started sending him little things she wrote, at first about little moments with animals as protagonists, then about her walks with her dog.

The curious thing is that today they all have strange requests. 

P-0 has already wrote a pastiche for all his books, so he says he would like to write the pastiche before the original, and wants him to write the original based on his pastiche, which of course makes no sense.

Banana tells him that she finally dreamed the conclusive dream: she saw him writing it! and then since they were both half naked they did... that, and now she wants him to write the most important (and impossible) chapter for her, and her letters become more and more incoherent, talking about her ‘book’ as if she was a single mother and he was leaving her without acknowledging their son.. at last he stops replying to her and she becomes aggressive in her last letter.

Pandora says that her dog is about to die - too old and unwell - and she wishes he will write a book about her dog so that reading it might soothe her pain.

Another curious thing is that today they all start telling him that he should write it using a pseudonym and they all suggest Felix.

He doesn’t want to do what they ask of him and at first he replies politely trying to make them understand that , but when they insist and insist he gives up and stops replying.

The same thing goes for Altomare too, he talks to him about writing under another name, then about doing parodies of his own work, using the name Felix.

After he stops replying to them, he concentrates on his ‘fan’, and him too suggests using the name Felix so he wonders who that is, how he knows him, and if he might be one of the others...

but then the cat makes him stop all this nonsense, and we understand that he himself was writing as his ‘fan’ using his notebook, and that the purpose of all this was to be able to write again, and it works. He says he’ll write to the other four accepting to do what they ask in his own way, all of them together, because like the ‘fan’ said, he won’t be stuck anymore and he’ll be able to write... this book, I’d say, is the final result. Writing about the cat Felix will be the solution to his problem.

The letters were quite funny as the story progresses :-D

It was a very nice read. It only stopped too abruptly, leaving me a bit... I mean, why did he agree with the others who were so insistent and in Banana’s and Altomare’s case even rude in the end? And more, what were they all threatening to do to him if he didn’t agree? We’ll never know.

There was a point half-way through where one ponders: how is it that the notebook is opened if he’s not using it? (when he says he hurries to close it so the cat can sleep on it since he likes that). Still, as always I don’t like to stop and think of things, I’m not interested in guessing the ending, I’d rather be surprised. Anyway, it was just a little clue, that is recalled at the end, when he says that he quickly sends the last email so he can close the notebook for the cat again. 

ITA il ghostwriter.

Independence day : resurgence - 2016

A big toy-movie, I found it entertaining enough, I honestly feared worse. It was quite predictable indeed, but the many battle-scenes made it entertaining anyway. It’s full of b****hit, absolutely, no doubt about that, and also many elements wanted to recreate the first story, of course, plus there were many details that... well, I couldn’t avoid thinking of the Millennium Falcon escaping from the beast mouth in one scene, or thinking of Star Trek many many times, and not because Brent Spiner is in the movie, he was in the first too but that was different.

We see most of the old characters/actors, but of course not Will Smith, I can understand that, but still I think they didn’t need to make his character dead :-/ 

They chose a female President for this movie, only to have her make a terrible decision and then kill her off. :-/

The characters are: Jake (Liam Hemsworth), a pilot; Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the little kid of the first film now all grown up, a pilot himself like dad was. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) of course, and his father Julius (Judd Hirsch). The old president Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and his daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe). General Adams (William Fichtner), the scientist Okun (Brent Spiner), Mrs Hiller (Vivica A. Fox) and the new entry: the new president (Sela Ward), Rain (Angela Baby) another pilot, and Charlie (Travis Tope) the silly talk-too-much pilot, plus an African Warlord or something, rather cool.

So, in details:

a very stupid, very American, very human decision: they see a sphere-like ship approaching, and without knowing anything about it they shoot it down. Which is more or less why everything else happens. How demented is that? It COULD be an enemy, so just in case shoot it dead !! 

... 

Did they think it was a Borg ship???

They didn’t care about the possibility that they might be declaring war to another alien race, as if one wasn’t enough. Let’s not talk about killing some innocent aliens, it’s not like people care about innocent’s lives if they’re not their own, right?

Anyway.

We are told that after the events of the first movie, Earth sort of reunited, putting aside all the insignificant differences, realising we are all on the same side and all that stuff that is so Star Trek, but so not human. 

We meet Jake and his friend Charlie who gets distracted during a complex operation and almost causes the whole base to be crashed under a big thing (what was it, a weapon of some kind? I’m not sure). Jake acts of his own initiative saving the day but nobody thanks him, instead accusing him of the accident.

The aliens and their stuff have been dormant for twenty years and all of a sudden they wake up. Also an alien machine in Africa, now it is all light up. 

Honestly, I think they were taking the whole matter a bit too lightly...

In Africa we meet David again, and also Catherine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who knows why, she studies the aliens and for whatever reason the Africans obey her...

Dylan is some sort of hero (because of himself or because of who is father is?) while Jake caused some accident during training, so as soon as they meet again, Dylan punches him in the face. 

Charlie has a crush on the new Chinese pilot Rain and his way of approaching her is rather embarrassing...

After they shoot down the sphere-like ship, they want David to attend a ceremony instead of studying the ship, but Jake ‘steals’ a ship and goes to pick him up. Catherine follows, so does the Warlord (if he had a name I didn’t catch it) and also, unfortunately, some kind of little bureaucrat  - I really have no idea what was his role in the movie, I only know that he was very annoying, that he was embarrassing, and that his character added to the stupidity because as it often happens the guy that at first looked like he had never lifted anything other than a pen suddenly becomes a warrior... well more or less, but still, he fights without killing himself.

At the ceremony to remember the heroes of the 1996 war of course David is not present, but president Whitmore shows up, in a sort of delirious state before his head starts hurting exactly like Okun’s - by the way, he also woke up after twenty years... and he started walking around as if only a night had passed. I thought he was dead...

A huge spaceship approaches, and after a scene much like Spaceballs where the ship never ends, this one scratches the moon before resting very close to Earth - it wants to dig to reach its center. 

It’s so big that it has its own gravity, and all things are attracted up towards it. 

Miller’s mom saves a woman and her baby but then she falls to her death. 

There’s a group of kids on the run, their families may have died and they are alone. They have a car and they meet Levinson dad and join him. 

The pilots try to attack the ship but it’s a tough battle, some manage to get in but it was a trap and their bombs don’t work, there’s an energy field. 

The warlord has killed an alien before and knows a little of their language... I mean, hats off to the only guy who seems to know how to actually kill aliens, without all the silly toys that the others like so much, but really, how did he learn their language? It seems easy when they tell you ‘x means this, y means that, so I guess that z means blahblah’, but when he didn’t know the meaning of any one symbol, how did he learn it? How can they say that he knows, maybe he guessed wrong, because come on, it can only be a guess, it’s not like he can access more data to confirm his theories....

It turns out that the ship they attacked at the beginning was actually here to help, it’s a sphere, the last survivor of its species, trying to put together a resistance. The aliens know it and want to destroy it. Good move, humans, you always know what to do! Shoot down the only one who was on our side!

There’s a big attack, the ex president goes on a suicide mission, the big mother ship is destroyed but not the alien-mother because it has a personal shield. Patricia (ex president’s daughter, I think) breaks that shield with a strong attack, but now the alien-queen calls all her ships to surround her and protect her and goes to get the sphere. Dylan and the others manage to get themselves free since they are now in alien ships and they manage to kill the queen before she gets the sphere. 

Of course now that the queen is dead the battle is over. As everyone knows, where there’s an almost unbeatable race trying to kill us all, don’t waste your time and your characters-without-a-name’s lives fighting them one by one, go directly to their mom, ‘cuz all aliens are mama’s alien-boy and without her they don’t know what to do anymore, ships stop moving, aliens stop fighting, even the huge ship digging to the center of the Earth stops immediately and leaves heading back home. 

Not sure why, actually. Why did it leave? Does it have no shield left? Why isn’t it continuing its mission?

Anyway, the film ends with... how can I put it... you see, the thing is, it’s such nonsense that it’s hard to know how to say it. Basically the sphere tells Okun that humans are so great that it wants humans to lead the resistance against the bad aliens.... did it forget already that these so called great humans shoot it down on sight? Sure, after that they got lucky, which is the main and best characteristics of all these human heroes: the sphere was not destroyed and at the end the bad-aliens ran away with their tails between their legs, for whatever reason... and you know what they say, better to be lucky than rich, so the sphere is probably hoping that their luck will continue.

But ehi! I’m all for it if they want to make a third movie bringing the battle up there, I would watch it because even with all the nonsense, these movies are still entertaining, and the nonsense is not so much as to spoil the entertainment, so yeah, do make a third movie and concentrate on alien-humans fights, and big ships and whatnot. 

Maybe since you’re at it, see if you find another place for the humans, because after all the damage done to the moon and to the Earth, I don’t think things could really be the same here.... 

I mean, a 3000 miles diameter alien ship drilling its way to Earth core... that’s got to hurt...

ITA independence day: rigenerazione

カーストヘヴン Caste Heaven - Heaven of school caste by Ogawa Chise

I only read a few chapters online hoping it would change, show a hint of light at the end of the tunnel, but no, and it left me physically sick. Disgusted by the world created, where nobody is at least a decent human being, full of rape and violence and cruelty. It’s set in a school, so they are all classmates, and they are all present, unlike many stories where there’s a main couple and all the others are there only to fill the background. Yet, with so many characters, there isn’t one decent.

The plot that you read everywhere is “ruled by a cruel and arbitrary ranking system, the school is a pool of jealousy, envy and lust. Azusa was the king for a long time but one day he falls to the very bottom”.

This is nothing like Battle Royale though. This is a class where every year (or every so often, it’s not really clear when things will change) they see an empty cardbox on the teacher’s desk at it is announced that they must start looking for the cards. What they can find will be their role in the class until the game will start again. 

There’s a king and a queen, the highest ranks. Then there are those that suck up to the leaders, until at the very bottom there is “the target”, the one that will be constantly targeted. 

It starts with Azusa being the king and acting like a bully. When the game starts again he thought he could use Karino’s ‘crush’ on him to get him to find the king card for him, but Karino actually gets the king card for himself and hands the target card to Azusa, the only card left since he didn’t even try to search, he only wanted the king card and nothing else and was convinced he could use the other guy to obtain it. 

From this moment, those that had been bullied before become the bullies and Karino starts raping Azusa at any chance he gets. It’s not a case of ‘intimate’ or ‘unhealthy’ relationships, it’s a matter of rape treated as if it was just sex, as if it could be explained. 

Azusa’s character gets a little bit of background, to explain why he is who he is, because his mother (the only decent character I saw, but not a very ‘important’ one) is a poor woman, a prostitute who always told him that there are those at the top of society and those at the bottom and she hopes that he might finish school and find a way not to be at the bottom like her. She raised him alone and loves him, trying her best to survive in this f... up world. 

Azusa always felt that he can be what he wants, that he can be on top, should be actually. Throughout those pages I read he was the only one who didn’t change who he was in the first page, it only changed what he could do and what was done to him, but not his attitude or who he was. 

Still, the story starts with him being a bully, enjoying using others and punching the low-levels. So, he will be the victim throughout the story, but he started as a bully. 

One guy, the quiet one, seems to be a good guy for like a few seconds, even handing a better card to ex-target-Atsumu (I think that’s his name) and keeping a lower one for himself. They start a relationship and it seems like they’re both good, but then only weak-Atsumu keeps mostly on the ‘good’ side. The quiet guy becomes a shit himself when he helps Karino in his sadistic plan to have Atsumu rape Azusa - both the victim are forced in this, Atsumu doesn’t want to. Actually Atsumu is the only character that shows (other than a soul) how ‘society’s system’ unfortunately works. He kept being scared even after getting the Jack card, then started voicing his thoughts to protect his quiet guy, then started to feel that the Jack’s power wasn’t enough when the queen took away his guy for a while and he started thinking that he needed to be king and almost killed-hurt the queen if his guy hadn’t stopped him. He realises then that he almost became a monster and wants it to stop. He’s also the only one who ‘rebeled’ when he tried to talk to a teacher to stop Karino from keeping raping Azusa, and in retaliation Karino did what he did with the quiet guy’s help, making Atsumu’s wish to never make a friend again so to not put them in danger.

The toughest part though is that it’s not clear why this system exist. The teachers seem to not care at all, basically it’s the student themselves who carry on with this. The king tells his classmates to rape Azusa (to make him decide to accept to be raped by only him and not by everyone) and they run after him, just like that. Why do they do it? Nobody is forcing them. They enjoy the little power they have, it seems, because it’s always the student themselves who get upset if the target or a low-level seems to keep his head high or something, the adults seem to be absent almost completely. No adult seems to give a shit about this whole thing. One way or the other. If the students wanted it to stop, they wouldn’t even have to do much. They could respect the ‘system’, which means the king and queen come first, and then the others, and if there’s a surprise-interrogation let’s throw the target to the teacher... there would be no need for violence at all, that’s just them wanting it. The kids. They enjoy the system, revel in it, use it to express all their inner darkness.

It is also sad that Karino is rich, like the son of a rich man or a politician, I think it was, which also makes me think, what if he couldn’t find a high-level card? He does, but would they have accepted it if he hadn’t? Could this son of an important family ever be the target? 

Actually, do families know about the ‘system’?

Let’s not even waste words on the hypothesis that Karino might really be into Azusa and doing this to protect him or shit like that, because I hate all that. If he wanted to protect him the first step would be NOT to rape him every single day, NOT humiliate him, NOT torture him like that. Pretty simple.

I understand that it may be compared to real society, and there might be long discussions about this, and blah blah blah, still that would be true even if there was less violence. 

I don’t know if it has been finished by the author or if it’s still going on; if it’s finished and someone has read how it goes, I’d like to know if there is a light at the end of the tunnel or not (and how long is this tunnel...). I can’t bear it any longer, things only get worse page by page, the rapes are frequent and violent and I’m sick, emotionally and physically, I can’t stand this.