Burroughs, Stefani and the exterminator

OK, so the mental imagery of the above three ideas is somewhat conflicting, unless you consider Burrough's Naked Lunch and the exterminator, and then also consider Gwen Stefani as the bug to be exterminated but in the process you find some sort of addiction within yourself.

(If you're intersted in Burroughs' work, I suggest you look at David Cronenberg's 1991 film version of Naked Lunch. The plot is an amalgamation of Burroughs' life and plot from the book.)

A little convaluted? Maybe. But in my recent exposure to Stefani's latest single, "Hollaback Girl," I've realized the importance of music videos, hooks and for the most part, a good looking focal point as the face for your product.

"Hollaback Girl" is such a horrible song with little substance other than a single choice expletive repeated throughout the chorus. But there's something that catches the listener's attention, hook, line and sinker. Or just the hook in this case. Stefani's latest single delivers a catchy riff in the context of her "melody," which undoubtedly hooks the ear.

The new single surpasses her old work, with titles like "Rich Girl," but fails to ascend any further than her fame with No Doubt, a band that could have ended after the Tragic Kingdom album and had a spectacular career, but instead followed it up with forgetable titles.

Sometimes you seek some solace from these catchy beats and choruses, the little songs that get stuck in the back of your head and will stop nothing short of a labotomy. So call in the exterminator. There should be a little guy inside your brain on call that can come in and destroy little parts of your brain that retain trivial pieces of information. I'm sure there have been studies done of information saved and forgotten in that giant wet-wired gray matter, and it's interesting speculation when you ask yourself: Does the brain ever really forget information or retain it indefinately?

Maybe that's food for a short story -- but I'm sure a novel would be no problem either.

I've been getting into a lot more science fiction lately, reading anyway. I've read a short story by Philip K. Dick, author behind such adapted movies as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and Paycheck, and two novels -- one of which is a sort of throw away novel with little implications and the other was Man in the High Castle, which is a clever, kitchy premiss revolving around World War II. Since reading Dick, I've gotten a little more into William S. Burroughs' work. I've read Junky (or the varient spelling Junkie) and currently reading Nova Express.

The writers during the Beat generation have moderately fascinated me with their various styles of changing the way we read certain works, but Burroughs' emulates this like no other in his prose. The fragmentary thought processes from his traditional writing and also his use of the cut-up method (by which the author cuts prose into little snippets of words and phrases and then pastes them together in a fairly random order). The cut-up method isn't so much an abstract prose style, but more of a collage using a single source, rather than multiple sources -- a cut-up work of multiple sources would be intense and enormous prose, probably even more undiscernable than Burrough's own work.

My only complaint with Nova Express isn't so much that his style escapes me (I can see some method in the madness), but Burrough's tends to repeat phrases and images throughout the book -- a repetition that I believe hurts the overall conceptualization of the text, rather than helps.

Well, that's all for me. The new issue of Zygote should be up fairly soon, as it's scheduled to be up today (May 16, 2005). So be sure to check it out for a new Tripp original.

Also on a side note, Wal-Mart will be stocking their shelves with the fourth season of Seinfeld tonight when I get off of work. One of the only highlights of working late, is that I don't have to wait until the day to go purchase the new releases -- and thus avoid any appearance in public.