I Box Man, You Box Man, He, She, Me Box Man.

That new Chance the Rapper single is good.

I just finished Kōbō Abe’s The Box Man and cannot stop thinking about it partially because it’s a phenomenal tale of social identity, extreme isolation, voyeurism, and a strange exercise in writing in the first, second and third-person, and also because I am too anxious to talk about it openly with others, online or in-person. Its lead is an unreliable narrator (1) who’s a neurotic (2), schizophrenic (3) (note: this is different from neurosis), and perverted (4), who exiles himself from society due (an alarming 5…) due to an extreme disconnect (6) with others (7 red flags). It’s a tough book to describe, and I’d love to take the time to do that. But it’s a for sure way of becoming lumped in with the extremely online group of men who worship male main characters for the wrong reasons.

I’m just not one of Those Dudes.

Except I go online and see something that proves that I, at least sometimes, have overlap with Those Dudes.

I stumbled upon a Reddit thread yesterday where a user aggregated 4chan’s top 100 books of all time into a single image. A skim and I’d realized I’ve read some and still want to read several of these books. Maybe more than several. A dozen, even.

Even if it's a little crossover, there’s still a crossover, and it taps into my personal horror of misrepresenting myself based on the judgments others have placed on the items/ideas/aura that surrounds me, which, of course, is out of my control. I fixate on this daily, hourly. It’s a thinking that keeps me awake at night. It’s enough to turn me into a box man, dude.

Anyway, I will not unpack any of the above for the risk of misrepresenting myself (duh) or invoking Godwin’s law (boring). But I will share my favorite quotes from The Box Man.

Reading The Box Man and following the Box Man — the narrator man who chooses to live as a vagrant in Tokyo with a box over his head — and his pattern of thinking, this one, in particular, got me. It’s mildly grotesque and imaginatively beautiful through the lens of a mentally/physically/emotionally confined man who desires more than anyone would give him credit for.

The inverted triangle formed by her torso, her thighs, and her upper arms was burned deep into the backs of my eyeballs; and wherever I looked a flesh colored openwork forever overlaid my field of vision. The pores of my whole body opened their mouths at the same time, and tongues dangled limply from them.

Nice! How about this:

Compared to the you in my heart, the I in you is insignificant.

That’s great.

When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet... When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world.

Relatable!

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Firstly, please support my former colleagues if you can spare a donation:

Unions forever.

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You were wrong about Chance the Rapper.

The people who were memeing this man’s last album are probably out in public right now shamelessly listening to J. Cole and Logic and genuinely asking people, “Is someone going to die from this Drake and Kendrick beef?,” so I do not care for their opinion on rap music. Put it on record that I’m saying The Big Day was not a bad record, though very fatty, scatterbrained, and sometimes corny. Anthony Fantano made hating this album his brand, and everybody except Robert Christgau ran with it.

Luckily, the smoke cleared and “Stars Out” dropped, following a series of other Very Good singles and one okay-but-cathartic (and underserved? unearned? dramatic?) redemption song. I can’t stop playing it — it’s so fun and loose. He’s rapping like a bad Valee or a good Zack Fox. I actually think he shouldn’t drop a follow-up to The Big Day. I’d rather him continue down the line of trickling singles like Lil Yatchy, or else he risks (which, in turn, we ALL risk listening to) another bloated data dump full of gospel parallel/R&B runoff hooks.

Does anyone still listen to Surf?

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I can walk into my local library and can walk out with video games if I want.

Palestine (1996)

The power that people give enthusiastic fitness girlies who tell others about their workout routines is the same power I harness when I read a single sentence in a book and tell others that I’m a reader (which is akin to the outdated vegans are just superior jokes no one on the planet should be making today), which is: you think I’m better than you because I’m telling you this but I’m actually not telling you I’m telling myself. Does that make sense? I’ve been reading again. It feels good.

Months ago, I read an autobiographical WWII comic book graphic novel manga that rekindled my relationship with graphic storytelling and, more specifically, non-fiction comics and comics journalism. I was surprised to see my local library has a grip of non-fiction cartoonists, so I picked up Palestine (1996) by Joe Sacco with hopes of following it with the lesser-known Footnotes in Gaza (2009). The former book details Sacco’s experiences documenting daily life in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1991 and January 1992; the latter, he does the same for Rafah to unpack a “footnote” (relative to today’s) conflict from 1956.

Footnotes in Gaza (2009)

Also, a quick note: People love saying they love libraries and never using them. Please do. Yours might surprise you. I found out my local branch has video games, and it’s well beyond LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Harry Potter video games. These motherfuckers have the System Shock remake.

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Giant-fit J.Crew undefeated.

I love seeing a top-half drape/bottom-half bellowing combination in the summertime. For me, that’s usually an oversized (striped) Oxford and wide-leg (military-issued or swishy nylon/beach) shorts.

Like this:

Those mixy proportions signal a casual indifference — maybe even disrespect if the fit is baggy enough — toward traditional American prep and the people who choose to enforce it…along with, like, I don’t know, accomplishing the most important thing about dressing up: prioritizing comfort. American prep has strayed from baggy for far too long, but J.Crew has embraced it in the last few years with its giant-fit chinos and shirts. It’s obviously a reaction to current trends, but I love that I no longer have to measure my body and constantly check eBay for oversized Brooks Brothers tops. Personally, I like it when “dressed up” means doing everything you can to “dress down.”

I got a few giant-fit shirts from J.Crew on sale at $20 a pop and have been thoroughly enjoying how ridiculously big they are — and I don’t size down because I’m not a cop. They’ve got a wiiiiiide chest and look ridiculous tucked in, so I don’t (again: NOT a narc), and they hide the body well for a non-tailored I’m borrowing my dad’s button-up for my first job interview vibe.

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I’m buying this.