My school’s book club’s selection this month is Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve really enjoyed everything I’ve read by Vonnegut, and he’s one of the authors I always mean to read more of. Thus, I was looking forward to this book. And it did not disappoint.

These were a few passages that struck me as I was reading, which I will post for your enjoyment.

This was written from Vonnegut’s point of view:

I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for a while after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, “You know - you never wrote a story with a villain in it.”

I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.

I never realized it until I read that, but the lack of villainy is one of the things I like about his books. They’re not black and white good vs. evil stories. They’re just about people. And I’m all about people being just people.

Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

***

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, seperating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

I think that this is one of the best passages I have ever read. It’s where the anti-war message of the book struck me most heavily. The images of the Germans healing the American planes, and of the bombs being dismantled and made safe, are powerful because they feel so happy and kind. I feel like that’s how life should be. It makes the reality seem more barbaric and stupid and useless by contrast.

Meet Margaret Spelling, new director of the Education Department. Spelling has told PBS - which produces and airs much of America’s children’s programming - not to air an episode of Postcards from Buster in which Buster the bunny visits Vermont to learn about how to make maple syrup, and meets a child whose parents are a lesbian couple. “Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode,” she said. And furthermore, “Congress’s and the department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.”

Read the full article at Democratic Underground.

Things like this make me so, so afraid.

I don’t want to raise children in a world that is afraid to show them gay couples on TV. I don’t want to have to tell them, over and over, that they have to be that much more tolerant and loving than the rest of the world. I want my children to look at same sex marriage the way I look at marriages between different ethnic groups. I don’t want them to grow up in a world full of hate, but I know they will. Society always needs a group to mock and make controversial legislation about.

Before you read this, you must know that High Fidelity may be my favorite movie ever. At the very least, it is in the top five (ha). I have watched it many, many times, and it’s still wonderful and never gets old. I’ve been meaning to read the book for a long time, and finally did it last weekend.

It should go without saying that if you’ve never seen the movie or read the book and don’t want anything spoiled for you, you shouldn’t read this. You probably wouldn’t get it anyway.

At first, I thought that the biggest difference between the two would be Dick’s hair. In the book, it is long, dark and greasy. In the movie, his head is shaved. I did , of course, find fleshings-out in the book that didn’t fit into the movie, like more on Rob’s parents and a more prominent Marie DeSalle. In the book, she doesn’t walk out of the picture after sleeping with Rob. She’s more of a permanent friend of the gang.

But though the two versions kept about the same mood throughout, and actual events were almost identical, the conclusions were very different. Though, in the movie, Laura tells Rob that she’s getting back together with him because she’s too tired not to, you get the impression that it’s because he is Home to her, and she’s had it with trying to get away. In the book it seems more literal. She’s sick of his bugging her, and still kind of likes him, so she might as well move back in.Then, in the movie, everything is good. Sure, there’s the brief Caroline Episode, and Laura won’t marry him, but you know they’re going to stay together. The book, though, is less optimistic. I’m not sure if I can see Book Rob and Book Laura staying together forever. There’s a lot about them arguing, and they just don’t seem as happy. Everything’s still in flux, nothing has really been decided. I guess that’s a lot more realistic.

I typically disagree violently with movies rewriting sad endings to make them happier*, but I think I’m okay with it in this case. The book ending would have left the audience feeling like the movie was unfinished. We expect out movies wrapped up in a neat little package. We want to be able to accurately predict what will happen to each character in the next ten years. Or, at the very least, we want it obvious that there’s going to be a sequel. People are more forgiving with books, though. It’s okay if a book’s ending is ambiguous. Why is that? Maybe it’s because uncertain endings make you think more, and people feel more comfortable being made to think by books. I’m not sure. It’s an interesting question, though.

*This mostly applies to children’s movies. The Little Mermaid? Swan Lake? The Hunchback of Notre Dame? All are supposed to have endings in which the main character dies. I felt betrayed when I discovered the truth. You will lie to me no more, Disney!

I was listening to NPR on my way home from work today, as I often do, and there was a story about one of the funniest things I’ve heard of in a while. Apparently, Saddam Hussein is a romance novelist. No, really.

Today’s All Things Considered featured a story called Contemplating Saddam, the Romance Novelist (scroll down almost to the bottom, it’s there, and you can listen to it).

The woman reporting seems to condemn him for his vanity because he’s really playing out his own fantasies instead of writing good books. I would encourage it, though. In fact I would encourage any non-harmful creative outlet in someone whose only other outlet seems to be killing people.

So many dictators write books that there’s actually a name for it. Dic-lit.

Further research revels that amazon.com sells Zabiba and the King, the first on this books, in both English and what I think is French. You can get the English in digital for for only $10! The Amazon editor’s write-up talks a lot about allegory and the not-so-hidden political meaning in the book, but I’m much more intersted in the fact that it was turned into a musical stage production in Baghdad.

No matter how you feel about the story, you have to admit it’s hilarious to think of Saddam Hussein, cruel and ruthless former dictator of Iraq, sitting down and writing something like this:

“Oh yes!” she cried, “YES!” as he thrust his throbbing member into her velvety sheath. She writhed in pleasure on the pillows as he entered her again and again, thanking Allah that she has the priviledge of making love to the most powerful man on Earth.

This is the best thing that’s happened to me today.

I mentioned a while back that I was displeased with the new I, Robot cover, which is based on the movie. I saw the movie today, and dislike the cover even more. I wrote about it here.

A few hours spent at Barnes & Noble (because the library isn’t open on summer weekends) and a bit of late-night reading, and I have finished Song of Susannah, the sixth and next-to-last book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

First, something general with no spoilers: in introductions to his Dark Tower books, Stephen King makes it very clear that The Dark Tower is his opus, his One Big Thing, the story that he feels most passionate about. I haven’t come close to reading everything he’s written, but I’ve gone through a good bit of it, including (obviously) all published Dark Tower books. I can definitely say that they’re my favorites. As a whole, The Dark Tower is completely different from everything else he’s done. There are six parts out now, and nearly every store and library has a few of them. So I don’t understand is why no one seems to have read them.

Sure, I’ve talked to other Dark Tower fans, but the vast majority of people who tell me they love Stephen King shake their heads when I ask about The Dark Tower. The first book is a bit boring, yes, but the others are beautiful. I think they’re of a higher quality than the rest of his work, overall. The Dark Tower isn’t just about a single set of characters and settings. It’s about everything. It travels through countless variations of the past, present, and future, of our world and all the others. It is the metastory, the story that all his other tales exist in. I could go on and make this an entry all its own, but I’ll stop. Read the books, though. They’re amazing.

Further discussion of the book will go behind the cut, as I’m going to be dealing with some pretty major plot points. Don’t be an idiot and read it if you don’t want to know what happens.
Read the rest of this entry »

I recently finished a reread of the fifth Harry Potter book, and it was amazing. In the three years between the publishing of the fourth and fifth books, I read the first four so many times that a lot of the magic was gone. My cousin Kathy and I used to have insane trivia contests, with questions like “What kinds of ice cream cones did Hagrid buy when he and Harry first went to Diagon Alley?” and “Which brick do you hit to gain access to said alley?” I knew all the books so well that they weren’t exciting anymore. The first time I read the fifth book, sleep deprivation limited my enjoyment. We got the books at midnight the day they came out, and didn’t sleep until they were read. It took until three the next afternoon, mostly because the words kept swimming in front of our eyes.

This time, though, it was great. It reminded me why I love Harry Potter. The creativity of the author, the romance,* the subtle hints of Ron/Hermione… it was just so good. And it’s probably just because I’m 17 (and I don’t know many 17-year-olds that don’t want to rebel against the establishment), but there’s something about the fight against Umbridge that I just love. Everyone’s coming together, risking probation, expulsion, possibly even arrest, to stand up to her. I can’t put it into words. The way McGonagall comforted Madame Trelawny, the way the faculty almost encouraged Fred and George, the way Hermione was willing to risk expulsion to get the DA going… It’s an uprising of the masses, and it’s beautiful.

*Not romantic love, but the kind of romance you see in glorified wars.

In honor of today’s realease of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:

JKR supports Harry Potter fanfiction.

Of course, there is the obligatory disclaimer:

But they will never stop us! Never! Mwahahahaha! Ha.

I called for an interview at EasyLobby the other day, only to find that the Woman in Charge was then in a demonstration and would soon be leaving for a 1.5 week vacation. I was advised to call back at the beginning of June.

I let my coordinator know and she called me back tonight to tell me that she had someone else over at Bose (where the make giga-sound in a Very Small Box) that might be interested in me but wanted to know what programs I was familiar with. Thing is, the guy I would be working for seems to do some sort of customer relations thing. She said that his job has a lot to do with computers, and I’m sure it does, but I don’t want to spend hours entering data or running programs, or whatever he does. I want to work somewhere where they’re actually writing the programs, or in some web development department. That’s the point of an internship- to see what the industry’s like and get some experience in it. I know that I need to tell my coordinator that, but I’m bad at things like that. I know it’s ridiculous, but I feel like she’s doing me a favor by finding places for me. That’s her job, and she needs my input to be able to do her job better. I just realized that she’s going to give the URL of this site to the Bose guys. Hello, Bose guys, if you’re reading this. I probably shouldn’t post this now, but I will anyway. You’re cool, and I’d probably own something of yours if I was richer.

Occasionally, my family spontaneously decides (usually over dinner) to go to a movie. Tonight we saw Super Size Me, which was excellent. Amusing, vaguely horrifying, very good indeed. Makes me want to exercise- a lot. The point though, is that the basement of the movie theatre houses the Museum of Bad Art, usually refered to as the MOBA. Anyone in my area should see it- it’s just one dark little room with fifteen or twenty peices of art, but it’s awesome. Come to my house and we’ll go see a movie and visit the MOBA. Better than the paintings themselves are the dry, biting, and hilarious captions assigned by MOBA people. I took a couple of pictures, but they were only the first two on the roll. It’ll take a while to finish the camera. If I had my own digital camera, as opposed to one belonging to my father that I must be Very, Very Careful with, I would post many pictures of my travels- not that I usually travel anywhere except school and work. Soon there will be a picture of the front right corner of my car, which is all banged up and missing a hub cap.

Site things you probably don’t care about, but I do:

- Started using Site Meter, which rocks because it allows me to ignore my own IP. See, the site gets so few visitors that I have to make sure not to go to it, or I’ll end up being responsible for a fairly large percentage of the hits.

- The linkroll over on the left is being funny. It’s supposed to be listed in order of when I added the links, but it semms to be putting all the new ones at the bottom. It put some in the middle at one point, too.

- Slightly new header up top, because I still don’t trust your ability to pronounce “lodenocity” correctly. Let me know is the smaller writing is hard to read.

- The Greymatter template variables are starting to be unreliable again. I wish I knew why that keeps happening. It may have something to do with my reuploading the file that they’re in, but I don’t think that should be a problem. The new copy is automatically CHMOD’ed to the right settings and is still included in Greymatter files. So when you see weird stuff over there, it’s not me being lazy. It’s Greymatter being crazy.

- Added a Recently Reading thing over on the right sidebar. For things I’m in the middle of or have just finished. The plan it to keep five titles up at all times and update them when necessary. I don’t know how good I’ll be about updating.

For the record, I would like to officially object to the cover that I, Robot is sporting right now. They’re making a movie of the same name (it seems to have little in common with the book, other than the Three Laws and various names), and Will Smith, a star of the movie, now dominates the book cover. I hate when they adapt books to movies and then redo the book covers to match the movie. I, Robot has been around forever (even though I only got around to reading it last week), and it deserves to be its own media entity, seperate and distinct from any and all upstart adaptations.