The Most Arrogant Blog You've Ever Read

Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood

2012-01-29T08:00:00.002-05:00

I spent my weekend completely unproductively falling madly in love with ckret2's Be the Sea Dweller Lowblood. This is a Homestuck fanfic, which is somewhat regrettable, since it's significantly more accessible than Homestuck, and I'd happily recommend it to people, but I think you have to read Homestuck first.

I should note that I'm not saying that BtSDLb is better than Homestuck. I think that Homestuck is aesthetically superior to BtSDLb. But BtSDLb seems far more personal for me - it aims a lot more directly at my own personal kinks and interests, whereas Homestuck is technically amazing and sometimes really emotionally involving without being as consistently on the mark for my personal taste as BtSDLb.

Anyway, still can't focus on anything, so need to talk briefly about some of my favorite parts of BtSDLb so that I can maybe get my brain back?

1) The story is just about a large cast of psychologically screwed-up characters. Okay, so is Homestuck, but in Homestuck the importance of the cast is secondary to the importance of the story, whereas in BtSDLb it's the other way around. Of course, this wouldn't be enough to work for me quite as well as it does if it weren't for the fact that the individual characters work very well for me, but this is, personally, much more on an Angel Sanctuary level of, yes, people screw each other up so badly than an Utena level.

2) The story is mostly about trolls. I am such a mostly-there-for-the-trolls Homestuck fan.

2) Equius. Equius is already my favorite in Homestuck. Because he's a guy with long, straight hair. Am I kidding? I don't even know. Anyway, he's my favorite, and "[S] Equius: Seek the highb100d" is probably the single most effective part of Homestuck for me. However, in canon, Equius is a minor, one-note joke character. I love the joke and care deeply about him despite that, but I'm very glad that he's also one of ckret2's favorite characters and that she decided to develop him more deeply for her story. I also really like the way he's developed. So poignant! He's probably more universally sympathetic in BtSDLb, because he's oppressed and downtrodden and has internalized the oppression, rather than being an aristocrat, but I don't care, I love him in every incarnation no matter what.

3) Eridan. Eridan was ckret2's other favorite troll. I knew there were people out there who actually cared about Eridan in canon, but I was always completely indifferent to him. He was a joke character like Equius, except his joke wasn't particularly funny to me. Ckret2 has made him significantly more interesting. I especially like the fact that he's not completely pathetic like he was in canon and actually does some pretty awesome things at times, particularly in his interactions with Karkat.

4) Karkat. Karkat is a really appealing and likeable character wherever he appears. I think most readers are fans of him in canon, including me, even if he's not my favorite favorite. He's just fun to read about, and it's always positive when he shows up. I'm not sure that ckret2 improves on Karkat's development in the same way she does with Equius and Eridan, but I really like her version of the character, and how complex he is. At first, I thought he really did enjoy his position and his life, which I kind of liked - it was soooo cute - sorry, adorabloodthirsty - but of course it's even better to keep him all self-loathing and deceptive of others but still basically decent but really messed-up. So I love the way his character is done here.

5) Sollux - I just. . . this Sollux is amazing. Amazing.

6) Rhosyn - I have mixed feelings about Rose in canon, and the same is true about Rhosyn in BtSDLB. But what is done with her is just in general amazing. Her sarcasm is universal. It can be really hard to read. I think this is great.

7) DAIVAT - I don't actually like Dave much in canon. I mean, I like him when he is interacting with most of the trolls (TAVROS! GAMZEE! EQUIUS!), but I don't like him as a character that much - he irritates me. But I think I just unambiguously adore Daivat. His character is so interesting and so much more appealing than Dave and I CANNOT WAIT for all sorts of people to start realizing his deep, dark secret. It is going to be so awesome.

8) Vriska's scene with Dualscar - I am not a Vriska fan (this is a controversial issue). I don't hate hate her like some fans apparently do, and I do think I understand why some people like her. But she does irritate me, and I do generally root against her. I started out feeling similarly about her in this story, but I think ckret2's done a good job of using the scenario where, instead of being an upper-middle-class kid bullying and tormenting a lower-class kid, she's a lower-middle-class kid bullying and tormenting royalty, and generally using this to make her more sympathetic. Some of the parts of the comic that have spoken to me the most powerfully have been things Vriksa said (of course, because a lot of what she says is about the futility of hope and talking about how useful hope is is always the way to my heart), and in particular her scene talking to the ghost of Dualscar was really powerful. Oh, and ckret2 has actually also done a good job of making me like Terezi less (in canon, I don't necessarily feel passionate about her, but I do like her because she's my patron troll). Her reaction to what happened to Sollux and what she did to Vriska and Karkat were both really pretty awful.

9) Sollux and Karkat - Oh, man. I just love this. . . relationship. . . so much. Two self-loathing guys taking it out on each other and being massively screwed up about it. They want to get along but they just can't because they both hate themselves so much. Awesome forever.

10) The whole "Poor Unfortunate Souls" bit - Works. So effective. Of course, because part of it is Sollux doing that thing, which is amazing, and part of it is Karkat being sooooooo cu-adorabloodthirsty. But in general it is really awesome and lives up to the hype I saw for it on the WEBSITE OF EVIL AND DO NOT CLICK.

11) Equius <3 Tavros - This is not the most awesome relationship in the comic. But I found myself rather unexpectedly empathizing intensely with both of them. Okay, yes, this is both exactly how a relationship between a lowbl00d Equius and a highblood Tavros would go, and also something that is directly relevant to my own life in its terrifying awkwardness.

12) Equius <3< Gamzee - Epic. I had never expected before I started reading this comic that I would ever be drawn into shipping kismesis, because I don't ship much anyway (I don't really ship anything in Homestuck. Well, except for Equius <> Nepeta. But I would ship Equius <> Nepeta, given that Equius is my favorite character and moirails my favorite relationship) and because why would I care about kismesis, what relevance does kismesis have to me? But ckret2 does amazing kismesis. Equius and Gamzee is great. Especially the surgery scene. I love the way the power relations in the scene keep flipping. I love the way Gamzee casually threatens to tell on Equius, and how HAPPY Equius is to be cutting Gamzee up, and Gamzee moving, and Equius being driven to the point of confessing his hate, and hate snogs, and, yeah. I kinda ship it.

13) ERIDAN <3< KARKAT - I have come to ship it so much. And yes. I realize that neither one is capable of a true kismesis at this point, explicitly in canon. But the scenes here make me so happy. Karkat being soooooooooooo adorabloodthirsty. Karkat having no idea why he hasn't let go of Eridan yet. Eridan being so happy to find himself in Karkat's room. Eridan accidentally impersonating Karkat with Vriska. ERIDAN PURPOSEFULLY IMPERSONATING KARKAT WITH TEREZI (OMG OMG OMG, for some reason I just love the impersonation thing). Eridan and Karkat's duel and verbal duel. Hate snogs, near hate rape, and Eridan still holding out the possibility even when he isn't into it. Eridan's Jack Sparrow moment. Karkat's potentially final words being "Spade Laws." Eridan's happiness when he thinks Karkat is making it official. I just ship this so much. It really moves me. And it's about two guys who hate each other. Who knew?

14) Oh, btw, speaking of ERIDAN IMPERSONATING KARKAT WITH TEREZI - I do not like Suweet Broski, and I was initially glad that he did not possess Karkat. I was rooting for Karkat there. But ever since that happened I kind of regret my attitude there - there should be more possessing and, more importantly, impersonation. Suweet Broski pretending to be Karkat would have been awesome and so hilarious. I am so disappointed that when Sollux's body actually did get possessed Troll Britain's First Guardian turned it into a female body. Wouldn't it have been hilarious if she had pretended to be Sollux and confused the hell out of Karkat? And I know that Daivat doesn't want to impersonate Karkat, but I can kind of imagine Karkat wanting to impersonate Daivat? This should happen. There needs to be more impersonation.

15) Waiting so hard for the Ψiioniic to show up in the present day.

Do None of My Interests Remain Untouched by David Bowie?

2012-01-13T02:27:00.002-05:00

I am boggled.

Odessa

2011-10-27T05:40:00.004-04:00

Researching my previous post led me to waste my entire morning and afternoon looking up various musically related things. One place I wound up at was the Bee Gee's "Odessa." This is a song I may have heard only once before today? I think my father played it for me as a teenager, or else I heard it sometime very late at night on the classic rock radio station (it would have had to have been sometime very late at night!). Not sure I've ever heard it since then, since this may be the first time I've thought of it since the creation of YouTube. Nonetheless, it obviously made a big enough impression on me that I thought to go look it up on YouTube today. And, man, it really is about as awesome a song as I remember it being. Exactly the kind of song I like. Really long and epic and with lots of different parts. What an excellent song! Glad I remembered it. How do you get from there to the disco stuff?

I Saw Her Again

2011-10-27T04:54:00.003-04:00

Having recently finished a huge amount of work and now in a fallow period, I have been wasting immense quantities of time on (do not click on this link) the website of evil and dismay. As you do. On the page for (do not click on this link) "ThrowItIn" - accidents that end up being kept in an artwork because they turn out to be pretty cool, it mentioned "I Saw Her Again"(the part where they say "I saw her - I saw her again last night," was apparently a mistake originally). This reminded me that "I Saw Her Again" is a completely awesome song - an undeniable truth. But I also love "I Saw Her Again" because it is evil, which is not true of most pop songs and thus makes it stand out rather. I've already mentioned in the past how "Ziggy Stardust" is really creepy. David Bowie writes a song that he then sings, but it's not from his point of view, it's from the point of view of his putative band members, expressing their supposedly negative feelings towards the character represented by David Bowie himself.

But "I Saw Her Again" is kind of the opposite. As far as I understand, the story goes that John Phillips and Michelle Phillips were married, but then Michelle started having an affair with Denny Doherty. So John found out about it, got angry, and wrote the lyrics to "I Saw Her Again" for Denny to sing in order to punish him and Michelle. The lyrics, and it seems like everyone in the band knew this, were about the affair. And the lyrics are so. . . "now she thinks that I love her (yeah, yeah) / Because that's what I said / Though I never think of her." And supposedly they all knew that this was what John was writing for Denny to sing about Michelle. So uncomfortable! In this case, we have the lyricist writing in the supposed viewpoint of the singer to express feelings that the singer really shouldn't be expressing (and, of course, Michelle herself was one of the backup singers emphasizing all the points). Oh, yeah. And apparently Denny wrote the music, so he gets songwriting credit for the song, as well. I will never get over how amazing this is. I mean, in a bad way, but amazing.

I first heard this story on VH1's Behind the Music for the Mamas and the Papas. But afterwards I thought that I must have been misremembering, because the story was just too much like what would happen in a good book to be true. However, the internet corroborates the story, much to my pleasure. So I should put it up here just to commemorate how much I like it.

BEST GOOGLE PLUS COMMENT EVER!!!!

2011-10-05T18:53:00.003-04:00

Jenna Moran - See? You just ASSUME she's aerial! She could be THE SUN OF THE SEA

... augh writing that in capital letters is giving me Xenogears flashbacks
Yesterday 23:09

Really? Really? I never knew!

Deeply Satisfying

2011-10-05T16:15:00.005-04:00

So, what's going on in my reading life is, ignoring the lengthy hiatus I took to play Final Fantasy II in sync with my brother and the lengthy hiatus I took to read plenty of YA novels and all of Sarah Rees Brennan's fanfiction, I'm reading in essentially random order through the books that a friend of mine who moved to a different continent allowed me to take. You may recall that these books included The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Maurice. These were then followed by Wade Davis's The Serpent and the Rainbow and, now, Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. So that's five books. Much to my surprise and pleasure, three out of those five have included Byron mentions! Ironically, considering the subject matter, Maurice is one of the ones that doesn't; more logically, neither does The Serpent and the Rainbow. Oh, yay Byron! 60% of all novels should mention you!

I Randomly Abuse Gerard Manley Hopkins

2011-10-05T16:07:00.002-04:00

You can download my new song. It is a good song to listen to while you walk somewhere, or while you are engaged in drudgery.

The Eminently Quotable Stevie Smith

2011-09-16T04:40:00.002-04:00

"Being alive is like being in enemy territory."

(Source)

This Amuses Me

2011-08-27T16:50:00.002-04:00

Apparently Nina Barnes is a Zizek fan. This would probably amuse me more if it were Kevin Barnes, but it's still pretty good. I think that means that any Lacan references I find in of Montreal lyrics can be taken as deliberate, which, given my propensity for finding Lacan references, is probably convenient ;-)

Marking Poetry (Brought to You By My Propensity to Misplace Things and Then Find Them Again)

2011-08-27T04:36:00.004-04:00

I. The light is dead! It's gone away!
It may return another day,
But, as for now, it's gone! It's gone!
I see no reason to go on.

II. The light is back! It's come to stay!
This is a day to run and play!
My heart, inspired, fills with hope -
I will not have to find a rope.

III. The world is a sea of endless light,
Awash in a silver flame,
And life is an island dimmed, a dot
Of misery and pain.

IV. The world is a sea of endless light,
Awash in a silver flame,
And life is a port where boats dock, rest,
And sail out from again.

THIS EXISTS!?!?!?

2011-08-05T06:34:00.003-04:00

I feel obligated to make the following comment: Probably the most AU thing about this is that Keats and Shelly are described as friends ;-)

What Hitherby Does to Me

2011-07-21T03:42:00.003-04:00

I adore Satanic Panic in the Attic. It is an amazing album that I want to listen to whenever I feel happy, and sometimes when I'm not particularly happy, because it is just so full of happy, amazing songs. That having been said, there are a few songs on the album that I don't particularly care for, and among that number is "City Bird." I just find it kind of dull. Nonetheless, I have had it inexplicably stuck in my head for the past few weeks. I really can't understand it; I have no conscious reason for that particular song to be constantly stuck in my head.

Then yesterday there was this. And today, on one of those occasions when I have to stand around for an hour doing nothing, I was thinking about that, and had "City Bird" stuck in my head, and it suddenly occurred to me, Oh, "City Bird" is a song about a bodhisattva. It simultaneously makes so much sense and is so completely over-interpreting, but I just know I'm never going to unsee it now. From now on, I'm always going to just assume it's a song about a bodhisattva.

Oh, Thank God!

2011-07-15T10:44:00.002-04:00

Honestly, this is a somewhat embarrassing thing for me to post about but. . . okay. . . cherries. I had this huge bias against cherries for years. I think part of it was because artificial cherry flavoring is so terrible (as opposed to artificial strawberry flavoring, which is amazing), and part of it was because of maraschino cherries. But eventually people convinced me to try real cherries, and of course they are wonderful. Nonetheless, I've remained somewhat bemused by the fact that cherries are wonderful. Somehow, I only learned today that cherries are actually closely related to all the other small round fruits. I feel like that explains everything. I think I've been subconsciously assuming they were closely related to blackberries and raspberries or something stupid like that for all these years. It makes so much more sense for them to be a small round fruit.

Just a Note to Things in General

2011-06-01T03:56:00.002-04:00

von Aschenbach: "You mustn't smile like that! One mustn't smile like that at anyone, do you hear?"

---Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

Dante Had Two Prussians in Her Brush

2011-05-22T03:39:00.003-04:00

People online that I've seen have been wondering about the lyric from the new of Montreal song "Slave Translator": "Dante had two Prussians in her brush, quite a rush."

Yesterday, I wanted to take a nap, but, as you do, I also wanted to delay the nap. I also am quite bored of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and wanted to look at the next two books in my list so as to remind myself that this was not the only book. A friend of mine who left the country to go travel for months gave me all her books as she knew I'd give them a good home, so I've been reading my way through them, in more or less random order. So I pulled out The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Maurice, feeling that I was likely to delay my nap for quite a while looking through them.

Instead, on the very first page of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I found "Dante had two brushes in her press," was deeply amused, and felt pleased enough to just go take my nap. It's a little interesting that Kevin is referencing James Joyce again - he already started talking about Ulysses in "Vegan in Furs."

This is how you go about constructing a system. Truth is obviously irrelevant!

Three Things About _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_

2011-05-22T02:48:00.005-04:00

1) My brother had read the chapter "One Shall Destroy the Other" in a class and described it to me, but despite this advance preview it turned out to be quite dull. That having been said, it was a huge relief to me to see Byron towards the end. I don't know why I find it so endlessly pleasing that Byron was such a celebrity in the 19th century. It's not even like I'm so into celebrity culture in the modern world - I would hardly claim to be uninterested in it, but still, there's plenty of people out there who are far more interested than I. But whenever I see some completely random reference to Byron in a seemingly unrelated text by an American or a French person, I find it deeply satisfying. Ah, Byron.

2) Relatedly, later on in the book, a character mentions a "text of Charlemagne, Stryga vel masca (Witch or vampire)." Interested as I am in the history of the Western vampire, this definitely got my attention. Was there actually a Latin word for "vampire"? Was Charlemagne actually writing about vampires? It's a little unclear, but I think I've reassured myself that this wasn't quite what was going on. It's hard to find material about this particular text that isn't directly related to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but this 1820 French text (the link goes to the Google translation) mentions it - Google translates "stryge" as vampire. However, looking on Wiktionary, while masca clearly means "witch," the meaning of stryge is less clear. It comes from the Vulgar Latin "striga," which does have "vampire" as one meaning, but seems to refer ambiguously to witches as well. The Romanian strigoi are clearly vampires, but it's alright because they are the old-fashioned disgusting Germanic type of vampire, not the sexy Byronic type. The Italian strega are of course witches, just like in the Tomie DePaola books. So even if Charlemagne was writing about vampires, I think it's okay and does not dethrone Byron, and he may have just been writing about witches and ghosts anyway.

3) This passage:

"The archdeacon heard him not. 'Oh! fool!' continued he, without taking his eyes off the window. 'And even couldst thou have broken through that formidable web, with thy frail wings, thoughtest thou to have attained the light? Alas! that glass beyond - that transparent obstacle - that wall of crystal harder than brass, which separates all philosophy from the truth - how couldst thou have passed beyond it? Oh! vanity of science! how many sages have come fluttering from afar, to dash their heads against it! How many systems come buzzing to rush pell-mell against this eternal window!'"

At first glance, it looks interesting, because it's talking about people trying to achieve transcendence and inevitably failing. But I think the focal point is in the wrong place for me to empathize. The issue here is that ultimate truth is unattainable. Which, okay, it's true, but is that really so much of a concern for anyone? The scientists I know personally are pragmatists who believe in the scientific method and are happy to admit that all of their theories are models of reality which always can be further refined - while of course their goal is to find more accurate models, I think they appreciate the fact that all they're doing is modelling reality because the gap between model and reality means that there will always be more science to do. As for me, a friend (a musician) recently asked me what truth meant in my discipline, and I pointed out that, while other students of literature would obviously disagree, for me, truth was simply not the significant issue. Literature and literary studies are not trying to find what's true - we're trying to construct our own system, obviously fed by the truth of this world but not beholden to it - and, in fact, surely the attraction for those of us who are attracted to this mode of thought is the fact that it's not beholden to truth. The problem with our system is not that it's untrue - in fact, that's the benefit of the system. The problem with the system is that it's unstable, tends to regress to the abyss. Ultimately, Dom Claude's concern seems to be a medieval one - it's always a bit surprising to me when people today obsess too much about the unattainability of truth, since I tend to feel that we have solutions for that that pretty much work for us!

We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

2011-04-28T05:57:00.002-04:00

Mind. Blown.

Now That I'm Not Manic Anymore

2011-04-27T05:03:00.004-04:00

Okay, I think this has already been kind of stated outright, and I don't know quite why this appeals to me so much, but where I'm really hoping the Hitherby canon is going, with even more explicitness than there is now, is that Melanie joined the monster's organization and accepted her birthright as a monster and is all monstrous purely with the intent of saving her best friend partially, Liril, from her horrible fate, even though she has to do it obliquely and subtly, and even though other than this one act of rebellion she must genuinely be a monster, and that she doesn't see what's wrong with it, and that she in fact refuses redemption and experiences her awful foretold fate, and that's the story.

I really have no idea why this is the kind of story I like. And it kind of is a bit too close to Max and Sid, maybe? But still, I am happier and happier that this is really where we seem to be going! She sacrifices herself, not physically but morally, for friendship! She sacrifices her morality for friendship! Please may it be so!

"Black Magic" by Jarvis Cocker

2011-04-20T05:34:00.000-04:00

I woke up in the morning
and all the bells were ringing
My eyes could see the glory
Baby

Could hear the song they're singing
You only get to see the light
just one time in your life
Oh, black magic
that blows your mind away
and takes you somewhere that you wanna stay
You only get to stay one day
Oh, that cold black magic

Is there anything more wretched
than to just have caught one sight?
The eyes that saw the glory have been
have been blinded by the light

And it's the true believers that crash and burn
But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna learn
Black magic
that blows your mind away
and takes you somewhere that you wanna stay
Oh, you only get to stay one day
Oh, that cold black magic
Ow

We can't escape; we're born to die
But I'm gonna give it a real good try
because nothing comes close and nothing can compare
to black magic
Yeah yeah yeah

Black magic
Yeah yeah yeah

"Black Rook in Rainy Weather" by Sylvia Plath

2011-04-20T05:20:00.002-04:00

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain-
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical
Yet politic, ignorant

Of whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,

For that rare, random descent.

"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

2011-04-20T05:19:00.001-04:00

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us,-visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,-
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,-
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,-where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,-why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given-
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone-like mist oe'er the mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messgenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes-
Thou-that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not-lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard-I saw them not-
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,-
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night-
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou-O awful Loveliness,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past-there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm-to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

Huh.

2011-04-17T22:03:00.004-04:00

Somehow, it had never really occurred before to me that the same person was partially responsible for "Call Me," "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", and The Neverending Story theme.

That's a thing.

Only One Coin

2011-04-15T00:17:00.003-04:00

“Because beauty, Phaedo, is the only thing that is divine and visible at the same time, and so it is the way of the artist to the soul.But do you believe, my dear Phaedo, that the one who reaches the intellectual through the senses can ever achieve wisdom and human dignity?Or do you believe (and I am leaving this to you) that it is a lovely but dangerous road that leads nowhere?Because you have to realize that we artists cannot take the path of beauty without Eros joining us and becoming our leader; we may be heroes in our own way, but we are still like women, because passion is what elevates us, and our desire is love—that is our lust and our disgrace.Do you see that poets can be neither sage nor digniﬁed?That we always stray, adventurer in our emotions?The appearance of mastery in our style is a lie and foolishness, our fame a falsehood, the trust the public places in us is highly ridiculous, education of the young through art something that should be forbidden.Because how can someone be a good teacher when he has an inborn drive towards the abyss?We may deny it and gain dignity, but it still attracts us.We do not like ﬁnal knowledge, because knowledge, Phaedo, has no dignity or severity:it knows, understands, forgives, without attitude; it is sympathetic to the abyss, itis the abyss.Therefore we deny it and instead seek beauty, simplicity, greatness and severity, of objectivity and form.But form and objectivity, Phaedo, lead the noble one to intoxication and desire, to horrible emotional transgressions rejected by his beautiful severity, lead to the abyss.Us poets, I say, it leads there, for we are unable to elevate ourselves, instead we can only transgress.And now I am leaving you, Phaedo; stay here until you no longer see me, then leave also.”

---Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (translation found online)

I am really not sure what to think of the fact that I fell in love with this at fifteen.

The Universe Loathes Me, and It Is Destroying Me Always

2011-04-14T06:23:00.004-04:00

No, seriously, I am not even kidding. This is just not fair. This is really the product of active malevolence. There isn't any other explanation. There is something out there that just wants me to die. It's not okay. There is a vast and intricate design out there, and its objective is an end to Grace.

Except of course I should note that my choice of pseudonym is also not particularly helping right now, hello!?!?!!?

Really Depressed Schizophrenia

2011-04-13T10:35:00.004-04:00

Also, this is the best thing ever. I saw that it was Jarvis Cocker interviewing David Bowie and was like, this is going to be the best thing ever! And then it turned out to be all about cigarettes and I was like, meh. But then I read it and it turned out to be the best thing ever after all! Probably because when you get Jarvis and Bowie together in a room, they are going to be talking about the Jarvis and Bowie things. Even cigarettes cannot stop them!

I should have faith in my boys.

Also

2011-04-12T22:05:00.003-04:00

Whenever I think that something is a Shelley reference, I am right. It is a Shelley reference. I can prove it.

That's just a fundamental truth of the universe.

Do I Have Time for This? No, I Do Not Have Time for This!

2011-04-12T21:49:00.003-04:00

One beneficial side effect of my current utter, complete, mind-blowing, devastating obsession with "Station to Station" (Devastating? Part of the problem with being obsessed with a song about the experience of cocaine addiction is that the obsession kind of recapitulates the experience of cocaine addiction) is that I have discovered that this is finally available online. I have been looking for that forever because it is, very predictably, probably up there on my list with Byron as one of the best things that has ever happened in the real reality. It's kind of hilarious to watch, really, because. . . well, first of all, Jagger sounds like me while I'm teaching ("Are you going to be quiet and listen to me now? This is really important, so you really should be quiet!" That is totally what I'd say if I were to suddenly start reading from Adonais in class.), but, secondly, he says something like, "I'm sure this reflects the way we're all feeling about Brian," and I'm like, "No, most people do not react to celebrity death with Neoplatonism, do they? I mean, the mere existence of Adonais certainly suggests that some people do, but. . . that's not the normal response, is it?"

If you are wondering about the connection with "Station to Station," can I just point you to this poem? It's by Aleister Crowley! And it's called "In the Woods with Shelley!" Lines totally include the phrases: "Spurning the stain of all grief here" and "Loose but your soul - shall its wings find the white way so appalling!"

EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE IS ABOUT SHELLEY!

Explain the Resonance to Me!

2011-04-03T02:39:00.004-04:00

DWJ's story "The Girl Who Loved the Sun" and Connie Willis's story "Daisy in the Sun" are two good, similar works. It is unsurprising that I like both of them, given that they both deal with themes of questioning conventional narratives of female sexuality and girls who rebel against these narratives. It helps that both of them, in different ways, have bittersweet endings that simultaneously affirm the girls' desires and express the problems with rebellion; I find that it makes them more interesting than pure wish-fulfillment fantasies.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds this an interesting theme, so it's not surprising to me to see two authors, in particular two female authors, working on the same topic. What confuses me is, why did both authors happen to pick, as their vehicle for discussing the topic, girls who rebel against ordinary heterosexual relationships by falling in love with the sun instead? Why is this the choice - boys or the sun? Where does the sun come from? It seems terribly coincidental that two stories both dealing with the same themes would pick the same exact symbol for alternative narratives, but I can't for the life of me think of what resonance made both authors choose the sun! Can anyone explain this to me?

The Real Place

2011-04-01T00:23:00.004-04:00

You know, 2011 is a quarter over, and I have posted a grand total of one post on this blog this year that is not about Hitherby. Yeah.

New _Hitherby_ Canon: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

2011-03-27T02:56:00.003-04:00

Benefits: A world with new Hitherby canon is a very different place from a world without it. I keep on thinking of "Your Song," of all things - how wonderful life is now it's in the world. Everything seems exciting and shiny and new; there's a fundamental source of rightness in the universe that lies deep below everything. When things go wrong, you don't have to worry quite so much because you know that beauty and truth and love are still in the process of trickling into reality - you know that something is going to be amazing.

Costs: How do you think about anything else? Hitherby has this awkward Homeward Bounders effect for me - it tends to look like the Real Place, even though I know perfectly well that it isn't. Luckily it's been only one time in my life that I had the really serious problem with Hitherby and spent a night feeling like I was going to fade out of the world, but it's still very hard to pay attention to the world when there is Hitherby calling to me - even when Hitherby is the child of the world and the arm of the world and the eye of the world, a part of the world itself, not something different and separate and alien. Even despite that, it tends to sever me.

Words of Wisdom from Jenna

2011-02-05T14:59:00.001-05:00

"A grape is a purple fruit that is not particularly responsible for the pervasive universal characteristic of suffering. Anybody attempting to blame this characteristic on the grapes has not completely thought through their theodicy."

---"What’s Purple and Incarnated in Human Form to Save Us All From Suffering? (III/VII)"

Aaaah! Aaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

2011-01-19T18:17:00.003-05:00

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I am too excited for life!

The newest Hitherby canon entry's title is a reference to one of my favorite legends EVER in the history of the UNIVERSE!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

New Hitherby canon is too much the best thing ever that it is kind of scary.

Wait

2011-01-07T01:21:00.002-05:00

Dude, what?

Relatedly, Hitherby needs a better Melanie tag. Although I do find the phrase, "Cunning Melanie, beloved of the gods," extremely memorable.

Depressing _Hexwood_ Thought of the Day!

2011-01-04T10:22:00.002-05:00

Mordion is the same age that I am now.

I mean, okay, sure, I'm not particularly old, but, damn. That is a terribly long time to be Mordion :(.

Wonderful Aspects of PSME Volumes 5 and 6

2010-12-19T13:53:00.002-05:00

-Rin's "I am evil" expressions
-Rin's "I am perfectly innocent" expressions
-Rin's "Ooops, what did I just say?" expression
-Rin's "Gyokuran, you are an idiot" or "I have no idea what you are talking about" or "This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life" or possibly "Man, you have a lot left to learn" expression
-Rin's "Despite the fact that I have not yet achieved double digits, I am amazingly patronizing" expressions
-Rin's "I am actually the single most patronizing person in the history of the universe" expression
-Gyuokuran and Shion have an argument even though Shion is not actually there! I will always love that.

Only One Coin

2010-12-13T02:45:00.002-05:00

The Neverending Story was my favorite movie as a kid, and I still quite enjoy both the movie and the book version. That having been said, it occurred to me while watching the movie today that the relationship between creativity and the void presented by the film is one that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Trying to think of an alternative model, I realized that, perhaps unsurprisingly, I find it best expressed in Fire and Hemlock:

"Two sides to Nowhere, Polly thought. One really was a dead end. The other was the void that lay before you when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else had quite had before."

Guess Who THIS Post Is about!

2010-11-09T07:23:00.003-05:00

Isabel Archer: "A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see - that's my idea of happiness."

---The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Rereading The Portrait of a Lady does make me feel very anxious that I will somehow inexplicably wind up marrying Gilbert Osmond.

I mean, metaphorically. You know.

_What Maisie Knew_

2010-11-08T03:56:00.002-05:00

In his Preface, Henry James himself picks out two scenes in What Maisie Knew as demonstrating particular excellence. One of these is the scene where the Captain, Maisie's mother's lover, says the first nice words Maisie has ever heard about her mother in her entire life, moving her to tears. The other is the scene where Maisie's father urges his daughter to let him take her to America, all the while making it quite clear to her nonverbally that he desperately wants her to refuse. Perhaps because these are the scenes James himself picks out, perhaps because they really are quite excellent, I did in fact remember both these scenes.

But I did not remember the scene in which the following happens:

ELDERLY WIDOW: Your father is a manwhore. And that's his best quality.
. . .
[later]
. . .
ELDERLY WIDOW: Your beloved stepmother is also a whore.
SMALL GIRL [Maisie's age at this point is slightly unclear, but I would guess she's twelve or thirteen): Well, but aren't you a whore too?

I so much <3 Henry James!

Old Pretender

2010-10-26T04:33:00.003-04:00

So, I've been re-reading The Wings of the Dove after finishing all my real work for the semester.

Then I had to spend an hour sitting around with nothing to do.

So I wrote the following sentence:

"After all, she felt, in her inner self, that she left rather a lot out, on the whole, when it came to pleasing others, so that she was positively obliged, insofar as she considered her general attitude a failure of the ideal, to make up for the absence as much as possible in those simple cases wherein the effort should be, thankfully, not quite too much to bear - and if she was unavoidably conscious of the fact that others - particularly those who, while always serving as attentive and sympathetic auditors of her complaints, were perhaps somewhat removed from or oblivious to the waves more typically spreading from the pebble dropped by her standard inconsistent treatment of her social relations - tended to see her as erring on the side of doing nothing else but too much, as far as her kindnesses were concerned, she rather suspected that no one would be able to sound the abyss of cynicism she knew to lie behind the gilded mask of her compassionate veneer better than she herself could."

I am rather proud of myself.

If nothing else, I think this provides strong evidence for the contention I used to make back in my Henry James and Flaubert course in graduate school (which had something of an unfortunate tendency to turn into a Henry James versus Flaubert course) that the prose style of Henry James - yes, even the late Henry James! - does a better job of representing my own experience of thought than the prose style of Flaubert!

Constructive criticism is welcome! Writing like late Henry James is interesting - it's much more like writing poetry than writing most prose (although this may be simply because when I'm not going for pastiche I don't bother sufficiently about style when writing prose).

The Workers Move to the Suburbs

2010-10-14T01:49:00.007-04:00

Belle & Sebastian's new album is apparently out now, not that I'm going to hear it for a while yet, and they produced a video in order to promote it. The video is a slightly odd one; about half of it is promotional material for the album, with performances of a few songs, songs running over photo and video clips, fans asking the band questions and having the band answer - and then another half of it is about the future of the music business, with a parody of a marketing executive (who, as a fierce Scottish man in business attire talking about media relations, reminds me awkwardly of Malcolm Tucker from In the Loop, such that I kept on waiting for him to curse more), questions in the interview about what young aspiring musicians should do, a whole conversation between members of various different about the changes that the industry is undergoing. The parody of the marketing executive even involves the mention of making a promotional video (which is on a list of things that will completely fail to help sell the album).

Although it did strike me as an odd topic for your promotional video to cover, I suppose that Belle & Sebastian were interested in discussing because as successful recording artists it's certainly something they must think about with at least moderate frequency - and something, I suppose, that all fans of music might legitimately be interested in. It's interesting for me at least in part because I've also been reading news and commentary lately about the future of the academic humanities - musicians are worried about their future, so are humanities scholars. The rhetoric on both topics even has a certain amount of similarity between it - take a look at the similarities between Mick Jagger's comments here and the point (which I can't seem to find a citation for now, but which I promise you I have seen today) that the academic study of modern languages is in fact a relatively new phenomenon in itself.

It makes me wonder what it's like to be old - to have more experience. There are aspects of the way things are that are so new that they've arisen within my own lifetime; I know that it's only very recently that it ever would have occurred to me to have a blog. But some things, like recorded music and academic humanities, have been around since well before I was born and seem pretty standard and normal. Thus, it's weird to think of them as relatively recent and ephemeral. I wonder if this is a fallacy that one ever grows out of, or if it's something that remains, no matter how old you get - well, I suppose it probably wouldn't remain if you were magical and consequently significantly longer-lived than non-magical people, but this doesn't really seem like a salient qualification ;-). I also wonder if there was always an issue. I have my own stereotype of the very normalization of rapid change in society and technology as being a relatively recent phenomenon, especially as a global phenomenon. And I think this is a very standard stereotype. But even if quantitatively this is true, I wonder about how my own ancestors, dating back for tens of thousands of years, actually experienced their lives - whether had a core sense of stability that I really don't possess thanks to being raised with a different set of expectations, or whether even when technological change was much slower than it is today, there was still a sense of the basic instability of society, because cultural changes that would seem minuscule to us seemed far more significant to them.

One thing I love about myself is the way I am nearly always able to find an extremely apt title for a blog post. Thank you, self!

Both of You Dance Like You Want to Win

2010-10-08T01:01:00.008-04:00

Why do I say indie-pop, not indie rock? I don't know. It's just a habit I picked up, but to the extent that there's a conscious motivation, I think it's because of the way all the bands I like turn out to have some relationship with dance music. The odd thing is that this happens regardless of whether or not the songs that get me into the band are like that. So. . . let's go through bands I like:

-Pulp: Dance-y from the first, I think. "Common People" sounds dance-y to me. What's more, this is a band that has a compilation CD named "Goes to the Disco" and actually recorded a song that is pretty straightforward house music.

-Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts - Well, this isn't even indie to begin with ;-). "Cosmic Dare" is kind of dance-y nonetheless, but it's hardly typical.

-Franz Ferdinand - "Music that girls [such as myself] could dance to." 'Nuff said.

-Belle & Sebastian - Okay, I first got into B&S thanks to "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying" and "Judy and the Dream of Horses." Not dance-y at all, right? So how could I expect when I first heard those songs that I was also falling in love with the band that put out "Your Cover's Blown"?!?

-The Delays - Actually, their third album was less dance-y than the first two, and I didn't like it nearly as much.

-of Montreal - I think this is the most egregious example. Started out intrigued by hearing "Penelope" on Pandora. Wound up addicted to, I don't know, "Faberge Falls for Shuggie" or something. "Faberge Falls for Shuggie," btw, would be the most hilarious title ever, but "Strawberry Letter 23" is actually probably less funky than "Faberge Falls for Shuggie," which ruins the joke.

All the Best People Have to Be Ghosts

2010-10-06T01:10:00.006-04:00

For a long time now, I have wondered why it is that I like Utena without loving it. On paper, Utena seems like something I should love. I've described Angel Sanctuary as "all these people who don't fully understand each other always hurting each other inadvertently" with Gnostic overtones implying that "the physical world is evil because it separates us, divides us up into these beings that can't touch and careen about and hurt each other" and, of course, weird gender and incest issues. Given this description, there's almost no distinction between AS and Utena. So, given that Utena is obviously the more intellectual of the two, and AS is clearly sillier by far, why is AS the one I adore and Utena the one I coldly admire?

While I was walking around doing nothing for an hour today, I came up, for the first time, with an answer that makes sense - if it is clearly not the content, then it must be the structure! This is slightly hard for me to accept because the structures do seem superficially similar (well, those aspects of the structure that seem relevant - I do not think the reason I don't love Utena is because of the Rose Bride duels). Both of them feature a main plot in the present and a lot of backstory, which is revealed gradually during the course of the main plot, up until the final, most important, extremely Gnostic backstory that gets revealed at the end. However, the difference between the two of them is, I think, in the balance of the backstory and the main story. It's true that in Utena the backstory is the motivation for the entire present story. It's also true that almost every important individual character has his or her own different backstory, and even that the backstories connect (to some degree - Utena's, Saionji's, Touga's, Akio's, and Anthy's obviously do). However, first of all I feel that less time is devoted to backstory in Utena and the focus is more clearly on the present. Even if I'm wrong about this (and I haven't measured it to find out for sure), I think that it's still true in the sense that people in AS spend a huge amount of time talking about the backstory with each other even in the present, whereas although we see a lot of the backstory in Utena, it seems less common for characters to be discussing it with each other in the present, such that it still makes for a time differential. Secondly, the backstory in AS is far more convoluted and interconnected; all of the characters have motivations that stem from the motivations of other characters who are connected to still other characters, whereas the backstory of Utena seems (if you don't mind my saying so) far less incestuous (as for whether or not this is literally true. . . ummm. . . that's a hard one). These two features contribute to my sense that, despite the many similarities between the two works, the backstory plays a more significant role in my experience of AS than my experience of Utena.

And of course it's very likely that this would, in fact, be a reason for me to love one far more than the other. Because I love stories where a lot of the story time is devoted to figuring out what went on in the past - in fact, that's among my favorite things. If you look at the works of art I have fallen in love with, whether it's Hexwood, Lost, Xenogears, PSME, or Hitherby - these are all stories where a lot of the narrative drive and suspense comes from trying to figure out what's already happened rather than momentum forwards. The big climactic moment of Utena isn't finding out the truth about Anthy and Akio, it's Utena's duel with Akio and the aftermath. It's something that happens in the present. But, although it is the end of the series, it would seem odd to say that the big climactic moment of AS is in fact Setsuna killing God; it seems to be more something along the lines of discovering the true relationship between Alexiel, Lucifiel, and Rosiel and the catharsis for Alexiel and Rosiel of Rosiel's death. So the climax is the reveal of the ultimate truth behind the plot; the death of God is more like a necessary afterthought (as part of the climactic reveal is the revelation that God is to blame for EVERYTHING!). This is the kind of story I love, where the whole point is to discover the truth about the past - it's the reason I fell madly in love with Absalom, Absalom! the moment I read it - because it's a book where the entire plot is laid out in the first chapter, and the rest of the book is just characters researching and then making up an explanation for it.

I don't know why this kind of narrative appeals to me more than other structures when the content is so close - but there you have it, it does. And I think that's a very helpful explanation of my heretofore inexplicable reactions.

Yay walking around doing nothing for an hour!

I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill

2010-10-02T14:53:00.004-04:00

Usually, when I think about the kind of music I like, I think it's indie-pop. Which makes sense, given that three of my four favorite bands and most of my other well-liked bands since I started listening to contemporary music as opposed to only classic rock have been indie-pop bands. Apart from indie-pop, I know I like Japanese soundtrack music (whether that's for anime or video games), and my other favorite band was Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts. So that's another type of music I specifically think of myself as being fond of.

But some of the music I like doesn't quite fit into those categories (I often like to joke about how two songs I really like quite a lot are Enya's "Oronoco Flow" and Laibach's "Tanz mit Laibach," which are very clearly from different genres, neither of which is indie-pop or J-pop). One other genre that I'm clearly fond of is a certain kind of retro standard-esque music. The example that comes to mind here is Jenny Toomey's Tempting. I really like this album, and I suppose it qualifies as indie pop, but it's not at all the kind of indie pop I usually think of when I think of the term. Have a link to "Unionbusting," which isn't only a good song but also has fun lyrics :).

Qualia

2010-09-30T07:57:00.003-04:00

When I purchased False Priest (amazing, btw) from Polyvinyl, I received The M's Future Women along with it for free. I've been extremely busy listening to False Priest as much as humanly possible, but today I finally listened to Future Women for the first time. As is more or less always the case when I listen to new music for the first time, I was unable to get much out of the experience. In fact, all of the songs sound sort of the same to me. It's not that I really think they all sound the same, but the differences all kind of blur together. They all sound like generic songs. And even as I can't tell the difference, I know perfectly well that if I listen a lot to this album, the songs will (probably) stop sounding so generic to me, I'll be able to pick up the distinctions, and they'll all sound relatively distinct, whether or not I end up liking the album (although this is not invariably true - one reason why I dislike albums like La Belle's Moon Shadow, The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency & I, and The Webb Brothers' Maroon is because the songs never became un-generic to me; even though I listened to those albums a lot, I can barely remember a single distinct from them).

This is not an original thought; I have had this thought many times before. However, what was original was that today was also my last day of classes for the year, and I was also thinking about my relationship with my students. I'm terrible at remembering people, and out of my five classes there are actually two where I can't honestly say that I know all of the students. But that makes three where I do, and I know those students reasonably well - I have ideas about all of them in my mind. Even in the classes where I don't, I know a lot of the students. And yet I am reasonably sure that when I start new classes in 2011 I will know barely any of the students at all for weeks, and for months quite a few of them will be a blur to me. It's hard to imagine now, when the students I teach all seem so familiar - can they really remain blurs for so long? And yet, judging from past experience, that's precisely what will happen.

So apparently my relationship with music is actually quite similar to my relationship with people - they both seem like indistinguishable blurs to me at first, but give it enough time and most of them resolve into quite distinguishable figures. That's kind of interesting. I've been reminded lately of just how unusually non-physical I am by a friend calling me weird because of it - and it really is true - I've often said I wouldn't really miss all that much if I became a brain in a vat. I love music, of course, and I like having ears. But it's interesting to me that all of these sensory impressions, whether auditory or visual, take quite a lot of time to take on me. I think I'm just less good at the physical than the mental, in general, even with those physical sensations that really are important to me.

Why I Like Being an English Teacher

2010-09-30T04:43:00.000-04:00

People come to you sometimes and ask you to spend a while talking to them about grammar! Like, that actually happens! People want you to talk to them about grammar for a while.

A Thin, Weak Thinker

2010-09-23T09:30:00.003-04:00

I don't particularly like fairy tales, and I can't remember ever having liked them. This apparently makes me anathema to Tom Lynn from Fire and Hemlock, but I can't help it. They don't seem interesting to me. They don't involve interesting characterization or plot or themes. I'm perfectly happy with some stories that don't fit the typical character-driven templates (Borges or even Hitherby probably qualify in this respect), but fairy tales never seem to offer interesting or thought-provoking themes to make up for it. What's more, if you know one fairy tale, you know them all. It's no wonder someone just made a template of all the different fairy tales; the differences between them really are that minor, that you can just mix and match a countable number of elements, and BOOM, you'll have a fairy tale.

On the other hand, I do really like, and can't remember ever having not liked, mythology. I suppose the difference between fairy tales and mythology is that, even if mythology also has elements of redundancy, even if mythology also doesn't tend to have the deepest characterization, it's epic. And I like epic. Stories on a large scale, with myriad characters in complicated relationships that you have to keep track of, where the redundancy almost manages to substitute for characterization because it's the same characters involved each time - that always appeals to me, whether it's a fantasy epic, a mythological saga, or, heck, even the history of the Roman or British royal houses.

I was thinking about how I tend to like stories based on fairy tales, even if I don't like the tales themselves, but the more I think about this the more I wonder if it's true. I am a huge fan of intertextuality - I like all sorts of stories that refer to each other, again, because they make the story more complicated, they grant it hidden meanings - actually, I suppose I like intertextuality for the same reason I like epic, or even sitcoms - they're all storytelling forms which involve the possibility that is kind of pointless or even unnoticeable on first glance becomes meaningful and even fascinating once you know all the context - but I wouldn't say that fairy tales as referent are a particularly important focus for my interest. It's more mythology, I think, that I really appreciate the references to - it's the mythological scale that always seems to hit me when I encounter it in a story, and make the story seem more numinous. All of the children's books that hit me that way as a child - I think of DWJ, of course, but also of Susan Cooper - are drawing on myths and legends, epic cycles. Perhaps "Tam Lin" counts as a fairy tale - it's closer to that than to an epic, anyway - but even Fire and Hemlock is secretly referring to the Odyssey and even T. S. Eliot as well, plus I think the stories of actual fairies/elves are broader than simply "Tam Lin" and add additional resonance that bring them closer to the mythological level.

Reasonable Fascimile Thereof

2010-09-16T05:19:00.004-04:00

I am at that stage in my procrastination where I feel an overwhelming urge to blog about. . . things. We will see how long that continues; probably not long.

Anyway, now I am going to blog about "Flight of the Bumblebee," by Rimsky-Korsakov. This is a rather famous short piece of music that I am sure everyone has heard before, but, being fairly ignorant about classical music, I personally was not aware that it was actually originally from an opera, The Tale of Tsar Sultan. In listening to this piece of music just now, I was impressed by the way that it really did sound like an insect's buzz - but much less annoying.

If the End of the World Has Ever Happened, This Must Be It

2010-09-04T14:30:00.005-04:00

Okay, so as far as things to be emotionally involved with go, Mely's opinion of Spike is a rather pathetic one. Nonetheless, I can't help but be pleasantly surprised at the fact that she's suddenly criticizing how Joss wrote Buffy because she's too forgiving of Angel and fails to sufficiently appreciate Spike!

Giles Goat Boy!

2010-08-04T09:32:00.005-04:00

Oh! Giles Goat Boy is totally another example of wonderful OTT narrative! I mean, this is the novel that I like to summarize by explaining that it's about a young American man who decides that he is going to finally achieve the goal of so many philosophers and spiritual leaders and start a new religion that can bring salvation to, at the very least, all of America, if not the entire world. Except that America is a college, the world is a university, and salvation involves passing your exams and graduating. Then my ideal interlocutor asks me if I mean that literally or figuratively, and I get to respond, "Both!" Plus there is the beat poetry version of Oedipus Rex.

Of course, the problem here is that Giles Goat Boy qualifies as exactly the right sort of OTT in my mind, but, unlike Angel Sanctuary or Gardens of the Moon, it is quite obviously intended by its author as a joke. OTOH, "Rautavaara's Case", for which the brief summary is "Jesus eats people" and which is clearly not meant as a joke, is not OTT at all, much as I adore it. I think the difference is that the basic premise of "Rautavaara's Case" is less "Jesus eats people" and more "Wouldn't it in fact be rather odd if Jesus ate people?" In other words, the oddness of the premise is intrinsic to the story; the story's plot and themes are entirely dependent on the fact that it's a really odd premise. Though PKD might well have written the story because he thought the idea of Jesus eating people was really cool, he goes to a lot of trouble to justify it in the story itself, and to explain why Jesus eating people is not only fascinating as a ridiculous idea but also genuinely fascinating on a theological level. On the other hand, though Giles Goat Boy is clearly a joke, it's told with a completely straight face - there's no attempt made to justify why the world should be a university, America a college, or salvation passing one's exams and graduating. This is just taken as a given, just as Yuki Kaori clearly thinks giant flying aborted angelic fetuses with lots of eyeballs that possess their twin brothers and try to rape people don't particularly need any justification, or Steven Erikson apparently believes that good houses versus evil trees are totally par for the course. So Giles Goat Boy may be a joke, but this is extrinsic to the story - although there is no way to miss the fact that it's a joke, the narrative does not depend on explaining or justifying the joke. The depth of the worldbuilding, I think, is what makes me feel inclined to take it very seriously despite being such a ridiculous joke. In a way, it reminds me of Gulliver's Travels - which, again, is obviously satire, but I tend to have the feeling that while Swift was writing it he sometimes just got so caught up in the worldbuilding that he forgot to focus on satire ;-). In fact, if it weren't for the fact that I've known the basic premise of Gulliver's Travels for as long as I remember, such that I'm entirely inured to it, maybe that would count.

Actually, you know what probably does count? Manfred! And that's even relevant to the original instigator of this whole train of thought, given that I strongly suspect Yuki Kaori of having an interest in Byron. I mean, her two most famous manga are both full of incest and homoeroticism, one of the bizarre brother/sister pairs in Angel Sanctuary involves a sister named Astarte who winds up dying before her brother, and her other famous manga (which I admittedly haven't read) takes place in 19th century Britain (or. . . umm. . . perhaps I should say Yuki Kaori's version of 19th century Britain)and has a hero named Cain who is only interested in heterosexual relationships with girls to whom he's related and is himself the product of incest between a woman named Augusta and her brother. So yeah.

Not to Mention the Cloud Whales

2010-08-04T05:01:00.005-04:00

You know, normally, if I don't love something, I'm fairly clear on why I like it or dislike it. I dislike it because it's boring, or I like it because it has that cool stuff that I like.

But when I'm obsessed with something else, it's a little different. When I'm busy being obsessed with The Homeward Bounders, The Homeward Bounders strikes me as the perfect book, and nothing else is even remotely as appealing, because nothing else is perfect. When I'm obsessed with Hitherby, even DWJ books seem wordy and simplistic in comparison to the sparse thematic complexity that is ideal. But, you know, being obsessed with DWJ or Hitherby is kind of okay, given that the things I love them for aren't actually absurd OTT-ness.

And then there's being obsessed with Angel Sanctuary. A friend of mine mentioned on her personal blog that she is really into the new ABC Family TV show Huge and that it has an asexual character, and I was intrigued enough to start watching it. And I am finding it entertaining enough. It's nice to have been motivated to watch TV again (I really have trouble staying motivated to watch TV unless other people are there watching it with me). But. . . I keep on finding myself thinking, Wouldn't this friendship be so much interesting if that guy was actually possessed by an evil sword that has been chasing the other guy's reincarnations for centuries because it's in love with his original identity as a female angel and is actually, unbeknownst even to itself, Lucifer? or, Wouldn't that scene be strongly improved if there was a giant aborted angelic fetus with lots of eyeballs floating above?, or, The best solution for any weird problems with your father-figure is letting him eat you when he turns into a cannibal zombie, and then he can temporarily regain his sanity just in time to save Lucifer from being killed by the reincarnated angel with himself, because he's blind, and then his blindness will be miraculously lifted and he'll suddenly realize that you're not just his surrogate child but actually his real child that he left for dead after cutting you out of the womb of your mother when he was set up into killing her, so that he can save your life and get you to kill him as the real ultimate act of love.

I also find myself thinking very nostalgically of Gardens of the Moon, which is one of the few narratives I've encountered that seems even to approach AS for OTT-ness. I mean, the epic battle at the end is a good house (as in a building) versus an evil tree! I will never get over that!

If anyone reading this happens to have other recommendations of completely OTT narratives, drop them here. I can't promise to read them, but I would like a list! Basically I am looking for things like the good house (as in a building) versus an evil tree, where it doesn't come off as intentionally funny, and the thing is, it is, unavoidably, funny, but somehow it actually manages to work despite that.

Procrastination. . . .

2010-08-01T03:22:00.003-04:00

So. . . ummm. . . this week just happened, where this thing happened, which was that I kind of read all of Angel Sanctuary (I didn't actually read most of Volume 1, but I've read Volume 1 enough times that I think that's okay). Apparently, the scanslations were up illegally online at this site OneManga, which was really easy to use. I should note that even though I put in that link, I don't really recommend AS to anyone who's reading this blog who hasn't read it already. It's very unlikely to be your kind of thing.

Anyway, despite how often I've been obsessed with AS, I haven't actually ever read the whole thing before! Let's see. I own books 1-13 in French, which I can sort of read, but not perfectly. I also own books 1, 3, 7, 9, and 17 in English. Back in 2006 I read all of the books that were out in English at the time in the bookstore, which included 1-14. I've also read 20 in the bookstore because I tend to have moments of panic about Lucifer/Alexiel (I used to have a lot of moments of panic about Shion/Mokuren, too, but I think I've been mostly reassured on that front. I don't have many OTPs, but I really, really care about the ones I do have!). Other than that, I've just read online summaries (although there used to be a lot more of those than it seems there are now) - in fact, when I first fell in love with the series back in November, 2001, it was entirely through online summaries.

I was expecting Volume 15 to be relatively dull - because Kira dies in 14 and Lucifer only shows up in 16. However, it turns out that there is this amazing scene in Volume 15 where Michael and Setsuna bond over their mutual love of Kira. It was kind of awesome. Setsuna leans tenderly over Michael, and Michael bursts out into tears, and there are images of Kira and Lucifer, and the whole thing is completely awesome. Yeah.

Oh, and it wasn't until I read this fanfic and Volume 16 that it was really brought home to me that, when Rosiel revives Lucifer, this is actually Kira Sakuya's body, not Lucifer's original body or some new body created just for the purpose (this really does seem to be canon in the manga - Katou says so). Mostly, this just intrigues me because of Mr. Kira. It's like, it's not enough that the guy lost his wife and son. It's not enough that, eleven years later, he also loses the spirit that's been possessing his son's body and that he's come to love as a son. No, he also can never bury his son's body because it has been permanently possessed by the Devil. And, okay, obviously this is somewhat mitigated by the facts that: A) the spirit he's come to love as a son was the Devil and B) the Devil is much more awesome than his reputation anyway, and who wouldn't be happy to give him the bodies of their loved ones? But still - despite the mitigating factors, it still seems like the guy just can't catch a break ;-).

I feel like I do so much babbling about Kira whenever I talk about Angel Sanctuary that no one will ever believe that, say, I like other characters too, or that I actually like Zaphikel so much I'd say he's my second-favorite character. But I do! It's just I have fewer random comments to make about Zaphikel. I have to admit, though, I really really really would like to see the epic pre-manga Zaphikel, Anael, and Lailah fanfic. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I think epic pre-canon stories about three intertwined characters really appeal to me (one of the very few fanfics I've ever even considered writing is the pre-Xenogears Miang, Ramsus and Krelian fanfic). I'm not sure what I think I'd get out of the fanfic that isn't in the manga. Just more Zaphikel and Lailah, I guess (I'd say more Anael, but she appears so rarely in the manga that I have very little feel for her. I hope she is awesome enough to live up to Zaphikel and Lailah in the story I am imagining). I guess it's my trouble thinking of what exactly would be added to the manga that means I can't think of the story myself (I have also, for a much longer time, been intrigued by the epic pre-manga Alexiel, Kurai, Arachne, and Nanatsusaya fanfic, but I can't really think what the epic plot would be for that one, either).

Oh! I also think this is an annoying story because I am really not sure who I am justifiably allowed to pick as my favorite female character. I'd pick Belial, if I were confident I was allowed to pick Belial. And if I'm not, then I'd pick Sevothtarte - but am I even allowed to pick Sevothtarte? (Note that my two favorite "female" characters are the ones who are in epic unrequited love with my two favorite male characters. That probably says. . . something about me.). I really like Kurai, but I'm not even sure that I don't like Arachne more than Kurai - I mean, come on, Arachne's flirtation with Kira is the cutest thing ever, and then they get married! So. . . yeah. Awkward. Kurai is definitely my favorite unambiguously female character, but I like a lot of the more ambiguous ones more than her.

Record of Times I Have Been Totally Obsessed With _Angel Sanctuary_

2010-07-26T11:27:00.004-04:00

1) November, 2001
2) June, 2002 (7 months)
3) December, 2004 (30 months)
4) September, 2006 (21 months)
5) January, 2009 (28 months)
6) July, 2010 (18 months)

This is the second time it's this Acey Dearest's fault, too. I discovered that she's published three Angel Sanctuary fanfics since I read "Cast it to Dogs" - all of them are Kira/Kato, but, like I said before, I don't mind Kira/Kato, and I actually really like the way Acey Dearest does it; it doesn't go against my interpretation of canon at all, and, in fact, really reinforces it. I don't actually have time to write about this, but I can't help but at least write a bit about it - "No Answer" is the least interesting to me, personally, since Kira doesn't actually appear in it at all - it's entirely Kato's reflections on Kira. "Mainsprings" is quite good, although, if I'm interpreting the ending correctly, it's really extremely bleak - but it's not necessarily good in a way that I particularly associate with Angel Sanctuary.

I think "Light Pollution" is an excellent fanfic because not only is it good, but it strikes me as good for more or less the same reasons that draw me to Angel Sanctuary, similarly to "Cast it to Dogs." "Light Pollution" is also a genderswitch AU - Kira and Kato are both female, and Kato is a closeted lesbian - which, to be honest, appeals strongly to me as I've been wanting a story about a female Kira for a long time, for. . . ummm. . . personal reasons - but I think that the story also really works on its own merits. I really wish I had more time to talk about this - but I love the way that it is entirely a story from Kato's point of view, and it does a compelling and interesting job of presenting Kato sympathetically and making the story about Kato and her concerns, but at the same time having Kato's story intersect with Kira's hidden story, which is only clear to us because we've read the manga - and certainly isn't clear to Kato! The genderswitch is effective (a genderswitch of Setsuna might have worked, also, although I think the genderswitch of Kira and Kato is ultimately more effective) because it means that Kato looks at Kira and sees a girl who has not only a father who loves her but also a potential perfectly normal heterosexual relationship, in contrast with Kato and her father who hates her and her internalized homophobia - Kato's story is all about the complexity of her feelings about Kira and the way she's incomprehensibly screwing up her life - whereas, of course, we know exactly why Kira does what she does and why her life is already screwed up. And of course we know that what concerns Kato is ultimately completely insignificant to Kira - Kato is convinced that Kira would be disgusted if she realized that Kato is a lesbian and attracted to her and imagines their relationship as impossible because of the homophobia, whereas one assumes that Kira could care less (I think there's plenty of evidence in canon that Nanatsusaya isn't particularly hung up on gender - in terms of sexual attraction, Nanatsusaya is obviously not disgusted by the possibility of sleeping with a female; it's not just in the story but in canon that Nanatsusaya is perfectly happy to possess a female body; when Kira teases Arachne in Volume 1, he knows all about who she is before he even gets into it but goes ahead with it anyway; and it's hardly as though he's likely to have any hangups about morality) - but I think what makes the story even more effective is that, since it is Kato and Kira who are genderswitched, not Setsuna, Kira's ambiguous gender comes up in the story - Kira alludes to herself as Rhett Butler (I had to look up this quotation, though - actually, encountering that quotation in that context actually made me want to read or watch Gone with the Wind, not an experience I've ever had before), not a woman chasing a man, and calls Setsuna a girl - but Kato, though she notices, doesn't pick up on the importance - Kato is left wondering about Kira but simply couldn't have the frame of reference to understand what's going on and interprets it entirely in terms of her own perspective. Like the moment when she notices Kira's bloodstain, but the bloodstain comes up entirely in the context of Kato knowing she will never have the chance to see it in full - picking up on the detail entirely from her own perspective. But of course Kato can never have Kira anyway, but not at all for the reasons she thinks.

It's a very effective story because of the story going on behind the obvious story, and because of the way the story behind the story is the motivating factor for the story we read, but, at the same time, only breaking through at moments into the story we read, and I think it fits so well with Angel Sanctuary's methods - it's like, IIRC, Katan. Katan is this hugely important character with a tragic story that runs throughout nearly all of the manga, which has a large effect on Setsuna and his life, but, again IIRC, Katan shows up towards the end and dies and Setsuna has only the vaguest idea of who he is - because their stories just haven't intersected enough for Setsuna to know, despite Katan being a major force behind Setsuna's entire story arc. The thing that's so GREAT about Angel Sanctuary is this messiness - although it's technically Setsuna's story, and it's obvious Setsuna is the hero, it's everyone else's story too, and everyone else's story often never becomes entirely clear to anyone else, so that it's all these people who don't fully understand each other always hurting each other inadvertently (well, obviously not all the hurt is inadvertent, but, with the exception of God, we mostly get everyone's motives) - and I think this messiness is really what makes Angel Sanctuary effectively Gnostic - Gnosticism works, in literature, because it's not just about the idea that the God that created the physical world is evil, it's also about the idea that the physical world is evil - and the physical world is evil because it separates us, divides us up into these beings that can't touch and careen about and hurt each other - "Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy, why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?" - or the point of Evangelion (although Eva is obviously a rather cynical take on the idea) - and this idea really explains a lot of the seeming craziness of the story and ties it together - perfect androgynous beings and gender being a division, wacky Freudian pregnancy issues with rampaging fetuses, Rosiel getting people to eat him so that he can possess them (see, it's not just a Eucharist joke, even if Eucharist jokes are the best jokes) - I realize I'm not making any sense but I really have to just say this - and I think it's that same sense - the separateness of people but the way we hurt each other anyway - that comes across so well in both "Cast it to Dogs" and "Light Pollution." So yay.

Oh! Oh! Oh!

2010-07-16T11:54:00.002-04:00

Over at Steepholm's LiveJournal, he happens to start off a comment with: "I do not know much about dragons."

Inexplicably, the comment does not then continue with a Spirited Away-themed filk of "The Dry Salvages."

I mean, there is even a train in Spirited Away!

I will concede that is perhaps unhealthy to see "The Dry Salvages" every single time I see a river god and trains. But then I have to admit that I have long thought that Miyazaki was a far better match for Spellcoats than he was for Howl's Moving Castle. I think I would actually be pretty excited if Miyazaki made a Spellcoats movie. So maybe I am really on to something here ;-).

I Write Like. . .

2010-07-12T21:15:00.002-04:00

This time, yhlee links to "I Write Like. . .". Apparently my posts on this blog are like Dan Brown. I should be offended, but at least in terms of content, it's kind of credible, from what I understand of Dan Brown's topics.

But when I put in my paper on 1984, I was told I write like. . .

George Orwell!

It's not just laughable because it's a paper on 1984, it's also laughable because one assumes George Orwell would loathe my writing style. . . .

Oh, Also

2010-07-01T11:43:00.004-04:00

Jenna Moran just posted up stats for Martin and Jane as if they were characters in her tabletop RPG, Nobilis. I know nothing about Nobilis, but TSOR suggests that what she has written strongly supports my contention that Martin is extremely creepy. So I am feeling kind of justified in that one, even if I think we're not meant to take it entirely literally.

Also - when it says that Jane is an angel, is that purely a Nobilis term? Because. . . it's a thought-provoking word choice.

I wish you would all read Hitherby so that you could comment on this!

ETA: Aww, the people who actually read Hitherby went and commented on it and answered my question in such a boring way that it no longer says that Jane is an angel! Oh, well. Nothing about Martin's creepiness has changed. It is difficult to imagine any circumstance in which Martin's creepiness will change.

Don't Want To Really Get To Know It Better

2010-07-01T11:02:00.004-04:00

One of the few bands that I actually pay attention to and try to buy CDs by, when they come out, is an extremely obscure British indie group that I discovered through some form of Internet radio - I can no longer recall if it was Pandora or Live 365. As it happens, about a year and a half ago this group (which is not the point of the entry) actually played a show in the city where I was living, at an indie festival. Naturally, I had to go. I am kind of obsessive about standing near the front at concerts (it wound up being well-worth the obsession at this particular concert), so I was there for all of the bands even though the band I'd come to see was the last to play.

Rather early on in the festival proceedings was a performance by Janelle Monáe. This made an impression on me, for several reasons. First of all, I was surprised to see a black woman performing at an indie festival - one thinks of indie as fairly white and male. Secondly, lots of people came specifically to see her performance, talked about past shows of hers they'd seen, and generally hyped her. Finally, she was undeniably an interesting performer - she comes off a bit cold for my tastes, but she definitely has style.

I wasn't really expecting Janelle Monáe to turn up in my life again, but she's popped up more and more often since that first performance. For one thing, although I'd first seen Janelle perform in a context completely unrelated to of Montreal, I wound up seeing her perform two more times (three in total), because she and Kevin Barnes have become quite good friends, and she often served as an opening act for of Montreal. Kevin talks about her all the time and even recorded a song for her new album - "Make the Bus." Meanwhile, Coffeeandink, whose blog, as I've mentioned in the past, I quite enjoy, has started posting about her quite a bit. I suppose this isn't really surprising, as Janelle is a black woman who writes science fiction, and that's generally what Coffeeandink likes anyway, but it's still interesting in that it's a context completely unrelated to either Kevin Barnes or the indie band I originally mentioned.

So, the thing is, I don't particularly like Janelle Monáe's music. I realize that I've mostly only heard it live, and I rarely like music I hear live, but I still feel like having seen her stage show three times does qualify me to have a sense for whether or not I'm eager to hear more, and I wouldn't say I am, particularly. I barely remember her songs despite having seen the show so many times; they didn't make much of an impression on me. And yet, despite this, I feel as though I kind of have to buy her album. I wasn't going to - after all, all these coincidences aside, it didn't interest me - but I've been listening to "Make the Bus" so much - and I like it! It mentions Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - that I feel I really ought to own it legally, and somehow that's pushed me over the edge. It's a kind of weird situation - everything I've read online makes it quite clear that "Make the Bus" is an of Montreal song with only minor participation by Janelle Monáe, and that it's really out of place on the album, and everyone who loves the album doesn't particularly feel that it fits in. So I really should just purchase the single track "Make the Bus" and let it go. But the fact that I like this song so much - much better than "Coquet Coquette", the first song released from of Montreal's upcoming False Priset - makes me feel like, given the preponderant weight of coincidence on the side of the album, I might as well go the whole hog. I feel as though I am fated to buy this album, taste aside.

Nothing at All to Do with God

2010-05-07T03:34:00.003-04:00

I am not sure what is a more bizarre thing - that there exists a genre of Germanic-language literature focused on people getting sick in Italy, or that it is a completely amazing genre! Seriously, if you told me, here is a book originally written in Swedish or Frisian about someone getting sick in Italy, I would be like, "Oh, wow, I have to read that!"

2010-05-05T00:28:00.002-04:00

Perhaps it is so obvious that I don't actually need to state it, but I'm worried that some readers may think that my theodicy explorations have only worked themselves all the way around to where they began. Therefore, I'd like to point out why this is not so.

It is true that the position I suggested Stanley Fish was at least hinting at (a recent reread suggests that it's actually the Devil's position in the Hitherby serial "An Unclean Legacy", which does not speak all that highly for it) is that fiction is theodicy - I also say fiction is theodicy.

Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that there is a difference. The Devil's position is that suffering is morally justifiable because it makes for drama. This is true even if people are genuinely experiencing suffering. My position is that suffering is morally justifiable if people are not genuinely experiencing it, and that this is possible if people see their suffering as fictional, as somehow less real than other things that are more valid. In other words, the Devil is happy to hurt people and thinks they should like it because of the intrinsic value of drama. He doesn't care if the intrinsic value of drama doesn't outweigh the suffering for those experiencing it. My hypothetical God (who does not seem to exist) wouldn't be happy to hurt people, and would ensure that people experience their suffering in the same way we experience suffering of others in a story or suffering of ourselves in the best kind of dream, rather than the pain and misery and unjustifiability of suffering in real life. The reason why this God (as opposed to any others) clearly doesn't exist is because we don't all experience our suffering this way, even if some people might.

A Theodicy I Find Acceptable! (Just Not in Our Universe)

2010-04-17T16:20:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about God and fiction again all weekend. I think my previous post on this topic had the issue of jumping between my perspective and my characters' perspective too much. I don't think it's fair to mix these up. From my perspective, we can say, I am obviously not God. However, I still might be God from my characters' perspectives, and this is the point that counts. So let's try to look at the issue from my characters' perspectives, then.

Okay. So, from my perspective, I created their universe. There then remain two possibilities. Either they could meaningfully "transcend" their universe and come to interact with me and other people in my universe, or they couldn't. If the former is true, then, by definition, I can't be God, because, by definition, God is the "uncaused cause" or the "unmoved mover." If my characters have the capacity of transcendence, then they clearly would realize that I am far from being an uncaused cause or unmoved mover. Thus, if my characters can transcend, I cannot be God, not only from my perspective but also from theirs! However, it seems obvious that, even if they can't transcend their universe from my perspective, from their perspective, they can. This is because they are capable of knowing that they are fictional characters. If I create them that way, they will be aware of their own fictionality. Since I have created such characters, I know that this is clearly possible. A character who is conscious of her own fictionality is clearly one who realizes the limitations and boundaries on her author, since that character is aware of the existence of a "real world" that subsumes her own and that provides limitations on the mindset of the author. So that character might be mad at the author, but cannot place ultimate blame on him and cannot think of him as God.

One might argue - but you are still creating some characters who aren't aware of their own fictionality; thus, those characters cannot make any such argument. I think in order to deal with this argument we really have to place ourselves into the perspective of one of these characters. So, switching gears for a moment and imagining myself as a character in a text by a transcendent, sufficiently-advanced alien (a hypothesis which may well be true): I certainly have no knowledge of my fictionality. However, I can safely believe there are three possibilities. Either my universe was created by no one, or it was created by an imminent God, or it was created by a sufficiently advanced alien. Note that these possibilities are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. The universe in Paradise Lost, for example, was created by both an imminent God (the God that appears in the text) AND a sufficiently advanced alien (John Milton). If the universe was created by no one, then it is meaningless to call God evil. If the universe was created by an imminent God, then I call that God evil. If the universe was created by a sufficiently advanced alien, then I do not call her evil, because she is not ultimately to blame for suffering - suffering was presumably part of the very cause that led her, a deeply moved mover, to create the universe. I believe that is meaningful to distinguish universes created by no one from those created by John Milton, in the sense that, while it's never possible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that your universe wasn't created by John Milton, it is, as mentioned above, possible to prove that your universe is. If John Milton makes you aware of the fact that your universe was created by John Milton, then you will know that your universe was created by John Milton (it is a justified true belief); this is something that is very unlikely to happen if your universe was not created by John Milton, and so, were I to be granted this belief, I would be pretty likely to take it at face value and not be skeptical about it. Thus, regardless of whether or not I know for sure that the universe was created by John Milton, as long as the possibility of knowing this is open to me (which it clearly is), John Milton is not evil from my perspective.

But this opens up a rather odd corollary that has useful and, I think, extremely satisfying implications for theodicy. The thing is, my third possibility is that the universe was in fact created by an immanent God (a possibility which I can clearly imagine, given the existence of, say, Paradise Lost. The immanent God Itself may be, in fact, a fictional character created by a sufficiently advanced alien, but, as long as the God believes Itself to be immanent, it still counts (I would want to say that, despite the fact that Milton created Paradise Lost's God, this is still justifiably a representation of God, not a sufficiently advanced alien. If we can say that fictional characters have properties, and obviously we can, then in the world of the fiction it is completely true that God is God.). I would like to say that this God is evil, a villainous character - and I'm not the only one, if you look at the kind of arguments people have about Paradise Lost. This God, which is, from Its own perspective, an uncaused cause (even if from our perspective It is not), deliberately chose to create the universe and be the cause of a great deal of suffering, for no good reason.

However, the immanent God is also, by definition, omnipotent within the realm of its universe, which means that, among the other things It can do, It can most certainly cause the people of the universe to believe, with full conviction, that they are fictional characters. This may or may not be true; from God's perspective, it certainly isn't true. But God can make them believe it, anyway. Which means that there is in fact a way for an immanent God to create a universe and yet not be evil - It just has to have Its people believe that they are fictional characters.

Is it enough for this to be possible? I was already saying that I am not evil if I create a fictional universe, even if I don't let all my characters know that they are fictional. But I am not within the fictional universe and therefore don't have to admit to the reality of my characters, and, in order for my characters to be talking and thinking about me and not a fictional immanent God in their world, I have to be not God. I am not the God of their world because I am not immanent and don't believe myself to be God; my moral decisions thus are made on that basis (and they will be able to come to understand if my moral decisions are made on that basis). But God really is God and believes Itself to be God; God's moral decisions thus have to be based on a genuine belief in the importance and reality of Its subjects (since God is not aware of any limitations on Its powers, and, in fact, within Its own universe, there are no limitations). Thus, God's responsibilities are different from mine. God is less evil and more good, even if It is fully immanent, to the extent that It lets Its conscious creations believe (even if falsely) that they are fictional characters.

So God, the source of all goodness, is in fact morally justifiable only if It lies? But I don't think this is as bad a result as it might sound. Because the whole point is that it isn't really a lie - if you believe you are a fictional character, then you are, or there is no meaningful difference between believing yourself to be a fictional character and actually being a fictional character (how can you prove that you're not a fictional character? Is this even a meaningful concept?). And being a fictional character seems to be the one thing that could justify suffering to me. Because if your suffering is purely fiction, then you are aware that it is not real, not important - you have perspective. My suffering seems real to me and that is why I hate it; were I to not experience my suffering as real, I would not have this reaction. In fact, this is precisely the point of the dream I relate here. One of the most exciting, pleasurable dreams I ever had, which involved suffering, but that was okay, because the suffering in the dream was known by the character experiencing the suffering to be only fake suffering, in service of a larger goal of creating suspense. That suffering is okay, because it is justified in the mind of the character who knows that she is really only a smaller part of a larger mind.

So, I can actually see an immanent God as non-evil! If you happen to be omnipotent and omniscient and want to create a universe, I will now give you permission! However, our universe is still not that universe, because we DO NOT KNOW that we are merely ideas in the mind of God. Or perhaps some people do know that, but I don't. And if an immanent God created me, then there was no need to create me without this belief.

I also really like this theodicy a lot because I think it fits with my love of Hitherby. I've often thought about how, even though there is just as much suffering and pain in Hitherby as there is in the real world, I always feel like I'd rather live in the Hitherby universe. I've never been quite sure why, except for the very vague thought that I liked the metaphysics better than the metaphysics of our universe. But now I think I have a better sense of why - the reason is because, even if Hitherby doesn't quite fit the ideal of having everyone know that they are a fictional character (and, in fact, part of the point of Hitherby is that even fictional characters can become real characters who feel real pain), it seems to come much closer to that ideal than our world. I still wouldn't quite call the God of Hitherby omnibenevolent, but It seems to be far less evil than the theoretical immanent God of our world. More like the level of evil of a regular human being or a sufficiently advanced alien than the level of brazen evil I see in that idea.

_Utena_-Based Theodicy

2010-03-29T20:30:00.002-04:00

I had an interesting theodicy idea but don't really have time to write about it. But it's definitely interesting. The idea, which stems from an online conversation with a friend, touching on theodicy, in which the friend asked some of her Christian friends to explain Jesus for us, is basically to assume that the situation of the universe is more or less the situation of Ohotori Academy in Utena (which is, I think, an intended interpretation of Utena, which is an explicitly Gnostic work, although I think there's also a lot of Buddhist influence that is more beyond me), but then to start from a more Christian viewpoint of God as prior to time, which means that the situation that leads to the complete messing up of Dios and his sister in Utena is in fact the fault of the complete messed-up-ness of Dios and his sister. Or, in more Christian terms, the reason why Jesus has to redeem mankind for its sins is because mankind sins, but the reason why mankind sins in the first place is because Jesus/God is timelessly messed up from the act of having died and gone to Hell. This sounds too circular to be interesting, but I think it is nonetheless interesting, as long as you accept the idea of God as unmoved mover. Thus, if God is flawed, God must be flawed because of its own action: this is only logical. It's not a theodicy that justifies Christianity or leaves us with an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God. But it is a fun variety of Gnosticism, I think. I wish it would work to make me appreciate Utena more viscerally (I tend to appreciate it intellectually but never find that it quite works for me on an emotional level), but I definitely like the idea that the real God might have things in common with Akio and Anthy, because they're much more interesting characters than Jesus as I know him.

Why I Should Not be Thinking

2010-02-18T22:25:00.000-05:00

[excitedly]I would get so much sleep! Sleep would be screaming as I beat it into submission!

Wistful Regret for Those who are Not Yet Here to Regret: Tannoreth

2010-02-08T18:58:00.004-05:00

Everyone knows about Fire and Hemlock and "Burnt Norton." I've written about Archer's Goon and 1984, and I've at least sketched out thoughts about The Homeward Bounders and Prometheus Unbound. But it just occurred to me that I've been taking the connection between Dalemark and "The Dry Salvages" to be so obvious (I mean, come on! "I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river / Is a strong brown god"?) that I've never really given it any thought or realized that I've never heard anyone else talk about it. I just briefly skimmed over "The Dry Salvages" - a lot of it is about ocean gods and sailing, a lot of it is about the interaction between the past, present, and future, and the excitement of sudden illuminations, and the intersection of the timeless and time - of course, it would be, given that it is one of the Four Quartets, but there is even a line: "When the train starts, and the passengers are settled."

Possibly it's foolish to even make the connection, given that the four books were written over a very long period of time and seem, in some ways, to be somewhat distinct from each other. Still and all, the resonances exist. And if you're strongly impressed by something such that it helps to form the fabric of the setting of your new work, might it not remain in the setting even over the course of long years?

Solidifying an Awesome Insight

2010-01-19T21:01:00.003-05:00

This isn't really a new thought, but it is a kind of awesome one in its awesomeness:

I am Shelley - Headfinger is Keats.

I was going to say, "Just read Alastor and Endymion," but there are two problems, namely: is it really fair to ask people to read Endymion, and, there is so much else to read that you could just about read everything, actually. Still, Alastor v. Endymion is the fundamental contrast I am going for here.

The reason why it's awesome, obviously, is that someone is going to write in the comments to my previous post some kind of rebuttal to my explanation of The Fabric of Reality's argument against solipsism, and that person will be Byron. Then we shall see some painted veils called life torn aside, and some loathsome masks are going to damn well fall, I say, fall! Oh, yeah.

Not Evil, Just Misguided

2009-11-23T12:12:00.003-05:00

Me: "I don't think that I think that fictional characters are real, after all."

Headfinger: "Imaginary people are no less 'real' or 'true' than real people like you and me."

Is this a disagreement (this is an important question because Headfinger is someone I intellectually respect quite a lot and with whom, consequently, I would, in general, rather not disagree)? I am not really worried about this, as there are several of levels on which this is clearly not a disagreement. For one thing, Headfinger's statement is an assertion about the world. Mine is an assertion about my thought patterns. Both of our statements could clearly be true without any contradiction whatsoever. Moving up a level, Headfinger's statement is one of certainty - mine clearly is rather tentative. "I don't think that I think. . .?" This sounds alarmingly like that time that I told someone that I didn't think I was a solipsist. Thus, it seems to me that my statement makes it fairly clear that I'm not fully certain about my stance on this issue and thus could potentially be persuaded to Headfinger's side, even if it's not my initial intuition (all of which is true). On yet another level, Headfinger himself qualifies his assertion in his next sentence as follows: "Imaginary people are (or represent in our models, if you feel more comfortable with that) people in alternate universes (AKA independent causal domains)." Since I do, in fact, feel much more comfortable with that, I find this reassuring. Headfinger starts out his comments on this topic by stating: "Imaginary people are like imaginary numbers in a lot of ways." Therefore, just as one can take a realist or non-realist view of math, so one can take a realist or non-realist view of fiction.

The question is whether the nonexistent factual disagreement in fact masks a significant moral disagreement. Because if Headfinger believes that it really is legitimate to call fictional characters real, then isn't he calling me a demiurge? And if Headfinger is calling me a demiurge, then this is one of the rudest things I have ever encountered in my life. I don't particularly find it comforting that he is also calling himself and almost everyone else a demiurge too - that actually kind of makes the problem worse, rather than better. But Headfinger seems to see his theory as uplifting and positive, not hopeless and dismaying.

Luckily, I think I am able to resolve this dispute, as well. Because to the degree that I am extremely bizarre given my complete obsession with theodicy despite having been raised in an atheist family, it's theodicy in a specifically Christian context (despite having been raised in an atheist Jewish family). And by a Christian context, I mean that I am most interested in theodicy in the context of assertions that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. If I tend to think that demiurges are deeply morally faulty, my main reason for believing this is the idea that they are omnipotent and omniscient, and therefore evil must be caused by their not being omnibenevolent. If the demiurges are not omnipotent, or not omniscient, then, on the one hand, I wouldn't say that I can comfortably call them God, but, on the other hand, I feel far less inclined to blame someone who is not omnipotent, or not omniscient, for causing suffering. After all, if you're not omnipotent, you might not be able to prevent suffering from happening. If you're not omniscient, you might not be aware of suffering that happens, or you might discount as insignificant suffering that is in fact significant. Therefore, if either or both of these characteristics apply, perhaps you should think twice before you create people, but you're not directly to blame for being the sole reason for those people's pain, which it would be easy for you not to have caused. In other words, sufficiently advanced aliens are not evil, just misguided. God, otoh, has to be evil.

Now, it's possible that Headfinger is saying that I am God, in which case he is still calling me evil. However, although Headfinger may feel comfortable calling the sufficiently advanced aliens God, coming as I do from my weird Christian theodicy background, I am not comfortable with this terminology. In other words, whenever I start out with my theodicy argument, I accept by definition that God is omnipotent and omniscient. Someone who is not omnipotent and omniscient must, therefore, not be God (maybe they are a god, but they are not God). And, given that I am not omnipotent and not omniscient (and, well, not omnibenevolent, either, but I'd prefer to believe that I'm not actively evil), I am therefore not God, and thus misguided at worst, certainly not evil.

As comforting as I find this, I realize that I need to support my assertion that I am not omnipotent or omniscient (I probably don't need to support my assertion that I am not omnibenevolent). It is obvious that I am not omnipotent or omniscient in my present universe. However, if I create an alternate universe, isn't it potentially true that I might be omnipotent and omniscient in that one? Look at what I've already written: "This seems to be even more true of the characters I make up - in an odd sort of way, the very way they "come to life" in my brain, the way I have to check the actions I posit for them against the actions I can actually accept them performing, the way I don't even have to make up the plots for their stories because they make them up themselves, seems to underline their lack of independent existence from me - I think it's the way they exist so fully within the confines of my brain. They can't possibly have independent consciousnesses of their own - they don't need them! Real people can surprise me - the characters in my brain never can, because I only ever can expect them to do exactly what they would do." This seems to highlight the problem. If I know all there is to know about these people, then, to the extent that they are real, doesn't that mean that I am omniscient insofar as they, in a separate universe from my own, exist? As for omnipotence, if the things that these characters do, the obstacles they face, etc., are entirely determined by me, doesn't that make me omnipotent in their universe?

Okay, so here goes my response to those questions: the reason why it would be fair to call me omnipotent in my fictional universe is because the limits to my abilities, manifold as they are, are completely irrelevant to my fictional characters. This is despite the fact that these limitations strongly shape my fictional universes - for example, if I am unable to imagine certain possibilities, even very logical ones, I cannot create those possibilities in my universes. Nonetheless, if my limitations exist on a different metaphysical plane from my characters, they therefore cannot prove them. From a Positivist standpoint, as there is no possible experiment they could do outside the universe to test these limitations, the very concept is meaningless for them.

Okay. Now, imagine that my fictional characters develop the ability to transcend their universe (that, by the way, is what I'd call a consummation devoutly to be wished). Were this to happen, obviously they would see that I was not in fact omnipotent in my universe. But it would also change the meaning of the boundary between the two universes. Two places are metaphysically distinct only if there isn't a route from one to the other. Thus, it would no longer be meaningful to speak of their universe as one separate from mine. Instead, it would be more accurate to speak of their universe as a subset of mine, in the same way that the solar system is a subset of the visible universe. However, in this case, I am only locally omnipotent in a subset of this universe, which doesn't really count as genuinely omnipotent. After all, while one can legitimately say, "Planets are common in the solar system," this intrinsically does not equate to "Planets are common everywhere" - the solar system is not everywhere. Thus, common planets simply isn't an omnipresent phenomenon - it's just a phenomenon that's present in one particular place. Similarly, "Grace has complete power over Dogville [to give a fictional universe a name]" does not equate to "Grace has complete power over everything" - Dogville is not everything, and, not only do I know this, but the Dogvillains [ed: not a typo, just a. . . joke] are also capable of knowing this, so I simply am not an omnipotent person - I'm just a person with total power over one particular place. Thus, if suffering exists in their universe, although I may well have been misguided in choosing to create a universe, I am not evil for creating one with suffering when the alternative was in my power - because it may well be legitimate to say that, as the product of suffering myself, I am unable to create a universe untainted by suffering.

Okay, so what if, then, my characters cannot transcend their universe? Then that universe really is metaphysically distinct, and I really am omnipotent! But, in that case, I think it's meaningless/contentless to say that they are actually real. For Positivist reasons, as explored in David Deutsch's Fabric of Reality, I actually am not a solipsist - if it seems as though there are other people who are separate from myself performing various actions, then we might as well call them other people who are separate from myself performing various actions. The only way I could possibly prove that they were all in my head would be to do a little transcending of my own, wake up, and realize that it was all a dream. But the only way I could do that is if there were something outside of myself to transcend to - thus, the only times that it's meaningful to make a distinction between other people being in my head and other people being outside of my head are the times that I wake up to something outside of my head anyway, and there must be something outside of my head. If there is nothing outside of my head, then I might as well use the term "universe" to mean my head - it has basically the same meaning. But for these same Positivist reasons, if my fictional characters can't come out and interact with me, if they have no reality outside of my omnipotence, then we take away the obvious pragmatic distinction between "real" and "fictional" when we describe them as real. We might as well call characters who are in the self-contained, metaphysically distinct minor universe "fictional" and the characters in my universe "real," since there is a genuine difference between the two - whereas calling the minor universe characters "real" needlessly erases this pragmatic distinction. If we want to describe the evident and meaningful similarity between the fictional characters and the real ones, rather than erasing this distinction, we might as well just call both kinds of people "people." I think this clarifies the ways in which they're the same, but keeping the binary between "fictional" and "real" clarifies the way in which they're different.

This is important because I don't believe in philosophical zombies, and, in consequence, I think that anything that acts enough like a real person to convince me that it is real does experience suffering. However, I am more skeptical about things that don't convince me that they are real people. For example, I have nearly 100% confidence that my father is capable of experiencing suffering. I have nearly 100% confidence that my rabbit is capable of experiencing suffering. I have, although Headfinger may disagree with me, a lot less confidence that my cell phone is capable of experiencing suffering - though this is not to say that I am 100% confident that it isn't! If I created a computer program that, no matter what you typed into the prompt, simply responded, "I am full of overwhelming suffering at the sorrow of the universe," I might think it was acting like a person, but it certainly wouldn't be acting like a real person, and I would be similarly uncertain as to whether the program was genuinely experiencing suffering. As described above, if there is an inviolable metaphysical barrier between my universe and that of my fictional characters, then I do not think it is meaningful to call them real people, although they are people. This does not mean that I therefore believe that they don't experience suffering - they may. However, it does mean that I am at least skeptical about it. But if I am skeptical about their capacity for suffering, this means that I do not know whether or not they suffer, any more than I know whether or not my cell phone suffers. And this means that I am not omniscient in their universe, even if I am omnipotent. Thus, I am perhaps misguided for creating people who I believe may suffer, but I am not evil for knowingly creating people who I am certain will suffer.

But have I just proven that, by my definition, there is no God - that God, at least as I define It, is in fact logically impossible? I don't think so, but I have made an interesting discovery about my own theology - evidently I believe that God must be immanent somewhere, by definition. Any purely transcendent God would just be a god/alien to me. I can believe in the existence of a being that knows everything there is to know about everything it controls, and has complete power over everything it knows about. This being, who is omnipotent and omniscient in every universe of which it is aware, would count as God to me. Now, you could consider that God to be transcendent to some universes - for example, if there are gods in God's universe, these gods might well create other universes that are subsets of God's universe. But It has to be immanent in the most inclusive universe. If It knew about a universe where It didn't have power, or had power over a universe It don't know about, then It is not God by my definition. I suppose I can't speak to anyone else's.

"On the Marionette Theatre" by Henrich von Kleist

2009-10-22T10:26:00.002-04:00

I ran across this essay because, apparently, it was a major inspiration for Philip Pullman in writing the His Dark Materials trilogy. I've never read the third book of the trilogy, but I was actually far more impressed by the essay than by the first two books! To be fair, my understanding is that the third book adds a lot of thematic material that corresponds to some of what makes the essay so interesting.

Age and Identity

2009-10-16T15:51:00.003-04:00

I often wonder about the way that some of my favorite themes and topics in fiction seem diametrically opposed to my actual experience of real life. Like, I experience time in a very linear sense - but I love narratives that tell stories out of order and sometimes even enjoy reading books out of order in order to manufacture such a chronology for myself! One of my favorite themes ever in fiction is identity - I have always loved stories about characters who aren't what they seem to be, have trouble understanding who they are, or even have several different identities. But I've always struggled with my confusion about this being a theme I preferred - I think I'm actually more straightforward than most people in my self-presentation, and I certainly have an extremely strong inner narrative of myself as a coherent personality, fiction though that may be.

Some of the stories I really like about identity have to do with age - I often enjoy stories about characters who aren't really the age they seem to be (although I feel obliged to mention in passing my utter, enduring hatred for the damn Child-Goddess Aphrael in those David Eddings books). This predilection of mine is particularly pronounced in the case of my fondness for Rin in Please Save My Earth - it's particularly good in PSME because Rin sort of is a seven-year-old kid, he's just also sort of not - and it also probably explains some of my fondness for Kira in Angel Sanctuary, since, even if he doesn't look like a child, he's still much, much older than he looks. And then there's creepy fanfic about when he was a child. It might also be one of the reasons why I'm so perverse in thinking of Thessaly as my favorite character in The Sandman.

So, over the past few months, I've quite frequently had people assume that I'm younger than I am - a college student, even a high school student. This is fairly typical, but it's getting more interesting the older I get. It's true that I didn't graduate from college that long ago, and that I haven't really had many of the typical life experiences that one normally thinks of as distinguishing a college student from an adult. Nonetheless, college is a decent number of years back for me now, and I definitely think my mindset has changed (and, yes, matured) quite a bit in those years.

I still have a very strong sense of myself as a coherent personality, and thinking about how other people mistake me for a younger person doesn't really change that, but perhaps I do actually have some connection to these identity issues now. If I wanted to, I could really be the creepy, preternaturally mature high school student that I love to read about. I am, in that way, misinterpreted by others in the same way that so many characters that I love are. I don't really have any desire to mislead people in real life, but it still seems to put me more in connection with this favored theme of mine to think that I could, if I wanted to!

Meta-Random Thought

2009-10-08T13:37:00.001-04:00

Why is it that, when I have a random thought, it so often tends to be about Jesus?

Should Jenna Happen to Read This, it Doesn't Have to be a Rhetorical Question!

2009-10-01T20:35:00.003-04:00

It is a testament to the match between Jenna Moran's talents and my own taste that I am quite enjoying Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist despite my profound inexperience with formal RPGs with rules (LARPs without rules, OTOH. . .). The digression that begins at the end of page 67 is a thing of sheer beauty. It is not new Hitherby, of course, but then, what is?

Especially When There is Some Discoloration

2009-09-19T01:00:00.002-04:00

Apparently, I have now read The Homeward Bounders sufficiently many times that I find imagery of stone anchors to be terrifying. Really. Almost unbearably terrifying.

Yet Another Actual Thought I Have Actually Had

2009-09-14T17:53:00.001-04:00

"I really wish I understood the Christian concept of the Trinity. It might help me understand Please Save My Earth better. . . ."

Two Thoughts on _Princess Tutu_

2009-08-20T01:02:00.002-04:00

Superficial: Like everyone else on the Internet who has watched this anime, am now Fakir/Ahiru shipper. I wonder why that's so effective. Usually I don't wind up shipping anything, although I suppose that in general when I do it is Japanese.

Somewhat less superficial: I really kind of wonder what Rich Puchalsky would think of this anime.

I think this means I need a "Rich Puchalsky" tag. Which is obviously shorthand for something that does not have any necessary connection to Rich Puchalsky - oh well.

Train of Thought of the Day

2009-08-07T17:55:00.001-04:00

". . .okay, so 'Vegan in Furs' and love. . . . You know how you were born from a mother? Well, it's just like that with 'Vegan in Furs' and love. 'Vegan in Furs' was born from love. 'Vegan in Furs' has love genes. And it's also sort of like Jesus. . . ."

Another Ambiguous Utopia

2009-07-10T00:04:00.000-04:00

Most Arrogant Blog reader Abangaku writes here about "social utopias," a term which seems to enter his post by way of an article by Cristoph Tannert and Theo Altenberg entitled "Paul McCartney: Reverses and Other Advances"). I am now going to go off on a completely tangential topic to his post, but it is inspired by it, because I found the conjoining of these two terms ("social" and "utopia") to be kind of thought-provoking. I think it's partially because it almost struck me as redundant - mustn't a utopia be social, in order to be a utopia? How could one have any other kind of utopia? This is where I feel like I'm missing Abangaku's point (and probably Tannert and Alternberg's, as well), but I do want to think about utopias and society.

When I was younger, the first couple of years after I graduated from college, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I suppose you might call a social utopia, in that it was a utopian society. I was thinking about this for entirely individualist reasons, however. My basic premise was that, given that I was stuck in a menial job and wasn't sure where to go with my career, which I needed to have in order to earn money, I should first think about what I would do if I didn't need to have a career in order to earn money and then try to come up with the career that was as close as possible to that. Therefore, I tried envisaging what my life would be like in a sort of utopia where there wasn't any money or obligation for careers. I think my vision of the utopia was somewhat based on Anarres in The Dispossessed - I'm not sure what that means about me.

Ultimately, I came to realize that my imaginations about what kind of life I'd live in this utopia ultimately failed to show me much truth about the life I wanted to live without restrictions - because the social utopia itself functioned as a restriction for me. My ideal life, or at least the one that seems to appeal to me as I am the most, wouldn't be lived in my imagination of the perfect society. Rather, it would be spent flitting from society to society throughout a multiverse of infinite possibilities, always as an outside observer, never as a part. Better than any life I could imagine staying put in one place would be making a life out of traveling from place to place.

But this raises the question: does my concept of the ideal life therefore intrinsically rest upon the denial of social utopia?

Well, in answering that question, it's important to note that my vision of the perfect life is not exactly anti-social. In fact, my perfect daydream doesn't involve traveling from society to society all by myself - I would like to travel as a member of a little mini-society, one that would ideally be extremely small indeed but would nonetheless exist - and we members of this little mini traveling society would not group together out of mere convenience but would actually enhance the experience of our travels by sharing them with each other. In other words, society would be intrinsic to the experience just as much as anti-society would - ours would be a mini-society premised on our exclusion from the larger societies to which we travel but equally premised upon the existence and coherence of our mini-society.

So could you then call our little mini traveling society a utopia, a vision of the perfect society? That would solve my problem neatly - I do in fact have a vision of a social utopia, just not the one I thought I did five years ago. Unfortunately, I don't think I can straightforwardly answer this latest question with a simple "yes" - my mini-society, it seems to me, can be considered a utopia if and only if it does not depend on the existence of other societies that are not utopias. If it does depend on such non-utopian societies, then it can't be a utopia, because I think we all have a natural feeling that a society that intrinsically requires oppression for its existence, even the oppression of people outside that society, is far from perfect, no matter how nice it might be to be one of the oppressors (ESPECIALLY if it's actually the majority that's being oppressed by the minority, as in this case).

So the next question that needs answering is whether or not my mini-society does require oppression in order to exist. The easiest way to answer this in the negative would be to suggest that, even if not everybody in all of the societies could join my mini-society, they could all join some similar mini-society. Obviously, it wouldn't work for everyone to be traveling all the time, because then there would be no societies to which to travel. However, it could be feasible to imagine a situation sort of like Anarres where everyone paid the price of being in a non-traveling society sometime and spent the rest of their time traveling - everyone puts in the work of creating a society, but everyone also gets to reap the rewards of being able to travel from society to society.

I don't think, however, that this would be feasible, for the simple reason that I fear that too much traveling would ultimately destroy the coherence necessary to make all the societies the mini-societies travel to into societies in the first place. This isn't to deny that one can travel and still be very much a part of one's society. I'm clearly an American despite the fact that I spend some of my time touring other countries and have even lived in Scotland and China. But I also don't spend nearly enough of my time traveling to make it seem like an integral part of my life in the way I imagine it, and, for that matter, I already am more distant from my society than many other people who live in it. This suggests to me that either the traveling would be rather superficial and not a key part of people's lives, or else it takes up enough time and mental thought that it would lead to the blurring of societies in a way that would ultimately turn into precisely the kind of social utopia in which I wouldn't be able to achieve my personal dream. Thus, even if everyone from every society is free to travel some of the time, to take short vacations throughout the multiverse, we must still envision a division between mini-societies like mine, which spend the majority of our time in such traveling and try to do our best to minimize the influence of any one larger society and preserve our outsider status, and everyone else, who remains a solid part of their own societies, making them cohere as societies - although I should probably point out here that I don't envision some kind of bizarre stasis wherein societies never combine or diverge. I just don't want all the societies to completely cohere so that everything becomes bland and boring - change is not in and of itself undesirable, as long as it doesn't lead to a complete erasure of all distinctions everywhere.

This does not, however, intrinsically mean that I'm positing a non-utopian situation. After all, it's entirely possible that not everyone wants or needs to travel the way that I do. It's also entirely possible that there are actually an infinite variety of potentially utopian societies, especially if we posit that people are free to choose which society they live in such that utopias can thrive to encompass a variety of different ideas about what societies should be. If this were the case, it would mean that no repression would be necessary, and there would be no invidious distinctions between people. People who wanted to spend their whole life traveling could go off and form mini-societies like the one I imagine, and the people who preferred not to travel quite as much could go and form their own manifold utopias for us to travel between. This would seem to solve my problem quite nicely - no repression would be necessary, and I would still be able to fully realize my dream.

And yet I still can't help but wonder if it's really that easy, if the manifold utopias would really fulfill my dream. The reason why I wonder is, of course, because I draw on a number of different sources in coming up with my own vision of the ideal life. Part of it is because I love traveling, especially traveling in good company, in the real world, of course. But that's not all it is. I'm also drawing on all sorts of models in the fiction that impressed me as a child, whether it be The Lives of Christopher Chant or Hyperion or even The Myth Adventures of Aahz and Skeeve. But I'm also drawing on the very nature of reading fiction itself, the feeling of exploring all sorts of other societies (whether that's in speculative fiction, historical fiction, global fiction, or whatever) from a very personal standpoint. I have to admit that I love the kind of book that Farah Mendlesohn describes as immersive fantasy, where part of the pleasure of reading comes from the sense of figuring out the puzzle of where you actually are. But I also love the way that you get stakes in the fictional world through following the struggles of a character. And then I'm also drawing on the pleasurable experience of the imagination at its best - of creating new worlds - which, again, so often involves pain for the characters you create. And the experience of dreams, where often you're involved in a new society that you at once have and haven't created. And where, once again, conflict and suffering are involved.

In other words, ultimately, I'm not sure that traveling from perfect society to perfect society is really enough to fulfill my dream. I mean that sometimes, sure, all I want is the tourist experience where learning about the customs of a new place and the perhaps violent history that has been transcended now is satisfying. But I'm not sure that's all I want. I'd also like to briefly drop in and get involved in the politics of a new world (and maybe I can't believe in a utopia with politics). I'd like to see the mythical stories I read about in books or made up myself come to life. I'd like to see all kinds of events and situations that simply wouldn't happen in a utopia. My wishes ultimately seem to involve at least occasionally being a tourist, a slummer, in the problems and sufferings of others. And so I go right back again to wondering if maybe my vision is intrinsically anti-utopian.

And yet, there's a very simple answer to this particular anxiety, contained in the way I described the problem itself. Because, after all, if my model is books and video games and tv shows, dreams and the creative process - well, books and video games and tv shows and dreams and the creative process can't be anti-utopian, can they, because they're not real? If Witch Week or the Word quartets or Xenogears do a good enough job of fooling me into thinking they've created a new society, then surely I don't actually need real new societies to be traveling to? All I need is something that seems convincing enough to do the job for me as an outsider. If I never really want to be a part of any society, just to look at it from the outside, then this hardly seems to require real pain, real suffering, real non-utopians. Fake societies, fiction, ought to do the job.

But I have to admit that it still makes me nervous - that my pleasure should depend on pain, even fake pain. There's this guy, Rich Puchalsky, who is a frequent commentator on The Valve. Back when I used to read The Valve a lot, I used to find him extremely irritating, although this was now long enough ago, and I have purposefully blanked out enough of those memories, that I don't exactly remember why. He also was a frequent commentator on Hitherby, where he was much less annoying and actually usually fascinating. Anyway, Rich Puchalsky made many comments (for all I know, he's still making them) about a theory of the author as demiurge (here's an example). The theory always bothered me. A real demiurge, if such a beast exists, would be responsible for a heck of a lot of pain and suffering. But authors aren't - there's a difference between my suffering or your suffering and the suffering of characters in books. So authors must be intrinsically better than demiurges and have no reason to think of themselves as demiurges, given that demiurges are such exquisitely terrible things to be. And yet I still find myself haunted by Rich Puchalsky's theory, on a level I can't fully explain.

I don't think that I think that fictional characters are real, after all. There seems to be a big difference between what it means to be me and what it means to be Charles Morgan or Kadie or Fei Fong Wong. Surely they don't have consciousness. This seems to be even more true of the characters I make up - in an odd sort of way, the very way they "come to life" in my brain, the way I have to check the actions I posit for them against the actions I can actually accept them performing, the way I don't even have to make up the plots for their stories because they make them up themselves, seems to underline their lack of independent existence from me - I think it's the way they exist so fully within the confines of my brain. They can't possibly have independent consciousnesses of their own - they don't need them! Real people can surprise me - the characters in my brain never can, because I only ever can expect them to do exactly what they would do. That must mean they don't have minds outside of mine. And since I don't suffer when they suffer - in fact, I often take quite a lot of pleasure in it when they suffer - surely there's no mind where any suffering can be occurring? The problem seems even less in dreams. One of my best dreams ever kind of epitomizes for me the perfect dream experience. On the one hand, I was the girl who had to run away from her father and was trying desperately to escape in the secret basement and was in a panic as she listened to find out whether or not her father was chasing her. And on the other hand, I was also the writer of the story about the girl running away from her father who was carefully analyzing whether I was putting the right clues in the narrative and chuckling about the way that I had made aspects of the story that the girl herself might not have noticed potentially guessable to the reader. I was both at the same time - and so there was clearly no real suffering going on. The suffering that the girl - I - was feeling, the anxiety, was really just a tactic for heightening my experience of suspense, and an extremely effective tactic, at that. I woke up from that dream with a sense of pure pleasure.

So I'm not sure what it is about Rich Puchalsky's theory of fictional worlds as Gnostic maya that so bothers me, what it is that makes me feel awkward about my proposed solution to the problem of how to combine my vision of a dream life with my vision of utopia. Maybe it's just the psychology of it - that my happiness as a person should seem to depend on the pleasure I take in suffering, even if that suffering isn't real. I mean, I think - I hope - I enjoy the suffering, am able to enjoy the suffering, because I know it isn't real, because it's a narrative device - and yet for all that I can't get away from the psychological truth that I enjoy the suffering, that I want my worlds to suffer through problems, that "human struggles" really do equate to "narrative," to "story" after all.

And so I return to my image of narrative as "a makeshift bandage on a giant seeping wound." The reason why narrative works as a bandage for the wound is precisely because narrative and the wound are both made possible by the same fundamental fact of individual consciousness. Without individual consciousness, there is no need for narrative. But, of course, without individual consciousness, there is no need for utopia, either. Because utopias are social. Utopias are about how to better improve experience through developing societies. And "A society is a body of individuals of a species, generally seen as a community or group, that is outlined by the bounds of functional interdependence, comprising also possible characters or conditions such as cultural identity, social solidarity, or eusociality." But, as practicing Jews like to remind themselves, this is irrelevant to transcendence because God is One.

And so. . . well, I always think of myself as being on the side of those who imagine utopias, because I feel like thinking that all utopias are dystopias must be a sign of despair. Because I believe that we are far from the perfect society and that improvement is possible. Because I have an odd tendency to read societies intended as dystopias as better than our own [umm, brief completely irrelevant sidenote. . . not only is Alex Proyas directing The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag but he is also directing The Tripods trilogy?!?!?!]. Because I do believe that societies have huge effects on individual lives and that societies can change for the better and that this is an effort worth making.

But I'm still an agnostic Gnostic utopian. And that means that I need to remember that utopia, too, can only ever be a makeshift bandage on the giant seeping wound. I'd like it to be a good bandage, as good as we can make it. But there is no perfection achievable in this world.

Enabled by the Internet

2009-07-09T22:01:00.003-04:00

Not only can you read your favorite band's daily recommendations about what albums to check out, but they are all probably available for free somewhere on the Internet.

So far, I was pleasantly surprised by Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome - there is a very long song about meeses, and apparently I just go for songs with weird pluralizations of "mouse" - but disappointed by 24-24 Music, which was boring.

There Is No Boot Stamping on the Human Face Forever (But It Doesn't Scan!)

2009-06-08T15:20:00.004-04:00

I love reading criticism and academic studies of literature because I love to see new perspectives on books. It is, unsurprisingly, enjoyable to read other people's views on books you yourself loved. However, it's almost even more enjoyable to read criticism about books you didn't feel so positively about. Sometimes, hearing an informed perspective on a book can help you understand what's valuable about the book; particularly in the case of classics that are part of The Canon [nb: I must always capitalize it that way. It demonstrates the tongue in my cheek.] and therefore clearly valued by a decent number of other people. Thus, I found My Antonia somewhat dull but really enjoyed being prompted by a professor to think about the role of gender and nostalgia in the text and was underwhelmed by The Return of the Native but ended up being able to write a really awesome and exciting paper about it after reading some helpful criticism.

But there are some cases of helpful criticism that are a little more weird - cases where I like a particular critical viewpoint because it suggests that I can align my personal reaction and my understanding of what a sympathetic reading would be better than I was previously able to. One notable memory I have of such an experience is that I was always disappointed by Heart of Darkness until I heard a professor talking about it in the UK university where I was studying abroad during college. Although I'd already discussed Heart of Darkness once in high school and once in a college seminar, it wasn't until I got to the UK that I heard someone suggest that the narrative sympathies didn't entirely lie with Marlow and that all of the heavy portentuousness that always irritated me about the novella could in fact be sympathetically read as over-the-top - the narrative itself was showing up Marlow's pretentious nature. I liked that reading - but why did I like it? Mainly because I had trouble taking Marlow seriously but had always felt that the narrative supported Marlow's opinion - to suddenly hear that maybe this wasn't because the book wasn't working for me but was in fact at least one interpretation explicitly welcomed by the narrative made me feel more at home with it.

I'm finding, in my reading of criticism of 1984, that much of what I'm reading has a similar effect. My initial reading of 1984 - and not just when I first read it in high school, either, but also when I re-read it this past year - tends to be that the narrative is in fact tightly constructed to show us that Oceania is a plausible society that might actually happen, that it functions as a warning - if we don't watch out, we will in fact all have to live in Oceania, and the future will be a boot stamping on the human face forever. I think a lot of the earlier responses to the novel tended to take this attitude, as well - so at least I'm not alone in my response. But, the fact is, I fundamentally don't believe that Oceania is a plausible society, and so my reaction to the book tends to be very worried and bothered - to point out all sorts of holes that prove that the narrative is wrong and I am right. A lot of the more recent responses I've been reading, however, start from the viewpoint that the text really is fundamentally a satire, and that the narrative itself, even if read sympathetically, demonstrates the unrealistic nature of Oceania. In other words, Oceania is not what the actual totalitarian governments that have existed in the world could have became or might yet still become - instead, it provides a reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate how utterly ridiculous these governments actually are. Just because O'Brien manages ultimately to convince Winston that Oceania's government will last forever does not mean that this is actually true in the narrative world - just look at how much O'Brien and the party lie elsewhere! In fact, O'Brien's very torture of Winston relies intrinsically on doublethink - as Laurence Lerner points out in his essay "Totaliarianism: A New Story? An Old Story?," O'Brien says both: "The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again" (215) and ". . .you are the last man. Your kind is extinct. . ." (217) (ref. from Lerner 80). Thus, nothing that O'Brien says should be taken as the firm assertion of the narrative as to what is plausible for the future of Oceania.

I find this reading makes the book a lot easier to take - it provides a way to match my personal reactions of protest with a plausible sympathetic reading of the narrative. And I suppose that there's nothing wrong with that - regardless of whether or not this was the interpretation that Orwell intended, taking this stance improves the book for me and makes it easier for me to react to it. And yet, I wonder what the possibility of opening up such sympathetic readings does to my personal reactions to books. If I dislike a book, does that always mean that I am functioning as a bad reader and need to be more creative in order to find the sympathetic reading that works for me? And if it doesn't always mean that, then what's the difference between the cases where it does and the cases where it doesn't?

A Brief Peek at the Unfortunate Connections My Mind Makes

2009-06-04T15:51:00.004-04:00

Erika Gottlieb: "In terms of Orwell's consistent allusion to mystical symbols, the hide-and-seek between Winston and O'Brien is like the mystical 'Game of Love,' described, for example, by Francis Thomson in the Hound of Heaven, which 'shows to us the inexorable onward sweep' of God, this 'tremendous Lover. . . hunting the separated spirit rushing in terror from the overpowering presence of God, but followed, sought, conquered in the end' (Underhill 135)." (Gottlieb, Erika, "The Demonic World of Oceania: The Mystical Adulation of the 'Scared' Leader," in George Orwell's 1984: Updated Edition, ed. Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 2007, pp. 51-69)

My mind: Love games?

Old Gregg:

_Lost_ Religion is Different from Real Religion

2009-05-14T15:14:00.001-04:00

Many people on the Internet are kind of thinking that Esau is Cerberus. I am inclined to believe this as well.

We Use Love to Build Kevin Barneses

2009-05-06T12:56:00.004-04:00

Pandora just played me "I Want to Have Fun," by of Montreal. Which has the exact same melody as "The Actor's Opprobrium".

Now that, my friends, is a juxtaposition. I want to go around singing, "When one is licking the knife, it's such a beautiful sight," except it's not actually that much more funny than the actual lyrics of "The Actor's Opprobrium" without all of the context.

It Turns out That Was Actually a Chant

2009-05-04T01:50:00.002-04:00

You can find the file to listen to here.

Not a Curse

2009-05-01T11:11:00.015-04:00

There is no slight exhaled breath out in the vault of space.
White needlepoint stars never prick through a midnight blue sky.
Naked long-tressed goddesses can never be seen on the beach.
We do not lie surrounded by green grass to fall asleep.
No faint noise birthed from children's games can ever hold us up.
No quiet wind will ever pull us softly into darkness.
There is no city through which we can make dreams manifest.
There is no cave through which birds fly forever to the river.
There is no river through which water meanders to the sea.
There is no mountain through which earth stretches out towards the sun.
No matches ever light our hearts with thunder-fetching fire.
We do not swing, forever and ever,
Higher and higher.
We climb no ladders.
The milkmaid does not call.
No one picks up the phone.
Human voices do not wake us.
We do not drown.
Problems are salt.
Nothing is an ocean.

Halcyon Days of My Youth

2009-04-28T13:26:00.003-04:00

Just watched some Britpop videos from Oasis, Blur, and Pulp. Oddly enough, although the only one of those bands from which I never bought an album is Oasis, it was actually Oasis that first got me into contemporary pop back in high school - I had recently read an article in Newsweek about how they were copying the Beatles, which intrigued me, and then, whilst flipping through channels on the TV, I ran into the "Wonderwall" video on VH1, which did look as though it was copying the Beatles. I liked it enough to continue watching music videos, eventually wound up seeing the "Common People" video on the Canadian music video channel a year or two later, and the rest is history.

Anyway, it's funny to watch a bunch of different videos from the different bands and compare. The Gallagher brothers tend to look as though they're copying the Beatles. Damon Albarn has a tendency to look completely ridiculous (I mean, clearly intentionally so, but still - maybe it's a preview of the aesthetic of something like "Clint Eastwood"?). And Jarvis. . . it's hard to explain, but regardless of what he's doing, he just seems to be doing it with vast quantities of charisma. Watching the "Common People" video again, I can still remember the feeling of seeing him for the first time and falling in love almost immediately. He's just as ridiculous as Damon, if not more so, but he takes it to another level. It's like the opposite of bathos - what is the opposite of bathos? And I still think that "This Is Hardcore" is a fabulous video. Jarvis is still awesome, but in a pretty different way.

How to Read Hitherby Canon

2009-04-27T14:36:00.004-04:00

I've decided to reread all of Hitherby canon - which is just one of those things that happens. This might lead to me blogging about Hitherby, but, unfortunately, due to the way Hitherby canon is, anything I post might well have spoilers for all of Hitherby. So if you want to read these posts, I would recommend that you read all of Hitherby canon too. It is a good idea, I promise you! Jenna claims that it is a good idea to start reading Hitherby canon at the beginning; my own experience is that this is not the case, since, as with many serial works of art, the beginning is somewhat less polished than later on, plus it makes so little sense without any context that it's very difficult to get into.

My own personal recommendation is to start reading at "The Flower (I/IV)", which makes more sense and is much more engaging and also has Maya! And things with Maya are good. And then you can read the next three - they kind of get across what some of the premise is. Then read Tantalus (I/IV)" and the next three - they are somewhat more bizarre than the first set I told you to read, but they are very entertaining, and convey another rather important chunk of the premise.

Then. . . ummm. . . read these, and then this, and then this, about Mylitta and Nabonidus and Belshazzar, and then the canon entires in the Buddhism category, and then, at least if you are me, you will be sufficiently hooked so as to want to read as much canon as possible, and you will not need my guidance any longer.

Then we can talk about the key important question of why Jesus and Prometheus (and my inner Paul Fry is telling me to add Satan, but I'm not sure he's a key important question) are missing, and how creepy Martin is (look, I'm sorry, but he is creepy), and what is really going on with Mei Ming (I had this dream about Mei Ming once. . . it's a little hard to describe), and the AMAZING AWESOMENESS that is anything touching on Ink Catherly. And you can tell me who your favorite characters are. Mine are Ink because she is awkwardly similar to that character I want Rebecca Mader to play, Maya because she is Maya, the veil of illusion, and Mylitta and Nabonidus because it is awkwardly similar to my favorite extremely private id-story of all time.

Riddle-Master Trilogy

2009-04-07T13:35:00.002-04:00

I was just thinking that one of the best parts of Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy (which I. . . read and/or skimmed for the first time at the beginning of the year) is the part where Mordion challenges Deth and Deth is like, "Okay, so maybe I am not just completely awesome in the way I have been up to that point but am actually completely awesome in multiple ways." I like that about Deth.

I Will Post Something in March So There Hah.

2009-03-30T16:37:00.001-04:00

Tonight I feel like I should just destroy myself
Tonight I feel like I should just explode myself
Myself

Tonight I feel like I should just destroy myself
Tonight I feel like I should just explode myself
Myself

There's someone calling my name
But there's nothing to respond
I lost so much in our collapse
Man, what little hope is gone

The voice said, "Don't worry, friend
The darkness is just a suggestion
No, don't worry, kid
The darkness is just suggestion
No, don't worry, Kevin"

Tonight I feel like I should just destroy myself
Tonight I feel like I should just explode myself
Myself

There's someone calling my name
But there's no one to respond
I lost so much in our collapse
Oh, what little hope is gone

The voice said, "Don't worry, friend
This darkness is just a suggestion
No, don't worry, kid
This darkness is just suggestion
No, don't worry, kid"

Tonight I feel like I should just destroy myself
Tonight I feel like I should just explode myself
Myself

I'm allergic to the world when we are separated
There's nothing in my heart that's worth a beating
Feeling like a Styrofoam prop ennui is eating
Oh, sure, we talk and talk and talk
But nothing worth repeating

I feel defeated
I feel defeated
I feel defeated

Now I'm OD'ing on your cocksucker blues
You make me uptight when you just don't work right
You painted my prison, now something's wrong
And I never, ever, ever wanted to write this song

I'm killing myself but it's not suicide
I'm killing myself
I'm killing myself but it's not suicide
I'm killing myself but my friends will never know
Because I've never been
Because I've never been honest with anyone

Always pulling faces from the unprepossessing places
Of the universal mind
I'm crippled by the world when we are divided
There's nothing in my heart that's worth the creaking
Feeling like a Pamplona bull that's finished kicking

Although we try to break the loop, it's always stuck repeating

I feel defeated
I feel defeated
I feel defeated

Now I'm OD'ing on your cocksucker blues
You make me uptight when you just don't work right
You painted my prison, now something's wrong

And I never, ever, ever wanted to write this song
I always thought things would change somehow
And we would start getting along but it's hopeless
Hopeless

And I never, ever, ever wanted to write this song
I always thought things would change somehow
And we would start getting along but it's hopeless
Hopeless

And I never, ever, ever wanted to write this song
I always thought things would change somehow
And we would start getting along but it's hopeless
Hopeless

And I never, ever, ever wanted to write this song
I always thought things would change somehow
And we would start getting along but it's hopeless
Hopeless

And I never, ever, ever wanted to write this song
I always thought things would change somehow
And we would start getting along but it's hopeless
Hopeless

Kevin Barnes (of Montreal), "No Conclusion"

Passion Pit's Best Song That You Have Ever Heard

2009-02-12T14:58:00.002-05:00

On Passion Pit's MySpace page, you can also listen to their song, "Better Things," which is at least as good as "Sleepyhead" if not better. I particularly like the part with the gods and the glory and the stories, and the part with the lipstick and the lipstick.

Revisionist Christian Mythology Lyrics

2009-02-11T15:14:00.002-05:00

To be honest, I don't think that Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better is all that good an album - I don't intentionally listen to it very much and never have. At this point, my favorite songs from the album, and the two that I think about with the greatest frequency, are "Walk Away" and "Outsiders." I don't think of the other songs, including "The Fallen," all that often.

But when I first heard the album, the song that caught me right away and impressed me was "The Fallen." And in listening to this concert today, I was reminded of just how much I liked that song the first few times I heard it. I don't know if this particular live version is a little different from the album version, though I suspect it is, but it really sounds forceful and powerful. And the song has those revisionist Christian mythology lyrics for which I've already mentioned my fondness. I would say these lyrics are somewhere in between those of "The Fall" and "The Repudiated Immortals" - they're not particularly sketchy, but there's still something missing from the story (evidently Alex Kapranos revealed some extra-textual background when he explained that the song was imagining a specific friend of his as the reincarnation Jesus).

Spinner's Best Songs of 2008

2009-02-08T16:18:00.004-05:00

I spent some time this week listening to Spinner's top 25 songs of 2008. Most of them were pretty boring to me on a first listen, some of them were okay, but there were two that I liked quite a lot:

-#17: "Sleepy Head" by Passion Pit - I really like the weird noises in this song (some of them may be backing vocals, but it's hard to tell) as well as the jagged part of the instrumental. It's otherworldly.

-#22: "I'm Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" by Black Kids - This song is almost literally a Cure song with more female backing vocals and people screaming "Dance! Dance! Dance! Dance!" But, to be honest with you, I think that is TOTALLY AWESOME and ENTIRELY TO BE ENCOURAGED!

Don't Fear the Cockroach

2009-02-03T15:28:00.002-05:00

When I read the Wikipedia article on the Mandarin version of "Dragostea din Tei," which was played quite frequently while I was in China, I thought someone had to be joking about the song being "about fear of cockroaches." But, no, this appears to be true. Oh, dear. Well, I suppose it's an extremely appropriate topic for a song in Mandarin. . . .

Augustine St. Clare

2009-02-01T16:10:00.002-05:00

As I have commented in the past, even in a novel written today, I think it's usually pretty easy to get a sense of which characters the narrative is favoring and which it is disfavoring. If the book ends with character X generally happy and character Y generally unhappy, depending on whether the tone at that point seems positive or negative, you can probably decide which character the implied reader is supposed to be rooting for. It's more complicated than that, of course, but it can still usually be done.

But in the classic 19th-century novel, with its omniscient narrator, it's even easier to get such a sense, because the narrator will come right out and tell you, "Yay wonderful, amazing Character X of Love!" or "Boo horrible, awful Character Y of Hatred!" This is taken to its logical extreme in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, wherein the narrator reveals to us whether each character who dies is going to Heaven or Hell. At this point, while you can certainly read the book against the grain as described in my above post, you certainly can't deny that the text pretty well sets out for you a defined attitude on each character.

What I find amusing is the contrast between the very. . . Protestant attitude of the narrator and my own. Most of the good characters are pretty good throughout, and, believing in Christ, as they do, they shape their actions and behavior based on their sense of what Christ would want. And then there's Augustine St. Clare. Augustine St. Clare was clearly written to be an attractive, Byronic figure (he's explicitly compared to Byron in chapter 28), and he is attractive. He's also, as you might expect of a Byronic character, not an especially good person - as he himself would, as you might expect of a Byronic character, be the first to admit. He has a very high moral standard, but fails to even begin to live up to it in any way. He hates slavery more than many of the other white characters in the book, including some who don't own any slaves, and is extremely articulate on the topic, but he gets so much benefit out of his own slave-owning habits that he doesn't even free his own slaves, let alone work for abolition in any way.

Eventually, St. Clare realizes that maybe he ought to act on his beliefs (he also starts trying to believe in God, which, for Harriet Beecher Stowe, is more or less synonymous). Before he can do anything to help anyone at all, except for Topsy, he gets killed off. Presumably, Beecher Stowe does this in order to end her novel with the portrayal of the awful and not-in-any-way-attractive Simon Legree and to give Uncle Tom the opportunity for his Christ-like martyrdom. But the funny thing about the way that it functions in the novel is that it also gives St. Clare the chance to go to Heaven, because he's started trying to redeem himself and now believes in God, despite the fact that he really never did anything good to anyone and, through his inaction up until the last couple of days of his life, did a lot of harm. Nonetheless, the chapter wherein he dies is called "Reunion," because he gets to go to Heaven and be with his beloved mother and daughter again.

Thing is, I really like St. Clare. I reread Uncle Tom's Cabin this past week largely in order to read about him. I find the book enjoyable and engaging during the section set in his home and kind of boring in the parts before and after. St. Clare is great. But I have the sense that the narrator, and quite possibly Harriet Beecher Stowe as well, like him even more than I do. I mean, it's one thing to be very fond of a character who's clearly not the most wonderful of people. It's another thing entirely to be so fond of him that you give him the chance to redeem himself without in any way making it necessary for him ever to change his behavior. So. . . well. . . it amuses me.

Richard Alpert

2009-02-01T15:55:00.003-05:00

Over the past week-and-a-half, I seem to have come to the conclusion that Richard Alpert on Lost is kinda attractive. Here are some related thoughts:

1) He is attractive.

2) His conversations (with Locke, at least) have a tendency to go something like this:

Locke: What does this compass do?
Richard Alpert: It points north, John.

Locke: You told me that I'm your leader.
Richard Alpert: Well, I certainly wouldn't want to contradict myself.

3) He is probably immortal. Anything that involves immortals is inherently a Grace-enticing thing!

4) This is a funny interview with the actor who plays Richard Alpert, Nestor Carbonell. Or, at least, there's one funny question/answer.

I'll Dream a Nation of Me, and We'll All Live in It

2009-01-27T14:51:00.007-05:00

From my dream journal, October 11, 2007: ". . .the actor who had played Peter in the Narnia movie was up ahead in the museum. I guess his name is William Moseley. Anyway, I was very excited, not because he had played an important character in the unmemorable movie version of one of my favorite childhood books but because, in the dream world, the Franz Ferdinand song "Outsiders" was apparently about this actor."

From the official lyrics to the album version of Franz Ferdinand's "Lucid Dreams," as written in the liner notes of Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, released in the US today and in the UK yesterday: "I'll dream a nation of me / another Narnia where we can live it."

As I like to say in these kinds of situations, be warned that the world may be destroyed at some time in the near future! But don't worry, if it is, I will save us all by effectively dreaming us into a new and better (if only slightly so) world. Then I will get abused by a misguided psychologist who wants to turn everyone grey. Won't that be fun? You should be greatful.

All the Poets Are Ded

2009-01-22T14:24:00.006-05:00

I like Keats. Heck, I've written two relatively decent and (if I do say so myself) insightful papers about Keats, which is more than I can say for Byron and much more than I can say for Shelley (in fact, I feel I wouldn't even know where to begin with this last).

The trouble with Keats is Keats as a person, which. . . well, I've read multiple writers talking about how, of the younger Romantics, Keats is the only one you'd actually want to know, because Keats was genuinely nice, sweet, and good. Which on a certain level is presumably true. And reading Keats' biography, or his letters, is not boring - and not just because he had interesting things to say about literature and wrote some amazing poems - since he was both a legitimately nice person and a brilliant genius in his field (and, for that matter, relatively disadvantaged), his death is quite depressing and tragic. But poets, like pop stars and politicans, don't really count as real people. And my tastes in real people probably don't run to the norm, anyway.

Shelley (as a person, as described in Richard Holmes's book) actually reminds me more of many of my friends than Keats. Probably this is a class thing, at least to some degree, but it remains true. Shelley writing that atheist pamphlet but getting kicked out of school for refusing to answer questions rather than making the "strong case" that his intellectual inquiry was, in fact, not criminal, Shelley deciding that it would be a great idea for his best friend/boyfriend to sleep with his wife, going away in order to facilitate this, and then completely abandoning the friend when he suggests it to her and she gets offended. . . these may not be paradigms of positive behavior, but they seem awfully reminiscent to me of the kind of things that happened to my friends, at least when they were young. And Shelley was, if not the same kind of intellectual as my friends, certainly a very intellectual person. . . part of the reason why I have such a hard time thinking about how to write about his poetry is because of the philosophical complexity of it. Shelley certainly had his flaws, and he obviously wasn't a nice person like Keats (hell, he apparently was, completely obliviously, not very nice to Keats himself), but I would have liked to have been friends with him, had that been possible. He would certainly have been a very interesting friend (although some evidence suggests that a friendship between us would have been difficult. Then again, this goes for Keats, in a perhaps even more off-putting way, as well.).

As for Byron as a person. . . ummm. . . he sort of wasn't. I realize that the blame for this lies somewhat on his own head, but obviously not entirely. The problem with Byron is that every aspect of his personality, including his own resistance to his celebrity, his desires to divorce himself from the characters in his poems, and even the admitted great differences between, Don Juan and, say, Manfred, has informed later writers and creators so much that it really is fundamentally impossible for me to think of him as anything other than a fictional character. Are there lots of real people like Byron? Clearly, no. Are there lots of fictional people like him. Oh my God yes. Thus, the concept of considering Byron as a potential friend seems ludicrous - it would really be like considering Cain or Manfred as a potential friend.

Everybody knows the story behind the creation of Frankenstein, but I found the story behind Polidori's Vampyre to be really. . . entertaining. So Byron begins a story and then never finishes it. Polidori, who apparently served as Byron's personal doctor largely out of a desire to give a kickstart to his career (and who was uncle to the Rosettis? Man, you think of Goblin Market as setting up a completely different tradition of speculative fiction), uses the story as inspiration for his own novel. This ends up being a story about a guy who pals around with a British nobleman who spends vast quantities of time seducing women on trips throughout Europe and eventually seduces the guy's sister. The nobleman, who is of course a really evil vampire, is named after a character in an earlier novel who is a transparent portrait of Byron. When the novel was published, somehow the magazine decided to claim that it was by Byron, thus infuriating both Byron and Polidori, who by this time really disliked each other. And apparently, all Internet sources agree that Polidori was the first to really write about the vampire as an aristocrat, thus more or less setting the tone for the entire genre as it developed throughout the next couple of centuries. I find this story genuinely hilarious. But it really does demonstrate why Byron basically only counts as a fictional character. The fact of his existence seems more or less irrelevant ;-).

Zizek and Laibach

2009-01-21T15:07:00.005-05:00

Here is something I wonder - does knowing more about Slovenia than I do (something which ought to be achievable with great ease) actually provide one with a useful context for Zizek and Laibach. I feel like it ought to - largely because I feel like there has to be some kind of context for Zizek and Laibach - but I know so little about Slovenia that it's hard for me to understand how it would.

I have been listening to Laibach songs today on YouTube and occasionally catching glimpses of the videos. You know it's going to be a good Laibach video if the lead singer shows up in his headdress thingy. Their cover of "Across the Universe" is really disappointing, though.

ETA: Apparently, Slovenia is the highest-ranking Slavic country on the United Nations Human Development Index. Did you know that? I totally did not know that. Watch me learn more about Slovenia!

Confession

2009-01-05T13:57:00.003-05:00

I think I like Astaroth (in Angel Sanctuary - this is going to be an entirely AS post) - and by "like," I mean that I get reasonably excited and happy when he shows up, just like I do with characters I like for other reasons - entirely because he is hot. I mean, he only plays a significant role in ONE volume. He has an appealingly tragic backstory, but since he appears in a manga with the fundamental premise that One Above. . . is experimenting / With various mixtures of human character which goes best,/
All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us," only for "various mixtures of human character" read "various mixtures of human and angelic character and also angelic fetuses" (why do you think I said I like the plot even better than the characters?), this doesn't make him stand out in any way at all. He also doesn't stand out in terms of what he actually does with his backstory; you would expect him to be kind of evil, and he in fact is kind of evil - and not even particularly interestingly so. So all that's left is that he excites me because he is hot. Darn it.

Oh, you know who else in AS is hot? Zaphkiel! Not that that is the only reason why I like him. I like him for a LOT of reasons - he has multiple personae, all of which I like, and I particularly like the combination of them all in one person. But he is, nonetheless, hot.

I. . . ummm. . . probably shouldn't even start talking about Kira. And yet once I started writing about this topic it was kind of inevitable that I would end up talking about Kira. So, leaving aside the disclaimer about my actual reasons for loving Kira with infinite, passionate love - if anyone really wants to know why I love Kira so much, just ask me in comments - I just so happened to almost by accident be reading the AS volume wherein Kira walks around in the military uniform. Now, Kira is always hot. That goes without saying. But, man, Kira in the military uniform. . . . Like, Kaori Yuki should have had Kira and Setsuna go to military school in the beginning of the manga, just so that Kira would have had to wear a military uniform. Also, she should totally write a sequel to AS about the next great war between Heaven and Hell. Sometimes we might see what was going on in Heaven, and Raziel and Raphael and Michael and Barbiel could show up, but mostly it would be about the army of Hell, and Kurai and Asmodeus and Astaroth (yay!) and Belial and Lucifer. They would have a horrible time all working together in order to fight against Heaven. It would be really funny. Also, Kurai and Belial would tease Lucifer a lot about the fact that he was married to Arachne. Lucifer would respond by being enigmatic. But mostly the plot would be about pictures of Lucifer in military uniform. That's what I think.

Undying in My Mind

2008-12-30T14:50:00.009-05:00

I have a lot to say and no time to say it in, but I just want to lay the thought that's particularly wanting to come out:

This year's Yuletide fics on Dalemark aren't all that great (one of them has extremely powerful form but less interesting content, and the one with potentially interesting content isn't all that well-written), but they were good enough to induce me to spend the weekend re-reading Dalemark. Now, Navis is BY FAR my favorite character in Dalemark. Navis is one of my favorite characters EVER. He is (sublimely) competent, sarcastic, romantic, and good, and this is not a combination that you usually get. But one thing that reading these Dalemark fics and then re-reading the books themselves has revealed to me is that, much as I love Navis, I feel like we have enough of his story that I'm not necessarily so eager for fic about it. I mean, I'll read it if it's there, and I'll be happy, in the way that I get happy when I'm reading about one of my favorite characters. But I don't feel like there's that much missing from my understanding of Navis that fic can pleasantly fill in. The books give us practically his entire life story.

But what I really want is Duck fic! Lots and lots of Duck fic! Duck is quite an intriguing character (a very bright star in the sky where Navis is sun) and, unlike Navis, has vast quantities of stuff to be filled in. I want fanfic about what exactly went on between Duck and Eleth and why she decided to claim that the One was Noreth's father and how Kankredin got to them all. I want fanfic about what happens after Crown of Dalemark when Duck has all of his power back - how exactly do Undying spend their time when they're bound as gods - Duck must be; he admits to being the Wanderer - but no one believes in them anymore and they've spent centuries without most of their power - Duck seems to have an even harder time dealing with his situation than Tanamil (maybe that's why he called himself Tanamoril), and I'd like to know how that goes in the modern world. And fanfic about the original Enblith the Fair and how Duck (and Tanaqui? And Robin, maybe, although that's only implied, and the answer seems kind of obvious.) first learned he was Undying and maybe even about the Adon and Manaliabrid, although that seems a bit presumptuous - well, I'd like to know about Manaliabrid in general. We don't get enough of her. But anyway, more Duck! I particularly like the way he doesn't show any emotion except for politeness, except that Mitt irritates him (obviously, Duck knew about the prophecies about Mitt and saw him as the competition; the point of the very first scene in the book, which doesn't necessarily even need to be there otherwise, is that Duck really dislikes Mitt; by the way, in terms of Navis being better than Duck, note the difference between the way he treats Noreth/Maewen as competition and the way Duck treats Mitt) and he's kind of quietly happy when he thinks that his daughter cares about him, and then he gets about as immature as possible when he finds out that she's actually dead (he certainly seems to realize right away that she must be dead, given how incredibly upset he is). There's something very interesting about immortality there, I think. Several of the Undying - Old Ammett and Tanaqui in particular - seem to be able to appear with multiple ages - why is Duck always young? I mean, maybe he is just because that's how he wants to present himself at the times we see him in the book, but then why doesn't he have to shave when that makes Navis suspicious?

WANT MORE DUCK!

Okay, hopefully that lays that a bit.

Amusing Thought of the Morning

2008-12-25T11:08:00.002-05:00

Wait, which song is that part in, again? You know, the part that goes, "I'm searching for the context, not finding it."

Do All Your Shopping. . . at Wal-Mart!

2008-12-24T21:42:00.004-05:00

I think that I will forever regret that I was not one of the children in the choir singing "The Most Unwanted Music." Seriously, to have been partly responsible for this would have been such an honor.

In Case You Didn't Know

2008-12-15T18:56:00.001-05:00

Why you should read Angel Sanctuary

Reader (Etc.) Response Theory

2008-12-15T14:14:00.004-05:00

One of the formative experiences of my youth was getting into an argument with other people at my high school summer camp over George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. Everyone else argued that Maggie Tulliver was a very sympathetic character; I protested that I found Eliot as a writer to be very manipulative (a point on which I haven't changed my mind; I had the same reaction to Adam Bede 8.5 years later) and that her attempts to gin up sympathy for Maggie made me inclined to rebel. My memory, though it may be somewhat distorted, is that even the professors running the class were kind of aghast that I was unable to just "enjoy the novel" without analyzing it; sure, later on, after finishing the book, it was a good and respectable thing to consider what the author had apparently been trying to do, but when you were just reading the book for the first time, in order to get as much pleasure out of it as possible, you should ignore that kind of thing and just react, without having these bizarre meta-reactions.

Well, later on I came across this attitude as the anti-English department attitude - people should just enjoy books, all of that analysis just gets in the way. I'm unable to buy it, just because I can't imagine turning off that analytical part of my brain. I'm not trying to claim that, on my first reading of a book, I ever do an in-depth, sophisticated reading of it that remains my stable critical attitude towards the book. But, let's face it. My reaction to narrative is inherently an active one; I can't even imagine what it would mean to passively absorb a story. Reader response theory appeals to me to the degree that it assumes that the reader is always playing a role in creating the story, because that's very true to my experience. I'll finish a book and just KNOW things about the characters that the author never bothered to say. And, furthermore, I'll also always come out of a story with a double sense. Ignoring the authorial intent issue for now, let's just say that I come out of a story with two reactions - on the one hand, how did I feel about the characters, plot resolution, setting, etc., and, on the other hand, what would a sympathetic reading of the story have to say about the characters, plot resolution, setting, etc. Sometimes, to be sure, those two reactions are more or less synonymous - but even then I'm consciously aware of the synonymy!

As with Maggie Tolliver, these perceptions quite frequently focus on characters. Sometimes I'll find myself disliking a character that I feel the story itself wants me to like. And sometimes I'll find myself adoring a character where that adoration doesn't feel sanctioned by the story. The latter situation happens to me a lot with Dave Duncan books. Most recently, I read his novel Demon Sword (published under the pseudonym Ken Hood). The hero of the novel is a young guy named Toby, and there's a significant secondary character named Rory. Throughout the novel, Toby has a very vexed relationship with Rory. Rory often treats him badly, and Toby dislikes Rory on first site (later, it's suggested that he subconsciously realized that Rory was a romantic rival for the female lead when they first met). On the other hand, Toby also recognizes many good qualities in Rory and occasionally has moments of showing great respect for him. One assumes we're supposed to root for Toby, based on the fact that he's the hero of the book, makes mistakes but often triumphs, shows a consistent and at least somewhat laudable morality, and, in the climatic moment of what seems to be a fairly light book, triumphs. Thus, Rory is presented ambiguously throughout. Finally, in his last few appearances, it's revealed that, despite his many positive characteristics, he really is a fundamentally lousy guy; he's willing to leave Toby to his death in order to get money and the girl. The structure of the story makes me assume that the reader is being led to repudiate Rory, just as Toby's loyal supporter Haimish ultimately does. And yet I found myself unable to do so. I'm strongly inclined to forgive Rory for his admittedly horrible behavior towards Toby, because I just found him more likable throughout the entire book than I found Toby. So, even though the structure of the narrative made the hero quite obvious, as a reader, I had to ignore that and pick my own, somewhat more flawed, hero.

Actually, despite my divergence from the planned narrative, my reaction to Demon Sword was very positive; I enjoyed the book and didn't really feel bothered that I differed from the narrative's perspective! My reaction to Final Fantasy VII in this regard is more problematic, however. At least Rory is legitimately ambiguous throughout the book. But with FFVII, up until the end of the game, I was convinced that the narrative was setting up redemption for Sephiroth. He did some pretty bad things, to be sure. But the game seemed to stress that he had been lied to all his life, had been manipulated, had never really had any chance to understand goodness. At one point, the protagonist, Cloud, comes to the conclusion that all his life he had taken physical strength as the only means to gain respect and that he's now realized the problems with that attitude; since he specifically considered Sephiroth to be a model of physical strength, I really believed that this scene was set up for the end of the game, when they would reveal Sephiroth's strength to be just as much of a pose, hiding the abused, unloved boy within. I played the game with my brother, and when he told me that we were up to the final dungeon, I didn't even believe that was possible, since the whole part of the game that came after Sephiroth's redemption was yet to come.

Well, Sephiroth, rather famously, was never redeemed. And that struck me as very different from Rory's situation. In Rory's situation, although I liked him a lot more than the narrative seemed to, his ambiguity throughout the book seemed to justify both the narrative's negative end to his story and my own more positive stance. But, in FFVII, I never felt that the narrative was ambiguous. I was expecting the narrative to agree with me. And it was a real shock and disappointment to find that the narrative really didn't.

On the other hand, those stories where the narrative and my own perceptions seem to be in sync can be really powerful. This is probably at the heart of my deep, abiding love for Please Save My Earth - there, the story has some very ambiguous characters whom I love. The suspense of the narrative for me comes from the way it often seems to skirt the edge of throwing off them off the cliff - in reading it, I can't help but feel nervous - what if the narrative ultimately presents Shion or Rin as ultimately evil? But, in fact, the narrative always comes right back and reasserts that my positive understanding of the characters is right! It's a very empowering story for me to read; I love the delicate dance between the possibility that my interpretations ultimately won't be justified and the constant clues the story provides that they will be.

I'm thinking about this in the throes of anticipation for Lost - which I really am very excited about ;-). I feel like my perception of Sawyer might be like my perception of Shion or Rin - an ambiguous character, whom the story often seems to risk presenting as fundamentally problematic, but one in whom my deep faith will probably be justified in the end. And Ben Linus is another case entirely - an ambiguous character whom I find enjoyable to watch as a mostly bad guy, with a few good sides; I'm not on Ben's side, but I enjoy watching him and continuing to not be on his side. I hope the narrative doesn't end up justifying all his actions, but I find him fun to watch nonetheless. But Kate is more of a problem for me; she's an ambiguous character who the story seems to think is more justified than I do. The key difference between Sawyer and Kate is that Sawyer doesn't think he is a good person for having committed horrible acts; he does some pretty bad things, but he doesn't like himself for them and doesn't really expect anyone else to like him, either, because he doesn't think he deserves it. The narrative in that sense helps to exonerate him; it suggests he has at least the possibility of some day making up for his errors. And I'm in line with the narrative. But Kate is presented as a heroine, someone whom, while we're supposed to doubt her, we're also supposed to root for. However, she never shows the same kind of self-doubt or remorse as Sawyer; she expects other people to like and respect her despite the horrible things that she's done. The narrative seems to think that it's exonerated her, at least to the same extent that it's exonerated Sawyer, but I can't go along with it. That's the main reason why her character really gets on my nerves.

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"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Huh.

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Aaaah! Aaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

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Procrastination. . . .

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Oh! Oh! Oh!

I Write Like. . .

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Especially When There is Some Discoloration

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Two Thoughts on _Princess Tutu_

Train of Thought of the Day

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