The Trewand Pen

Detective Harold Lint -- the Mystery of the Sauce #2

2012-03-09T00:47:00.003-05:00

Click here for "The Mystery of the Sauce #1"

“Do you have any enemies?” Harry Lint, detective, asked his client.

Toni Rigatoni couldn’t think of any enemies.

“Old friends, then? They’ll usually do for enemies in a pinch,” the detective queried further.

“I do have old friends,” Rigatoni was very nearly insulted. Why would he not have old friends?

Lint raised an eyebrow. Rigatoni couldn’t tell if it was done questioningly or incredulously, as Lint’s the secretary had done moments before.

Rigatoni pointedly ignored the fact that the detective then proceeded to commit a most heinous culinary crime by producing from somewhere in a desk a small box of fruity cereal and pouring root beer straight into the bag. He could barely swallow his indignation, but he managed, and continued,” I do have old friends. My old partner, Tony Macaroni, for instance.”

“Tony Macaroni?” The eyebrow was definitely incredulous that time.

“Yes, Tony Macaroni. We’ve been partners for years, until just recently, that is. He retired six months ago. But we still get on. His son, Tony Macaroni, Jr. started work at the factory three months ago.”

“Tony Macaroni, Jr.?” What came beyond incredulous?

“Yes, and he’s a very good worker. Has all the natural talent of pasta sauce making that his father did. Of course, he only does simple things so far, but the bambino has a bright future ahead of him.”

Lint settled back in his seat, taking a big bite of fruity puffs and root beer with a spork. “Yes? Tell me more about him.”

Rigatoni did just as he was told. “He’s twenty. He graduated from pasta-sauce-making school just last year, top of his class. His father’s been training him up since he was born. Except for those few years when he went through his rowdy teenage phase. That was a couple years ago by now. Seemed he hated his father, then. Complete turn-around, though, at one point. I don’t know what happened, but the bambino saw reason. Respects his father properly now. He’s really eager to please him and do well at the work. His father isn’t happy with it, but don’t mind him. I can’t see why he wouldn’t be. That’s old Macaroni for you, not a bit of sense.”

“Yes, I can imagine.”

Suddenly, the office door flew open. “Harry! We have a problem!”

Rigatoni strained around his seat to see who it was. He was glad that he did, because it was worth the effort. There was a boy, about the same age as Tony Rigatoni, Jr., standing in the doorway. He was wearing three paper hats of various colors and was holding a rubber duck in each hand.

“Cord, my boy, what’s the matter?”

“Uncle’s just come In with a mystery!” the guy, presumably named Cord, shouted.

“Two mysteries! What an exciting day.” He put down his food and spork. After some rummaging, he retrieved four billiards balls from his desk and began to juggle.

“Cord, bring your uncle down will you? I could use his assistance.”

I hope you enjoy the second installment (of 500 words) of our delightful mystery. So the old partner and the new up-and-comer, huh? What do you think? Do they seem clean or suspicious? Are we putting them on the suspects list? Who is this Cord guy exactly? Who is his uncle? What could this mystery possibly be? Paper hats and ducks? And then, there's the most important mystery of all: what on earth is wrong with Detective Harry Lint?! Let me know your thoughts about the story so far! And come back for more of the mystery next Thursday night!

The Water of Life

2012-03-08T23:59:00.004-05:00

Dreams, water, fruit, life -- they make the world, in ever-changing combinations. This is a kaleidoscopic collection of dreams, water, fruit, life. The dreams which drive the world, the water which fuels it, the fruit which is not only rich in taste but in meaning, and finally the life which is inexpressibly the most meaningful of all. This collection shows how they work together in so many different ways from so many points of view to create the world which we know and which we are also always endeavoring to understand.

1. The Dream

There was a fruit of purest wat’ry kind

Which fell apart, undone, throughout the earth

Creating ev’ry people, ev’ry mind.

The races woke as one from this the first.

And some then hurried chasing far, alone,

The hopes that they had started then to dream.

And others stayed to find a truth their own,

Together digging, suff’ring as a team.

Still more were frenzied, maddened with their need.

Unknowing what they did until too late,

They wake at last and notice how they bleed,

With hair still wet from thirsts they’d tried to sate.

But the fruit, the world, is just a dream, one night,

Of numbers of the universe, of light.

2. The Water

I had been a child such a short time ago, chasing my freedom along the sharply illuminated edge of the clear blue water. Once, I stopped and, looking over that edge, saw the light shining on the surface in a mysterious, simple chaos that only a mathematician could understand. But as I looked longer, the water itself became more and the chaos became a simple whole; it seemed like a delicious fruit being served up for me, like an opportunity -- so rich! I wish I had taken my joy of it then, for now all the water is dried up by the discarded despair that life accumulates. And here I sit, under an old bridge which is worthless now without the water, and I in despair draw the blood from my own limbs to wet the hair of my younger self just so he can feel the water.

3. The Fruit

“How can I describe it? It’s life, really. They say that we are all made of smaller selves, of atoms and elements. The ancient philosophers held some debate about which elements they might be – fire, or earth, or water. The modern scientists, themselves, weigh in on the side of water. All living things are mostly water. Life is the gathering of small elements of water into a more fruitful whole, whether that fruit be Eve’s apple or that of Dionysus’ vine. What none have said is that the fruit is ripe, and that it’s being given to you. God is holding it out on a metaphorical, metaphysical shallow ladle. Forget seizing the day. If you seize this fruit, you hold life in your hand. Yes, it is indeed the fruit of that arboreous virgin, the tree of life, singly untouched by mankind. This is it, its fate, to come to you. Take it, drink in as much of it as you can, before God retracts his arm. Taste it, isn’t it wonderful? It’s life, really. How can you describe it?”

She had read that in a book, once. Before she had died, before God had taken back the fruit.

4. The Life

He had been running, happy. He had been running too fast, too happy. He had tripped and fallen into the river. His mother always warned not to be so close to the edge.

At first, the water was wondrous. He saw a shape in it, for a brief second, as he had been falling in. From the splash the water droplets formed something like that of a pear. In that brief second, it was amazing how something so like life could come from that water.

But soon he felt himself pulled forward on the river, and down. He struggled upwards, but couldn’t struggle back. Everything darkened, closing around the fractal rays of the sun, dimming with each failed breath.

Then he was pulled sideways.

When his body worked again, he looked through dripping bangs at who had saved him. The man was leaning against the rusted support of the bridge, leg scraped and bleeding from scrambling to the support’s edge.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pointing at the man’s leg.

The man shook his head. “They said I was a worthless, trash-digging kid, but now I’m not. I gave you life from that water. I have a new life, too.”

Note: This is what I wrote for the Second Challenge for the Fourth Writer's Platform Building Campaign. See the Challenge itself for the prompts. The unnumbered introduction is an attempt at Challenge #1 -- it's based on the prompts in a broad sense, as it's based on the other pieces. Piece 1 is for Challenge #3. Piece 2 is for Challenge #4. Piece 3 is for Challenge #5. Piece 4 is for Challenge #2. Each is inspired by all five prompts, and all are under their respective word-limits for their challenges, no fear on that account. But most of all I hope you enjoy them! It was a rather difficult challenge, but it was interesting to take such different prompts and combined them in so many different ways to convey a single great message! Let me know what you think!

Book Review: Beatrice and Virgil

2012-03-07T17:55:00.000-05:00

I sure hope you can handle talking about the Holocaust, because that's what this book is about. I knew that going into it, from review I had read online beforehand, so I thought I would make sure that we all know that before this review of it, too.

Now, a brief history of my view of the Holocaust. My grandmother is a Nazi. She fought in World War II for the Germans, as did her father. Her father died in a Russian prison camp -- and, although not a concentration camp, these prison camps weren't all that nice either. I saw a grave they have set up for him in their hometown the other summer, just down the street from where he worked as an elementary school teacher. That's right, he was a soldier for Hitler, but still just an elementary school teacher. They are people, too. And that's the thing, and maybe the thing crucial to understanding this book: Nazis are not this body of mindless people collectively out to do evil out of pure hatred. My ancestors were merely following a charismatic leader that seemed to be helping his people from the economic and cultural threat of what they were told were an inferior people. It's an amazing thing, the power of propaganda.

I'm not defending the Holocaust, don't mistake my purposes for saying this. Rather, I'm realizing the Holocaust, trying to describe the war as a two-sided ordeal rather than a straight-forward good vs. evil battle. Hasn't all of the best literature taught us that it is never quite so simple as that?

Speaking of great literature, that's also the point that Beatrice and Virgil makes. So now let us turn to the book itself. It's by Yann Martel, whose name might sound familiar if you've read The Life of Pi. If you haven't, then you should, because it is an excellent book.

The reason I read this book, really, is for the title. The names Beatrice and Virgil should sound familiar to you if you've read Dante. If you haven't, then you should, because it, too, is excellent. But enough of that, let's get serious. Beatrice and Virgil are Dante's (or the narrator's, if we're being more correct here) guides through the Divine Comedy. Virgil leads him through Hell and Purgatory, and Beatrice is his guide through Paradise. So what are these characters doing in the title of this book? That was my question exactly. I just had to know what the reference meant.

Let's talk summary. The book is about a writer who wanted to write a new work about the Holocaust for this second book, but it's turned down. But his first popular book gets him fanmail still, among which is a letter from a man. This man sent a Flaubert story about a man who hunted animals and took great joy in it, until he had a change of faith and gained both redemption and sainthood in the end. The man also sent a passage from a play he wrote, in which two characters, Beatrice and Virgil, try to describe a pear. A note requesting the author's help is included. The author is intrigued. He writes a postcard in return, meaning to drop it off at the guy's address. But the place turns out to be a crazy, eerily-fascinating taxidermy store and workshop. He goes inside, meets the man, who turns out to be the taxidermist. The taxidermist is writing a play, about which he and the author spend most of the book talking about.

The play is revealed to us in bits and pieces, read to the author by the taxidermist out of order. There are some parts we never get to know. Beatrice is a donkey, Virgil is a monkey, and they are living in a world in which animals are like the Jews during the Holocaust. We get hints throughout the book as the author's suspicion grows about his friend taxidermist's play. He thinks it might be about the Holocaust, but he never knows, until near the end.

And now for actual SPOILERS. I usually don't include much in the way of spoilers, but I can't help it now. But trust me, it's worth reading having heard the ending still. Anyway, the author tries to confront the man about the theme of the play. But as this last conversation progresses, and we get to more graphic scenes (including the tragic death of our titular characters) the author realizes that the man was actually a Nazi. He's writing this book about these poor, dear, beautiful animals from personal experience. The author now understands the Flaubert piece, why the man had sent it. The man was preserving dead animals to try to gain redemption for what he had done. He had been writing this play practically since the Holocaust itself to describe the horrible, terrible things that had happened to the Jews, to redeem himself. He, like the bloodthirsty hunter turned saint, wants redemption and forgiveness. The author, sees the man as a hideous, ugly, disgusting creature, sees all of the atonement he's tried to make as a gross display. He tries to leave. But the man, the ex-Nazi, he's desperate. He needs help with his play. It's his saving grace, he needs help finishing it. He tries to read more to the author, he tries letting him read the whole manuscript, he tries shoving pages into the author's coat pockets as the author tries to leave the store. Finally, when the author completely shuts him down, the man loses all hope. He picks up a knife from his workshop and stabs the author in the gut. He lets him stagger into the street to get help. And then, the taxidermist sets fire to his shop and himself, burning down all of his failed attempt at salvation.

The story is even more beautiful with all of the details, trust me. But this plot, I don't get what's wrong with it. Sure, the stab in the gut comes out of nowhere. I was so surprised, and it seemed so pointless. But that's what the Holocaust was, isn't it? Isn't that what the whole book is about? And it was the desperation of the man. He couldn't get the author to read his work, to help him, to forgive him, so he leaves what mark he can. But this ending has received a lot of criticism in reviews, which I think is just a result of the readers trying too hard to live out their own predicted endings.

Reviewers point out a lot of problems with the book, actually, saying that nothing happens, that they just talk, that it becomes more and more obvious that the play was about the Holocaust. I don't understand these. The first two problems, those are taken straight from the author's criticism of the taxidermist's play. If Yann Martel had a book with these faults, I highly doubt he would have been unaware of it. And not all stories are plot driven. Some are character-driven. This is one of those. It shouldn't be judged poorly for that. And of course the play's theme is more obvious the more we hear of it. That's kind of what drives the book. The author's suspicions about the play grow over time. How could that happen if it wasn't more and more obvious over time? I don't get this point.

There are also complaints that Yann Martel is trying to hard to be intellectual. That he references too many outside works. This is silly. He does reference a lot of outside works, and it is an intellectual book, and I loved that. You hardly see that anymore. He's not being pretentious, he is just being legitimately intellectual. That's what The Life of Pi was. I don't know why people love that earlier work but hate the intelligence of this one. And references to other works? What's wrong with that? I loved it. That's why I read the book in the first place. He references Dante, obviously, and Apuleius, whose work I'm using in my Master's Thesis. And he mentions Marc Chagall! Remember when I wrote a whole blog post about him a month ago? Yeah. The thing about making outside references is that by using them, you can add so much meaning in just a couple words. If I say something was like the works of Marc Chagall, well, that's a lot of description, actually. If I say their names are Beatrice and Virgil, and you know that's a reference for Dante, then you know that they are our guides, that they lead us through Hell eventually to Paradise, and with that journey comes all of the themes and images and ideas from Dante. Martel's references really added something, and I don't know why people don't like them.

But most important of all, people complain about the character of the taxidermist. They, too, think that the book is awful because of the disgusting, horrible taxidermist. This character we've read all about is a dirty, ugly Nazi! But somehow they miss the whole point. They weren't tricked into liking a Nazi, they saw that Nazis were people, too. That they aren't innately evil. That they can be freed from the delusions which their environment pressed upon them, and that they can seek redemption for their crimes. If we assume that Nazis were all innately corrupted and evil, isn't that just what they were thinking about Jews and other races? That's the same attitude that caused problems in the first place. So please let's not be like that. The book shows us that this man, who is writing this heartbreakingly beautiful play about how divinely wretched the Holocaust was, who tries to preserve the beauty of animals after their death and treats it as an art, who hides from and fears other people, that this man was a Nazi and happily killed Jews. That doesn't make him that man we just described, who wrote the play, who is a taxidermist. We spent the entire book having our eyes opened to the tragic horrors of the Holocaust and then in the end we're reminded that they were all human people. All of them.

Beatrice and Virgil ask the most important question of the entire play. The question that is the reason for the play. And it, too, is the reason for the book. They wonder how they will talk about what has happened to them after it has happened. How do we talk about something as horrible as the Holocaust after it has happened? Now that it's over? It doesn't deserve to be forgotten, so it must be talked about. But how? Beatrice and Virgil make a list of ways to talk about it, a list of things that can take the place of words, since words cannot express what had happened. The book is a very, very rich story that shows us one way to talk about it. And it makes you think. I ought not to go on any further about this book than I already have, but trust me when I say that it's fantastically, even masterfully written, and that it's absolutely beautiful. No, it doesn't just describe the typical story which you might learn about at the Anne Frank House or at the Holocaust Museum or somewhere. It gives you a story that is rich and tragic from the point of view of both sides. It is an abstract approach to a realistic portrayal. And most of all, it makes you think. And that's what really ought to be done, right?

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Now for an update. So I'm doing WriteMotivation this month. You should go check it out. I'm trying to finish Magic Tricks of the Trade. So far I've only written a couple thousand words more. But I had a huge Latin midterm to study for like crazy. Now that it's over, I'm starting to make some more progress. Next week is spring break, so I'll have more time then, too. I am definitely going to reach my goal for the month, because I have further goals contingent upon it. So stay tuned, and I won't say no to some positive encouragement! For now, I'm off to write. Farewell for now.

Detective Harold Lint -- the Mystery of the Sauce #1

2012-03-01T21:32:00.000-05:00

“Detective Lint, you’ve got to help me!” the man cried, his words bleeding an Italian accent so strong that he was obviously from anywhere but Italy.

“Ah, of course, is it a mystery? People come to me with those a lot, for some reason. You’d be surprised,” answered Detective Lint.

The man twirled a mustache anxiously.“My sauce has been stolen!”

The detective was shocked. “Oh my! By whom?”

“I don’t know!”

“That is a mystery, isn’t it? Please come in. My secretary will help you.”

The office was on the second floor of a four-story row-house and consisted of a waiting room dominated by a behemoth of a desk, a door labeled “Detective Harry Lint” and another door, unmarked but clearly in use.

“This is my secretary, Gypsy. She’ll take care of you,” Harry Lint said, before disappearing behind his respective door.

“Gypsy?” he asked, turning to the secretary. He would never have guessed that she was the secretary. She looked far too young. Was she even sixteen?

“Yes, hello, how may I help you?” she asked.

“Uh, I have a mystery?” said the man.

“Of course,” the girl replied, pleasant and distant. “Your name, please?”

“Tony Rigatoni.”

“Tony Rigatoni?” Gypsy looked up from the papers she was filling out just so could raise an eyebrow, and so do incredulously, even.

“Yes.” Rigatoni didn’t know what could be wrong with his name. What was wrong with this girl?

She answered the question before it was asked. “I’m twenty-two. I’ve worked here for about a year – I graduated early.”

“Oh, I thought –“ the man stopped, disoriented. “It must be the desk – makes you look... small.”

“I like to be organized,” the young secretary said defensively, behind the battlements of her desk. “What’s your mystery?”

“Uh.” Rigatoni took a deep breath. “Someone stole the super secret recipe for my super special pasta sauce.”

“Suspects?” Gypsy asked, reading from a paper.

“Uh,” the pasta-sauce-maker sputtered even more this time.

“Next!” Lint’s voiced boomed from his office.

That meant Rigatoni. He went in, and he didn’t notice the balloon animals and origami creatures filling the shelves of the office. If he hadn’t recently had his sauce recipe stolen, a devastating tragedy, I’m sure you know, he would have thought the office very peculiar.

“Who do you think did it?” Lint asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Uh….”

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This is the first installment in a serialized story! Each installment will be no more than 500 words. A new installment will be posted every Thursday evening, so that you can read it on Friday or over the weekend, at your leisure.

And since this is the first story, it's just getting started! Loads more fun is coming up! More zany characters! Weird suspects! And of course, more mystery! Who do you think did it? Feel free to take a guess every week, just so you can brag about having been right when Detective Lint finally solves the case! Why not take a guess now, who do you think did it? What it Lint? Gypsy? Rigatoni? The butler? Did they all do it? Or maybe it was a ghost? Or maybe the recipe was never stolen to begin with? Or something else entirely? The playing field is wide open, my friends. Give it a go.

Don't forget to come back next week for #2!

A Fated Post

2012-02-28T12:53:00.000-05:00

Everything has a simple meaning, an old meaning, and the real meaning.Let's consider the idea of destiny/fate and things of that sort.

The simple meaning, that's the one you definitely know. Things are destined to happen. Sort of like the idea that time is fixed, all events are fixed, and certain things will happen, and nothing you do will change a thing from happening, if it's destined. The benefit of this idea, of course, is that it makes a lot more sense with time travel. But it's more complex, of course - yes, even the simple meaning is complex. The question is, what is destined? Is everything destined, every single thing? Everything that ever happens? I was just thinking about this last night, about oh say, couples being destined -- Blair and Dan, how about that, huh? I mean, are two character destined to be together? Well, they are or they aren't, right? They work or they don't, right? Things either are or aren't, they either will be or won't be. It's pretty straight-forward, yeah?

The old meaning is easier, usually. For fate, you just have to do some research. Let's think of the three Fates: Clotho and her two sisters. They exemplify the key to destiny -- it isn't merely the distributing of lots. It's the making, the giving, and the taking. The old meaning of fate, or at least one since there really are so many, the old meaning is that fate is something that you take and have taken. Caught up in the thread being woven.

The real meaning isn't one that you can easily see. In fact, it's almost impossible to ever quite get right. Our language is only an attempt to describe true meaning, and this becomes desperately obvious in occasions of such complex ideas as destiny. But please excuse me as I try to exemplify. In this Gossip Girl comparison (for those who don't watch this show, imagine your own character, by all means; it still works our). I tried to think back to if this Dan/Blair thing is the angle from the beginning. And you know what? No, I don't think it was. But nothing at this point was expected. There's been so much in the middle. There was the making of our character, there was the laying out of the plot, but the taking that makes the third part of the old meaning? Is that when the show ends? In life it's supposedly when we die, but is it? What about everything after death, is that our own doing, and not fate? In some respect, everything we've done, though, is in response to fate, and fate certainly has control over how what we've done is received. Does any of this make sense? No, not really, and that's the point. It isn't simple, not at all, not really, not in its real meaning.

Now, the real question, though, isn't what is the meaning of destiny. The question is what should we do about it. The answer? Whatever you can. If something is destined, you can't do anything about it. If something isn't, then you can. So do whatever it is that you can do. That action, itself, may be destined, even. Leading to another question. You needn't necessarily run from fate. Some fate is good. That's what we call fortune, my friends, good fortune. Sometimes it is ill fortune, but even then it may be what is best for us. There are religions, you know, with beliefs that seem to imply that everyone gets what they deserve, and that justice is what they are destined for.

In any case, I don't know about you, but I'm terribly curious about what my destiny might be. I'm determined that it is something brilliant. Come, let's do whatever we can, and see this whole destiny thing through. The maybe, once it's all over, we can decide if we were really fated for anything after all.

And I must say, that this post isn't entirely my own creative idea. It's rather derivative actually. It's part of Jessica Therrien's Launch Party of her new book Oppression, which sort of deals with the idea of destiny and fate, so it's probably worth checking out, huh? I've bought it, but I'm still trying to find the time to read it myself. It apparently involves ancient things, too, and of course I must read and judge these things, as a professional in ancient things, you see. If only I could actually use that to justify making time to read it. Soon, though! If it is my destiny to do so!

Hark, an Announcement! Something New This Way Comes

2012-02-26T21:42:00.001-05:00

I've never been a fan of reading poetry. I love poetry, but one doesn't simply sit down and read it. Not like, a sonnet. One may sit down and analyze a sonnet, but one doesn't read it. It's too short. By the time you've starting reading, you're already done. And you can't read more poetry once you've finished that first one. The first one has enough meaning for at least 20 minutes worth of thought, if it's a good poem. But that doesn't mean you're going to sit around and think about it for 20 minutes before you turn to the next. So what happens is either you read another poem or two, but then you stop because you're tired of reading and missing out on the meaning. Or, you might just stop reading after that first poem, enjoying that poem itself, but frustrated that you can't read more.

Why am I talking about poetry? Because short fiction is very much like poetry in this respect -- except prose. Poetry is sort of like short fiction. The prose/poetry difference doesn't really affect this phenomenon that I'm talking about, the one I've described above about reading poetry. The same exact thing happens if one reads short prose. Flash fiction shouldn't be just a shorter selection of fiction. It ought to tell the entire story in that limited number of works. Just like a poem. A good piece of flash ficiton should give you 20 minutes worth of thought, if you pay enough attention, of course. But if it's so frustrating to read, what's the point of it?

Yes, that used to be my question exactly. And since last week when I wrote The Wax Doll, a piece of flash fiction as part of the first campaign challenge, I began to find my answers. As I worked that piece, toiled over agonizing word choices, counting the words, deleting words, changing words, finding sentence balance, tone, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, repetition, and plenty of other devices, I realized that in the process of writing the 200 words, I understood my story very, very well. I learned so much about the characters, the setting, the larger plot that the shorter story is describing. Not only did I understand it, but I had to know it very well so that I could make sure all of the devices I was using told that story. I needed to make sure I could tell it without actually telling it. And I got great practice in writing. Few words means better words, overall. And if not better words, then better-used words. It's flash fiction not because it's so short, because it is a quick flash of brilliance. It felt marvelous, and I ended with a piece of which I was really proud.

So what did I learn about flash fiction from that experience? Well, I used to just shrug the idea aside. I used to think that there wasn't much point in something so small that you're not ever going to use for anything because no one would want to read something so short, due to the aforementioned frustrations. However, it's a great experience for a writer to write short fiction. It's perfect for starting stories, working through difficult spots in a larger project, or for just writing practice in general. I'm definitely going to try to do it a little more often.

Speaking of which, I'm going to be doing something new here on my blog now! Yes, you guessed it! Short fiction! Except I'm not going to rant about how frustrating short fiction is and then expect you to read it. So it's not quite flash fiction. But kind of. I'm going to be writing a serialized story, and each installment will be a fairly short. I haven't decided on the word count for each post yet, but it'll probably be about 500 words. The work will be Mystery/Humor. Pretty fun, right? I figure that anyone reading blog posts doesn't expect them to be all that long anyway, so the short-factor won't be too frustrating. And it's not pointless, you'll be able to read more the next week. And in between, you can puzzle over the mystery as it develops with each new installment! Exciting, right? Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others told many of their stories through serialized fiction, and I miss those sorts of days. As far as I know, there's no real living market for it still today. But I'm going to try to make it happen on my blog at least!

So I'll be posting the a new part of the story EVERY THURSDAY NIGHT. (Now that I've said it, I've got to do it!) Hopefully people stop by on Friday then and check out the first part of the mystery! It'll be light, funny, and, of course, mysterious!

Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss; Lola and the Boy Next Door

2012-02-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

I know, the titles sound a bit cheesy, but they aren't that bad, really. Since the first of these books was released, I've been hearing a lot about it. Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins, surely did make a bit of a splash. Despite the silly-seeming title, people all over the internet were raving that it was a really sweet story, and that it, as opposed to Twilight, was what Young Adult Romance should be. I thought that that was a fairly good recommendation, but since I don't typically care for romance-y books much, usually, it wasn't until this past Christmas that I bothered to get the book and read it. About a month later, I was in the mood for some fluffy, happy reading, so I read the next book, too, which wasn't as highly recommended, but about which people seemed able to still say some good things.

Anna and the French Kiss

If you recall from the Valentine's Day book review, I said some pretty good things about this book. It is pretty good, as far as sweet teenage love-stories go. But I'll get to that in a second....

First, I want to mention the cover. I hate YA covers that show people on the front who are at all realistic-looking. I will talk about this in another post, I think. I don't want to get distracted quite yet. But it was definitely frustrating, the cover that is. The girl on the front is not Anna from the book. It's just silly. And along with the silly title, it was persuading me not to read the story. Thank goodness for other people's good words, right?

Anyway, the premise of this book is that Anna is from Atlanta (a popular city in YA lately, it seems) but she is sent off to a fancy American school in Paris for her senior year. For some reason, she's upset with this. I suppose it does sort of suck to have to switch schools for your senior year, but I wasn't entirely convinced with her continued hostility to the idea, even after she was actually in Paris.

Another thing about Anna is that she loves film. She has her own little film critic website, on which she writes up reviews. It's a little amateurish, but that's what the teenage years are about for the ambitious: great ideas but few resources to do anything with those ideas. That part I believed. What I didn't believed was that she's a film-buff and thought that she wouldn't be able to see any films in Paris. She somehow has no idea that Paris is an artsy place that includes film among the arts until the main love-interest informs her of it. Somehow, he is happy to do this. I sort of wished he would throw her into on-coming traffic. It's fine for main characters, especially teenage ones, to not know as much as me or the author, but they do know some things.

Speaking of the love-interest, let's move on to him. His name is Etienne St. Clair. If you're thinking that it might take awhile to get used to the idea of a love-interest with the name Etienne, you're right. But you don't have to worry about that for a couple hundred pages, because he just goes by St. Clair. If you're thinking that that is maybe even more awkward and hard to get used to, you're right again. And then once you get used to the name, Anna switches to calling him Etienne. And then after that it alternates every couple dozen pages, depending on our lovely protagonist's mood. It's one of those things that's good in theory or a literary book, but in a light book like this, it was frustrating.

So Etienne St. Clair, huh? Well, he's flawed. He's short with crooked teeth. He stomps around when he walks. He's a big history buff who pretentiously likes to compare himself to Napoleon. And all of that isn't a problem for this love-interest because he is also charming. There's a reason that "prince charming" is a thing. A little bit of charisma can go a long way. Oh, and although is is from San Francisco (another popular city for the YA crowd, it seems), he is partly French with an English accent, so that doesn't hurt things much. St. Clair really is an entirely lovable character. When Anna falls for him, it's mostly for the right reasons, which is really refreshing to see in YA literature at this point.

And the progression of Anna and Etienne's relationship is very good. They meet at the beginning of the school year, and they get together at nearly the end of it. They go through close moments, and then they have weeks of distance. They grow closer through conversations while at home over break -- how nice is that! And for months and months and months, Anna is oblivious. And so is Etienne. And everyone else knows. They make it through other issues, too. Anna has a split with her old best friend and her old summer crush. Etienne's mom has cancer and his dad is completely horrible. All the while, their relationship slowly grows through a developing friendship. It's actually really sweet, and the situations seem relatively real to me.

The only problem is that it is not okay for a guy to get a huge crush on another girl and to pay a lot of attention to her and not to break up with his current girlfriend despite their rocky relationship and to instead just start to give less attention to said girlfriend. This is just... no. By the end, they understand that this wasn't the best way to handle things, but you just get the impression that it's only because Anna and Etienne could have been together sooner if he had broken up with his old girlfriend. No, it's a bad idea for a lot of other reasons. Mostly because everyone is then miserable and everything ever is awful! And that first girlfriend is not at all the bad guy, here, despite how this book may portray it. So, yeah, it made it a bit difficult to actually enjoy the story.

Lola and the Boy Next Door

I don't have as much to say about this book. Like everyone else, I enjoyed Anna and the French Kiss, but Stephanie Perkins' second novel seemed only lukewarm. Like everyone else, I have to say that is was just alright.

In this companion novel, Lola is a high school girl living in San Francisco. She's sort of weird, wears lots of crazy wigs and clothes and such. She wears costumes really. Anyone else think of "Lola" from Hannah Montana? The girl on the cover is wearing a wig that makes her look like she's straight from that show. Ugh. Anyway, Lola lives with her two gay fathers, avoids her destitute fortune-telling mother, and is dating this weird punk/rock/goth/emo/whatever guy who's a bit older than her. And they've been dating "forever," by which Lola means three months. There comes a point where authors need to watch out for shoving these "learn, teens, learn!" messages into our faces. I don't think I would have appreciated it even as a teen.

So, as you might have guessed, the love-interest here is the boy next door. The house next to Lola's used to have a brother and sister living in it. The girl was obsessed with figure skating practices, but Lola was good friends with the boy. Lola developed a crush on the boy. Things seemed to be going well. Then things sort of seemed to be ruined. Then the boy and girl moved away. Then the house had various tenets over a few years. Then the boy and girl move back. Lola still likes the boy. Oh, and Lola and the boy have bedroom windows facing each other, just a little gap apart. It's sort of awkward. But the boy is in college, so he only comes hom on the weekends. He's also a nerd. His name is Cricket.

Yup, that's right. His name is Cricket. And now he and Lola go through this little routine of liking each other, not telling each other, making horrible decisions, etc. It's not really very original, or particularly natural. Lola's punk/rock/goth/emo boyfriend doesn't like Cricket, I wonder why. And no one besides Lola likes her boyfriend. I couldn't stand him and couldn't stand why Lola practically insisted on continuing to date him. Lola proceeds to be an idiot for most of the book. It's just remarkable how really immature she is. To be a good young adult book, let's all remember that the main character does not, in fact, need to be really immature.

Also, did you catch what I said at the beginning? They live in San Francisco - a popular city for YA novels it seems. In fact, so popular that we meet Anna and St. Clair there, too! Anna works in the same movie theater as Lola. They give her love advice that she doesn't do a good job at following most of the time, I'd say. St. Clair is much the same as before, but it's hard to see Anna in third person, or rather from Lola's point of view. She was a relatively indistinct character in her own book (sometimes a good thing for a first-person narrative which tries to make the protagonist relate-able), and it definitely works against her in this one. Not to mention that at first it was rather weird to see these characters again. I sort of had this idea of "happily ever after" that I liked. I didn't feel the need to just... check up on them again like this.

It might not be quite as bad as I'm making it out to be. But in the end, that was what I felt like I had read. It was nice to read, but I don't think I would read through it again.

So read these books, or let me know what you thought when you read these books!

The Wax Doll

2012-02-20T22:57:00.002-05:00

Shadows crept across the wall. The chill began to ferment. Cecilia’s eyelids drooped. She was caught between the light and the shadows, between the steel-blade air and the breathing fire, between life and somnolence.

Her father entered the study like a shade, somber and silent in a well-tailored suit. “How’s my little girl?” He always asked the same question. Cecilia never gave the same answer.

“Tired of waiting,” she said, twisting from the hearth to look at her father. The grandfather clock down the hall chimed. Twelve booming tolls rolled into the room.

Cecilia’s father looked at her in return. “You should be asleep,” he said matter-of-factly, not feigning to care.

Cecilia understood. “I was waiting.” Her tone was steady; she could have waited for hours more.

To his daughter’s approval, the man didn’t attempt to apologize, but suspended the waiting. He offered her a wax doll. “Your present.”

Cecilia studied the figure in her hands. Her father studied her, though he tired of the effort before she and departed.

The shadows crept higher. Cecilia hugged the doll to her as she slept curled in the chair.

The wax doll was gone in the morning. So, again, was her father.

*I'm #79. This is my short story for the First Challenge of the Fourth Writers' Platform Building Campaign! Word count: 200 exactly. I hope everyone likes it! If so, vote for it, yeah? It's something I might expand into a larger story, but this is it for now. For now, it is time to pop off and read some of the other great stories that have been written so far! Farewell for now, my lovelies.

Writers' Platform-Building Campaign and 11 Questions

2012-02-15T20:50:00.001-05:00

One of the best things you can do for your writing is know other writers. (I believe I've said something similar before.) And to this end, I am participating in this Writers' Platform-Building Campaign. From what I can tell over at Rach Writes, it seems like she's had a lot of success with previous campaigns. Go check it out of you're interested! As I'm posting this there are still a few hours left to sign up!

If you're here from the Campaign, welcome! Welcome to my humble blog where I write about a lot of different things. You'll find a lot of book reviews on here, a music review or two, life updates, posts about new interests -- it's definitely an eclectic selection. Feel free to poke around at any old posts that catch your eye. Just be sure not to break anything while you're here.

In the meantime, I've been tagged in the 11 Questions game that's going around, and this is the perfect opportunity to answer those questions. I'm bad at short answers, but hopefully they're entertaining.

1. What is your weapon of choice?

I like my classic sword. However, if I don't want to die, I should probably go with a bow and a quiver of arrows instead. Make that three quivers of arrows, I doubt I'd be a very good shot. But really? Still have to go with sword in the end.

2. What is the name of the first story that you wrote voluntarily?

This... is a hard question. I wrote sticker-book stories when I was little. You can be there was probably a pony involved. But the earliest title to a story that I can remember would be "Out of the Mist" from eighth grade. I mostly wrote a lot of poetry in those third-eighth grade years.

3. What genre(s) do you write?

YA/Fantasy mostly at the moment, with a bit of Urban Fantasy thrown into that. I have another that is just Fantasy with a touch of Humor, I have some High Fantasy aspirations, and I also have another novel up my sleeve that is a sort of Distopian/Literary/Sci Fi piece that I would ideally like to market from the Literary/Mainstream angle. And I'm not doing it right now, but I've been known to do some Historical Fiction as well. I'm all about crossing genres, if you haven't noticed.

4. Besides reading and writing what are at least two of your favorite pastimes?

I love languages, and although it's technically school work, I love learning knew and fascinating languages -- mostly ancient ones, but modern will do in a pinch. I also play a bunch of instruments, but piano is the one that I find rather therapeutic to play these days. Back in the day, I used to dance, and I miss it terribly.

5. What is the coolest/strangest thing you've ever done?

I was on national TV for a whole 20 seconds on the Today Show. I was at a banquet at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Washington, DC. My friends and I stayed a few nights in a castle with a Baron in Austria. I went to a Midsummer's Night bonfire on the top of an Alp in southern Germany. I attended an archaeological excavation in Israel. I (as part of my high school band) performed during the half-time show during the Sugar Bowl in the Super Dome in pre-Katrina New Orleans.

6. What is the best piece of writing advice you've heard?

Write first, edit later. Beyond that, I couldn't possibly choose just one piece of advice, because so much has been so helpful, you know?

7. What are your five most used websites?

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogger, Gmail

8. What is your favorite book/author/movie?

Book: used to be Lord of the Rings, but the Name of the Wind has come awfully close, so close as to demand a recount. Author: Tolkien, not necessarily for his literary merits (although he certainly pioneered our modern perception of fantasy and did is so well), but also for his academic pursuits, which are somewhat similar to my own. Movie: I have no idea. There are about 10 that are tied up at the top. But since I don't want to leave you disappointed, I will instead offer up the information that Sherlock is my favorite TV show.

9. If you could be invisible for one day, what would you do?

I would like to sneak on an airplane and travel somewhere! That way I would only have to pay for half of the airfare! So where would I go, you ask? Well, that would depend on the price of the ticket to get back.

10. What are your hopes for your writing future?

I would love to publish some of my novels. I have a fun series I would like to write indefinitely (sort of like Terry Pratchett's books), and I have some YA/Fantasy stuff I would like to publish to get myself a start. I'm saving most of the good stuff for later, though. I just hope I can get past the first stages and that people will like what I write.

11. Is there anything else we should know about you?

Probably, but I wouldn't even know where to begin.

The 11 Questions I am passing on are:

1. What setting best describes you?

2. What was your favorite childhood book?

3. What genre(s) do you write?

4. Besides reading and writing what are at least two of your favorite pastimes?

5. What is the coolest/strangest thing you've ever done?

6. Whose writing inspires you the most and why?

7. If any character from any book could be your best friend, who would it be?

8. What is your favorite book/author/tv show?

9. If you could be invisible for one day, what would you do?

10. What famous person (dead or alive) do you consider a role model for your own aspirations?

11. Is there anything else we should know about you?

And I am tagging:

A Writing Idea

2012-02-14T18:54:00.006-05:00

What will happen to our societal tolerance when we develop time travel? I might write a story about this idea myself, but certainly your story would be different from mine, so I thought I'd mention the idea. It's perfect for any strange adventurer out there who wants to combine science fiction, historical fiction, and social/political commentary.

I'm not going to even try to discuss our current "tolerance," since that varies by culture, by country, by state, by family, and by individual. And in addition to that, people have very different ideas of exactly what is thought at each level (sort of like that "what it's really like" meme that's going around). One sort of tolerance that many people don't even try to have is tolerance for the ideas of people throughout history. To many modern religious enthusiasts, the Romans were horrible heathens. To people playing on their smart phones, historical people without modern technology were primitive, practically animals (not to be confused with modern people without technology, whom we must be tolerant towards). I teach all of world history to college students (mostly freshmen), and they are very unforgiving toward societies throughout history who don't think quite like they do (or like they think they do).

What would happen if we have people like this time traveling? Everyone knows you shouldn't mess with history, or else you'll create paradoxes and ruin everything ever (the exact consequences are debatable). But would these people be able to control themselves? And should they? What makes them right and other people wrong? Can we expect people from the future coming back to the modern day and correct ideals which we think are correct? It could be chaos!

And where there is chaos, there's a great idea for a story! Or many ideas for many stories! It's a troubling topic, of course, but sometimes those are the most worthwhile to write about. Writing doesn't always have to argue a perfect view; writing can get people thinking, instead. This is a veritable garden of potential thoughts. This isn't even considering the fact that the troublesome points sound obviously problematic here, but in a story might hardly be more significant than standard satire.

Personally, I've been struggling with an idea for a short story, and I think I'll form an idea from some of the questions raised above. But others should write on this, too! I'd love to see what other people can make from this idea. I know there are probably a lot of other books and stories similar in topic, but my sources for the idea are different than theirs, so I think I could create something very different, as would anyone reading this. That's one thing we all have to love about writing.

PS - I'm doing this Fourth Writers' Platform-Building Campaign thing because it's always great to get to know other writers. It's a new decision, so I will write a proper post about it soon. But go check it out! One more day to sign up!

Special Valentine's Day Book Review... Extravaganza

2012-02-13T22:55:00.001-05:00

To me, Valentine's Day is what it always was: everyone decorating paper bags and everyone getting Valentine's cards from everyone else in said bags. This was always more fun than it sounds, since you got to pick who got the more serious or more funny cards and who got the standard "Happy Valentine's Day!" ones. On the other side of the day, when you're waiting at the end of the school day with your bag full of cards, you get to pick out all of the ones with candy, because they are by far the best Valentines. And that, my friends, is Valentine's Day.

... in elementary school.

Yeah, I've never quite managed to grow up with the holiday. But that means that although I don't quite care for the chocolates and roses and fancy French restaurants side of the day, I also don't care for the "oh no, I'm alone on Valentine's Day!" side of it either. I guess I just don't quite get any of it. However, I really like holidays in general, so I thought I'd put something about about Valentine's Day while it's here and all.

So I'm going to Rate the Romance in a bunch of books. It's kind of like a book review, except not. And I'm not reviewing Romance Novels. Let's just get started, and you'll see what I mean.

Harry Potter: starts too late in the series for me to really agree with any of the couples

The Hunger Games: Peeta's cute, but the romance feels poisoned

His Dark Materials: cute at the very end

Lord of the Rings: Sam and Rosie forever, duh

Twilight: if you believe really, really hard, it might seem nice

*Howl's Moving Castle: slow, but worth it in the end, and there's plenty of other good things too

Chronicles of Prydain: annoying red-haired girl, why?

The Belgariad: annoying red-haired girl, why?

Romeo and Juliet: in theory, quite sweet - until they die for each other as teenagers after a few days of dating

The Mortal Instruments: just a bit odd on occasion

Inkheart: for a little while, it's quite adorable

Sookie Stackhouse: some questionable relationship options

Sisters Red: cute every other chapter, as long as you don't mind a girl who angrily wants to kill things in between

The Kingkiller Chronicles: one of those agreeable romances that is just frustrating, intentionally

*Enchanted Forest Chronicles: okay, this one's pretty cute almost straight through

*Anna and the French Kiss: I actually kind of think this is rather good, sort of realistic, and they aren't kidding when they say the guy is charming

The Magicians: best not even focus on the romance, since it's all a bit too depressing, oh and the part where they're animals is weird

*Evil Genius: a unique romance that has a very good, refreshing dynamic: bonding over math with a handicapped girl? yes, unique and refreshing, and not awkward about it

Ella Enchanted: only if you like epistolary romances

The Fault in our Stars: cute, I guess, but a bit too well-played out (besides the cancer part)

The Name of the Star: enjoyable when read for the first time, but questionable when considered in retrospect

The Mediator: a Buffy-esque series, which really steps up the romance plot in the last few books

Lola and the Boy Next Door: a nice romance, but an awfully frustrating main character who sticks with the wrong guy for just a little too long

*The Night Circus: very well done, realistic and lovely

And so I've starred the winners. This was mostly a random selection of what I've read. I favored the addition of more recent reads, left out most of the classics and, obviously, left out most of the ones that didn't have much of a romantic plot.

So there you have it. A random overview of the romance plots in books. What did we learn? The best romances are either realistic or the ones that aren't even trying. We should probably use that in our lives or something, huh?

Happy Valentine's Day! Now have some candy:

How to Translate

2012-02-09T23:07:00.003-05:00

Ever wonder how to translate a dead language? Well, here's a way to do it. Probably not the best way,* but I'm sure it'll get you somewhere in the end, and probably to hilarious places, too. This can also be used for a writing prompt or such, if you need one.

1. Pick out all of the words you know already. Presumably, you've learned a little bit of the language at some point. You might even know a word or two. These words will be a good starting point for the rest of your translation.

2. Find all of the words that look like other words you know, either words of the language or in almost any other language. Chances are, these words are not the words they look like. So pick out any other meaning for these words besides the ones they appear to be related to.

3. Next you will want to find all of the words that sound like any other words that you know. To do this, you will need to read the passage out-loud. If you don't know how to pronounce the language, let your ear be your judge -- you will want to sound as though you are reading a magic spell. If any of the words sound like words you know, chance are that these actually are related to those words. They may not be exactly similar, though, so feel free to give yourself creative room to adjust the meaning according to whatever you suspect the context may be.

4. Now, you'll notice a lot of extra words. These you'll just make up meanings to. You have intuition, right? Don't use it -- you're probably completely wrong. These words, because you in know way recognize them, are probably really very boring words. So I would suggest that you try to keep your invented meanings as dull as possible.

5. Add words as needed. Ignore words as needed. And remember to be free with word order.

Let's look at an example:
Latin: quae ante conditam condendamve urbem poeticis magis decora fabulis quam incorruptis rerum gestarum monumentis traduntur, ea nec adfirmare nec refellere in animo est.
English: Hey, anti-conditioners condemn urban poets and magic because of qualms about their fabulous decorations and incorruptible rare guests and traded monuments, but they affirm the necks and refill the necks of animals.

Yeah, I'm not going to back these anti-conditioners in the next election! I don't know what it means to affirm and refill necks of animals, but it doesn't sound good. And what do they have against fabulous decorations anyway?

* Disclaimer: this is probably the worst ways to translate.

Things Are Happening!

2012-02-07T19:26:00.001-05:00

Please, do not be fooled. This is simply an update blog with a hopefully snazzy, exciting-sounding title. That being said, I really do hope that you'll continue reading. I only post the interesting things.

Lasers, lasers, lasers! (I said it'd be interesting things!) I went laser tagging over the weekend. I'd never been before and had been rather nervous beforehand. One reason why I'm always hesitant to play games with others is that I'm terribly afraid of losing. Well, not like I'm afraid, exactly, but I'd really rather prefer not to lose. If I don't have a very good chance of winning, then I usually won't play. If the stress of trying not to lose is greater than the enjoyment of playing the game, then I also usually won't play. This latter instance accounts for most of the games I opt out of, which is a large portion of games in general. But this laser tag thing was something that the grad students of our department had been contemplating for months. And it was actually a sort of combination birthday party thing for four grad students. And I have laser tagging on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days or whatever that list is. Anyway, I really need to try out this laser tagging thing. And it was fun! Shooting things is quite nice, right? And trying to hide from people shooting you, and sneaking around. but after a few games, you start to understand that to get the maximum number of points, you don't shoot other people. You go to the other team's base and shoot their targets until you run out of lives. Then you go back to your base, get more lives, and repeat the process. It's actually more of a chore, isn't it? but once I sort out the dilemma of points vs. fun, I'm sure I'll have another great time when I go back again maybe in future! It's interesting to note that the Lasertron which is about a 5-10 min. drive from my apartment is the longest-running laser tag place in the country, and I think they said it's the largest arena in the Northeast! It's hard to say no to that, when it's really so close!

As for school, I'm taking Roman Britain, Tyrant-Killing, and Latin Literature. The Latin course is just a standard Latin survey. However, we also spend a full half an hour speaking Latin, though. We have reading assignments about the week's authors and their lives and their corpus of works, and we bring that knowledge to class and then discuss it in Latin. We, the students, sort of stumble around with it, but we only need to say one or two things at a time. So we manage, and it's not all that dramatic a change. At least for me, the hardest and most noteworthy new thing is listening to our professor speak in Latin. You know that day you go to Spanish or French, and your teacher starts talking to you all in that language? When this teacher doesn't try to speak slowly, doesn't try to go easy on you, etc. When this teacher just talks? Yeah, that's what it's like. Except that it's harder because it's Latin, and we have no really been prepared for this before at all! At least I have five and a half years of practice so that I can understand almost everything. It's still very different, though, and very challenging.

Roman Britain is about Roman Britain, sort of. We have a lot of reading. Tyrant-Killing technically has a fancier name, but we all know that that's what it is really. It's about tyrannicide legislation in ancient Greece. And about the institution of tyranny in Greece, and about the institution of a state and laws in a general abstract way. And we talk a lot about politics and economics and formulate theories about them in ancient Greece.There's a lot of really great discussion, analyzing politics and such, comparing these changes in Greece to changes around the world in various different times. We also made a few chemistry-based metaphors for some things. And it really makes you wish that people could look at today's political and economic situation in a similar way, because it's absolutely fascinating to analyze it all. It also just reminds me how classicists really do need to have such a broad knowledge of so many different areas. We need to be able to talk about military tactics, political and economic theory, geology and geography, understand distribution of settlements, linguistic changes, poetic meter, etc. Not to mention the history of the entire world until the present day, which is what we teach in World Civ. There's just so much to know.

What Sanskrit looks like. (And no, I can't read it yet.)

And if these classes didn't comprise enough to worry about, some of us have started a group to learn Sanskrit together. My adviser wanted to teach a Sanskrit class next year, but he couldn't due to other obligations. So we decided to start this semester and just learn it ourselves, but work together on it, since it's a tricky language to get the hang of all on your own. We take over a classroom and work through the material once a week. Then in our own time, we read through the textbooks and grammars and such. It's nice to know that even if we can't get a professor to teach a certain class, we'll just make our own class -- in addition to our already-full normal schedule -- and learn on our own. It's encouraging.

In other school-related news, in addition to my full schedule of classes and Sanskrit, I'm TAing for World Civ. still, writing my Master's Thesis, doing my own Greek-review thing since the Greek review group was scheduled when I teach, learning Egyptian, learning Hittite, tutoring Latin, and I think that's it. I'm very busy.

And now I'll ruin that by saying that I have been watching so much television; it is horrible. I just have way, way too many shows to keep up with. I don't even try to stay up to date with all of them, but now I have too many that I actually am trying to watch weekly. For the past few weeks, it seems like only half of my shows have been airing new episodes, so that's eased the burden. But, man, is TV exciting!

I'm reading way too many books, and now that the semester's started, I hardly have any time for them. Much the same can be said for my writing. I'm still trying to do this short story thing, but finding time to focus on one of my novels is growing ever more difficult. I wanted to finish one and get through two rounds of edits before the end of this semester so that I could have some friends read it over the summer, but that's a tough goal to meet. I'm still going to try though, so I can use all the encouragement I can get!

And speaking of books, I'm going to be a World Book Night Book Giver! World Book Night is on April 23, a week after my birthday, on Shakespeare's birthday/deathday. It's happening in the US, UK, and Ireland this year -- it had previously only been in the UK. In the US, they're recruiting 50,000 people to give out 1 MILLION free books to people who wouldn't normally read. So I'm going to get 20 copies of a book -- I asked for The History of Love by Nicole Krauss as my first choice, which I read in the boring English 301 class as an undergrad -- and maybe grab a friend, go downtown to the metro (yes, the metro with the mugger who was on holiday), and ask people if they read much. If they say no, they get a free book to enjoy! It's a charitable sort of thing meant to encourage reading! I'm actually really excited for it; I'm sort of considering it as what I'm doing to celebrate my birthday, even though it's a week after. The extended deadline for applications was last night (Feb. 6), so sorry for the late notice if you wanted to be a Giver too! Maybe (and hopefully) you can be a Giver next year! If you're already a Book Giver this year, that's awesome! I'm certainly looking forward to it.

I think that's all that I have to talk about for now. More things will undoubtedly happen throughout the semester, and I will collect the updates, save them in a very special little chest with an ornate key, and unleash them on you again when that little chest becomes too full. So to speak.

Book Review: The Night Circus

2012-02-06T20:03:00.001-05:00

I am usually in the habit of reviewing books in pairs. However, there is another book that I had never had any intention of reviewing as a pair and which I will probably have to read a second time before I can properly write a review. And then there is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which although it doesn't equal this previously mentioned book, it certainly is more brilliant, more skillfully written, than most of the books I review. And so, it deserves its own review.

There are a few things I wish I could do with this book. I wish I had a red scarf I could wear and be a reveur, having read and appreciated the beauty of the work. I wish I could embrace the spirit of collaboration of masterpieces and write a novel which answers this one. I wish I could write a detailed journal of the few days I spent passing through the marvelous tents, I mean pages. But of these, perhaps the first is the only achievable and worthwhile ambition, even if I will probably be the only one I encounter to understand the significance. If you haven't read the book, are you curious enough yet?

Something that I really have to admire about this book is the wondrous imagination. Anyone who writes fantasy needs to have a trick or two up their sleeve, and by trick, I mean a good imagination. That's what fantasy is, at heart, all about. And this book definitely embodies this idea. The wonders which Celia and Marco create are so very clever and beautiful. It's such a joy to picture them.

And speaking of Celia and Marco, another thing Morgenstern does exceptionally well in her book is creating characters. Almost all of the characters are so well described, and so artfully, tactfully. I always have a hard time picturing details of faces. Sure, in my head the characters still have eyes and a mouth and a nose and all that, but beyond these qualities, they look a bit cartoonish, and blobular. The characters in this book, however, somehow all have faces, with one exception -- and that exception actually fits with the plot, oddly and surprisingly enough. The point of view changes from different characters throughout the book, and the setting jumps accordingly, but all of the characters are so rich and interesting and delightful that I hardly cared at all when we moved on to another set of characters -- and trust me, this is something I also usually have a hard time doing. So this book gets much respect from me on the account of characters.

Now let's talk about the love story element, since that's something so debatable these days, especially since Twilight sort of botched its love story a bit (sorry to those who like it, but it is problematic in parts, you have to admit). Celia and Marco seem to have such a realistic relationship, and it feels very natural as it progresses. This, again, is quite a feat, considering the entirely unrealistic and unnatural world of these characters. I can't help but admire the skill of the narrative.

Bailey is an interesting character. He sort of comes out of nowhere, and his plot feels very much disconnected from the rest for a long time. But I will just say that it's all worth it. He grows on you over time. You sort of begin to relate to him, begin to have hopes for him, begin to want to see what's going to happen to him next. And it is his ending that is the most satisfying of them all. His actual role inside the story is to bring balance, and that's his role in the creation of the story as a whole as well.

Poppet and Widget are the best names for cool circus twins ever.

And last, but in no way least, the themes. This book has such a marvelous array of themes, motifs, etc. It's not just a book of wonders, not of characters, but of real, true meaning. And the book is created so beautifully that you can move easily through it, not straining to imagine or understand the basics, feeling comfortable in the plot and its progression, and so you can then, in a way, sit back, relax, and relish both the thought-provoking, emotionally-engaging meanings and the dreamlike, miraculous wonders.

So read the book, grab your red scarf, and let me know what you thought of your trip to Le Cirque des Rêves!

Let's Talk About Art

2012-02-04T16:09:00.003-05:00

I know almost nothing about art. However, I will flatter myself so far as to say I have a good eye for analysis. I like to pretend I have a good sense of interior decorating and fashion. And good enough problem-solving skills to manage in both of those fields with hardly any money to work with. But all of that might just be my imaginations, and I'm okay with that. But I know very well that I don't know anything about art. I just think that I can understand some of the good things.

The Walk, 1918

Just yesterday, I found an artist who had been previously unappreciated by my nonexistent sense of art. Someone on Facebook posted a link to "Famous Paintings Improved by Cats," and how could I say no to that? After scrolling through the list of paintings and laughing appropriately, I returned to one that I hadn't recognized but had, to me, stood out among all the others: "The Walk." I look at the artist, a certain Marc Chagall, and I didn't recognize his name. That's not surprising, I know the big, big names of course, and beyond that I mostly only know Spanish artists, since the only time I had ever really studied art was in my third- and fourth-year Spanish classes in high school. I suspected that Marc Chagall wasn't Spanish.

Amoureux de Vence, 1957

I was rather taken by "The Walk" -- yes, even the non-cat version -- so I immediately took to Google to see more by Chagall. I found myself looking at a site of posters of his works. The more I saw, the more I found myself adoring almost every single one of them. Marc Chagall's works span several different major artistic styles, as you can see just by glancing at the pictures along this post. I'm not even sure what struck me first, but I sort of think that it's the edges of the subjects in his work. No matter what the style, there is the most pleasant definition around figures. Of course, the definition is made in various ways, but it's always just pleasant.

La Chevauchee, 1974

The next step was to run to Wikipedia for help. I needed to know more about this artist. I was recognizing the styles of his works, and they gave me a more or less good idea of when Chagall lived, but I needed to be sure. And yes, I was right: he wasn't Spanish. And yes, I was right again: he was more or less a contemporary of Picasso. Marc Chagall was a Russian-French artist, Jewish, and was a mere six years younger than Picasso. He and that famous Spanish artist had been hit by the same artistic movements, and although the selection on this post probably won't showcase it, you can see it in their works. We studied Picasso for a couple weeks in Spanish IV. I liked a lot of his work. Not the most famous paintings, but I never seem to like the most famous by anyone. But I am fairly confident in saying that I like Chagall's works much more than Picasso's.

Le Violoniste Bleu, 1947

Although they followed the same artistic progression, the works of Chagall and Picasso are very different. Apparently, they knew each other, and Matisse as well, but had a sort of amiable rivalry between them. The Wikipedia article explains is well. Chagall and Picasso really were very different artists, but then why does "Le Violoniste Bleu" remind me so much of "The Old Guitarist" from Picasso's blue period? The paintings are about 45 years apart and in very separate styles, but somehow they still have a certain similarity, don't they? Obviously, they are both blue, and that's nothing much. Picasso's work was in his blue period, and Chagall has plenty of pieces of this color. But the posture of the subjects, it pulls the viewers eye in the same way, in the same direction across the canvas, with the same twists.

Autumn in the Village

"When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color is... His canvases are really painted, not just tossed together. Some of the last things he's done in Vence convince me that there's never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has." -- Picasso, on Chagall (quote from Wikipedia)

Solomon, 1956

And just as Picasso apparently said, it is the color and the light which make Chagall's works so magnificent. Remember how I said the figures in the works were so distinct? Part of that is the actually definition of the subjects, big black outlines, swooping across the canvas. But part of it is also the distinctions made by color. All of his paintings are so vibrant and immediately expressive. Take this "Solomon." The purple and yellow distinction is so simple. Two colors, and yet it says so much. It is almost magical, isn't it? And the work is accentuated with lovely distinctness, by the simple means of just these colors. Again, I hardly know how to say what I'm actually talking about, since I have no training in art, but I do hope that this is a clear enough example to show this marvelous style of Chagall's work.

The Red House

The really sad thing is that Marc Chaggal is distinctly not all that well known. Not like Picasso, at least. Everyone knows at least several of Picasso's works, but I doubt if nearly as many people know Chagall. Information about his works is so difficult to find. That's why I'm relying so heavily on Wikipedia, here. Some of the dates of these works I had to get from French websites, others are from certainly dubious sources. But I thought I would include them anyway. I would love to get a poster or two or these pieces (choosing which ones is so hard!), but they are remarkably expensive. Some posters I can't find for less than $100! The cheapest posters are about $10, but those aren't actually ones I like all that much. The cheapest ones that I like are about $30-$50. These certainly aren't your standard van Gogh or Klimt (see season 4 episode 1 of Buffy for the ridiculous popularity of these artists).

But I thought that I would write a blog post to talk a bit about Marc Chagall, partly to get the excitement of finding something new and awesome out of my system, and partly because I suspect Chagall is not nearly as well-appreciated as he ought to be by the general public. And thus, here is just a little bit about him and his works. Just because they ought to be talked about.

Rain, 1911

Bad Luck

2012-01-31T15:17:00.002-05:00

Bad luck is a funny thing. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but peculiar funny. Bad luck as a phrase is strange enough. Luck used by itself is a good thing, but you can still add good or bad to give two separate and additional ideas. Also, it's hard to identify bad luck, because what may seem like a catastrophe might be "good luck" compared to what else could have happened. You tripped down the stairs? What good luck! It wasn't a car accident! We don't know what the goddess Fortune is choosing from when she picks us our surprises.

What did I do to her, huh?

But then there are those days, or weeks, or even longer, when we know -- I mean really know with certainty -- that we are plagued with bad luck. This has been one of those weeks for me. Here are some highlights:

I needed to mail Apple my first gen. iPod nano so that I could get a new sixth gen. one for free! But Apple's return package is prepaid to ship FedEx. After much effort to find a place to mail FedEx from on this campus, I located a FedEx dropbox! I physically found it and everything. But then bad luck struck: that dropbox does not accept FedEx ground shipments. And, of course, that was how Apple paid for it to be shipped.
The roster of my students this semester no longer lists their emails. Why would someone who teaches a college course not be given students' email addresses? I contact them all semester via email. So I had to ask them all to give me their emails on the first day of class. And of course, some students had difficult to read handwriting which took some trial and error to figure out. And then many added the course after the first class, and need to be emailed the syllabus individually. Basically, no emails addresses = one big mess.
The market did not have the "egg beaters" eggs that I wanted. I have brownie mix, but no eggs to make it with; it's like torture. The market also did not have cheese hot pockets (just to note, all their hot pockets had meat in them). They did not have Irish cream coffee creamer. They only had about half of the things on my list. And by "the market" I mean Wegmans! People up here in Buffalo say "why would you go to Tops [some sort of Giant-brand store] when you have Wegmans?!" Wegmans has a horrible selection too often. Next time I'm going to Tops.
I order a hamburger (just a plain burger, nothing on it) at the grill-type place in the food court in the building below my office. I pay 2.71 for it and wait 22 minutes before realizing they just skipped my order or something. Tired of standing, I tossed my receipt with my order number on the counter and left.
The next day of the shuttle to the market, it snowed a lot and had really high winds, so I thought I'd avoid buses (just to be extra safe). But I never did get all of those things that I needed and couldn't get the time before.
I went to Starbucks instead of going to the market. There, some weird guy sat next to me and tried to be friends. He said he would probably be around on campus the next day, and we should try to meet again for coffee sometime. I want to sit at Starbucks and be a mopey writer, not make friends. At least not with people who are pushy about it. I had been trying to write a post for this blog that I had to abandon in the middle because I was still too freaked out by the guy having talked to me.
The campus doesn't clear all of the sidewalks. Only a random ~80% of them. So I got to class with only a few minutes to spare. My usual seat was taken, so I put my bag in the next closest seat. I get up to hand out papers, since I am one of the TAs and that's my job. I come back from handing out papers to find that a student has moved my bag, taken my seat, and also taken the handout I had left there for myself!
I go to the gym to rent an annual locker. After scouring through the women's locker room, I quite think he assigned me a men's locker. I really don't think I look like a guy!!!

And that brings us up to a few hours ago. Bad luck, right? Or things going poorly at almost every chance? Either way, I'll call it bad luck. And it's very easy to see, at least for me. I should also mention that these really are just the highlights, to give you some of the most striking things and some variety. The smaller things are similar, though. I really wish it was break and I could hid in my apartment all day. Because this sort of luck is terrible to have.

That's the spirit, right?

A Ramble about Short Stories

2012-01-24T18:56:00.000-05:00

My friend Mel wrote a post on her blog last week mostly talking about the benefits of failure and short story writing. After some thought, I have mixed feelings about the failure thing. However, my opinion about the story-story-writing thing is much more defined: I am all for it. Not just in Mel's case -- she is an awesome writer, after all, and I'd love to read stuff from her -- but for me as well. I don't know if I've really mentioned it, but on my 101 Things in 1001 days list, I have "Write a short story a month for at least 12 months." Yeah, that hasn't happened. I've written a few things that I've posted to my blog that I've considered short stories, but who am I kidding? They aren't the same as short stories should be. They are the touched up, fictionalized versions of other things, things from my life. They aren't what I would want my short stories to be; they just don't count. So perhaps I am going to start again this year.

Have you ever looked at the full list of works for famous authors from the first half of the 20th century? And the 19th century? You may notice that the list contains many stories or poems published in literary journals. Because, I suspect, people actually read them back then. Even my mom has said, when I rant to her about the lack of a thriving short story market, that she misses the days when there were journals like that, because stories were easier for her to read when she was busy. So, apparently, my mom can remember those days; they weren't all that long ago.

I would love to try to publish some short stories. The only problem is finding somewhere worthwhile. You have to already have some sort of cred, or to have some extra help, or something, if you want to publish a collection of your own stories. Sure, there are plenty of random online magazines and journals, but that's just the problem. They are online. The digitalization of the publishing industry has left so much confusion in its wake. But one of the many problems it causes is the overabundance of material available. Not all of it is worthwhile. It just becomes to easy to put out work that shouldn't be out there. Work that isn't worthwhile. Okay, a lot of it is. But there's something to be said for the competitive nature of the printing industry. It's a familiar problem, most people who write or read understand the dilemma we're all facing here.

The thing I want to say is that it causes a devaluation in online short story publication, too. There are just so many places to "publish" material online that the audience for any one given place is so small. Not every place has a name that will look good on a CV either. And the pay, if it exists, is hardly anything. It's nice to just try for these things, just to get into the hang of submitting work and dealing with possible failure, but there's not much at risk here. There's nothing really in it for the author, especially not an author with good work.

There are still actual literary journals out there, and collections of stories compiled by various editors. In some cases, people may not read them, and in others they may not look the best on a CV. In any case, there's usually something more to be gained by them, and thus the risk is greater. But we can gain from failure, too, right? Especially with a greater risk. From these print publications of short stories, it's easier to gain from success and from failure. So that's still what I'm aiming for. Call me old fashioned, but I like the old guys from 100 years ago. I'm quite fond of that age in writing, I'll admit it. But I think there's some actually merit to it, too. Writing groups for instance: I wish those were like they used to be.

Anyway, I was going to list a few of the places I was thinking of submitting stories to soon, but one I thought I bookmarked, but apparently didn't, and can no longer find it online anyway. It was asking for submissions of stories about dragons for a collection in honor of Anne McCaffrey; I had a story from middle school I could have revised for it. But I can't find the site. Don't know what happened there. It may have been decent, I didn't even look much at it at the time, just (thought I'd) saved it for later. The other is Less Than Three, which is being edited and compiled by Kristina Horner and Haley G. Hoover from YouTube, which so many people know about. The submissions deadline is January 31, and I don't have anything very good yet, but I'll keep working and then give something a shot. Why not, after all? It's about "Love, like, and the internet," none of which are things I'm good at writing about, at least not with happy endings. A good excuse to work on such topics.

I had a few more, but I can't seem to recall what they were. It's been a rough few weeks (mostly this crazy weather is really getting to me), so I've done an awful job of staying on top of things.

Don't get me wrong, I do write stories just for fun. But they don't end up going anywhere. Because they're all depressing. It's not the "teenage angst" thing that has made my poetry and my stories depressing since I was about 12 or so. No, it's just that I realized I'm better at conveying those sorts of emotions in my writing. I can make people sad, I can make them feel wonder, or fear, or think about things, but I can't figure out how to make them happy. It's the hardest thing for me to write. And I've been so worried about writing for practice, in order to become better at actually writing, that I didn't care much about the themes. Until the last few years, when I realize I can't show people my work without getting scornful, mediocre responses, no matter how masterfully I use literary devices. Now I think I have to try writing for an audience, so just taking the risk to try and submit stories seems like the best way to do that. It's all about trial and error.

And on that note, I guess I should say that I do plan on writing more short stories for this year. One a month, for at least 12 months, right? I probably won't put them on my blog, since sometimes that's considered previous publication and all that, but I might talk about them. And I'm definitely willing to have other people read them, if anyone's interested. And please feel free to pressure me about actually writing. Because I could probably use it.

For now, I'm finished my tall no-water chai, so I think I will brave the wind and icy, snowy, rain to walk back to my apartment, heat up some potato soup, and start reading "The Romanization of Roman Britatin" by Haverfield (part of this week's reading for my Roman Britain seminar). I will try to blog more often again, as soon as I'm out of this "blah" sort of mood.

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars

2012-01-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. This, I hope, will be a simple review.

If the book were a sandwich, I ate the bread first. I began by reading the first few pages, the bits before the novel starts, and the last few pages, the aknowledgements and the bit about John. Mostly I thought of Esther, and how amazing her story had been. (Then I immediately took the duskjacket off before I read anything else because it was squeaky and uncomfortable and distracting.)

After the bread came the peanut butter. The dialogue sounded so pretentious, and it stuck to the roof of my mouth. It's difficult to relate to these characters when they sound so insufferable. I've always been a big fan of simple language used well, rather than fancy language used appropriately. But that's just me, and I do hope I may be excused for it.

The turning point. That part, a little over a hundred pages in, when you've come to a decision as to who will be dying by the end of the book. And, as you close the book to get a good image of how many pages you still have left, you hope that they don't do it too soon, or else this may be like A Taste of Blackberries that you had to read in the fifth grade and found pointlessly depressing.

Then came a sweet bit, sweet and so terribly tangy. Really, really wanting to enjoy the book, but having such a difficult time doing so, waiting for disaster to strick at every turn. But it doesn't, not yet.

And then the rest of the jelly. Which is far too runny. Things get thinned out. In an effort to not be one of those books, it still feels like one of those books.

And then the disaster strikes. And you're finished the jelly. But now you have to finish licking it off your fingers, and it's uncomfortably sticky. The whole book so far you'd been thinking of friends who've had cancer (all of whom have survived, thank goodness), but now you're left remembering deaths and other tragedies. One of my good high school friends lost her leg in my sophomore year of college. Another of my friends died after my junior year, when I was alone in Europe and couldn't even go to her viewing. She was one of my Top 8 Friends from the high school days of Myspace. So she was close enough. The first person my own age whom I was close to to die. And I thought of all of that. And I suppose it was just as well that the novel itself was thin, because there was enough, otherwise.

And then it ended. It somehow felt like a sudden ending, even though it wasn't. I guess I was so full of thought while chewing over that last bite that it wasn't until I went to take another that I realized the sandwich was gone.

I then flipped through some depressingly empty pages to skim back through the acknowledgements section, and then to the "about the author" section. And there he is, smiling. Smiling. Let me just say, I wasn't smiling in quite the same way. For a moment, that horrible thought struck me: how can he be smiling like that? But I knew it was awful and not at all the right question. But I thought it was a question that needed to be asked. And then I flipped back to the front of the book. And I remembered having taken that first bite of bread, having looked at the page with John's signature. And I remembered what I had thought when I saw that signature, before I had read a word of that book. I had felt guilty, thinking about how many pages John had to sign and how trying it had been. I remembered all the videos, so many videos, throughout which his puff levels increased over the stress of the signing. And I felt guilty. There it was. The signature that really didn't matter much at all, but that had meant a lot even if it didn't matter. And remembering that thought from hours before, I forgave the smiling John in the back of the book; I let him have that bit of happiness, in exchange for that signature. But I didn't understand it. I still don't.

Overall, it was a good book. It was rich in a few good themes, and there was plenty of wit and humour. And although while reading it I struggled with the feeling that it was only telling a part of a great and complex universal truth, I can at least admit that it tells it well. We choose our struggles, rather than attempt to take on the world. This book chose its struggle and won, and that should be enough.

And after reading talk of eulogies, I realize that this may sound a bit like a eulogy for The Fault in Our Stars. And I think that's fine, if it means something to you. Perhaps you can take more out of it than just a sandwich-based metaphor about a cancer-themed YA novel. And if so, I will leave you with just one more thought....

I closed the book and replaced the squeaky duskjacket. And you know what? It was an even worse fit then than it was before. But isn't that what reading a book is? It changes you, and you don't fit quite just like you had before.

New Year's Plans for 2012

2011-12-31T21:44:00.001-05:00

So I don't think the world is going to end. Let's start off with that. It's just a new age for the Mayans' calendrical system. But that's not the point right now. Let's now talk about plans for the New Year, for the year 2012, as the title of this post might have suggested. There are a lot of plans that I have for the next year, but I thought I'd just mention a few of them here.

1. I'd like to practice running so that I can actually run for longer than about a minute. I'm really bad at it. I can do other things, so I'm not precisely way out of shape (although I haven't danced for ages so I won't deny that I am a bit out of shape), but I just am awful at running. And there are a couple reasons why I've always found it frustrating, but I'm tried of people giving me a rough time for it, so I'm going to fix that.

2. There is this website: http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/Walk/walk.html. My plans for this are related to the running thing, but they are a little bit separate. I just love the idea behind that site. I think it's just the neatest. It give you different paths to take, with different mileages, but the paths are different routes taking by characters in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. And they break the amount traveled down day by day, and they give descriptions of what things would look like whenever possible. I love things that blend books with the rest of life. So I would like to follow along with that site to go from Bag End to the Lonely Mountain before the Hobbit movie next December. That's my plan. I'm not going to count walking to and from class or shopping or anything like that, though. Those things don't count. Only just walking or running for the sake of the things themselves. And I'd like to re-read the book by the time of the movie, too. So it should be a fun year.

3. Speaking of reading, I would like to actually complete the 50 Books Challenge, as opposed to this last year, in which I pretty much failed horribly. I only made it about half way there. But this year will be better, I now it.

4. I'm going to finish the first draft of "Magic Tricks of the Trade" I hope, soon. And then I would like to have finished two rounds of edits by the end of spring so that I can send it to friends to read and edit and give me feedback over the summer. And then I guess I'd like to edit some more in the fall. And I guess I'd like to maybe finish something else in the summer while other people are looking at that first WIP. But in addition to all that, I would like to complete both sessions of Camp Nano in the summer and also NaNoWriMo proper in November. So I guess I can say I'd like to do a lot of writing next year.

5. Speaking of writing, I am going to finish my Master's Project this year and then get my MA. Not that it's really all that exciting, since it's something they just give you along the way to your PhD, but I guess it's nice anyway.

6. I would also like to learn more languages next year. I need to practice German so I can pass my German exam, but I would also like to finish up with Hittite and probably Italian, too. I'd like to see if I can take an independent study in Old Irish with one of the professors in the fall, and hopefully my other professor was able to round up enough people for a Sanskrit course in the fall. And in addition to Hittite and Italian in my own time, I would like to go back over Egyptian properly, and then finally get past chapter 8 in Akkadian. Yes, I have awfully high hopes.

7. I would also like to be able to cook more things. It's absolutely awful to not be able to cook much. Things are just too expensive. However, this year I'd like to at least try to find simple, cheap things that I can make that can still pass as something worthwhile. That way I don't feel so awkward and pressured when I have to bring food to parties or events of sorts.

8. I am also going to try to go to the new Argentine Tango Club that one of the grad students from Anthro. really started. Some of the other grad students from our department have gone, and they say it's great. I didn't like the ballroom dance club at my undergrad school, and the swing club had a lot of issues, really, so I didn't get a good chance to keep up with my dancing since high school. Sure, none of these dances are quite as intense as ballet, but it's nice to still be doing some kind of dance at least. So I'm going to try tango, I guess.

9. I wanted to make this go to ten, but I can't think of a specific number nine. I've already drawn out a few minor issues for the last few. I guess I could say that I'm going to try to not stress too much next year, because it's not good. It doesn't help anything. And to aid in this effort, since I am lending my brother my flute, he said I can borrow his N64 and what few games remain (LoZ: OoT, LoZ: MM, Super Mario 64, and maybe even Diddy Kong Racing!). I think being able to play video games would make my apartment in general feel more relaxing and home-ier. And somehow video games are a great way to take my focus off of everything else. I love reading, but it's so hard to spot myself from thinking to much still, though. So that's a plan I have, I guess, to fill in for a number nine.

10. And lastly, I would like to make my blog a bit better, I think. I'm not entirely sure that I have any specific plans for it, but I definitely am going to keep it up and hopefully make it nicer.

So those are some of my plans for next year. Just a glimpse, really, I have a lot of plans, because I love planning. I hope everyone else sets good plans for the new year and succeeds in achieving them!

Travel Blog: Muggers and Other Problems (12/15/11)

2011-12-29T23:36:00.002-05:00

Travels always yield great stories, and that was definitely true for my travels coming home for winter break. So here's my story of how I came home for Christmas this year! Enjoy!

I left Buffalo in a bit of a hurry. I not only had to wash almost every dish I have, tidy my apartment after the tornado that is the end of the semester struck, and do a lot of laundry so that I could pack, I also had to copy a ton of pages from some books so that I could return them to the library before I left. Some inter-library-loaned books that aren't renewable were due over the break, and one of them was already overdue, and I certainly didn't want to drag them home with me in any case. But I did need their valuable information so that I could finish writing my papers. I also needed to grade exams, as many as possible, so that I wouldn't have to drag the whole pile of "blue books" home and back again too. It, all in all, was a very hectic day. I left my apartment at about the last possible minute.

I got on the bus between campuses easily, although I definitely felt out of place with my big suitcase. My suitcase wasn't that heavy, it was mostly clothes with only several, light-weight books -- it was only 3/4 full anyway, before expanding the top! But the suitcase itself is heavy and just plain unwieldy, so it was difficult to carry up the stairs of the bus anyway. I sat in the very front seat, closest to the door, so that it would be easier for people to walk around me and for me to get off at my stop. However, that meant that when the bus driver lady opened the door at all of the other stops for like a minute, I got hit with the light misting of rain coming in from outside. Lovely.

Not too disgruntled....

I made it to my stop alright, and the bus driver lady in the Santa hat didn't seem too disgruntled by annoying self, at least not more than usual, so I wished her a merry Christmas (I thought I could, since she was wearing a Santa hat after all) and trundled my way down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. By this time it was about 10:15 at night. My bus to DC didn't leave until 11:45, but I didn't really want to miss the next metro train and have to wait half an hour. I had no idea when the next train was leaving, so I rushed into the metro, bought my ticket, and waited patiently as my luggage and I descended the rather long escalator down to the platform. The train was there when I got there, so I hurried over to make sure I got inside before the doors close. It's the end of the line, so the train usually sits there for maybe even five minutes before it actually moves, but I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't miss it -- but I had plenty of time. So I pluncked myself down on a seat in the front car with room for my luggage and with access to the front-most door of the car. The stops downtown have a raised platform with a ramp that the front-most door stops at, but the other doors just have access to stairs that lower from the train itself -- yeah, not doing that set of several tiny steps thing with all of my luggage.

After a few tops, a man gets on and sits directly across from me. Perhaps here I must derail for a moment to say that sometimes taking public transportation can be very uncomfortable. Usually, I hardly notice it, but sometimes, depending on the intensity of the glares, I am reminded that the demographic of metro patrons at the moment, excepting myself, is entirely African-American. This itself doesn't bother me, but the fact that they are bothered does. Anyway this is one of those times. I didn't notice, but after this man came into the car and sat down, I was painfully aware that I was the young white girl with lots of luggage alone on the public metro at nearly 11 at night. And even more painful was the awareness that the rest of the patrons were aware of this fact as well.

The man across from me took a quick look around the car when he came in and then zoomed over to the seat across from me. He said that he was a Buffalo tour guide and that it was obvious that I was from out of town. And that it's okay, he's out of jail now. He gave me his name and extended his hand. I shook it lightly and uncomfortably, politely answering with my first name. He says that it's clear that I'm from out of town, and he wonders where I'm from. I just shake my head and sort of smile, trying to politely ignore him, if that's possible. He says that I need to smile. He asks if I would like to hear a joke. I just shake my head. He tells me a joke anyway. It's the one about the parrot that sings "chestnuts roasting on an open fire," if you're familiar was that one. I try to crack a little bit of a smile, but shake my head again. I look away. He says that I really need to smile. He then discusses in length that, yes, he just got out of jail. He expresses his disbelief at how they could put him in jail with a murderer as a cellmate. He talks about how they brought tours of high school students through, watching them as though they were in a zoo, but that the kids really need to see what it's like, they need to know so they don't end up there themselves. Then he focuses again one how could they possibly put him in there was a murderer? He's just a thief. He just mugs people. And he does it because he needs to get money somehow, you know? But that guy, he murdered someone. He, himself, just mugs people! I continue nodding, distantly. But don't worry, he's off for Christmas, it's okay. Then he says how he's going down to see the police just then. Then he says that he's just joking, he's actually going dancing. Then he gets up and starts dancing. He says again that I need to smile more. And then he gets off at the first of the above-ground stops downtown.

Looking back, he was probably just joking with me about being a thief and about having been in jail. He probably thought that since I was white and I guess okay looking, not from around there, I would probably believe him, or maybe think it was funny? But it seems most likely that he was just making fun of me, in a way that he probably laughed about later. But I'm even now, in the safety of my home, I'm not entirely sure of that. He may very well have been a mugger. He may very well have been in jail. How would I know? In either case, it bothers me that he was targeting me for his games. I don't appreciate it.

At the time, certainly, it made me very nervous, and I didn't want to take any chances. He got off at Theater, I think, and I was getting off at Church, which is only a few blocks down. It's a totally run-able distance away. It could have been entirely possible for him to run down to my stop and mug me ambush-style when I got of the train. Therefore, I was ready. As I maneuvered my way to the front door and onto the platform, I already had my mother's number dialed and was pressing call. I needed to on the phone as I walked through the dark streets to the bus station. There were a couple other people walking from the metro to the bus station, too, also with luggage, so I felt much more safe tagging along just behind them. There were clumps of people along the streets, waiting inside the little shelters for their buses. They made me uncomfortable and I rushed by each of those clumps.

Eventually, I made it to the bus station, where people looked at me funny. I don't know why. Sometimes there are people on the phone. Get over it. I looked at the time and saw that I had about 45 minutes until my bus was going to leave. I hadn't properly eaten anything all day, what with my rush around the apartment and around the whole campus to get everything ready to leave. So at the bus station I hung up with my mom, made a trip to the vending machine for some soda and some chips, and sat down to eat. When I was done, I thought I should get my ticket out of my backpack so that it's more accessible. Well, not a ticket precisely. Megabus doesn't meed a ticket. What they need is your reservation number which they email to you. I opened up the paper to look it over, only to realize that my printer did something it hadn't done since October: it didn't print the bottom of the page. So where the reservation number should be is a white blank space. Not good. I had glanced at it when I was done printing it, and I had seen numbers and was satisfied (remember I was in a hurry), but those numbers were the order number, not the reservation number. And I know from seeing this sort of problem with other people before, that nothing else will do, not your order number, nor your name, nor the rest of the entire bloody email. Only the reservation number matters.

I immediately called my mom again. It was about 11:44, but the bus wasn't there yet. Sometimes the bus is as late as half an hour or more, so I thought I should be fine. I think the closest to on time I had yet seen it was 15 minutes late. I called my mom and told her to start turning the computer on (a process that takes perhaps 10-20 minutes). Then I explained to her the problem. She said that it would be quicker for her to look it up on her phone. So I gave her my email and my password and told her the date on which the email was sent, so she could find it, since it's a ways into all of the nonsense mail. I hang up to let her use her phone.

At 11:46, the bus comes. I step outside with everyone else. But while they're all marveling over the fact that this bus this time is a double-decker, I bouncing on the balls of my feet waiting for my mom to get back to me with my number. I stand in line and wait. I planned on just handing the man the paper and then acting like I didn't know the number was missing. That's what I did. He says I'm missing part of it. He points to my phone and says that I need to look it up. Why is it that everyone assumes everyone has phones that can do that sort of thing? Mine is a 15 dollars cheap phone from Walmart because my other phone broke after having it for four years. My plan is pretty cheap, anyway, I can't really afford the fancy stuff, although I had been talking to my mom about switching. My brother even offered to sell me his phone so that he could get an iPhone after adding his Christmas money to his own earnings (that he's supposed to be saving for his tuition...). So it certainly was not lost on me just then that I really need a new phone that I can use to check my email.

I explain to the man that I'm waiting for my mom to finish checking and call me back. I look at the time. It's 11:50. What could be taking her so long? He just says that I need to call somebody, obviously not understanding that I'm already trying to get the number. I try calling my mom. No answer. I call the home phone, and she answers, and yells at me for how many pages of junk notification emails from Twitter and Facebook she has to scroll through. Apparently what is three pages on my email layout on my computer is many more pages on her phone, and each page takes a long time to load. The man keeps asking me if I have it yet, and I have to try to explain to him that she's trying to look it up, but it's just taking awhile. But each time I talk to him, my mom thinks I'm talking to her, and each time I talk to my mom, he thinks I'm talking to him. I'm about ready to cry. I have my mom yelling at me, and I have this guy saying that if I don't get this number very soon, I'm going to have to stay behind. I wouldn't be able to go home for Christmas. I'd have to stay at the bus station all night because the metro stops running at about midnight. I really didn't want to get back on the metro anyway, not with dancing muggers telling jokes, and I didn't exactly want to stay at the bus station for pretty much the same reason. It was awful.

Except full of people
and things and darkness

But eventually, my mom found the email with the number, I read it out to the guy, and my mom didn't give me time to repeat it to him properly, but eventually he got the first third of the numbers and said good enough. I got on the bus. There were no seats on the bottom, so I had to go up the stairs. I hung up with my mom and tried to find a seat. It was hard. There weren't very many extra seat. Or at least not ones that didn't already have people's things in them. In the second to last row of seats on the bus, I found a mostly empty seat. It didn't have coats and multiple bags in it, just one single bag. I asked the guy if I could sit there, and he moved the bag for me. Good, I was on the bus and I had a seat. I hate it when the buses are crowded, but at least I had a seat next to someone who was roughly my age and decent looking. He was on a laptop when I sat down; he was on Facebook even. That's a good sign, I thought. Surely someone who has friends and needs to chap on Facebook while on a bus in the middle of the night must be an okay kind of guy. And I liked his hair, from the little I saw of it.

My iPod is pretty much 90-years-old in iPod years, so it stayed back in my apartment. I didn't have anything to listen to or anything to do. It was extremely awkward to just sit down in my seat and... sit there. But that was how that first evening of traveling ended, and that is where I will end this post. The next day had equally crazy adventures, so I will be sure to write about those, too. There were heights and live wire and business men in suits. I'm serious. Just you wait.

It's Tea Time!

2011-12-28T23:54:00.002-05:00

This post is all about tea, but not about all tea. It is a post about the teas that I currently have in my apartment. Yes, I'm currently at home in Maryland for Christmas, but I thought it would be a good idea, while I'm nice and cozy (cold) here, to write about what sorts of teas are going to be getting me through the cold, snowy months* when I go back home to Buffalo. And there are a lota of teas here, because, if you know me, you know I have this thing about liking to have choices (not necessarily actually choosing, but just having choices). And most of these teas are Bigelow; I think I've added pictures of any others. So, tea time it is!

English Breakfast - The standard tea, I think. It doesn't get more basic than this. I usually like to drink it with a little sugar and a little Irish creme coffee creamer.

Earl Grey - My favorite tea. Apparently, it is also the choice of tea of many awesome people, such as Ciel in the anime Black Butler and Captain Picard and probably many more. But it was my favorite long before I knew all of that. Since elementary school probably. I usually drink it with just a little sugar. The taste is rich enough itself that it doesn't blend well with cream, I think.

Decaf. Earl Grey - This is the decaf. version of my favorite tea. Caffeine doesn't usually have much effect on me. I will have trouble sleeping sometimes, but it seems irregardless of if my tea was decaf. or not. However, it does make me feel better to have decaf. before bed, so that I can be certain that I'm not making things worse. And this tastes just the same as regular earl grey, so it works out just fine.

Darjeeling - I bought this a couple of weeks ago when I wanted to expand my taste in teas. I picked this kind because it said "the champagne of black teas" on the front of the box, and I thought that that was a very recommendable statement. I had to see if it was really that great. It wasn't. But I drank it with just sugar, and then I tried some creme in it, but I know it wouldn't have been the right flavor of creme. Perhaps I need to experiment a little more before I find the right combination.

Spiced Chai - I like to get tall no-water chai tea latte's from Starbucks. I get a lot of other drinks from Starbucks, too, but since they sell this tea pretty easily at the market, well, it seemed like a good idea to get it. However, chai is a tricky, tricky tea. It must be rich and thick(ish) and sweet, all the while remaining a tea and having that spicy kick. It's even hard for Starbucks to do. That's why I get a no-water, because it's spicier. And also why I only get a tall, because the grande is too weak, too. It's even harder for me to do at home. I've tried, but it just ended up with a messy pot and one cup of halfway-alright tea, and about three cups of kind of gross tea. I may try it again in the coming months and try to get my method down.

Vanilla Caramel - It's a good sort of tea. It's sweet enough with just a little sugar, definitely too sweet with cream or anything. I like to make a pot of this to reheat as needed. I'd then drink it all evening while reading and listening to the local classical radio station. It's just that sort of tea.

Pumpkin Spice - This sort of tea is fine, but it's not that great. You can taste both the pumpkin and the spice, but you really have to think about it and look for the tastes. It's one of the seasonal teas, so it makes it kind of neat. But beyond that, I haven't had it very often due to lack of thrill. I probably will have it more often, though, if only for the sake of variety. I mean, it's not bad, it's just not outstanding.

Apple Cider - Another one of those autumnal seasonal teas. I quite like the bite of the apple, as most fruit teas tend to have, but I think there are just too many flavors in this tea. I'm always a little overwhelmed when I drink it, and the flavors tend to muddy the mix. But it's good as long as I can focus on that apple flavor.

Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride - This is my favorite Christmas seasonal tea. It's pretty sweet, but I like it. Sometimes it's just nice to have a really sweet cup of tea, you know?

Sugar Plum Spice - Another holiday tea! This certainly isn't your standard fruit tea. It certainly does have those crisp fruity flavors of plum, but in addition it has that spice kick, which really adds another whole layer to the blend. Although it's a very rich, flavorful tea, I really like it. It's a bit much to drink regularly (such rich teas can give me a bit of a sore throat), but it is a nice treat to have when you're looking for a really good tea.

Peppermint - This is your standard peppermint tea. I don't think it's as good as the peppermint my grandmother grows and dries herself, of course, but it's a nice bagged alternative. It's a really familiar tea for me, what with it being my grandmother's largest crop from her garden, so I've grown up with lots of it. I find it's familiarity makes this the most relaxing tea for me.

Mint Medley - By mint they mean it blends peppermint and spearmint. It's a nice blend, not as strong as the peppermint, as the spearmint does tend to soften the minty force, but it's good. My brother used to make a big pot of this and then put it in the fridge. It was really good. I never chill the teas I make these days, but if I did, it would be this one that I would use.

Chamomile - They say it's relaxing, but I have yet to experience why. It is perhaps one of the more aromatic teas, though, and for that reason, maybe some might find it more relaxing. It gives me a sore throat sometimes, though, so I'm fairly careful with how often I drink it. Still very nice, though.

Red Raspberry - A fairly standard fruit tea. It has a nice tangy taste to it, a sharp edge, as good fruit teas tend to have. However, just like most fruit teas, it has a lot of potential for becoming a sweeter tea, if you put cream or so in it. I tried it with Vanilla Creme coffee creamer, and although the mixture looked a little less than homogeneous, it tasted really lovely. Definitely worth a try.

Christmas Eve - Yes, yet another holiday blend, but this time it's one my family and I randomly found in the Martins (supermarket, the same company I think as Giant and Tops) back home. I got it as one of my Christmas Eve presents. Half of the box is in English, and the other half is in French. That's how you know it's fancy. But I'm intrigued anytime you give things interesting name, under the assumption that it means an interesting blend. This one is definitely interesting. It's herbal tea, with predominate flavors of cinnamon, orange peel, and spearmint. There's also clove flavor in there too, I think the box said. It actually really work, and between the spice of the cinnamon, the sweet tang of the orange peel, and the sweet mint of the spearmint, it all blends together really nicely, for a taste that I would say is, yes, Christmas-Eve-appropriate.

White Christmas -The same deal as "Christmas Eve" tea. Half-French box, from Martins, got it under the tree Christmas morning. This is a white tea blend with peppermint and ginger root. My brother had this first, and he forgot about it and let it sit for too long, and then he told me that it tasted too much like the ginger. But we figured it was because it sat for so long. My cup was decent, I suppose, but not what I had hoped for. The blend itself sounded like a brilliant mix, but I don't think the peppermint was strong enough. The tea didn't taste fresh enough. Although, the ginger had a nice appearance in the aftertaste, and I always admire a flavor complex enough to have an aftertaste.

Merry Mint - Another Christmas like the two above. I just got this one today, because it was on sale with all of the Christmas candy for $1.69, which is a fairly good price for tea. So I bought it to try. It's green tea with peppermint, spearmint, ginger, lemongrass, and wintergreen oil. It has a strong base of, I think, the lemongrass. You can't really taste the ginger as much in this one as the previous tea above. Of the mints, you can taste the spearmint more than the peppermint, but both together are weaker again than i would have expected. I guess I'm not used to the mints used in blends like this and not by themselves. The wintergreen seems to be more for the aroma, which is perhaps the best part of the tea. You can really smell the wintergreen and the spearmint in the aroma, making it a delicious blend of minty and sweet. Great for the holidays.

*These months last all the way through April and sometimes even into May. You've just gotta love Buffalo, right?

The Holly Jolly Holidays [a somewhat creepy story]

2011-12-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

So, I wanted to write a holiday post. But the problem is, I don't think I can write a holiday post without offending someone. I think it's nonsense, but all I hear about the holidays this year are complaints. A lot of them. And it's stopping me from enjoying my favorite time of the year. So I've put off this holiday post for a long while, now. And I can't put it off much longer. So I just wrote a story, one that I think everyone should be able to enjoy, or maybe no one, I'm not sure. Just try to complain, I dare you. Either way, I don't think I care anymore. Enjoy. You probably won't. I am so sorry. Christmas really is my favorite holiday....

~*~*~*~

Once upon a time, since that's how all good stories that are worth their salt begin, there was a little elf. This elf lived at the North Pole and was friends with all of the other elfs.* It grew up singing Christmas songs year round, and it ate nothing but Christmas cookies without having to worry about gaining weight, because that is the elf's natural diet. It wasn't educated in anything besides toys, and happiness, and Christmas lights, but it always got straight A's on its Christmas-report-card, along with enough letters to spell "Merry Christmas" of course.

He was a very well-behaved little elf. Sure, he went through his phases, just like the rest of them. When he was still a child he tried to steal toys from the workshop like all of his friends so that they could play with them themselves. Then, during his teenage years, he ran away and decided to become a dentist. It was merely a childhood dream, though, because the elfs' teeth had evolved into diamonds, what with all of the sweets they ate; they had no need for dentists at all. And then in his college years, when he was away from home, down with the Southern Water Tribe, he briefly decided to convert and be Jewish and celebrate Hannakah and just give up on Christmas entirely. He could never figure out how to spell his new holiday, though, so he eventually abandoned it, too. And when he returned to the North Pole, he decided to once more take up that warm and cozy blanket of Christmas.

But still he was a good elf. Just about as good an elf as you could find. Sure, he was a little disillusioned with the whole Christmas spirit, but don't all the elfs get that way, once they realize Santa Claus isn't real? Once they realize that for their whole lifes they've been working away to help out a big commercial toy operation? That the real Santa Claus had died generations before? Once they started understanding the meaning behind the evil eyes scratched into the bathroom stalls with the inscription "Satan Claws" underneath of it? So all things considered, this was a very, very good little elf. There were many who were worse, and I'd rather not talk about those....

But this little elf, he didn't give up hope entirely, like so many of them did. He was good. He took stock of the situation. After he graduated and returned to the North Pole, he entered the elfish work force in the capacity of a minor desk clerk in marketing. He licked stamps. Then he was promoted to opening letters. When his request for funds for a letter-opener were accepted, his career really took off. He shot through the rankings. Soon he was jetting all over the globe to make mall appearances and to network with all of the big CEOs. And eventually, before he knew it, he was Vice-President of the Vice-Board of Commercial Affairs. And everyone knew that the Vice-Board of Commercial Affairs was one of the most powerful boards second only to the Board of Commercial Affairs.

Eventually, after about a year or two, he rose even higher. Everyone watched him soar. The President of the Vice-Board of Commercial Affairs died, and our elf simply slid into the new chair like it was made for him. And then, after two long years in that position, he slept with the Secretary of the Board of Commercial Affairs, who was able to land him a prime position in the stack of candidates for the next opening on that Board. And our elf, he nailed the interview. Before long he had ousted the Treasurer for embezzlement, the Secretary for scheduling extra vacation time, and the Vice-President for playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving. And he inherited each position in turn. Then, the next year, he arranged that the President himself would be forced to resign due to serious injuries sustained during an ill-advised business meeting during a mall on Black Friday.

And so, our good little elf was now President of the Board of Commercial Affairs at the North Pole, and everyone knows that it is the most powerful board. The good little elf was in charge of Christmas. And so, in a horrible attempt to fix all of the wrongs he had seen throughout his happy little life, he donned the red suit and the white beard, he ate veggies to get the right sort of belly for the job, and he officially declared himself The Santa Claus. And started celebrating Kwanzaa.

The End.

*Since they say the "v" in "elves" was coined by Tolkien, we're going to go back to the true roots of the spelling for this story. Only the truth is good enough for this masterpiece, I assure you.

~*~*~*~

So, did you enjoy it? That's what I thought. A fair warning for future: beware my Christmas stories about elves. They tend to be very cynical or creepy or something. I guess it's not as bad as Santa being Hitler at least, although I feel like it's not far off.

So, sorry for this Christmas derailment. In a couple days, maybe tomorrow even, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled program with posts about teas and my traveling adventures from last Friday. Happy Holidays!

Project for Awesome 2011

2011-12-16T11:00:00.026-05:00

Today (really yesterday, but it was "today" when I wrote this) for me is all about packing, errands, and cleaning. And grading. But that is kind of part of packing -- I want to made the pile of exams I have to take home and back smaller so I have more room for other things. Anyway, as I'm zooming around my apartment doing all of that, I thought I would just take a moment to talk about Project for Awesome.

If you aren't familiar with the Project for Awesome, aka P4A, etc., it is a YouTube thing mostly. It can be kind of confusing, what with all that actually happens during it all, but I'll just skip to the important points.

The Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green, and a ton of other cool YouTubers, the Nerdfighter community, and anyone who just likes being awesome, does this thing in December. This year, it is this weekend! So get ready! Get ready for what you ask? Well, you can make videos promoting a charity or similar organization, you can comment/like/favorite P4A videos to get them some attention, you can tweet about P4A all day long so that it trends on twitter and everyone sees it! Or help out with any other sort of promotion, too! There's something easy to do for everyone! Check out videos explaining it in more detail on YouTube if you're interested. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kab9yTQr2c&feature=g-u&context=G23c2761FUAAAAAAAIAA) - That video sort of explains it, I guess. You can find a link to the P4A website there too.

The point of this post, though, is to talk about what my strategy would be if I were able to participate, which I can't do because I'm in the process of traveling home and writing papers this weekend.* Just not enough time! Last year I promoted the Harry Potter Alliance, which was in the middle of its Deathly Hallows campaign and lots of awesome stuff was happening. The HPA still is doing awesome stuff, but this year, while staying with a similar sort of literary-influenced choice, I would suggest Pat Rothfuss' charity-thingy called Worldbuilders.** It too, in fact, has another sort of promotion project in which you donate to Heifer International.*** And he, too, will match 50% of your donations. Those are the best kind of donations, right? The ones that mean even more giving? Yes, they are probably the best kind, in case that was not clear. But it's actually even cooler than that. You get entered to win some really awesome prizes if you donate. Worldbuilders is also auctioning off neat stuff and selling neat stuff, which the proceeds going to the same place. Awesome, right? Yes, the answer is yes. So I'm kind of hoping people talk about it among all of the Project for Awesome festivities. It has a lot of the same values as the Project for Awesome. Pat Rothfuss, is, after all, fairly nerdy himself, as most P4A'ers tend to be. He's an author, and he writes the best high fantasy novels of our day.**** At least the prizes are nerd-worthy for sure. And all of this is reflected in the ideas of this charitable project. It adds a nice flavor to it, don't you think? So I suggest that you go on over to the good old Patrick Rothfuss Blog and check it out. And then, I would suggest that you promote it during P4A stuff, or even just ignore P4A, if you absolutely must, and just donate through this. Donate so much that he is "penniless and living on the street," because he'll be fine, no need for you to worry about him -- I've read The Name of the Wind, and as long as he follows his own writing, he'll be fine.

I just wish I had the time to do cool stuff like this. But, alas, grad school sort of devours most of my time, so I can merely recommend my desired course of actions to others. So remember, the Project for Awesome is this weekend, so do try to get in on some of the crazy internet fun. It's actually a really stunning idea, and even more amazing to see how huge it can be!

*And speaking of writing papers, sorry for the rambling, sometimes-uninformative nature of this post. I am just so tired of writing at the moment.

**http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2011/12/worldbuilders-2011/

***http://www.heifer.org/

****Read The Name of the Wind if you doubt this claim. Repeat as needed.

Book Review: Moving Pictures and Reaper Man

2011-12-09T18:50:00.001-05:00

It's been awhile since I've done a book review. This is because I haven't read many books lately. The semester is really busy, and if you happen to not be a Classics PhD student, let me just tell you right now: there's a lot of reading involved. I'm still trying to do the 50 Books Challenge this year, but I'm not sure if I'll make it. Check out the current state of the list of "Books I've Read this Year" over on my "What I'm Reading" page to see why I'm concerned. However, if you glance up at the "Books I'm Currently Reading" section, you'll see that I have a ton of books that I am part-way through and that wouldn't be too hard to tip over onto the list below. It's hard to tell if I'll make it to 50 or not, but I'm going to try. December is a rallying month for that.

Anyway, it took me a long, long time to read Moving Pictures -- and I'll explain why in the actual review below* -- and then I finished Reaper Man over the Thanksgiving holiday. Finally, I have another pair of books to write my thoughts about. Hope you enjoy. If you've read them, let me know what you think!

Moving Pictures
So what do I think of Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett? Well, I think I could explain this book pretty quickly. At least much quicker than it look to read. Now, I'm very busy when I actually have classes, but that wasn't the reason it took me a little over two months to read. It was overall a fairly dull book. And let me explain why.

They were mostly all new characters. The characters themselves were alright, I guess, but if you know Pratchett's books, many of them incorporate characters you've met before. Sure, there were characters from before, like Dibbler for instance, but so many of the characters weren't acting like themselves. They were influenced by strange Discworld magics of a sort. It's hard to explain without taking forever to do so. The point is, any characters you knew from before weren't really acting like themselves. And there weren't very many of them. The new characters, as I said, were alright, but we didn't get a chance to really appreciate them.

And that's the next problem. We didn't get a chance to appreciate the characters. The book was all about plot. Not even about story. If it was about story, then I would've been better. But it was about all of the clever satire of the golden age of classic Hollywood films. Sure, Pratchett was very clever. But after about a hundred pages, it gets kind of old. The book just kept going and going. Any time we made headway in the story, we'd get sidetracked with the satirical plot. The characters didn't really get to shine. There was hardly any point to many of them. I feel like I understood them eventually, but not without trying really, very hard to get to that point.

There were good things, too. Mostly the end. The end was decent. Finally our main character, Victor, really did something. He showed himself as a capable hero, something he had been sort of hiding throughout the book until that point. We started describing him as lazy and indifferent and lacking drive or passion, but somehow that doesn't quite fit with the end. Or maybe it does, but Pratchett makes no effort to tie it together. It could have been much better than it was, but it was at least enjoyable compared tot he rest of the book.

Reaper Man
This book, also by Pratchett, was pretty good. I wouldn't call it one of my favorites, but it was better than the one before it. The idea of this one is that Death is soon to be fired. And in being fired, he will himself die. He will be killed by the new Death. So he gets his own hourglass that ticks away his life and sets off to really live while he can. But the problem is that there's no new Death for humans, yet. So people die, but their souls linger. There's a lot of paranormal activity, and one of the old wizards who had just died is now a sort of zombie. Those are the two stories to this book: Death's life, and the living dead in Ankh-Morpork.

I think the most moving part of this book, and the most epic, is the description of Death's attempt to live. It's always amazing to see such an ancient and colossal figure among the ordinary people. There are so many simple moments that really mean something great when you look at how big the figure of Death really is. The story is just great for this part. It's beautifully composed, and definitely worth reading. The only thing lacking is Death's character. Death is a common character throughout the Discworld books, and sure, he does have a character, but it's not a particularly engaging character. He's separate from humanity, and Pratchett does such a good job at writing that that he is separate and aloof from the reading as well. He's just hard to get. But that's sort of the point. It makes it hard to get into his story, but it makes it lovely and moving when you think about it.

Now to turn to the undead in the city. This part is a bit strange, and it's also a bit all over the place. Windle Poons at the start of the book dies. I'm not giving anything away, ti says it on the back of the book. And we see an adorable description of his last hours, really touching. You get that feeling of, "Aw, what a sweet old man! So cute!" It really is adorable. And then he runs into problems when Death doesn't come to pick him up, he enters his body again, and then he has to deal with the problem of being an undead. We see a lot of other undeads throughout the whole book, too. It's interesting, but again, they all feel so satirical that they're more parodies than characters. The end is a bit weird. It's clever, of course, but it's just not as rich as the climax to the Death half of the story. I suppose it gives the whole book a good balance, as well as a meaningful contrast maybe. But I just can't say that I was thrilled by the end of this portion. I didn't hate it, but I wasn't immensely moved to any particular affection for it.

So that's it. I think that's all I really need to say about these. Moving Pictures is not one of the better Discworld books, and neither is Reaper Man. But Reaper Man is definitely a book that ought to be read. If you've read either of these books, as I said before, let me know what you thought!

* It's time to point fingers and play the blame game! And I shall point my finger and say, "It was totally the book's fault!"

Cleopatra: An Egyptian Queen or the Best Video Game?

2011-12-06T20:28:00.002-05:00

Just lately I started reading (finally) The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud. I'd been saving it. And as I was nursing my cold over the weekend, having just gotten in a fight with my mom, I was really getting into the mood of the book. Or at least the setting. Or at least the setting in a very, very general sense. I thought that since I was enjoying this ancient near eastern feel so much, why don't I play my favorite video game, which happens to be set in ancient Egypt?

It wasn't just for fun, mind you. This game is pretty much the main reason that I still have my old Dell laptop. My current game is saved on it, and I've gotten to far in that file to be cool with just restarting. I'd been playing it for years and I wasn't ready to through it all away. Also, playing the game on my HP messing up the resolution. Anyway, as I said, not just for fun. Beating three levels of this game is on my 101 Things in 1001 Days list,* and I really need to start making more progress on that list. I had been playing my current level for about three years now. I had to keep restarting the level over and over again, but I could never manage to beat it. So I had put it aside and avoided it for a long while. But this weekend, on a whim, I decided to just turn on the old computer again and give it a try.

It's such a great game, guys. It is everything I love about video games (mostly). It's a city-building game, which are the best kind. They actually require thinking as well as quick skills. And this isn't just any city-building games. Technically, games like Sim City and that series are city-building games, as well as games like (I hate to say it) Farmville. But there are so many complexities to Pharaoh/Cleopatra** that the other games don't have. I can't even begin to describe all of the numbers and calculations, not to mention all of the complexities that come from them. You'll just have to play the game for yourself, I think.*** But just know that it is like, the smart kids version of Farmville, which would in comparison be like, for your dog.**** And another thing that I love about it is, well, it's ancient Egypt. Who doesn't love ancient Egypt! The other game by the same people, Caesar III, is about ancient Rome, and it's cool too, but Egypt is just cooler.

Anyway, so I played the game again over the weekend. And I beat that level! The one that took me three years to beat! And then I beat two more levels, completing the item on my list! And then I beat two more since. That's the good news. The bad news is the I've probably spent too much time on that game lately. No, not probably, definitely. It's the end of the semester, and I'm extremely busy. I don't feel that guilty though, because it is probably the best way to de-stress that I've found yet. I'm not very good at relaxing, but that game really does the trick! I wish I had cooler stuff to talk about though, but that's about all I've got at the moment. Mostly obsessing over the game. Give me a few more days and I'll move on to something else. Something with a few more pages to it....

A picture from the internet, not my actual city or anything.

*www.dayzeroproject.com
** The game is technically Pharaoh, but the expanded version is called Cleopatra, and that's the disc you put in to play the game, so that's what I call it.
*** It's usually super cheap, so I'd recommend it!
**** Assuming you have a stupid dog. I'm sorry, I'm a cat person.

Post-NaNoWriMo Post

2011-12-04T18:06:00.000-05:00

And now what you've all be waiting for.... I won! Yes, I made it all the way to 50k. Fifty thousand words in the month of November. I did it! So here are a few thoughts now that I'm done.

1. I don't feel quite as good about it this year as I did last year. Maybe because it didn't feel like quite as much work. Don't get me wrong, I was pressured and stressed and I wrote nearly just as much, but, well, I didn't put quite as much good work into it. There are a few reasons for that. First, I didn't like my novel as much, so I sort of put it off as long as I could. Last year I was on pace for the first few days, and then until about day 10 I wrote practically nothing, but then I caught up and on the whole stayed that way until the end of the month. There'd be a day or two that I didn't write, and I would make up for it really quick. This time, though, I hardly wrote anything the first half of the month. I mean, I was a little under 10k, so I had some words, just not enough of them. And it wasn't until about Thanksgiving that I really caught up. Just before Thanksgiving I was at about 17k. I was supposed to be about 35k. I was very behind. And I made it up mostly with a few 5k days and one 11k day. But even throughout all that, I didn't quite get into my novel. I didn't really like it. And here's what I'm blaming for that:

2. I planned too much for this one. No, it wasn't that I planned too much, really, it's just that my plot was split up, and had some repetitive scenes. They turned out much longer than they should have, and I don't really know why. I felt my characters were always in the same place doing practically the same things, saying the same sorts of things, and as I looked ahead into what I planned to write, they were still doing that. Last year, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to write. I planned the start of it, but I had no idea how it ended. In fact, what I had thought was the ending turned out not to be by the spring, when I decided to add on a more climatic different ending. Sure, it led to some struggling, such as that day 3-10 stretch of being unmotivated, and then that day 10-15 stretch of writing crap. I got to a point where I didn't know how to write what I wanted the scene to be, but I just wrote through it and moved on to the better things on the other side. This year, I knew I had important scenes here and there, and I would just skip around among them. But then all I was left with were those scenes. I don't think anything really new and worthwhile popped up in the middle. Sure, my characters did things I didn't think they would do, but I didn't get entire new things happening. Except once. And it is probably the best scene in my entire 2011 nano novel. But on the whole, I used the plan too much as a crutch, when I could probably have strolled through my novel on my own.

3. Another problem was the fact that I managed to write really fast. I started slow at first, as always, but about halfway through, when I really needed to catch up, I turned to Write or Die. And with that, I was able to write 1000 words in 20 min. Yeah, that's right, a 20min1k. Over the summer, during Camp NaNoWriMo, we started doing 30min1k's and they worked great. So this time I decided to step it up a notch, and it worked just fine-- I even got to 1200 words in 20 min. quite often. Except it was exhausting. I was usually too tired to write any more afterward. But that wasn't the biggest problem. The real issue with this sort of writing style is that you don't get to spend enough time with your novel. Sure, the strategy of NaNo is to mostly just spit out the words and fix them later, but I was spitting them out too fast. They were there, but I hadn't learned to like them, even a little. All of it felt like that day 10-15 section from last year, where I just had to barrel through and write awfully. I just wrote too fast that I didn't give myself time to enjoy my novel or really enjoy the writing.

4. Because I didn't really get into it until the second half of the month, I missed out on a whole half-month of cool things going on with the NaNo community. And in the second half of the month, I was mostly too busy trying to catch up with writing to spend time around the site. Sure, there was twitter, and I was able to check in with fellow wrimos there, but there was so much more that I missed out on. That community aspect was an important part to my enjoyment of the month last year, and I didn't have that this year. It was just me, me writing a lot of words, far too quickly. It's like sitting by yourself, in a little room, inhaling 50k gallons of ice cream. In the end you have had a lot of ice cream, but it's started to melt and to taste a bit sour, and it didn't take long to get really boring.

5. Because I finished so so so close to the end, it didn't feel so much like winning as it did like not failing. And that's no fun.

6. Because so much of my writing was done in such a little period of time, I don't feel like I developed any really good habits or anything. That would have been really nice. But alas, it was not so.

7. I don't know what I'm going to do with the novel I wrote. I wouldn't even say that the first draft is done, though it does have a beginning, middle, and end of sorts. I ought to finish it at some point. I mean, I will finish it at some point. But not for awhile. I have other drafts to work on, ones that are more promising and more enjoyable. That one, well, I don't even have a title yet! I really wanted to think of a title throughout the month, but I just couldn't. So it will go awhile nameless for awhile.

8. Speaking of finishing drafts, I think I would like to make it a habit to get a significant amount of writing done whenever I go home. So over Christmas break at home, I would like to finish the first draft of my 2010 NaNo novel. That's the goal. And I'm fairly determined about that. Compared to this year's novel, I love last year's. I'll let you know how it goes.

So sorry that this was a little rambling, but my writerly mind is still frazzled from that frantic finish to the month. I will write more interesting things soon, now that it's the end of the semester and other obligations are starting to end.

Dear Santa,

2011-11-25T18:43:00.003-05:00

So now that Thanksgiving is over, it is now appropriate to do Christmas things. I used to think that this could only start on December 1, but considering the majority of society was grumbling about pre-Thanksgiving Christmas cheer and is now calling today a "good enough" time to start Christmas, I feel that I can't help but agree and just give in. I really do just love Christmas.

So, speaking of Christmas, and especially in honor of Black Friday shopping, I thought I'd talk about my own Christmas list for a little bit. I know some people might say that I'm too old to still get a bunch of Christmas presents, but I will tell you that it's not that simple. My mom's rule is that as long as we still come home for Christmas, we get treated like the kids of the family and still get a bunch of presents. Although, due to greater financial hardship, our present budget is down 50% from when we were little kids. So yeah, just to give you some background on my budget here.

Anyway, here's my sort of list of what am getting for Christmas from "Santa" (yes we still play that game, because it's fun). There a definite theme to what I want this year: books and boots. I like how they are really the same word, with only one letter changed. Nice, huh? So let's start with the books:

I'm getting Abarat, by Clive Barker. Mostly because it was recommended by a YouTuber whom I think to have good taste, so far. So I'm trusting her enough to get this for Christmas. I don't know if I'll like it or not. It could be interesting though, and I think it will be sort of like a type of book that I haven't read in a long time. I tend to restrict myself into certain specific kinds of books, and I'm afraid of getting caught in a metaphorical corner. Granted, I do try to expand my tastes, almost every Christmas actually. But a lot of books really are just awful. I think this one might not be. But we'll see. I'll read it and probably put a review of it up on here, in case you're curious what I'll think of it.

I'm also going to get the Magician King by Lev Grossman. Last year, in August I think, I read The Magicians, the first book in this series (although I'm not sure if there are meant to be more books, so I don't know if it's really a series, but whatever it is, you get the idea). It was an interesting book. It was really, really depressing. Perhaps just as depressing as Mockingjay, but in a different way. It was a very real book, though. And I think that's what made it so powerful, somehow. It's hard to describe, you just have to read it. This book came out a few months ago, but new hardcover books are so expensive, so I've been waiting for Christmas to get this. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

I'm also getting Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. It sort of reminds me of such recent(ish) books as Evil Genius and The Mysterious Benedict Society. Along those lines at least. Where there are peculiar children. Of course, these children are much more peculiar than those in the previously mentioned books. I think it is a neat idea though. And apparently the old pictures in it, which were originally kind of creepy, gave the inspiration for the book and the characters. I will admit that I don't know if I'll like it or not, but it seems to have gone over well with readers, and I like the idea, so I'm hopeful. Again, it's a book that came out months ago, but that I couldn't afford. So I saved it for Christmas, and I'm excited to read it.

Another book that I'm getting is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It seems to have a very clever idea, which of course I like in a book, clever and creative. And the real exciting point about this book is not only that it's clever and creative, or that it's been a big hit, but that it's actually a NaNoWriMo novel! I love seeing NaNoWriMo novels do so well. And although the author has already written a pep talk or OLL blog post or something like that and explained how the book as it is is very different from her original NaNo idea, I really would like to see the finished product. I understand the sorts of novels people are writing during November, but it's important to see what my novel may one day be. It's another book that came out months ago, and I saved it for Christmas too. Can't wait to read it and see what all this fuss is about! High hopes here!

And here is another NaNoWriMo novel: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. I'm not usually one to read non-fantasy young adult, but I have nothing really against young adult in general. And from what I've heard it's a really sweet, cute book. It's what young adult probably is supposed to be, fixing the bad image created by Twilight and its type. People my age and older who read young adult have said very good things about this book, so I think I can certainly give it a try. And again, it's a NaNoWriMo novel. Not all published NaNo novels have been as successful as these two I've mentioned, and many other are not ones that I am even remotely interested in reading. But since I am somewhat intrigued by these, I'll swipe up the chance to see what these NaNo novels have become! This book has been out for quite a while, too, and Perkins' second book has already been out for months, so I really need to get cracking on this book!

I'm getting Douglas Adams' The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because I haven't read it yet. And I'm sure you understand how horrible that is, to have not yet read it. I know, I'm an awful person. I've been putting this about for about nine or ten years now, seriously. So it's about time, huh?

I'm getting Iorich by Steven Brust because it is the next in the series. It's a pretty good series. The pacing can be problematic at times, as can the overall plot, since it varies so much. However, one thing that is unfailingly great is the voice of our first-person narrator. That is never a disappointment, it is one of the best you'll find. This book came out a long time ago, but I don't bother paying a lot of money for the hardcovers in a series like this. I can just as easily wait. That being said, it's been two years since I read the book before this one, so it's certainly time that I get this paperback for Christmas this year.

I'm getting Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce based on the recommendation by the same YouTuber I mentioned before (I think). It seems like a good book though, I like to read different takes on fairly tales, and this author seems to have a promising series of them going. I thought I would just buy the first book and give it a try. Hopefully it's good.

I'm getting Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead. Last year I got Hood and Tuck, the first and third books in this trilogy. So obviously now I need the second. I'm not finished reading the first, though, so I haven't been in too big of a rush. I like this author. The Pendragon Cycle series was one of my favorite series back in like, eighth grade. This particular series about Robin Hood has been sort of slow so far, but I'm only about 100 pages into the first book, so I'm sure it'll pick up, and then I'll be very thankful that I got the second book.

And lastly of the books, I am getting Maskerade by Terry Pratchett. I have several more books in the series before I get to this one, but it's the next one that I need to get. I'm mostly getting it because three of the above books are under the 4-for-3 promotion on Amazon, so I needed another 4-for-3 book so that I could get it for free. That's right, I'm getting this book because it's free. I figure that I'll buy it eventually anyway, so I should probably buy it now for free, right? Since I didn't have anything more pressing to get.

So, that's all for the books. At least for now. I'm not quite finished with my Christmas list yet, so I may very well go home after the semester is over and shop around and pick up another crazy book or two if anything on sale looks good.

But let's move on to the other category: boots. I can really only afford one pair, actually. It was even on sale for Black Friday from Bon Ton. My mom picked them up at midnight last night. They were originally $80, were on sale because of Black Friday for $41.29, but were actually $31.29 after my mom used a $10-off coupon she had. Great deal, huh? These are Rocket Dog's "Chomper." Despite the name, I like them. Lace-up boots seem to be all the rage now, or are at least coming into style. However, so many lace-up boots look like combat boots, especially after they come with labels that say "combat boots." But you know what I don't want? Combat books. When I first saw all of the lace-ups at Bon Ton in August, I thought, "Wow, these remind me of the Black Forest!" Now, perhaps I should pause and briefly discuss how I do style. I sort of usually start with an article of clothing that reminds me of a theme. It might be "1910 Luxury" or "1950s" or "Not Quite Goth" or "Not Quite Witch" or "New York Artist in Loft Apartment" or "Princess." And then I use that idea to complete the outfit to my tastes. The theme keeps the outfit together, keep me inspired, gives me almost like a role to play as I wear it. But the "my tastes" part of course keeps it under control so that it is still an outfit rather than a costume. And I know it sounds crazy when I explain it like this, but trust me, I usually get a lot of compliments on my wardrobe. Anyway, I saw all these boots and thought "Black Forest girl, ripe for the fairy tale picking!" Do you see what I mean? But then most of them said "combat boots" on them and absolutely ruined everything. But I still see "Black Forest girl" until I'm reminded by the labels. These, however, aren't called "combat boots" anywhere. And I think that the little strappy bits with the buckles are far more "Black Forest girl" than "combat boots," don't you think? And yes, I got these grey ones. Apparently, they come in other colors, according to the internet, but Bon Ton only had the grey ones. Which I think is just fine. Usually I would buy black boots, but really grey goes better with black leggings. My black boots go fine with my grey leggings, but they look more awkward with the black leggings. So now I will have grey ones to wear, instead. I like them. Of course, I have yet to try them on. I tried to point them out to my mother in August, trying to explain to her that I would probably want them for Christmas, and since I wouldn't be home before then, she should take careful note as to what they were. She was too busy digging her way through the piles of summer-shoe-sales to pay me any attention though. But at least I got to tell her "I told you so!" right?

Anyway, so that is my Christmas list so far. Oh, and I also want something to hook my laptop up to my TV if I can. But that wasn't quite as interesting. Also, I haven't found what I would need yet. But I thought I would just make a post about this, in case anyone was interested or needed ideas for their own Christmas list! Hope you all have lovely start to your Christmas season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T14:56:00.002-05:00

I never say what I'm thankful for. I'm sorry if that was what you were expecting from this post, but I'm going to start out brutally honest and say that I just don't do that. It's not that I'm not thankful for things, it's just that there's so much, you know? How can you pick just a few things? Isn't it unfair to the rest of what you should be thankful for? You just can't get everything in your "What I'm thankful for" list. So I just skip the list entirely. I know I'm thankful for things, the act of being thankful isn't in the act of saying that you are, after all.

In any case, I'm just not a big fan of Thanksgiving. I love turkey, though. It is my favorite meat, especially if it is nice and dry turkey breast (yes, I know I'm weird, I've been fully informed, don't worry). And I do like mashed potatoes. And gravy is special just because it's a luxury that we usually can't afford to have. Pumpkin pie is alright. But I don't like stuffing, I don't like cranberry sauce, frozen vegetables we have all the time, rolls aren't ever a thing to get very excited over.... So that's my view of the meal.

Now let's move on to Thanksgiving practices. And of these, let's first talk about company. My family is fairly small. For most of my life growing up, Thanksgiving dinner was just me, my mom, my brother, and my grandmother. My uncle came by for dessert after he ate dinner with his wife's family. But really, for the main meal, it was just the four of us. Nothing special really, except that my grandmother never ate dinner with us usually, so that made it special. Especially when I was in high school and my mom and my grandmother decided that they would start having wine with the meal. My grandmother almost always spilled her wine on me, without fail. Don't you just love traditions? But then, in the last couple of years when I came back from college for Thanksgiving, my grandmother decided not to come down. It was just my mom, myself, and my brother. It was really not much different than normal dinner, except that we ate at the table instead of in the living room. That made it fancy. Not really, of course. When I was little I always wanted everyone to dress up for the occasion, but that always just ended with me in a dress and my family around the table in sweatpants or jeans. Awkward. But it can, in fact, get less fancy, apparently, when it's just three people sitting at the table instead of on the couch.

And starting last year, I stopped going home for Thanksgiving. It's just far too expensive and takes too long (about 100 dollars and 40 hours round trip, or 200 dollars and maybe 20 hours round trip). So at home, it's just my mother and my brother. A very small dinner now. And up here it's just me, even smaller. I still make my microwaveable turkey, and instant mashed potatoes. This year I'm making real mashed potatoes though! I skip out on the vegetables, not because I don't like vegetables, but because I already have enough food for me to eat, I never have room for vegetables too. I tried last year, but they just weren't eaten. Also, they tasted really gross. Don't buy the Wegmans frozen mixed vegetables, guys; just don't do it. I made rolls last year too, but I didn't have room for them either. I ate them the next day, for three meals. I don't think I ate anything else besides rolls on Black Friday last year.

But Thanksgiving alone is nice. This year I could have gone with my friends and had Thanksgiving with everyone else, but I would rather eat at home alone. It's nice. I get to dress up and not be overdressed compared to everyone else (since there's not anyone else). I can watch whatever I want on TV, I can read all day, I can catch up on my NaNoWriMo wordcount. That is a very big part of Thanksgiving for me: NaNoWriMo. I'm usually rather behind by this point, and in desperate need to catch up. Still true this year. I usually stay up late Thursday night and enjoy the fact that while people are getting ready for their Black Friday shopping (or sometimes starting it, since so many places are opening early this year) I'm staying up late writing a novel in my cozy little apartment. Isn't that nice? Now that's what I call a holiday.

After all, when I was little, waiting in the house all day while the smell of turkey filled the air, to distract myself from my growling stomach (because with all the holiday dinner excitement we were usually pretty low on actual food) I would play. I think I usually built myself a little blanket fort and brought my stuffed animals inside. I would imagine that we were snowed in and that we had to survive with what little we had and ration out things. I always loved the idea of being snowed in, or stuck inside somewhere. That was the plot every time I played with my Barbie dollhouse or anything like that. But especially around Thanksgiving, when I wanted nothing more than snow outside and a cozy, content me inside. And I have that now, don't I? Does this mean I win at Thanksgiving? I think so.

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone reading this! Wish me luck on my wordcount!

Obligatory NaNoWriMo Post

2011-11-04T17:04:00.003-04:00

Yes, it is November. So, yes, it is NaNoWriMo time. This is my fifth year attempting the challenge, but will only be my second year winning.* I'm behind already.

What is my novel about, you ask? Well, please let me regale you with the moderately adventurous adventures of Elsie Guest. She's a gypsy, more by spirit than by blood. Mostly, her family has nomadically lived around eastern Europe for a couple centuries, long enough for them to be unsure if they were ever really Romani or not. They certainly don't think that it's a necessary part of the lifestyle. All you need is the gypsy spirit. And Elsie has it. She loves traveling and wandering and roaming. That's the problem, her parents have sent her to a dreary town in Maine to live with her great-aunt Ruth and attend high school like a "normal" 14-year-old girl. She's unsure about settling down, but willing to consider high school another sort of adventure. It certainly does become one, once she and her friends begin to think that their ugly old hag of a guidance counselor might be the legendary Baba Yaga, a hag/witch who lives in a house on chicken legs, drives a mortar and pestle, gives guidance, chooses heroes, and eats children. Is she really Baba Yaga? Is she a danger to the town? Can the friends save whoever may be in danger? And can Elsie quench her wanderlust?

It's actually really fun, trust me. You haven't even heard about the other characters, yet. They're great. I got my ideas for them from eavesdropping and people-watching at Starbucks. And that obviously means that they're awesome, right? I thought so, too. I don't have a title yet though. So, if you'd be so kind, leave comments with any suggestions!

Anyone wondering whatever happened to "Magic Tricks of the Trade," last year's NaNo novel, let me ease your concerns: I'm not finished at all, but I'll go back to working on it soon. If I'm still capable of writing in December.

What's my strategy for NaNo this year, you wonder? My, you are just full of questions today, aren't you? Well, I'm just going to write when I get the chance. As with last year, I'm going to accept that I will get behind, and that I will catch up later in the month. The beginning is much, much harder to write than the rest, even a poorly-written beginning is very difficult. It just takes so much longer. But my novel will soon pick up pace, and I will have fewer parts that sound like horrible fanfiction (I hope). I may also attend some write-ins on campus, because I'm a huge fan of the Inklings** idea. Anyway, so there's that.... This year I'm working against popular opinion, though. In that, most of my friends in the department scoff at the idea of writing a novel. They assume that I must have tons of time to do such a thing. Really, I don't. They give me a rough time for not going to the Library (our local bar) with them, or going to Halloween parties and such, but they don't realize that I sort of use that time to write and read and blog, etc. And I'm fairly certain they on occasion do other things, too. But somehow doing NaNoWriMo reflects poorly on me -- not the most encouraging thing in the world, right? Oh well. I don't know how I'm going to make up for that, how I'm going to make it look awesome and myself just ridiculously busy, but when I figure it out, that'll be part of my strategy for this year as well.

What else is new this NaNo? Well, I'm mentoring four newbies, I think. I'm excited for the novels they're writing, and I hope that I can get these wrimos all the way to 50k with some pretty smashing novels! I am busier because of it, of course. But you know what? I think I can only really write 50k if I'm busy. I failed twice over the summer during Camp NaNoWriMo and thrice during previous NaNoWriMo seasons in undergrad. I think being busy really helped last year. Writing was definitely the more relaxing and fun thing, compared to all of the other work I could have been doing instead.

I've written a lot for this blog, so I think I will leave you all for now. I will perhaps write another NaNo update blog or two throughout the month, if anyone's interested in that. In fact, it's almost a certainty. For now, though, I'm roughly 3334 words behind! Gotta get writingggg!!!

* For anyone who doesn't know (since it'll be important for understanding the rest of the blog), NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It is always the month of November. The challenge is to write 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days of the month. If you make it to 50k, you win! You don't win anything besides the 50k you wrote, your pride, bragging rights, a certificate, and some other discounts and such. But trust me, it's worth it.
** The Inklings (if you don't know already for some reason) -- the writing group Tolkien and Lewis were a part of in Oxford. I just want to become Professor Tolkien, don't mind me....

Shush, I'm Researching!

2011-10-30T17:41:00.000-04:00

I seem to like to start posts discussing etymologies, but here I have nothing to say where I wish I had something. I really do wonder at the moment what the word research breaks down into. Re-search. To search again? That's a strange way to look at it! I'm not really sure how the word works, and that's just fine, I am far too busy with all sorts of other kinds of research to research the word "research."

What kinds of other research you ask? Plenty of things. I'm researching things for my Masters Project such as Greek colors, metals, various ancient poetry and mythologies, etc. I'm researching things for my Greek epigraphy class such as Argos and the Athenian Empire. I'm researching things for my Tacitus class such as Tacitus, Celtic/Germanic religion and rituals, and the concept of the Other. Also, let us not forget, research for my NaNoWriMo novel, such as the legend of Baba Yaga.

But thinking and sometimes stressing about all of my research has brought me to thinking about how there are so many variations on the idea of research. Some of my more science-oriented friends are simply appalled by the idea that research may consist of sitting for hours and hours at a time in a library, just reading. They feel that that isn't research, it is learning, studying. Research for the scientist may be finding answers, but research for the humanities scholar is gathering information from which the scholar finds the answer himself. When you look at it this way, they are two very different processes.

And then let's turn to the NaNoWriMo research that I'm doing. Research for writing. It is much like doing research for any other creative venture. The main difference for this sort of research is the scope of it, usually. When researching for any of my academic projects, I usually have very specific topic I am looking into. No matter what stage of the research I am at, there are always two types of research: opinions that agree with mine and opinions that don't. Even if I don't know what my opinion is yet, by sorting what I read into these two categories, I find it.

Researching for writing, however, is not about opinions. You need to read as much as you can and not judge correct or incorrect. Usually, you're still in the creative process here, and you can't shut out any new ideas, you can't categorize them. Well, as suppose you can, but into the basic: things I know already, and things I don't. And then you taste everything in the latter category, ponder over it, savor it, and then decide if you want to serve it at your party of a novel. You also don't always need to check the facts. Sometimes, the fact that it would make a good story is enough. You are presumably writing fiction, after all.

It is by far the most fun, and really the most exhausting research to do. The good thing is that you don't have to go any farther than you want. For my academic writing, I need to go as far as I possibly can when researching a topic. When creatively researching, you only need to go as far as you want. When you think you have enough for your story, perhaps you should go a little bit farther, just in case. After all, isn't the fact that good backgrounds really help things out something that we can learn from Professor Tolkien? But once you stretched your limits a little farther, you could probably stop. It's really up to you at that point. You can still write a fantastic story without further research, no one's going to be judging that. It's all about working it. Making it work... no, unlike my Latin professor, I have not been watching Project Runway.

And with that, I'm out! To actually not do research, actually, but just regular homework. Wishing everyone else the best of luck in their own researching endeavors!

October

2011-10-18T16:53:00.000-04:00

Before you say anything: I know. I know, I know, I know. I haven't written anything for quite a little while, and I am sincerely sorry for my discourteous sudden absence. Have some complimentary virtual (and possibly imaginary) candy corn with my apologies. Yes, please, it's no problem; I have plenty of virtual candy corn, because it's October! And to celebrate October, please have some more virtual candy corn, and I will give you a few snippets of October-ness.

~ Today I was returning from giving a paper at an academic conference. My bus had arrived downtown at the station shortly after 7:00. I waited awhile for the metro to start running. When I felt it was close enough to the time, I left and walked to the metro stop. I set down the bag I was carrying, pressed the buttons for my ticket, and then retrieved two one's from my purse. Then there was a moment. It was just barely after sunrise, the wind was whipping about, tangling in my bangs and hairs that had fallen out of place, threatening to tear the bills from my hand as I fought to feed them to the machine. Church bells began to chime. The leaves along the sidewalk danced merrily to the music with the autumnal wind. It was magical, really. I love wonderful moments like that.

~ On a less serious note, but a no less important one, October means planning for NaNoWriMo. I am very excited about this. I had had no idea what I was going to write when the new NaNo site when up early in the morning on October 11. I thought about it all the next day and finally decided on a main character. Additionally, I chose to use some other characters I had developed through people-watching at Starbucks earlier in the month to compliment my MC. I added a fourth character, and then everything really started going. They all have great names, work great together, all perfect. But I had no plot for them! Oh, sure, I had a vague idea of something, an idea I created from memories of some books I liked in elementary school. But it was the absolutely vaguest of ideas. When I had a boring free hour at my conference, I called my brother and ran my vague idea by him and asked for advice. And as usual, he pulled through and gave me a pretty good idea. And from that, the plot has been unraveling before my mind faster than I can write it down. Now all of my ideas and scenes and characters, they are like Christmas presents sitting under the tree, premature for the unwrapping. I'm waiting in the wings of the stage, bouncing on the balls of my feet, eagerly and nervously awaiting for the curtain to rise and the overture to finish. (Please excuse my multiple metaphors.)

~ October is Halloween season! This is the time of the month during which I review ABC Family's 13 Nights of Halloween schedule and make all of my favorite movies on the calendar. I received an invite to a Halloween party just the other day. I'm frantically trying to think of a costume that is clever, flattering, and possible. (Speaking of which, if anyone has any good ideas, I would definitely appreciate them!) I'm also trying to fit as many Halloween-ish books into my reading schedule, despite how little time I have to read for fun these days. And since my students deserve some good Halloween fun, too, I'm turning over ideas for spooky assignments for them.

Fall Television

2011-09-27T22:48:00.000-04:00

It seems like a lot of people have been talking about their favorite shows that are starting up again around about this time. So what will I be watching this fall?

1) Sherlock. I know that it isn't set to air this fall anymore, but I'm including it anyway. I will probably be re-watching the three existing episodes like a complete maniac. Or like a high-functioning sociopath. Wait, no, a maniac.
2) Merlin. I'm doing my first conference presentation on this show. How could I not be watching it? It seems like it'll be getting pretty different for this season, and I'm sort of both concerned and excited. But you can't really go wrong with the cast they're using, can you? And I have high hopes for the magic reveal happening soon.
3) How I Met Your Mother. I watched the two-part premiere last Monday. I'm not sure if there's anything I'm excited about plot-wise... I'm mostly just really into anything that involves more Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris. The plots are always marvelous, though, and I will continue to enjoy them throughout this next season, I'm sure.
4) The Vampire Diaries. I've watched the two episodes of this season, and it seems like it could get pretty interesting. I have a problem with the commercial format that the CW is using though, in that the commercial time and the show time about just about equal, and I find it immensely difficult then to really concentrate on the show. Also, I feel that there is so much time being given to other sub-plots that the main story arc (You know, the Elena one? Remmber her?) is losing its importance. And I'm really bored by this Jeremy sub-plot. I didn't mind him before, even while it seemed everyone else online was ranting about how wasn't in the books and was an annoying character. Now, however, I just don't care, but I'm seeing him all the time. Also, he shoulders are too big.
5) Doctor Who is actually just ending its season, but it still counts as a fall show. It is awesome.
6) Glee. So I watched the season premiere of Glee earlier this week (I'm waiting for the second episode to load as I'm uploading this). I really do feel that I only watch that show for Darren Criss. And I have grown rather fond of Kurt too. I'm not sure I like Blaine as a character, but, you know, does that really matter? It's Darren Criss people. A year ago I heard that rumor that he would be on again, and I didn't believe it, but I kept watching just in case. And then it was true, and I was so excited. So the fact aht Darren Criss is even more important to the show is just even better. That's about all I have to say about Glee, just Darren Criss.
7) The Secret Circle. To be honest, I didn't have very high hopes for this show. I have nothing again teen supernatural dramas, certainly not. But the in the way I heard it described, it seemed a bit, well, cliche maybe. Of course that's what other people will say though, I know. I didn't watch it right away. Instead, it came on after The Vampire Diaries this week. I watched the first few minutes, and I thought it was alright. Not like anything actually happens in the first few minutes of the second episode. Even less happens if you don't know who anyone is yet because you haven't watched the first episode. But the song... that was what got me. They will have to make the show pretty awful for me to stop watching that show, just because of that song. It adds a tone to the show that is childish, yet dark. I love the idea of dark nursery rhymes, etc. Anyway, I watched both episodes in order then, and decided that so far, it's good enough. I'm sure it will get better. But what is up with Phoebe Tonkin's accent, right? Is she trying to hide it? I just watched all two good seasons of H2O this summer, so it's hard for me to watch her again so soon. But she's great, though... but that accent. And why does Charles look a bit like Elijah from TVD? Can't these people get a little more creative? Adam's dad reminds me of Alaric, and Faye's mom reminds me of Jenna. At least in looks and mannerisms. So just... what?
8) Once Upon A Time. I haven't seen it yet, but I am looking forward to it. Fairy tales: what's not to love?
9) The Ringer. I haven't seen it yet, but I am looking forward to it. Sarah Michelle Gellar: what's not to love?
10) Gossip Girl. They're going to LA? But the point is that they're in New York, right? I'm not sure if they're there just for one episode or for the whole season, but I hope it's just one episode. I just don't see how it can hold up as well somewhere else. The Upper-East-Siders won't have the same status. And how would Gossip Girl be there? I suppose I will just have to watch. In any case, Blair will still be an awesome character, so at least something will still be watchable.
11) House. Cuddy's leaving, isn't she? That's going to be weird. But Chase is still back, and that's nice. Those few awkward seasons with the new team were... well, yes, awkward. I'd prefer it is House didn't go back on the Vicodin, though. I think we're pretty much covered that topic, and it's a little old to keep pushing the plot around his addiction. I'm sure I will enjoy this season anyway, but we will see how good it really is.
12) Dexter. I still have to finish watching last season, but I'm looking forward to this season. Killing people: what's not to love?
13) Big Bang Theory. This show is mostly just a filler show. The characters are all so annoying, and it's so awkward when you're supposed to laugh and say Sheldon's crazy but you really actually agree with him and have maybe that same quirk they're making fun of him for. I'm looking forward to watching it, but that doesn't mean that I'm not avoiding doing so at the same time.
14) The New Girl. I watched the pilot. It looks cute enough. I'll give it a try.

I am watching so many shows! I didn't even realize quite how many until I wrote this post. I really do do work, I promise. I do work all the time. I'll probably get so caught up in the semester that I'll start getting behind on all of these and be forced to marathon them over Christmas break. Some I will definitely have to keep up with though! (I counted five of those, I'll leave it up to you to guess which five they are! Games are fun. I hate guessing games, though. But only when I'm the one guessing!)

Sunday Salon: 1st Edition of "New Editions of Books": Agatha Christie Edition

2011-09-25T13:24:00.003-04:00

Some other blogs I follow (of the book variety), do Sunday Salon, so I thought I'd give it a shot. What are the publishers thinking these days? Seriously, have you looked at some of those books out there on the bookshelves of the wild lately? I have. And in this (first) edition of New Editions of Books, I have some opinions on the new editions of some books which I thought I would briefly share.

So, how about those new editions of the Berkley Mystery editions of Agatha Christie novels, huh? As anyone who has been reading this blog would know, I've been on a sort of Agatha Christie kick again lately. It happens once or twice every year, so it's not like it's a special occasion. However, once I'd read the three new Poirot's I picked up from the bookstore back in June, I went in search of some more.

And found larger books. They are that awful book size, about 7.9x5.3 inches (Penguin Classics size), as opposed to the 6.9x4.2 inches (Signet Classics size). If you don't have a ruler handy, the former is that kind of paperback that's almost as large as your standard hardcover (but thinner of course, what with it being paperback) and the latter is your usual mass market paperback. The mass market paperbacks (which I'll call MMP's) will fit into a purse (even if you don't have a very large purse). Agatha Christie mysteries are perfect travel reads, whether that travel be in a plane or train or car, or even if you just want to read in the waiting room at the dentist. That's difficult to do with these larger books. You just can't take them anywhere very easily.

And that's not the only reason this size is inconvenient. I will admit that the larger size is best for hardcovers, mostly since smaller hardcovers, if they are thick, tend to have problems with the inside margins. If you read enough, I'm sure you'll know what I mean. And some paperbacks have that problem, too, I know. But I'm not talking about those fat, portly copies of Les Miserable, War and Peace, or even Pat Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind. No, I'm talking about Agatha Christie here, guys. The are not at all big, fat books. When they are printed in that larger format, as paperbacks, they just become floppy. They are hard to hold up and read, because they sort of just flop around too much. They aren't stable. You need to set them down on a table or some other surface. That's great for if you don't want to use your hands to hold the book, so that you can just plop it down on the table, open it, and let it stay open all on its own. I will readily admit that that is pretty awesome. However, if I had to chose one or the other, I would pick the smaller books that you can hold. And I say that from plenty of experience reading.

Ugly New Cover

Better Old Cover

Now that I've fully exposed the main flaws of the size of the books, let's turn to the covers. Notice here on the LEFT the NEW cover of the book that I most recently finished, Lord Edgeware Dies (I will write up my review of it soon). It really just isn't a very good representation of the book. I hope I'm not giving away any spoilers by saying that Lord Edgeware dies, but he was killed with a penknife (or another small knife of that sort). He was at his desk in his study. I see the desk there, in that illustration. But what's up with the gun, right?! There are two other deaths in the book, only one of them very prominent. It was a death caused by an overdose of a drug. Again, not a gun. That gun is just not important to the book. So why is it on the cover? Now, here on the RIGHT is the cover of the MMP I read. I can tell you that these are all important pieces to the mystery of this book. Much better, right? And this isn't the only book with a worse cover. Taken at the Flood, I just so happened to notice, has a cover that hardly means anyway. I'm sure some are better than others, but in general, I am not thrilled. They sort of modernized the covers, yes, but some just seem like they didn't get any farther in their migration to the great present than the 80s or 90s. It's one thing to make the covers look older (such as from the dates the books were written) or to make them twin to the aesthetic styles of the present day, but to place them somewhere in between? That's just odd. And I don't like it. You may think otherwise though, and that's fine too, of course. But I remain adamant.

One last thing about these books: because they are larger, they are more expensive. They are approximately $10, whereas the smaller MMP's were about $7. So they expect me to pay more for something that I like less? Well, of course I will, since they aren't giving me much choice, now are they? I've dabbled in other editions of Agatha Christie novels, but those old Berkley Mystery editions ended up the winners (not to be confused with the blacker, funny textured Berkley editions).

I was able to get some of the last of the old copies though. Amazon is selling used versions of the old editions for $2.50-$4. But with their Super Savings Shipping or whatever it is. So they are the books I like best, about a quarter of the price (considering the new prices of the new editions), and they also have free shipping (which is the problem one usually encounters ordering used books from Amazon). The way I see it, that's pretty awesome. So what if they're a little used? They're still good. They're still small with better covers. I wasn't able to get all of the ones I wanted, though. I still have about half of the Poirot mysteries to read, so I put as many of those as I could find in my shopping cart, and waited several hours, debating if I should buy all of them or not, and if not then how many I would buy. When I checked back again, two of them were already sold out. So, they're going fast, folks! Grab the good copies while you can!

Unless you think they are the bad copies. I'd be interested in hearing what anyone else has to say about it.

Discovering Sleep Paralysis

2011-09-20T04:39:00.000-04:00

I've always been good at remembering my dreams. And I do dream a lot, it feels like. That has grown over the past several years into more frequent awareness of the dream, which is also called lucid dreaming. I sometimes am able to change things in the dream, but I usually choose not to, otherwise it sort of spoils the act of dreaming, right? It would just be imagining, if I control everything. Usually, after I become of aware of a dream, it doesn't last too much longer. I normally would like it to, but it's just so hard to keep a dream going without conscious interference then. Sometimes, though, I want to wake up, whether it is because I have grown tired of the dream or because I am afraid of oversleeping and need to check on the time. Lately, though, these lucid dreams have ended in a much more awful way: sleep paralysis.

Now, most of my research into sleep paralysis has consisted of me looking over a few wikipedia articles a few hours ago. Until I talked to my mom about it tonight, I didn't have any idea what it was. A few night ago I had a dream in which I was running from something (I forget what now), and I realized I was dreaming and that that was a good time to wake up... but I couldn't. I kept running and thought that I just need to move my body and I should be able to wake up then. I tried flailing my arms around, but my dream arms flailed instead. I knew my real arms were there, I just couldn't get them to move. I was mostly still in the dream though.

Earlier tonight, I got another instance of this sleep paralysis but worse. I was dreaming that I was poisoned maybe? That was the background to the dream, so I'm not entirely sure. I do know that I was in a maze sort of thing, and I had to undergo trials. In this dream, my dream body was outside the maze being poisoned or sick or whatever was going on. There was a projection of myself (the self I was consciously using) in the maze. I had just overcome some trial or other, and then that projection of myself had another projection of myself, and this one sort of zoomed out and hovered over the maze. I was looking at where the other rooms led to. I saw some larger rooms up ahead eventually, thinking that those rooms would have the trials. Such as dragons. Then, just as I was starting to realize that this projection of a projection nonsense was silly and that I was actually asleep, a dragon came out of nowhere and grabbed my floating double-projected dream body. I made an effort then to wake up, as the dream-vision split to a small corner screen of my vision and the majority of my sight was whatever greyness you get when your eyes are closed. I couldn't wake up though. I was panicking. The dragon's claws were gripping me, and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I thought, if only I could breathe! If only I could kick my legs or something! I was perfectly aware of my body laying there on my bed, but I just couldn't get it to move. I couldn't get it to breathe. I felt like I was dying. I thought, "Is this what it feels like to die? I don't want to die now, that's not fair, what a rip-off!" (Yes, apparently that's what I think when I think I'm dying... I'm all about the justice, guys.) There is nothing worse than feeling that you are completely paralyzed, are suffocating because you lungs won't work, and are dying.

In reality, there is a sort of paralysis that your body goes through when in REM sleep, a paralysis which is what stops you from sleep-walking and acting out your dreams. It's natural stuff that's kind of neat. Anyway, in sleep paralysis, you wake up and come to consciousness before that anti-sleep-walking paralysis goes away. So that you can't move and it feels like you aren't breathing. It can happen while you're falling asleep too, but reversed, so that the paralysis comes before your mind goes to sleep, but I'm not familiar with that sort of thing. Apparently, it's a condition associated with stress, narcolepsy, possibly migraines, sleeping on your back, or, as in my case, coming out of lucid dreams. It's not actually dangerous at all, but it is very disturbing and terrifying. The paralysis can last anywhere from several seconds to several minutes to, in extreme cases, several hours. Imagine not being able to breathe for several hours! For me it was only a few seconds, but it was bad enough. I know that I was breathing, but... it's so hard to fully convince myself of that! It's not the sort of risk I like to take, so that's why I'm still currently avoiding sleep at 4:30 in the morning (after about five hours since my earlier sleep paralysis).

So, to delay longer, I will relate to you some of the history of it that wikipedia describes. So have you ever wondered what the "mare" part of "nightmare" is all about? Well, the mare part is an Indo-European root, going all the way back to Proto-Indo-European (we're talking at least four thousand years ago guys, more likely five or six thousand even, at least). The mare bit generally describes a sort of creature, it can be a goblin, succubus, incubus, hag, ghost, demon, whatever. This mare thing sits on your chest while you sleep, so that you can't move or breathe, causing that sleep paralysis. So the term "nightmare" actually comes from that sleep paralysis sensation rather than actual nightmares themselves. And trust me, sleep paralysis is way worse than just nightmares, so it is fitting I suppose, that the ancient peoples would put a heavier distinction on the paralysis. And just think how old the thing is... people from let's say five thousand years ago, nomads on the Eurasian steppes, were having problems with this sort of dream paralysis as well. I wonder what they dreamed about? What were they so desperately trying to wake up from?

I suppose I ought to go back to sleep now and hope and pray that I don't have to endure any more of that sleep paralysis. It's only really happened these two times, and I don't want it to become a regular thing. There isn't any real cure or treatment for it, besides being educated on what little we know about how sleep works. I don't think that education will really help when you feel like you're suffocating though. Really, it is just the worst thing, thinking that you're dying. I definitely don't recommend this. If you have lucid dreams, just stay in them. If they are scary or something, at least you know it's a dream and thus shouldn't be scared. I just tend to say that it's silly to stick around for an unpleasant dream, but it's really better than paralysis. I will try to remember that the next time I'm dreaming and we'll see how well that works out for me.

Trading Places

2011-09-14T20:26:00.000-04:00

**This is the true story of a scary thing that happened to a relative over the summer.**

Cassandra was watching television in the living room of her sister's house. So many times in summers past had she watched TV just the same, but in those days she had been surrounded by her sister's family. This time, it was different. The TV wasn't merely recreation, it was a form of therapy for her. The room wasn't just empty, it was barren. It had been another hard day for everyone. Upstairs the youngest daughter was in bed, she a teenager needing sleep even if it wasn't a school night; the oldest daughter was in bed, too, she in her twenties and at the age at which the late nights are far from a novelty; downstairs, the middle child, Colin, was probably not asleep yet, though, since 10:30 is hardly bedtime for a nineteen-year-old. Her sister was downstairs in bed, but almost assuredly not sleeping. Although she needed to, the poor thing. Her husband was down the hall, sitting at the bed-side of her brother-in-law, Carl. They made sure day or night, someone was always there with him. And Carl... well, Carl was probably not asleep, exactly. Perhaps closer to unconscious. Carl had cancer, and all summer he had been wasting away, his condition worsening with every day.

Carl's decline had been hard on the family that summer, and everyone had had their moments of weakness. Cassie's poor sister, Carol, had forgotten to eat lunch exactly sixteen times in the past month. Caitlyn, the eldest daughter, who hadn't been in the habit of attending church before that summer eventually broke down in tears in the last row of pews; the pastor had to stop his service and walked all the way to the back to comfort her personally. Colin saved his tears for when he was alone, in the shower, where instead of singing, he let both the water and guilt wash over him as he cried, "Why does it have to be him? Why now? Why couldn't it have been me instead? What has he done to deserve this?"

Cassie herself had been devastated as well, and had tried her hardest to hold up for the rest of her sister's family. She knew it was hardest on them. But she only just got by, day to day, with the help of therapeutic distractions such as the television show she was currently watching.

Before long, though, the calm was disturbed by Colin's feet pounding up the stairs. He jumped the last few, and practically dived into the armchair. "Aunt Cassie?" he said, out of breath. "Can I talk to you?"

Startled by his sudden appearance, Cassie wasn't surprised by his request. She had been talking with the children all summer, trying to guide them through the dark time as best she could. "Of course," was her answer.

Colin hesitated a moment, his eyes flicking toward the hallway toward his father's room, avoiding the stairs he had just rushed up. "Outside?"

Cassie was quickly becoming more and more concerned by her nephew's behavior. She could tell he was breathing heavily and may have been shaking; in any case, the way he was sitting just wasn't quite natural, either. She nodded to his request, almost a plea, and led the way onto the back patio.

In the unforgiving light of the back porch, Colin's appearance hit her. His face had the terrifying pallor that only a normally tan complexion can fully accomplish. His eyes were wide and frantic. His breathing wasn't so much hard as on the verge of hyperventilating, he was indeed shaking in an alarmingly jerky fashion, on his arms were vast herds of goosebumps.... Quite frankly, Cassie had never seen the usually cool young man like that. Come to think of it, she may have never really seen anyone like that.

"Colin, Colin. Calm down, what's wrong?" she asked. She reached a hand out to rest on his arm, both to reassure him and to try to steady his tremors.

"I...I.. Ithereandthingstvandbedand in... in the closet, they were little, and neveriinthenowhere andnotandthetrytoand..." he gasped, as his speech wove in and out of intelligibility. "There were, and they said, theysaiditandididn't think, no, I didn't, and then, then... theyweretheretheyheardwhohears howcanthingsandstuffandnowhereandhatsandshoes in my closet. In my closet! Three, there were three. Threeandyellow and thingsandthingsandandand... and... and... they...." His rush of words finally ended as he had to stop and struggle for breath.

Cassie rubbed his arm until he could at least breathe, then she hugged him, patting his back and telling him it would be alright. At last he seemed to return to the state he was in at the start of their conversation, so Cassie tried again.

"Three, Colin? You said three of them? Three of what?"

Colin wasn't any more sensible this time. Eventually, through many hugs and pauses for simply breathing in the warm summer air, Cassie got the story out....

Colin had been sitting at the end of his bed, playing Madden. It had been a rough day, but no more so than any of the other recent days. It didn't make much difference if his father was 67 pounds now or 65, it was all just as awful.

But a good way for Colin to try to relieve some of the stress was through video games. It was a sort of normality for him, and he could easily lose himself in the game. It was one of the rare moments lately that he could actually enjoy, at least a little.

After playing for a while, he got that sort of feeling that someone was watching him. He waited until he finished the particular turn he was on, then turned to his right, where he still could feel eyes on him.

To his surprise and terror, he actually did see eyes watching him. There were two small figures there. He hardly had any time to digest the sight and wonder, before he saw movement in the direction of his closet. Watching rapt with horrid interest, he saw a third figure emerge from the closet's darkness. It walked toward the other two.

For a moment the three figures stood huddled together, talking. Colin couldn't understand anything that was said, so he observed. One figure was wearing a top hat, one had the face of a pig. They all had small yellow-slitted eyes. Eventually, the figure from the closet stepped forward, and introduced the three of them. Colin thought its name sounded something like Hercules, but he couldn't understand the others'.

"We are here to talk to you," it said, "about what you said before."

Colin stared at it in silence, frozen with horror, confused at its words.

"What you said before," it said, "in the shower, about trading places with your father. Because today is his last day. Your father is to die tomorrow. Do you still want to take his place?"

That was all it said to Colin, because the young man had then passed beyond terrified and progressed to mortal panic. He had bolted from the room and run up the stairs to his aunt.

Cassie couldn't help but believe Colin's story. His terror was very clear and equally real. But after some time she managed to calm him down to some coherency.

"What if - what if they're still down there? What about Mom? She's downstairs in bed! What are they going to do? What if they're-they're still there?" he worried. "What if they come upstairs for Dad? What are they going to do to him? What-what.... What do I do? What do-do-do w-we do?"

Cassie gave him another hug and said, "How about we go downstairs and check on your mom, okay?"

Showing real bravery, Colin nodded and followed his aunt back inside and downstairs.

After checking on Carol, and seeing that she was fine and had noticed nothing unusual, Cassie herself ventured to Colin's room. The young man himself had retreated upstairs once more to check on his dad.

She stood in the doorway first, her eyes scanning the room cautiously. She didn't see the small figures. She saw the video game still on the TV, the controller left tossed aside on the bed. A trail of sheets made a path from the end of the bed to the door, showing where Colin had shed them in his flight. The closet door was open. Everything else seemed to be in order, just as a nineteen-year-old boys' room should look. He had some trophies on the shelf, next to a couple books that had accidentally found their way there. Posters of his favorite sports teams on the walls, blue curtains drawn shut for the night....

Assuring herself that nothing seemed to be wrong, she walked into the room and sat in Colin's deserted place on the end of the bed. She looked around to maybe notice anything out of place or any explanation for what her nephew had seen. Not noticing anything, she turned off the light. But there was still nothing.

Cassie looked around the room yet again, to maybe find something that could explain what Colin had seen. Maybe it was just a shirt that fell off a hanger in the closet, or maybe something placed in such a way that when the light was on it could cause a shadow. But there was nothing. She looked again and again, but couldn't find anything. She was desperate to find something. She needed to be able to tell Colin, "Oh look, that's what it was, it was nothing, nothing at all to worry about, just your overtaxed imagination." But she found nothing.

Reluctantly, she went back upstairs to the living room with no explanation. Not even something that could pass as a possible, tentative explanation. Nothing.

Upstairs, Colin was curled up in the armchair, looking at the television - it would have been a bit much to say that he was watching it. Cassie resumed her seat and asked about Carl. Colin reported that he was just as he had been earlier that evening. His uncle had seen nothing out of the ordinary.

In turn, Cassie filled Colin in on her inspection of his room. She explained how they weren't there anymore, and how she had tried to find something but couldn't. "There just wasn't anything. I even turned off the light to try to see if maybe, just maybe, I would notice something then, but...."

"You turned off the light?" Colin asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

"Aunt Cassie... I didn't have the light on."

They prayed for a few hours. When it became impossible for even a nineteen-year-old to stay up any longer, Colin gathered together his strength and went to his room, with any luck, to sleep.

The next day, Carl passed away.

Quid agis?

2011-09-13T00:00:00.000-04:00

For those who don't know, quid agis means "what's up?" in Latin. Plautus, the comic playwright from around 200 BCE, uses it a lot in his plays. People are always saying "what's up?" in comedies, right?

Anyway, what I mean by quid agis is that I am going to tell you what I've been up to lately and what I will be up to this fall. I have a bunch of different things going on, so that might just be nice to know.

First, I'm TAing for World Civilizations again this year, since my two fellow TAs from last year have moved on and I would be the only one left. The plus side is that I'm head TA I suppose. In addition to teaching, I am taking three classes: Latin Syntax and Stylistics, Latin Literature: Tacitus, and Greek Epigraphy. Latin Syntax is alright. We read about maybe sixty or so lines of Latin for each Monday and Wednesday, going over it in class; we have some exercises to do for composition (you know, translating from English to Latin) on Fridays, and write our awful sentences up on the board and go over them; and sometimes we read some other articles or a chapter or two from our grammar books. The Tacitus class is supposed to be a literature class in which we read the works of Tacitus the Roman historian, but instead it is more of a historiography class; we do read a lot of Latin though, at least. It's a ton of work, much more to translate than for Latin Syntax. Tacitus we only have one a week though, on Mondays. On Thursdays I have Greek Epigraphy. This is supposed to be epigraphy -- studying Greek inscriptions -- but instead it is more historiography too. We do still read some inscriptions though, but we are supposed to be considering them in a historical context. And those are my classes. The professors are all pretty okay, mostly. I may get into more detailed stories about anything that happens in any of these classes at a future date.

In addition to classes, I have several things I'm working on on the side. First, there is my Master's Project. It is a paper of at least 30 pages (but maybe as many as 50 or 60) that I need to have completed by the end of next summer. Then I can get my MA. It's not really that exciting, though, because nothing really changes after that; the finally goal is the PhD after all, so getting the MA is more of a formality than anything else. It's just a step along the way. I'm not sure what exactly I'm writing my paper on yet, but I will be sure to explain it (in a hopefully interesting fashion) on here once I've figured it out. I will tell you now though that I think it's going to turn out to be a pretty cool topic. I just need to narrow it down, but I'm liking it so far.

Also, I have a conference paper I'm working on. I mentioned it before, but I'm giving a paper at CAAS in Baltimore this October. Currently, I am finishing up the research and starting to write the actual paper. It's just over a month until the conference and just over two weeks until I have to submit the paper. I'm not sure when I will actually start to feel nervous about it. I was worried for much of the summer, because I just couldn't find any good sources. I knew what I was going to say, but I just couldn't find anything to cite. At the start of the semester, though, I hit a real spot of luck and found a website with a lot of good sources listed, and it really helped. So now I feel much more comfortable with it. And it's only a fifteen minute presentation, so only a five page paper or so. And Andrew explained all of the copyright stuff to me, so that now I know that I can show a clip from Merlin with my presentation, and that makes my actual talk even shorter still. Piece of cake, right?

A short while after the conference (sometime in November, so anywhere from two weeks to maybe even a month later) I will be taking my German reading exam. I still have to practice a lot. The vocabulary is always the hardest thing. I will try to read a bunch of articles, but it's so hard to judge what sorts of articles you need to read. Art history articles? Or archaeology articles? Roman history articles? Political theory? Ancient oratory? War camps in Germany or Cisalpine Gaul? Roman hairstyles? (Probably not that last one, it was the subject of the German exam last year.) Hopefully I can pass it and get it out of the way!

I will be writing up an abstract to submit to try to present at a grad conference at Columbia in the spring. I really like my idea for it; it's based off of my Virgil is a wizard by the beginning of the renaissance paper I did for my Dante/Milton class spring of my senior year. I'll just be expanding it and twisting the point around a bit. But really I am pretty excited about it. I hope my abstract gets accepted so that I actually get a chance to write about it! The abstract isn't due until I think November 1 or so, so I have some time still to do some initial research and put it together.

I may also start reading for my language exams this year. By that I mean the Latin and Greek exams, not the modern language exams. There are just so many languages to keep track of, I know.

I may also get involved in that intertextuality program I was working on last fall as part of a class. The professor sent me a personal invite to the general meeting, so I sort of have to go now. And I legitimately am interested in helping out on the project if there are opportunities for working without putting in the full time commitment of the new intern position. I may have to learn some computer stuff though, which sounds a little too involved for my tastes. I have nothing against the programming side, I just have too much else going on to learn PEARL just for this. But who knows, we'll see how it goes. That general meeting is this Wednesday afternoon, so I will have a better idea then.

Oh, and I almost forgot, but I am now the secretary of the CGSA (Classics Graduate Student Association). This is not me taking any sort of initiative; really it is me being glared into volunteering for a position. Seriously, every single office (there are like eight considering the various representatives and senators) had only one person running. We were only able to consider it an election at all by having spaces for write-ins on the ballots. And it was a unanimous vote, so that's nice. I signed the forms that say I am the secretary today. So yay for getting involved?

Over the weekend we had a welcome back party at the Chair's house. He just recently got a new house and a wife, so we all had to go and check out both of them. He also has a cat, presumably as a cover to make people believe that he is a human and not a robot, but since none of the grad students are fooled by this ploy we didn't even believe that he had a cat at all. We checked it out and we did indeed see that he has a cat. And his house is gorgeous. I think I know which one of the people his wife was, and she's sort of alright. I stayed up late the night before and made cupcakes to bring. I talked with my adviser and some other people I'm friends with. There were adorable babies, particularly little five-month-old baby Titus, with whom I am birthday buddies. It was a fun afternoon. Particularly when after a few hours they decided to start up the kickball game. You see, the neighborhood is so nice that there are two little league baseball diamonds right behind his house. Literally. You walk through the bit wooden gate and there it is, twenty yards away, if even that. It would be possible to hit a foul ball and break one of the house's windows, if it weren't for the trees in the way that would probably stop the ball. That closest field had some actual little leaguers on it whom we thought we should not chase off. We could totally take them, but you know, why bother. So we all trooped over to the other field. I just watched from the bleachers with some other girls (we were goaded to play, but it was decided that we would conform to traditional gender roles for the purposes of that game). Mostly we were nervous about playing kickball with professors. I mean, you throw balls at people when you play kickball. And when playing with professors, you throw balls at professors, and professors throw balls at you. Most all of the grad students were nervous about the party in general, and even more so about the game, but most did still gather the courage to play. And my one professor's ten-year-old son, Joey, who actually does play baseball on those fields, joined in the game as well. And the game went surprisingly well. It ended 18-14, but it was a really tough game. Each team traded turns in the lead. And everyone traded some good-humored heckling. One team even played half the game with half of their players playing with beers in their hands. My one professor even went up to the plate and kicked while drinking a beer! (That drinking team lost... some surprise, right?) On the bleachers were cheered and awww'd trying our best to cheer for everyone equally. Really everyone just had a good time. And back at the house afterward, looking around the patio, everyone was relaxing in the shade, rehydrating, and sharing the best highlights of the game. It was a really good bonding experience for both professors and grad students. It was an amazing thing to see how that mood just lightened up. I left shortly after that, but it had been a very successful day!

I think that's all that's been up with me lately, besides being a bit sick last week which is no fun and even less interesting. And now I must be off to enjoy what remains of my evening (I don't have class or teaching even tomorrow, so I tend to take Monday evenings pretty easily). Farewell for now!

Book Review: Guards! Guards! and Eric

2011-09-04T19:53:00.000-04:00

So today I am sick. The past few days, I was in the state of getting sick. It is, indeed, rather lame. Therefore, this seemed to me like a good time to post this bit that I wrote the other week. Enjoy:

I will try to make this brief-ish, since I've been doing so many of these Terry Pratchett books lately. You guys must be getting awfully tired of them. That being said, I would like to introduce you to:

Guards! Guards!:
This book was better than I expected it to be. It's about the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, the city-est city ever. It goes through city-hood and passes out on the other side... and then keeps going for about two light-years. I like reading about this city though, but I thought, 'In the last books, we've had some nice witches and mummies and cute tiny romances and all sorts of just delightful quirks. They were so... light-hearted. How could this story about city guards, stuffy old men, really compete?' But somehow, it does.

I would say, it is because of the well-constructed characters. Captain Vimes is exactly what he is supposed to be. He is a disillusioned guard, who started out loving the city and came to resent it, once it used him harshly. He compares it to a woman, but I don't want to steal his thunder with that comparison; you'll just have to read that for yourself to quite understand. But, by the end, his old vigour does come back to life, and he is a stout character, brave in his way, and strong of purpose, with confidence. He knows what he is doing, and he knows that is he going to do it. It's the character we've known was in him all along, and if he started out that way, we wouldn't have found it all that appealing. Yeah, yeah, we'd say, so what? But because we have seen that part of his character grow, it is all the sweeter. We really appreciate it.

The other characters are a mix: some well-developed, some not so much. Carrot is mostly the sole inhabitant of the latter category. He does have such a unique character, but he is surprisingly flat. He is so strange, but that's it. He just continues being strange. Flat. And the back of the book and the beginning of the book seem to imply he is a main character, but because of his dullness it is best not to read the book expecting that. He has so much promise to be interesting too, it's sort of disappointing. Anyway, the other characters are delightful. Nobby in particular is so well created. Perhaps too well created, with too many different, strong qualities to sort of wrap your brain around all of them at once, but that's fine. Rich characters are great. Colon is alright, can't say much more than that. Not a particularly rich character, but not disappointing either. Lady Ramkin is almost unappealing, but so strange that you're more intrigued that repulsed. The members of the cult, each of them has a distinct character. They aren't too important, but at least you know who they are... not just their names, but who they are.

Speaking of who characters are, there is an element of the mystery story to this book. It lies in the identity of the Supreme Grand Master. I didn't realize it until we found out who he really is. So I must have sort of missed out on any build up, suspense, or clues for that. Oops. But I was definitely surprised by the reveal!

It is a reasonably well-planned story, and interesting enough. There were some nice connections and turns, just enough to keep you happy. But the real treat was the characters. And for me, that was also the real surprise too!

Eric:
This is a short book. I used it to fulfill the "read a book in one day" goal on my list on dayzeroproject.com. By that I mean, I read it in one day. It is just under 200 pages, and the font is bigger than the other books. Also, it just reads fast. It felt like pacing regressed back to the The Colour of Magic days. The plot is very episodic, and that drives me crazy. It is so annoying. And all of the new characters were so simple. Now, this obviously isn't just another Discworld novel. But I'm not sure what it is then supposed to be. On the page of the book that lists all Pratchett's works, it says that Eric was written with someone named Josh (or John?) Kirby or something. But the front cover of the book does not say that. Neither does the inside title page. Nor does the back cover. I forgot to check the inside of the back cover, but I think it just has Pratchett there. So I don't know about this mysterious second author and what he had to do with this book, but I don't think I personally like it. If I knew what the book was supposed to be doing, if it was for slightly younger readers or something, then maybe I would appreciate it more. As it is, I don't know.

This book is important in terms of Discworld chronology, though, because we see the return of Rincewind. I'm not going to soil the end of Sourcery, but let's just say that he goes away for a bit. Not unusual right? Well, this is when he comes back. And he is just as delightful as ever. He is awful at things (although we don't see that enough in this book), but he is also good at some things too. More things than just running away. Such as, remember how he's good at languages? And that he did hang out at the University for an awfully long time, which in that cut-throat world must mean something, right? So he does have some skills. And we see them here! I had almost forgotten that he was good at anything at all! Besides his adorable feats in Sourcery that is. I forgot he has been good at stuff all along. It's nice. I quite like Rincewind. But the other characters, as I said, were a little immaturely created.

The plot, as I said, is episodic and annoying. We travel from one place to another, and encounter events that sort of resolve themselves before we move on. There is an overall plot to the story of course, but basically is is structured like The Colour of Magic. And not a whole lot really happens. I don't know, I just didn't feel that it was very interesting. I suppose, there is some not-so-subtle hinting that it is a sort of satire of Faust in some sense. But -- and I'm embarrassed to admit it -- I haven't quite read Faust yet. I own it -- in English with the facing-page German even! -- but I just haven't read it yet. Maybe I would have enjoyed this book more if I had it's supposed source material. Not that there aren't jabs at other things too along the way, but I'm just sort of afraid I'm missing the bigger picture. I don't know. This was a short read, and also shallow -- not very deep at all, for me anyway.

Further Comments:
I have one more comment to make, and that is: it is good to read these books in order. I told a friend that I was reading them, and he asked which ones I had read. And I told him I was reading them in order. And then he sort of gave me a look (he was driving, but there was a look anyway, when we pulled up at the first red light) and asked why I would do that. Why wouldn't I start with the good ones first? Because, with my method, I had to read the bad ones too. And I just shrugged and sort of mumbled a noncommittal answer along the lines of "I don't care." Well, now I feel justified in my choice. Because in each of these books, there is a reference to the book before it. In Guards! Guards! the Supreme Grand Master at one point thinks to himself something along the lines of "I can stop whenever I like, honest." This is a direct reference to Dios from Pyramids. He is the same type of character in a sort of similar situation. But it comes as a sort of anomaly for the Supreme Grand Master to say. There are some holes, it doesn't quite fit the character as we see it. But if you read it as a reference to Dios, the reference fills up those holes, and actually further develops the character of the Supreme Grand Master. We say, "Ohhh, he's like that is he?" There is something similar in Eric. At one point they encounter a "one in a million chance." And we learn all about those by the end of Guards! Guards! They don't explain the implications of a "one in a million chance" in Eric. You just have to know it is a reference to the previous book to get the exact meaning, fully developed. These are relatively small instances, so if you read the books out of order, there is a good chance you might not catch these delightful moments. And even if they come up in later books, so you have a reference for them, you don't have the reference. And I'm sure it's just not quite the same. So trust me, read these books in order!

The Case of the Stars

2011-08-30T20:28:00.000-04:00

I've already alluded to this mystery, so now I will briefly explain what I meant.

Have you noticed the stars on some houses? (I'm assuming your house doesn't have one of these stars.) If you ask about them, people say that they are there for all sorts of reasons. Go on, I dare you. Search for "why do people put stars on their houses?" and read through some of the answers on the various question-answer sites that come up. Some people say they are for pure decoration, some say they evoke a sense of a colonial feel, some say they are a symbol of rebellion from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, some say they are reminiscent of a structural element, some say they are nowadays for good luck, some say they have a nautical meaning, some say that they are Jewish, some say that they mean a loved one in the military. But trust me, none of these are correct, at least not in Cumberland.

You see, my family has wondered about these stars for maybe the last ten years or so at least. If any of these answers were correct, we wouldn't be wondering. The thing is, they are all in awkward places on the house, of different colors, different sizes, different orientations. There is pretty much nothing alike about any of them besides the fact that they just look odd. They are usually rather noticeable and sort of in a really awkward ugly position. I don't think I can explain it any better. They are just weird.

Now, the thing about weird stars is that none of the above solutions can be true, because none of them involve putting a star on your house in an awkward and kind of unappealing place. On the flip side, there has to be some pattern behind them, something has to make people put strange stars on their houses, right? We've long debated the idea of some sort of cult or secret society or something. Not in a "paranoid, government conspiracy" kind of way, more in a "what is this club and how don't I know about it" kind of way. I was never very positive about that sort of theory, because it just seemed a little eccentric, and a lot laughable. But recently, something happened that made me change my mind.

It was a few nights before my family's road trip back to Buffalo. It was evening, about an hour before sunset, and I was reading on the back porch. Well, for this to make the most sense you should know that our back porch is on the side of our house, rather than directly in the back. Anyway, I was sitting there reading, and I heard a vehicle of some kind pull up in front of the house. I didn't want to be caught outside if someone was going to come up to the house, so I scurried inside and peaked out the front window. From between the huge unruly bushes in front I could see a sort of big white truck. It was parked along the curb directly in front of our house, completely ignoring the "no parking this side" sign. I didn't see anyone get out of the truck, but there was a guy inside. Then another guy walked back to the truck; he must have gotten out and walked away as I was coming inside. And he was walking back from the direction of the side of our house, just where I had been sitting before. I waited a few minutes until they wandered across the street with papers that they probably wanted to hand out, but they didn't come to our front door. I thought briefly that the one guy must have gone to the back door instead, but there was nothing there. Why had he been on that side of the house if he wasn't even going to leave anything?

I watched from the back door as they proceeded walking up the street. One guy went to the house sort of diagonal from us, where I don't think anyone was home. But instead of going to the front door, he walked around the side and disappeared toward the back of the house. A moment later he re-emerged. Then he went to the next house and went straight to its front door. He knocked on it, and then had a maybe five-minute-long chat with the person who answered the door. I wondered what was different about that house. I realized almost immediately: there was one of those awkward stars on that house. A big wooden one set in an awkward space at a jaunty angle. That must be why he was looking at the side of our house and went around to the back of the house across the street; he must have been looking for those awkward stars! After awhile, they had ventured up the street (all beyond my field of view, I couldn't see farther than that star house), came back to their truck, and drove away, presumably to another block of houses. Honestly, those stars are the best answer to that strange incident. Nothing else would make any sense. It really was odd.

But it would seem that these stars really are some sort of secret club. Some weird dudes in a plain white truck (a truck that was the closest thing to a white van a truck can get, trust me), handing out papers and talking to people door to door, only knocking on the doors of houses with stars. Like I said, I honestly didn't really believe the secret organization idea before, it was just a fun thought. But now, now it actually is not only plausible, but the likely answer. So now I am keeping that in mind when I see houses get awkward stars....

Welcome Back, Doctor

2011-08-28T14:45:00.000-04:00

Sorry for all of the recent posting. I guess I'm getting anxious now that school is on the horizon and my illusion of "free time" is running out. But, I just walked "Let's Kill Hitler" last night, and now I have to talk about it for just a little bit.

So, let me say, that I haven't liked Doctor Who since the fourth series. I mean, I don't think I like the production quality Steven Moffat has been implementing. It is just too good. It makes every episode seem like a movie. While watching yesterday's episode, I realized why that is a problem. Sometimes, in Doctor Who, we encounter some really epic moments. For instance, the first time the Doctor met River was sort of an important moment, but only in retrospect, not at the time. But now we are waiting for when the River first meets the Doctor. Or when Amy first met the Doctor. Or when anyone reunites with the Doctor. Basically, I mean that anytime we realize the full extent of how important and amazing the Doctor is, that's when it is epic. That's one thing I liked about the tenth doctor's time. All of the right moments were appropriately epic. But from series 5 and on, well, everything is epic. Or everything seems epic anyway, because of the production quality. And it really kind of ruins the parts that actually are more epic.

Now, on to some good things about last night's episode. It was well made. Like, the surprise, about who the one person is (I'm avoiding spoilers, can't you tell?), you could tell from early on, like the wording and stuff. Now, I didn't pick up on that, because I had accidentally read a mis-leading tweet from earlier int eh day from someone watching it during the BBC airing. That person obviously didn't understand the surprise yet either. But it just got me off-track, so I didn't make the obvious connections. but when I went back to watch the scene again, it was pretty clear, but yet still not so. I can't describe it any better than to say that they really did do a good job with that one.

Then also, Amy and Rory. I have always thought Rory was just adorable. But I've never quite been able to stand Amy. But after that one flashback scene yesterday, Rory is just so cute, that he even makes Amy better just by association. So there's that.

Oh, another down-side to things again. Just really quick, I have to say that I miss the days when I spent most of the episode understanding what is going on. There are so many complexities now to try and figure out, and that's good, but I miss the simpler days. And actually, this fits well, because it leads me to my next point....

...that is to say that just as I don't like the addition of the better quality production, I also don't like the addition of the overall story-arcs. I know that in theory it should add to the series, right? You don't need to establish a problem and finish it off in one episode. It saves you time to put in lots of awesomeness, right? Well, that's in theory. The reality of it is that I feel like we're losing out on things. Don't ask me what, exactly, because I have no idea. But I really feel like although we're getting somewhere, closer and closer with each episode, nothing really is happening. I think, maybe, now that I am considering the matter here, perhaps it is that the characters are not developing. The plot surely is, yes. And we are finding out more about the characters. But are they growing? The Doctor himself is fine. He doesn't need to grow, he just needs to be enjoyed, and in any case he did a lot of growing at the end of series 4 so he should be good for now. But no one else seems to be changing much, and it just feels a bit dull, in that sense.

Also, I am finally really starting to appreciate Matt Smith. I will always miss David Tennant, but Matt Smith's Doctor really does seem to be a bit more amiable. Like, you can really feel safe with him. Not that the tenth doctor isn't like that, but well, you know what I mean maybe.

Anyway, that's all for now, just some quick thoughts upon the mid-series return of Doctor Who!

What is Classics?

2011-08-27T14:12:00.000-04:00

Alright, guys. To me, this seems pretty basic. But a lot of people aren't quite clear on it, so I thought I'd write up something quick on the topic: what is classics?

When people as what I'm studying, I say, "I'm working on a PhD in Classics." A lot of people either know exactly what I mean, or they nod politely and pretend that they know exactly what I mean. Nonetheless, a handful of people still ask, "Classics? That's like..." And at that point there are a few options for incorrect answers. Usually, when people think "classics" they think either 1) the literary classics, such as Dickens, Bronte, Shelley, etc. or 2) classical music, such as Mozart, or also even Bach or Beethoven. Just to clear this up now, Classics is neither of these things. Classics, as a field of study, means mostly ancient Greece and ancient Rome. There is a lot of overlap, though, between Classics, Egyptology, Near Eastern Studies (which covers often both the ancient and the modern Near East), Anthropology (which covers modern Anthropology, but also pre-written civilization as well). You see, the Romans and Greeks interacted with other peoples during their eras, and they developed from the earlier eras, etc. So that is the reason for the overlap, really.

Now, in the field of Classics in particular. People then ask, "So what do you do in Classics?" Classics is split into three different sub-fields, more or less. There is 1) Archaeology, 2) History, and 3) Philology (study of languages) and Linguistics. I study number 3, the languages and linguistics. And within that, there is the study of Latin language, Greek language, Greek and Latin language, or Indo-European linguistics. Or at least that is what I've found to be the most common break-down of the sub-field. What do I do? I mostly do the last one. Or that's the idea anyway, I'm not quite there exactly yet. And now you may wonder, what is the deal with Indo-European linguistics? The first three are pretty simple, but yes, Indo-European linguistics could certainly be explained a little further. Let's start with the name. Indo and European. It is a category of language that covers most of the modern European languages -- yes, both the Romance languages and the Germanic languages -- and even some Indo languages, meaning languages like Sanskrit in India and the Persian language in the Iran/Afghanistan sort of area. Wow, that's a lot of languages, you may think. Well, yes, but it doesn't include any of the East-Asian languages, Native American languages, Semitic languages (from the Near East), or Egyptian (you know, those neat hieroglyphics that everyone always thinks of when they think of ancient languages). The point is, it seems like it covers a lot of languages -- and don't get me wrong, the Indo-European branch does cover a ton of them! -- but there are a lot of important exceptions that are not included in the group. Now, the linguistics part is pretty simple, too. It just means that you learn the languages but also look at the relationships between them. Typically linguistics is broken down into major fields such as Morphology (word-structure), Phonology (word sounds), and Semantics (word meanings). As language moves throughout different places and times and peoples, and as languages grow and evolve and then double back and run into other languages that are perhaps even older than they are, well, there is plenty of room for studying these linguistic features.

Why am I studying this? Contrary to what some believe, no, all of Classics has not been done. We aren't finished. The archaeologists are still finding and digging up new sites all the time, not to mention that is does take a long time, years and years to really exhaust a site. Many sites are only open in the summers, since the leading archaeologists are professors and can only run their sites during their summer "vacations." And keep in mind too -- a lot of people don't realize this -- archaeology as we know it really didn't start until the 1800s. It's kind of a relatively new thing. Or at least the field isn't as old as the things it studies. Then, you may wonder, what about languages? Surely you've discovered everything you're going to? The study of Latin and Greek has been around since the Renaissance and all. Well, each new excavation brings us more information. There are new inscriptions found, and sometimes other sorts of records, depending on how well-preserved the site may be. Do the "Dead Sea Scrolls" ring a bell? They're often finding all sorts of new things out in the field during these digs, and, really, it makes it like a puzzle. Pretend you move into a new house. The previous owners had a puzzle, but it accidentally got thrown in the air and somehow scattered throughout all of the nooks and crannies of the house. Now, you want to put the puzzle together, just because you want to see what it looks like. You have the "archaeologists" who clean up the house and try to find all the pieces. When they've found them, they bring the pieces back to the "philologists" sitting at the kitchen table who are working on putting the pieces together. It's kind of hard to put together of an unknown picture without all the pieces isn't it? But with each new piece, you can get a little bit closer. That, my dear friends, is what Classics is doing. And I am one of the puzzle-putter-togetherers.

Now, here's another fun thing. Not all of the ancient languages have been decoded or translated. The name to remember about this is Michael Ventris. In the early 50s, he decoded Linear B. Then he died, which was a real shame. Linear B is the language of the Mycenaeans, or the pre-Greek people in Greece. They were the Greeks of the Trojan War. The writing wasn't Greek, it was a bunch of picture-symbols, kind of like a sort of hieroglyphics. So Ventris, a bright young man, spent awhile trying to figure out what the language actually was. After a ton of trying to figure it out -- and this is kind of like a cosmic joke really -- he discovered that it was actually Greek after all! It was the same Greek language. The same words and all, just with a different writing system! I'll try to explain it with English. Let's take the word "computer." The word would still be computer, but written differently. Let's say a picture of a wheel represents the "com" part, a house the "pu" part, and a crescent the "ter" part. Wheel-house-crescent wouldn't be recognized as "computer," but it is! Not even just the same meaning, but even the exact same word. Just written differently. The same with Linear B. We thought, since it didn't look like Greek, that the people were entirely different people. But obviously they weren't if they were speaking Greek too! It was a very important fact, really. So that's the story of Linear B. Now, Linear A, on the other hand, that one hasn't been figured out yet. We don't have quite as many examples of it as Linear B, so it's a lot harder. And there are several other non-decoded ancient languages as well.

I'll leave it at that for now. I'm sort of writing this as a background so that I can maybe mention the work that I'm doing in future posts. So that if I talk about the work that I'm doing with Hesiod's "Five Ages of Man" or something, I don't get as much confusion.

Book Review: Wyrd Sisters and Pyramids

2011-08-25T12:06:00.000-04:00

I read both of these Terry Pratchett novels during the first ten days of August, but well, I'm just a little late. And already I'm forgetting some of the excellent things I have to say. Therefore, without further ado, I shall "commence to start" with Wyrd Sisters:

Wyrd Sisters:
I ought to start this review by saying: I am a big fan of MacBeth. It is one of my favorite plays by Shakespeare. Like, one of my seven or eight favorites. That is one of the reasons why I love this book. The blurbs on the back of these Terry Pratchett books I've been reading (in order, of course) have been raving about Pratchett being such a great satirist. But I hadn't really seen it up until this book. I mean, I knew he poked fun at some things here and there, and his take on the whole genre of fantasy could, conceivably, be considered satirical -- even though I wouldn't actually call it proper satire -- but I didn't get why Publishers Weekly would say "Pratchett... should be recognized as one of the more significant contemporary English language satirists." Now I'm starting to see it. If you've read MacBeth before, you'll recognize both lines popular and well-known, and lines a little more obscure but loved by those literary types. Not to mention that the whole plot of this story is the same as the Scottish Play, but twisted in a delightfully Pratchetty way. And he doesn't just stop at MacBeth. There's the wise fool (sort of) -- and I say there's no better wise fool than the one from King Lear. There are lines from other Shakespeare plays as well, although I can't seem to find them now, a few weeks later. But trust me, they are definitely there. I would know, I squealed and wiggled around in delight every time I caught one, which was every few minutes probably. This book is definitely for my fellow Shakespeare fans!

I would also like to comment on some of the other great elements of this book. The plot has finally evened out into a good story. We see a very good rise and fall to the action. There are some times where we leave certain characters for what seems like an disproportionately long time, but a lot of authors do that, so I'm not really going to do more than just point it out. But really, this book has a good pace. And the love interest in this book is an absolutely adorable story. We don't see the romance development too much -- so it isn't one of the main elements exactly -- nor do we see it so little that it isn't fully developed and leaves us feeling apathetic about it -- such as was one of my main problems with Pratchett's Mort. The characters meet in a simply charming scene and there are subtle reminders thrown in every now and then to show the progress of the relationship and the characters' feelings without ever side-tracking. It took Pratchett awhile to really get how to handle romance, but now that he's figured it out, it is so cute!

Pyramids:
Just as Wyrd Sisters was good for us Shakespeare buffs, Pyramids is a joy for us ancient history buffs, particularly those who can't get enough of -- you guessed it! -- ancient Egypt! Yes, I'm lucky enough to fall into both categories. I'm sure you'd like both of these books without being Shakespeare or ancient history fans. This book especially uses mostly common knowledge of ancient Egypt, so don't worry. And like I said above, the plots in these books finally become well-written. Like, for real this time. Although, this books did give me a few disappointments.

Teppic, the main character here, is trained as an assassin in the big city. Then he comes back to his ancient kingdom to rule. No spoilers there, don't worry. The problem is that Pratchett focusing for the first fair-sized chunk of the novel giving us the background. We get background knowledge and we get a good development of Teppic's character. However, that does sort of make the book a little top-heavy and disproportionate. It doesn't feel disagreeable to read, but you read the first seventy or eighty pages, look up, and realize that you've read far more than thirty or forty pages. I know I'm used to reading book which cover all of that background stuff much quicker. The real problem with this though, is not the slow start, since you don't feel that at all. What you do feel is the lack of character throughout the rest of the novel. Teppic is such a fun character at first, and then somehow he loses a lot of that later. The plot sort of eats it up. He is so busy doing what the plot requires of him that he can't let his own personality shine anymore. That could possibly be meaningful and tie in with some of the overall themes of the book, but I'm not buying that. I'm all for attributing lots of meaning to probably meaningless things, but this time it would be stretching it a bit far. Teppic is still a good character, though, you just really need to bring all of it along with you from the beginning of the book.

The love interest again here is well developed, in a rather similar way to Wyrd Sisters or so it felt. The author handled the outcome of it similarly, at least: vaguely. It was fine to make a circumspect ending for the romance in one book, but two books in a row just felt like Pratchett is messing with me.

The last thing I have to say is that there seemed to be a small handful of lose ends to this story too, that didn't get tied up after what felt like a sort of rushed denouement.

I think I ought to stop now, because I'm getting awfully nit-picky. Really, this book is one of the better written ones I've read so far from Pratchett. I am still seeing a lot of improvement throughout these first seven books, and these last two really do show how much better the series is getting. The plots are just delicious. Pratchett is a great bibliosnack. So go on, take a big bite! And I promise I will never use this food metaphor ever again.

Earthquake!

2011-08-23T19:50:00.001-04:00

In the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23, 2011 there was an earthquake in Mineral, Virginia of a 5.8 magnitude which was felt from Atlanta to Toronto, Boston to Indianapolis. The rumours that the Washington Monument was subsequently leaning were proved false by a team of experts with a ruler. Almost no one reacted appropriately according to standard earthquake safety protocol. Most people were just confused and had no idea what was going on for the duration of the quake.

In Buffalo, I personally felt nothing. However, I will gracefully turn over the reporting to my Facebook news feed, which seems to be well informed:

"OMG EARTHQUAKE!"

"My dresser was just shaking uncontrollably! Crazy!!!"

"Yep, felt the earthquake. Now I can't find my cat!"

"What earthquake?"

"My mom called to tell me there was an earthquake. I was sleeping so I missed it. But it would explain why all the cabinets were open and the crackers moved."

"Earthquake!!!? Really!!!!!? Ugh! That was weird... I'm not liking this... Definitely hitting the "Dislike" button!"

"So that was an earthquake... wasn't too bad here. I didn't even notice except that it sounded like someone was on the roof and Bella's clothes were moving."

"Good thing the news came on for the earthquake... I got yelled at for shaking the whole house...."

"That EarTHQuaKe ride was fun."

"I feel left out of the earthquake club."

"Woooooo my first earthquake!"

"We were definitely in an earthquake."

"There is nothing like an earthquake to make digging shovel test pits more exciting. I was holding my screen at the time. It was like it was sifting the soil all by itself."

"I think the earthquake made my house straighter."

"That was an earthquake! Probably not the best time to be in a house on stilts, huh?"

"OH year EARTHQUAKE yeah. Nothing like working on drywall when you feel like your house is about to wiggle off the foundation."
"Say what you like, but a 5.8 magnitude earthquake when you are 40 feet off the ground hanging onto a pole as the ground moves beneath you is no joke. I love scaffold days."
"I've had enough excitement for one day. An earthquake and a bear hunt? Who'd a thunk it!"

So there you have it folks. We had an earthquake. Yes, indeed. Oh, don't worry, the news said that there was a 76% chance of <1 person being killed by that quake. It's all good.

Ten Ways to Be Just Plain Rude to Your Characters

2011-08-19T10:06:00.001-04:00

Let's say you're writing a novel. You really get to spend some quality time with your characters, you really get to know them. You may even start to get really attached to them. Or you may start to really hate them. If you start to get bored with them then you're doing it wrong and you should just spend more time with them and get to know them even better. Then, in the "real world," they all say (yes, that mysterious "they") that you should throw some conflict at your characters, you should really make them suffer, you should -- well, heck -- you should just kill them off! And all of that is fine. You may feel bad killing or torturing your dear, beloved characters, but just trust me, it's natural. It's natural for them to die and suffer. That's what happens in stories. But you already knew that. Don't think you're completely in the clear, though, because you're not. There are still plenty of ways to be really rude to your characters. I feel like I'm struggling a bit with a couple of these in my current work in progress, but I will say that I do in fact feel really bad about it. As you should when you:

1. Give your character a stupid name. Names are really important, and, as many writers will tell you, at times very hard. It's so elusive, that perfect name. So, since you're really just trying to write and you don't want to have to write "_______" every time you write your character's name, you will just give him the best name that you can find. It may not be the perfect name, but you can change it later. Or so you think. But names can really effect your characters, or at least what you think of them. You will see your character differently with a different name. If you name your character (who's really more of a "Harrison") "Hubert," he actually wil probably become a Hubert. And who wants to read a story about a Hubert?

2. Leave your character ignorant. And I don't mean ignorant of plot developments that the doesn't know yet but will later at the appropriate time. No, I mean those spaces that you leave in your writing, or try to fill in, but know that you will have to research later. For me right now, for instance, I have some things about the British courts of law prior to some consolidation act or other in 1870 or sometime. My characters have just been skirting around the issue of what some of them do for a living because they don't know. How would you feel in that situation? Now my characters are going to need to know something about ships, and I can't bear to imagine them sailing this ship and calling everything "that rope thingy over there." Although, some of them may just do that, but I would like to do it purposefully, only to the characters who really are ignorant. They don't feel badly about it then.

3. Make your character contradict himself. Related to number 2 but not quite, is this way to be rude to your characters. As above, I don't mean doing it purposefully. If your character means to contradict himself, or if he is doing it because he really doesn't know that he's doing it, well, he can't feel bad about it then, now can he? But if he actually knows. This is often something that happens while writing your first draft, and it is often unavoidable. You'll say the character lives at 45 Drummond Street, and then 10k words later, you'll have him say he lives at 991 Cherry Lane. He's not lying about it, but I really do think he knows where he lives, don't you? Well, you don't know, obviously. Either that or you've changed your mind. It's okay for you, this is your first draft. You have plenty of edits to do. But for your character, he has to live with not getting his own address right. And it's all your fault.

4. Make your character someone else's character. This idea is actually inspired by a couple of Pat Rothfuss' latest blog posts in which he describes how what you read can really have a large effect on what you write. He made his character Kvothe into Sherlock Holmes for awhile. I don't think Kvothe would want to be Sherlock Holmes, I think he'd rather be Kvothe. The same with your characters. They want to be themselves, or else they would have come to you as they have, dressed up in their very own clothing, cloaked in their own skins. Even if in the narrative they want to be Frodo or Harry Potter or Holmes or Kvothe, well, they would much rather have the story be about themselves. That is the point after all. So they do get really uncomfortable when you make them into someone else, even if it is an accident. What, are they not good enough for you? It's a great way to give your characters an inferiority complex.

5. Give your character an unofficial clone. What I mean by this is, your character won't like it if he reads another work of yours and sees a character just like himself in it. Sure, he may have a different name and a different job and a different accent even, but he is still a tall young man with red hair, green eyes, and a tendency to spend the entire novel both getting into troubles with ladies and fighting with his father. There may be some characters who are just more appealing for you to write about, and you may have this urge to write about them, a sort of tendency to somehow turn any character with even the smallest of similarities at first into that character. But it sure does take away some of that spark of originality from that first character, doesn't it? And this is something you can do without even noticing it at all! So be on the look out for that, unless you actually do want to hurt your characters' feelings.

6. Move your character. Alright, so maybe you've read number five, and maybe you have noticed that your latest character is a clone of a previous character in a story that you've either abandoned or decided to change or whatever. You've had to choose between these two almost identical characters, and between these two stories. Obviously, the story you are writing now is most likely going to be the winner there. But what if the previous character is the one you like just a little bit more. You say, "Right, that cleptomania and ability to sneeze on command is just what this latest character really needs!" So in your mind you just sort of switch the characters. You kick Mr. New Guy out of the new story, and move in Mr. Previous Guy and all of his cute little character luggage. You edit the new novel to make him fit, and you make sure that his back-story really does work seamlessly. That's nice that you are getting him all settled in, but it really isn't his home, is it? He's going to feel so uncomfortable! Just think about it. He and the previous story grew up together. Now he's somewhere new, filling in some other guy's shoes. Poor guy. Moving the character wasn't such a nice idea anymore, huh?

7. Give your character unnecessary conflict. You have writer's block. You have no idea what to write next. But you really want to keep the momentum going here. So you do what they always tell you: give your character some conflict! And all of a sudden, now that you've added that flying giraffe that came out of the sea and ruined your character's beach jousting tournament, you have another seemingly endless stream of ideas! But did your character really need to reveal that she has trained in the flying sea giraffe rodeo for ten years and even though she retired due to the stress her coach put on her (not to mention her coach's possible sexual advances) that she has dearly missed the sport? I could be wrong, but that whole section may need to be cut once you start editing. If not that section, then maybe it is a section created by one of the other nine crazy conflicts you added to stave off writer's block. The point is, you made your character 1) get distracted during that crucial beach jousting tournament, 2) ride a freaking flying giraffe from the sea, 3) train in the flying sea giraffe rodeo for ten whole years, and 4) be pressured both competitively and sexually by her flying sea giraffe rodeo coach. All for no reason at all if you cut the section! Now, if you want to cut the section, that's fine. I mean, it doesn't quite fit with your character's background anyway, does it? No, cutting it is not the problem here. Adding conflict and cutting it even is alright, usually. The thing is what you added was really just weird! You knew, deep down, when you wrote it, that it wouldn't ever be used! You knew it! So why did you do it, hm? Perhaps you should have been more careful when introducing that little bit of conflict in the first place. It may have been really fun to write, but just think of your poor character....

8. Don't write in chronological order. Many of the best authors do this. In fact, I think I read somewhere in the Introduction to one of the books, that Tolkien skipped around when he wrote The Lord of the Rings (I can say for certain that all three of the books in the trilogy were published together at once). It may be the best for you, writing parts as you think of them. But it confuses the hell* out of your characters. You expect them to make sense, have all sorts of proper motivations that will help them develop properly throughout the novel. But how can you expect them to do that when they are jumping all around? I know you really love making the cat chase the laser pointer around in circles until he can't walk straight, but did you ever think that it's not particularly well-mannered?

9. Leave your character in an undesirable place. Whether this place is a seedy sea-side tavern (where I left my character for a week), in a haunted house, in the middle of the apocalypse, an all-nighter before a big exam, waiting for his girlfriend to accept his proposal, at her best friend's funeral, or feeling guilty for fighting with his grandmother -- in short, whether the place be physical, mental, or emotional -- your character will not be happy if you put him there and then walk away from it for days, weeks, years. So it isn't the most thoughtful thing to do, to leave them somewhere unpleasant.

10. Abandon your character. This is just like number 9, except it is a number 9 in which you never come back. Ever. Never ever again. And this is really rude no matter where your character is. You could even leave her playing with her kitten in a sweets shop,** but she would get lonely. Sure, you say, she has her kitten, how could she get lonely? Or, you may even have left her with her best friend, and her parents, and everyone else she knows because it is her birthday party and her millionaire parents invited everyone for her sweets shop birthday and everyone brought her a kitten as a present. But she would miss you most of all! You and your character have a bond that is unbreakable. That means no matter how far away you try to walk from that abandoned manuscript, there will still be a little string that attaches you to her. It's tied to her heart, and it tugs at it more, the farther you walk. And her heart will never just be pulled right out of her chest, because that's not the type of... it just won't. Don't forget that she also had a story to finish too. She was still waiting to go places or to become things! Abandonment may be inevitable (goodness knows, I've done it enough), but that doesn't mean it isn't the worst thing you can do to your character!

And these are just ten! There are a ton more, I'm sure! Feel free to let me know some others, or if you have any good examples of times when you were rude to your characters, doing any of these ten things or other rude things. Maybe it will make me feel a little less guilty for doing a few of these myself!

* I really don't swear, it's just that Douglas Richardson is a bad influence. Don't you who that is? Well, please excuse me while I rant about how hilarious Cabin Pressure is and how much you should listen to it....
** That's a candy store for any of you proper Americans, which I have been doing a very poor job of being lately.

Family Road Trip Adventure

2011-08-16T20:20:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I came back to Buffalo, via a family road trip. My mom wanted to drive me up and make sure I had everything that I would need for the next year. Buses are great, but they sort of limit the sort of purchases you can bring home. Thus, the family road trip. It is only a five hour drive -- certainly it's nothing too extreme -- but for our family, for whom back in Cumberland a drive twenty minutes away is a little bit of a stretch, the Cumberland to Buffalo drive is a big adventure.

I started out the trip tasting the jelly beans I got (they're my new travel snack), and tried to convince my brother to play any of the games they play on Cabin Pressure. None of them stuck besides "yellow car." It's hard to not play that one, since "you're always playing 'yellow car.'" Anyway, we sort of have our own kind of games as well. Except that one of them isn't a game at all, it is dead serious: when you pass a graveyard, you have to put your thumb up, and then put it down once you have passed it. If you do not do this, the ghosts will follow you home. This came from some sort of book or tape my brother and I got from the library once, when we were visiting our dad one weekend. We have put our thumbs up appropriately ever since. Alternatively, you can either say "rabbit rabbit' repeatedly until you are past the graveyard and then say "bunny bunny" or vice versa (I forget which one is for which), but1) it seems much more involved, what with the constant talking and 2) I'm not sure which way is which anymore. The third sort of "game" is to point out weird stars on houses. I know they may, possibly, perhaps, conceivably, be for decoration, but too many of them at home are just ugly and don't make sense. We have always speculated that they much mean something more, some sort of cult or something. A recent event supports that theory. Anyway, more on that perhaps another time. The point is, we pointed out stars. All three of these "games" together can get confusing, apparently. Jonny once said, laughing, that he had just put his thumb up when he saw a star on a house. These occupations lasted the whole five and a half hours.

These and the radio were the main excitements until we came to a cute little town in PA. Phillipsburg or Phillisburg or something like that. It was adorable. We drove through it and onward. A while later, we came to another town, around noon or so (we left at about 9:30). It looked like a cute town at first, not as cute but cute enough. We thought we should stop there to get some gas and use the bathroom and such. We missed the turn into Sheetz, since we didn't even know there was a Sheetz there until it was too late, so we had to drive down the road a few more blocks until we could turn around. We pulled over into a parking lot and turned around. And suddenly the town didn't look so cute anymore, but really really sketchy. We had turned around in the parking lot of a gun store, and -- you'll just have to trust me on this -- it was really sketchy. We looked at the town in a new light then, and the whole place seemed really sketchy. I wish I didn't have to repeat the word, but nothing fits better: it was sketchy. The bathrooms in the Sheetz were nice-ish though.

A little while up the road, we saw a building that said something along the lines of "We buy guns!" Jonny briefly imagined life in the merchant business, buying guns from the gun store in the sketchy town and selling them to that gun store. The idea was eventually discarded, if you were wondering. From there the landscape became more factory-filled. It was interesting, and very picturesque in its way, driving through the mountains, watching the smoke/steam from the gray/black factories lifting into the air to mingle with the fog and low-hanging gray clouds. Then we passed some alpacas. Apparently. Jonny swears he saw some alpacas. He said they also may have been llamas, since he doesn't really know how to tell very well, but he is quite sure that they were probably alpacas or llamas. They were in one of the smaller forest roads with houses. We guessed someone in the nearby house farmed alpacas? Weird, I know. So that was interesting. Then, as we were nearing another factory valley, and there was a fork in the road. Unsure what the GPS was telling us, we took a wrong turn. But that was alright, because as we were waiting at a red light to turn onto the road that would lead us to the road we wanted to be on, my brother looked to the car to our left and exclaimed, "Look! It's a climbing wall!" And it was. It was a climbing wall on the back of a truck. As the light turned green and the cars ahead of us started moving forward, we rushed to try to take a picture of it and failed. Then we speculated about if it was just carry it or if one was meant to climb it while the truck was driving. It seemed like a really intriguing idea.

Just as we finally turned back onto the correct road (and saw a public library for the town that was actually a house they just turned into the library!) there was a horrible smell. And I mean awful. Now, a quick interlude here. At home over the past few weeks, our house had a bad case of awfully-smelling-things twice. The first time it was the broccoli from the previous day's dinner that was just sitting in the garbage can and which continued to sit there for a couple of days, smelling disgusting all the while. The next smell-curse was apparently week-old deli turkey in the fridge. It smelled the fridge up the whole day, and was thankfully not let loose to plague the house. That is, not until we took it out of the fridge to put in the garbage can. A ziploc bag took care of the smell, but not before plenty of smell had already escaped. Now, back to the road trip. This smell was like both of those smells. It was horrible. Looking around us for the source of the smell, Jonny and I found it. Domtar. A building sort of factory place perhaps, which read "Domtar." We don't know what Domtar is, but we do know that it is Rat Mod backwards. Domtar just sounds awfully sinister. Rat Mod pretty much says what it means, we guess. Anyway, things that smell evil are actually evil. So remember, Domtar is evil, and probably Rat Mod.

Next, we entered the realm of mountains and broad valleys filled with corn. Much corn. Signs that said that you could buy fresh sweet corn up ahead. Little houses that appeared to be depressingly far from what we sort of considered necessary civilization (such as grocery stores, although they seemed to have a McDonald's nearby). In one of the more mountainous parts between two of these broader valleys, we passed a beautiful unicorn. No, seriously. Now, I didn't see it until it was too late really, and I only saw the flank and the rump, so I only saw a beautiful white horse. Jonny, however, swears he saw a horn on its head. Now, you may be thinking Jonny was going crazy, but really, it wouldn't surprise me. That pretty white horse just seemed to come out of nowhere, just standing there on the outskirts of the woods eating some grass. It was totally the sort of place and time for a unicorn. So that was another neat thing on our road trip.

The unicorn was actually just an hour and a half away from Buffalo, maybe even a little shorter, so nothing of note happened after that. But it was quite an eventful road trip, especially with plenty of suspicious stars, and with ninja graveyards that were sort of hidden around trees and then popped out at you all of a sudden, and with alpacas and unicorns, and with cute towns and creepy, and with the evil Domtar. Yes, quite the adventure!

Scholars' Weekend (August 5-7)

2011-08-14T22:20:00.000-04:00

It's been a few weeks since I last posted anything. That would be because I went home, and since home is generally unpleasant, I couldn't persuade myself to write anything. I was at home for a week. Then, I went to Scholars' Weekend for the Foundation, my first time as one of the alumni. It went quite poorly. I had planned on writing a post vainly trying to explain how awesome it would be, but after it happened I realized there is not point devoting a whole post to me just complaining about everything. So I'll keep my explanation short... ish.

So the train was four hours late. Then I road the train three hours down, missed my connecting train from Union Station to BWI since it was so late, had to walk to the far bathrooms in the food court at Union to avoid a line, then wait in the long line to change my ticket. My train left DC at 6:05. Too bad I needed to make it to Johns Hopkins AND change into fancy clothes BEFORE 6:00 when the bus left for the FANCY BANQUET AT THE HIPPODROME! Desperate to make it there in maybe enough time, I texted Mel to see if she was going dancing maybe and if I could get a ride; she was, but the timing wasn't quite right. I got to BWI at 6:30, and I had to pay $45 to take a cab from the train station to the school, because although I was going to catch a ride with Max at 3:30, the delay made me miss that as well. And I should mention, all this delay was because THE TRAIN TOOK A WRONG TURN. A switch that should have been switch wasn't. That is how train accidents happen, silly people.

Anyway, I got there late, checked into my room at Charles Commons, and wandered around Hopkins, bored for a few hours. I was SO bored. Then people came back at 10:30, and I went down the street with them to the Charles Village Pub. Now, standing around in a crowded and noisy bar and drinking a Coke is not my sort of scene, mostly because I really prefer scenes where I can actually be heard. It was nice to catch up with friends though. We went back at about 1:00 in the morning and went to bed. I was so exhausted, so I also had a headache. It took me over an hour to fall asleep.

After a second night in a row with just four hours of sleep, the next morning I had to try to find staff so I could sign in. It was tricky. Even then, she didn't want to go upstairs to get me my stuff, so I got a generic folder. Not worth missing breakfast to track the staff person down. Then, the Conundrum. It was so easy. That is all. It was just so easy. Five puzzles in one hour, in place of four puzzles really squeeeezed tightly into two hours. What fun is a puzzle if you get it almost right away. Silly people. Anyway, we didn't win, and it also wasn't so great. And then lunch, in which Nolan's was to crowded to find a place to eat my food so I had to throw it away. By this point I was very angry since I hadn't had a proper meal the day before or a proper breakfast. I had been eating vending machine for the past four meals, and another vending machine meal just frustrated me. It was worse that my bag of chips didn't make it out of the vending machine so I had to miss that meal too.

Next I sat around bored some more until the College Fair. I was representing UMBC, trying to get some awesome Young Scholars to go there. Sadly, that went poorly too. The Foundation asked the schools for fliers and pamphlets and such, but UMBC didn't send them anything. So I sat at an empty table in the corner (that placement was just coincidence, since the tables were ordered alphabetically). I watched as everyone herded around the Cornell table, and the Hopkins table, and the Brown table, and all those sorts. They were also right by the doors. Unfair, right? Also, the Foundation said that they had made a scavenger hunt sort of thing for them, a sheet with questions they had to answer or something, so that -- or so the Foundation said -- the scholars will visit tables that they otherwise normally wouldn't visit. After all, the point of a college fair isn't to learn more about schools you've already looked into, but to learn more about a bunch of schools. Well, it turned out that UMBC wasn't even on the scavenger hunt. UMBC is worse of than University of Sand Diego, University of Vermont, even Tulane. THEY were on the list.... And I bet all those big name schools were on the list, too. That scavenger hunt sure didn't succeed very well, did it? I was grumpy that I had to sit there for three hours and only talk to four people total. I did talk to some of the staff that I knew so that was nice. And one guy was really interested in UMBC, and I think between explaining to him that the cool kids from the Honors Floor don't go home on the weekends like everyone else and that there was an organ in the Honors Floor lounge I may have done a good job convincing him to go there. Hurray for moderate success! Sill a big waste of time though. I could have been napping.

Then I was bored for another awkward amount of time, and then I headed to toward the Alumni Reception. I met some people though, who said that Cohort 1 (my cohort) kids were going out to a diner a few blocks over and just skipping the reception. But then we ended up staying because moving large groups of people is tricky. This was mildly disappointing, since I once again was denied a real meal. I had some cherry tomatoes and some carrots sticks, along with a cute little thing of chocolate mousse for dessert. I talked to some of my friends there, and that was fun. I also chatted with some of the other alumni I knew who weren't from my cohort, and we talked about Headquarters, how Jason use his position as IT for the Scholars' Association to keep everyone informed on the parties and dinners in multiple areas, how to reach out to other schoalrs to get involved in the Association, and what should be done about the cuts made to such things as the Young Scholars' Welcome Weekend. It was nice.

Then, it was the talent show. It was alright, I thought. There were some cool acts, but there were also acts I thought came across us just unimpressive. Also, there was constant flash from cameras, and that is not a good theatre experience. Afterward, other people went out. I waited for them to leave and then I got some Subway form across the street and had a nice warm meal in my room while watching Sherlock on my brother's iPod. Then I went to bed early enough to get six whole hours of sleep.

Next morning was uneventful, on the whole. I met some cool scholars at breakfast (cohort 5 and cohort 2, Sara and Sam). Then I got to the closing session early and sat around. The girl next to me, though, apparently is Belle at Disney World! Belle at Disney World on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday during the summer is a Scholar! So cool! Then, just as they were starting the closing session, Max texted me to let me know he was in Cumberland and that in a strange turn of events, we had actually changed places there for a bit (since I was super close to his apartment). The talks started so I couldn't reply just then, but between that neat thought and Belle, I was definitely entertained. Then, standing around waiting on the bueses after, one staff person came up and talked to me, and then after I introduced myself she said, "Oh, you're Sarah! I've had your name-tag in my bag all weekend!" Funny that I found her eventually, even though it was a bit late. I felt like I completed some sort of quest. She then proceeded to ask my age, because then she said, "I'm sorry, I had to ask, you just look like you're fifteen!" It was the FIFTH time someone thought I was that young. Other people thought I was a Young Scholar -- and they're 16 or 17. I went to the Weekend hoping that I looked older than that by now, what with a change of hair style slightly and all. But alas, I still look young.

On the way home, the BWI train station had some scholars who disappointed me. They 1) made fun of the talent show people and obviously shows themselves to be uncultured, and 2) talked about how their parents beat them and how they try to be quiet when their parents beat their siblings. They should tell the Foundation about that, they can point these kids toward the best sources of help for that. Anyway, at Union Station, I barely had time to grab some pizza really quick and eat it before getting in line. And in line, the only people who talked to me were teenage girls -- and they WERE actually 15. The one girl was in line behind me, and she asked if I wanted to sit next to her. I said sure,and we exchanged nice smiles when were found out we were in the same car even though I was stopping at Cumberland and she was going all the way to Cincinnati. And then we exchanged sorry smiles when we were assigned seats, ones that weren't together. It was kind of alright, because I was probably actually a lot older than she thought I was, and that would have been weird. Anyway, she was really sweet though. I ended up sitting next to a rude lady who rather than put one of her bags in the overhead rack, put both of her bags on the floor and took up half of my foot space. She even always slammed her bag down on my legs. I have no idea what her problem was.

Then I arrive home. Mostly, it just wasn't the best weekend ever. Last year, Scholars' Weekend was so inspiring. This time, however, I hardly used my brain, I met a lot of disappointing people, and the Foundation never seemed to care that I didn't check in. They didn't even know if I showed up or not. Doesn't that kind of thing matter to them? I am still debating about weather or not I want to go back next year. Word is that we have now outgrown both the Hippodrome for the banquet and Hopkins for the conference in general, so it will probably be at a conference center in DC or the immediate Virginia area. And there are SO many more nice places in DC to hold the banquet. So far I've been to banquets at one of the smaller Smithsonian galleries, the Embassy of the Russian Federation, and the Hippodrome in Baltimore. I would love to make that list just a little longer, and maybe even more impressive if I could possibly!

So that was last weekend. Up next: today road trip with the family! Trust me, you won't want to miss it. There were some CRAZY things that we passed by.

Fabulous Weather

2011-07-22T15:54:00.000-04:00

Apparently it is hot out today. The weather app on my desktop says the weather is cactus (communicating the weather with pictures is odd sometimes). It also says that it is 94 degrees out there. Luckily, this doesn't bother me a bit, as my air-conditioning magically fixed itself about three days ago after several days of allowing my apartment to become an unconventional oven. I am sorry for all of those whom the heat is inconveniencing, though. Really. I'm going back home for a bit next week, to the house without the AC, where the temperature is even higher than here in Buffalo. Don't worry, I will soon be suffering like the rest of you, fine fellows.

As for today, though, I don't mind the heat. Nope, not even when I actually go out in it. Nope. Sure, it is hot, but here at least it is not very humid. Sure, I get to experience that unique sensation of feeling like my skin is on fire, but quite frankly, I kind of like it. It is... hmm, how to pick the best word... it is fabulous.

Now, I don't mean the fabulous that you are thinking. To explain that choice, I must explain two things. First, that I like my weather to have character. I like particularly snowy days, particularly hot days, dark black clouds, grey clouds, a light drizzle with grey clouds, rain in the still of night, big fluffy clouds, warm breezes, cool breezes, almost anything that isn't lifeless. What is lifeless then? Plain, cloudy days, those ones when the sky is covered in plain, white clouds. That is the worst kind of weather that I know. Closely following are the sunny days without a cloud in the sky. Sure, the blizzards and thunderstorms, the extreme heat and extreme cold, they bother me. They annoy me immensely at times. But I can't fully loath them like I do those boring weathers. Now I must explain the next part of my statement. Fabulous. Think on that word. Do you know what it actually means? What the heart, the root of the word means? Fabula: Latin for story. Fabulous means that it is story-worthy, more or less. Not noteworthy, but more than that. Worthy of being a story. And a dry day like this, when the heat dances along your arms with sizzling steps, think of what a story. It isn't a story, no, but it is worthy of a story.

I went out for a walk yesterday to get some lunch and do a chapter of German. Now, as someone who is rather fair-skinned and burns ridiculously easily, I have grown accustomed to avoid strong sunlight. I know heat doesn't mean particularly strong UV rays, but the weather actually did say they were strong too. So as I walked out of my apartment, and stepped from the shade into the strong afternoon sunlight, I was ready to inwardly cringe at the heat and the feeling of the sun. But I didn't need to. It wasn't that bad. This wasn't a heat that came from the sun, it was a heat that came from the air. It was already surrounding me, but not drowning me. It wasn't thick air. It was hot, but light. Like a large book that you pull of the shelf can surprise you with its light weight. And like a book, you could feel the story to it. This is the sort of heat that wafted the rich scents across the Nile from Cleopatra's barge. This was the heat that accompanied the delicate cloud of dust raising from the press of a hunting lion's paw. This was a heat that held thousands of stories. And as I drank it in, I could feel those stories raising to my mind.

Even if you find this heat annoying, do try to enjoy it. It is something special: it has character. It has stories to tell, it is alive with the movement of the tales. This is actually great weather for writing. These stories I am inhaling aren't my own, no, but they could be, certainly. If I wanted them right now. But more than anything, they stir the inspiration. The warm wind stirs the leaves of fabula and somewhere among the rustling I can catch glimpses of inspiration that I can use for my novel right now. It is the movement that we need. Inspiration isn't a river, for most of us -- at least not for me. It is a pond, a lake, a reflecting pool in the most mystical depths of a dark forest. It doesn't move on its own. You need to stir it up a bit yourself. Sometimes things may pass over this pool and ideas may flash into your mind, but it is far better to let the breeze stir the waters and watch the ripples dance with the constellations.

I suggest that you go for a walk, and bear all this in mind. Take in a deep breath, and taste the colorful flavor of the heat, richer than any wine, and savor this sort of weather. The weather with stories. Fabulous weather.

Book Review: Peril at End House and The Murder on the Links

2011-07-19T20:12:00.002-04:00

Obviously, I'm doubling up again for this review. Be expecting that for awhile, until my list of books that I'm reading all at once slims down a bit. Anyway, for today's review, I'm focusing on two Agatha Christie mysteries, both featuring her renowned detective Hercule Poirot! First, let us discuss:

Peril at End House

This is a relatively short mystery, just over 200 pages, so it's a lovely easy read. Personally, I always consider Agatha Christie novels "beach reads" (I don't go to the beach, or pool, or anything, so I sort of consider them vacation read really), because they are short-ish, self-contained, interesting but not too engaging, and are simply delightful. I understand, though, that many people might not find murder a good topic for enjoying oneself. Such silly people. The point is, though, that this would satisfy even these readers. There is murder at one point, yes, but most of the novel is about preventing a murder from happening! Solving not the mystery of who murdered the victim, but who is trying to murder her. It is a new challenge for Poirot, and refreshing for the reader.

This mystery is furthermore what I like to think of as vacation mysteries, even among the category of Poirot's mysteries. Set after his "retirement," Poirot is taking a vacation at the moment at the sea. He takes a lot of vacations. Certainly, not quite as exotic as say, Appointment with Death, or Murder in Mesopotamia, but you can rest assured that your mind is escaping into a fictional vacation nonetheless, which is the very best you can do to "get away from it all." This is also one of the Poirot novels narrating by the amiable Captain Hastings, Poirot's Watson. They are always the best ones. The detective's foil is a familiar set-up for a reason. It's just not the same him. Not that other novels aren't good, but... well, I like Hastings' point of view. He gives great insights, and just as Poirot does, you can be sure to not trust his judgments about people. It makes everything that much more exciting: trying to figure out the whodunit based on the information given about the suspects but not trusting a bit of that information and often thinking that the information you are given is the exact opposite of what is true. It's great.

In this particular book, it is clear that the answer to the mystery is more complex than it seems, sort of. I certainly tried to think of any number of trick endings while reading it. Usually, I am always a bit disappointed in that regard, though. Christie often submits to the "the simplest explanation is the true one" philosophy in her novels. You may be thinking, "But Sarah, what about Murder on the Orient Express!" Yes, that one is an exception. Not many of the books I've read so far (and I've read a few less than half of the Poirot novels) actually have very tricky solutions. The novel we are speaking of now, however, is a bit different. I shan't tell you how it is different, lest I spoil anything. But I will say that it is not the simplest explanation that there could be. There are plenty of characters and many complications to the plot (someone trying to kill Miss Nick, mistaken identity, cocaine addicts, inheritances and will, secret engagements, foreigners, lost pilots, a creepy house, and all the lies a reader could ask for), how could it not be more complex? And the complex mysteries are always more fun. But did I guess at the solution correctly? At one point, yes, but without the details, of course. I couldn't figure out part of the motivation, which was a real shame. It's one of those things that you look back and remember thinking at one point, "Well, yes they could have done that, but why though? It doesn't make any sense!" and at another "What an interesting thought that is!" and wish you had thought them at the same time, for then you would have seen it all as clearly as Poirot does in the end. And what a marvel it really is, trust me. I thought it was definitely worth the read to see how this one unfolds!

And not to mention, there are a few great quotes such as:
"'Looks much the same -- hair a bit thinner on top but the face fungus fuller than ever.' 'Eh?' said Poirot. 'What is that?' 'He's congratulating you on your mustaches,' I said soothingly. 'They are luxuriant, yes,' he said complacently caressing them. Japp went off into a roar of laughter."
"In consequence, the events of that day take on in my memory the semblance of a nightmare -- with Poirot coming and going as a kind of fantastic clown, making a periodic appearance in a circus."

The Murder on the Links
The similarity between this book and Peril at End House certainly surprised me a bit as I was reading this, and I thought myself very lucky that I decided to pair these two books together. They really do suit each other. This is another short book, about 230 pages, and the murder takes place in a sort of vacation setting. No one is on vacation, but it is set in France, and as we all know, France isn't a real place for real people. No, jests aside, it really is half a vacation setting. Although it is out of London and the typical local settings for Poirot and out of the jurisdiction of our dear Inspector Japp, there are local French officials who run the case and are prominent characters. There is still a business aspect and we are not beyond the reach of the law, even if we are all the way across the Channel.

This is another novel narrated by Hastings. It is also a fairly early one, so Hastings and Poirot are actually roommates. Now, I've already said my bit about Hastings above, but I shall need to mention a couple more points in regard to this book. It is this book in which Hastings makes the most spectacular fool of himself. Oh no, forget all of the embarrassments and blank looks he may swim in throughout other stories. No, it is this one which is the worst. Oh, pauvre Hastings! And another thing -- I can't quite say it without giving away huge spoilers, but the story in this book actually gives us a major change in Hastings' life which actually affects his back story in the other books. I was glad I stumbled across this event by reading this.

Now, remember how I said Hastings was sort of Poirot's Watson? Well, that would sort of imply Poirot is the Holmes of this story. Agatha Christie is probably rolling over in her grave at the thought, because it is in this book in particular that she makes it abundantly clear that she has a huge dislike -- and I would like to think misunderstanding -- of Holmes' methods. If I had to pick between Poirot and Holmes, my dear reader, I would always pick Holmes. "Papa Poirot" is great and all but he isn't at all the same. And that is what Christie shows. Poirot begins by describing methods he holds in disdain, and then the story introduces I rival French detective from Paris! Once who practices the "new methods" and scoffs at the old methods of a retiree such as Poirot. This detective, Giraud, has an eye for details. He partakes in a minute study of the scene and the evidence and uses his knowledge of the details to try to piece together the puzzle. But Poirot, whose methods of course win out in the book, studies the psychology of the crime. There is a strong statement about these two methods throughout the novel, making it a little less light of a read than I would have liked. How dare she slight Holmes so!

As to the mystery itself, it is a clever one. It is strange that I read this along with Peril at End House because the structure of the mystery is so similar. Like the book above, this book features a mystery of two crimes which are blended together into one tangled mess. It is a trick which certainly does not disappoint. How can it be anything but clever to have two separate crimes in one mystery? And again, there is a twist to the solution of the crime. And it is essentially the same answer as the final answer in the mystery above, although that answers are not found in the same order. This book, though, features a seemingly never-ending set of solutions. You think you have found the answer, but more and more twists present themselves and always it is someone new who was at fault. I wondered why the novel seemed to be ending fifty pages away from the end of this 230 page book, but that was because it was just a false answer. No need to fear. And there were a few more false answers to follow it. It really did keep the story interesting.

Both of these books were very good. There are some Agatha Christie books which are better than others, and some certainly which are decidedly disappointing. Although I wouldn't call these two read the best of Poirot, they were certainly among the good ones and very solid, exemplary pieces of Dame Agatha's genius.

Not Done with Harry Quite Yet, Sorry

2011-07-15T13:45:00.001-04:00

The evening after my last Harry Potter post, I made plans to go see the midnight premiere. Previously, I didn't think I could go, because I don't drive. But I was able to makes plans with other people. The point is, I went to a midnight premiere and it was an amazing experience, so let me share a few thoughts with you about that.

We went to a back-to-back showing of part 1 and part 2 of Harry Potter 7. This was very convenient, as I had not yet managed to see part 1. The first movie was at 9:15, and then the second was promptly at midnight, of course. Even if I hadn't seen the first part, this was the ideal way to watch. The story is not a part 1 and part 2 type of story. The first part has no real climax in and of itself. The same sort of problem occurs in the second part, in that it is only climax and has little of a beginning or middle. Even though the combined movies approach five hours of duration, it is worth it. After all, didn't we all read the book in practically one sitting? And didn't that take us longer than five hours?

Another part about seeing this movie was that we saw it in a drive-in movie theater. That's right, a drive-in. And you wonder if they even still have those. They do. They have a few of them. This was the best possible way to watch the movie I could imagine. Beforehand, the atmosphere was not unlike that before the Quidditch World Cup in book 7. You walk around and see all sorts of people sitting up their chairs in front of their cars, turning the trunks into suitable seating, seeting out various assortments of snacks and whatever luxurious they may desire, and watching people of all ages sort of wander around excitedly, drinking it all in and impatiently waiting away the hour before the first movie would start.

Last night also happened to be the night before the full moon. That was the best part. No only are you watching in the fresh air, but you are watching under a full moon. The moon was really bright, and offered a lot of light, but not enough light to interfere with the screen. In this way, I could watch the movie just fine, but also drink in my surroundings. And for this movie, surroundings are important. It is all about the shared experience of the end and feeling the expanse of the community at the height of its growth. Also, a full moon is just magical. What could possibly be better, more magical and more epic, than a full moon under the circumstances of a Harry Potter midnight premiere which would end it all? The question is rhetorical, for the obvious answer is that there is nothing that could be better.

The night was cold, probably one of the coldest nights we've had in a few weeks, but once you wrap yourself up in the black you brought, it wasn't that bad. It nipped at your nose a bit, but that just sort of made the expereince all that much more real. You were in the cool and refreshing summer air at midnight under a practically full moon. If it wasn't a bit chilly then it wouldn't have been real. But no, it was all fully real.

There were a few moments of enjoying the audience's reactions, of course. When the final movie started playing, there was much honking of car horns (and one guy just yelling "honk honk"), and that's not something you could get in a movie theater (except for the guy yelling "honk honk," but I will say that it would be very unlikely). When Molly yells her famous "Not my daughter you bitch!" there was some clapping for her. And when Neville slashes the head off of Nagini, there were outright cheers. I think there may have been some clapping and cheering when Harry kills Voldemort. And there were audible growns when the screen said "19 years later." Apparently something about an epilogue happened after that, but I don't know what people are talking about. What epilogue?

Even driving home afterwards, with does running alongside the car and crossing in front of the car. Flitting in and out of the trees and the moonlight. None were blue and shiny, to our disappointment.

All in all, it was an amazing experience.

I have no lack of opinions about the movie itself, either, but I think it best if I not even start on those. Really, there are just too many things. But nothing about it could ruin the whole eventhing, that is certain.

PS: I almost forgot! During the previews, there was the preview for Breaking Dawn. This did not go down well with the HP audience. Someone yelled, "You're dead Cedric!" and then someone else very appropriately yelled "Kill the spare!" That part was lovely too, and a very good way to control the mounting tension that accompanied the previews of the final movie.

Thoughts on Harry

2011-07-12T20:43:00.001-04:00

I just thought that what with the approaching -- no, looming -- end to Harry Potter with the second part of the seventh movie, I perhaps ought to say something. Like you do at funerals, right? Well, isn't that just depressing...

No, good thoughts now. Come on, chaps, that's right, chin up! Here's my Potter story.

Sarah and the Sorcerer's Start. I read the first book when we read it at a summer enrichment program I attended at my middle school after sixth grade. I think the fourth book was just coming out sometime around then, to give you some perspective. Anyway, we were reading it chapter by chapter, and only got a few chapters in, but I read all the way through right away. In the program, our teacher said we would make cloaks and wands and such, but we never did. We were, though, given time in the computer lab to find an article about the book to present to the class. I couldn't find anything about the book, but I did find a casting call for the characters of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. That sure takes you back, doesn't it? Overall, a nice summer story.

Sarah and the Book of Secrets. So, funny story. That first book was my brother's, I had borrowed it for the summer program. He still hadn't finished, but he was taking ages. My mom did buy him the second book, though, for when he finished with the first. He already had the fourth, since our grandmother bought it for him when it first came out for some reason. Anyway, I didn't want to let on that I was actually into the series. So I sneaked down to the kitchen every morning before school during the twenty minutes my mom spent getting ready in the bathroom. The book lived on the stand by the stove, so I just had to stand there, and read it, and run away when my mom came down again. It was an awkward beginning to that school year. Once, I read the part about Diagon Alley one Saturday morning when my mom and brother went over to our other house to mow the lawn; it had been a beautiful morning, too. The ending, the entire episode when they go to the actually Chamber, I read on the dining room floor during a bad thunderstorm while my mom and brother were getting stuck in some minor flooding on their way back form his karate lessons. Ah, good times.

Sarah and the Prisoner of this Series. This book was great. I loved it. I read it by stealing it from my brother's room. He didn't notice. I read it really fast, because it was the first book I borrowed from him without his knowledge, so I wasn't sure if it would work. It did. But the book couldn't leave my bedroom.

Sarah and the Goblet of Addiction. Another book then swiped from my brother after I returned the third. This one was longer of course, so it took me longer to read. Again, it couldn't leave the safety of my room. But every day during school, I was dying to get back to my room and back to reading it. School days were long. I finished it in a few days, but all the non-reading parts I remember being awfully frustrating.

Sarah and the Order of the Potter. When this book came out, things were different. My brother and I were both fully caught up with the series, and were ready for its release. It was so expensive though, and it seemed silly to buy two copies of it (especially for me, who had up until this point been reading my brother's copies secretly, remember?), so we decided that we would split the cost and share it. The problem with this plan is obvious. Who would get to read it first? I read much faster than my brother, but I would read it straight through, and he would put it down a lot. I think in the end, we made the deal that I could read it first, but he would get to keep the book. Because the possession of the book in the end was a problem too, of course. This seemed like a decent deal to me. I needed to read it, you see.

Sarah and the Boy-Wizard Prince. Fun story with this one too. The release date was a big deal. After Sirius (who had then been my favorite character) died in the last book, there were all sorts of rumors floating around about who would die in this one. People said it would be all sorts of people who were close to Harry, and it was really painful to think of the horrible variety of solutions. Personally, I also needed to read the book because I was holding close the hope that Sirius wasn't really dead, based on Luna's cryptic "things come back" reassurance. The problem was that I was in Tennessee, living at a Days Inn for three weeks at a summer science program thing learning HTML and making a website. I didn't want to figure out how to get to Wal-Mart to buy the book. Luckily for me, one of my friends at the program was allowed on a special trip to the store with one of the staff members and asked if any of us wanted anything. You know what my request was. So the last few days of the program, when I should have spending the last time that I could with my new friends, I spent reading furiously in my hotel room alone. The end of the book, everything from shortly before Dumbledore's office before going out Horcrux hunting until the very end, I read on my flights back home. I didn't even stop when it got dark; the kind lady next to me turned on my overhead light for me, even though I hadn't even noticed how dark it was. I finished shortly before landing. What a read.

Sarah and the Deathly Sorrows. Not much to say about this. The reading of it wasn't the exciting part. I did stay up all night finishing it, though. The epic excitement leading up to this book was the best part. I re-read all the books, was addicted to Jo's website, and essentially tried to read everything people were speculating about it that I could, all the while avoiding the deadly spiders... I mean spoilers. I did find a spoiler though. I read it to my brother because I thought it wasn't a spoiler and it was the stupidest thing ever. He yelled at me for telling him spoilers, but I assured him it was too ridiculous to be real. It turned out to be the epilogue (which we all know doesn't really exist...). I first listened to wizard rock that summer. It was all very grand.

And in the end, that sort of attitude it what I like best about all of Harry Potter. I love the community. I love that it is something so many people love. I like nothing better than to be a part of something like that. It is a large body of people loving something. It is like an anti-war. Reverse-anti-genocide. The fandom is the best part about Harry Potter. It is better than the boy who lived, it is better than the story, it is better than the books, better than the movies, better than quidditch even! You can criticize the series for whatever you like, sure enough it isn't perfect. For the longest time I had a problem with the less-than-astounding writing. But no matter what you find to complain about or to condemn, you can't say anything against the massive miracle that is the fandom and all of the good that it represents. And if you try, well, have fun trying to dodge the bat-boogy curses!

Indie Pendants' Day: A True Story, Mostly

2011-07-05T20:58:00.001-04:00

The other day was the fourth of July, or American Independence day. The town fireworks were being set off over the lake right behind my apartment, so a million hours beforehand, I went outside to find myself a spot to sit amid the goose droppings and the crowds of people which were already staking out their territories for this momentous occasion, an occasion surpassing even the original day in 1776, mostly because this one is now and that one was then. And just to prove the grandeur of the occasion, I shall share with you a few quotes I myself witnessed at the time.

Older Uncle: They shouldn't be climbing that pole.
Mother: Why not?
Older Uncle: Because it's black.
....
Older Uncle: Because it's an electric light pole! Why do you think???

Mother to young daughter: It's in goose poop. See look, you dropped your carrot on the ground and now it's in goose poop. And now the goose has it. Look it's eating it. It's gone! Be quiet! Do you want me to make it come back up here and vomit it up at your feet for you?

Mother: Put your shirt back on!
Boy: I like it better this way.

Mother: Come back here so you can share your carrots with everybody!
Passing 13-year-old boy to his friends, in mocking voice: "share your carrots"... haha

Mother: Ooo, look, they found a ring! Why don't you go over there and dig through my purse with the rest of them?

Live orchestra set: The Star-Spangled Banner, first Sousa march, second Sousa march, third Sousa march, "Master of the House," "Can You Hear the People Sing," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "You're a Grand Old Flag," etc.

Mother: We have a toddler strip show here.

Mother to her 22-month-old daughter: Don't wander too far with all these people walking by. One of them's going to snatch you up and take you home and probably be really mean to you, and make you do lots of chores, and cut your legs off, and scoop your eyeballs out of their sockets with a spoon....

And I'll leave you with this thought: the only two songs people sang along to were Katy Perry's "Firework" and "Can You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Miserable.

Hope you had a good July 4th!