Chasing My Hat

Wordle

2010-09-19T01:25:00.000-07:00

Hah. See a trend? Why "book" is on there twice, I do not know.

I leave for Capernwray on Tuesday and it still seems unreal. The future contents of my suitcase are currently spread all over my bedroom floor (nobody go in there).

New layout--I like the colour scheme and the sky but am unsure about the mounds of seaweed everywhere.

Shameless Thievery

2010-08-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

...from Krys.

1. Favourite childhood book?
The Chronicles of Narnia. What else? I was eight or nine when I read them so I don't remember my first impression, except for being very sad when I finished The Last Battle and read "The Chronicles of Narnia are his only books for children" in the author bio blurb at the end.

2. What are you reading right now? Just finished The Man from Pomegranate Street by Caroline Lawrence which I read solely to finish off the series (it's the seventeenth) but it was better than I expected. A couple parts were like a bad parody but certain parts (like Jonathan) were excellent. And Flavia (who drives me crazy) spent a significant portion of the book in awkward or painful situations, so that was good.
Also, Miss Manners Rescues Civilisation. Awesome title, awesome cover, full of subtle snark.

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
Current stuff includes raw/vegetarian cookbooks, The John Holt Book of Homeschooling, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Blink by Ted Dekker (which, I just realised, has been on hold for MONTHS despite only having two holds on it when I ordered it. What gives, library?).

4. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
Sixty-two items (well, that includes music). Which is two over the limit. That librarian knows me so she was kind. Do you really want to hear all of them? Really?

5. Do you have an e-reader?
Paper and ink for me, thank you!

6. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
I usually have about six on the go...one for upstairs, one for downstairs, one in my handbag, various volumes strewn about my bedroom...

7. Can you read on the bus?
Yup.

8. Favourite place to read?
Anywhere quietish. This is harder to come by than one might think.

9. Do you ever dog-ear books?
Heresy! No!

10. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
I can't bring myself to, but I enjoy reading margin-notes written by other library patrons. Oh wait, I have, once or twice. In a library book I was especially irked at and wished to keep other readers from believing the author's folly. But that was a long time ago. And it was in pencil.

11. What makes you love a book?
Well-rounded and relateable-to characters. Truth—especially where I'm not expecting it. Subtlety. Lack of adverbs.

13. Favourite genre?
YA lit, historical fiction, theology stuff, psychology/sociology, history...

14. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
I make the most of the opportunity. :D

16. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
30+

17. How often have you returned book to the library unread?
Far too often.

18. Favourite fictional character?
That's not nice. That's not nice at all.

A few of my top ones are Gavroche, Shasta, Gen, Jess Aarons, the Bastables, the Inglefords, and Indigo Casson.

19. Favourite fictional villain?
Favourite villain? Isn't that an oxymoron?

20. What books are you most likely to bring on vacation?
P.G. Wodehouse (which I actually read during the holiday) and big thick classics (which I do not).

21. What's the longest you’ve gone without reading?
Until age five or so, my existence was sad and dark.

22. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
Various works of Stephenie Meyer, Bryan Davis, and Cornelia Funke. Among others. (Such as War and Peace...ahemmovingon...)

23. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
Siblings throwing things at my head, shouts of "Kelsey! Come help with dinner!", my sister's escaped semi-domestic rodent creatures crawling over me, etc.

24. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
Lord of the Rings, Empire of the Sun and Bridge to Terabithia

25. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Prince Caspian enough said!

26. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
Finding a more interesting book

27. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Yes. Woe to anyone who disturbs that perfect (but easily comprehended, so never fear) arrangement.

28. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
Keep!

That is all. Cheers. I will now go do something constructive, like...sleep...

NB

2010-08-14T00:11:00.000-07:00

Dear People Who Keep Asking What I Plan to Do with My Life,

I HAVE NO IDEA.

Yours,
Kelsey

There and Back Again

2010-06-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

Where do I start?

I've been back for a month now. Coming back was a lot harder than going. It was odd, because I wasn't euphorically happy every day of the trip or anything. For the first few days I couldn't wait to come home. When I finally did, it took a long time to get used to routine and normality again.

I won this trip, or a large part of it, in a contest at Missionsfest. It was something I never would have chosen to go on and never could have afforded on my own so it was pretty amazing how God worked everything out. I didn't even enter (though I would have if I had seen it); my dad put in my name and my brother's and we all thought nothing would come of it. Well.

Skip to the interesting part.

There were seven people in our team—three adults, four teenagers—and I can't imagine what it would have been like if we had a group of 10-20 kids like most short-term mission trips seem to. We went with a organisation that sponsors children and is building a school/children's home.

So far they have the land cleared and after we left they were finally able to start drilling their well. We helped make bricks—out of clay and straw, you let them dry in the sun and then fire them in a kiln—and also gave out soup mixes and visited the some of the kids that they’re sponsoring. The children’s home is only for the most extreme cases, otherwise they want to keep the kids with their families as much as possible—even if one parent is dead or they’re living with an aunt or grandmother—because it’s usually better for the child and better for the community to grow up in that environment, no matter how wonderful the orphanage is.

We also spent a lot of time with the local kids, and did some children’s programs and that sort of thing. The people there are amazingly friendly. It’s part of the culture of hospitality—it’s an enormous honour to have guests. Especially white people. Shouts of “mzungu!” follow you everywhere you go, kids wave at you when they see you on the street. At the churches we visited everyone said, “You’re only staying three weeks? Why are you only staying three weeks? We must find you good African husbands, and then you can stay here, and learn Swahili, and become true African women!”

I was uncomfortable with it at first because (subconsciously) you wonder how it can be genuine. We looked like tourists. We WERE tourists, more or less. After a few days I stopped being uptight and just enjoyed the experience, because what can you do about it. :P

Kenyan kids smile on demand (i.e. when you smile at them), unlike Canadian ones. They also LOVE having their pictures taken.

There's colour everywhere. Red roads, blue sky (not quasi-blue with a permanent layer of cloud). A lot of the shops and houses are painted in not-quite-neon. You see school uniforms everywhere—some drab like ours, some bright pink or purple.

We visited a couple different schools. At one of them, one of the girls on our team, K., started talking with those girls through the window. One of them said, "You must make sure I can come to Canada! You will bring me to Canada, right?"
"I'm sorry," said K., "I can't."
"Then you can give me money! Do you have any money?"
"No," said K.
"But you will give me something!" said the girl. "What do you have?"
"Nothing, sorry," said K.
The girl looked at C. (the only guy in our group). "Then give me the boy!"

I’d like to go back but I’d like even more to go somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t have so much effort already being poured into it. It would be silly to pretend that we changed the world in three weeks, that we made a huge lasting impact for God’s kingdom. We didn’t. Most short term mission trips probably don’t—what can you accomplish in a couple weeks that will last? Not much.

But if the main point is to get people interested in what's going on over there and show them what life is like outside of our rich, North American bubble, then it definitely worked. I wasn't the only one who became interested in the third world and in doing more.

Because I come from a super-missions-family (my parents were missionaries in China for years and unreached peoples are my dad's passion) it's something I've grown up hearing about. We have missionaries over all the time. We do street outreaches for teenagers and minorities. My parents have missionary friends all over the world and we subscribe to all the magazines and newsletters.

None of that was quite the same as getting shoved out of my small comfort zone and seeing it for myself. It wasn't a momentous first step. But still a step.

This and That

2010-06-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I have had a lot of shocking haven't-posted-anything-in-HOW-long? records in my short blogging career, but I think that one conquers them all. (Do I feel guilty? Um, not really.)

I went to Kenya for three weeks in May. More about that later. The trip involved things such as four-inch beetles, marriage proposals (although not to me), fainting, and going 52 hours straight without sleep.

I graduated. Sort of. I thought I graduated last year and then I kept on doing grade 12 courses, since they were free and I wasn't doing much else besides working. So I'm sort of graduating now. Except not officially because I don't have any grade 10 credits. I was never one of those homeschoolers who was confused about what grade she was in until I started taking classes at public school.

I started getting things together for Capernwray next September. If you have ever wondered, student visa + criminal check + trying to find the cheapest flight although they won't book round trips that far in advance + the UK disapproving of people entering without a return ticket which brings us back to the Visa thing = a whole lot of fun. Oh yeah. :D

I stopped writing. Really since the end of NaNo, but "officially" from about February to now. I think I'll pick it up again eventually. Maybe soon. For all my grand advice to people about "no, your writing isn't perfect now, but keep at it because practise is the only way to get really good," I grew tired of pretending--pretending to have life experience I didn't. Writing about emotion I knew only from books, and making my characters experience things instead of stepping out and trying them for myself. The results felt fake and empty always. Right now I'm thinking maybe life first, words later. Learn now, give back when what I have is worth a little more. But mostly, no more hiding.

Welcome World and All That Jazz

2010-02-18T16:56:00.000-08:00

Is it frowned upon to sneak photos of strangers? (I wouldn't mind if they took pictures of me. I'm sure they did--in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Monday you couldn't walk two steps without getting in front of somebody's camera. In one case said camera belonged to NBC Anchorage. Well.) I won't make a habit of it. Really.

just ignore how I messed up the blurring, 'kay?

The Skytrain (and its strangers) was more interesting than the hype, but this round of Olympic Spirit vs. Kelsey's Cynicism ended in a draw. Apathy conquered. How Canadian.

Best and Worst Books of 2009

2010-02-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

I know, this is very late. My flash drive died a grim and sudden death, so this post was stranded on my laptop for a month. However it has now been brought back to the land of the living, in all its overlong and hastily edited glory.

***

I wasn’t going to do this, because I read hardly anything this year. Too busy. Life happened. My total was seventy-two or something, and out of that only about ten fiction books, half of which were rereads. Scary, eh? But it’s tradition, so here we go.

Best:

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr: I read this a long time ago, but didn’t think much of it until last week when my mum read it and liked it so much that she decided to read it to my siblings. I happened to be loafing about and heard the chapter about Pumpel the suicidal dog, and that was that. It’s about a Jewish girl and her family who leave Germany in 1933, and live first in Switzerland and then France. There isn’t a whole lot of plot; it’s very much a character-driven story. The growing Nazi Menace is more or less out of the picture after the first few chapters. But the author tells of their daily lives and their adjustment to two new countries with great humour and understanding of human nature. I enjoyed it very much. It’s one of the few children’s’ books I’ve read that doesn’t explain everything but assumes that the reader can figure out the rest on his own.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes: I’m not much into the Revolutionary War but I really loved this book, especially the first half—when it’s concentrating on Johnny instead of the war and the Patriots (I know, I’m strange), and when he’s an immature jerk who gets what’s coming to him and has to deal with it. Esther Forbes knows her stuff—the details and characters never once jar the reader back to modern times. She has great characters, witty dialogue, and—bonus points!—doesn’t present the British as beasts, either. Hooray.

Various P.G. Wodehouse: I went on a Wodehouse binge this summer. All his books blur together in my head so I can’t remember all the titles—they’re on Goodreads somewhere—but Wodehouse is smashing, all round. His plots and characters are all exactly the same but boy does he make up for it with his humour and his pseudo-English 1920s flavour. Favourites were Leave it to Psmith and Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.

Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne: Another children’s-book-from-the-far-distant-past. It was quite epic. My seven-year-old self did not appreciate it properly.

The Compass by Daniel Schwabauer: The textbook for the One Year Novel curriculum. Shameless plug: Nina interviewed Ruth, Kayla and I about this a few days ago.

I Am David and the The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia: All rereads, so they don’t really count. Sigh. But you should read them anyway. Hurry, because the fourth Attolia book comes out NEXT MONTH!

Worst: I didn’t abhor any of these. They’re only worst by virtue of my not reading any tremendously bad ones this year. How disappointing—I will have to be sure to put some rotten books on my reading list for 2010, because they’re always such a joy to write about. (Or would be if I had time to waste on them.)

Beyond the Reflection’s Edge by Bryan Davis (with apologies to the Most Kind and Esteemed Friend who lent it to me!): I don’t get why everyone loves this guy! Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get into his books. I enjoyed this one more than the Dragons in our Midst series, because it was based more in the real world and involved no dragons and long prophetic poems. But I can’t connect with the characters, can’t get into their heads or feel like I know them. The story relies entirely on plot, a convoluted plot that I never really cared about because the characters were so mediocre. And there’s something about his writing that grates me though I can’t exactly define it. Maybe just the fact that it’s a very modern style and that it takes itself so seriously (though DIOM does that more). A lot of this is my own bias, i.e. not really being a fan of the genre. I liked some parts of it, but I can’t remember what they were at the moment. The cover was pretty awesome, that was one thing. And the whole music motif/theme.

Introvert Power by Laurie Helgoe: I had high hopes for this one but alas, it was a dud (to use the technical term). The author seems to think that all introverts are hypersensitive and idealistic. There’s a lot of talk about envisioning dreams no matter how unrealistic they are and visualising fantasies, in order to deal with the abuse of the extrovert world. Sorry, I happen to be a sceptical, rational, unemotional introvert. We do exist, believe it or not. (What’s up with every author who writes about introversion thinking that introvert = INFJ?) The tapping-into-your-inner-self idea is a bit too New Agey-for me. Methinks my inner self could do with less influence, not more.

The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters: The title is a disguise. Underneath lurks list upon list of clichés. I don’t need help coming up with those, thank you! Try The Bookshelf Muse’s Emotion and Sensory Thesauri instead. Plus it’s free!

Most want to read in 2010: I have 971 books on my to-read list, so I give up trying to narrow it down. At this rate, I'll be busy for the next thirteen and a half years, except for the fact that this list seems to grow at an exponential rate. Things look bleak. What a gruesome fate.

What were your most loved and hated books this year?

Scholl and Sayers

2010-01-26T22:51:00.000-08:00

"In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die."
— Dorothy Sayers

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you.
But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."
— Sophie Scholl, executed in 1943 at age 21 for distributing anti-Nazi literature

Seeking Justice

2010-01-17T22:58:00.001-08:00

In reply to Krys' comment:

"The question 'what can we do' is troubling—possibly in the best sense, though. Although, it makes me wonder. Are we, still young people—just teens—supposed to feel bad that we cannot at present leave our homes and actually get on the front lines (of this subject and many others of the like, helping the homeless, etc) in a major way, or do we look at this time at home as the time to prepare ourselves for the future, which for some of us (being almost adults) really isn't that far away. True, there's the whole Rebelution thing that is great, but are we supposed to feel really bad because in essence right now we can't do as much as the adults we read about who are dedicating their lives to helping others? How exactly are we supposed to respond—we who are caught between childhood past and adult hood future, but not really here nor there...if that happens to make any sense. I'll admit it's a feeling and a question one can't really put into words, there's so many facets to it..."

It bothers me too. And you're right. It should.

It was Jamie McIntosh's speech at Missions Fest last week (was it really only last week?) that kicked me back onto this topic. I had been interested in modern-day slavery and human trafficking for a year or two, especially in sex trafficking and in the work International Justice Mission is doing, but gave it up for a while for no good reason. Like Krys said, it's only one problem of many, but if the homeless is her "cause," or issue of particular interest, or whatever, and government is Kayla's, then I suppose this is mine. But back to the question—and this post certainly doesn't relate only to this topic.

It's pointless to feel guilty about what we can't help. So we're in a less influential position than celebrities or millionaires or adults with connections. So what? Remember the woman who gave her only two coins: it's what you do with what you have that matters. Guilt won't accomplish anything, so yes, for teenagers this is the time to be learning, growing—practising really—and not shying away from what you are able to do.

Which doesn't change the fact that fame and fortune are great assets when you're trying to change something.

All over the internet are lists of Things You Can Do to End Slavery. They come in stacks of ten or eleven or forty. (The eleven list is the best of those, by the way.) Don't view porn (well, duh), write a poem about it, buy free trade, spread awareness... None of those are bad things, some are very good, but most seem frustratingly small. Raising awareness is all very well—at least it's a first step—but knowing what's going on without taking further action doesn't help anyone.

Those things are important, some more than others, but I would say that the three biggest things you can do are:

1. Pray! It's effective (not to mention free, with the cheerful consequence of benefitting you as well as the people you pray for—both of which are selfish reasons, but side effects nonetheless.) Pray for wisdom, strength and courage for those giving their lives to fight injustice. Pray that the media in these countries would pick up on what's happening and expose it. That the authorities would enforce their laws instead of turning a blind eye. That the Westerners who spend their holidays in Southeast Asia (and other places) having sex with children would be caught and exposed as well and the industry would crumble. Also, if you're wondering what you can do, ask God—He'll tell you!

2. Give, to reputable people and organisations like the marvellous IJM—those who are on the front lines and often rely on those that aren't to keep them running. If you can't support them financially, support them by word-of-mouth, or with your time and labour if that's an option. International Justice Mission is my particular favourite here, obviously, but there are others too. Or organise an event, such as a fundraiser with a film screening or something. (I'm brainstorming a way to do this—brilliant ideas welcome.)

3. Encourage others to do the same. Most people don't know what's going on, and if they do, they don't know how they can help or don't want to bother with it.

Small? Well, yes. All of this looks trifling indeed against long, depressing numbers like twenty-seven million. But if these efforts help rescue even one person—to that one person, it would be enormous. We're to make good use of the resources we have; that is all. If you think about it, that's rather a large responsibility no matter how much money or influence you possess. We do what we can. God takes care of the rest.

And if you want to write a poem about it all, go for it.^^

1865 Was Not the End

2010-01-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

Nearly two million children are involved in the commercial sex trade.

There are more slaves around the world today (about 27 million) than in four hundred years of trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Human trafficking brings in an estimated $32 billion a year.

These are just statistics. Soulless, impersonal numbers. But with each one come millions of stories, stories like this, this, and this.

What are you going to do?

That question's sort of haunting me.

As quoted by King George VI and Dym's Wall; or 2009 can NOT be over already!

2009-12-30T18:11:00.000-08:00

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."

On Christmas Music

2009-12-14T00:03:00.000-08:00

I miss choir already!

This year I am on a mission to promote some lesser-known Christmas songs. Joy to the World and Away in a Manger are all very well, but they deserve a lengthy rest (say, forty years), along with the other ten or so songs that are played ad nauseam for a month and a half straight every year. There are a few—Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire comes to mind—for which I vote Permanent Decimation, but never mind that. (Hey wait, it mentions Eskimos! We could get rid of it on grounds of political incorrectness!)

Some of the songs below are harder to sing, so it’s understandable that they aren’t sung in churches and that sort of thing, but artists releasing the world’s 4238th cover of Silent Night have no excuse. There’s a heap of music out there that no one ever bothers with, except for the occasional choir. Choir is great for this. Their choices are more original, and they immerse you in Christmas music starting in September! What fun.

This Little Babe
Draw Tua Bethlehem
The Huron Carol
The Angel Gabriel
The Wexford Carol (or Celtic Woman version if you prefer)
I Saw Three Ships
What Shall We Give?
Coventry Carol
Gaudete
Masters in This Hall / Strings version
When He Comes Again (this version is not that great, but it’s 100% better than Youtube’s other recording. >.<)
Wise Men, They Came to Look (the internet is sadly deprived of a recording. You must come to my church’s Christmas Eve service to hear it.)
Twelve Days of Christmas, as sung/edited/mocked by Relient K. Sorry. Could not resist.

(Aside: these videos of boys' choirs, especially Libera, always amuse me. They all look so angelic with their white robes and soprano voices. Ha!! What a disguise.)

And I must give a shout-out to O Come, O Come Emmanuel and God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen (not God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen), even though they’re fairly common. I myself like songs that talk about sin and redemption as well, although the other sort is all right too. Because on its own, the fact that Jesus arrived on earth is not important—it’s why he came, and what he did.

What are your favourites—well-known or not?

For the Daring

2009-12-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

So, Krys and Valia and I have undertaken the challenge of reading War and Peace, starting yesterday. (It was supposed to be during the month of December, but I doubt we'll finish in a month, unless we read 46.7 pages a day. Which is quite doable, but going through it slowly and discussing it is more fun.)

I'm posting this here partly to advertise and partly so I'll be properly humiliated if I quit. We've started a reading group blog and are sort of figuring this out as we go along, but the more the merrier!

Books to the Ceiling

Come join us!

My Illustrious Writing Career

2009-11-26T00:20:00.000-08:00

Hannah #1 and Hannah #2 (fight amongst yourselves for who gets which position) both kindly donated the Somethingorother award. Thanks a bunch! Rules, abridged: List seven facts about yourself, then give it to seven people, then keep on being awesome. No comment to the last instruction, and just about everyone I would have given it to has already gotten it or will very soon, so I'll skip to the other part. Which I am totally cheating with. Aren't randomly inserted numbers at paragraph breaks wonderful?

1. It’s 12:30 on a Saturday night. I am sitting with my (beloved, new-to-me, Internet-less) laptop on the floor of my room, complete with very bad posture, and listening to Nickel Creek (also new-to-me, and not beloved but well-liked). I have finished my daily word count, leaving my main character frozen in the middle of a fistfight and a secondary character on the verge of being shoved into an oven.

So, since certain other people have taken up the practice of putting their story synopses and covers in their sidebar, and it looks very impressive and all that, and I like reading about other people’s stories, and I conform easily, I decided to do it too. Except not on the sidebar, because I can’t bear the thought of my summaries glaring at me every time I open my blog, so I shall stick it in a post that hardly anyone will read and it can fade into happy obscurity. Here we go.

2. Nameless NaNo 2007—Coriander and…I can’t remember her brother’s name. Something like Aelric, Aedric? go out to seek their fortunes after the ~~convenient~~ tragic death of their father. They find that they were actually related to the royal family or something like that. Rambling adventures ensue, involving the Titanic, mathematics anthropomised, Rapunzel, and a revolution. I’m more proud of the fact that I wrote the entire thing by hand WHILE pulling a good mark in Physics than anything else. The story is horrific. I decided to do NaNo at 9:30 PM on October 31 that year and it’s painfully obvious.

3. No Safe Home (with Krys and Miss Ethel G. Keynes)—Three London children are evacuated to the country, where they meet people of varying degrees of nastiness before coming home forever scarred. Yeah…pretty much. I have no idea how we made 45K out of this—it doesn’t have much plot at all, now that I think of it. But it was loads of fun (for me at least—sorry Krys), and my first “real” story that I finished AND actually didn’t hate it by the end, plus it got me interested in the Blitz and from there, WWII as a whole. Our part was only a smallish part of the real thing, which mushroomed and mushroomed—one branch is the very awesome Through a Rain of Fire.

4. The Exiles—2008’s NaNo. I had a smashing futuristic dystopian plot worked out for several months before, and then for SOME REASON decided to do a random idea I came up with in biology class on October 28. It was an unsuccessful attempt at steampunk, about six kids who are sent to a boarding school where sinister goings-on abound and eventually they discover that they’re all being used as scientific experiments. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out nearly as cool as this sounds. Also my attempt to make two interesting INTPs and INFJs flopped because their ISTP brother completely took over. I always lose when my ISTPs rebel.

5. Day of Ashes—sequel to No Safe Home, 2009’s Rebel NaNo, my OYAN novel, and my magnum opus, oh yes. Will (one of the three kids) joins the Fire Guard as a messenger, while his friend/enemy/neighbour (it’s complicated) Una discovers her forgotten past etc etc. Things burn, bombs fall, people occasionally die, that sort of thing.

6. Untitled Epic—2009’s other NaNo novel. Sort of an adventure/fantasy/parody thing. Dainail insults Greoghar Risteard’s hat and Risteard doesn’t take it well, so Dainail must flee the country. He meets a blind girl, falls in love with her stunning beauty blah blah blah, but can’t marry her until he finds a cure for her blindness. The quest that follows involves pirates, a lost king, and other things that have yet to be decided. The other plotline involves a bureaucracy bent on (as they see it) restoring sanity—i.e. making things the way they used to be in the days of fairy tales—so they keep throwing obstacles in Dainail’s path.

Please throw shoes and tomatoes at me for not learning my lesson in what happens when Kelsey tries to write fantasy, or stories on the spur of the moment, or (the especially brutal combination) fantasy stories on the spur of the moment. Bad idea. Very bad idea. Very, very bad idea.

7. I have about half a million other ideas and half-finished drabbles that I’ll probably ruin when I eventually get around to writing them. If only I could be like Alexandre Dumas, who supposedly came up with the ideas and got someone else to pound out the words, then stuck his name on it.

So, not so illustrious, but that's ok. I've met a lot of people, mostly online, who are truly serious about writing...I'm not, sad to say, although I love learning the theory of it, and applying that to what I read. I write because I enjoy it, but I doubt I'll ever get anything published, and that's quite all right.

The Joys of Pet Seafood, or, How Western Civilisation II Has Enlightened Me

2009-11-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

“Because it does not bark, and knows the secrets of the deep.”

—The nineteenth-century poet Gerard de Nerval, when asked why he was parading a lobster on a blue ribbon through the Palais-Royal gardens

How to Win at NaNoWriMo in Four Easy Steps

2009-10-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

1. Make a list, mental or otherwise, of all the homework that is due tomorrow, the rooms that need to be cleaned before clutter renders them entirely unrecognisable, and the meals that want making to prevent your family's starvation.

2. Procrastinate on all of these by writing, until your wrists ache and the items on the above list sound like excellent alternatives to pounding out another word.

3. Procrastinate on writing by scrubbing the bathroom or working algebraic equations, etc. OR, 3b. Keep writing so as to avoid the other jobs. Either way, remember that you're not actually working, you're procrastinating! So all is well; you needn't feel like you're (horrors!) getting something done.

4. Repeat.

[NOTE: if you don't disconnect your Internet before attempting this method, don't blame me for your results. Facebook can destroy even the best of us.]

So that's my method for 2009; it worked last year and the year before. "Worked" is a relative term—it got me 50,000 words, but I did NOT produce a decent story. This year I'm not subscribing to the "let's all write 175 pages of rubbish!" philosophy and plan on tossing the whole word count idea if it's necessary to drag the plot back out of the gutter.

I have rather a love/hate relationship with NaNo—namely, I love it for eleven months of the year and hate it for one. Guilty confession: I actually only bother with it because so many other people do. Nothing like suffering in unison.

So far, the only thing that 2007, 2008, and 2009's stories have in common is that they all begin with the main characters' parents being disposed of. Poor characters. I have far too much fun making them suffer. (And poor parents, who seem to be the Expendable Crewmen of the YA Lit world). Their trials begin in thirteen days. Bon voyage, all!

Go here if you have no idea what this post is talking about. Real Life Friends I Know Are Reading This But Never Comment, I don't suppose I have any chance of talking you into doing this too? No? No. Thought not. :(

(Guess what, I'm still alive)

2009-09-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

“The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.”
-Psalm 19:9

"The fear of the Lord is clean." I think that adjective is perfect. This fear is not the murky, dim anxiety that results when you care what other people think. It's not the feeling of walking a tightrope—in a fog—because you're tormented by the possibility of not upholding human expectations.

The fear of the Lord is clean, pure, shining. It gives confidence instead of draining it. It gives direction to places you would never even consider while you're bound by the fear of man. I know this—but knowing is not the same as doing.

Happy Wednesday, all. :)

With Deepest Apologies to any ESTJs

2009-08-30T00:34:00.000-07:00

or, "You're Not My (Myers-Briggs) Type." Can't resist posting this—the original has a bit of crude language and I can't find it on Youtube anyway (though it's on Playlist.com) so, lyrics—

I've been told by those in the know
That this is an ESTJ world
And though I soldier on and try to maintain,
The search for love sometimes seems in vain

My friends say you're cute
You're just my style
You've got a cherry scooter and a winning smile
You've got rave reviews, but I don't believe the hype
Honey, you're not my Myers-Briggs type!

I'm an I-I-I-I-N-F-P
There's only one percent of me

By temperament I'm a sensitive crusader
By temperament you're a slimy corporate raider
Your ESTJ-ness hits me just like kryptonite
Honey, you're not my Myers-Briggs type!

So hop right on that scooter, drive those stupid teeth away
It's been really great to meet you, hope you have a super day
Sorry if that's rude, but you irritate and vex
It's not personal, it's your personality index!

I'm an I-I-I-I-N-F-P
There's only one percent of me

I'm introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving
You're obnoxious, self-involved, shallow, deceiving
I'm an I-I-I-I-N-F-P...

Elsie Strikes Again

2009-08-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

I helped out at an IBLP conference last week, mainly behind the book table. On this table lay three sets of Elsie Dinsmore audiobooks. (My own family has conflicting opinions on Elsie. My young sister enjoys them but sniggers at the 90% of story that involves Elsie throwing herself on the bed and weeping. My dad concedes rather dourly that, at age seven, "Elsie has more virtues than the Apostle Paul" but bought them anyhow as a sort of child-improving method.)

A teenage boy—taller than me and about as macho-looking they come—and his aunt came by. The aunt seemed to be looking for something to buy for someone. They glanced about for a few seconds and then the young man contributed his opinion to this venture.

"Oh, Elsie Dinsmore! You should definitely get those. They're great. They're fantastic. Just fantastic."

Will wonders never cease?

In Which I Unmask a Conspiracy

2009-07-13T00:27:00.000-07:00

{Spoilers!}

So Les Mis was superb in almost every way (except for horrid wigs, the expected crudeness, and Gavroche's death scene. He just kind of sang and choked and died at the top of the barricade, without even getting any cartridges. How tragic). Otherwise it was smashing, I loved it.

Their Eponine was not bad, only a little whiny and victimised, which I suspect is not the actress' fault so much as the way she's been indoctrinated. Evidence of how far this shocking fact-twisting has spread can be seen in sites like this, this, and this.

Observe the original Eponine's speech after she takes Marius' bullet:

"You see, you are lost! Now, no one can get out of the barricade. It was I who led you here, by the way! You are going to die, I count upon that. And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the muzzle of the gun. How queer it is! But it was because I wanted to die before you. ...Oh! How happy I am! Every one is going to die."

And Cosette isn't completely spineless either. i.e:

"Moreover, Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her."

The method behind this defame-Cosette-canonise-Eponine-and-make-Marius-look-like-an-unfeeling-imbecile scheme is fourfold:

1. Put Cosette into ghastly gowns. Give Eponine a trench coat! And a newsboy cap!

2. Let Cosette be the brainless, bland porcelain doll, the symbol of the bourgeois and the idiots who remain constrained by the class structure. This will allow Eponine to be a character foil—no one can resist charming, plucky street urchins!

3. Unrequited Love is always useful, because all middle school girls who have ever had a crush on someone can relate to it. The fact that Marius is a BARON and would create a massive scandal by marrying a girl from the Paris underworld is of course irrelevant. This is Twue Wuv, after all—who cares about historical accuracy?

4. Tragic Death. At the end of the day (ha, ha) the fact remains that Eponine died to save Marius! Even though he rejected her! Can you imagine anything more noble? And then Marius had the nerve to go and marry that Cosette person anyway!

So there you have it. You can now recognise the metaphorical arrows of perfidy and thus protect yourself. I myself like both Cosette and Eponine. In my opinion a mentally unstable stalker-girl is infinitely more interesting than a victim worthy of sainthood. The perky and cute Eponine in the musical (alternately, the angsty and sorrowful one) is all a disguise. This is their tactic. Don't be fooled!

One Day More

2009-07-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

(well, more or less) until Les Misérables at the Arts Club in Vancouver.

I will try very hard not to wax loquacious as much as I did last time (and that was only the School Edition!), but things are already looking grim on that front. But at present, "AAAAAHH CAN'T WAIT!!" about sums up my thoughts on the matter.

“He shall have dominion from sea to sea”

2009-07-01T00:00:00.001-07:00

Ruler supreme, who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our dominion within thy loving care;
Help us to find, O God, in thee
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day,
We ever stand on guard.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Unlike Americans, Canadians aren’t really taught to be proud of their history. Without fail, every person I know who has taken Social Studies reports it as insufferably dull. The history I learned in my own humanities classes consisted mostly of apologies for Canada’s past oppression of minorities, which is all well and good but makes for a rather lopsided view of the past. No, we didn't have a glorious war for independence, but you’d think that they’d take advantage of the more interesting parts of our past—the Loyalists, or the invasions in 1775 and the War of 1812, or the various rebellions, or the World Wars.

Few people remember or care about the British involvement in Canada, but it was Britain who gave us our judicial system, our parliamentary system, and much of our culture—and our Christianity. Like it or not, Canada was indeed a Christian country. It’s a part of our heritage that has affected us more than hockey or totem poles ever could. And we are the better for it. Maybe—just maybe—the success of America and Britain and the colonies was because of our founders’ worldview, not in spite of it.

I don’t have an idealised view of the nineteenth century and earlier. I know that there were injustices then as there are now. But at the same time I am proud of what the early Canadians did, the things that should not be forgotten: battles like Vimy (miserable mess though that war was)—the liberation of the Netherlands and other events of World War II—Canada’s years as a refuge for escaped slaves—the explorers, missionaries, and settlers who didn’t sadistically smother noble Aboriginal cultures, but actually benefited the Natives that they encountered (imagine that!).

Happy Dominion Day!

And it's really a great pity that no one wants to annex Turks and Caicos.

Thoughts after a Week of Two Graduations and a Wedding

2009-06-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

(Also, a week of moving and organising 2500 books and multiple bookshelves, but this fact has little bearing on anything.)

—If only Regency-era dancing were a more generally known skill.

—I will wear something grand and historical to my wedding, perhaps involving hoopskirts. Alternately, red converse. (Not both.)

—If I had to choose a favourite verse for a bio-thingummy for graduation, as my friend did, I would choose Ecclesiastes 12:12.

—Romance/romantic love are the only ingredient of classic stories and fairy tales that still exists in modern daily life. The others we still see in principle, of course—overcoming obstacles to reach a goal is the most obvious one—but none so literal or unchanging. I must ask myself why this element of all things is so timeless, but I don’t suppose dragons or heroic deaths in battle are going to make a comeback anytime soon. Alas.

—I still firmly hold to the idea that whoever invented the hats one wears at graduations had a really, really weird sense of humour. (Oh, the perks of being alternately a homeschooler and a public school-er whenever it suits me. Ha! ha! ha!)

Six Fillings and Oral Laser Pseudo-Surgery

2009-06-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

The dentist didn't notice it.

Sehnsucht

2009-06-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

"Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

—C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The Saga of Frances the Bank-Teller, In Which Everyone Dies At Least Once

2009-05-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

or, Greek Tragedy meets Classic Western Crime Drama.

Frances the bank teller sits waiting for customers, unaware that, as she prepares for another exciting day of entering figures into her account-book, evil lurks in the shadows.

But these are no ordinary back robbers. These are Frank and Joe, famed outlaws, feared by all, etc etc. Note the demented red eyes. (Not to be confused with those Hardy chaps, who insist on being disgustingly prejudiced against people of the criminal persuasion.)

"Stick 'em up!" says Frank, putting his patented Fearsome Glare to good use.

"Certainly not!" says Frances.

Great violence ensues. Joe gets killed in the crossfire. Frank doesn't even notice. (Poor Joe.)

"Noooooo!" shrieks Frances, as the bullet enters her chest.

With her hand on her heart, with one valiant last breath, she expires, still pledged to protect her town's currency. Alas! Her efforts were in vain.

Frank gathers up the loot, stepping over his partner's dead body, and exits the bank. But—!

Summoning all her remaining mad banker skillz, Frances rises from the dead (temporarily). She grabs her gun and her cattle prod and deals Frank a fearsome blow over the head.

Frank dies, and the world is rid of evil. Finally. It's about time. (We're going for the Enjolras-dead-on-the-barricade look here, 'kay?)

The End.

You know you've found a good book when...

2009-05-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

...you go back to your own writing after finishing it, and stare at the Word document in despair for ten minutes, pondering the newly-discovered fact that you are not, nor will ever be, Susanna Clarke or Megan Whalen Turner—no matter how many adverbs you slice away.

The book was worth it, so you do not wallow in depression on account of this. But still.

Bah. :P

With Deepest Apologies

2009-05-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm trying not to bash Twilight too much. Honestly, I am. There's plenty of justified criticism and unjustified hatred in existence already, plus I know of some perfectly intelligent, articulate, non-fangurlish Twilight fans. They do indeed exist.

But this poster destroyed all of my resolve. (The headlines that keep appearing in Vancouver newspapers do not help any, I regret to say. "Fans throw tantrums after being rejected from audition!" "Kristen Stewart seen at bar!" "Robert Pattinson walks down street!")

AHAHAHAHA.

Such angst. Such tragedy. Such drama.

Ok. Thank you. I feel better now.

This City Is Crazy

2009-05-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

There's a Canucks game tonight. Do you know what that means?

1. At least three people check the score at various times during class with their cellphones or whatever, and inform the rest of us of the game's progress. (It was 1-0, then 2-0, for us.)

2. The teacher checks the score on his laptop and also does his part to enlighten us on the current state of the game. (The score is now 3-0.)

3. I go into the lobby/student area/whatever it's called to wait for my dad. Someone has turned the Sports Network on, on the computers there. Supposedly these computers are for Educational Purposes Only, so the kids look guilty when the school counsellor walks past, wondering what he will have to say on the topic. "What's the score?" he asks.

The answer: 3-1. "Blast. I made a bet with my neighbour that they would lose 9-1."

The students chide him for his lack of patriotism.

"I am a man of little faith," says the counsellor in question.

"Move," says the lady at the desk. "You're standing in our view there."

4. My dad arrives. My brother I and run through the rain and hop into the truck to be met with—guess what? THE GAME on the radio. I thought my dad was not a hockey person but it seems he's joined the dark side. Another one bites the dust.

5. I see 50-ish Canucks flags on people's cars during the ten-minute drive home. Or could have, if I had counted. Which I didn't. Also sighted: a bus that displays "GO CANUCKS GO" on the screen where the destination is usually listed.

6. We walk in the door at home and I hear the telling buzz of the TV, the sound that Young People are apparently able to hear but can't when they get older. What do you suppose is playing? This is despite the fact that our TV generally resides in the downstairs closet. I wasn't even aware that the rabbit ears worked anymore.

Oh the pain. Save me, ere I perish in this desert wasteland of hockey fanatics!

They beat Chicago 3-1, by the way. :D

I tried to catch a cartwheel

2009-04-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

It didn't work.

Two in the morning

2009-04-20T01:54:00.000-07:00

...is the best time to wax philosophical. Quite.

Tonight I watched a History Channel documentary about what the earth would—or will—be like after people. If everyone on earth vanished...if all at once, humans ceased to exist. (Why might this happen? Er—here we are called upon to use our imaginations.) Within a few days, every artificial light would go out. Within a few years, vegetation would smother all man-made structures. Animals would roam through the cities, except for those of the poodle variety, which would be extinct before the end of the first week.

What I noticed most about it was the theme of "once humans are gone, the earth will return to the blissful state it enjoyed in the centuries before we appeared." Because, of course, the rest of the world would be far better off without our interference. Naturally.

It's ironic how, though humanism places man as the ultimate power while Christianity does the opposite, the very act of erasing the possibility of God diminishes our worth rather than increasing it. If there is no God—if there is nothing more advanced than ourselves, and nothing exists that we cannot see or touch—then we are lucky accidents who happen to be a little farther along than the animals we eat. We live and die and fade away. The human race lives and dies and fades away, ending an existence that's pointless and abbreviated when compared with the efficiency of nature.

Life has inherent value when it's a gift from someone greater. Not when it happens by chance. Not if Man is the supreme authority.

Resurrection

2009-04-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

MBTI & Blogging

2009-04-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

Currently reading: Little Dorrit

I'm mostly posting because I'm sick of seeing that post on top every time I come to check the blogroll.^^ The amount of internet time I used to have is appalling, now that I think of it; I've let almost everything online slide lately because of classes and outside events and such—and I must say, I'm quite enjoying actually having a life. LOL.

Two interesting things—at least, I find them interesting—which means that probably no one else will, oh well, here we go!

According to the Typealyzer this is an ESTP blog. Hmm...yeah...figure that one out! I stuck in the addresses of a bunch of the blogs I read into it after, and all were ESFPs. I would very much like to know how it decides what blog is what type. Certain keywords? Number of other names vs. number of references to self? I would have thought that they use amount of time between posts to decide Judger/Perceiver, or Sensing/Intuitive, however accurate that might be, but it doesn't seem that they do. The only conclusion we are left with is that the creators of Typealyzer are plotting some conspiracy, world domination, whatever is the fashion now. I always knew those EFSPs were up to something.

Blogthings' What's Your Blogging Personality? is a little more accurate. It doesn't say anything about the MBTI but that's what the questions are based on.

Your Blogging Type Is the Private Performer

Your blog is your stage—with your visitors your adoring fans.

At least, that's how you write with your witty one liners.

And while you like attention, you value your privacy.

You're likely to have an anonymous blog—or turn off comments.

...or more properly, ISTP. The last part doesn't fit me (why have a blog if you don't allow commenting?). The rest might.

What did you get?

Smavewv counts if I say it does.

2009-03-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

Currently watching: The White Feather (Foyle's War)

My siblings have taken up Scrabble. Brother #3 in particular; everyone else got sick of the game after a few days, so he wages epic battles of Marshall vs. Marshall. I have taken over the couch as my homework headquarters, so I sit there listening to CBC Radio 2 and watching the excitement. It beats graphing exponential functions, anyhow.

But is this ordinary Scrabble? No. Oh, no.

"'Oxgole?' That's not a word."

"It is in this game. It means "Hi, dude."

"What about 'skaq'?"

"That's a sort of food. Really spicy. Ugh. A Q, a K, triple word score, sixty more points!"

"And 'Toca'?"

"That's a town in Marshalland. On the Marshall Islands. Of course."

"Er—of course. 'Rtenjr'?"

Marshall gives me a look of despair. "That spells 'janitor.'"

Think of all that you're missing by limiting yourself to words that happen to be available in the dictionary. How stifling of all natural creativity. Tragic.

Being Canadian

2009-02-15T23:22:00.000-08:00

This term I'm taking Civics 11, again at the public pseudo-high school. The class is coated in political correctness AND debating is welcome. Yep, it's awesome.

Of course the textbook and the teacher are continually talking about how great Canada is. And mostly, we are. *ahem* I mean, I love living here and can't think of anywhere in particular that I'm dying to relocate to. But once in a while, all the patriotism needs a good dose of snark and cynicism. So—why not to like Canada:

1.) The fact that we have next to no national identity, on account of the constant shoving-down-throats of Multiculturalism. I have more than a few friends who are visible minorities, and of course they have a right to be proud of their heritage. So am I. But the media and the government chant the whole We Are a Mosaic, Not a Melting Pot! mantra a whole lot more than the minorities themselves do. Multiculturalism is great but please, people, there are other things we could focus on once in a while, too. Besides the things we've stolen from other cultures (and that includes the ever-popular amusement of America-bashing—also a Canadian tradition, it seems. Apparently our tolerance doesn't extend to them. How curious) there isn't much as far as Canadian culture is concerned. Oh yeah, there's hockey. That one doesn't count.

2.) The incredibly lax penalties for any sort of crime. Human trafficking (not human smuggling/illegal immigration) for example—in the US, the minimum sentence is ten years in prison, and the average sentence is about twenty. In Canada, there is no minimum sentence, and the average is two or three years. There have only been two people convicted of trafficking minors in Canada, ever—one got three years, minus thirteen months for time served before the trial, for holding a fifteen-year-old-girl for 2 1/2 years and making thousands of dollars off of her exploitation. The other, after time already served was subtracted, spent an entire week in jail. A week. This is the sort of thing that's supposed to happen in southeast Asia or somewhere (not that it's less horrific there—it's more, I'm sure). Not here. Not in any country that claims to be civilised.

3.) Though the French remember their past, and the history of the First Nations is much publicised, the only people who haven't forgotten about what the British did for us see them as hateful, oppressive, destructive conquerors. *weeps*

Hmm...that's all I can think of. Perhaps hope remains for my indoctrination after all. (Also, there's the fact that Bill C-268, which would impose a five-year minumum sentenc e upon anyone convicted of human trafficking, had its first reading last month. Yeah...it's a start, I guess. Three cheers for Joy Smith, and for anyone who writes to their MP to tell them to support the bill.)

Sorry for the tangent; it's a subject I've been reading a lot about lately.

Back to Canada. In my quest to be a well-educated individual (an excellent reason to research the most random of subjects, if you ever wish to explain to the unenlightened why you're reading about the history of paper clips or something of the sort) I picked up Culture Wise Canada from the library—one of those guides for tourists and immigrants, written by a Brit I think. Very interesting. For example, how to converse with Canadians:

Another favourite conversational gambit is complaining, especially about Americans, the government, and of course, the weather... In the average Canadian conversation, it doesn't really get cold until it's -40C outside and you're outside wearing nothing but a stupid grin and a paper hat. The exception to this is the inhabitants of southern British Columbia, who are much more likely to drone on about how balmy their weather is—positively Hawaiian, in fact.

Well, it is. Can we help that we have the only decent weather in Canada? *grins* Real Vancouverites don't carry umbrellas!

Safe topics of conversation include hockey, American football, films, gun control in the US (always a hit topic), Toronto's overbearing influence (unless, of course, you're in Toronto), the Canadian healthcare system, and the failings of politicians. ...

Canada's national animal is the beaver, and they are proud of the beast, so it's best not to ask them why they didn't choose something more impressive...rather than a large, bucktoothed water rat that slaps its tail on the water to warn of danger.

Or,

British Columbia is generally regarded as Canada's coolest province... known for artists, drinking coffee on patios, hippies, marijuana production, retirees, skiing, Vancouver, vegans and water sports. The climate is notably damp, meaning that British Columbians don't so much tan as rust. They're viewed as rather estranged from easterners...more unconventional, and having more in common with nearby Seattle than far-off Toronto.

My province's culture in the shell of a nut. I've never been skiing and drink tea instead of coffee, but our neighbours did used to have a grow-op. *pours oil on Tin Man joints*

But, a question for the general public—what do you think of when someone mentions Canada? What's our stereotype? (whether good or bad) What stands out most about what you know of the culture and people?

Books & Tag

2009-01-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

Last year I wrote a list of the year's books, which somehow managed to post itself on New Year's Day. It is not New Year's Day now, but, uh... Moving on! Continuing the tradition, here's the Best and Worst of 2008, and it's rather shorter than 2007's for various dull reasons.

Best:

Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery: I love this book. Love love love it. Maybe it's the fact that it's set in WWII Britain (a time and place I've been immersed in for the last few months) and written by someone who was actually there and actually experiencing it, or that it's about a large family, or the amusingness of James and Porgy. Maybe it's the way Dym and Tony's relationship is almost a picture of us and Christ--Tony is stubborn and headstrong and sure he's right, he wreaks havoc on the Inglefords, he runs away and runs away again--but Dym never gives up on him.

If you read it because I told you to you probably wouldn't like it. Lately my book recommendations tend to malfunction.

Black as Night, Waking Rose, and The Midnight Dancers by Regina Doman: All so much better than The Shadow of the Bear, in my not-very-humble-opinion, which no one agrees with really but that's ok. I managed to convince my mum to read them too, which is shocking, and even more shockingly, she liked them. (Actually she said she didn't, because they kept her from doing what work needed doing. :P) I hate to call them chick-lit or fairy tales, though they are a little of both, because that makes anything sound shallow. The themes she chooses (especially beauty vs. goodness in MD) + fairy tales + literary references + Fish = Win!

(Yes, I like Dym. I like Fish. I like Edmund. And Gen. Can't forget Gen. My lack of originality is appalling. But I remain the only one who properly appreciates Shasta.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke: Long. So? It deserved to be long. The chapter "The sky spoke to me" or some title like that remains my favourite.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis: Snarky, sarcastic, full of "oh-how-true-though-I-never-would-have-come-up-with-that" moments. The Blitz part of it is a bonus. :P

The Man Who Was Thursday & The Club of Queer Trades by--guess who?--G.K. Chesterton.

Worst:

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz: I read the first half of this and then skimmed to the end. It's sort of the male equivalent to Twilight, i.e. constant action and explosions, mediocre writing, a main character who has no weaknesses. So long character development!

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer: Review here. I'm not a Twilight basher, exactly. It's like High School Musical: it doesn't quite deserve all the brutal reviews that it gets, but it sure doesn't deserve the ridiculous popularity either--and because of that popularity, the non-enchanted have way too much fun tearing it to shreds. Then people like me have way too much fun reading their reviews. Hehe. Anyhow, enough said about that.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: I've complained about this in enough places already so I'll restrain myself here. I halfway enjoyed the movie though. Might try East of Eden someday, as a book that was made into a movie that Delaney loves can't be so terribly bad, can it? No, it can't.

Two or three Oz books, the titles of which I can't remember, by L. Frank Baum: They had the random chaos of the Alice books without any of Alice's humour or depth, and Baum tends to talk down to the reader. All of Oz is a perfect, lovely, charming socialist society. No conflict, no suffering. I'll take House of the Scorpion or something, thanks.

I'm reading through my to-read list from last year, and laughing. Of course I read all the "fun" books that I meant to read, and ignored the classics and fearsome tomes. This year. This year shall be permeated with Dostoyevsky and Dickens and Austen and Gaskell. And of course, more Chesterton. Ha.

***

A tag, courtesy of Owan, well, sort of.

1) Look at the list and bold [embolden?] those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Put 6 stars next to the ones you are reading******

Updated rules:
5.) Ignore #3 since there's no underline button and I'm too lazy to put the HTML in
6.) Ignore #4 because I'm not reading any of them (except the Bible--and P&P which I haven't picked up since October)
7.) Therefore, asterisks now equal the books I love. Here we go.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings* - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - A grey story, with flashes of orange whenever Bertha made appearances.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Eh, maybe someday, in order to be a Well-Read Person and to have an opinion on them and all that. *shrugs*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird* - Harper Lee
6 The Bible** - Have I read it all the way through? I will by the end of this year, and I've definitely read a good chunk of it. Currently reading Isaiah and 1 John.
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte - Love the title, but the book sounds like it would be good parody material. Heh.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - Ditto #4. Maybe only the first book though. Or maybe I'll never get around to it and that would not be too terrible of a tragedy.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - It was all right. Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities were better, and there are a ton of his other books that I need to get around to reading soon (Little Dorrit and Bleak House, particularly).
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Works of Shakespeare - I've read Comedy of Errors and The Tempest and will read some more...er...someday. * for The Tempest. * for the Bard on the Beach production this summer, too.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger - Started it but couldn't stand the writing and language. Next!
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment* - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - I can't remember if I've read this or not. Obviously time for a reread. C.S. Lewis and Rachel Durham both liked it!
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - If only to atone for the fact that I read an abridged version when I was nine.
33 Chronicles of Narnia* - C.S. Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe* - C.S. Lewis - You repeat yourself, O List.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - Is on my shelf
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Maddening Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - No thank you! I weep for the world of Canadian literature.
49 Lord of the Flies* - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - *sigh* I guess I should read that someday...
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities* - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist* - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes* - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down* - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables* - Victor Hugo - Brilliant.

27/100? I need to work on this.

So It Begins

2009-01-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

So, finally Blogger and its proclaimed glory got the better of me. (I mean--blogrolls without HTML! Javascript! No vexing adverts! Can it get any better?)

Not *ahem* that I've been blogging much lately to begin with. Let's call it a month-long blogging fast, all right? That sounds better than "the month and a half in which Alyosha was both lazy and busy, but probably more lazy than busy."

My old posts are here: http://www.xanga.com/gaminfairy

The list on the sidebar is composed of mostly friends, but also some blogs whose authors I've never talked to but I find interesting, and a few blogs whose posts I find so intriguing because I disagree with them that I keep coming back.

The girl in my profile picture is not me, but for a stock photo she sums up a personality pretty well. Sarcastic, thoughtful, geeky, finds the world amusing while viewing it from a detached distance. Yep.

Undeniable truth: This blog is crying out for a decent title.

EDIT: There. Though it is subject to change at any time. Read the whole essay here.

While Procrastinating

2008-12-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

"Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much."

"...And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world."

"The word 'good' has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."

AH I love Chesterton. (And Goodreads' handy quote gadget.) The first reminds me of Attolia.

A swashbuckling return to Latin and biology homework is now in order.

Post script: So NaNo is now officially over which is sad plus it's December which is frightening. Spent last evening listening to my brother Marshall dictate his last few hundred words before Time Ran Out (he did the Young Writers' Program).The story was very interesting; it involved two Spanish ninjas named Benini and Lulavila, and their fifteen ninja children, plus their daughter Pearacoola who disposed of six people at a time with mad karate skillz and the razor blades on her hands. *nods* And that was entirely unrelated, plus it's time to go make dinner which means I'm saved, for the moment, from biology. Hooray!

"...And then we can have some rest and some sleep."

2008-11-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

"It's gone! It's done!" "Yes, Mr Frodo... It's over now."

Three days ago I decided that I was sick of story and wanted to just get the thing done with, so this afternoon after many interruptions and several hundred repeats of The Kiss from the Penelope soundtrack, The Novel finally reached THE END. (Despite the mushy title, the above is a triumphant, victorious sort of song--fitting, if one can base the quality of a book purely on its word-count). Except that the story isn't done yet but we'll deal with that tomorrow. The Inner Editor has been in a coma since the second of November, though she...he...IT did wake up to weep furiously at the results of my one word war. There have been rather too many nights when I didn't bother to go check that the downstairs door was locked like I usually do, because if anyone was planning to burgle my house that night, they would have done it already.

Such was the euphoria that I went upstairs and made a salad. Of my own free will. This occurrence was so shocking that it had to be documented:

(It tasted fairly decent, actually, despite the black beans which I felt compelled to include purely for colour and contrast purposes. The carrot helped also, but a salad with every ingredient the same basic colour absolutely would not do. Right? Of course right. I wish we had peppers. Or that feta cheese came in more aesthetically pleasing shades . . . Never mind, that would just be weird. )

Hey, it's midnight! Thus I am off stick The Novel into the validator and watch the temperamental counter-monkeys mangle my lovely 50,048 into 48K or something. 48K is so this morning.

I love how so many of my NaNo-ing friends and acquaintances are so far ahead that it makes me feel behind even when the calendar disagrees. Positive peer pressure and all that jazz, yup yup. You all rock. Especially Owan and her cheerleader alter-ego. (Did I really just use "rock" as a verb? ...The lack of sleep must be getting to me.) I've talked to one or two people who decided to do their own personal NaNo in a non-November month, and...wow. I can't imagine doing it without all the other people who are. No motivation, etc, and all that.

And three cheers for the saner people who haven't finished yet, you can do it, Persevero! It's been an awesome November, and still is, in fact. I hear eleven library books shouting my name now with dreadful insistence.

Incentive

2008-11-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

Stealing a page from Owan's book here. (No pun intended...well....sort of. )

You all have permission to mock me if/when I fail, and if you live in my general area, I'll even come scrub your floors like Chris Baty suggests.

There. That ought to do it.

*slaps self back into writing mode*

One Day More

2008-10-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

One more day before the storm!
Do I follow where she goes?
For this group of crazy writers!
Shall I join my brothers there?
When our ranks begin to form
Do I stay, and do I dare?
Will you take your place with meeeeee?
The time is now!
The day is here!

(Revised.)

Overdose of Les Mis TAC + staying up far too late + an extroverted day behind and an extroverted day ahead = My weird sense of humour exposed.

So NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow. I have met exactly one real-life person with the courage to attempt it, and he was a random guy visiting our church who was writing a horror novel. Most people say "Na--no--what?" or just "Huh?" How sad. It's not too late! Join the insanity! Register now and all that jazz. (Actually you can't, because the site is down--and the Sorry, We'll Be Back Presently page doesn't even have the spiffy coffee-cup coat of arms that it had last time. Drat.)

I have had a plot in mind since August. It was outlined. It was well thought out. The characters all had shiny names. It was also pathetically dull. I refuse to resort to time travel or mathematics personified this year to cure that malady whenever the novel needs it. Thus, said plot got a total rehaul tonight, and mostly in the margin of my biology notes during class, because amino acids are just inspirational that way. (The notes suffered only somewhat.) Gyneth, beside me, was drawing sheep and writing letters in Arabic, and she was inspirational too. No, I have no notion why that be, as hopefully my novel will not include Arabic or amino acids, and please, no sheep. Instead it's steampunk-esque and involves a family sent to a boarding school used for scientific experiments. It's all right; you may snigger. Oh yes, and orphans--all good books have orphans, right Morgan?

My place is here
I fight with you!

Mrs Lovett, what a charming notion!

2008-10-31T14:08:00.000-07:00

Eminently practical and yet appropriate as always...

Every year towards the end of October, articles about Hallowe'en start appearing all round the conservative-homeschool-Christian blogosphere. Most are anti-Hallowe'en, saying that Christians shun everything to do with it because of the origins. Some say that trick-or-treating is harmless and fun or that though some of Hallowe'en's history is related to paganism, its origins are also Christian. Meh. I haven't looked into it and can't say for sure.

For my family, though, it's an Opportunity. Or at least, it is for my dad, and as he goes, so goes the rest of this small empire. Five of us and three friends were recruited to hand out DVDs to high schoolers today. About hell and the afterlife. While wearing ghoulish costumes. What fun! Right? Of course right.

I watched said DVD not long ago. It was mostly a collection of film clips, all showing man's view of death--including "Yeah I'm a good person, I'll go to heaven" said about fifty different ways. At the end they said what the Bible taught about death and what would happen after, and a few quick answers to common objections about Christianity. (Extra points because they quoted C.S. Lewis.) All that sounds preachy but it somehow wasn't. Just matter-of-fact about the whole thing, with no "you need to accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Saviour!!!!" Besides the fact that that's not really biblical, Christians acting like a cult with their own weird jargon is not going to win any points with anyone. [/slightlyofftopicrambling]

The kids are going out again tonight. One Grim Reaper costume, two balaclavas, some spooky cloaks... I went as Mrs Lovett, not that anyone recognised me, but she's certainly spooky enough. Perhaps I ought to have brought the rolling pin along.

(Bad pictures; it looked better in real life, but even so one's costumes are sadly limited when one has zero sewing skills.)

Thus we went to one of the local high schools, I took some classes there last term actually. My Saguine friend Sascha is far too good at this sort of thing. She walked up to a massive group of Young People (half of them were wearing more interesting than ours) and shouted, "Hey! Anyone want a free DVD? About death, it's really spooky!" How does she do that? (Did I mention that she was dressed as a mad scientist? Very impressive.) But behold, we were surrounded by an army of hands, all willing to take the thing. One boy asked for two and then smashed them both on the ground. Another girl looked at the cover and said, "Hell? How cool is that?"

We've done a lot of evangelism endeavours like that but I've never seen people so willing to accept things.

We haven't really advertised this escapade to most of the people at church, and I can see how it would scare some off. To non-Christians we're religious extremists (ha, ha). To Christians, we're using methods that are, at the least, unorthodox. It's also the hell thing that gets them. Maybe in past centuries the fire-and-brimstone aspect was over-emphasised, but now people seem to conveniently forget the other half. Is God merciful and loving? Sure. Is He also just and unable or unwilling to disobey His own laws? Absolutely.

Of course the best way to evangelise--as if there was a prescribed formula that each person has to follow!--is getting to know the person, loving them, showing them the gospel at all times and if necessary using words. Still, if you can't do that then I think that this is not a bad substitute. It's not meant to magically convert people, or anything of that sort. But perhaps it will plant a seed.

Happy Reformation Day, All Saint's Day, and/or NaNo Eve to all and sundry.

(Two blog posts in two days--shocking I know. My brain went into "Get some blogging done before NaNo murders me!" mode.)

Nothing Like a Melancholic Poem to Enliven the Atmosphere

2008-10-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

Violins complain
Of autumn again,
They sob and moan.
And my heartstrings ache
Like the song they make,
A monotone.

Suffocating, drowned,
And hollowly, sound
The midnight chimes.

Then the days return
I knew, and I mourn
For bygone times.

And I fall and drift
With the winds that lift
My heavy grief.
Here and there they blow,
And I rise and go
Like a dead leaf.

—Paul Verlaine

On The Last Battle, and Tea

2008-10-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

I am a great fan of tea in theory, which is to say, I like the idea of tea more than actually drinking it. But today happens to be a very tea-ish day as far as weather is concerned--not to mention that even if it doesn't cure colds, tea tricks one into feeling somewhat cured--thus, I am drinking my fourth cup in between typing. This does not bode happily for the well-being of my keyboard should the mug upset itself,* but "Raspberry Thriller" (no kidding) is worth the risk, I think.

I finished reading The Last Battle to my brother and sister yesterday. That's the end of our Narnia reading, at least for a while--I'm saving LWW and PC until they forget about the movies some more. It was so much fun to watch their reactions to everything, as they either listened to the story for the first time or were reminded of something that they heard a long time ago and could hardly remember, because, apart from a cold stab of horror when I reached "There was a real railway accident," I don't remember reading the CoN for the first time at all. Neither actually said how they liked it, but halfway through Marshall decided to dress up as Tirian and stalked about the house with a crown and a sword for a long while, and I heard more than one "I wish we could get to Aslan's country..." when we neared the end of the book. And that's quite good enough...

After looking through Amazon reviews, there seem to be a lot of people who don't like the book at all. It's too grim, it's too happy, Lewis was evil because he included Emeth, Lewis was evil because he left out Susan. Can't please everyone I suppose; I like the book for all of those reasons (except perhaps Emeth). The first two-thirds are almost hard to read, especially the part about the dwarfs and the horses. I hated that chapter for a long time.

But then, the last part wouldn't have nearly as much meaning if the characters hadn't trekked through so much despair before reaching the end. Chapter the fifteenth has some of my favourite quotes:

But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. ... And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream. ...

Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different - deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.

I love that idea--that however much joy we experience now, however much beauty we observe, it can't begin to compare to what's still coming. Longing for a better country, indeed.

And that was today's rambling; you may go do something constructive now.

*Because it's always the cup that upsets itself, isn't it? I never have anything to do with it. Certainly not.

His skin was pale and his eye was odd

2008-10-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who sees a resemblance here? (Self to Alyosha: Yes, you most certainly are.) The connection with blood. The aura of general weirdness. The overly pale skin and overly dark everything else.

Bella has no idea what she's in for. Poor girl.

*pictures Edward throwing Bella into a -- ohwaitspoilerswillneverdo! -- while Sweeney glitters*

Alas for the unfortunate Sweeney.

...

*blinks* What happens after staring at one's computer screen for too long.

edit--Oy, I just realised that Twilight has now been the subject of three posts in a row. I absolutely deserve the E***** C***** T-shirt adverts on my sidebar.

I Feel a Funeral In My Brain

2008-09-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This blogger admits that she is not particularly favourably inclined toward stories about vampires, books with mushy romance, or insanely popular series, to begin with.

Twilight was much better than I expected it to be. It's captivating, even in places with no hint of plot beyond the annoying Bella/Edward pairing. I started it at ten PM expecting to read maybe the first chapter, and ended up putting the book away at page 375 when my eyes refused to stay open any longer. (Of how late that time was, I shall say nothing.) I finished it the next day and liked it less the more I thought about it. There was no deeper meaning--nothing that stayed with you after the book was over. It was enjoyable for the moment. That was all.

But I understand why so many people, especially women, especially teenage girls, adore these books. The entire story is wish-fulfillment. Bella is the figure that every girl thinks of herself as--insecure, clumsy, and generally put upon by the trials of life. Edward is the person every girl wants; he's protective, a gentleman, oh, and of course the strength and beauty beyond the lot of mortals thing. And he loves her...or is infatuated with her, rather...and tells her that she's beautiful too, and she believes it...what romantic couldn't like it? They remind me of Glinda and Fieryo in Wicked: "You're perfect!" "You're perfect!" "So we're perfect together!" Bella likes Edward because he looks good, Edward likes Bella because she smells good. (Literally.) Love? What love?

And then there's the whole "forbidden love" aspect...of course it's always more exciting when your boyfriend is tempted to turn you into dinner. Bella knows that it's unwise to keep up her Edward-addiction, but of course she ignores that and everything comes out all right in the end anyway. Real, true, deep commitment, where emotions are not the most important factor, is far too dull to be worth writing about.

Escapism at its finest, all parading as sincerity.

I know plenty of Twilight fans who don't believe those messages--they enjoy the story and don't take it too seriously. But judging from the number of Edward Cullen fangurls out there, I think most of Twilight's popularity is due to the fact that it satisfies the longing for acceptance and flawless, easy, "twue wuv," with a dose of excitement thrown in--and it's all a fake.

On the writing: It certainly wasn't great. Meyer needs to take Mark Twain's advice: "When you see an adjective, kill it." Still, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. The paragraph in the post below this was definitely the worst part; the rest was more or less bearable.

So as not to sound utterly negative, there were a few things I did like:
1. The fact that Bella seems to be a moderately well-read individual; at least, before she abandons her books in favour of Ed
2. The other Cullens--how they had fairly developed personalities for their amount of screen time, how they adopted each other and now act like any other family, how they were always isolated, how they glitter (ok, that last one was a lie)
3. The cover, which is nice enough and looks scarily similar to this book of CSL quotes
4. Carlisle, just 'cause Carlisle is under-appreciated and deserves his own place on this list. He's wise, he's a doctor, he made a conscious choice to not become the monster he would naturally tend toward, though it took a struggle. Plus he's been around since the 1600s, that must count for something.

Post scriptum: Take it from a lifelong resident--the Pacific Northwest is not that bad. Then again, if you've grown up in a desert like poor Bella did, maybe you wouldn't properly appreciate the rain. Just maybe.

On Twilight

2008-09-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

"Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn't get used to it, though I'd been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lips were shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal."

'Nuff said.

More later. Must finish, must see what happens...

The Post That Is Not About School

2008-09-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

I was going to come and post about schoolwork, school starting up again, etc etc, but then I realised that however many times non-students ask students how school is going, no one really finds it interesting. No one would be truly fascinated if I informed them that yes, I'm doing biology, chemistry, Bible, a novel-writing course, NOT MATH, HA, Latin and I forget what else this year. I happen to find school interesting, but I certainly don't blame them for not caring about my education, though I do wonder why they continue to ask.

So I'm not going to post a list of subjects and I shall say nothing whatsoever of school.

It starts tomorrow, by the way.

Another favourite question that people ask is "So what are you planning to do after you graduate?" This question arrives as regularly as my computer crashes, which is often, I assure you. It can be counted on to come directly after "How are you?" and "How is school going?" Again, I don't think most consider the answer they receive for more that a quarter of a second. I inform said people of my plans to acquire wold domination, now.* It's quicker than going through the whole "Definitely something English- or literature-related but other than that I have no idea" thing.

So there you have it. The post that had absolutely nothing to do with education.

*The method behind this scheme is classified information. All manner of apologies!

Lazy old day, rolling away

2008-08-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

It's summer! Blue skies and windy days and root beer floats, homemade...trips to the beach...playing baseball in the backyard with various siblings...enough time to read whole books in one sitting...

Yahh, stop laughing, all you whose summers began in June.

*idly wonders if anyone but Lainey will recognise the title*

Stealing The Simple Woman's Daybook tag-meme-thing from...various places, but originally here. (Why simple? Is it good to be simple? Is any human being really simple? Questions, questions.)

Outside my window there are clouds that seem willing to bestow rain upon us at any moment. No more of the nasty Yellow Face that burns us! This is proper Vancouver weather.

I am thinking about The Midnight Dancers by Regina Doman...still. (Review forthcoming. Well, not a review, but some thoughts at least.)

I am thankful for parents who challenge me spiritually and practically, even when it's uncomfortable. EDIT: And for my Narniaweb Tshirt which just came in the mail!

In the kitchen sits a bag of frozen chicken, a bowl of cauliflower, and a recipe for chicken curry, which I ought to go deal with.

I am wearing jeans and a black Authentic Boca t-shirt, which on a particularly slow day stimulated much discussion around here. We looked up that mysterious name and found a neighbourhood called La Boca in Buenos Ares, a Viking King Boca, and a Boca Burger company. Hmm...

I am going nowhere, for once! Hahaha!

I am reading the book of Hosea, The City of Ember, and a host of other things. (Lina is a ENFJ San-Chlor, and Doon is an ISTP Chlor-Mel, I think. Since, of course, you were wondering. )

I am hoping that I got a decent mark on my English exam (decent = more than 94%) but since provincial exams have to go through the Ministry of Education and endless hassle, I remain in blissful oblivion.

I can hear three siblings playing Playmobile ("The bad guys got away! They tripped me!" "Oh no! Dispatch the secret agents!") and another weeping over his multiplication tables

Around the house, the Olympics are the favoured entertainment of the hour. (Never mind the fact that the TV's reception is truly pathetic and the interesting things are all on after midnight. Canada has nine medals. Therefore we cheer.)

One of my favorite things is Nutella. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens just can't compare.

A few plans for the rest of the week: Shrinkwrap packages at Campus Crusade, help out at the church library and add the multitude of books to their system that need adding, talk to Meg-formerly-Morgan on the phone perhaps, get my letter to Rebekah sent, finish all the books that I'm halfway through, work on getting my L... Yeah, exciting.

A picture I am sharing--
What happens when you need pictures to send into the school and ask a four-year-old to give you a nice, normal smile:

Much Madness is divinest Sense ―

2008-08-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

To a discerning Eye ―
Much Sense ― the starkest Madness ―
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail ―
Assent ― and you are sane ―
Demur ― you're straightway dangerous ―
And handled with a Chain ―

A lot of a class depends on the teacher. When I did English 11 a few months ago, I thought that the stories one hears about how liberal and propagandistic the public school system is were nonsense. We studied Lord of the Flies. The Ministry of Education's worldview didn't seem to conflict with mine much. And that was that.

But English 12--same curriculum, but a different school, a different teacher--one who is a great fan of all things Politically Correct. Yeah, I'm more of a sheltered homeschooled kid than I thought. Everything is multiculturalism and diversity and "whatever you decide about this moral issue is fine, as long as it doesn't conflict with what the person beside you thinks".

Sorting through it all, to find and remember the truth about literature and life--because a lot of what they teach is true!--becomes exhausting. I want to scream out in the middle of class that just because something happens in real life does not make it a good book; that no, I'm not offended if you use "his" instead of "his or her"; that morals do, too, have something to do with literature! It's all so subtle--you can't quite stand up and argue against assumptions that are already made, offhand comments or things that others just take for granted to be true. And if I stop paying attention, I catch myself beginning to agree with them. Who doesn't support tolerance and freedom from prejudice? I want to hide away in my safe, homeschooled world before I start to succumb to some of it.

But...that's not what we're here for. We aren't called to hide, but to be salt and light, cities on hills, all the things that I talk about so glibly when I'm with people who believe exactly the same way I do. High school English is sort of a pathetic way to go about this, but it's a start, I suppose.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a long, angsty rant, believe it or not. Contrary to what one would think reading this post, I really am enjoying this class--on the whole, and taking one thing with another. It's like...reading and writing day camp. Yayw00t. But at the same time, I'm getting a taste--only a taste--of how it's so very, very easy to call yourself a Christian and believe your faith is suitably strong when you're far away from any battle.

So that's my venting-session of the day. See you tomorrow.

Are there any synonyms for "random"?

2008-08-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

Les Miserables is coming to Vancouver in May 2009.

We're seeing The Tempest in September.

...No Safe Home...

The Midnight Dancers is nearly here!

Those are the thoughts that I take out to think about when the computer randomly crashes, or when I remember that can't find my Chapters gift card (I'm beginning to despair, imagining all the books that could have been) or something equally dreadful occurs.

You know, I think I'll hit "no comments" to spare myself the humiliation of no one commenting on this post, for the excellent reason that there is nothing worth commenting about.

No, I don't know why I'm posting about this either, apart from the fact that it's 1:38AM and I'm celebrating No School Tomorrow! by listening to City on Fire until I join Fogg's lunatics in their insanity, and staying awake until my head hits the keyboard.

yuhijyh7t6ggyu.

Good night. And good riddance.

The Final Memorandum

2008-07-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Between musical theatre and summer school, this summer is more busy than any of my school years have been. Both of these are, in themselves, perfectly fine and upstanding things, but together they can prove fatal.

My introverted side, having been withheld the proper nourishment, has recently shriveled and disintegrated. My extroverted side is bravely toiling on, but it has not the fortitude to withstand for much longer.

The end is near. I may wither slowly, wasting away until eternal sleep is imminent. I may simply vanish in a cloud of smoke. Whatever happens, I bid you, my faithful readers, a fond adieu. Be blessed in your endeavours. Farewell! Farewell...

holiday

2008-07-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed. Two updates in three days. Do not faint. But then, perhaps photo-posts don't count. These are from Long Beach last week, and there are a host of more boring ones too (that I shan't bother posting), as this sort always seems to generate the following conversation:

Me: Look at this picture I took!
Parent/Sibling/Other: Oh...uh....nice...I guess.
Me: What?
Parent/Sibling/Other (disdainfully): It's just...so...artistic.

OHo, you should see what one could do to them on GIMP, that would be artisticness worthy of disdain.

Theatrical Ramblings

2008-07-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Musical theatre camp started today. A little acting, a little singing, a little dancing, actually today a lot of dancing. The results were as follows:

Singing: Good
Acting: Very Enjoyable
Dancing: Atrocious

So there we are. You learn something new every day. Today it happened to be You Are A Hopeless Dancer. Tomorrow, who knows? But the rest should be fun. When they attempt to teach dance steps tomorrow I'll pretend I'm Petrova Fossil and that might bring some comfort.

(The teacher is bald. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But I can't remember the last time I didn't have a teacher who was bald; this is at least the third or fourth in a row. Is this the new fashion or something? Do they conspire in both teaching methods and hairstyles? One's brain begins to dwell on things of little importance when one is overtired, I think.)

Then... Came home, looked on the theatre company's website, screamed (figuratively) with joy because they're performing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 2009, considered auditioning, then realised that it was the rubbishy Robinette script and lost hope. So much for that. I've seen LWW twice with that script and it is horrible, horrible, horrible. It's been a while so I can't remember why (apart from the fact that Father Christmas uses an elf to distribute his gifts). It just is.

(Oh, and Waking Rose was splendid. Still a little too romantic for my picky tastes, but oh well. I'm still not really sure what Fish sees in Rose...I understood him a lot better at the beginning of the book than at the end! I lent SotB and WR to my friend Gyneth today also, so we'll see if we can convert her into a fan. Today the Fairy Tale Novels, tomorrow, Les Miserables! Woohoo!)

Attolia, Rose, and Graduation Attire

2008-06-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

WAKING ROSE CAME.

I am a very happy girl.

The Midnight Dancers is here too, but since my mum very kindly paid for it, I don't get to read it until I finish with English provincials, which are in August. But I shan't complain until I'm finished Waking Rose. It's fabulous; or the first four chapters are at any rate. Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles, Fish--the works. The book is sitting beside me on the computer desk and I'm almost loathe to pick it up again. The faster I read the sooner it will end. And after Midnight Dancers is finished too, what is left? Aaaugh. (No, you mustn't say anything about buying Black as Night.)

Events of the last few days: Reread Queen of Attolia. Lounged around on Narniaweb. Reread King of Attolia. Went to a graduation ceremony because of an English award thingummy; the award was nice but the Chapters gift certificate was nicer. (Pointless side note: I would like to know the history behind those unique blue pieces of headgear. There must be some hidden reason that they aren't yet obsolete. Really, the whole idea of flat and round and tassel equals a trainwreck of a hat.) Started on The Thief, until I was distracted by a Certain Parcel in the mail.

I'm still not sure I understand half of what's going on in QoA and KoA. There's so much subtlety and so many hidden meanings, everywhere. You end up wholly satisfied with the story, but there are still a few hungry questions eating away at the back of your mind. (Unless you're smarter than I am with that sort of thing. I was absolutely fooled in all three books, I admit. I had not even the slightest shadow of a suspicion that things might not be as they appeared.)

And, of course, the obligatory personality guesses. Yay.

Gen: ISTP, Choleric-Melancholic
Attolia: INTJ, Choleric-Melancholic...maybe
Costis: ISTJ
Aris: Some sort of Phlegmatic...ESxP perhaps...or...something.
Phresine: INFJ
Sophos: ISFP

And that leaves me with questions. Such as: why are all of my favourite characters ISTPs? Why was I born an Intuitive instead of a Senser? Why don't I even have the luck of knowing any ISTPs in real life? Why? Why? and also: when is the fourth book coming out? WHAT HAPPENED TO SOPHOS? When is the fourth book coming out? What type might the Very Cryptic Eddis be?

The ponderments of the hour. (And the hour being what it is, I should get to bed. After I finish the next chapter of WR of course. Ha. Ha. Ha!)

EDIT. I'm done with fanfiction. It was just a phase and it lasted all of two days, as I got sick of sorting through the quantities of rubbish. So you needn't doubt my sanity any more, but I do thank you for your concern.

Into an Unknown Realm

2008-06-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

Lately I've had far more free time on my hands than any decent person should have, and as a result I have done something I never dreamed I would do.

*dramatic pause*

In a word, Fanfiction.net.

And more specifically, reading Narnia fanfics. I'm not a great fan of fanfiction generally, but some of the stuff there is actually pretty good, and some is so bad it's almost worth reading, if you don't have anything constructive that needs doing (these usually follow the sickeningly-beautiful-and-perfect-girl-meets-the-Pevensies -and-falls-in-love-with-Peter sort of plotline) though if you are exposed to that sort of rubbish for more than twenty minutes or so, you will begin to lose hope in the future of mankind. Which is not really a nice feeling.

The anecdote is Canon Keepers and How To Kill a Narnian Mary Sue. Splendid. Hilarious. Read them.

I've been on the computer for a shockingly long amount of time this morning and ought to go get my brain in shape again. It feels like it's rotting. The anecdote to that is to read some big thick classic book. Here ends the pointlessness. Finis.

Emily Dickinson, Regina Doman, and Prince Caspian

2008-06-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

First, the poem. It has the very creative title of "Poem #89."

Some things that fly there be --
Birds -- Hours -- the Bumblebee --
Of these no Elegy.

Some things that stay there be --
Grief -- Hills -- Eternity --
Nor this behooveth me.

There are that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the Riddle lies!

The first thing about it that caught my attention was the rhyme scheme: A, a, a, a, a, a, b, b, b. Never seen that before. I've no idea what the rest of the poem means, what it really means, though. I'm sure there's a profound meaning behind it somewhere...

I ordered Waking Rose and The Midnight Dancers this morning, a fact which causes me alternately to wail about the books NEVER getting here and how very MUCH they cost; and to bounce off the walls in excitement.* I had a dream the other night in which I was the youngest of the what's-their-names, the twelve girls, except that instead of sneaking off to dance we escaped to see Prince Caspian every night (much more profitable and sensible if you ask me) and in between viewings I read The Midnight Dancers. I've also had dreams about getting Black as Night and the Sweeney Todd DVD (Special Edition!) and woke up wanting to buy them all most desperately; apparently my subconscious is of a much more materialistic bent than the rest of me is.

So yes, the reread of The Shadow of the Bear is a sort of consolation prize. It is a prize because rereading a book I own when I have several hundred checked out from the library--alright, maybe more like a couple dozen--makes me feel most dreadfully guilty. I like it a lot better this time than I did back in November. The first time I was racing through it to get find out what would happen and missed half of it, and also I wasn't expecting that much--er--mushiness and was somewhat annoyed by the whole thing. (Though if one must have romance, the Fairy Tale Novels have the best sort.)

We went to see Prince Caspian again a few nights ago and I think I liked it better...maybe. Some of the atrocities were less shocking, though I still bewail my poor wonderful Book Peter, in particular. It's not his fault he's misrepresented! All manner of condolences to the real Peter. At a few parts, I could trick myself into thinking that since this piece was right, the rest of the movie will be all right also: Caspian's escape from the castle, the Pevensies on the beach, Edmund and Peter dashing into Aslan's How to save the day in SaSV. All of those scenes (and others) were so perfect. I'm not sure if it makes it worse, having enough wonderful parts to make you realise that the movie could have been really, really good if only a handful of themes and characters were different. The few seconds right before Susan's ghastly kiss are maddening. You know she's going to perform that dreadful act, but as she walks away it almost seems like she won't. And it takes all your self-restraint not to shout out, "SUSAN! DON'T DO IT! NOOOOO!" And then it happens. And you shut your eyes and grit your teeth and survive only because you remember that Edmund and Lucy have good lines afterward.

But enough complaining. The theatre was of the 1940s style/retro variety, and that can't help but add to one's enjoyment of the movie. It was fun watching the other people's reactions to everything too, even though I heard some shocking remarks, such as the words "cute" and "rat" and "hamster" presumably in connexion to Reepicheep.

Have you noticed that audiences have a tendency to laugh at entirely the wrong times? Younger siblings do too, but cinema-goers are even worse. Edmund relocating Peter's shoulder is dramatic. Sorcery and Sudden Vengeance is meant to be spooky. Reepicheep-the-nearly-dead and his mouse entourage are tragic. NOT FUNNY. None of these things are humourous. Can we get that straight? Ok good.

And I quite like The Call...

*Not literally you understand. It would not befit a Phlegmatic. Not at all. Though it might be very interesting to try sometime.

This Post Has No Title

2008-06-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

I. Was. Tagged. For the first time in a long time; no actually that's not true, but it's my policy only to post tags on my blog when they're related to books. (There is no logical reason behind this.) So.

Who’s your all-time favourite author and why?
C.S. Lewis. Because, er...because I like his books? Also he just seems like a really amazing, interesting, humble sort of man.

Who was your first favourite author and why? Do you still consider him/her among your favourites?
C.S. Lewis again. Of course, of course he's still among my favourites! *is thoroughly shocked* From the dingy, far-off days before I was exposed to Narnia, there were Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott (I remember adoring Little Men when I was about ten and being devastated because I couldn't live at Plumfield), both of whom I still enjoy and read when I need some Literary Hot Chocolate but wouldn't count as my favourites.

Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favourite authors, and why?
Megan Whalen Turner or G.K. Chesterton, probably (maybe he doesn't count because I've only read two of his books so far, out of the multitudes). MWT because the Attolia books are layered and hilarious and wonderful (and GEN). GKC because The Man Who Was Thursday and The Club of Q ueer Trades are also layered and hilarious and wonderful, in an entirely different way. Oh, and Kit Pearson, a Canadian author who no one but me has ever heard of. Her A Perfect Gentle Knight is one of my favourite modern children's books.

If someone asked you who your favourite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth?
C.S. Lewis (do I detect a pattern here?), J.R.R. Tolkien, Victor Hugo, E. Nesbit, Anne Holm, Joan Aiken (a very few of her books, only select ones, you understand), Lewis Carroll, Megan Whalen Turner, and G.K. Chesterton. How amazingly unpredictable of me, hey?

And. I get tag other people. Ha. Morghan, Laura, Krys, Kris, and...that's all I can think of. Gyneth my friend, this is another reason you need a blog: I can't inflict random, pointless, inexorably fun questionnaires like this one upon you if you don't have one. Sending it through email just wouldn't do, I'm afraid.

(I do wonder what "inexorable" means. I suppose I ought to look it up before using it and thus looking like an idiot. I've only ever heard it applied to Tash which might not be a good sign.)

I typed up a great deal of rambling afterward and then realised that it would do for a whole 'nother post. Mwahah. Until tomorrow.

"I AM Prince Caspian!"

2008-05-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was The Day. It isn't an exaggeration to say that I've been waiting for this movie for years--well, not exactly, but vaguely saying "Oh, years" when asked sounds much more impressive than just saying "Two and a half."

First we dropped off my youngest brother at my cousins' house, and he was most put out to have been deemed Too Young to see PC in theatres. We consoled him with the usual speeches about yes, you can see it on DVD, and you can see VDT in theatres, and you saw LWW when you were only three, isn't that young compared to how long some kids had to wait?

The usual "Ohmgoodness I'm ACTUALLY SEEING IT!" reaction set in as we pulled into the theatre. The particularly annoying commercials they played beforehand did their best to eradicate all feelings of exited benevolence, but they didn't succeed, quite.

And then the movie...

I walked out not really sure what to think of it. Some parts were better than I could have hoped for and some were so close, but just sort of...failed. I loved the beginning, with Tarva and Alambil and then Caspian's escape from the castle. The first first beach scene was probably my favourite in the whole movie; no, maybe that place goes to Edmund's duel with Trumpkin, or Edmund's delivering the challenge, or everything at Cair Paravel. Ah...I'm not going to try to choose.

Aslan was in, what, six scenes? A somewhat sad number. But those six scenes were amazing. In LWW one of my main nitpicks was that they downplayed Aslan's power and made the Pevensies the real heroes, but despite the fact that he has less screen time in this one, he's much more noble and awesome and untame.

Susapian was cheesy and annoying but it was a small enough part of the movie that I'll save my complaints for any unnecessary romance they add between Shasta and Aravis. (DO. NOT.) Oh! And I also loved the river god and the writings on the wall at Aslan's How, and the transition from Narnia back into our world.

The characters I rate as follows (to steal from Little Women):
Lucy: Very good
Edmund: Very good. Very very good.
Susan: Middling
Peter: Bad (I'm sorry, I must be the only person in existance who doesn't enjoy watching arrogant, ignoble jerks who are completely out of character until a few minutes before the movie is over).
Caspian: Good. And he's still the same Caspian despite his unorthodox age and hair colour--and those things don't matter, really.
Reepicheep: Good
Miraz and Company: Very good

But still...something was missing. I think, now, that the movie was trying a bit too hard to be another LOTR, and its method of doing that consisted of the following:

a. Add Battles.
b. LOTS of them.

I like action as much as anyone else, but by the end, the constant hacking away at everyone in sight was just getting boring. Most of the people I talked to afterward, few of whom are afflicted by book purism, said the same thing (to my great surprize). Peter's duel with Miraz was good (though my fellow theatre-goers had the audacity to laugh during the Peter-and-Edmund conversation! *is outraged*) and the Night Raid was nice because it actually had some emotion mixed in there. Other than that...meh. And, in my very un-expert opinion, it threw the pacing off too. We're rushed through Cair Paravel, the woods, journey to Aslan's how, Aslan's appearance and the others not believing Lucy, etc etc etc, and then we get stuck on Action for a frighteningly long amount of time. The battle ends and *bang* the movie is over. No celebration, no explanation even of why the Telmarine villagers would be cheering for these enemy conquerers.

The script still suffered from randomly-inserted, cheesy one-liners, but of course I was happy for all of the almost-from-the-book lines (I can't remember any that were quoted word-for-word but they were pretty close) and the rest of it wasn't so bad either. Still annoyed that they took out all of the unique and atmospheric 1940s slang; is it really that hard for modern-day Americans to understand what "I say" or "jolly" or "brick" on one or two occasions? Even "Bother, I've left my new torch in Narnia!" didn't survive unscathed, but it did make it in there. Yay! Let us rejoice.

I did like the movie. It certainly was not Lewis' Narnia and it didn't impact me like the books have. But it was a good film and I enjoyed it.

And really, I shouldn't have hoped for anything other than that.

Less than two years until The Voyage of the Dawn Treader!

More Prince Caspian Rambling

2008-05-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Oh dear. I appear to be slipping back into the habit of updating once a month. Which is not a good thing. But I don't particularly enjoy reading blogs made up entirely of "Oh I'm so sorry I haven't updated sooner!" so I have resolved not to make mine like that again. Thus, my excuse for not making excuses. Did I just murder the entire point? I could also make excuses for this post not being very good, because it isn't, but I've decided not to do that either.

First of all: Eight days until Prince Caspian! (Ten days for me. A great many more for the poor non-North American folks.)

There. Now. I reread the book not long ago and of course noticed some things I hadn't noticed before. The Narnia books--and any good book, really--are like that, they just are, they have layers. Particularly, I noticed Edmund. Until now he had been tied with Lucy and Peter on the Favourite Pevensies List (Susan was never in the running, ever. Sorry, Susan).

Edmund has...nobility. So does Peter, so do they all, but "the Just" fits Edmund particularly well. He's changed so much since LWW that one would never know he had been a traitor--I had forgotten entirely until the narrator reminded us of it in chapter two, and then I promptly forgot again. He stands up for Lucy when no one else believes her, and I love the description when he enters Miraz's camp: "...Nor would the other boys at Edmund's school have recognised him if they could have seen him at that moment. For Aslan had breathed on him at their meeting and a kind of greatness hung about him."

He has more of a sense of humour also, compared to the others--random witty remarks are always a good thing, hey? "It's worse than what Father says about living at the mercy of the telephone." "Very well, may I say our D.L.F.?" And of course, "Bother! I've left my new torch in Narnia." And he reads--"In books, they always find springs of clear fresh water." (Also Goldwater in VDT, where he figures out the mystery because he's read detective stories.)

Personality types? of course, of course.
Peter: ENTJ
Susan: ESFJ
Edmund: ISTP
Lucy: INFP (weak I)
Caspian: INFJ
Trumpkin: ESTP
Trufflehunter: INFJ (but where does his badger-ness end and his personality begin? Maybe all badgers have the same personality... Anyway.)

I'm not really sure about Peter, besides the Thinking and Judger half... I could see each of the Pevensies as one of the four temperaments, though. Peter a Choleric, Susan a Melancholic, Edmund a Phlegmatic, and Lucy as a Sanguine. Caspian might be a Phlegmatic also.

Another thing that stuck out was the descriptions, especially of the trees. One of the reasons I don't like PC more is because of all the walking-around-in-the-woods parts, but pieces like the the waking of the dryads and tree-gods more than make up for that.

And Cornelius knew Caspian's mother! Quite cool really. Was I the only one who missed that fact?

Mostly About Books

2008-04-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

So my "fiction fast" is over. It's strange, it took me a few days afterward to get back into the habit of reading anything that wasn't strictly fact. I had ordered an enormous stack of library books, fiction and nonfiction, to begin on April 1 but until yesterday or thereabouts I could only concentrate on the nonfiction.

But now I'm reading a great stack all at once, and it is most agreeable. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Starcross by Phillip Reeve, Goodnight Mr Tom, random books about writing and poetry and the London Blitz.

I haven't read much of JS&MN yet. It's not the sort of book that one just rushes through. Actually I can't read it when I'm the least bit tired or I'll start falling asleep, which is strange because it's not boring and I really am enjoying it. I love the style...and the footnotes...and the illustrations...and I will say no more about it until I actually get some more read. It's a good book to lug around town though, if one enjoys glances that convey the equivalent of, "What an utter geek."

Starcross had no lasting effect on me but I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's the sequel to Larklight, and the premise sounds undeniably absurd--"They set out with visions of rest and relaxation only to be sucked into a dastardly plot involving spies, time travel, and mind-altering clothing! Before their adventures are out, they'll sail an aether-ship amid asteroid-strewn seas, dodge demonic puppets, and learn wisdom from an unlikely ally: the Moobs!" But the author makes it all work. Somehow the whole ridiculous thing is believable and engaging. It's an alternate Victorian age where British colonisation hasn't stopped at just Earth, but is taking over the rest of the universe as well. Very interesting. I didn't care for the plot as much the writing, though. Art is a most excellent narrator. He reminds me a good deal of Oswald Bastable.

Goodnight Mr Tom is set in 1940s Britain, London Blitz, children being evacuated, etcetera. It was all right. The two main things that kept me from actually liking it were 1. The fact that it was predictably charming, or should that be charmingly predictable? and 2. the subtle anti-Christian worldview. The villain is overzealous in her faith and calls herself a Christian, while the good characters believe that God is some vague, benevolent being who is found in trees and fields. Within us all, right? I suppose I've become more sensitive to that sort of thing in These Fictionless Months. The other night I was reading one of those introduction-to-philosophy books and it more or less painted all Christians as narrow-minded, misled lunatics who would gladly provoke another Spanish Inquisition if they could--unless they were the enlightened sort who knew that their god was the same one that every other religion believed in. And it just...hurt. Or it would have, if I had let it...

Also, have been (or should be) reading more short stories for English. More tragedy. More depression. More authors who think it artistic not to use any quotation marks.

Next in the queue ("queue" sounds infinitely more interesting than "line," does it not?) are The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander, and The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. My knowledge of the latter is limited to the enthusiastic recommendations of Delaney and Kris, and the fact that it's been compared to The Great Divorce. The only thing I know about The Kestrel is that it has a nice cover--at least, I suspect that it does, but I can't tell, because my library absolutely delights in placing their stickers directly over the face of whichever character gets their picture on the front. Is there any sort of reasoning behind this? My younger brother believes that it is somehow connected with a plot to take over the world.

Oh, also I'm going to try for the third time to conquer Pride and Prejudice. This is mainly because my mum and I went to see a play of it a few days ago, performed by a local college. It was a good play apart from the fact that Lizzy slightly resembled Mrs Lovett (okay, very slightly); and it inspired me to attempt it again. Either that or it shamed me into feeling frightfully illiterate for giving up halfway. (During the intermission I overheard a random theatre patron and a ticket-taker discussing the greatness of the book and how the 2005 movie simply ruined it. *finds this amusing for no logical reason*)

Such have been my book-related exploits as of late. That is all.

(Atonement soundtrack=awesome. Just FYI.)

2008-03-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

I have biology and history homework to do, I should go help with supper, and I'm very definately sleep deprived, but here I sit instead, curled up my dad's hovel of an office, listening to Eisley and typing pointless blog entries. Everyone else seems to be writing deep and personal posts lately, but I can't do that, somehow-- at least not yet-- so instead this shall be an exercise in Making Ordinary Things Sound Interesting. (Whether I succeed or not, that remains to be seen.)

So yeah...

New(ish) layout, Alice-in-Wonderland themed. The reasons for this are varied and trivial:
1. Alice is the only likable fictional INTP that I have yet run across in my book-travels-- at least, she's an INTP according to Rebekah. I haven't read the books in a while so I wouldn't know, and who am I to argue with the Great Guru of All Things Myers-Briggs?
2. Lewis Carroll writes splendid poetry, though few in my family appreciate my random quoting of Jabberwocky.
3. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Tim Burton adaption turns out.
4. I got sick of the old layout. I expect I'll do the same with this one before long, as none of the colours match, and the header is afflicted by graininess.

The title of this post is from an Emily Dickinson poem, the first poem I read by her that I really, really liked. A lot of her stuff is nice, but not quite...grasp-able, though I have been appreciating it more lately. I enjoy it but can't connect with it, exactly, and that makes no sense, so enough about poetry. I know very little about that subject obviously, but I almost like it that way. Books are fun to analyse and find hidden meanings in, but poetry, not so much. It's easier to smash and murder poems with Over-Analysation than it is with books, I think.

Yesterday was another English class, and I received my first assignment back (it took forever, too). The grade was decent but I got marked down for using parentheses. I love parentheses. *sighs mournfully* The next mission I am to be sent on is that of Descriptive Writing, and just reading the assignment made me inexplicably excited. (Yes, very strange, but I assure you that I harbour no uncannily benevolent feelings toward any other school subject. I wail about mathematics at a suitable decibel level and regularity.) The student-- though the term Agent-In-Training sounds ever so much more exciting-- is supposed to write a description of and assign an identity to one of the people whose pictures are given. One photo is of a dull-looking cigar-holding politician type, one is of a girl who looks remarkably like Briony Tallis, and the last looks to be a woman clutching a giant maggot to her chest, though it's hard to tell because all three are so very pixelly.

Yeah, I'll probably choose Briony.

Note to self: Quest to make dull things worth hearing about has been unsuccessful thus far. Rambling about English assignments is not the ideal way to accomplish this feat, even if you yourself happen to find said English assignments quite interesting.

Hrm...other items of interest. I could talk about Wicked (some nice songs, but a little too pop-ish, and its worldview is decidedly skewed), That Hideous Strength (which I started reading in December, but it's nearly finished now; I'll have to post some quotes later) or the loveliness of the word "objurgate"... (as in, "I objurgate the centipede."). No.

According to the Xanga footprints thingummy, Google and Co. have dug up this blog with the most random of searches. See:
Depressing Quotes Xanga
purple herring
gavroche death scene
MBTI Gerry Butler Gerard Personality Profile
fairies back drop and settings for sw
minnie driver "golden key"
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet St
where can I find a hat like Eponine wore in Les Miserables
Caspian and Susan romance
prince caspian romance
prince caspian film romance

Curiouser and curiouser. (Oh, fine, enough Alice references.) Those last three have all been from the last couple of days-- weird, very weird.

Ah, just received a Teachers and Librarians email from HarperCollins (how did I get on this mailing list anyway?) talking about Prince Caspian's impending release, and encouraging their subscribers to read the book. And to watch the movie trailer, but that's ok. Hope remains.

Undoubtedly, my mission has failed-- oh well. Next time, next time. Next time my stories will be fascinating, my words shall dance and weave together and accomplish other, equally poetic things; and I will have come up with some profound and amazing revelation to write about.

Maybe that's too ambitious. Nevermind.

"Her name is Gabriella, and she's very nice."

2008-03-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

Would it destroy any reputation I have as a musical theatre fan forever, if I admitted that I saw High School Musical tonight, and enjoyed it?

The play, mind, not the movie. I haven't seen the movie and don't particularly want to. (The soundtrack was quite enough. The word "bubblegum" comes to mind, in association with it.)

But the play...was fun. That's the only word to describe it, really. I learned nothing, my life has not been changed in the slightest, and it was not at all thought-provoking. It was full of cliched characters and the sort of lines that one quotes solely to laugh at their cheesiness. Sondheim it ain't, but it was enjoyable, especially after I managed to get out of Snarky Comments Mode, and I don't regret spending $5 on it.

Gah, I feel like Javert did after Valjean released him, or something.

We Have Cause To Be Uneasy

2008-02-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

or, a rant on a topic that everyone is probably sick of hearing about by now; therefore after this, I shall say no more on the subject. Maybe.

As everyone who has encountered me probably knows, I am extremely puristic when it comes to my favourite books being turned into movies. The more I love the book, the more I cringe at seeing their accompanying films slaughter the plot, characters, or essential themes. I'm not against changes when they're necessary, of course, because sometimes things that work perfectly well on paper would be impossible to get "right" in a movie-- such as Tom Bombadil or some of the less essential parts in books as long as Les Mis. But often, too often, it really does seem that directors and script-writers change things just to make themselves feel powerful and adequately in charge of the whole production. (E. Nesbit's books appear to be particular victims of this.)

When someone decides to adapt a novel that people have loved for years already, they have a responsibility to the author and to the fans. Naturally, no movie will ever be able to please everyone, but if filmmakers want to make up their own story they should do so, instead of releasing the film under the guise of an adaption when the only thing in common with the author's characters and the movie's is their names, or when plot elements are added and taken away for no apparent reason.

Which brings us to Prince Caspian, now only two and a half months away (is it really two months? Wow...). Until those gorgeous and high-res production pictures were released a couple days ago, I had more or less stopped caring. It would be a nice story, nothing worth getting excited about and not the Narnia I had known, but enjoyable or at least interesting. I'm not sure why those pictures changed anything, but I do care, if only for the sake of future Narnia movies. (The Horse and His Boy, in particular, for no logical reason other than the fact that it's my favourite).

Prince Caspian has always been one of my least favourite CoN books. Maybe it's all the walking around in the woods, or the way that half of the story is told in a flashback; and I have no objection to those things being remedied in the movie. The White Witch in the ice I can deal with, the night raid could work out all right, making Caspian, Susan, and Peter into (so we assume) completely different characters might, perhaps, possibly, maybe be tolerable. But the other books...the splendid and amazing Other Books that have never even had the luck to be adapted by the BBC-- what of them? If They find that they can get away with manufacturing a Susan-and-Caspian "romance" out of nowhere, what might happen to expand on Aravis and Shasta's "years later, they got married, so as to go on [quarreling and making up] more conveniently"? If PC needs more action and intensity, how can The Magician's Nephew, which has *gasp* no battles, possibly make a good movie?

Maybe it's better just to be apathetic about the whole affair. One is less apt to be disappointed that way, since lowly fans can't change anything anyhow. Still, for some people, the Walden films are going to be their only exposure to Narnia. They'll never read the books. If Walden doesn't stay true to the quintessence of Lewis' writings, those people are going to think that battles and warrior women and heroes who rely entirely on themselves while fighting with the other heroes who have some weird romantic attachment to with the aforementioned warrior women is what Narnia is all about. It isn't.

I'm looking forward to May, really I am. But if the movies aren't done decently, I'd much rather have them never made at all. Until That Fateful Friday when all of these crazy rumours will be either verified or put to rest, I shall be keeping up with the movie news and attempting to get as many people as possible to read the book before seeing the movie. (Current count: 3. Does anyone have any suitably irrefutable replies to the unenlightened who say "I don't want to read the book because it will spoil the movie for me"?)

Crazy Eights

2008-02-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

Or at least, it used to be called Crazy Eights. Now it's...Crazy Fives? Something like that. It doesn't have quite the same ring, but no matter.

5 things I’m passionate about
1. Truth
2. Justice
3. (nope, not "the American way" ) Words...language...books
4. Movie adaptions staying true to their source material
5. ...Life? I don't know. Sanguines are passionate. Phlegmatics are not passionate (generally). More comfortable that way, but less exciting.

5 things you say often
1. "He's definately an ESTP." (or other personality type rigmarole)
2. "Have you seen my {USB cable, biology text, library book that was due a month ago, etc} anywhere?"
3. "When are we going to the library?"
4. "Can I have the computer now?"
5. "It wasn't like that in the book! AAUGH! They got it so wrong!"

5 books I’ve read recently
1. Right From Wrong by Josh McDowell
2. Whatever Happened to Justice? by Richard J Maybury
3. The Question of God by Sigmund Freud, C.S. Lewis, and someone who edited it all together and actually wrote the book...
4. Jack's Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis by Douglas Gresham
5. and I'm about to start Mere Christianity.

^Yup, lots of nonfiction and Lewis. So I'm halfway, or two-thirds of the way, through my Three Months of No Fiction experiment...I don't really mind not reading fiction as much as I mind not getting all the books read that I have waiting. But it's been...good. I'm not really sure how else to describe it. Nothing groundbreaking and truly amazing has happened so far, but I've learned a good deal, and definitely enjoy that sort of book more than I did in December. Favourite book so far: Whatever Happened to Justice?.

5 things I want to do before I die
1. ...Fulfill the plan that God has for me, of course
2. Learn everything-- well, not everything, but as much as possible, you understand
3. Travel. To Britain, particularly, and also to visit everyone I know who lives so far away...
4. Read all the books on my enormous and ever-growing book list
5. Finish all the things I have started, find all the things I have lost, remember all the things I have forgotten

5 songs I can listen to over and over again, and probably have
1. Confrontation (Les Miserables)
2. Up is Down (POTC III)
3. The Ballad of Sweeney Todd (hey, this is the fourth post in a row in which I have mentioned ST...)
4. Hope and Memory (ROTK)
5. La Musica Notturna Delle Strade Di Madrid by Luigi Boccherini (this has become like...my family's theme song).

5 things I learned in the this year
1. Public schoolers are not nearly as uneducated or lazy as some homeschoolers seem to think
2. I am a great deal more flawed, useless, and sinful than I used to think, also...
3. 50,000 words is a lot more than it sounds like when you're writing, and looks like a lot less when you're finished.
4. I really do live a ridiculously easy life.
5. People, particularly writers of fanfiction, will make a huge deal out of the smallest and most inconsequential comments and actions between book or movie characters. *screams*

5 random facts about you (why does this keep switching between first and third person?)
1. I plan to give my children strange and glorious middle names...Britannia, Estel, Alexei, Marius. (I don't think those would work for first names, alas, otherwise those monikers would not be reduced to the lowly station of Middle Name.)
2. If I was Empress, abridged books would be done away with, as would chatspeak, nailpolish and 103.5 FM (a frightfully annoying radio station that plays the top ten hits over and over and OVER, which wouldn't be so bad except that it's played in every. single. store. Always.)
3. I still listen to Adventures in Odyssey. (The next season starts March first! huzzah.)
4. I talk in a slight pseudo-Cockney accent when I'm nervous. (Must be very slight, as I'm the only one to have noticed it so far...)
5. I have a bad habit of making references to books and movies that I know the person I'm talking to knows nothing about. It usually makes me look like a fool. (Oh well. They'd figure that out soon enough anyway.)

I'm doing English 11 at public high school this term. On my first day there, a couple weeks ago, the teacher asked if I was homeschooled, and I said yes I was. Then he said, "You know that things are done differently here, as far as grading goes, right?" This is the same system that has to include reminders before each set of study questions (you're supposed to write a couple paragraphs) to "answer in COMPLETE SENTENCES," so I'm not sure what he meant by that comment (though I expect that some homeschoolers do get off easy, or could easily do so if they wished...). Anyhow, so far the curriculum and the aforementioned questions really are quite interesting and thought-provoking. They put a huge emphasis on the superiority of interpretive and realistic fiction though, as opposed to more fantastical and escapist fiction. I know, that's what English classes are supposed to do: make students study books that they hate. But too much realism is dull. I get a large dose of real life every day without having to read about it too-- does realistic fiction really have more inherent educational value? I'm not sure.

I suppose I should think of a profound and intelligent conclusion to end this most recent of ramblings? (Yes, it really is 1:25. And yes, brackets are my favourite type of punctuation, though the semicolon is nice also, and ellipses are extremely convenient when one wants to trail off in a mysterious manner.)

"And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don't want to do it but I can't help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner,
And the prospects for my future social life couldn't possibly be barrener.
Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't be barrener?"

Good enough. Ogden Nash's poetry can be used for any occasion, more or less.

Attend the tale

2008-02-05T14:37:00.000-08:00

(ah yes, another conversation transcript.)
The following has become somewhat typical, of late:
Me: Have you heard of Sweeney Todd?
Unnamed Aquaintance: Yeah, it's about a barber who dies and comes back as a demon, right?
{Here I attempt to sort out this misconception, explaining that "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is not a literal demon.}
Me: ...actually it's a musical about a barber who kills his customers and then his neighbour bakes them into meat pies--
U.A.: Ugh! How morbid! How can you like something so awful?!

LESSON LEARNED: When casually introducing someone to Sweeney Todd, do not use that particular synopsis. Talk instead about Anthony and Johanna, or the history behind it all, or say, very vaguely, "Oh, it's about a man who was wronged and how revenge will destroy you..."
(Though it is somewhat amusing to tell people what it's about and watch their faces ).

Because it's true-- the themes of the whole play are somewhat morbid. If you took out the parts about crime and immorality and the depraved nature of man, generally, there wouldn't be much of a plot left. But the point of the whole story is not that it is fun to bake people into pies, and that makes a huge amount of difference. Sweeney is the main character, but he is an anti-hero, not the hero. In the beginning of the play, he is a definite victim and the audience can easily sympathise with him, but after the first act, Sweeney takes matters into his own hands and though he still sings about wanting justice, his own idea of it is now completely contorted.

One part in the Finale, especially, is talking about how anyone could become like Sweeney Todd (Sweeney waits in the parlor hall/Sweeney leans on the office wall.../Isn't that Sweeney there beside you?). A scary thought, and in a way, Mrs Lovett is a greater villain than Sweeney is. She's more frightening because she has no reason to assist a crazy barber in murdering people-- no justification whatsoever for her acts.

But then, in a sort of ironic way, justice is served. None of the "bad guys" get away with what they do.

Anyway, there are three main reasons why I like Sweeney Todd at all:

1. The brilliant music, enough said

2. The intricacy and complexity of the plot (and the melodies and the lyrics also). There are a multitude of subtle things that you don't notice right away. I've listened to the soundtrack over and over and am still finding new Items of Interest; there must be a lot more that I don't know anything about.

3. and, somewhat farther down the list: The historical setting-- I realised the other day that every one of my favourite musicals takes place in the nineteenth century. No idea why. But the Industrial Revolution and Victorian England have always intrigued me, and the story wouldn't be the same if it took place in modern times.

Really, if the entire play was grim and depressing, I wouldn't like it either. It does have humour, though some is of a a darker, more sardonic sort-- such as A Little Priest, or Anthony and Johanna's love story (which is somewhat quirky-- Sondheim seems to be poking fun at your traditional fairy-tale love-at-first-sight romances. ok, well, that amuses me, anyway.)

Sweeney Todd doesn't fit into the mindless and happy-go-lucky stereotype that musicals seem to have. Its message is not exactly pleasant, but it's thought-provoking and certainly not a horror story in the way that the plot summary makes it sound.

(Note: This post is about the general story, not about the movie. I haven't seen the film yet but apart from the gore, I'm irked that they cut out SO MANY SONGS...)

"We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather."

2008-01-19T14:38:00.000-08:00

SO...mere hours remain, of my being fifteen. Sixteen sounds a great deal older than fifteen, I think; but of course, last year fifteen seemed so much older than fourteen. I already know what most of the conversations I take part in tomorrow will be like:

Other Person: Happy birthday!
Me: Why, thank you.
Other person: So how old are you turning?
Me: Sixteen--
Other person: Ahh. Sweet sixteen.
Me: Er...yeah...

*cringes* Why is it "sweet"? What makes sixteen sweet and not, say, fourteen or seventeen? At sixteen you can drive, you can legally drop out of school, and in some provinces you can leave your parents and live on your own. Is that what makes it worth being a milestone? And of course when one turns thirteen, everyone expects you to suddenly start acting like a teenager, with unpredictably irrational emotions (which, in my experience, is just a myth), rebellion (which is entirely a matter of choice, and not some sort of disease that one cannot escape like some people seem to think), and all the rest of it. Who decides these things?

It's strange though, how our culture glorifies youth. Why do people hate to get older? Why are fictional kids always so much smarter than their parents are? Obviously it's not true childlike-ness that people strive towards, either, but-- like Polly said about Susan, in The Last Battle-- the "whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can." Childishness, in someone who is not a child, is definately not a good thing, but it is possible to be both mature and childlike. Most of the really wonderful, wise people I know have somehow managed that.

(That's not to say that I, personally, am like that, yet-- right now I think I have all the negative attributes of both childhood and adulthood. Urgh. Unlike most teenagers, I'm not particuarly happy about getting older, but that's more because I'm lazy and am perfectly happy to have nothing more to worry about than chores and good grades-- which, in itself, is childishness, as much as wishing to rush ahead is. I think. *has confused herself*)

This morning consisted of book shopping, paninis (always a good thing, except when they put on an inordinate amount of mustard), and snow.
Everyone I met --except for the kids, naturally-- was talking about how perfectly horrid the weather was. Why this is, I have no idea. Foolish people; we're supposed to be at least somewhat Canadian here, and it was only two inches.

The secondhand bookstore I frequent isn't really a bookstore. It sells mostly clothes and other uninteresting things, but next to the dull pastel paintings and the shelves of ceramic animals, there is a smallish room that is full of books from the ceiling to the floor, as in all proper book shops. The rest of the store is more or less organised, but that room is in a near-perpetual state of glorious chaos. One never knows what might be hiding there. Today I found five books and got into a random conversation with an old man about the atrocities of dog-earing. It was all very interesting.

A Confession, a Camera, and Other Items of Interest

2008-01-09T14:39:00.000-08:00

I admit, I am rather fond of those random, pointless, indisputably inaccurate quizzes that somehow pop up all over the Internet. They're especially useful when procrastinating on physics homework.

You Are An INTJ

The Scientist -- Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging

You have a head for ideas - and you are good at improving systems.
Logical and strategic, you prefer for everything in your life to be organized.
You tend to be a bit skeptical. You're both critical of yourself and of others.
Independent and stubborn, you tend to only befriend those who are a lot like you. ...

How you see yourself: Reasonable, knowledgeable, and competent

When other people don't get you, they see you as: Aloof, controlling, and insensitive

What's Your Personality Type? ________

Hmm, interesting; I almost always get INTP on those tests. I'm definately a "weak" Perceiver though-- or a weak Judger, perhaps. (Translation: I am indecisive, inflexible, unorganised, etc etc. All the bad parts of each. By the way, here is a more accurate Myers-Briggs test. If anyone does click on that link, and no one will, I shouldn't wonder, please do let me know what your results were!)

What Les Miserables character are you?

You are Eponine! Although you may be lonely, you are a very caring person. You will do anything for a friend, even at your own expense.

Eponine

83%

Jean Valjean

67%

Fantine

67%

Thenardier

58%

Marius/Cosette

58%

Javert

50%

Enjolras

50%

Ack...oh dear. Musical!Eponine strikes again. (Evidently the person who made this is under the impression that Marius and Cosette are one and the same [Mariusncosette?] or at least that they have exactly the same personality. Poor Gavroche, left out again.)

Which Sweeney Todd Character are You?

You are Sweeney Todd. Sure, life's given you lemons, but you didn't need to chop down the whole lemon grove. Still, driven mad by grief and fury, you'll make a name for yourself, both on Fleet Street and on Broadway, for your cunning, your ruthlessness, and your inability to lay the past to rest before you destroy it yourself.
Take this quiz!

Mwahaha. Fear me.

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog.
Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights.
A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time.
You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

What's Your Blogging Personality? _________

So. Yes. Other news in the life of this brilliant, creative, logical, amazing blogger (ha, ha! But they got the perfectionist part right, at least...) includes the following:

I got a new camera! This one. Actually I don't have it yet-- my mum insists on waiting until my birthday to give it to me, and as she was the one who paid for it, I guess I can't argue. It's sitting on the dresser in her room, and I go and stare at it in wonder and joy every once in a while.
Sweeney Todd is awesome. More on this later, maybe. No luck so far in getting someone to take me to see the movie, though (wonder why?).
I've been reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss (yup yup, another NW recommendation). It hasn't really improved my punctuation so far, but it has instilled in me a great fear of ever making any grammar mistakes, and increased my annoyance at everyone else's. Hmm.
Thanks to my excellent taste in movies () and the fact that one cannot turn on our TV without at least four siblings flocking over to see what's playing (why is that?) Oliver! has taken over this house. If you hear various people break out into song the moment you walk in the door-- Consider Yourself, of course-- well, you know why. (We won't say anything about the possibility of being pickpocketed. No one has succeeded yet anyway. It's harder than it looks.)
My brother and I might start working at a horse boarding place down the street...maybe. I'm not sure exactly what possessed me to inform everyone that I might be interested in cleaning out horses' stalls, but you can't make any money at the library without a degree in library science or something like that. Though volunteering there would be just as good...hmm... *schemes*
New(ish) layout! The picture in the header and background is a painting by Vermeer (View of Delft) and my display picture is a painting by John William Waterhouse (Miranda-- The Tempest). I like Waterhouse's art, especially Boreas, but they're all rather the same. Anyway, the quote in small print is a random one from Victor Hugo, and the fonts used are CheltPress Trial, Scriptina, and butterbrotpapier. I'm sure you all were wondering...

(Is it frowned upon to use so many paraenthses? They're addicting.)

And that's all...though naturally, as soon as I hit "Save Changes" I'm going to come back and edit this. Is there a holiday I could wish you all a happy one of? (Atrocious grammar. I know, I know.) Ah. Google reveals all. I hope everyone has a lovely National Static Electricity Day.

Best and Worst Books of 2007

2008-01-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

A while ago on NW, some were making lists of the top five books read this year. (Last year, I suppose it really is, but I haven't gone to bed yet, so it's still this year...) I tried, but after further consideration, I can't limit it to only five. (I also can't remember whether half of these were read in 2007 or 2006.) I'd love to see your lists too, if you haven't posted them somewhere already.

Perhaps "best and worst" is not entirely accurate. These are my favourite books, rather. Quo Vadis, and The Kite Runner, and others were undoubtedly better than some of these, but these had more...er...hedonistic value? So anyway, most-and-least-enjoyed books (and that doesn't sound quite the same, does it?) in no order whatsoever:

Best:
The Attolia books, by Megan Whalen Turner-- Brilliant books, what more can I say. I do pity those poor deprived souls who thought Queen of Attolia was dull, never finished it, and therefore never got to read The King of Attolia. Many thanks to wisewoman to recommending them in the first place, otherwise there would still be many copies sitting alone and unopened on library bookshelves.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis-- This book...has layers. I'm not sure what else to say about it. I need to read it again.

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll-- Most of my family hates these books; they say that they're too random and disjointed. I like the randomness. I wonder if that relates to personality types in any way... Anyhow, they're funny and clever and quotable. What more could one ask for? (I would say "charming" too, but I don't like calling good books charming; makes them sound like the literary equivalent of cream puffs or small, cute animals.) Oh, and both books have awesome poetry also. The Annotated Alice is even better.

The Children of Húrin, by J.R.R. Tolkien-- Dark, miserable, and tragic. Loved it, though Turin is not a particularly likable main character. And of course the illustrations are beautiful.

Black Hears in Battersea, The Cuckoo Tree, and Dido and Pa, by Joan Aiken-- The Wolves Chronicles are sort of like Robin McKinley's books; some are splendid, some decidely not. These three were my favourites of the series. The plots aren't very realistic; they're more swashbuckling, almost fantastical. But Dido is a plucky and smart heroine without being the obligatory feminist Amazon, the setting is Dickens-esque and the dialogue includes nineteenth century slang. Yay.

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding-- I'm not certain really why so many people hate this book. Maybe just because they were forced to read it in English class and didn't get the privilege of reading it for fun like me (ha, ha). It's grim and haunting, certainly, but it's also beautifully written and manages to have a good message without losing any of the story itself. The cover (my cover) is freaky though. Worse than the book.

The Others (only because I can't think of anything to say about them): Milkweed, by Jerry Spinelli; A Perfect Gentle Knight, by Kit Pearson; Beauty, by Robin McKinley; and The Golden Key, by George MacDonald.

Worst:
Tears of a Dragon-- I liked the other books in the Dragons in Our Midst series well enough, but this one...eh, let's see. Cheesy, rather slow, weird cliffhanger ending and everyone who died in battle randomly comes back to life. Eye of the Oracle was much better.

The Door Within trilogy-- Basically a Narnia spin-off (and at times, LOTR too). The writing style is annoying (an overabundance of CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!! which I don't mind as much in dialogue, but in narration it's just entirely wrong) and the characters have no...character. Also the names are random, based on no apparent langauge or sound system, which shouldn't affect my opinion of the books any but it does. Ironically, I greatly enjoy reading the author's blog. He is a LOTR and Narnia fan (well...that was obvious, I guess) and wrote a very interesting review of CoH when it came out.

Inkspell-- Long and slow. Very slow. Editor needed badly. I'll probably read Inkdeath just to see who dies, which I know sounds horribly morbid. (Hopefully it will be Meggie or Farid. *feels evil* I like Dustfinger and Mo though...sort of.)

Peter and the Starcatchers-- What, exactly, does this have to do with Peter Pan? The characters are completely different and it contradicts the original book. The story itself is nothing special, and the style is amateurish. (Not that I'm an expert or anything, but...you understand. *sigh*)

Secrets of the Fearless and Star-crossed-- These are two separate books written by two separate authors, but as far as I am concerned they can be referred to interchangeably. Both use the frightfully overused Girl Dresses Up as a Boy, Goes to Sea, and Proves that She is Just As Good as Anyone Else plot, and both are basically about 21st century characters seemingly transported back to ships in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Lesson Learned: Do not pick up random books off the library shelf. Ever. Even if they happen to be about Napoleonic naval warfare.

OK, enough book-bashing; I sound so utterly proud and over-opinionated. I read mostly good books this year anyway.

Ten Books I Want to Read in 2008:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell-- I know almost nothing about the plot of this book, and intend to keep it that way until I can get ahold of it, but everyone I know who has read it has nothing but good reveiws. Which is...promising.

Black as Night and Waking Rose, by Regina Doman-- This is entirely Delaney's fault. I liked the first book (The Shadow of the Bear)- not loved, but liked. Her characters are interesting and well-developed, and the idea of modernised fairy tale retellings is rather more original than your average medieval one. Quotable too.

Enna Burning and River Secrets by Shannon Hale-- More second-and-third-books-in-a-trilogy-of-fairy-tale-retellings. Or rather...sequels to a fairy tale retelling. Or something.

Some Russian literature, haven't decided exactly what yet (all I've read is Crime and Punishment, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich).

The Slave-Girl from Jerusalem, by Caroline Lawrence-- I know, rather frivolous with little literary value. Oh well. I still want to read it. Inter-Library Loan is awesome, though they charge an inordinate sum for any days overdue and tha librarians scowl at you when you ask them to order something through it.

The Silmarillion-- I know, scandalous. I call myself a LOTR fan but haven't read the Sil yet. I will, I will! (But I am living proof that one can read Children of Hurin without reading the Sil first and not be utterly confused, though the chapter titles in CoH are dreadfully spoilerific.)

North and South, The Princess Bride, The Sherwood Ring, and Twilight. (This last is for two reasons: a.) It's been recommended to me by more than one person, all of whom generally have good taste in books, and b.) If I don't like it at least I can criticize it properly, complete with long rants questioning how people could possibly like Edward Cullen when Gen [Attolia] is so much better. We shall see.)

That said, I'm going to take a break from most fiction until April, to read Christian books and particularly, the Bible. This is not through any particular nobleness of my own. Quite honestly I am not looking forward to it at all, but it will certainly be good for me, however lonely I am for my lovely fiction books at the beginning. ("Christian books," mind, do not include such things as rubbishy pseudo-literature with some sort of moral tacked onto the end to make it "Christian." Theology, rather...though the Space Trilogy counts.)

It's two in the morning and I can't think of any decent conclusion to this longish post, so... Happy New Year, all.

I heard the bells on Christmas day

2007-12-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn, the households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Merry Christmas, all!
(and a Pippin New Year too, of course. )

"And Lucy felt the way you do when you wake up and realise that it is the first day of the holidays..."

2007-12-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

And it is! Huzzah.

Yesterday's amusement consisted of baking Pfefferkuchen, a sort of German gingerbread that everyone enjoys making and few in this household like to eat, unless it is with large amounts of icing and sprinkles on top. It's Tradition, you see.

All right, all right, I cheated with the pictures-- they aren't actually from yesterday. But what does that matter?

(Side note: Google ads appear to have invaded my sidebar, along with everyone else's. Things look grim. Though for the present, at least, mine are all advertising Les Mis. That is some small comfort, I suppose.)

On Prince Caspain

2007-12-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

So! The long-awaited Prince Caspian trailer has finally been released! (Go here to watch it, if by some strange twist of fate you have not seen it already.) On the whole I'm quite pleased with it...or at any rate, resigned to the Inevitable Changes that some people think are necessary. If I can just somehow manage to get out of Purist Mode by May, then all will be well (maybe). I love the whole first part of the trailer-- the train station, the beach, Cair Paravel. The sets and costumes are gorgeous and more or less like the book too. And small, random things, like the fact that Lucy has bare feet after they land on the beach, made me very happy for some reason.

So yes...I have been motivated to read Prince Caspian again. It's the only Narnia book that I actually remember reading for the first time- I think I was about eight. Those first few chapters, with the island and ruined castle and their mysterious origins, fascinated me. (Then the Pevensies and Trumpkin started walking around in the woods, and I became rather less interested in everything. ) I sort of wish now that I hadn't read the books so early, because now I can hardly remember what it was like to encounter everything for the first time. It's become old and familar.

This time 'round I will not make the mistake of watching PC as often as I did LWW-- which wasn't even that often. I loved LWW back in 2005, and I still like it now, but it's not the sort of film you can watch over and over and over again. With the books, I still notice something new almost every time I read them.

Now, to convince the rest of my family to read the book before seeing the movie.

In Which I Seize the Chance to Ramble on and On about one of my Favourite Topics.

2007-12-01T14:45:00.000-08:00

An extremely geeky, longwinded post is ahead. You have been warned. Oh, and spoilers throughout, too.

Yesterday my dad and three unnamed friends had the good fortune of seeing Les Misérables, the school edition. My friend's cousins were in the chorus and playing Gavroche; otherwise we probably never would have heard about it. I was trying not to get my hopes up, terribly, because I love Les Mis, love the book, love the Tenth Anniversary and London cast recordings (hate the OBC! hate most movie adaptions!) and therefore could have been Easily Disappointed.

I needn't have bothered. I know Les Mis is amazing to begin with, and pretty hard to kill, but even when I think of all the things wrong with the show and gripe about them to no end (much to the annoyance of Family and Friends) I don't like the musical any less. If that makes any sense...

Until then I think I had always thought of Les Mis as my own personal property. I have a few relatives and friends in Real Life who have seen the show and enjoyed it but they aren't exactly raving fans (particularly the relatives). It occurred to me the other day that I've never actually met anyone who has read the book, which is quite sad, really. Prior to last night it was my book and my musical. (Someone else can claim the 1998 movie.) But then the curtain went up and the orchestra played the first notes of Look Down and all I could think was, Oh, wow.

They cut some things-- quite a lot of bits and pieces and a few whole songs. (Confrontation, which is a terrible, terrible tragedy, and Stars, which is NOT supposed to be cut even in the school edition. I have no idea why they did that.) But actually I barely noticed the cuts (except for the aforementioned Confrontation. Grr.). I didn't even realise that Stars was omitted until this morning, which I know is practically heretical of me. And of them- but anyway. They also took out Marius and Cosette's conversations before their wedding (which was the only omitted thing that really affected the plot; it certainly felt like there was something missing) and the wedding song, neither of which are supposed to be cut in the school edition, but I'm not certain. Despite all that the show was 2 1/4 hours and I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be two hours exactly...maybe they added some parts back in? That's still pretty long though; by the end one could definately tell that the actors were beginning to get tired! I would love to see it again; it's playing tonight still. Alas, I do not yet have my driver's permit and my mum says absolutely not.

Lovely Ladies was Dramatically Edited down to a wordless dance and the Fantine-and-and-the-hair-buyer lines, which was sort of nice, really... Master of the House was also creatively sanitized but it worked pretty well; I never would have noticed anything amiss if I didn't know the song already. It's quite a fun, upbeat song, when one can listen to it without having to fastforward every other minute. Some other songs did not fare so well... let's face it, "St Michele" and "what the heck" just do not rhyme.

It was interesting, some of the things they did, that you would never notice just listening to the soundtrack: Fantine seeing Tholomyes for a moment in I Dreamed a Dream; Grantaire falling backwards in a mock faint while he sang "I am agog, I am aghast;" Young Cosette appearing in the background in the beginning of Fantine's Death and then walking away when Fantine sings "Come to me..." --so sad! Marius tried to climb over the garden gate when he sang "I'm doing everything all wrong..." (he would have fallen into the orchestra pit); and the man-who-looks-like-Valjean (what's his name?) was grinning and pointing to Valjean as Valjean sang "Two-four-six-oh-oooonnnne!" at the trial, as if he was saying "It's him! Not me! Get him!"

Gavroche- ah, Gavroche. He's definately my favourite character in the book; maybe my favourite fictional character. In the musical his part is cut down considerably (isn't everyone's?) and I'm quite sad that they never mention that he's actually the Thenardier's son and Eponine's brother. (And Azelma's and those other two boys' brother...but nevermind.) The Gavroche we saw was really good; I think he was only...ten, or something. I am so, SO glad that they still use Little People in the school editions, and not that Ten Little Bullets song that makes Gavroche look like someone consumed with bitterness who lives only to get revenge on those evil bourgeois who have wronged him. In the book, he thought of the whole revolution as a sort of game, which just makes his fate all the more...er...miserable.

OK. End of rant.

Gavroche's death scene was all wrong though, says I-- after "You need somebody quicker, and I volunteer!" he climbed to the top of the barricade (we'll talk about the barricade later) and proceeded to get shot there, and stay there. At least they didn't cut out the song, but it made it look like he died for nothing at all, without even trying to get the ammunition. All the same, the theatre was completely silent as he sang Little People for the last time, and then fell backwards.

I wasn't too impressed with Javert until they got to Javert's Suicide- that was REALLY good. Much better than the Broadway Javert there, who just sounded weak.
Valjean and Marius...were alright. I'm used to Colm Wilkinson as Valjean because I've never heard anyone else, and Michael Ball, because he is the Marius.
Cosette was good too; she looked just how I imagined Cosette, and wasn't screechy like some Cosettes are.
Eponine had a very nice voice (it contrasted well with Cosette's ridiculously high notes) but I'm not much of a Musical!Eponine fan. One of my friends and I occasionally sing On My Own very loudly and off-key just to see how bad we can make it sound. But I rather liked that Eponine's version of it.
Fantine was probably my favourite singer; she made me actually like I Dreamed a Dream.
Enjolras sounded almost perfect when he was singing the loud, powerful songs, but he didn't sound so good in the quieter parts (like after Eponine's death).

And the Thenardiers were the comic-relief show-stealing characters, of course. Their costumes were just right too- Thenardier wore a garish red waistcoat, and striped stockings and some other Mismatching Items and had awful, stringy hair, and the Thenardiess had a red dress with immense crinolines (or petticoats, whatever they're called) underneath that spun all around when she danced in Master of the House. The Thenardiers are some of the most maddening villains that I've run across. They're so-- so-- I'm not sure, but they remind me of the Sackville-Bagginses.

They didn't use a lot of props-- the ABC Cafe consisted only of a collection of wine-barrels, which the students sat on. That would have been fine except that the empty chairs at empty tables that Marius sings about later are reduced to imaginary, figurative furniture, which isn't quite the same. Maybe they're ghost chairs...like the ghosts of the Friends of the ABC. (Sorry. Can you tell that it's getting late?)

Random notes and observations:

--The audience started clapping at the same exact times as the audience in the TAC does, which I thought was sort of funny...though the clapping in the TAC annoys me to no end (except during Beggars at the Feast) because it gets in the way of the music.

--Jean Valjean wore a strange wig. Javert too, but he wore his (loverly, stupendous) hat most of the time. Marius was also cursed with weirdish hair but he had the most awesome steampunkish coat, so it's all good.

--Eponine and Gavroche both wore newsboy caps (I'm a great fan of newsboy caps), but they insisted on wearing them backwards. Why was that?

--There was no rotating barricade set, just a large pile of barrels and boxes and wagon wheels. It worked pretty well though, especially for those fortunate people who happened to be sitting on the the revolutionaries' side of the barricade. Oh well, we got a nice view of the National Guard. The leader (the one who sings, "You at the barricades listen to this!") was wearing a US Marines uniform. Heh, I wonder if that means anything.

--I'm not exactly sure how they do the sewers part in the real play, but here they just had Valjean walk around the stage a couple times, with sewer-y sound effects. My friend had the audacity to laugh when Valjean picked up Marius and slung him onto his back. *shakes head in despair*

--One thing that I can't figure out in the musical: In the book, Valjean breaks his parole by stealing a coin from a boy, and that's why Javert is after him. But in the musical, he gets out on parole and then steals the silver-- but the Bishop tells the police that they were a gift, so why would Javert still be after Valjean? Or is there something I am missing?

--I know, I must be a complete fool, but I never connected the "There is a lady all in white" line in Castle on a Cloud to Fantine, until she appeared in the middle of the song.

--They added some harmony in Red and Black...which sounded quite nice some of the time, and some of the time it...didn't.

School productions are underrated. I've seen Fiddler on the Roof done by a high school too, and liked it better than the movie, actually. Apart from Valjean, Javert and the Thenardiers, all of the characters in Les Mis aren't that far away from high school age themselves, so it's sort of nice to see a Fantine and Cosette not played as middle-aged women.

While watching Marius and Cosette's wedding I remembered that the End was near-- the end of the play, I mean-- and that was a quite a disheartening realisation. Everyone came out for the finale, the cast raised their hands in the air as they sang the last notes, and then everyone started to applaud...and applaud...and applaud, as they took their bows. They clapped the most for Eponine the poor victimised innocent waif, which irked my book-puristy self, but then the Thenardiers appeared and the applause suddenly grew a great deal louder. A bunch of teenage girls started screaming and cheering when Valjean came out. Jean Valjean fangurls...who would have thought it.

And then it was over...

I have more to say about the story generally, but this is getting insanely long, so I'll save that for next time-- maybe.

"Again he beheld Mabeuf fall, he heard Gavroche singing amid the grape-shot, he felt beneath his lips the cold brow of Eponine; Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose erect before him, then dispersed into thin air... The revolt had enveloped everything in its smoke... A fall into the shadows had carried off all except himself. It all seemed to him to have disappeared as though behind the curtain of a theatre. There are curtains like this which drop in life. God passes on to the following act."

Of Elves and Words and the Weather

2007-11-26T14:46:00.000-08:00

O frabjous day, it's snowing outside. I went out in my cloak and boots to investigate, and ended up walking around the block. Or...half of the block. Anywho, it's gorgeous out there, with the snow and the fog and the dark.

Ran across this picture from a Canadian touring horse show sort of thing today; doesn't it just sing of Middle-Earth?

Four days of NaNo left! It was fun, a lot of the time, and certainly good for me, but I'm looking forward to it being over. I read in the Official NaNoWriMo Guidebook that only about half a dozen people have written their novels entirely by hand (at least, when the book was printed, it was so). Huzzah, I'm famous, I'm unique. And I'm also jolly tired of counting words. I keep having nightmares (figuratively) that I'll finish my 50,000 words and look up, and it'll be 12:06 on December 1, or that I'll find out later that I made a mistake and really only wrote 49,000 words. I guess it doesn't really matter.

New pictures in background: a newsboy from 1912 selling papers with a headline about the Titanic, and two random Russians who are driving the czar's carriage.

Blow, wind, blow

2007-11-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

(Eighteen days until Les Mis and the end of NaNo! And yeah...below is a random "I'm posting here because there's something else I should be doing instead and I'm a hopeless procrastinator" post. *nods*)

This morning when I woke up the power was off. That isn't anything out of the ordinary in November, because of the annual High Speed Winds We called the power company and they said it would be a few days, which we took to mean at least a week.

My siblings went outside before breakfast and were running around in the wind; they find it amusing. I suppose I do too... I was standing at the window, looking out at the woods behind our house... and then two of our tallest trees started leaning, and leaning, and leaning, until they hit the ground. They reduced the swing set, shed, and pig-fence into splinters of timber (or in the case of the pig-fence, pieces of bent wire).

My sister was upset because the swing set was smashed, and my brother was mad because he had been a few feet behind the trees and too busy running away to properly see everything get demolished. My mum and another brother went out to chase the pigs, who had cleverly taken advantage of the current lack of fence. It was all very exciting; I rather wished I could document it properly.(Alright, alright, no more complaining about my camera...)

A few minutes after that the wind let up completely, and the sun came out, and our collection of trees (the ones still standing, that is) looked just how Lothlorien should look.

And then the power came back on. Curiouser and curiouser.

"I have only one of everything: God, king, sou, boot."

2007-11-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

The above is a Gavroche quote. Does it have anything to do with this post? Er... No.

So anyway... I am attempting NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, and the first week is now over. It's a lot of fun- so far anyway- though I wish I had planned more beforehand instead of deciding to register all of two hours before it started. I thought that the story I had in mind was at least halfway book-length, but noooo, it could be finished up quite neatly within forty pages. The result of that is that I unconsciously use few or no contractions these days. At all. Now I think that a lot of the time it sounds better that way, actually.

The end product (the novel, that is) will almost certainly be unfit for human consumption and will probably never leave the notebook it is written in*. Thus far the story is frightfully random and involves a masquerade ball, the sinking of the Titanic, the colour red, a retelling of the story of Rapunzel, time travel, occasional long, pointless asides by the narrator, and mathematics personified. *cringes* Ah well. In twenty years I can laugh at how foolish I was at age fifteen.

(*Yes, I am using a notebook. Terribly old-fashioned, is it not? But it must be so when one is sharing a computer with seven other people.)

I have only read about ten pages of The Goose Girl and I can already tell that it will be bad for my NaNo word count and my physics homework. Val and Delaney recommended it highly; not to mention that the book smells delicious, which is always a good sign.

Status of Alyosha's Digital Camera: Officially deceased. *weep*

In other news...I am (finally) going to see Les Mis at the end of the month! Huzzah! I've been wanting to see it for years (alright, alright, three years at the most) and some today some friends of ours asked my mum is any of us wanted to go. Actually it's only the school edition, but I suppose that that's the next best thing to the national tour, which is the next best thing to Broadway or the West End. It's a Christian school that's putting it on; I wonder if they will cut out or change some of the Potentially Objectionable parts. Hmm...

And now, I am finally going to stop procrastinating (something I've been doing all day) and go do some of the things that need to be done. In closing, here is another completely unrelated quote from E Nesbit:

It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.

Mist and twilight, cloud and shade

2007-10-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

(Side note: The Perilous Gard was really good. Sort of a dark, historical fairy tale...very interesting, though I'm not exactly currently reading it...)

On Hallowe'en (or All Saint's Day, or Reformation Day, or whatever you prefer) for the last six or seven years, our church hosted an outreach sort of thing, with drama, and games and such...for church people and the community too. My family usually helped with it, and last year my dad and I were on the planning committee. It was a lot of fun, and we don't go to that church anymore (they don't have it anymore anyway) so I'm going through All Saint's Night withdrawal at the moment. *sigh*

We've never gone trick-or-treating, and we live too far away from everything to get many people knocking on our doors. I'm always hearing people complain about them but really, I think handing out candy could be sort of fun. It's too bad that people insist on making October 31 so spooky and all that (not to mention the less-than-wholesome origins). What's wrong with just an innocent, fun holiday? (albeit a rather pointless one.) Dressing up and getting candy, what could be better? The decorations that are all around the stores around now tend to annoy me greatly, mostly because they aren't even nice, just tacky and unattractive. Christmas and Easter are not a whole lot better in that respect, but at least stars and rabbits are not inherently ugly.

I don't believe that "Halloween alternatives" are evil either, especially if it involves outreach, or evangelism-- if something is bad, isn't trying to change it more likely to have more impact than just ignoring the whole thing?

I don't think my family is doing very much this year- perhaps my sister and I will wear random steampunkish clothes to "celebrate." Any excuse to wear a costume, you know. I'd rather have Guy Fawkes' Day anyway, as no one can accuse that of having a questionable background, and apparently they celebrate it in Newfoundland as well as Britain. Very patriotic.

I am convinced

2007-10-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

that Facebook kills brain cells. It kills mine. After an hour or so browsing that site (although it is an improvement on Myspace) I feel the need to immerse myself in a classic Russian novel, or some such thing. Perhaps it's a subconscious act of defiance against the hordes of Internet users who probably wouldn't mind turning in a school assignment that was written in chatspeak, or full of profanity.

It was my little brother's birthday today. The youngest one, who somehow manages to sneak into so many of my photos.

Silly kid.

Would write more, but I'm being kicked off the computer, due to the unfortunate fact that there's school tomorrow.

Ramblings

2007-09-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

(In list form, because I can't think of a way to connect all these unrelated items)

1. New layout! I rather like it, though I had to sacrifice that lovely Library Thing gadget in the sidebar. And that green line drives me batty; I can't figure out how to make it black....and the fonts are all screwy now. Xanga Themes can be so temperamental. Anyway, any criticism (constructive or otherwise) is much welcome.
The pictures are just random ones from around the turn of the century... some taken by Lewis Hine, I believe. The one on the very bottom right is the last Russian Imperial Family-- well, it was, but now you can only see Alexei. I've always liked old black and white photographs for some reason. They have character.

2. The other day we were looking through some junk in our storage room and ran across two Bibles that had been forgotten about for a while. They're from my dad's family...from about 1880. Both of them are full of letters and postcards and those ever-handy lists of marriages and such. A few photographs too- we're related to these people, but have no idea even what their names were!
Family history will be my newest "kick," I expect. My mum's side came from Germany; and my dad's side is British (with a little German and French) but they've been here since before 1821, at least, and we know that some of them fought in the Civil War (both sides)... But I will refrain from rambling on about it all, if it isn't to late already, because I expect no one besides me is interested.
Old things are fascinating, are they not? If only they could disclose everything that's happened to (or around) them; that would be nice. The only thing I've been able to find out about the ancestors who owned one of the Bibles is the cemetery in Iowa where they were buried. Parents, three daughters, and their respective husbands.

3. Robin Hood movie status: We still want to do it...sometime...but haven't actually gotten around to filming. Yet.

4. The only outside class I'm doing this term (besides skating which isn't really a class) is Physics 11 at a high school of sorts- it's mostly adults or other people in 'special' situations taking classes they missed. I'm probably going to fail. Other than that *ahem* it's going all right...much, much nicer atmosphere than that algebra class. I might do English or Drama and Film or something fun like that in the spring there too.

5. I'm not a fan of most contemporary music, but a friend lent me the above album by Rebecca St James, and I rather like it. She manages to mix the standard synthesizer-and-drum stuff with some orchestral music. And she makes "doors" and "flaws" rhyme. Yay.

6. My siblings are all at AWANA this evening, and the house is abnormally quiet. Very strange. And my mum just brought down blueberry muffins for my socially deprived self; are not mothers loverly? (Not meaning to imply that the muffins are the cure to my being antisocial, of course...*has confused herself*)

(Hmm, this is turning into more of a free writing thing-- that is, typing any random thing that my foolish brain comes up with.)

7. I think my camera is about to kick the bucket...*weep* It's being capricious and just generally provoking, but I really don't want to spend $300 on another one. A plague on it all.

8. Book shopping tomorrow! Along with a bunch of other errands, most likely. I need a new bookshelf...

Long Awaited Updated

2007-09-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

I don't really like talking about my life. Nothing particularly exciting happens (which is, I suppose, a good thing, but it doesn't make for very interesting reading) so it seems egotistic to go on and on about myself. Nonetheless, I greatly enjoy reading other people's blogs (and I also update because I'm selfish and love getting comments ). Perhaps a sign of being a good writer is being able to make something commonplace sound interesting.

Anywho...

I read The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley the other day and was disappointed. I really, really enjoyed Beauty by the same author, and I've always liked Robin Hood, but alas, my high expectations were sadly misplaced. The book is both too long and too short- there's not a whole lot of character development, but it borders on tedious at times. The constant feminism annoyed me too...the author is continually harping on how Marian and Cecily are just as good at archery and All That as anyone else, and 'aren't content to stay home and do needlework.' I don't like spineless heroines any more than anyone else, but physical strength isn't the only kind of strength there is. It wasn't all bad though...the cover art of my edition was done by Alan Lee, for one thing. *grin*

(A particularly personal bias here, but I also didn't like that Robin was your typical cautious, doubtful, Frodo Baggins hero. Not the least bit swashbuckling. Haha.)

[end rant]

Oy, I still have to do the Blogger Reflection Award thing. I will get to it soon, Danica, really I will. (And while I'm bemoaning unfortunate incidences that are my own fault, I also have two library books due tomorrow that have vanished in the chaos that is my house. Oh dear, oh dear.)

I shall close with a poem by the esteemed Ogden Nash:

The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
Is hoping to outwit a duck.

Four Days in Long Beach

2007-08-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

(Long Beach on Vancouver Island, not in California. )

Nothing REALLY interesting happened for most of the trip. But it was a lot of fun anyway; my mum and siblings and I went with my grandparents and cousins.
A few pictures:

^that's my sister

^and my brother

^and my cousin

^and my siblings, looking bored

Anywho...we were planning to take the 5:45 ferry back to the mainland, and had reservations for that time, but my mum changed her mind at the last minute because she didn't want to get home too late. We got in line for the 3:15 one and after a lot of anxious waiting we JUST made it on...we were the second last car onto the ferry, out of the 250-ish that were on it. (The trip back was uneventful, except that we happened to sit behind a large group of particuarly talkative highschool girls coming home from camp. Four of them turned around to look at my little brother and said, "Awww, you're so cute!" He scowled at them. But I digress.)

When we got off and were driving home my mum turned on the radio and we found out there had been a bomb threat on the ferry we would have been on if we hadn't changed our plans or had missed the 3:15 one. They shut down just about everything and we probably would have been stuck in Nanaimo overnight at least.

So yeah. God is good. Today it's back to school. Only a week and a day left, huzzah!

(Yeah, my profile picture is me. I look weird, but then, I always look weird. Those are all good books, by the way, if you can see the titles.)

P.S.: Be sure to check out Narniaweb if you haven't recently- loads of Prince Caspian news! I'm actually not hoping for much, because it sounds like they're changing SO many things from the book and I'm a hopeless purist, but it's jolly hard not to get excited when you read things like Comic-Con news and the PC set report

Tagged

2007-07-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

SO, I am supposed to post ten interesting things about myself. Very well...here are ten random facts, I won't presume to say they're interesting.

1. My earliest memory is running away from my dad in a mall in Hong Kong (we were missionaries there until I was four). I was about two and wore red shoes...that's about all I remember about it.

2. I'm an INTP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving), and Phlegmatic Melancholy, and yes, also very interested in personality types.

3. For about a year when I was six or seven, I was fascinated by pioneers and refused to wear anything but a long dress and sunbonnet.

4. ^I'm still like that- not dressing up in pseudo-historical clothes (usually), but being obsessed with an event or book or time period for a few weeks or months.

5. I write lists of everything even though I usually end up losing them. Books to read, books I've read, names I liked, a list of things I keep lists of...to name a few. I also write things to remember all over my hands in pen, it drives my mum crazy.

6. Possible future careers I have considered at one time or another include: author, journalist, missionary doctor, actress (this was more of a hopeless fantasy) singer (ditto), photographer, movie director/scriptwriter/or just a production assistant, and cigar lector (someone who reads aloud to factory workers).

7. That Robin Hood movie I mentioned ages ago IS still going on...slowly. We just finished editing the script and hopefully can film next month.

8. Fancy restaurants (the kind that my family can't afford and I probably wouldn't spend my money on anyway, but that people invite us to sometimes) make me want to do something unpredictable and unorthodox, like dancing on the table, or something (don't worry, I've managed to restrain myself thus far ).

9. I'm am member of...eh let's see, 12 forums (doesn't mean I post regularly on them all, you understand) and all but 2 are owned by Narniawebbers.

10. The word "sophomore" technically means "wise fool." (Which doesn't really have anything to do with me, apart from the fact that I just finshed gr. 10.)

So there you are. Now I can go tag some victims of my own. Mwaha.

edit- The Currently Reading thing isn't working. *growls* but I'm halfway through Children of Hurin right now. It's beautiful and sad and more like a history book than LOTR is.

In Which I Experience Real School, of a sort

2007-07-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

8:00: My mum drops me off, and I manage to find the right room without getting lost (shocking!). Introduction, technicalities, and all that.

8:15: Textbooks handed out. One of the eight previous owners of mine wrote in the front, "In Case of Fire, Throw Book In."

8:17: Graphing. Linear equations. I attempt in vain to comprehend the mysteries of the Y axis, or something like that. Will spare you the details, because it's even more vapid to hear about than to experience. (vapid=new favourite word)

10:15: Fifteen minute break, everyone talks and I go and get a drink. On the way back I note how happy the English 11 students look. Am decidedly jealous. The girl beside me tells her boyfriend, using about three profanities per sentence, that she's failed this class twice and been expelled once.

11:03: I also note that the boy-in-front-of-me's ringtone sounds a lot like Masquerade from POTO.

11:29: Why do you suppose all these math books have frogs on them? Jumping in front of the moon?

11:45: The END! Until tomorrow. I go home and do about six hours of homework (because for some reason I could not understand half of what I was supposed to be doing... got it figured out now though. More or less.)

So that was Day 1. Despite all my complaining it's not that bad. It's just a whole lot easier to be lazy when you homeschool.

(Oh, yes, and I also came home to find that an *ahem* anonymous family member had set one of my books on fire in the microwave. Er...yeah. )

Book sale finds of late

2007-07-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

Inkheart
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Actually I haven't read this one yet.
Nicholas and Alexandra- I can't believe that I found this. Actually my mum did. Early twentieth century Russia is always fascinating, you must admit. *grin*
The Breadwinner- A kids' book, about Afghanistan under the Taliban. Veeeery interesting.
The Thief- I got one of my rather picky (with books) real-life friends to read this too, and she liked it a lot. *waves to fellow consparitors*
Little Men- Am I the only one who liked this better than Little Women? Maybe because it's a little less "girly."
Calico Captive, by Elizabeth George Speare- The Bronze Bow is the best of her books, but this one is good too
The Marvelous Land of Oz, or something like that
Papa's Daughter
Book notes for Crime and Punishment

And the people rejoiced! I love cheap secondhand bookshops. Actually bookshopping is the only kind of shopping I like. (Sorry, Orious. )

I never do those "mood:" things out of principle (because everyone else does, I guess) but if I were too, right now it would be "A General Feeling of Impending Doom." Because of that math class, I guess. A plague on it. Three more days of freedom.
Canada Day comes first though, I'm not sure what we're doing (it's not nearly such a big deal here as the 4th is in the States), but a very happy Canada Day to you all.

Be blessed in your endeavours!

Lazy summer days

2007-05-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

(Lazy for everyone but me, anyway...haven't finished school just yet!)

(I know, I know, some of these have been in my album forever.) I have strange taste in pictures...I seem to like things that no one else appreciates.

P.S.: Today and tomorrow is the 175th anniversary of the barricades. Be sure to read some Les Mis.

Horseradish

2007-05-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

There are some who say that sitting at home reading is the equivalent of travel, because the experiences described in the book are more or less the same as the experiences one might have on a voyage, and there are those who say that there is no substitute for venturing out into the world. My own opinion is that it is best to travel extensively but to read the entire time, hardly glancing up to look out of the window of the airplane, train, or hired camel.

and

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

How very true, eh?

I found out a few days ago that I'm going to have to do an algebra class this summer at the local public high school. *sigh* I've been taken classes at private schools before but never a public school, so this will be...different? Yeah. Rather new and frightening for this sheltered, unsocialised homeschooler, even if it isn't exactly like "real" public school (during the rest of the year, I mean...if that made any sense). Not my prefered way to spend July, anyway. Maybe I'll document it like Anna did her with driver's ed. :P

My siblings are listening to opera right now. Loudly.