You know it's Friday when...

...your boss and the IT guy get into a war seeing whose little plastic Halloween witch has the scariest cackle.

 

So not kidding.

Just a quick post, to let everyone know about a very cool webcomic: www.crimsondark.com

Nicely done, great dialogue, intriguing story, and one of the most gorgeous ships I've ever seen: the Niobe.

Go check it out! (And thanks to Adam for the heads-up!)

This NaNo is making my head hurt!

 

I have cavemen, an Atlantis-like island, a watery world with few continents, 2 renaissances, future guilds of evil historians, and at least 200,000 years of history, economics, ecology, and geology to juggle!!

 

AUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

(This is either going to be a ridiculously fun story, or ridiculously excruciating.....)

NANO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT'S BACK!!! The site is back up, ready for signups!!! Only one month till insanity! Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *dances the dance of joy*

 

Ha!!! I rule! Shiny! *dances the dance of joy*

This is so awesome.

"Your hair is reminiscent of a self-digesting yak in heat."

Me Joi. Want Tarzan!

This past weekend, I got to sit and read the first few pages of Tarzan (reading Princess of Mars made me want to read more of Edgar Rice Burroughs' work). Talk about a rollicking good tale! It seemed like a very entertaining book, and even in that short section had one line that made me laugh out loud! I'm hoping to read the whole thing soon, and go on to reading more of his work. I haven't read a writer whose books were this much sheer fun since H. Rider Haggard,

It's amazing how soothing a cup of hot, sweet, strong tea can be.

The Joys of Pulp

I have been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' Princess of Mars lately. ERB tends to get laughed off a bit, since he authored Tarzan, and most people don't even know about his sci-fi.

 

Why didn't anyone tell me that Burroughs is such a good writer?? I don't think I've enjoyed a pulp book this much since I went on my H. Rider Haggard jag! (and yes, I loved both She and King Solomon's Mines.)

 

I wish I had found some of this classic pulp stuff in junior high; I think it would have prevented me reading a lot of total junk. I can't tell you the plot of a single Bsbysitters Club book (though I read quite a few of them), but I know I'll always remember the dread as the stone door slides shut, sealing the party into the tombs of the kings in King Solomon's Mines. I'll always remember Ayesha (She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed!) leading Alan Quatermain and his companion into the depths of the earth, and seeing her shriveled body fall as the eternal youth is taken from her. Who could forget John Carter in among the Green Martians, watching the moons of Mars speed across the sky and dreaming of Dejah Thoris?

 

Is pulp "good literature"? Not really. It's pretty light fare. But as Chesterton says in his excellent Defense of Penny Dreadfuls,  

 

"These common and current publications have nothing essentially evil about them. They express the sanguine and heroic truisms on which civilisation is built; for it is clear that unless civilisation is built on truisms, it is not built at all. Clearly, there could be no safety for a society in which the remark by the Chief Justice that murder was wrong was regarded as an original and dazzling epigram.

"If the authors and publishers of Dick Deadshot, and such remarkable works, were suddenly to make a raid upon the educated class, were to take down the names of every man, however distinguished, who was caught at a University Extension Lecture, were to confiscate all our novels and warn us all to correct our lives, we should he seriously annoyed. Yet they have far more right to do so than we; for they, with all their idiocy, are normal and we are abnormal. It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal. Books recommending profligacy and pessimism, at which the high-souled errand-boy would shudder, lie upon all our drawing-room tables. If the dirtiest old owner of the dirtiest old book stall in Whitechapel dared to display works really recommending polygamy or suicide, his stock would be seized by the police. These things are our luxuries. And with a hypocrisy so ludicrous as to be almost unparalleled in history, we rate the gutter-boys for their immorality at the very time that we are discussing (with equivocal German professors) whether morality is valid at all. At the very instant that we curse the Penny Dreadful for encouraging thefts upon property, we canvass the proposition that all property is theft. At the very instant we accuse it (quite unjustly) of lubricity and indecency, we are cheerfully reading philosophies which glory in lubricity and indecency. At the very instant that we charge it with encouraging the young to destroy life, we are placidly discussing whether life is worth preserving.

"But it is we who are the morbid exceptions; it is we who are the criminal class. This should be our great comfort. The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life, just as there are a large number of persons who believe they are the Prince of Wales; and I am told that both classes of people are entertaining conversationalists. But the average man or boy writes daily in these great gaudy diaries of his soul, which we call Penny Dreadfuls, a plainer and better gospel than any of those iridescent ethical paradoxes that the fashionable change as often as their bonnets. It may be a very limited aim in morality to shoot a "many faced and fickle traitor," but at least it is a better aim than to be a many faced and fickle traitor, which is a simple summary of a good many modern systems from Mr. d'Annunzio's downwards. So long as the coarse and thin texture of mere current popular romance is not touched by a paltry culture it will never he vitally immoral. It is always on the side of life. The poor--the slaves who really stoop under the burden of life-- have often been mad, scatter-brained, and cruel, but never hopeless. That is a class privilege, like cigars. Their drivelling literature will always be a "blood and thunder" literature, as simple as the thunder of heaven and the blood of men."

(The entirety of this excellent essay can be found at http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/penny-dreadfuls.html)

So I got a gift card to Barnes and Noble, and decided to get a whole stack of books yesterday. I went into my two favorite sections (Literature and SciFi/Fantasy) and ended up with these:

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe

The Idiot, by Dostoyevsky

Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Shadow and Claw: The First Hal of the Book of the New Sun (two books in one volume) by Gene Wolfe

The Knight, by Gene Wolfe

plus a giant book of crossword puzzles.

I'd heard the Tom Wolfe book being talked about a little online, read the first chapter online, and decided it was interesting enough to read all of.

I got the Idiot, because I love Dostoyevsky and it's supposed to be one of his best books.

I've been wanting to read Burroughs' Mars books for awhile (gosh darn it, Mr. Wright, stop talking about books, it keeps expanding my reading list!) Plus, it had a picture of a space princess in a bikini on the front. How could I resist?

Gene Wolfe also comes highly recommended by Mr. Wright; I picked up The Knight and started reading the first chapter to see if I wanted to buy the book. After about 2 pages, I felt like my mind had been pulled through into another dimension, and been remade as something new. On the strength of that, I bought both G. Wolfe books that I'd grabbed, instead of just onoe. Can't wait to see where he's going with this story! Even in the first two pages, there were references to Norse mythology and Platonic dialogues.

It's here!

The first movie poster for Prince Caspian! It gives me the shivers just to look at it!

 

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/09/17/exclusive-the-chronicles-of-narnia-prince-caspian-official-o/

 

*blushing furiously*

So, as some of you know, I recently concluded a practical joke (for lack of a better term) that lasted a little over a year. Now, this wasn't a mean type of joke; it actually involved anonymously giving gifts to people at my workplace. (No, I'm not giving more details than that)  At a recent company-wide meeting, I had finally revealed then identity of the secret giver, causing much uproar, surprise, and happiness (apparently, my little gifts had meant more than I thought! Yay!)

 

So that was nice, and everything. I was a little sad that I couldn't send gifts anymore, now that everyone knew who I was, but I'd given something to just about everyone in the company, so it worked out ok.

 

But then came today.

 

Today did not start out well. I arrived at work, and everyone else was dressed in the official colors. I was told that a memo had been sent out, and why didn't I dress in colors myself? I hadn't received the memo and was very upset.

 

Then, a few minutes ago, my manager called a meeting (this happens at least twice a week) and we all turned off our phones. Everything was normal. Then the Big Boss said, "ok, everyone gather around Elizabeth's desk!" Well, that was a little unusual. Then, to my utter suprise, they presented me with a lovely book of fairy drawings (http://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Book-Flower-Fairies/dp/0723249393/ref=pd_bbs_2/105-2550683-5390823?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190228218&sr=8-2) and a gift card to Barnes and Noble!

 

I still haven't stopped blushing!

Arrrrrrrrr!

It be National Talk Like A Pirate Day today! Tell all ye mateys!

 

*sigh*

It's started....I'm in a Christmas mood. I have no idea why. Maybe it's the predicted rain this weekend, maybe it's the idea that I could get an actual Christmas tree this year, who knows....But I'm in a Christmasy mood!

 

Now, where did that Joni Mitchell CD go, I want to listen to River......

 

My favorite blog

This blog is probably my favorite blog right now. It's excellently written, often funny, and always worthwhile. Here's the great post from today:

 

http://johncwright.livejournal.com/119334.html#cutid1

 

 

Thanksgiving day?

Hello all! My sister may be visiting me this Thanksgiving Day, and we are looking for someone to share it with! I'm perfectly happy to have the meal and my house and do the turkey, if someone else (or lots of people; heck, I'd be happy if a bunch of people wanted to show up) wants to join us and bring side dishes.

 

Let me know if you're interested!

Tarkovsky

About a year ago, a lot of people from a certain Torrey class became obsessed with the Russian filmmaker Tarkovsky. I was not one of them; I have to date only seen one of his films (Andrei Rublyev, which I loved). However, on faith, I purchased the book he wrote about his films and art in general. It is fantastic. He has quite a few really excellent things to say. He maintains that art cannot be simply about self-expression, because art is empty if it elicts no response in the viewer. Can't wait to read the rest!

 

Now I'm going to Netflix to add all of his films to my queue.

Dad's vacation

As most of my readers know, my dad took a vacation and came out to visit me: his account of it is here: http://tuliacoc.livejournal.com/

 

And he's right; we see the LA area through totally different eyes. Even after 7 years, I love it out here as much as ever. I love being able to hop on the freeway and see a show in LA. I love being able to hang out at Forest Lawn. I love being so near to all this movie history. I love being in the midst of university life, and being able to participate in the dialectic. I hated being stuck in a small town; while I grant that they are good places to be, I will leave it to others to live there. I love having the freedom to be who I am, and not have to fit some mold (I am so glad to not have to pretend to care about football games anymore! And to be free to care very much about books) Give me the city skyline, the palm trees, even the freeways. Give me the ocean, and the long slow rains that drizzle for three days. Give me the long golden sunset light, and the milky whiteness of the eucalyptus trees. Give me the hot asphalt, the crumbling concrete, and even the earthquakes.

 

I love this City.

 

(But then, ya'll knew that already.)

Last night was weird

Yesterday was not a great day for me. I was tired, and somewhat depressed (note: this is very normal for me, just annoying) and by the time I got to Bible study, I was not in any mood to be around large groups of people.

 

I was too shy to share my struggle in the time for prayer requests (maybe next week), but prayed anyway that God would get me out of myself (oh dang that sounds so weird after the discussion last night....) and let me be present with the Plato group in a meaningful way.

 

I didn't notice that I cheered up, but I had one of the best discussions I've ever had. I was able to follow the discussion (mostly) and contribute a few significant things, I think. Maybe.

 

So thanks be to the God who understands bipolar introverts!

MMMMmmmmmm...

*munches* liquor-filled chocolate cake......yummy.....

 

Good thing I brought the leftovers of the cake to work. If it stayed in my house I'd eat it all!