Writer’s Block: I May Be Crazy
… but it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for!
I have been able to imagine here much of what other people have seen, but to me it’s the grinning face of a fox. (Admittedly, one with oddly bifurcated ears.)
The smile is a Trickster’s smile, the smile of Loki, or Coyote, or Q. That smile promises only a relief from boredom – it does not promise either way whether you’ll enjoy that relief.
John Milton revisited
I’m curiously drawn to re-interpretations in modern fiction of the underpinnings of Christian theology, such as the one in the beginning of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Since I’ve enjoyed Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels, I picked up To Reign In Hell at a con or bookstore, and gave it a read.
Well, I tried to. Twice. The first couple of times, for some reason I couldn’t get a sense of the characters or the premise. Last night, I took a deep breath, and tried a third time with much more focused attention, getting much farther into it. The attempt didn’t work out…
Acceptable abuse
I’m a little stunned this morning.
As practically anyone with sense predicted, the homosexual community reacted extremely badly to the passage of Prop. 8. It’s one thing to have had rights denied to you for centuries, it’s another to have recently-attained rights taken away by people for no other reason than they don’t like you.
So, why am I stunned? Well, certain religious organizations were active in the process to remove those rights, and plenty of others stood complacently by. So, gay people are lashing out at these religious groups. And the stunning thing is that religious folks are acting surprised and hurt!
I swear, I’m reading this in many places online, such as LiveJournal, news sites, opinion blogs: “We’re just treating you like abominations and taking away a chance at happiness you briefly had. We don’t understand why you’re so upset. Why would you have a problem with this?” Of course, it’s not those specific words, but it’s absolutely the attitude. “We don’t understand why you’re so angry, and honestly, we’re a bit offended.”
Frankly, I’ve always attributed discrimination against gay people, in most cases, to malice. “We don’t like you, and it’s socially okay to mistreat you, so we’re gonna.” I never before realized that someone could be unaware that treating another human that way was wrong. “Why does this bother you?”
Wow.
At the Movies
I am turning Starr into a Hayao Miyazaki fan, getting her attention with “The Castle of Cagliostro”, cheering her on a bleh evening with “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, and charming her last night with “My Neighbor Totoro”. After “Nausicaa” and “Spirited Away”, though, I’ll be all out and have to pick up some more sometime.
Oddly enough, by coincidence she’d been reading up on Shinto traditions yesterday afternoon, and recognized much of them in the movie – more than I! I foresee a Catbus plush in our future.
Also, over the weekend I finally saw the “Lost Skeleton of Cadavra” (Rowr.) An intentionally bad 50s-style SF movie, this flick is awesome if the viewer’s got the right sense of humor. The associated drinking game required drinks on the words “science”, “meteor”, “atmospherium”, “alien”, “mutant”, and “skeleton”. I didn’t participate, mainly because I don’t drink, but also because I’d have ended up blasted out of my mind. Why do people need to pretend to be forced to drink alcohol?
The other weekend movie was “Dorkness Rising“. I really loved it, and am tempted to buy a copy; good script, nice production values for a low-budget film, and an utterly believable – if silly – look at the GM-player dynamic in tabletop RPGs. Additionally, much of the scenes ‘within the game’ are absolutely hilarious. Really, if you game and you happen to see this on the video schedule at a con, make time to see it.
I will be 40 years old on November 15th. I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m still reminding myself multiple times per day to act like a grownup. I’ve taken responsibility for a lot of things in life, and willingly so; I want the perks of adulthood. But it means there’s a long list these days of stuff that I can’t wait for someone else to take care of for me, and after all these years I’m still learning many of the tricks of handling a grownup’s duties.
On the other hand, I am surrounded every day by people who aren’t giving that half the effort I am, so I suppose there’s hope. 🙂
