The Road Goes Ever On and On...

I'm ready to go on to morning shift. That's 6 am to noon here, and I'll be trying to wake up at 4:30, to leave the house by 5:30, and have some room for sanity before I go.

But I was reading my sister's blog, and she was talking about hiking around Santa Clarita, and was asking about some of the places around there.

I thought back to where I would go, and what I would do, because I realize now that I used to go sort of wilderness romping quite a lot - something I haven't done nearly as much in the military. I keep talking about it but never really bother to plan to do it.

When I was in elementary school my best friend was Mike Lightner, of the lightner clan, and behind their house was a hill that was too sheer for track homes to crawl up, I guess. It was also too sheer for bikes, generally, so we used to walk up around there. I can't imagine it was very big, but we somehow found places to go. I particularly remember there was some sort of naturally enclosed, sort of "secret garden" place, that found once and couldn't find again. There was also a long, deep drain running down one part, I think it was while they were building houses on top. Mike broke his arm or sprained his wrist or something when we were climbing around in there.

During that time, and after, I'd take my bike behind...I think it was Bouquet Park. It was on the other Wellston. There was always a section in the fence that could be pushed thru to get back to the hills back behind there. I almost guarantee there are track homes there now, but it was all sort of chapparell (or however that's spelled) desert when I went. There we tons of jumps on little trails that someone or other had smashed and dug at some point before I got there.

I remember at least once I was riding or walking on this long horseshoe shaped road on top of one of the hills. It was probably a service road. I got back to the very back of it...the portion furthest from the park, probably at least a mile back (as the crow flies, if you will), and I looked out and there were these hills literally as far as I could see, without any sign of people or buildings on them. I compared it to the Lord of the Rings (in my mind), which I'm also rereading right now. I loved having those seemingly endless swathes of "wilderness" outside my door.

I do miss those places and I know of little that's comparable right here. It probably would be difficult to find a comparison to my child's memory anyway, as these places were undoubtedly far less pristine than I remember, and here everything is bound by roads or farms. Just fly over this place and look at the window. Every square mile is covered with farms...quite literally, in some areas.

But I've resolved to do at least one camping trip this summer, somewhere near here, or else I'm sure I'll regret my homebodyness while I was here. This weekend I'm going back up to duck lake, so we'll see if we can't find some buried treasure this time.

Arbitrary Gestures

Today's Adventures:

Hair cut - Same as always, but my dyed, then bleached hair looked very strange as it was getting swept up off the floor. Like the mane of a baby lion.

Change Cell Phone plan - The year was up, I went in, got unlimited texting, and got me a chocolate. It's definitely the coolest phone I've ever had, and the one with the most appetizing name (way better than VX6895, blegh).

Shopping - Needed a few things. Dishwasher detergent, paper towels, cat food. What a difference some Jet Dry in the dishwasher makes, too. Oh and I picked up I Am America and So Can You as a book on CD, so that'll be good to keep the trend after Death in the Afternoon.

Writing - Dear readers, I stumbled in my pursuit. Friday I consciously decided to "take a day off," and then last night I just planned poorly and was too tired when I got home to really get out anything good. Both of these were mistakes. So today I'm doing a 3000 word marathon. I'm about half way thru and I like the results so far.

Discovery - Adventure Alaska or Alaska week or something starts at 9 on the Discovery channel and I love Alaska and want to watch it, so we'll see if I can't get the writing done before then.

Birds - April showers bring floods, and what do floods do? Kill birds. To help combat that, I've refilled the bird feeder I hung outside my window last spring. The Professor is enjoying crackelingly meowing at the patrons.

Tomorrow - Grind grind grind the pieces of my soul away. My first of five flights is on Thursday. I'm anxious to get out of that place.

Cheerio.

These Voices In My Head

Ernest Hemingway, again. Apparently he liked bull fighting. As immoral as it was considered, even in his own time, he found he liked it.

He wrote he has an interest in suicide. He compared something like the nobility of the bull, and the tragedy of their death even as a sure thing, with suicide. I think that's what the comparison was. Books on CD tend to wash over me, giving the continuum of the colors rather than solidifications of facts and events.

Where was I?

He has a voice, on this book on tape - literally, and in the more Euclidean sense. His writing has "a voice." This isn't new. I've even understood this before, but I never identified it with myself.

These emergent properties in this experiment. Not the right use of "emergent properties," really, but they're emerging the more I write, and their properties of my writing, and writing in general.

Last night I finished a story. About 6 thousand words (we've been going about 6 days). Apparently we found out some time ago that in the middle of every story, whether the story is told by a character, a picture hanging on a wall, or an invisible narrator, there is always always a persona, telling the story. Apparently when this sort of philosophical revelation came about writers experimented and tried to write stories without this voice. I'm not sure, but I think they were unsuccessful. We can't separate the is from the who, no matter how we try. We want to personalize things.

My story has a voice. I mention Hemingway because as I listen, the voice that's emerging from there is sincere, and caring. He's talking about something he cares about. The voice that emerges from my story is witty, I hope, empassioned, I think, and often times sarcastic. I imagine a greasy old New Yorkian wearing a gristle-stained apron, sitting in the corner of a diner, smoking, and telling this story.

If I can talk about my feelings for a second (Hi, my name is Kevin, and I write sarcastically), I wonder if this isn't because I'm not quite comfortable with what I'm doing yet. I remember when I first started "acting." Yes "acting". I often times played the character angry, even when it was unnecessary. It was easy. It was masculine. And it was defensive. I wonder if I might be doing the same thing here.

Some work of noble note, may yet be done, - Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods

My ex-wife wrote in her blog, "IF I love Him I WILL keep His commandments." Obviously we're assuming there's something real to love here, so putting that aside - This is true. Likewise IF you truly believe something, you WILL live your life by it.

I got in a tuff with a "Mormon" in my class over this. I say "Mormon" because he's been excommunicated but he still claims to believe every word of it, he just doesn't live by it. I said this is impossible. If you truly believe you're going to be punished for your misdeeds, you won't do them. IF there's a cop walking around with you, you WON'T steal. The same as, if I really DON'T believe there's a door in front of me, I WON'T bother to open it before I try and go thru it.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about dreams, and it goes something like this. IF I really want something, I WILL pursue it.

That's where if bites though. If I really want it. If I REALLY want it. And if I REALLY want it, why the hell am I not pursueing it?

Or does it just get choked under our obligations? Under these pressures that society, and pride, and the boogeyman put on us. "We work jobs we hate, so that we can buy shit we don't need."

So either I don't want it, or I'm letting it get choked. I'm hoping it's the second one, cause I'm just flapping in the wind if my dreams are something I really don't want. Just another check mark on the checklist the boogeyman handed to me some time in my youth. Cause he's got a stack that says "Baseball Player" and "Astronaut", and he's handing them out like candy at the park, to unsuspecting younglings that don't know yet about abortions and laziness and bipolar disorder. But for most people it must be something some best friend actually handed to them, or some TV show, or some girl that likes men in suits and fancy cars. Cause really what they wanted more was a family, or a cushy job, or some time alone on the couch.

So I'm reading The Gunslinger again, and it's one of those stay up past your bedtime books. One of those fuck-society I-don't-need-friends books. And I underlined something in the introduction. "Let it rip regardless of what anybody tells you, that's my idea; sit down and smoke that baby." He's talking about writing despite being young, about taking on big ideas when the older and wiser might shake their head and say you don't know the first thing about what you're talking about.

When did I stop thinking that? I said to myself, laying in bed, early. I used to write everything I could think of. When did I start being scared and when did I start not caring? When did I start choking and when did I start listening to the chicks that go after big cars? Since when did I let the warning labels and the has-beens tell me what to do? Since when did I stop saying my dreams are what make life worth living, and the only thing that will make me happy?

The answer is, of course, is never. I stopped believing it, and I stopped living it.

"If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned."

So I invite you, dear reader, to join me. I will give this three weeks. Three weeks. Apparently it takes 21 days to establish a pattern. For these three weeks I will write 1000 words a day, and see if I can't stop by the end of it. I have a calender on my wall and I'll check off the days, starting tonight. Today is the 9th (or a few days later for you maybe). By the end of April I'll have 21 days behind me. At the close of this month I will have chased my dream, truly and immediately, for at least three weeks. If the handwriting on your checklist is your own, and not the boogeyman's, or some ex's, I offer this opportunity for you to join me, to stop choking and come up for air. It's not too hard, it's only a blip in your life.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Two percocet, some cotton soaked in clove juice, an upset stomach, and about twenty starburst jelly beans later, and I'm writing a blog entry at one in the morning. It was dry socket, I'm out of pills, and I have no ambition.

Hemingway was the man's man of writers. He used to tie himself to his chair, get drunk, and go until he passed out I guess. I may do the same tonight. Lewis Carroll's drug of choice was LSD, why can't mine be prescription?

Today I discovered that I can feel the hole in my lower left gums, and my upper right one is starting to hurt. It may degrade into dry socket like my lower right. I suppose I can stand the pain, and it's odd, but one of the main things I take into consideration when delegating my hope is whether it will get me out of work or not. This may, so I'm crossing my fingers for it.

I don't know if it's the sitting in a room with the same people, the sense of no direction, or the knowledge that I'm forced to take part in a system I don't believe in and am not interested in, like a minaret that hate's disco forced to perform Saturday Night Fever, but on the days I don't go to work compared with those when I do I find it's the difference between trying to spot a zebra in the serengeti or in a polka-dot pillow sale. That is, I don't feel quite at home. That is, I feel like an entirely different human being that thinks he wants things, and wants to appear certain ways, that the me laying on my floral patterned couch wearing a floral patterned bath robe would never even consider. That wasn't suggesting I'm hiding something like Heath in Brokeback Mountain was, it's a throwback to the camouflage analogy.

To keep this from getting too heavy (I was told that "ism" don't make for good crowd interaction in a place that ends in .com) I'll clarify that yes, now I have gotten dry socket in one tooth. They packed it with some kind of cottony looking stuff that is supposed to act as "scaffolding" for the gums to repair themselves. Apparently the scaffolding my body provided took a long union break, then went on strike, or went to protest the damage being wreaked on the liver, or something. Except there were no scabs to bring in this time: pun intended. This cottony stuff was soaked in an oil that smells like cloves and tastes like digested and crapped out cloves, and ended up making me feel high and nauseous by the end of the night. I said, "My feet feel far away."

I'm reminded of Shawshank Redemption. "You know, the funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." I was a good high schooler, and it took me joining the military to get me tripping the light fantastic, kissing the sky, etc. Going to the square dance. That's an LSD reference.

The professor has been very sweet lately. I need to put seed in the bird feeder outside my window. My hair is even more red looking since I tried to bleach it. I still don't have a camera. Licorice tea is delicious, but somewhat hard to find. Why must emotions nearly always skew relationships for the worse? I'm very satisfied with my last round of shopping. The joy of intellectual stimulation is something akin to sex and I don't know how I get along when I'm not having it. A new office is on this Thursday, I think. Happy Birthday Amy, I'll give her a more proper post tomorrow, when I also buy her gift. Chinese is a useful skill, like when the seamstress only speaks chinese, and gives you a huge discount when you chat with her in it.

This is where I sleep, little whiskered ones.

"A cat may look at a king. I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where."

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

On death and dying. That was a class at the community college I went to, I think - where they looked at writing about death, and death as a subject.

Because he is gone. The only tiny idea most people have of this guy is that he wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. What are you doing Dave? That Buuuh...buuuh....buuuuh....NA NA!! Song is from that too.

But he was so much MORE than that, to me. A couple weeks ago I went to the Half Priced Books, in West Omaha, and bought I think like 6 or 7 of his books. The birthday present Amy gave me was one of his books also.

He was born in England and knighted there, but he hated it. So at some point he moved to Sri Lanka, and he said he never intended to return to Britain. If you read that article you can see he was one of those authors, like H.G. Wells, that wrote about concepts before they happened.

I have little doubt that some of his other books will be made into movies. The sci-fi he wrote never had aliens in the intergalactic war sense, never had star-wars esk lazer fights, or warp drives. That's why I appreciate him. For the most part, he write's sci-fi for the world he's in, and not the next one to come - even when talking about hundreds of years in the future.

Rendezvous with Rama, for example, is about we human beings here encountering the first aliens as a huge cylinder - this vehicle wandering through our solar system - programmed literally thousands of years ago by some intelligent species - and on it's way from somewhere we don't know to somewhere we don't know, probably completely oblivious to us.

Because, if evolution is true, which nearly all scientists think it is, the possibility that we're the only life forms in the universe is getting smaller and smaller, the more earth-like planets we discover. And it's very possible that these life forms could predate us by millions of years and hence be far more advanced technologically, than us. This idea returns in The Fountains of Paradise, where what's basically a huge computer database comes sailing through our solar system, it's soul purpose being an information exchange with intelligent civilizations. We send it our encyclopedias and it tells us what else is out there in the universe, then sends that back it it's home planet - itself many light years away.

But I'm sure I've filled my geek quota for the next week, so I'll end and say that even if you're not a sci-fi fan, check out one of his books - 2001 if nothing else, cause I know I'd have no chance of understanding the movie if I hadn't read it.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future" (Clarke's second law)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years.
Arthur C. Clarke, 1983

It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.
Arthur C. Clarke, First on the Moon, 1970

Episcopal

Finally finished The Island of the Day Before, but I'm going to sit on it a day or two before I "review" it.

I'm on to the Book of Mormon now, which I'm giving myself more time for, obviously. I'll probably have smaller reviews of each book within, and then an overall review, since it was all written by the same guy anyway. Oops! I mean...written by many different people...thousands of years ago...not in the mid 1800s....Yup!

Sound in a Vacuum

Here lies this blog, found slumped over and starved in it's cage, dead from neglect. It once filled much the same role that the marmonts at the zoo do. Nice for something between other things. Not a main attraction, but every once in a while there'd be a chase for a piece of fruit, or one of the marmonts would flip out and just be pacing back and forth for no apparent reason, and the people going from here to there would stop and go, "Huh." and move on. But the marmonts' fur started getting haggard and their health went down, and eventually there were just lying around, panting - so the viewers got less, and less, and less, until one day, one of the zoo hands was sweeping up gum and happened to look in and see...nothing.
The wind blows sand around their limp, rotting bodies.

So maybe I can start a project to fill the void. Never made a new years resolution I really thought much of.
This year I said I'd read a book a week. A book a week! Six weeks in and I'm going, more or less strong, my current book may bleed into next week, but otherwise I'm caught up.
So I can probably do something like a review each week. Nothing very comprehensive, and mostly just to help my own understanding of what I'm reading.
Last week I read the play Waiting for Godot. I think it's what Waiting for Guffman is based on name-wise. It was recommended to my be an old friend from the good ole days in the Saugus High Playmakers. She's actually pursuing an education related to the dramatic arts.
Now, I'm guessing she read this play in a playreading or writing class, and they analyzed it and maybe even acted it out. It seems to me very awkward.
It's an English translation of an originally French play, translated by the author. I did my best to read out loud and put emotion behind some of the more awkward parts, but some, I still can't imagine them being acted out without the audience feeling uncomfortable by how unnatural the dialogue is.

That's probably part of the point. The characters are probably supposed to be archetypes of some kind, and with a stretch, I can put some kind of analysis onto it. The two main characters, from the get go are in a sort of barren landscape, and what they're doing is in fact waiting for someone named Godot. Spoiler alert: He never comes. The only other two main characters are what seem to be some kind of rich man, who goes blind in the second act, and his slave "Lucky." The slave hardly speaks except when told to "think" out loud, whereby he rambles on stream of consciousness style about what comes off as high-handed white noise (successfully annoying the actors and, I'm assuming the audience).

The end is hopeless, with the two main characters deciding to hang themselves.

The first parallel that springs to mind is that of The Second Coming. These characters' lives are poor and full of suffering. Their glint of light in the distance is this Godot man, who seems to me to be somewhat of a savior character. The message would of course be shown in that in the end, he fails them.

Still, the writer, Samuel Beckett, won the nobel prize for this, so I can't imagine it having such a controversial message.
Apparently, according to Wikipedia, "Beckett tired quickly of “the endless misunderstanding. Why people,” he said – as far back as 1955 – “have to complicate a thing so simple I can’t make out."
It reminds me of "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." written at the beginning of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. When I, in exasperation, quoted this back to my 10th grade honors English teacher after weeks of thematic analysis, he said, "But that's the great IRONY of Twain." If that's irony, color me rainbowy.

What are these writers playing at, if what he says is true? Is it like playing hard to get? Have they tapped the psyche of the populace to such a great degree, and do they believe their own works to be so significant as to con people into sucking meaning out of them like sucking water from sandstone? It seems like too much, to me. Too many games. This is the business of writing, not poker. It's like the Chinese guy in the prestige. Even outside his work, his whole life is an act. Somehow, I doubt it.

That said, even what Beckett saw as simple in his play, was way over my layman's head. I found it disconnected and monotonous. I know I haven't watched it and I'm no doubt not appreciating it on some level. I accept that, this is just what I've taken from it. A sense of hopelessness in present and in prospects. An inability, or unwillingness on our part as a species to take control of our own destiny, and the ultimate consequence of our impotence. That's what I took.

I'm happy I read it, though. It's a piece of our literary background, and obviously it means SOMETHING to lots of other people. But there's really not anything much deeper that I can say about it.

Scar

Well, I finally finished it. I'm a slow reader I guess. It's taken me most of 2 days to actually finish it, but I of course enjoyed it immensely.

It was not nearly as light hearted as the rest of the books, probably due to the subject matter - and it's quite a bit different from the other books too.

I thought it had been ruined for me by some stuff I overheard but nothing of it was significant, though when one of the things I had overheard was confirmed I was kind of stressed the other stuff would be too. But I was right in some of my predictions too - namely, which of the main characters would die. I thought that one of their deaths would be in a different manner than it was though, but oh well.

I wonder what JK Rowling's gonna do now...

Urrrghhh

Piece of crap Amazon. Guaranteed deliver on Saturday my ass. Unless they come in the next 7 minutes I get a free book...I'd rather just get the book today though. I coulda gotten one for the same price at a grocery store last night and had it in my hand.

Birthday Surprises

If you'll take out your copy of Half Blood Prince and turn to page 389, you'll find that Ron Weasley and I have the same birthday. Odd I never noticed before.

'arry

Just got back from the midnight show.


Freakin Awesome.

I'm gonna say it, best one yet. They've just each gotten progressively better. I especially noticed the music in this one was very cool. The girl that played Luna was spot on, and we get to see Dumbledore lay the smack down.

The Promised

So I'm going to write a bit about my life right now. I just read andrew's blog where he gets to talk about what he learns at work/school. I can't really do that generally, which makes it difficult. But rest assured that this rockin classified stuff I'm learning is generally the kind of stuff you'd look at and say, "That's IT!?" You know, psychic brain probes and remote viewing.

What is the government not telling you? I know, and it's not that exciting. And no, it doesn't make Bush a better President, or make a Cheney or more honest man if you knew what was going on behind closed doors.

So now, where am I? I've started the class I'll probably be in till about Christmas time. I like the people in my class a lot - between séances we find time for sudoku and general merry-making. I had my first graded sim today and passed. I think I can say that and not be saying anything illegal. Yes, it was playing the sims and being graded. I had to add a third story to my family's house and make the husband and wife make woopee in the hot tub. I was nervous, but it was no big deal, as things tend to be when you start actually doing them.

On tuesdays, thursdays, and fridays we play ultimate frisbee for pc (physical conditioning). I'm usually picked pretty early on despite often throwing bad passes and elbowing people in the face (unintentionally of course (not really)). It's getting humid and hot here, and the base is near an Iams or Friskies or something factory where they make dog food. So sometimes you walk outside in 90+ degree weather, 70%+ humidity, and it smells like horse carcass and you just wanna puke all over the ground. You get out of the shower and feel like you wanna get right back in, but it's not that bad. I like how it feels at 5:30 in the morning when I go to work (on the 6am to 12pm shift right now). But the gym we're in for ultimate (we play in an indoor soccer field) has no exhaust and...I don't think has any air conditioning...so it's gotta be like 3000% humidity. You set your car keys down on the bench and you start pouring sweat.

I come home and I read books and read stuff online mostly, occasionally watch a movie, man vs. wild, the daily show, or the colbert report. That's about what encompasses my weekdays. I avoid loading/unloading the dishwasher as long as I can, as well as going grocery shopping. So I usually have clean dishes sitting in the dishwasher, nothing but tuna and boxed rice in the cupboard, and dried cheese/whatever I mixed it with (chips, eggs) stuck on the plates in the sink. Then I end up just drinking the last bit of the big 2 gallon jug of water straight from the container in the fridge before caving and spending my $200 on my sex-weekly (okay that sounds scandalous - what would it be? bi weekly, tri, quad...what's six?) grocery shopping trip.

The Professor's still pretty cool, but I think he's been gaining weight just sitting around all day, so I've started putting his food up while I leave. I'd love to let him out but there are 2 problems:
1) When I put a collar on him he just jacks with it till he can get it off.
2) The door to my apartment is in a hall that has another door to the outside, so when he'd want back in I don't know how I'd know unless I could train him to come to the window he escaped out of.
I'd also like to let him out cause he's starting doing this obnoxious meow, and sitting by the door - obviously trying to tell me he wants to go out. But he does it at like 2 am and wakes me up. I don't know why he keeps it up cause I haven't once actually let him out while he does it. I've started saying "Quiet!" and chasing him around a little.

Let's see...anything else to add? Taking a computer class online thru Metro Community College to fulfill what I need to get my associates degree thru DLI. I'm signed up for a biology class and a college algebra class next semester. I felt pretty proud of myself and I'll tell you why: Sophomore year in high school I took Algebra 2/Trig. After that year I took a math placement test at the comm college in So Cal and I tested into college math/statistics...like the math 140 range. Didn't actually take any classes until 2 years later after I graduated. I had to take the math placement test again and I tested into the math 070 range! Which is basically Algebra 2/Trig again. So in 2002 I took that class again. It has hence been 5 years. I had to take a math placement test again, so I bought an Algebra book and studied on my own before taking it. I got thru the book and tested into statistics...so like the math 140 range. So after 5 years of no math I managed to test into the same level as I did right after I finished the highest math I've taken. So I felt pretty good about that.

I actually like math now. I like figuring stuff out just thru logic - stuff that I don't necessarily know the real formula for. I always liked the humanities esk subjects more...but on the standardized tests in high school I always did better on the math parts.

I think that's quite long enough for now. Maybe more later. I'm sure there's more.

More: I work here.

Any HP fans out there

The full artwork of the book. Dragon.

Backlash

I wrote a response to Randy's statements, but I won't frighten the rest of you with it here, or it's length. I'm posting it in the comments of this entry, if you'd like to read it.

Nothing Quite Like

A new stack of books.










Or the professor next to some licorice tea.

When you ride alone...

Yesterday I did vacuum and I did finish Collapse, and today I read The Giver in one fell swoop (not hard to do). I liked it, and it reminded me of my childhood, but something else occured to me - the hardly masked trail of propaganda running through this book.

To start out, the place where the main character, Jonas, lives is called the Community. Commun (...). In this Commune everyone is the same, to the point that color has somehow been phased out of peoples vision. It seems apparent the geneticists have purposefully done this, as well as made other changes to society in order to stifle diversity. It's considered taboo to point out someones difference - like Jonas's different colored eyes. There are no books, with the exception of a book of rules for the community, and a list of the functions of each of the community's facilities - the bicycle repair shop, the fish processing plant. All of society has been orchestrated in order for each person to have only common experiences and memory.

At first this is not seen as such a bad thing, in fact people seem relatively happy, unaware of their dull and ultimately meaningless lives (called meaningless by the main character once he discovers the impending euthanasia of everyone ultimately "released" from the community, either by old age or chronic misbehavior). It's after the main character begins to inherit these memories which show him that, in his own words there is not "only us," there is not "only now." Coupled with the fact that these new discoveries drive Jonas to anger at the fact that others lives are so flat, and ultimately causing him to leave the community in order to save these people from a life of meaninglessness, this is also a clear critique of censorship.

Furthermore, family planning is mentioned, not necessarily in a negative tone, however, but proported as a solution to hunger issues. The copyright to this book is 1993, as far as I can see, and China's one child policy becan in 1978, indeed, in the face of severe hunger issues, of which my Chinese teachers can attest.

I'm not saying the messages of this book are bad necessarily or that there are not good reasons to prize individuality and diversity, certainly when the alternative is purposeful elimination of diversity. I'm more surprised by the emotionality and appeal to sentiment present in this book, which expounds little but the ideals that should be held by a good little capitalist. And almost everyone I've talked to has had to read this in their public schooling.

In the questions for discussion at the end of the book, #2 is: In Jonas's community, every person and his or her experience are precisely the same. The climate is controlled, and competition has been eliminated in favor of a community in which everyone works only for the common good. What advantages might "Sameness" yield for contemporary communities? Is the loss of diversity worthwhile?

The obvious answer is no, but I'd question whether a 5th grader reading this would be able to tell you why the obvious answer is no. The message of this book is that 1: Such sameness is somehow associated with euthanasia (a link merely incidental in this case), 2: Such sameness deprives us of something, in return for safety, and 3: Such sameness is ignorant, probably among a few others.

Another book a lot of people were required to read in school is Farenheit 451, which is also quite obviously anti-censorship. I haven't read that book in a while, but my memories of it are much the same as this book in that - they are books meant to invoke associations of capitalist, democratic, or at least American values, with good feelings. Sameness is associated with euthanasia, dullness, and scary futuristic machines (in 451). Again, I'm not saying that many American values don't have good reasons for believing in them - what I am saying is what these books are are not explanations of those reasons through fiction, what they are is narratives meant to produce a necessary emotional link of either joy or despair - joy with american values - despair with communist/totalitarian values - in short, these books are propaganda.

I welcome any other thoughts.

To Do

I think I'm taking after my grandmama on my maternal parental unit's side. Every night, as far as I know, she makes a list of what she needs to do the next day. I haven't been doing that, but I have a list of all the things I want to accomplish ranging from apply to colleges (which I can't do for another year and a half) to vacuum (which I should have done a week ago). And then every day in the morning I'll make a list sometimes, or just hilight the things already on the list I want to get done today.

Today: Vacuum.
Finish Collapse
I've been reading that book for nigh on 2 months. It's interesting and I like it...but it puts me to sleep whenever I try to read it. I don't know...I like a lot of the specifics, and I like the overall idea of the book, it just goes too long on some bits, for me. I mean, the guy won the pullitzer prize for his last book, so far be it for me to critique his writing, but once we've talked about tree rings, pollen samples, and top soil erosion...sometimes I just can't hang in there when the next sentence is "Moving in to the next major climate zone in Australia, we encounter five new major problems:" I'm just overwhelmed with the nearly irreversible environmental damage we've caused...and I need a nap to get over it. I have 150 pages left and I need to knock those out today to get on to the rest of my book stack:
Also I want to finish the first draft of a short story I started yesterday. Short storys always pose a problem for me cause when I started doing any writing, when I was in like 3rd grade or something, it was always in imitation of Lord of the Rings or Narnia. So I'd just go on and on in whatever epic quest these mythical creatures were on and I didn't have to worry about tightening up the story or characters. But when all you have is 5000 or less words, you have to be a lot more economical and impactful with the little you write.

Book Splurge

This is the plan: My house is pretty much set up, so now what I'm going to do is make myself read all the books I have that I haven't read yet before I can buy any new ones, and there's a bunch I want.