Briane Pagel's Blog: Thinking The Lions, page 29

Slacktivism doesn't help: Paris Edition

OMG Jennifer Lawrence (net worth $60,000,000) WORE A TRI-COLOR PARIS PIN TO HER MOVIE PREMIERE the other night!

The Daily Mail called it an "unprecedented show of support."




Paris is fixed :)

It was SIXTY ONE DEGREES Sunday afternoon!

10 Minutes About "So You Want To Be A Wizard."

I found out about So You Want To Be A Wizard through a recommendation on IO9, which said that "Diane Duane's Young Wizards Is The Fantasy Book Series Everyone Should Be Reading." I don't know if I agree that everyone should read it, but I did and I liked it, and I'm pretty picky, so you probably should, too.

So You Want To Be A Wizard is the first book in the series, and it somehow hits every single step we expect of a book about a girl who gets to be a wizard, while somehow making the story still seem fresh and interesting.  That's tough to do, especially since competing with Harry Potter in that department is kind of like writing a swords-and-sorcery adventure using elves and wizards without being accused of mimicking Tolkien -- and while still being original.

I should note that So You Want... actually precedes Harry by nearly two decades, so while I read Rowling's series first, if anyone copied anyone... forget that. J.K. Rowling is superlitigious, as is apparently every single person who ever read her book, according to this Wikipedia article on the number of people who sued her and lost badly.

So You Want To Be A Wizard has a misunderstood and bullied protagonist (Nita) who finds a magical book accidentally (the Wizard manual), learns that she is one of the rare few people who can be a wizard, and sets out on a quest that involves her saving the world... eventually. It has a fire-breathing dragon, it has a friend who is better at spells than Nita is who kind of shows her the ropes, it has trees coming to life and battling, and it features kids who really use about two or three spells to get everything done.

That said, the book doesn't really feel like it's full of tropes, at all, first because the writing is done pretty well: the book moves along at a good pace.  I suspect it's aimed as a YA book but like the Potter and Narnia books it resembles (or which resemble it) it doesn't feel like it's meant for a 13-year-old.

In addition, Duane adds nice touches to her magic: the magic is a combination of the heavily-detailed magic that Lev Grossman uses in his Magician series and science. The magic here is largely used through Speech, which is a way of describing the world that helps keep things alive and which also can change things: wizards work in part by simply talking in magical language that convinces things to be other things, so Nita can change a stone wall into a door by convincing it that it's a door.  That's a neat concept that I wish I had thought up.

Duane also gives a reason for magic and magicians to exist: They keep the universe from running out. The mythos behind the series has to do with a master of evil, who goes by a lot of names but mostly is referred to as You-Know-Who, because nobody can say his name.

AS AN ASIDE I think we can stop that now: The Villain Whose Name Can't Be Said Because He Will Hear And Destroy You is dumb. I never liked the concept, and it hasn't grown any better with repetition.  JUST SAY THE VILLAIN'S NAME.

Anyway, this Master of Evil at the dawn of creation got scared and introduced entropy, and thus death, to the universe, meaning that one day the Universe will end.  So wizards have the Speech, which they can use to keep things alive, and the main collection of the Speech is found in The Book Of Night With Moon, which honestly is an awesome name and is another example of how Duane's book rises above average-level Magical Kid fiction.  Periodically, wizards have to get The Book of Night With Moon and read from it to keep the universe from ending, and that's [SPOILER ALERT THAT YOU'D PROBABLY HAVE SEEN COMING IF YOU GAVE A MOMENT OR TWO'S THOUGHT ABOUT THIS BEING THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SERIES] what Nita and her young wizard friend Kit have to do: They try to practice their first spell to find a special pen a bully stole from Nita, and in doing so accidentally call into their world a sentient white dwarf star they call "Fred" who teleports the pen to the monstrous version of New York where You Know Who lives, and where it turns out the Book of Night With Moon happens to have been hidden.

The white dwarf star thing is an especially nice touch: Fred is one of the better characters I've come across in any book, and again is one I wish I'd thought of. It's stuff like that, and the monsters in Alternate New York, and the fact that the whole book feels super-well-thought-out, that makes this book worth reading.

So, not maybe for everyone. In terms of 'kids discovering they would save the world' books, it's nowhere near as good as the Narnia books or His Dark Materials, but it's at least equal to Harry Potter or those Prydain books.

Adventure Squad: Children Standing In Front Of Art:

One-third of a giant mural in the US Bank Plaza on Capitol Square in Madison, with Mr F. We had to go drop something off at a law firm, so I timed the delivery for Friday afternoon, after Mr F and Mr Bunches got home. That way I could technically "work" until 5 p.m. but really the last hour of the day was just hanging out and driving with the boys.

A Conversation Between Ben and Donald

Oh, hey, Donald. I didn't see you there. I was just...
thinking.

ABOUT WHAT??!?

















About God.
How he obviously doesn't ever intervene in anyone's life directly.















WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT??!?

















The other day on TV there was this football player
saying how God had helped his team win.

















 It got me to thinking, why would God help his team win the game, and thereby punish the other team? Am I to assume that the entire other team had done something worthy of punishment? As well as all their coaching staff, and people who had bet on them to win, and their fans?









I GUESS??!?



























Even their fans?like some little 7 year old kid sitting on his dad’s lap watching that team wearing an old jersey of his dad’s, a kid who just wants the team to win because even though he doesn’t understand the game he knows that his dad really wants the team to win, so the boy wants the team to win too? For his dad?God punishes that kid?





















UMMMM??!?


















Suppose dad gets so mad at the team losing that he beats the kid? Did THAT kid deserve that punishment?just so some football player could date a third-rate pop singer?






















What about the team that won?
All of their players are worthy of God’s special love?
None of them did something so bad that God felt the need to punish them?
None of their fans ever embezzled money or coveted their neighbor’s wife
or whatever? UMMM??!?
Then I thought about that 7 year old fan of the losing team
again and you know what came to mind?


I CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE??!?














Jetpacks.















I WAS RIGHT!!?!

















That 7 year old boy loves jetpacks, right? He does. All 7 year olds love jetpacks. I thought, if God cares enough to grant prayers for those people who deserve it, then there would be jetpacks. 



















And not just jetpacks but real life dinosaurs, and space aliens flying X-wings over Niagara Falls while Spongebob shoots at them with lasers.







But none of those things exist.
So if God intervenes in our world on behalf of prayers, then he obviously does so in a partial, haphazard way: randomly choosing winners and losers, ignoring some prayers (he would have to ignore them because he is omniscient so he knows about them, he didn’t miss them like an email in the junk folder which let’s face it happens less often than people claim), granting others, just capricious as the day is long.


























So I said to myself: Do I want to believe in a God that is like that, just some sort of deranged genie granting wishes like they are slots on a roulette wheel?
Or would I rather believe in an all-powerful God that chooses to ignore us entirely?



















THOSE DON'T SEEM LIKE THEY
WOULD BE THE ONLY TWO CHOICES!!?!


















A God who is just not paying attention, who is binge-watching the British version of The Office, letting prayers go to voicemail, so that people can die of thirst under rubble after an Earthquake while people like Tom Brady can go undefeated seems preferable to a mad God who bestows favors and punishments in an incomprehensible way, leaving us with no guidance as to how to act, wouldn’t you agree?





















WHAT ABOUT THE IDEA THAT GOD HAS A PLAN AND WHAT SEEMSARBITRARY TO US IS PART OF A LARGER SCHEME REQUIRINGSOME SUFFERING TO SERVE THE GREATER GOOD?
GOD HAD HIS OWN SON DIE FOR US, SO SURELY YOU WOULDACKNOWLEDGE THAT A GOD WHO WOULD DO THATMIGHT ALSO ASK THAT WE GO THROUGH SOME HARDTIMES TO GET TO THE REWARDS HE PROMISED?
























So you ask me to believe in a God who loved us so much that he had his son die for us, but who then, in that infinite love, cannot help us find a way to cure cancer? Who wants seven-year-olds to die of leukemia? Who lets planes crash into skyscrapers thereby unleashing fifteen years of consecutive warfare?



















....??!?


















All in the service of a master plan? A plan that will someday lead us all to something much much better than this, a place of eternal happiness without pain or suffering or want?
A God who loves us so much that he says all you have to do is suffer eons of terrible things and incomprehensible behaviors, and then you get the good stuff?
How is that better?


























....??!?



















Either a God who doesn’t care, or who is just flinging blessings around like a crazy child, or a God whose plan is make things horrible for a lot of people for a long time and then ease up a bit. 
Those are my choices? 
Because if that’s the options, then I’m still going with God who doesn’t pay attention. 
It’s the best possible belief, isn’t it? 

























I think you’re missing the point. We don’t really, and can’t really, understand how God’s mind operates, and trying to judge his behaviors based on how our own minds work is like an apple trying to figure out an octopus.






















I think you’re missing the point: in any system of belief in which God cares enough to reward,directly or indirectly,good behavior, the world would be overrun with 10-year-old cowboys riding rocket jets to chase the Abominable Snowman.

I had to make my PB&J sandwich out of both heels of the loaf of bread and now I don't believe in anything anymore.

It's A Free Country

As in "you are free to come pick up this guy's trash if that's your thing."

Updates on God: Jesus is The Reason For The Decaf.

God is supposed to have told people (ie us) not to make graven images in the form of anything in Heaven (or on the Earth or in the waters so pretty much everything is out, graven-image-wise) but what does God know about what He said? Also, God probably didn't mean thou shalt not honor Jesus with pictures of snowflakes and such, which is why the people that are protesting Starbucks' new Xmas-less design for their Xmas coffee cups are absolutely right to be outraged. From HuffPo via Gawker:

Some Starbucks’ customers are outraged over the coffee chain’s new holiday cups, just because they lack a Christmas-themed design. In the past, the company released cups depicting images of snowflakes, reindeer, white doves and ornaments. This year, the cups are plain red — and people are really pissed. ...some Christian customers feel the coffee chain is oppressing their religion.

They are fighting back exactly the way Jesus taught them to never ever ever take anything lying down: by putting the "Christ" back in coffee, or something:

one gruff-voiced customer dressed like Fred Durst circa 1999 wrote, “Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus,” then brags about “pranking” Starbucks by having them write “Merry Christmas” as his name on the cup.

OH HO HO! That'll show those commie libtards who run the world's most profitable coffee chain whose profits somehow managed to rise even though sales dropped. But in case you have somehow missed the message of love that is the heart of the Xmas story, that customer also flashed a gun that he takes to Starbucks because you'll take his coffee from his cold dead hands, Obama.

Starbucks says the cups are intended to embrace the simplicity and quietness of the season, but the Gun Toting Disciple is having none of it. He writes on his blog that

If there are people on this planet who get emotionally worked up over a throw away coffee cup, that says more about their mental state than it does about the “intolerant” views of others.

YEAH MAN RIGHT ON IT'S NOT WORTH GETTING ALL WORKED UP OVER... wait I think I missed something here.


PS Starbucks settled six complaints of violating workers' rights in just 3 years, routinely denies workers meal and rest breaks mandated by law, fails to pay them all the money they are owed (and then tries to keep them from collecting it) and uses worker-scheduling software that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for workers to plan ahead and/or work a second job all things that I, in my layman's opinion, would think Jesus might find questionable. But by all means, "Christians," protest those cups by buying more coffee but making them write Merry Christmas on it. Just remember to please tip the underpaid worker who hasn't had a break in 13 hours.

15,842 new words

tarn : A mountain lake. But specifically a lake that is created by an amphitheater-like hole dug by a glacier, and then filled in with rain water. The word comes from Old Norse, tjorn, meaning pond. So the English took the Norse word for pond and used it to rename a pond.
_______________________________________

Read in So You Want To Be A Wizard: 

Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under smoky London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another.  .  .  .

psammead was another new word in that passage; it's a sand-fairy that apparently existed only in the 1902 book Five Children And It, a sort of pre-Narnian book about five kids in England who meet a magical creature and have all kinds of mishaps and adventures. Apparently Five Children And It has been continuously in print for 113 years. I'd never heard of it before, but as soon as I read about it I borrowed it from the library, so I'll let you know how it is.

Stupid Things Noel Gallagher, some idiotic washed up British Rocker, said in his GQ interview, ranked.

Noel Gallagher is apparently some part of Oasis, which apparently was some sort of band, which a certain sort of person (jerks) idolized because they made a record once that was like number 3 on the British charts, which is like being number 477 on American charts.  This "Noel" person gave an interview to GQ back in 2013. I read this interview here, two years later, because Drew Magary, a writer I previously respected, linked to it on Twitter and said to elect "Noel" president.

I read it and as I tweeted to Drew Magary:

...@drewmagary I mean jesus that guy deserves to be locked in a barrel full of eels.— BrianePagel (@BrianePagel) November 8, 2015

Here, from least-stupid to most-stupid, are all the stupid things Noel Gallagher said in this interview.  Mixed in are AMAZING FACTS ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER, like this one:

AMAZING FACT ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER: his brother hated Noel so much that he started a band without even telling Noel!

14. "Banal pop music... what I think is: everybody's winning out of it... The geezer who's writing the f***ing shit tunes-- he's winning."

QUOTE FROM WIKIPEDIA ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER: Be Here Now  (1997) became Oasis' most eagerly anticipated album to date. As with the previous two albums, all the tracks were written by Gallagher. After an initial blaze of publicity, positive critical reviews, and commercial success, the album failed to live up to long-term expectations, and public goodwill towards Be Here Now was short-lived. The album was ultimately regarded by many as a bloated, over-indulgent version of Oasis
13. "I'm all right when I'm drunk."
12. "I've seen seeds in Coldplay's dressing room... Where's the parrot?"
11.Interviewer: Who would you build a statue of?LIAM: Les Dawson.
10.  "I only read factual books...novels are just a waste of f***ing time. ...I just end up thinking 'this isn't f***ing true."
AMAZING FACT ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER: He used his earnings from that band he was in to buy numerous cars and swimming pools, despite being able to neither drive nor swim.
9.  "Book sellers, book readers, book writers, book owners-- f*** all of them."

8:NOEL: "Novels... I'm not having it.... that doesn't happen in real life."Interviewer: But do you like films?NOEL: Yeah I love films.INT: But films aren't real. Do you sit watching them, thinking 'oh this isn't real'? NOEL: Well you've presented me with a dilemma there. But say my favorite film The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, now that might've happened.
AMAZING FACT ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER: He said that if he championed a band they were guaranteed success, calling them Noelrock. The bands he championed? The Boo Radleys. Ocean Colour Scene. Cast. Go listen to your Boo Radleys Greatest Hits album right now man!
7. "Novels and the people who write them... my 68 million records beat your one book."
6. "The root of all that is bad in the world. Religious... preachers....when you see these people standing on soapboxes banging on about religion or politics."
QUOTE FROM WIKIPEDIA ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER:
throughout his career, many of his songs have mentioned God ("Carry Us All", "Gas Panic!," "The Hindu Times" and "Little by Little"), and all the tracks he had contributed to Dig Out Your Soul,,,, have lyrics and references to God and other biblical terms. Dig Out Your Soul has been described by Gallagher as a "religious Armageddon".

QUOTE NUMBER 2 FROM WIKIPEDIA ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER:
Gallagher has spoken about his political views on several occasions, most notably when he visited Tony Blair at No. 10 Downing Street in 1997. In an interview in 1997 when he was asked about why he visited Blair he replied, "I've taken a lot of flack for going to No. 10 Downing Street but the thing about that is, I never considered myself a rebel anyway. [WIKIPEDIA HAS WAY MORE NOTES OF 'NOEL' 'banging on about... politics'.]

5. "Don't ask the man on the street. He's a c***. That's why he's the man on the street, not the man eating f***ing mini sausages at four in the afternoon." (NOTE: The interview was in a fancy restaurant over mini sausages.)
SPECIAL NOTE SHOWING HOW DUMB IT WAS OF THE INTERVIEWER TO SUCK UP TO GALLAGHER:
Noel: ...what f***ing winds me up about books...INT: This is already the best sentence I've ever heard....Noel: People who write... books are f***ing putting themselves a tiny bit above the rest of us.INT: Thing is, I write books and...Noel: Hey, I know you write books and all that shit....Do you write novels? Don't tell me you write novels.INT: I've written a novel.Noel: What was it about?INT: About a guy who sees a girl...Noel: Here we go. Already the shittiest book of all time. 

4. [On his brother Liam trying to ride a dog at a bar]: "Liam's got a touch of the Red Indian when he has a drink. When the Europeans went to America they got the Red Indians pissed and bought Alaska off them for a f***ing milk bottle top. Wahoo! Firewater!"
3, "I don't like litter... you get caught dropping litter you get your head chopped off."
AMAZING FACT ABOUT NOEL GALLAGHER: He thinks litter is comprised of doughnuts: 
"If you're going to buy a doughnut, eat the f***ing doughnut. Don't have a bite and then chuck it on the floor." 

2,  "I'd have made a brilliant assassin. Sniper. Sitting in a tree for four months on the off chance."

1. "People shouldn't work weekends unless they work in the service industry and they're getting paid double time....That's how wars start.... if terrorism had the weekend off, eventually they'd have a year off. Eventually they'd go F*** this, blowing up shit? Football's on."