Today is Wednesday. For those of you who aren't comic book geeks (which may be everyone who reads this blog), Wednesday is new comics day, the day a new shipment arrives at comic book shops everywhere. Today a comic is coming out that is supposed to be relatively important as far as stories in a shared fictional universe go. I'll be heading to Comics Dungeon this afternoon to pick it up. This morning I took a look at my preferred comics news site, as I do several times a day, and saw a story referring to an article in today's New York Daily News that apparently gives away the last-page reveal of this important comic that's coming out today. I resisted the urge to click on the link.
This goes against my nature, and it's hurting.
I knew about the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense two years before I saw it. I enjoyed watching the movie knowing what was coming, catching all the little clues that most people probably didn't notice until the second time they watched it.
I knew about the death at the end of Harry Potter Book 6 before I ever picked up Book 1. Again, it was kind of cool to read the story knowing what was coming. But I resisted seeing any major spoilers about Book 7 before reading it, so I was totally shocked when Harry died at the end. (Just kidding, Cricket. That was for you.)
I must admit, it's not uncommon for me to look at my Amazon.com wishlist before my birthday or Christmas to see what people have bought for me. I wouldn't want them to tell me what they got--part of the fun of ruining the surprise is finding out for myself.
My justification is that I don't actually ruin the surprise; I just experience it earlier. I wonder, though, if by removing the surprise experience from the reading experience or viewing experience or gift-opening experience, I'm missing out on something. This is why, if I can, I'm going to avoid reading that New York Daily News article until after I read my new comics this afternoon. I'll report back on whether saving the surprise makes my comics reading that much more transcendental.
Showing posts with label 650 _0 Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 650 _0 Books. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Book Tag
Now that both Th. and Cricket have tagged me in a roundabout and sneaky way, I feel obligated to do this.
Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog.
5. Tag 5 people.
"The man needing cables accused the black man of being an Uncle Tom, protecting a white woman from a black man."
From Navigating Differences: Friendships Between Gay Men and Straight Men by Jammie Price.
I will now tag five completely random people who are not I repeat NOT necessarily my five favorite people in the world (sorry to the rest of you; rest assured that you're number six):
Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog.
5. Tag 5 people.
"The man needing cables accused the black man of being an Uncle Tom, protecting a white woman from a black man."
From Navigating Differences: Friendships Between Gay Men and Straight Men by Jammie Price.
I will now tag five completely random people who are not I repeat NOT necessarily my five favorite people in the world (sorry to the rest of you; rest assured that you're number six):
- FoxyJ,
- Scot,
- Mama[Mormon],
- Craig, and
- editorgirl.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Hipocrisy is the Greatest Luxury
Last night FoxyJ and I watched Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, a documentary about a group of refugees from Sierra Leone's brutal civil war of the nineties who started a band, bringing music to refugee camps in Guinea until the war ended in 2002 and they became leaders in bringing the refugees home. The story is meant to be one of hope, showing how these people used music to help them and their fellow refugees recover from the horrors they'd lived through, but as much as I enjoyed the movie and especially the music, I had a hard time getting past the horrors to the hope. It's hard to listen to a man tell how rebel soldiers forced him to beat his child to death and then cut off his hand, to see the fear in his eyes at the prospect of returning to the country he once called home, and not be left with the same sense of despair and helplessness that I've felt after watching every other film I've seen about the atrocities that happen in countries throughout Africa.
Earlier this week we watched In the Heat of the Night, and while I enjoyed the story and the acting--Sidney Poitier is amazing--I felt a similar sense of helplessness, though in this case not so much despair as anger at people whose racism leads them to treat human beings so inhumanely. Toward the beginning of the film the camera rests for a moment on a little statue of the Virgin Mary on a policeman's dashboard, and I was reminded of Crash, another film about racism that combined all those feelings of helplessness, despair, and anger and magnified them. As it turns out, I'm not the only person who has made the connection between the two movies--a review FoxyJ stumbled upon talked about how both movies are meant to make middle-class white people (read: me) feel good about themselves for not being racist.
A couple weeks ago I spent a while digging through the archives of a blog called Stuff White People Like. I laughed quite a bit as I read the satirical observations of white yuppies, as the particular brand of white yuppie parodied here, who loves diversity and gay people and the environment, is very much your typical Seattleite. The more I read, though, the more uncomfortable I became; the parodies started sounding less like parodies and more like accurate descriptions of me. I am the white guy who recycles because it's a way I can save the Earth without actually having to do much. I am the white guy who loves "conscious" hip-hop because it so vitally addresses the problems of a community I don't belong to. I am a living parody of educated, middle-class white people. I'm not very comfortable with this realization.
I'm in the midst of reading Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama's memoir about missing the chance to get to know his father and the resultant disconnect with his Kenyan roots. I feel a connection--and at the same time feel like I have no right to claim such a connection--to the teenaged Obama who felt as much like an outsider among the few other black students at his high school in Hawai'i as among the Asian, Polynesian, and white majority. I had a similar experience when I went to college and related neither to the white students that surrounded me nor to the other students from Hawai'i. In the former case it was my own pride in my island upbringing that prevented me from acknowledging that mainland white culture was not that different from my own; in the latter it was the color of my skin that betrayed me--despite the fact that I'd never lived anywhere but Hawai'i, I felt like an imposter claiming the islands as my home.
I like to think it is my own experience as an outsider--whether for my race or my sexual orientation--that leads me to feel a sense of connection to the victims of racism and to the residents of a continent recovering from centuries of European colonization and American slavery. The fact that I like to think this reveals just how ridiculous I am. I have a nice home, food, and nearly two master's degrees. Technically I believe my family's income is below the poverty line, but that's by choice, not by necessity. I am not a victim of anything. I have never been discriminated against for my race or my orientation. I live in a country where I can reasonably assume that rebels are not going to come to my village and kill or mutilate me. No matter how much hip-hop I listen to or books about racial identity I read or documentaries about Africa I see, I will not know what it is to be oppressed.
What then should I do? Should I stop trying to understand because I will never succeed, because even if I did that wouldn't solve anyone's problems? I don't think so. I can't solve the problems of the world, but I can't ignore them either. I'd like to end here on something pithy like "Perhaps trying to understand is all I can do," but honestly that feels like a cop-out. An excuse for the privileged intellectual elite to feel smug about recognizing that people everywhere are suffering, but not really do anything about it that would require more effort than buying a "Save Darfur" t-shirt.
I remain in the comfort of my perceived helplessness because anything beyond that is overwhelming.
Earlier this week we watched In the Heat of the Night, and while I enjoyed the story and the acting--Sidney Poitier is amazing--I felt a similar sense of helplessness, though in this case not so much despair as anger at people whose racism leads them to treat human beings so inhumanely. Toward the beginning of the film the camera rests for a moment on a little statue of the Virgin Mary on a policeman's dashboard, and I was reminded of Crash, another film about racism that combined all those feelings of helplessness, despair, and anger and magnified them. As it turns out, I'm not the only person who has made the connection between the two movies--a review FoxyJ stumbled upon talked about how both movies are meant to make middle-class white people (read: me) feel good about themselves for not being racist.
A couple weeks ago I spent a while digging through the archives of a blog called Stuff White People Like. I laughed quite a bit as I read the satirical observations of white yuppies, as the particular brand of white yuppie parodied here, who loves diversity and gay people and the environment, is very much your typical Seattleite. The more I read, though, the more uncomfortable I became; the parodies started sounding less like parodies and more like accurate descriptions of me. I am the white guy who recycles because it's a way I can save the Earth without actually having to do much. I am the white guy who loves "conscious" hip-hop because it so vitally addresses the problems of a community I don't belong to. I am a living parody of educated, middle-class white people. I'm not very comfortable with this realization.
I'm in the midst of reading Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama's memoir about missing the chance to get to know his father and the resultant disconnect with his Kenyan roots. I feel a connection--and at the same time feel like I have no right to claim such a connection--to the teenaged Obama who felt as much like an outsider among the few other black students at his high school in Hawai'i as among the Asian, Polynesian, and white majority. I had a similar experience when I went to college and related neither to the white students that surrounded me nor to the other students from Hawai'i. In the former case it was my own pride in my island upbringing that prevented me from acknowledging that mainland white culture was not that different from my own; in the latter it was the color of my skin that betrayed me--despite the fact that I'd never lived anywhere but Hawai'i, I felt like an imposter claiming the islands as my home.
I like to think it is my own experience as an outsider--whether for my race or my sexual orientation--that leads me to feel a sense of connection to the victims of racism and to the residents of a continent recovering from centuries of European colonization and American slavery. The fact that I like to think this reveals just how ridiculous I am. I have a nice home, food, and nearly two master's degrees. Technically I believe my family's income is below the poverty line, but that's by choice, not by necessity. I am not a victim of anything. I have never been discriminated against for my race or my orientation. I live in a country where I can reasonably assume that rebels are not going to come to my village and kill or mutilate me. No matter how much hip-hop I listen to or books about racial identity I read or documentaries about Africa I see, I will not know what it is to be oppressed.
What then should I do? Should I stop trying to understand because I will never succeed, because even if I did that wouldn't solve anyone's problems? I don't think so. I can't solve the problems of the world, but I can't ignore them either. I'd like to end here on something pithy like "Perhaps trying to understand is all I can do," but honestly that feels like a cop-out. An excuse for the privileged intellectual elite to feel smug about recognizing that people everywhere are suffering, but not really do anything about it that would require more effort than buying a "Save Darfur" t-shirt.
I remain in the comfort of my perceived helplessness because anything beyond that is overwhelming.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
My Favorite Lines From S-Boogie's New Books
From Snow by Uri Shulevitz, wherein a little boy hopes a few snowflakes are a sign of more to come:
"No snow," said radio.From Pinkalicious by Victoria Kann & Elizabeth Kann, wherein a little girl eats too many pink cupcakes and wakes up pink, much to her parents' concern:
"No snow," said television.
But snowflakes don't listen to radio,
snowflakes don't watch television.
All snowflakes know is snow, snow, snow.
My hair was the color of raspberry sorbet. I cried because I was so beautiful. I even had PINK tears. I put on my pink fairy princess dress and twirled in front of the mirror, while Mommy speed-dialed the pediatrician.I love love love the image of a four-year-old girl crying because she's so beautiful. If you don't read picture books, you really should.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
What I Want For Christmas
So considering my profession, I probably should have heard of the Amazon Kindle before now, but I tend to be out of the loop that way. At any rate, wow. I like it. I've seen other attempts at portable reading devices, but I'm really impressed by this one. It seems to be lightweight and easy-to-use (or at least Amazon says so), and it uses ultracool technology that gives the screen the look of printed paper. And it makes perfect sense that Amazon.com would be the people to make the portable reading device that is actually going to work, since they already dominate the market in all kinds of related media so they're in a position to back the device up with a service that makes it usable, but for some reason the idea never occurred to me.
Considering Marvel Comics' recent foray into digital comics (and DC is sure to follow sooner or later), I'd say it's only a matter of time before I'm reading my weekly comics on the Amazon Kindle that you're going to get me for Christmas (yes, you--c'mon, it's only $400).
And you know what? I'm okay with that. Call me a traitor to librarianship. Yes, there will always be books that I want to have in a tangible form on my wooden (well, plywood) bookshelf, but I'd say the majority of what I read I'd be just as happy to read without paper. Why kill another tree?
Considering Marvel Comics' recent foray into digital comics (and DC is sure to follow sooner or later), I'd say it's only a matter of time before I'm reading my weekly comics on the Amazon Kindle that you're going to get me for Christmas (yes, you--c'mon, it's only $400).
And you know what? I'm okay with that. Call me a traitor to librarianship. Yes, there will always be books that I want to have in a tangible form on my wooden (well, plywood) bookshelf, but I'd say the majority of what I read I'd be just as happy to read without paper. Why kill another tree?
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Harry Potter and the Hallowed Death
Spoilers...
...
(for real)
...
Does anyone else think Rowling was going for a Christ story with the whole like-a-lamb-to-the-slaughter, taking-on-the-sins-(Voldemort)-of-the-world, dead-then-back-again thing? Or is it so obvious that my pointing it out is kind of redundant? I guess Hagrid gets the part of Mary Magdalene, then, when he notices Harry's body is missing.
The death scene actually reminded me most strongly of the "crucifixion" of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with all the bad guys gathered round in the woods and the Christ figure giving himself up so willingly and peacefully. Maybe Aslan and Harry can team up some day. Or fight, being as how Harry practices witchcraft and is therefore evil.
...
(for real)
...
Does anyone else think Rowling was going for a Christ story with the whole like-a-lamb-to-the-slaughter, taking-on-the-sins-(Voldemort)-of-the-world, dead-then-back-again thing? Or is it so obvious that my pointing it out is kind of redundant? I guess Hagrid gets the part of Mary Magdalene, then, when he notices Harry's body is missing.
The death scene actually reminded me most strongly of the "crucifixion" of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with all the bad guys gathered round in the woods and the Christ figure giving himself up so willingly and peacefully. Maybe Aslan and Harry can team up some day. Or fight, being as how Harry practices witchcraft and is therefore evil.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Just Received
But unfortunately I'm not the implied subject of that verb (or the implied object of the implied preposition "by" following the past participle, if you prefer to read it that way).
A week and a half later, the status of the book-on-CD version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Seattle Public Library has finally been changed to "Just Received." Until now it's been "On Order." At least now it should just be a couple days (assuming they rush through processing, as they darn well should, with 480 people waiting) before I get my copy--I'm number 23 on the list and there are 23 copies.
I would have finished the book a week and a half ago, along with the rest of the English-speaking world, if I weren't so cheap--refusing to fork out twenty bucks to buy the book myself--and for that matter, picky. At one point I was number 12 on the SPL waiting list for the print version, but I listened to the first six books and I was determined to listen to the seventh book, so I switched over to the audio version as soon as it was available for placing holds. Little did I know that while the library is quick to process the books and get them on hold shelves the day of release, the same doesn't apply to the book on CD.
Sigh. One of these days I'll be cool.
In related cheapness, I've been holding off on ordering the latest album from my second-favorite* rapper, Common, until I get the Amazon.com reward certificate I'm supposed to be getting from my Amazon.com Visa credit card. The album came out today, though, and I still haven't gotten the reward certificate in the mail, so I think I'm going to commit a Fob family transgression: I'm going to stop at Barnes and Noble on the way home from work, and if they have the CD in stock, I'm going to PAY MONEY(!!!) for it.
Forgive me, Foxy, for I'm about to sin.
*After Lauryn Hill, of course.
A week and a half later, the status of the book-on-CD version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Seattle Public Library has finally been changed to "Just Received." Until now it's been "On Order." At least now it should just be a couple days (assuming they rush through processing, as they darn well should, with 480 people waiting) before I get my copy--I'm number 23 on the list and there are 23 copies.
I would have finished the book a week and a half ago, along with the rest of the English-speaking world, if I weren't so cheap--refusing to fork out twenty bucks to buy the book myself--and for that matter, picky. At one point I was number 12 on the SPL waiting list for the print version, but I listened to the first six books and I was determined to listen to the seventh book, so I switched over to the audio version as soon as it was available for placing holds. Little did I know that while the library is quick to process the books and get them on hold shelves the day of release, the same doesn't apply to the book on CD.
Sigh. One of these days I'll be cool.
In related cheapness, I've been holding off on ordering the latest album from my second-favorite* rapper, Common, until I get the Amazon.com reward certificate I'm supposed to be getting from my Amazon.com Visa credit card. The album came out today, though, and I still haven't gotten the reward certificate in the mail, so I think I'm going to commit a Fob family transgression: I'm going to stop at Barnes and Noble on the way home from work, and if they have the CD in stock, I'm going to PAY MONEY(!!!) for it.
Forgive me, Foxy, for I'm about to sin.
*After Lauryn Hill, of course.
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