Sponge-Kodoma?
Jul. 27th, 2005 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptI feel a little bit like a sponge. A sponge, you say? Indeed, for through most of my umpiring shift tonight I was in the rain. It was never a downpour nor a soaking, so I'd take on some water, dry out a bit, take on some water, dry out a bit, and so forth. Feels good, though - and it was reasonably chilly as well. All in all, a rather enjoyable rain. Too bad I was working during it. The humidity keeps going back to sweaty though, even after the rain's arrived. Must be close to August in Michigan. (Yep.)
I know this because I have sunglasses without much tint, and most people should know this if they've ever had friends with glasses, but maybe all Clark Kent needed was glasses. Then again, considering that Joe Q. American doesn't have too much for brains since he's too busy being scared of propaganda, perhaps glasses are a more effective disguise than we think. Anyway, more stuff to do tomorrow. Maybe I'll finally get caught up enough on being behind that I'll be able to feel reasonably good about myself. I'm still enjoying the aftereffects of the Dear Friends concert, so there is a considerable amount of stuff to get caught up on. Whenever someone gets the picture we took there, send it to me, okay?
Plus, as a student of the Arts (as all of us should be), I have to say that U.K. LeGuin gets it right when she says that books don't always have a message - although she focuses on children's lit as being exempt, I would say a considerable amount of adult literature is also under this rubric. There's some stuff that's trying to get a message across, but then there are some stories that are told as such, without an end necessarily in mind. Music is much like that - the story is told through the music. There isn't necessarily a message that goes with it - often music with a message is with advertising, and good music rarely advertises. Good music inspires.
Anyway, more ZZZs for me. Although if there were some way to easily resolve the fear of passing away in one's sleep with so much to do still on the platter, I'd like to hear it. It's not paralyzing, but it appears occasionally.
I know this because I have sunglasses without much tint, and most people should know this if they've ever had friends with glasses, but maybe all Clark Kent needed was glasses. Then again, considering that Joe Q. American doesn't have too much for brains since he's too busy being scared of propaganda, perhaps glasses are a more effective disguise than we think. Anyway, more stuff to do tomorrow. Maybe I'll finally get caught up enough on being behind that I'll be able to feel reasonably good about myself. I'm still enjoying the aftereffects of the Dear Friends concert, so there is a considerable amount of stuff to get caught up on. Whenever someone gets the picture we took there, send it to me, okay?
Plus, as a student of the Arts (as all of us should be), I have to say that U.K. LeGuin gets it right when she says that books don't always have a message - although she focuses on children's lit as being exempt, I would say a considerable amount of adult literature is also under this rubric. There's some stuff that's trying to get a message across, but then there are some stories that are told as such, without an end necessarily in mind. Music is much like that - the story is told through the music. There isn't necessarily a message that goes with it - often music with a message is with advertising, and good music rarely advertises. Good music inspires.
Anyway, more ZZZs for me. Although if there were some way to easily resolve the fear of passing away in one's sleep with so much to do still on the platter, I'd like to hear it. It's not paralyzing, but it appears occasionally.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 04:58 am (UTC)i never used to think about it until it almost happened to me one night... now i know that the possibility is there, and if it happens, there's nothing you can do about it whichever way it goes, so i don't worry about it... if it happens, it's going to happen whether i worry about it or not, and i'm much happier thinking about other things anyway...
hope that helps. 8)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 09:42 am (UTC)If I can find it on-line, someone once wrote an enitre term paper in psycology about why all Superman really needed was glasses. Essentally the argument was that anyone who doesn't think just putting on a pair of glasses and combing your hair ina different way would hide a person's idenity has probably never met a decent conman, or at least doesn't know it.
ALSO!
Date: 2005-07-27 09:46 am (UTC)What can you do about it if it does happen? I mean really, what can you do? Nothing, that's what. You are going to die one day, and for the most part there is very little you can do about it. So don't worry about it, no really, stop worrying. If you remain active throughout your life you ARE going to die with things left undone. The only way to avoid this is to stay in bed, or get a normal boring 9 to 5 and never do anything risky or requireing a great deal of time and effort. That however is not living, that's waiting to die.
You can live with the understanding you'll never get it all done, or you can sit around and wait to die.
Re: ALSO!
Date: 2005-07-27 12:31 pm (UTC)As for "message" books, that's what fables are, too. Yet nobody seems to think that fables suck hardcore for being moralistic tales. Maybe it's because they tell a decent story and then stick the message on the end? Or maybe they're just stories. It's true, though, the War on Some Drugs' messages almost require you to be on them for you to think they're realistic.
Superman, however, is a con man. With all the superdickery he's done, he has to be able to sweet-talk everyone into letting him stick around. I don't know how many con men I've met, but I would hope not to be bilked out of too much by the ones I do meet.
Re: ALSO!
Date: 2005-07-27 12:43 pm (UTC)there can be some good books trying to give a message, but most of them suck.
Re: ALSO!
Date: 2005-07-27 01:19 pm (UTC)The Aesop fables aren't too bad - and a lot of stories like that soften the moral by telling it as a story of how the leopard got his spots or something like that.
How bad are these kiddie propoganda that you speak of?
Re: ALSO!
Date: 2005-07-27 01:25 pm (UTC)Imagine a book that explains you have eggs at easter not because of the pagan fertility connection but because it represents the boulder that was moved from Big J's crypt. It's not quite Chick track the book, but it's close.
There is also a lot of tyring to drum in concepts that little kids just aren't prepaired to cope with. It's hard to gather the notion of the euchirist (another word I can't spell) when your four. These books tend to be more about pounding in the message aboutm body and blood rather than telling why that's important. They range from bad to reprehensible all the way to borderline crimes against humanity.
Re: ALSO!
Date: 2005-07-27 02:05 pm (UTC)Remember, too, that saying something that Easter is derived from a pagan tradition would be asking a Christian to admit that there may have been some borrowing going on from other traditions to make their own easier to swallow. It ranks up there on the mortal sin list with questioning whether Jesus really is right for you (or everyone else) and believing that other religions might not be going to hell for their beliefs.
Yeah, the concept of transubstantiation (if you're Catholic) or of a bodily sacrifice (if you're not and see it as a symbolic gesture) is tough to understand when small. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've seen or leafed through a book designed for children that really takes the time out to explain the importance of the sacrifice. Considering how much of a central tenet it is to the religion, that might explain the large amount of Christmas-Easter Christians.
And when looking at the way that the Christian religion has been used and abused throughout history, those books seem to be inheriting a rich tradition of bad, reprehensible, and borderline inhumane actions and thoughts. So maybe they are good historical Christians after all.
Maybe what the Christian churches need right now is a good heresy. That way, people might know what the church actually thinks.