Wide Sargasso Sea is Jane Rhys' response to Charlotte Bronte's "madwoman in the attic" character, depicted in Jane Eyre as Bertha Mason. In Bronte's novel, Bertha only represents an obstacle between Rochester and Jane, and his source of unhappiness. She is briefly described as Creole, foreign, lunatic, and not belonging to the same world that Rochester and Jane belong to.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys (a Creole herself) writes a story for Bertha, and gives her a voice and a distinct identity, that of Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress. The novel follows her life, from her childhood growing up in the West Indies to her arranged marriage to Mr. Rochester, through the deterioration of their marriage, her relocation to England, and her eventual complete mental breakdown. As a sample of post-colonial literature, the novel explores racial inequalities, colonization, assimilation, and the parallels and differences between colonists and the colonized.
I wasn't aware of the connection to Jane Eyre before starting the book. I had already read Jane Eyre a few months ago as part of this same reading list and the character of Bertha Mason didn't grab my attention beyond being the mystery behind the story and the one reason Rochester and Jane couldn't be together. Rhys' story fits so well with the narrative already presented in Jane Eyre, that it feels like a necessary prequel that makes the story complete. Bronte's character Bertha is merely a caricature; Rhys' Antoinette is alive and complex; also deeply disturbed, yes, but the backstory sets up the events that happen in Thornfield Hall perfectly.
So, why Bertha - Antoinette? The novel explores issues of identity and assimilation. Rochester, in his role as patriarchal English colonist, assigns Antoinette a new identity, and renames her as Bertha. In fact, Rochester is pretty much a jerk this entire book too. Like Antoinette, however, his backstory is also fleshed out further, for example his relationship with his father and brother. Antoinette's progression into madness plays out throughout the entire novel, getting increasingly worse until the last third of the book when she is living in England and has lost all sense of self.
I would recommend reading this after reading Jane Eyre. I can think of no other prequel that complements the original story so well (though, the book works as a standalone read as well due to the lush descriptions and heavy symbolism). Are there any other good prequels out there? Seriously, I'm asking...
29 down, 23 to go.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Sin's Adventures in Wonderland
Many thanks to Rock and Subie for the pictures featured below. Looking back, none of the ones on here are actually mine :)
Rock and I took a 6 day vacation to Disney World in Orlando around mid-September (seriously, time flies). Subie joined us for the first four days. We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and had access to all the parks and also took a day to see Universal Studios. And I’ll just get this stated now; it was seriously one of the best vacations ever! Below, a lengthy list from Bad to Awesome of how it went, and a few pictures that are not in any particular order.
The BAD
- Dear lord, are there lines. Lines for rides, lines for food, lines for the bathroom, lines for the bus, lines to take pictures…I do not like lines. That said the longest line we voluntarily stood in was 45 minutes long to see a 30-minute scene of “The Lion King on Broadway Show” at Animal Kingdom (which was awesome). I say voluntarily, because the longest line we actually stood in was about an hour and a half long, after the Electrical Magic parade at Magic Kingdom just to get out of the park and onto our resort bus. Guess who was not a happy tourist that day? Poor Rock and Subie, evil Sin came out and it was not good for anybody :-(
- The walking. Yeah, yeah, it’s an obvious one, but it had to be said. We were so exhausted when we got back, we slept twelve hours straight the next day. That’s not an exaggeration. And maybe the walking wouldn't have been so bad but for the horde. Not the WoW Horde. I'd take lovable orcs, trolls, and the walking undead over the thousands of tiny feet and hands that were swarming every inch of the place and rending the air apart with their furious high-pitched squeals. Yes, I don't necessarily like kids, but the magic of Disney is that you get used to them pretty quick. So much so, that I didn't even remember I had an opinion on it till Rock pointed out that Magic Kingdom is the unofficial spokeperson for birth control. So true.
- Rock on a plane. To be fair, he’s not afraid of heights or of small spaces, it was the “dear god, we’re trusting this human-made piece of metal to not crash 35,000 feet” that got to him. Outwardly he seemed ok, but I was really nervous for him…poor Rock.
- Disney Quest’s Build Your Own Rollercoaster. Rock and I built it together and, thinking it would just be a movie of the ride, we went ahead and put in all the crazy loops and figure eights and jumps. And then we’re ushered into a capsule that will simulate the experience. Holy hell. Ok, disclaimer: I am NOT a fan of rollercoasters. I’ll go so far as to say I hate rollercoasters and don’t see the attraction in them, at all. I was not prepared for this ride to feel like an actual rollercoaster but, I don’t know how they do it, you can feel the acceleration (I have been in rollercoasters before, once or twice) and the capsule does flip you upside down and sideways and it jumps and all the rest of it. It was the closest thing to a rollercoaster I rode during the entire trip and it took me completely by surprise.
- That’s about it for badness. I complain about lines but honestly, since it was off-season at the parks, we got into the rides we wanted in 20 minutes or less, and about 80% of the time we just got to walk right on with no waiting.
The GOOD
- Disney Quest. It was pretty awesome to play some old school arcades as well as some immersive virtual games all in the same floor space (and five stories of it!). Unfortunately, the virtual games already feel terribly dated and we get better graphics and motion-controls from a Wii. The place was probably the bomb not even five years ago, but it could use a major overhaul. Why hasn’t Disney partnered up with Microsoft or Sony to showcase some in-the-works technology? Which leads me to:
- 3D, 4D, and virtual-immersion attractions. The rides that use 3D technology are still fun in their own right, either because they have cute stories (the PhilharMagic is adorable, with Donald Duck running through various Disney storylines like Fantasia, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid), or have interesting 4D effects (smoke, water sprays, smells, seat movements, lighting effects, human actors), but with the 3D saturation clogging up every local movie theater, the charm has faded a bit. Clearly, just a few years ago, this would have been THE place to experience some solid, fun 3D action. The 4D elements still keep the rides alive, but the 3D technology is now second fiddle.
- The craziness of it all. I spent most of the trip remarking on the strangeness of certain jobs. I mean, someone’s job out there is to be the Sebastian the Crab puppeteer on the Voyage of the Little Mermaid. The show was cute and whacked out but I seriously spent the entire show feeling bad for the guy that has to activate the smoke machine and light effects (though it’s probably just a computer at this point). The kid in me loves seeing the guys in the mouse costumes and the actors dressed up as the Princesses, but I find myself just thinking “how weird is that?” I don’t know, we met “Mary Poppins” at breakfast and she came over to talk to us and I felt like such a dumbass for talking to a woman in a costume pretending to be Mary Poppins, when this woman knows I am not five and therefore don’t actually believe she is Mary Poppins, so we both know she is just a woman in a costume pretending to be Mary Poppins, and that just makes the whole thing…awkward. But she was very adorable.
- Wizarding World at Harry Potter. I’m aghast at myself for putting this here and not in the Awesome category below. They did a fantastic job with the architecture and building facades, and Hogwarts is built to a pretty awesome scale. But there wasn’t a lot of content. The entire place is essentially one big store (shocking, I know) but I was disappointed to see that some things weren’t pushed far enough. Like the candy store from the books (the name escapes me). The candy in the store is your generic grocery store candy: peach rings, Swedish fish, jelly beans, etc. I was really hoping for an actual confectionary, where they make the candy right in the store and you can watch. The joke shop was cute but you can’t play with any of the stuff so you can’t really tell what’s inside the boxes. I didn’t get on the rides because I’m a chicken and they didn’t have any mild versions from what I could tell (no 3D virtual immersion type rides, although Subie tells me the Hogwarts castle ride was close enough). I felt very silly for doing this but of course I tried the “butterbeer” and “pumpkin juice.” The butterbeer was cream soda with extra foam (whipped cream I think) and the pumpkin juice tasted just like pumpkin pie. Very cute and silly. Finally they had an acapella group made up of “students” and of course they sang the "toil and trouble" song, and a few other things. I love acapella so that was a neat surprise.
The AWESOME
- Everything else. But I really should elaborate.
- THE FOOD. Oh my god, the food. I really didn’t expect the food to be all that great, for some reason, and to be honest some things were pretty unremarkable (like all of the quick service/fast food counters in the parks), but we went to some pretty awesome restaurants. My favorites were the ones in the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we stayed. There was an Indian-inspired restaurant (Sanaa) and an African-inspired buffet (Boma) that made me sad I couldn’t keep eating.
- The pool and hot tub at the hotel, and the water park. I’m so glad I got to do some actual swimming this summer. I want regular access to a pool so badly. We only went to Blizzard Beach (not Typhoon Lagoon) where we rode a really fun raft ride.
- All of the parks. I’m trying to rate them but I really can’t. All of the parks feel different enough that I just can’t compare them.
- Epcot: I loved Epcot’s Soaring ride even if I was freaking out for the first few minutes, and Spaceship Earth is very cool (though the storyline ends with Jobs building the first Mac so Disney really needs to update this and add some more scenes at the end…I can’t really get misty-eyed over the first Mac when I have a much better computer that fits in my pocket). World Showcase was very neat but we didn’t have time to see any of the live performances. We did see the belly-dancer in the Morocco restaurant; she wasn’t super authentic but, as Subie pointed out, it is a family restaurant.
- Hollywood Studios: this was the smallest park and it doesn’t offer a ton of rides. I loved the Indiana Jones stunt show, more so than the Sinbad stunt show at Universal Studios, but overall Hollywood Studios paled in comparison to Universal. I also loved the 50’s Cafe, which really feels like you stepped into someone’s house from a 50’s TV show. And they had amazing fried chicken and s ‘mores :-) I’m also very glad I got a FastPass for the Toy Story ride because, while it was extremely cute and fun, it does not justify an 80-minute wait in line at all (the standby time for the queue when we redeemed our FastPass).
- Magic Kingdom: I loved this park more than I expected to, I think because it has the most stuff out of any other park. We bought tickets to Mickey’s Not-So-Very-Scary Halloween party, which ended up being absolutely awesome. When I planned the trip, I didn’t devote a full day to MK, thinking it would be mostly kid stuff. So at the last minute we bought tickets to the Halloween thing, which was a trick-or-treat event at the park from 7 to midnight, but the rides are also open. It was awesome because, while everyone else stood in line to get candy, we got to just walk onto all the rides. We walked straight up to the Haunted Mansion twice (best ride ever!). In the end, we went to MK three times: one night for the Electrical Parade, again for the Halloween event, and on the day we left for another three hours. The Halloween parade was more fun than I expected, especially because the crowd was pretty small so we got front row seats (as opposed to the Electrical Parade where it was packed and we had tons of people in front of us).
- Animal Kingdom: Rock didn’t really like this one, and I admit I didn’t like how confusing the layout is, but I absolutely love seeing animals and the whole place is essentially one giant zoo. I wasn’t convinced that the Safari felt like a real safari, like other reviewers have said, but as far as zoos go, it was great to drive through all the animal habitats. Different, at least. The Lion King show had acrobats, singers, and dancers, so obviously that ranked high with me. I was upset I didn’t think to get FastPasses for the Dinosaur ride, because by the time we wanted to ride it, the line was 45 minutes long. At least we rode the Jurassic Park ride at Universal.
- Universal Studios: this place is huge! And I think the themes are even more cracked out than Disney’s. They have a Dr. Seuss section where everything (even the trees) looks like the books. They have an ancient temple section that has the Poseidon ride and this restaurant that resembles a cave. I liked the Jurassic Park section, I was not expecting that big drop at the end of that ride but it was fun. They have a comic strip section which had great buildings but I didn’t really recognize the comic strips (it’s older ones like Hagar, Popeye, stuff like that). The superhero section was fantastic and my favorite pictures will forever be Rock posing with Cyclops, Wolverine, and Captain America. Shame there was no Spiderman. The Spiderman ride was my favorite of the entire trip, hands down, even if I had to shut my eyes for a few seconds cause I was getting motion sick. We did the obligatory Jaws and Rock got soaked :-) and saw the Terminator 2 4D show, which is a 3D movie with some parts played by live actors. Very cheesy but very fun. And I think Universal does the movie theme much better, they have entire streets that really feel like actual movie sets, and Disney doesn’t really do that.
So I rambled for thousands of words and there are still other things I could talk about. It was a great trip and we were pretty lucky, the weather was great, the crowds weren’t too bad (most of the time), we got on a lot of rides, and I think I ended up seeing about 90% of the stuff I wanted to (which is way better than I expected). And we rode the Haunted Mansion ride four times all told :-) That’s enough of a win right there.
Rock and I took a 6 day vacation to Disney World in Orlando around mid-September (seriously, time flies). Subie joined us for the first four days. We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and had access to all the parks and also took a day to see Universal Studios. And I’ll just get this stated now; it was seriously one of the best vacations ever! Below, a lengthy list from Bad to Awesome of how it went, and a few pictures that are not in any particular order.
The BAD- Dear lord, are there lines. Lines for rides, lines for food, lines for the bathroom, lines for the bus, lines to take pictures…I do not like lines. That said the longest line we voluntarily stood in was 45 minutes long to see a 30-minute scene of “The Lion King on Broadway Show” at Animal Kingdom (which was awesome). I say voluntarily, because the longest line we actually stood in was about an hour and a half long, after the Electrical Magic parade at Magic Kingdom just to get out of the park and onto our resort bus. Guess who was not a happy tourist that day? Poor Rock and Subie, evil Sin came out and it was not good for anybody :-(
- The walking. Yeah, yeah, it’s an obvious one, but it had to be said. We were so exhausted when we got back, we slept twelve hours straight the next day. That’s not an exaggeration. And maybe the walking wouldn't have been so bad but for the horde. Not the WoW Horde. I'd take lovable orcs, trolls, and the walking undead over the thousands of tiny feet and hands that were swarming every inch of the place and rending the air apart with their furious high-pitched squeals. Yes, I don't necessarily like kids, but the magic of Disney is that you get used to them pretty quick. So much so, that I didn't even remember I had an opinion on it till Rock pointed out that Magic Kingdom is the unofficial spokeperson for birth control. So true.
- Rock on a plane. To be fair, he’s not afraid of heights or of small spaces, it was the “dear god, we’re trusting this human-made piece of metal to not crash 35,000 feet” that got to him. Outwardly he seemed ok, but I was really nervous for him…poor Rock.- Disney Quest’s Build Your Own Rollercoaster. Rock and I built it together and, thinking it would just be a movie of the ride, we went ahead and put in all the crazy loops and figure eights and jumps. And then we’re ushered into a capsule that will simulate the experience. Holy hell. Ok, disclaimer: I am NOT a fan of rollercoasters. I’ll go so far as to say I hate rollercoasters and don’t see the attraction in them, at all. I was not prepared for this ride to feel like an actual rollercoaster but, I don’t know how they do it, you can feel the acceleration (I have been in rollercoasters before, once or twice) and the capsule does flip you upside down and sideways and it jumps and all the rest of it. It was the closest thing to a rollercoaster I rode during the entire trip and it took me completely by surprise.
- That’s about it for badness. I complain about lines but honestly, since it was off-season at the parks, we got into the rides we wanted in 20 minutes or less, and about 80% of the time we just got to walk right on with no waiting.
The GOOD- Disney Quest. It was pretty awesome to play some old school arcades as well as some immersive virtual games all in the same floor space (and five stories of it!). Unfortunately, the virtual games already feel terribly dated and we get better graphics and motion-controls from a Wii. The place was probably the bomb not even five years ago, but it could use a major overhaul. Why hasn’t Disney partnered up with Microsoft or Sony to showcase some in-the-works technology? Which leads me to:
- 3D, 4D, and virtual-immersion attractions. The rides that use 3D technology are still fun in their own right, either because they have cute stories (the PhilharMagic is adorable, with Donald Duck running through various Disney storylines like Fantasia, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid), or have interesting 4D effects (smoke, water sprays, smells, seat movements, lighting effects, human actors), but with the 3D saturation clogging up every local movie theater, the charm has faded a bit. Clearly, just a few years ago, this would have been THE place to experience some solid, fun 3D action. The 4D elements still keep the rides alive, but the 3D technology is now second fiddle.
- The craziness of it all. I spent most of the trip remarking on the strangeness of certain jobs. I mean, someone’s job out there is to be the Sebastian the Crab puppeteer on the Voyage of the Little Mermaid. The show was cute and whacked out but I seriously spent the entire show feeling bad for the guy that has to activate the smoke machine and light effects (though it’s probably just a computer at this point). The kid in me loves seeing the guys in the mouse costumes and the actors dressed up as the Princesses, but I find myself just thinking “how weird is that?” I don’t know, we met “Mary Poppins” at breakfast and she came over to talk to us and I felt like such a dumbass for talking to a woman in a costume pretending to be Mary Poppins, when this woman knows I am not five and therefore don’t actually believe she is Mary Poppins, so we both know she is just a woman in a costume pretending to be Mary Poppins, and that just makes the whole thing…awkward. But she was very adorable.
- Wizarding World at Harry Potter. I’m aghast at myself for putting this here and not in the Awesome category below. They did a fantastic job with the architecture and building facades, and Hogwarts is built to a pretty awesome scale. But there wasn’t a lot of content. The entire place is essentially one big store (shocking, I know) but I was disappointed to see that some things weren’t pushed far enough. Like the candy store from the books (the name escapes me). The candy in the store is your generic grocery store candy: peach rings, Swedish fish, jelly beans, etc. I was really hoping for an actual confectionary, where they make the candy right in the store and you can watch. The joke shop was cute but you can’t play with any of the stuff so you can’t really tell what’s inside the boxes. I didn’t get on the rides because I’m a chicken and they didn’t have any mild versions from what I could tell (no 3D virtual immersion type rides, although Subie tells me the Hogwarts castle ride was close enough). I felt very silly for doing this but of course I tried the “butterbeer” and “pumpkin juice.” The butterbeer was cream soda with extra foam (whipped cream I think) and the pumpkin juice tasted just like pumpkin pie. Very cute and silly. Finally they had an acapella group made up of “students” and of course they sang the "toil and trouble" song, and a few other things. I love acapella so that was a neat surprise. 
The AWESOME- Everything else. But I really should elaborate.
- THE FOOD. Oh my god, the food. I really didn’t expect the food to be all that great, for some reason, and to be honest some things were pretty unremarkable (like all of the quick service/fast food counters in the parks), but we went to some pretty awesome restaurants. My favorites were the ones in the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we stayed. There was an Indian-inspired restaurant (Sanaa) and an African-inspired buffet (Boma) that made me sad I couldn’t keep eating.
- The pool and hot tub at the hotel, and the water park. I’m so glad I got to do some actual swimming this summer. I want regular access to a pool so badly. We only went to Blizzard Beach (not Typhoon Lagoon) where we rode a really fun raft ride.
- All of the parks. I’m trying to rate them but I really can’t. All of the parks feel different enough that I just can’t compare them.
- Epcot: I loved Epcot’s Soaring ride even if I was freaking out for the first few minutes, and Spaceship Earth is very cool (though the storyline ends with Jobs building the first Mac so Disney really needs to update this and add some more scenes at the end…I can’t really get misty-eyed over the first Mac when I have a much better computer that fits in my pocket). World Showcase was very neat but we didn’t have time to see any of the live performances. We did see the belly-dancer in the Morocco restaurant; she wasn’t super authentic but, as Subie pointed out, it is a family restaurant.- Hollywood Studios: this was the smallest park and it doesn’t offer a ton of rides. I loved the Indiana Jones stunt show, more so than the Sinbad stunt show at Universal Studios, but overall Hollywood Studios paled in comparison to Universal. I also loved the 50’s Cafe, which really feels like you stepped into someone’s house from a 50’s TV show. And they had amazing fried chicken and s ‘mores :-) I’m also very glad I got a FastPass for the Toy Story ride because, while it was extremely cute and fun, it does not justify an 80-minute wait in line at all (the standby time for the queue when we redeemed our FastPass).
- Magic Kingdom: I loved this park more than I expected to, I think because it has the most stuff out of any other park. We bought tickets to Mickey’s Not-So-Very-Scary Halloween party, which ended up being absolutely awesome. When I planned the trip, I didn’t devote a full day to MK, thinking it would be mostly kid stuff. So at the last minute we bought tickets to the Halloween thing, which was a trick-or-treat event at the park from 7 to midnight, but the rides are also open. It was awesome because, while everyone else stood in line to get candy, we got to just walk onto all the rides. We walked straight up to the Haunted Mansion twice (best ride ever!). In the end, we went to MK three times: one night for the Electrical Parade, again for the Halloween event, and on the day we left for another three hours. The Halloween parade was more fun than I expected, especially because the crowd was pretty small so we got front row seats (as opposed to the Electrical Parade where it was packed and we had tons of people in front of us). - Animal Kingdom: Rock didn’t really like this one, and I admit I didn’t like how confusing the layout is, but I absolutely love seeing animals and the whole place is essentially one giant zoo. I wasn’t convinced that the Safari felt like a real safari, like other reviewers have said, but as far as zoos go, it was great to drive through all the animal habitats. Different, at least. The Lion King show had acrobats, singers, and dancers, so obviously that ranked high with me. I was upset I didn’t think to get FastPasses for the Dinosaur ride, because by the time we wanted to ride it, the line was 45 minutes long. At least we rode the Jurassic Park ride at Universal.
- Universal Studios: this place is huge! And I think the themes are even more cracked out than Disney’s. They have a Dr. Seuss section where everything (even the trees) looks like the books. They have an ancient temple section that has the Poseidon ride and this restaurant that resembles a cave. I liked the Jurassic Park section, I was not expecting that big drop at the end of that ride but it was fun. They have a comic strip section which had great buildings but I didn’t really recognize the comic strips (it’s older ones like Hagar, Popeye, stuff like that). The superhero section was fantastic and my favorite pictures will forever be Rock posing with Cyclops, Wolverine, and Captain America. Shame there was no Spiderman. The Spiderman ride was my favorite of the entire trip, hands down, even if I had to shut my eyes for a few seconds cause I was getting motion sick. We did the obligatory Jaws and Rock got soaked :-) and saw the Terminator 2 4D show, which is a 3D movie with some parts played by live actors. Very cheesy but very fun. And I think Universal does the movie theme much better, they have entire streets that really feel like actual movie sets, and Disney doesn’t really do that. So I rambled for thousands of words and there are still other things I could talk about. It was a great trip and we were pretty lucky, the weather was great, the crowds weren’t too bad (most of the time), we got on a lot of rides, and I think I ended up seeing about 90% of the stuff I wanted to (which is way better than I expected). And we rode the Haunted Mansion ride four times all told :-) That’s enough of a win right there.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
My Kingdom for a Ram
Despite what it looks like, what with the numerous posts on the subject, I don't necessarily want to post about WoW all the time. I love the game but even I understand that this makes me seem, well, just plain hopeless. But every now and then things happen that I just need to write about. In my geeky head, it is as if mystical goings-on occur that nudge my faith in super-cosmic powers just a wee bit more. Such a thing happened this Tuesday night.
Those that read my recent ramblings on aquiring a certain purple dragon, obtained by doing many Herculean feats revolving around in-game holidays for the better part of a year (some of those occuring during actual real-life holidays and events, so I leave it up to you to decide how much I ignored my real life friends, family, and duties for virtual duties), may remember that one such holiday was Brewfest. And some of those very attentive readers may even realize that it's been a full year since the last Brewfest and that this year's festivities were upon us just a few weeks ago. Ah, but how time flies.
Trust it to real life to get in the way again, however. My Disney vacation (post still in the works; there were A LOT of pictures) intersected with the start of the holiday so there were four days lost, during which I could have consumed virtual beer as opposed to the real beer I did consume (it was tasty, to be fair). But more importantly, that was four days during which I could not fight the Brewfest boss for a miniscule chance at obtaining one, or both, of the very very very rare mounts that he drops. I was...not pleased.
I went to work at once upon my return. Last year I had seen one mount drop in 14 days and obviously lost the roll. This year: the gods were kind! I got one of the mounts on my third day of trying! It was exhilirating. And I was only the tiniest bit disappointed.
The reason the boss drops two mounts is because they are faction-aligned. One mount is designed off the Kodo mount that is exclusive to the Horde (my faction) and the other is designed off the Ram mount that is exclusive to the Alliance (the filthy enemy). Except these Brewfest mounts can be used by either faction. And well, I already have Kodos. I have many Kodos. Several colored Kodos. This does not make the drop any less sought after. I was certainly happier than a clam, but...a Kodo is not a Ram (hey, that rhymed!).
I kept going. I diligently killed the boss everyday for my daily attempt. I heard many horror stories of people having to destroy several beautiful Rams because they already had one and the item could not be traded. The days ticked down and hope was dwindling.
Tuesday, the last day, dawned and i didn't even realize it, I was so sure the festival ended the next day. With a heavy heart I arrived home that day to face my last attempt for the year. Hope was rock bottom. There was no "tomorrow is a new day" for my character. This was it.
And then, the stars aligned! The fates swirled, gushed, spun, gargled, and spit out a shiny Ram! I could barely believe it! It was EXACTLY like every cliche movie ending where the main character faces insurmountable odds and then, at the last second, evil is vanquished, the bad guy is killed, the guy catches up to the girl, the ring falls into the fire, all of it, but BETTER because I had no idea it would happen that way! It was glorious. Just...beautiful.
Those that read my recent ramblings on aquiring a certain purple dragon, obtained by doing many Herculean feats revolving around in-game holidays for the better part of a year (some of those occuring during actual real-life holidays and events, so I leave it up to you to decide how much I ignored my real life friends, family, and duties for virtual duties), may remember that one such holiday was Brewfest. And some of those very attentive readers may even realize that it's been a full year since the last Brewfest and that this year's festivities were upon us just a few weeks ago. Ah, but how time flies.
Trust it to real life to get in the way again, however. My Disney vacation (post still in the works; there were A LOT of pictures) intersected with the start of the holiday so there were four days lost, during which I could have consumed virtual beer as opposed to the real beer I did consume (it was tasty, to be fair). But more importantly, that was four days during which I could not fight the Brewfest boss for a miniscule chance at obtaining one, or both, of the very very very rare mounts that he drops. I was...not pleased.
I went to work at once upon my return. Last year I had seen one mount drop in 14 days and obviously lost the roll. This year: the gods were kind! I got one of the mounts on my third day of trying! It was exhilirating. And I was only the tiniest bit disappointed.
The reason the boss drops two mounts is because they are faction-aligned. One mount is designed off the Kodo mount that is exclusive to the Horde (my faction) and the other is designed off the Ram mount that is exclusive to the Alliance (the filthy enemy). Except these Brewfest mounts can be used by either faction. And well, I already have Kodos. I have many Kodos. Several colored Kodos. This does not make the drop any less sought after. I was certainly happier than a clam, but...a Kodo is not a Ram (hey, that rhymed!).I kept going. I diligently killed the boss everyday for my daily attempt. I heard many horror stories of people having to destroy several beautiful Rams because they already had one and the item could not be traded. The days ticked down and hope was dwindling.
Tuesday, the last day, dawned and i didn't even realize it, I was so sure the festival ended the next day. With a heavy heart I arrived home that day to face my last attempt for the year. Hope was rock bottom. There was no "tomorrow is a new day" for my character. This was it.
And then, the stars aligned! The fates swirled, gushed, spun, gargled, and spit out a shiny Ram! I could barely believe it! It was EXACTLY like every cliche movie ending where the main character faces insurmountable odds and then, at the last second, evil is vanquished, the bad guy is killed, the guy catches up to the girl, the ring falls into the fire, all of it, but BETTER because I had no idea it would happen that way! It was glorious. Just...beautiful.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
I have to put up my Disney vacation post soon but I need to arrange my pictures first, so I figured I would put up this post quickly in the meantime. This is another book from my deck of cards.
A few weeks ago I came across this illustration, which I’m sure is pretty well known by now (it’s actually over a year old). I like the drawing, and it is especially helpful in this case because it almost sums up Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: he imagined all of these things happening at the same time.
Montag is a fireman who has only ever been taught to start fires, not to put them out. In this dystopian novel, books have been banned and are illegal, and any houses suspected or known to have books are burned down. The story follows Montag as he begins to question the reasoning behind the book burning, and as he meets others who teach him that things were very different once. That’s about it for plot, without giving away the ending. It’s a short book and a simple storyline but the significance is in the message. I feel lazy doing what I’m about to do but I love these passages from the book and they portray what Bradbury was trying to get across pretty well, and certainly better than I could. Besides, I think people are already fairly familiar with the book’s message. Like Orwell and Huxley, Bradbury was issuing a warning, for people to not get complacent, to not allow themselves to be lulled, to wake up.
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.”
“…when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities in the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved by any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”
“There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.”
Unlike Orwell and Huxley, however, Bradbury didn't place the blame on the government first, but rather on the people. He saw people's interest in entertainment and television as catalysts for their disinterest in reading and in literature, a movement which government would take advantage of for their own purposes (in the book's case, to wage a long war indefinitely).
In the book, government has taken control of information, the truth can be modified and presented to the people as the government sees fit, and the people are complacent with it all because the ‘truth’ is good and entertainment is always on. The other message here is the harmful effects of a lack of education, either when it's taken away from people or when people don't want it anymore.
It's an interesting take, the idea that people can bring about their own dystopian future, not because there will be supremely powerful governments, but because people will forego their own free will, their own education, in exchange for comfort and pleasure (I'm resisting making aggrandizing comparisons to today's society because I'm not equipped or prepared to make that kind of post but, well, it doesn't exactly sound like science fiction, does it?). The book is more famously known as a warning against censorship and state-sponsored banning, but Bradbury has always emphasized that he was more concerned about people's interest in literature in the first place (though he appreciated the irony of his book being censored by Ballantine editors to remove swear words).
28 down, 24 to go.
The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time . . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!
A few weeks ago I came across this illustration, which I’m sure is pretty well known by now (it’s actually over a year old). I like the drawing, and it is especially helpful in this case because it almost sums up Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: he imagined all of these things happening at the same time.
Montag is a fireman who has only ever been taught to start fires, not to put them out. In this dystopian novel, books have been banned and are illegal, and any houses suspected or known to have books are burned down. The story follows Montag as he begins to question the reasoning behind the book burning, and as he meets others who teach him that things were very different once. That’s about it for plot, without giving away the ending. It’s a short book and a simple storyline but the significance is in the message. I feel lazy doing what I’m about to do but I love these passages from the book and they portray what Bradbury was trying to get across pretty well, and certainly better than I could. Besides, I think people are already fairly familiar with the book’s message. Like Orwell and Huxley, Bradbury was issuing a warning, for people to not get complacent, to not allow themselves to be lulled, to wake up.
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me with the theremin, loudly. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment.”
“…when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities in the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved by any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.”
“There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.”
Unlike Orwell and Huxley, however, Bradbury didn't place the blame on the government first, but rather on the people. He saw people's interest in entertainment and television as catalysts for their disinterest in reading and in literature, a movement which government would take advantage of for their own purposes (in the book's case, to wage a long war indefinitely).
In the book, government has taken control of information, the truth can be modified and presented to the people as the government sees fit, and the people are complacent with it all because the ‘truth’ is good and entertainment is always on. The other message here is the harmful effects of a lack of education, either when it's taken away from people or when people don't want it anymore.
It's an interesting take, the idea that people can bring about their own dystopian future, not because there will be supremely powerful governments, but because people will forego their own free will, their own education, in exchange for comfort and pleasure (I'm resisting making aggrandizing comparisons to today's society because I'm not equipped or prepared to make that kind of post but, well, it doesn't exactly sound like science fiction, does it?). The book is more famously known as a warning against censorship and state-sponsored banning, but Bradbury has always emphasized that he was more concerned about people's interest in literature in the first place (though he appreciated the irony of his book being censored by Ballantine editors to remove swear words).
28 down, 24 to go.
The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time . . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!
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