News item 1: I didn't get accepted into Fordham. Oh well. Steven Page, I blame you for thi... don't give me that look! You said, "When all else fails, you can blame it on me." I am doing what you told me to do!
News Item 2: I stole Ovid's Metamorphoses from Robby D yesterday. I also stole Oreos from Heidi. (I also like that "I stole it from Mr Ford" is now an acceptable answer to "Why are you reading this?")
News Item 3: I wasn't kidding when I said I'd reread The Lost World by Michael Crichton. (The sequel to Jurassic Park, which I enjoy in book-form ten times more than the first. The movie of The Lost World deserves a special place next to the Breakfast of Champions movie in my backyard.
The book is about an island with dinosaurs on it. Come on. Come on, even you youngens should know this! No excuse! More specifically, this island isn't Isla Nublar--it's Isla Sorna. Dinosaurs were raised on Sorna and shipped to Nublar (the park). So, when Jurassic Park was abolished, the 'unknown' animals on Sorna were left to grow and whatever for about eight or ten years. (At one point it is mentioned that the two children from the first book are now in college.) And Ian Malcolm did not die at the end of the first book as it was almost 100% explicitly said. It was just a 'close call', or something ridiculous. Ughhh. Crichton...
So carnotaurs start washing up on beaches (I believe it was a carnotaur) and everyone who was involved with the island or heard rumors is immediately all "HECK YEAH". (Carnotaurs are basically T Rex's stubby and less cool cousin.) Then they all go to the island. Yayyy.
That guy who I called Repton in my last post? I was wrong; his name is Roxton. And he doesn't get eaten. Roxton is kind of the 'idiot scientist' in the book and cited twice for being so darned stupid! (Because they're stupid!) First, he's called out by Levine (Roxton never personally appears in the book, by the way) for "never really"knowing anatomy. (This is foreshadowing!) He says so because Roxton apparently dug up a new skeleton which he believes is a new type of velociraptor; however, Levine believes it is more likely a stenonychosaurus, which is fancy talk for a troodon. (Couldn't have just said troodon? Really?) Later on he is mentioned because a "misinformed" character read Roxton's report that frogs and t rexes have similar brain cases (remember that anatomy comment?) so t rexes are like frogs and can only see movement. So, the character having read this of course doesn't bolt when a t rex starts after him--and gets chomped. Come on, Roxton! Look what you've caused! Do you think you're playing Turok right now!? THIS IS NOT A GAME THAT MAKES ANGELA CRY. It's not even a game in general! God, Roxton.
Oh, but the guys who get eaten by the t rex? All of them deserve it. They're jerks and bastards and grrrr. Good. Though I can't imagine anyone honestly fearlessly approaching a t rex, no matter what they thought they knew. (Thus proving how stupid they are?) I for one would most likely... uh... alter the nature of my underoos. And run like hell. Baselton, you go on ahead. I'll just hide. No, you'll be fine without me, they won't be able to see you, remember?
Okay, fun thing I never noticed before in the past 900 times I've read this book (other than the Roxton foreshadowing on about the third page of the book) is that there's a document, a German document, Levine requested to have mailed to him... from the Peabody Museum!!! Which is so cool mainly because that was my place. I was a dinosaur kid. I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was little. (I am unsure whether I would reject the chance to go to Nublar or Sorna if they were real islands and it were possible or go.) I loved the Peabody Museum. Still do. It's how I roll. The only museum I could ever imagine being better is that one in Russia that has the closest to being complete brachiosaur in the world. (So maybe it wasn't Anastasia that sparked my interest in Russia after all...) But. Uh. What's going on? What was I talking about? Oh, right, the Peabody. Though most people probably don't know this, (George) Peabody founded the museum at his nephew Othniel's asking. Othniel Charles Marsh (OH MY GOD, THAT NAME!!!) discovered some pterosaurs, allosaurs, apatosaurs, eohippus (the "dawn horse", obviously not a dinosaur but an ancestor to modern-day horses) or some other very early horse ancestor, and named basically every genera of dinosaur. Oh, he also discovered a few normal people might know... some dinosaurs called stegosaurus and triceratops. And diplodocus! Oh man. I'm overdue for a trip to the Peabody.
At one point, a teenager named Arby gets into the island's camera system. Of course, seeing all the dinosaurs, his first thought is
(this had to be a trick)
that... it had to be a trick... Really? Like anyone is ever going to get that reference. Even Bruce Coville wouldn't recognize it! Anyway. He says to himself: "They must be movies, he thought. The dinosaur channel." I WISH.
There's this one scene where this scientist lady is on a motorcycle and she has Arby's also teenager friend Kelly ride on the back with a dart gun to shoot raptors. It's easily the most bad ass scene in this book, and in just about any book ever.
Oh, and the ending is very nice. Enjoy the half-page I'm including because I love you that much. Oh, yeah, and spoiler alert too.
"'I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. It's just theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed... that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better.' 'Aren't they?' Thorne shrugged. 'They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon?'...'No, but...' 'And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people talk about them,' Thorne said. 'A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, "You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?" They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies.' Thorne shook his head. 'And meanwhile, do you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't real anything else. Now look at that compass, and tell me where south is. I want to go to Puerto Cortes. It's time for us all to go home.'" Dear Michael Crichton: I love you. Just so you know.
This book is about ten thousand times better than the movie with the same title. It focused more on the raptors (the movie) and that relationship between the dad guy and his daughter. Ughhh. Cry me a river. I don't watch movies with dinosaurs and people to see sappy crap. I watch movies with dinosaurs to see people get eaten, or random 1940's women getting at least attacked by pterodactyls. Let's see... this book is actually compared with Frankenstein a lot, because it is also the negatory (is that a word? And if it is, am I even using it correctly?) side of scientific tinkering. Bringing dead flesh back to life and suffering the consequences and all of that. A little begrudgingly I admit the closeness. However, my theory is that Frankenstein is remembered as the classic version of this idea because it was the first. (That tends to be the case. An example of a book I don't like that is most likely a classic because of such is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. One that I do like would probably be Bram Stoker's Dracula. Look at me, not being biased!) Sometimes this first version is good--and sometimes it's bad, Mary Shelley. Jurassic Park deserves to be the classic! First isn't always the best, guys. Now I'm going to be a grumpy old person! Rabba rabba rabba!
So, I realized this month was like obsession month for me. The Russian revolution, Narnia, and Metamorphoses. If I can squeeze in Pride and Prejudice and the entire Animorphs series before January 1st, it will be perfect! Think I can do it? Well, keep on humoring yourself. It's not happening. Haha. But speaking of Animorphs, they'll be reprinting the series next year... (I AM SO EXCITED!!!!)
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
I like soup, and I like ice cream sandwiches too--I like fish sticks, but I love you
First, today (tomorrow by the time stamp that will be on the post) I was called out in class... We're doing this packet on symbolism in Marky Mark's class and we got to biblical allusions. One space had characters from the Bible who are often alluded to: the first was Adam, Eve, and (blank). Marky Mark asked if we could guess who it was, and all became silent and still until Emily said Lilith a few moments later. He briefly explained Lilith and then pointed to me like he had Yorrick's skull in his hand and said "I'm surprised you didn't get that!" I was caught completely off-guard, and apparently it was incredibly humorous to see my face go blank and squeak "Me?" You know what, it's been a while since I've read the Bible. (I don't even recall seeing anything about a Lilith? Was sex even allowed in the garden of Eden?) And then he was like "Reread the part in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the Beavers talk with the kids." I know they talk about Lilith, but obviously I missed the meaning because I don't have the book of Genesis memorized (nor the Narnia series, as hard as that may be to imagine). Then, we deduced that Jesus had to have been born in March. (Yes, specifically.) Later, at VG club he stopped in, saw me, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I figured you'd be here." Are you trying to say I'm a dork, O Emperor Dork himself? Nyah! Haha. Also, I schooled Robby D three consecutive times in SSBM. Sorry... I was raised with a controller in my hand. Also, Roy is a monster. Though we were equally cheap, Mr Captain Falc--I HATE CAPTAIN FALCON.
Any--Anyway... As I mentioned maybe, my cousin bought me Jonathan Safran Foer's newest book for my birthday. It is Eating Animals and it is about the treatment of livestock animals, in raising and slaughtering. It will, God willing, do what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did in his time. When I tell you this book is stomach-turning I certainly do mean it. The worst accounts were of turkey and pig raising, so I was disturbed--but felt less sick because I don't eat either meat. Pigs are filthy creatures. Besides that, I invariably get sick when I eat any form of pork, except for bacon, which makes an interesting thing to keep in mind for later. Turkey just grosses me out, but not nearly as badly as pork. Ick. Ugh, let's continue, okay?
This also felt much more like a book by Foer than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close did. I mean, it was written by him, obviously, it's just... it didn't seem to have really him in it. At least, not the him from Everything is Illuminated. This new book, weirdly enough, felt more like Foer in his first book and less forced. Granted, he was writing as a nine-year-old in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but still. This sounds much more... real. More him.
Basically, Foer started researching for this book because his son was about to be born. His wife and himself were 'vegetarians' meaning they never ate meat except when they did. Before his son started growing up, they decided they needed a clear-cute decision: either eat meat or don't. How to raise their son? He decides vegetarianism is the way to go, and that's very clear from very early on, but how is what the book is about. Of course.
"People get married for many different reasons, but one that animated our decision to take that step was the prospect of explicitly marking a new beginning. Jewish ritual and symbolism strongly encourage this notion of demarcating a sharp division with what came before--the most well-known example being the smashing of the glass at the end of the marriage ceremony. Things were as they were before, but they will be different now. Things will be better. We will be better." You see what I mean about it sounding more like him, even already?
"'If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.'"
Early on, Foer talks about his dog, George. She was bought at a time when he feared and hated dogs, but very quickly he fell in love with the pup. By no means is she a model dog, however--she is "a major pain in the ass an awful lot of the time." She chews shoes and baby toys, attacks skateboarders, squirrels and Hassidic Jews, freaks out around menstruating women, often is attracted to the most uninterested people ("backs her flatulent ass into" as Foer puts it) and is generally obnoxious, it appears. I think I have a feeling of who Sammy Davis Junior, junior, was based off of.
What he segways into after bringing up George is why aren't animals--specifically dogs--used as a food source? They're a common enough food source around the world. Many dogs are just euthanized in shelters (his argument is just for sheltered dogs; not dogs that have homes) to begin with, and those dogs end up in the feed of livestock and pet food. So, in the case of pet food, we kind of are doing it already... Basically, he probes around as to why it's such a taboo to eat dogs. They aren't any smarter than pigs or chimps (yes, some cultures do eat chimps) and other people of this day and age do do it, not just the ancient Romans. I'm--the idea makes me uncomfortable. Again, I can't exactly explain why it is a taboo, it just is. It's a norm in us from the beginning. It's a norm in other cultures in the beginning to eat dog. It... I can see how it would benefit, certainly. But I'm not sure how I'd feel about eating a dog. Logically it may make sense, but those darned emotions get in the way. You say, eat a dog, and I of course think of Dante stuck on the table with an apple in his mouth like a suckling pig.
I'd say everyone knows about the terrible conditions in which chickens are raised, but maybe you don't. Chickens are kept in cages so small they are often held aloft. (Supposedly, broilers have slightly larger cages.) They are starved and are very famished--what I did not know was what happens to male chicks born to layers. Obviously, male chicks can't lay eggs. They're useless. What I didn't know is what happened to those chicks--they are tossed into what is basically a wood chipper. Or they're tossed into plastic containers, left to trample each other and eventually suffocate. Good God. Besides this, chickens and turkeys genes have been tampered with so they produce the most meat--their legs can't support them, they're too fat to fly... Often they suffer from muscle and bone injuries because of said defects. In Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood there is a food factory that created ChickieNobs. Basically, masses of chicken flesh hanging off feeding tubes that resemble light bulbs. They're meant to harvest chicken breast without wasting a whole animal, and cannot feel pain fear or anything and can't move or do anything unrelated to digesting food. Since they cannot feel pain, though, is this acting really cruel? When I read that book, I was quite disturbed by the ChickieNobs--but after reading Eating Animals, I kind of wonder if that way wouldn't somehow be the more humane way? That's a scary question. The fact that that question even has to be asked is scary.
Chapter one in part "Hiding/Seeking" is called "I'm Not the Kind of Person Who Finds Himself on a Stranger's Farm in the Middle of the Night". Hilarious title. But beside that, Foer, in that section, goes with an animal activist called 'C' to a turkey farm. 'C' gives him a run-down of what to expect when getting into these farms in the middle of the night--hiking fences, sometimes avoiding dogs... and sometimes avoiding bulls which are allowed to roam freely in fields to "impale snooping vegetarians". Foer, more than a little scared about this, and asks what should be done in case one should be found. 'C's' response: "'Stand very still,' C advised. 'I don't think they see stationary objects.'" Notice that think in there. You know what other animals scientists thought couldn't see stationary objects? Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know what happened to Repton, the guy who thought that? He ended up as dinner. Oh man, forget reading Mansfield Park. I'm rereading The Lost World. And rewatching the movie. Oooh. Dinosaurs are awesome! Wait--what was I talking about?
"A farmer doesn't lock his doors because he's afraid his animals will escape. (Turkeys can't turn doorknobs.)" Yeah, well I can think of some ancestors to the turkeys that can open doors... CLEVER GIRLS!!! Man. Glad they devolved, or we'd be in quite a spot of trouble; right, Ian Malcolm?
What Foer is referring to is the fact that the doors to the barn holding the turkeys are locked. He's listing all the reasons why they don't need to be locked--basically, there's no reason for them to be locked. To him, "...nothing will unsettle me more than the locked doors. Nothing will better capture the whole sad business of factory farming. And nothing will more strongly convince me to write this book." The chicks are disturbing. Even just described--well, my imagination did the work of providing an image of these poor creatures. It was an image I'd rather not see personally. Bad enough in my head. At first glimpse, the chicks look fine. Cute enough to handle. Baby chicks! Come on. But as he looks closer he begins to notice some are "blood-matted", "covered in sores", "have red spots on the tops of their heads", "deformed", and "there are few places to look without seeing at least one [dead chick]." He approaches C who is "kneeling over something". The something is a baby chick with eyes that are crusted over, that's covered in scabs and bald spots, and on its side. C slits its throat quickly and painlessly--it was too far gone to be salvaged. I was quite upset by this--not her putting it out of its misery, of course--but it being in that misery in the first place. For those who would be disgusted by her killing of the animal, regardless of it being a mercy killing, she defends herself as such: "...that chick was too sick to be moved. And its suffering was too much to leave be. Look, I'm pro-life. I believe in God, and I believe in heaven and hell. But I don't have any reverence for suffering."
The information about most animals--bird wise--can't even walk or support themselves comes from a letter included from Frank Reese, who considers himself the "last poultry farmer". He doesn't consider the factory farm turkeys to be real turkeys because they're genes have been so messed around with. Those birds are all artificially inseminated, they can't fly (turkeys can fly!? I'll be damned! Maybe chickens could fly once, too) and hardly jump or walk, nor can they even handle the elements. He's the only one still raising these 'traditional' turkeys. All of his flock is healthy. People are allowed on premises. No locked doors.
Oh, and the poor pigs. Mother pigs are put in cages so small they can't even turn around. Then bottom of the cages are slotted so their waste kind of... ripens below them. (I didn't get how that part worked, exactly). Then when they have their piglets they are crushed in so tightly they end up stepping on and killing a few piglets. Trying to figure out how to stop this is apparently one of the industry's current biggest goals--as Foer himself points out, this wouldn't happen if the pens were bigger. Among this, piglets are de-teethed so they can't hurt each other when they fight for milk, and are often bathed in their own waste (turkeys and chickens also suffer from this). This brings up the thing I mentioned earlier, about getting sick 99% of the time when I eat pork. Often these creatures are so bathed in filth and so poorly checked over, the meat gets imbibed with the filth on the skin. Ever have a 24-hour flu or stomach bug? More likely than not, according to Foer, it's this filth getting mixed in with the meat that's making you sick, not some form of the flu. It makes you sick until you pass it out of your system.
Just to drive the point home more, Foer compares the factory-farming of pigs with a dog locked in a closet (though he says that's "somewhat generous" an analogy). Of course, even though I don't eat pork, it hit a soft spot... My dog was a rescue dog in exactly that situation. (If I open the boot closet even now, almost five years after we rescued him, he'll walk over and go in). Ehh. And he speaks of pigs' intelligence. They really are damned smart animals. They can be trained to play very very simple videogames, they can recognize their names and come when called or follow on foot, and can open gates with their snouts (earlier, Foer recounts a recounting of a pig farmer's pig who would open her gate, travel a mile or so away to another pig farm, have sex with a male, and walk back and reenter her gate when finished). Going back to Oryx and Crake, this is why I said the guys who decided to grow human neo-cortexes in the pigoons were idiots. Of course, they were even smarter still and more dangerous and more violent. Though if that were to happen--it may be more of a Karmic thing. Yikes.
"'The consumer's couldn't tell the difference between ground pig flesh and human flesh. Of course they couldn't. The difference between human and pig... anatomies are insignificant compared to the similarities--a corpse is a corpse, flesh is flesh.'"
It was disturbing and informative book. Being non-fiction, I don't feel comfortable calling it 'good' or 'bad', but it was interesting. And upsetting.
Marky Mark was doing (continuing) a slide show on symbolism and we got into Christ figures. He had a check list that was "You may be a Christ figure if..." And one of them was they've spent a lot of time alone in the wildreness. He paused and added, "Like Jack Kerouac." Of course my head snapped up because I'm all HEY JACK KEROUAC! and he nodedd at me and I gave him the thumbs up. Haha. I'd say it was fairly awesome... Oh, and I had a dream last night that he became dictator of the school and Big Mikey was his bodyguard and Robby D was his gopher. He (and Emma) figured it wasn't so much a dream it was more of me seeing the future. He was pretty excited to know that yes, undead were involved. I'm staying on his good side.
And Robby D asked me how I was enjoying Ellison's Invisible Man. I gave the you know, ehh cusi-cusi sort of gesture/noise, and he was like "Uh oh, if Angela doesn't like it there's a problem." Which I thought was really cute! We have a problem.
Any--Anyway... As I mentioned maybe, my cousin bought me Jonathan Safran Foer's newest book for my birthday. It is Eating Animals and it is about the treatment of livestock animals, in raising and slaughtering. It will, God willing, do what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did in his time. When I tell you this book is stomach-turning I certainly do mean it. The worst accounts were of turkey and pig raising, so I was disturbed--but felt less sick because I don't eat either meat. Pigs are filthy creatures. Besides that, I invariably get sick when I eat any form of pork, except for bacon, which makes an interesting thing to keep in mind for later. Turkey just grosses me out, but not nearly as badly as pork. Ick. Ugh, let's continue, okay?
This also felt much more like a book by Foer than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close did. I mean, it was written by him, obviously, it's just... it didn't seem to have really him in it. At least, not the him from Everything is Illuminated. This new book, weirdly enough, felt more like Foer in his first book and less forced. Granted, he was writing as a nine-year-old in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but still. This sounds much more... real. More him.
Basically, Foer started researching for this book because his son was about to be born. His wife and himself were 'vegetarians' meaning they never ate meat except when they did. Before his son started growing up, they decided they needed a clear-cute decision: either eat meat or don't. How to raise their son? He decides vegetarianism is the way to go, and that's very clear from very early on, but how is what the book is about. Of course.
"People get married for many different reasons, but one that animated our decision to take that step was the prospect of explicitly marking a new beginning. Jewish ritual and symbolism strongly encourage this notion of demarcating a sharp division with what came before--the most well-known example being the smashing of the glass at the end of the marriage ceremony. Things were as they were before, but they will be different now. Things will be better. We will be better." You see what I mean about it sounding more like him, even already?
"'If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.'"
Early on, Foer talks about his dog, George. She was bought at a time when he feared and hated dogs, but very quickly he fell in love with the pup. By no means is she a model dog, however--she is "a major pain in the ass an awful lot of the time." She chews shoes and baby toys, attacks skateboarders, squirrels and Hassidic Jews, freaks out around menstruating women, often is attracted to the most uninterested people ("backs her flatulent ass into" as Foer puts it) and is generally obnoxious, it appears. I think I have a feeling of who Sammy Davis Junior, junior, was based off of.
What he segways into after bringing up George is why aren't animals--specifically dogs--used as a food source? They're a common enough food source around the world. Many dogs are just euthanized in shelters (his argument is just for sheltered dogs; not dogs that have homes) to begin with, and those dogs end up in the feed of livestock and pet food. So, in the case of pet food, we kind of are doing it already... Basically, he probes around as to why it's such a taboo to eat dogs. They aren't any smarter than pigs or chimps (yes, some cultures do eat chimps) and other people of this day and age do do it, not just the ancient Romans. I'm--the idea makes me uncomfortable. Again, I can't exactly explain why it is a taboo, it just is. It's a norm in us from the beginning. It's a norm in other cultures in the beginning to eat dog. It... I can see how it would benefit, certainly. But I'm not sure how I'd feel about eating a dog. Logically it may make sense, but those darned emotions get in the way. You say, eat a dog, and I of course think of Dante stuck on the table with an apple in his mouth like a suckling pig.
I'd say everyone knows about the terrible conditions in which chickens are raised, but maybe you don't. Chickens are kept in cages so small they are often held aloft. (Supposedly, broilers have slightly larger cages.) They are starved and are very famished--what I did not know was what happens to male chicks born to layers. Obviously, male chicks can't lay eggs. They're useless. What I didn't know is what happened to those chicks--they are tossed into what is basically a wood chipper. Or they're tossed into plastic containers, left to trample each other and eventually suffocate. Good God. Besides this, chickens and turkeys genes have been tampered with so they produce the most meat--their legs can't support them, they're too fat to fly... Often they suffer from muscle and bone injuries because of said defects. In Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood there is a food factory that created ChickieNobs. Basically, masses of chicken flesh hanging off feeding tubes that resemble light bulbs. They're meant to harvest chicken breast without wasting a whole animal, and cannot feel pain fear or anything and can't move or do anything unrelated to digesting food. Since they cannot feel pain, though, is this acting really cruel? When I read that book, I was quite disturbed by the ChickieNobs--but after reading Eating Animals, I kind of wonder if that way wouldn't somehow be the more humane way? That's a scary question. The fact that that question even has to be asked is scary.
Chapter one in part "Hiding/Seeking" is called "I'm Not the Kind of Person Who Finds Himself on a Stranger's Farm in the Middle of the Night". Hilarious title. But beside that, Foer, in that section, goes with an animal activist called 'C' to a turkey farm. 'C' gives him a run-down of what to expect when getting into these farms in the middle of the night--hiking fences, sometimes avoiding dogs... and sometimes avoiding bulls which are allowed to roam freely in fields to "impale snooping vegetarians". Foer, more than a little scared about this, and asks what should be done in case one should be found. 'C's' response: "'Stand very still,' C advised. 'I don't think they see stationary objects.'" Notice that think in there. You know what other animals scientists thought couldn't see stationary objects? Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know what happened to Repton, the guy who thought that? He ended up as dinner. Oh man, forget reading Mansfield Park. I'm rereading The Lost World. And rewatching the movie. Oooh. Dinosaurs are awesome! Wait--what was I talking about?
"A farmer doesn't lock his doors because he's afraid his animals will escape. (Turkeys can't turn doorknobs.)" Yeah, well I can think of some ancestors to the turkeys that can open doors... CLEVER GIRLS!!! Man. Glad they devolved, or we'd be in quite a spot of trouble; right, Ian Malcolm?
What Foer is referring to is the fact that the doors to the barn holding the turkeys are locked. He's listing all the reasons why they don't need to be locked--basically, there's no reason for them to be locked. To him, "...nothing will unsettle me more than the locked doors. Nothing will better capture the whole sad business of factory farming. And nothing will more strongly convince me to write this book." The chicks are disturbing. Even just described--well, my imagination did the work of providing an image of these poor creatures. It was an image I'd rather not see personally. Bad enough in my head. At first glimpse, the chicks look fine. Cute enough to handle. Baby chicks! Come on. But as he looks closer he begins to notice some are "blood-matted", "covered in sores", "have red spots on the tops of their heads", "deformed", and "there are few places to look without seeing at least one [dead chick]." He approaches C who is "kneeling over something". The something is a baby chick with eyes that are crusted over, that's covered in scabs and bald spots, and on its side. C slits its throat quickly and painlessly--it was too far gone to be salvaged. I was quite upset by this--not her putting it out of its misery, of course--but it being in that misery in the first place. For those who would be disgusted by her killing of the animal, regardless of it being a mercy killing, she defends herself as such: "...that chick was too sick to be moved. And its suffering was too much to leave be. Look, I'm pro-life. I believe in God, and I believe in heaven and hell. But I don't have any reverence for suffering."
The information about most animals--bird wise--can't even walk or support themselves comes from a letter included from Frank Reese, who considers himself the "last poultry farmer". He doesn't consider the factory farm turkeys to be real turkeys because they're genes have been so messed around with. Those birds are all artificially inseminated, they can't fly (turkeys can fly!? I'll be damned! Maybe chickens could fly once, too) and hardly jump or walk, nor can they even handle the elements. He's the only one still raising these 'traditional' turkeys. All of his flock is healthy. People are allowed on premises. No locked doors.
Oh, and the poor pigs. Mother pigs are put in cages so small they can't even turn around. Then bottom of the cages are slotted so their waste kind of... ripens below them. (I didn't get how that part worked, exactly). Then when they have their piglets they are crushed in so tightly they end up stepping on and killing a few piglets. Trying to figure out how to stop this is apparently one of the industry's current biggest goals--as Foer himself points out, this wouldn't happen if the pens were bigger. Among this, piglets are de-teethed so they can't hurt each other when they fight for milk, and are often bathed in their own waste (turkeys and chickens also suffer from this). This brings up the thing I mentioned earlier, about getting sick 99% of the time when I eat pork. Often these creatures are so bathed in filth and so poorly checked over, the meat gets imbibed with the filth on the skin. Ever have a 24-hour flu or stomach bug? More likely than not, according to Foer, it's this filth getting mixed in with the meat that's making you sick, not some form of the flu. It makes you sick until you pass it out of your system.
Just to drive the point home more, Foer compares the factory-farming of pigs with a dog locked in a closet (though he says that's "somewhat generous" an analogy). Of course, even though I don't eat pork, it hit a soft spot... My dog was a rescue dog in exactly that situation. (If I open the boot closet even now, almost five years after we rescued him, he'll walk over and go in). Ehh. And he speaks of pigs' intelligence. They really are damned smart animals. They can be trained to play very very simple videogames, they can recognize their names and come when called or follow on foot, and can open gates with their snouts (earlier, Foer recounts a recounting of a pig farmer's pig who would open her gate, travel a mile or so away to another pig farm, have sex with a male, and walk back and reenter her gate when finished). Going back to Oryx and Crake, this is why I said the guys who decided to grow human neo-cortexes in the pigoons were idiots. Of course, they were even smarter still and more dangerous and more violent. Though if that were to happen--it may be more of a Karmic thing. Yikes.
"'The consumer's couldn't tell the difference between ground pig flesh and human flesh. Of course they couldn't. The difference between human and pig... anatomies are insignificant compared to the similarities--a corpse is a corpse, flesh is flesh.'"
It was disturbing and informative book. Being non-fiction, I don't feel comfortable calling it 'good' or 'bad', but it was interesting. And upsetting.
Marky Mark was doing (continuing) a slide show on symbolism and we got into Christ figures. He had a check list that was "You may be a Christ figure if..." And one of them was they've spent a lot of time alone in the wildreness. He paused and added, "Like Jack Kerouac." Of course my head snapped up because I'm all HEY JACK KEROUAC! and he nodedd at me and I gave him the thumbs up. Haha. I'd say it was fairly awesome... Oh, and I had a dream last night that he became dictator of the school and Big Mikey was his bodyguard and Robby D was his gopher. He (and Emma) figured it wasn't so much a dream it was more of me seeing the future. He was pretty excited to know that yes, undead were involved. I'm staying on his good side.
And Robby D asked me how I was enjoying Ellison's Invisible Man. I gave the you know, ehh cusi-cusi sort of gesture/noise, and he was like "Uh oh, if Angela doesn't like it there's a problem." Which I thought was really cute! We have a problem.
Friday, December 4, 2009
I routinely check closets for Narnia
On to Narnia! Personally, my favorite fantasy series of all time. Harry Potter pales in comparison. We know how I feel about Lord of the Rings. So awesome that I based my farm in Harvest Moon off of Cair Paravel. That translates to: oh my God, Angela, could you go get a life? You're embarrassing the human race again. Anyway--I'll be doing the books in order they're meant to be read, not by how they were published or written. So! First! The Magician's Nephew!
Even though, so far as I know, this has never been made into a movie, it is the first--or intended to be the first--in the series, not The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It chronicles Narnia's birth through the eyes of accidental world travelers, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, along with Digory's nefarious Uncle Andrew and the White Witch. Uncle Andrew sends Polly and Digory into magic lands because he is too cowardly to try his gained magic out himself (this is a little too bothersome to explain) and then they fall into a dark world, where they wake up the White Witch, then just Empress Jadis. Jadis follows them into London, and they try to take her back to Charn (her world) but ends up in the newly-forming world of Narnia.
The world is being formed by a singing lion--Aslan, of course. The one who's supposed to be representational of Jesus? Oh, he totally is. Zero questions about that.
My first actual note comes in almost at the home stretch of the book.... "'All get what they want; they do not always like it.'" / "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it"--Oscar Wilde Oscar and Aslan are on the same page!
Woah, did you like that extreme dearth of notes and comments? It really is good, though. Read it and stop trying to tell me this isn't the first in the storyline, it's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
That book is the second book! I'm going to assume you've seen the movie, but if not, four children are sent to live away from their homes in London during the Blitzkrieg. (I had to write a paper on the blitz in Contemporary lit and mentioned children being sent to the countryside--my teacher wrote next to that line 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. Duh, Marky Mark! [rolls eyes]) They are sent to live with a certain Professor... a Professor Kirke... and while playing one day, Lucy hides in a large wardrobe and finds herself in a winter's forest where she meets a faun. After a while, she returns to the house, and of course, no one believes her but Digory. Edmund discovers the country and meets the White Witch, who appeals to him and his heart becomes twisted. Eventually, all four children make their way into Narnia--and must set about restoring Narnia to what it should be by breaking the White Witch's curse upon the land--she's made it always winter, and never Christmas.
First, CS Lewis wrote a rather touching dedication, which I feel I must include: it's so sweet. "To Lucy Barfield. My dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, CS Lewis." In the final book, Susan doesn't not appear as a friend of Narnia because she no longer believed--and I think it had something to do with the real Lucy's age and how she may have reacted to Narnia as she got older. Well, it's possible, right?
The Professor is unmarried and old in this book, and ever since I first read the books, I always thought it was sad he didn't marry Polly. Of course, Polly didn't exist then, but still.
Um... the notes for this book are sparse as well. Well, I do love the series greatly (save A Horse and His Boy) so it's safe to assume my affection towards this addition to the series as well. Actually, we were cleaning out my garage a week ago, and found a wardrobe. My mom went upstairs to answer the phone--I looked around very cautiously, tip-toed up to the wardrobe, opened it... No. No Narnia. But I'm going to try again on a rainy day. (Hello, my name is Angela, I came through War Drobe from Base Ment. How do you do, Rob Merci--I mean, Mr Tumnus?)
A Horse and His Boy is a pointless addition to the series. I hate it. It's terrible. Even after Marky Mark explained it to me I got to the second-to-last chapter and was like, "This is--What the hell is this?" I can't even properly summarize it for you. It's just blehhhhhhegh. (Like that sound effect?) I was giving it the benefit of the doubt (I usually skip this book--I think of the eight times or more I've read the series I've read this maybe twice--thrice counting this time) but no. No more. I will be skipping it every time after. I HATE IT.
Oh, an interesting note is that CS Lewis always seems to equate apes with villainy, or at least they conveniently show up on the wrong side whenever villainy is afoot. In the second book, apes aid the White Witch in fighting Aslan's side, in this book, a cruel fellow is described as having a face that resembles "an ape" and in the final book, an old ugly ape named Shift basically brings about the end of Narnia.
Prince Caspian is next, which tells of Edmund, Lucy, Susan and Peter's return to Narnia. Narnian time passes at a different rate than Earth time, so several hundred years have passed. In the Narnian future, 'Old Narnia' has been suppressed (that is, dwarfs and unicorns and dryads and Talking Beasts and fauns and such) and men have taken over. Caspian is rightful heir to the throne--but when his aunt has a baby, his uncle plans to have him murdered so his new son can inherit the throne.
The scene where the four siblings come up to Cair Paravel (a castle) after a few hundred years is one of my favorites. Anyone who hasn't read the book will probably be curious when they read it for the first time, but of course I knew. So, it seemed silly while all the children were looking around saying "Oh, this item in the castle is just like Cair Paravel!" or "Oh, we had this is Cair Paravel too!" You dunderheads, it is Cair Paravel! Excuse me whilst I chuckle.
I love Trufflehunter the badger! Not--not just for his name! He's a cool badger too!
Two Talking Beasts' names that would do Dickens proud: Clodsey Shovel (Mole), and Hogglestock the Hedgehog.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is next in the series--in this book, Peter and Susan don't return to Narnia--but Edmund and Lucy do. Along with Edmund and Lucy come a particularly horrid cousin, Eustace Scrubb. CS Lewis, when first introducing Eustace, says he "almost deserved it". He "liked books if they were books of information and had grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools." No comment. But he's greedy and selfish and rude and often teases Lucy and Edmund about Narnia, which he believes is just a silly babyish made-up game. Until, of course, a painting of a boat on the ocean in his room suddenly floods the room and becomes quite clear. (Even then, it takes a while for him to understand he's not in England.) The boat is the Dawn Treader, and Caspian is sailing to see what has become of several lords who were friends of his father who were exiled and to see the end of the world, for their world is flat.
I LOVE REEPICHEEP. I tend to think of the non-human characters as 'background characters', or sort of sidekicks, but still, Reepicheep is my second favorite of this breed. My first is Puddleglum, who will be showing up next book. Reepicheep is a valiant warrior--and a Talking Mouse. I suppose you may know that from Prince Caspian, but too late I just re-told you.
At one point, Lucy finds a magic book and reads a story that is three pages long--Lucy thought it was the most beautiful story she had ever read but as soon as she finished it, she realized she was slowly forgetting it. She tried to turn back, but the book was enchanted and the passed pages stuck together and could not be read. "'Shall I ever be able to read that story again; the one I couldn't remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.' 'Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.'" It is her life--I believe. Her life story and beyond, to when she goes into Aslan's land.
The Silver Chair is, like I've said, the first appearance of Puddleglum. Besides that, it is based off Eustace's next adventure into Narnia along with his friend Jill Pole. The two call for Aslan and appear in Narnia, to discover that--among other things--some eighty years have passed in Narnia times. Caspian is a doddering old man (Eustace is heartbroken to see his dear friend in such a state) and he has no heir. Many years ago his queen was killed by a great serpent--Caspian's son, Prince Rilian, set out secretly to kill the beast and disappeared in the process. Eustace and Jill are asked to search for (and hopefully save) Prince Rilian, accompanied by a Marsh-Wiggle named Puddleglum.
The two children are from the same school, Experiment House--one of the first co-ed schools of its time. This book is FULL of comments on reforming and new-age sort of ideas as this, none of them positive. (He does this a little when speaking about Eustace's parents in The Dawn Treader, when he says the Scrubbs are 'new-age' so Eustace calls them by their first names and they're vegetarians and whatnot. You don't get very positive vibes off any of this.) They're little sideways things, but they make me giggle a little. For example, he doesn't like the fact that the real schools like Experiment House are secular--at one point Eustace and Jill are completely confused by being called a son of Adam and daughter of Eve and he adds, in parenthesis, of course, because religion wasn't taught, or something similar to that. He comments on the fact that the headmaster is female, the school is co-ed, children aren't caned or properly punished (this one I can get behind) and... well, there's more and more. I just love how CS Lewis just slips those grumblegrumblegrumbles in. Aw, you just hate everyone today, don't you, Lewis? Love you, bro! (Big hugs for CS Lewis!)
Puddleglum is like Mr Downer, but there's still something oddly charming about him. For example, if one were to say, oh, today looks like it'll be nice, he'd be likely to answer "I shouldn't be surprised if clouds roll in or it rains later on, though". Or, if he's complimented on the food he makes he says "it would probably disagree with them [Eustace and Jill] horribly." He really is a downer... but I love him! Fun fact: he was supposed to have been based off CS Lewis's gardener, who supposedly had quite this personality. (The example of his attitude was quite similar to the first example I gave of Puddleglum's attitude, for the record.)
The villain in this book is also a witch (who can turn into a giant snake) and brainwashed Caspian's son and treats all of the underlanders as slaves. Though it's often agreed on that the White Witch is the worst villain of the whole series, the witch in this book seems much more threatening to me. Using an enchanted flame (that gives off an enchanted smoke) and by playing a magical instrument and using simple persuasion she can erase memories and create new ones plus she can turn into a snake. The white witch was all "Always winter and never Christmas!" I'm less scared of that. I'll just celebrate Hanukkah or something.
I think this book is my second favorite in the series mainly because of Puddleglum. The bottom of the world weirds me out a little too much to say it's number one, though. It's creepy in the final book as well, which is...
The Last Battle. I hope it's obvious that this is the final book of Narnia; Narnia's end. Shift, a villainous ape has tricked Narnians into thinking Aslan has returned to his land. Pretending he is Aslan's right-hand man, he starts ordering the creatures to kill trees and be sold as slaves and so on, saying it's what Aslan has ordered. Even worse, he strikes up deals with the Calormenes, men generally considered to be wicked and villainous. They, privy to Shift's scam, don't believe a word of Aslan and so summon their own false god by accident, Tash. At this point, basically everything goes to hell (even after the real Aslan has shown up) and the Last Judgment pretty much happens, only with the Talking Beasts. So... that's cool, I guess.
One thing I love about this book that instead of just a few children coming to Narnia, all the children but Susan come back--and Digory and Polly are young again. Not children, but I wouldn't say any older than 30. (Susan doesn't come back because she no longer believes--all she cares for are boys, and being an adult, and so on. When her siblings try to speak to her about Narnia, she waves it off as silly children's games.) But I get all excited. AND THEN DIGORY AND POLLY GOT MARRIED BECAUSE THERE WAS NO REASON WHY THEY WEREN'T BEFORE AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
"'If she was a boy she'd have to be knighted, wouldn't she, Sire?' 'If she was a boy,' said Tirian, 'she'd be whipped for disobeying orders.'" Wow, you're kind of a jerk. The day was just kind of saved, Tirian.
"'I thought it was the beginning of a railway accident. So I was jolly glad to find ourselves here instead.'" Foreshadowing... Can you say foreshadowing... (SPOILER!!! It was a train accident. It turns out it is an accident and somehow all the children are dead and they go into Aslan's Country, uh duh heaven. More on this later, look for the asterisk!)
"'It seems then,' said Tirian, smiling to himself, 'that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from the outside are two different places.' 'Yes,' said the Lord Digory. 'Its inside is bigger than its outside.'" Aslan=the Doctor? Stable=the TARDIS? It's starting to look that way...
Here's a big paragraph of spoilers so get ready: 1. The Last Judgment happens in Narnia with Aslan opening a gateway to his world--Talking Beasts look upon him and if they look at him with hate, they become regular beasts and die with Narnia. If they look upon him with still love in their eyes and hearts, they go into what is basically heaven. Dragons and such destroy what's left of Narnia and then die themselves--and Narnia is but a 'shadow-land' to Aslan's Country, just like London and anywhere else that's not Aslan's Country is. As for the children being dead, * it turns out they were really dead and are also drawn into Aslan's country: "All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is greater than the one before." Wow, someone's a little colon happy, CS Lewis! But yeah, they end up going to heaven, which is a rather satisfying ending, I'd say. It made me sad when I was a kid that Narnia was over, but now I'm quite happy with the ending. I can dig it.
Like I said, I LOVE this series. I can't even attempt to be objective. READ THIS SERIES TO YOUR CHILDREN. Just do it! (Will I get sued for saying that?) And if you haven't read it yet... Well. You know what you must do!
I found a wardrobe in my garage recently. No signs of Narnia yet, but heck if that will stop me from trying. You have no idea how excited I got when I found it... Well... I bet you can nary a guess...
Oh, and fun fact! CS Lewis apparently got quite uncomfortable around children. And, this entry took me six days to write--but I noticed during the course of those days there happened to be two Narnia comics on differing webcomics. Do I dare declare... destiny? Randall Munroe had a more modern take on Lucy's reaction to finding Narnia, and Duke AKA Ben Kahan who just had his eternally high take on Larxene think she was in Narnia. Good enough for me!
Even though, so far as I know, this has never been made into a movie, it is the first--or intended to be the first--in the series, not The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It chronicles Narnia's birth through the eyes of accidental world travelers, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, along with Digory's nefarious Uncle Andrew and the White Witch. Uncle Andrew sends Polly and Digory into magic lands because he is too cowardly to try his gained magic out himself (this is a little too bothersome to explain) and then they fall into a dark world, where they wake up the White Witch, then just Empress Jadis. Jadis follows them into London, and they try to take her back to Charn (her world) but ends up in the newly-forming world of Narnia.
The world is being formed by a singing lion--Aslan, of course. The one who's supposed to be representational of Jesus? Oh, he totally is. Zero questions about that.
My first actual note comes in almost at the home stretch of the book.... "'All get what they want; they do not always like it.'" / "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it"--Oscar Wilde Oscar and Aslan are on the same page!
Woah, did you like that extreme dearth of notes and comments? It really is good, though. Read it and stop trying to tell me this isn't the first in the storyline, it's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
That book is the second book! I'm going to assume you've seen the movie, but if not, four children are sent to live away from their homes in London during the Blitzkrieg. (I had to write a paper on the blitz in Contemporary lit and mentioned children being sent to the countryside--my teacher wrote next to that line 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. Duh, Marky Mark! [rolls eyes]) They are sent to live with a certain Professor... a Professor Kirke... and while playing one day, Lucy hides in a large wardrobe and finds herself in a winter's forest where she meets a faun. After a while, she returns to the house, and of course, no one believes her but Digory. Edmund discovers the country and meets the White Witch, who appeals to him and his heart becomes twisted. Eventually, all four children make their way into Narnia--and must set about restoring Narnia to what it should be by breaking the White Witch's curse upon the land--she's made it always winter, and never Christmas.
First, CS Lewis wrote a rather touching dedication, which I feel I must include: it's so sweet. "To Lucy Barfield. My dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, CS Lewis." In the final book, Susan doesn't not appear as a friend of Narnia because she no longer believed--and I think it had something to do with the real Lucy's age and how she may have reacted to Narnia as she got older. Well, it's possible, right?
The Professor is unmarried and old in this book, and ever since I first read the books, I always thought it was sad he didn't marry Polly. Of course, Polly didn't exist then, but still.
Um... the notes for this book are sparse as well. Well, I do love the series greatly (save A Horse and His Boy) so it's safe to assume my affection towards this addition to the series as well. Actually, we were cleaning out my garage a week ago, and found a wardrobe. My mom went upstairs to answer the phone--I looked around very cautiously, tip-toed up to the wardrobe, opened it... No. No Narnia. But I'm going to try again on a rainy day. (Hello, my name is Angela, I came through War Drobe from Base Ment. How do you do, Rob Merci--I mean, Mr Tumnus?)
A Horse and His Boy is a pointless addition to the series. I hate it. It's terrible. Even after Marky Mark explained it to me I got to the second-to-last chapter and was like, "This is--What the hell is this?" I can't even properly summarize it for you. It's just blehhhhhhegh. (Like that sound effect?) I was giving it the benefit of the doubt (I usually skip this book--I think of the eight times or more I've read the series I've read this maybe twice--thrice counting this time) but no. No more. I will be skipping it every time after. I HATE IT.
Oh, an interesting note is that CS Lewis always seems to equate apes with villainy, or at least they conveniently show up on the wrong side whenever villainy is afoot. In the second book, apes aid the White Witch in fighting Aslan's side, in this book, a cruel fellow is described as having a face that resembles "an ape" and in the final book, an old ugly ape named Shift basically brings about the end of Narnia.
Prince Caspian is next, which tells of Edmund, Lucy, Susan and Peter's return to Narnia. Narnian time passes at a different rate than Earth time, so several hundred years have passed. In the Narnian future, 'Old Narnia' has been suppressed (that is, dwarfs and unicorns and dryads and Talking Beasts and fauns and such) and men have taken over. Caspian is rightful heir to the throne--but when his aunt has a baby, his uncle plans to have him murdered so his new son can inherit the throne.
The scene where the four siblings come up to Cair Paravel (a castle) after a few hundred years is one of my favorites. Anyone who hasn't read the book will probably be curious when they read it for the first time, but of course I knew. So, it seemed silly while all the children were looking around saying "Oh, this item in the castle is just like Cair Paravel!" or "Oh, we had this is Cair Paravel too!" You dunderheads, it is Cair Paravel! Excuse me whilst I chuckle.
I love Trufflehunter the badger! Not--not just for his name! He's a cool badger too!
Two Talking Beasts' names that would do Dickens proud: Clodsey Shovel (Mole), and Hogglestock the Hedgehog.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is next in the series--in this book, Peter and Susan don't return to Narnia--but Edmund and Lucy do. Along with Edmund and Lucy come a particularly horrid cousin, Eustace Scrubb. CS Lewis, when first introducing Eustace, says he "almost deserved it". He "liked books if they were books of information and had grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools." No comment. But he's greedy and selfish and rude and often teases Lucy and Edmund about Narnia, which he believes is just a silly babyish made-up game. Until, of course, a painting of a boat on the ocean in his room suddenly floods the room and becomes quite clear. (Even then, it takes a while for him to understand he's not in England.) The boat is the Dawn Treader, and Caspian is sailing to see what has become of several lords who were friends of his father who were exiled and to see the end of the world, for their world is flat.
I LOVE REEPICHEEP. I tend to think of the non-human characters as 'background characters', or sort of sidekicks, but still, Reepicheep is my second favorite of this breed. My first is Puddleglum, who will be showing up next book. Reepicheep is a valiant warrior--and a Talking Mouse. I suppose you may know that from Prince Caspian, but too late I just re-told you.
At one point, Lucy finds a magic book and reads a story that is three pages long--Lucy thought it was the most beautiful story she had ever read but as soon as she finished it, she realized she was slowly forgetting it. She tried to turn back, but the book was enchanted and the passed pages stuck together and could not be read. "'Shall I ever be able to read that story again; the one I couldn't remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.' 'Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.'" It is her life--I believe. Her life story and beyond, to when she goes into Aslan's land.
The Silver Chair is, like I've said, the first appearance of Puddleglum. Besides that, it is based off Eustace's next adventure into Narnia along with his friend Jill Pole. The two call for Aslan and appear in Narnia, to discover that--among other things--some eighty years have passed in Narnia times. Caspian is a doddering old man (Eustace is heartbroken to see his dear friend in such a state) and he has no heir. Many years ago his queen was killed by a great serpent--Caspian's son, Prince Rilian, set out secretly to kill the beast and disappeared in the process. Eustace and Jill are asked to search for (and hopefully save) Prince Rilian, accompanied by a Marsh-Wiggle named Puddleglum.
The two children are from the same school, Experiment House--one of the first co-ed schools of its time. This book is FULL of comments on reforming and new-age sort of ideas as this, none of them positive. (He does this a little when speaking about Eustace's parents in The Dawn Treader, when he says the Scrubbs are 'new-age' so Eustace calls them by their first names and they're vegetarians and whatnot. You don't get very positive vibes off any of this.) They're little sideways things, but they make me giggle a little. For example, he doesn't like the fact that the real schools like Experiment House are secular--at one point Eustace and Jill are completely confused by being called a son of Adam and daughter of Eve and he adds, in parenthesis, of course, because religion wasn't taught, or something similar to that. He comments on the fact that the headmaster is female, the school is co-ed, children aren't caned or properly punished (this one I can get behind) and... well, there's more and more. I just love how CS Lewis just slips those grumblegrumblegrumbles in. Aw, you just hate everyone today, don't you, Lewis? Love you, bro! (Big hugs for CS Lewis!)
Puddleglum is like Mr Downer, but there's still something oddly charming about him. For example, if one were to say, oh, today looks like it'll be nice, he'd be likely to answer "I shouldn't be surprised if clouds roll in or it rains later on, though". Or, if he's complimented on the food he makes he says "it would probably disagree with them [Eustace and Jill] horribly." He really is a downer... but I love him! Fun fact: he was supposed to have been based off CS Lewis's gardener, who supposedly had quite this personality. (The example of his attitude was quite similar to the first example I gave of Puddleglum's attitude, for the record.)
The villain in this book is also a witch (who can turn into a giant snake) and brainwashed Caspian's son and treats all of the underlanders as slaves. Though it's often agreed on that the White Witch is the worst villain of the whole series, the witch in this book seems much more threatening to me. Using an enchanted flame (that gives off an enchanted smoke) and by playing a magical instrument and using simple persuasion she can erase memories and create new ones plus she can turn into a snake. The white witch was all "Always winter and never Christmas!" I'm less scared of that. I'll just celebrate Hanukkah or something.
I think this book is my second favorite in the series mainly because of Puddleglum. The bottom of the world weirds me out a little too much to say it's number one, though. It's creepy in the final book as well, which is...
The Last Battle. I hope it's obvious that this is the final book of Narnia; Narnia's end. Shift, a villainous ape has tricked Narnians into thinking Aslan has returned to his land. Pretending he is Aslan's right-hand man, he starts ordering the creatures to kill trees and be sold as slaves and so on, saying it's what Aslan has ordered. Even worse, he strikes up deals with the Calormenes, men generally considered to be wicked and villainous. They, privy to Shift's scam, don't believe a word of Aslan and so summon their own false god by accident, Tash. At this point, basically everything goes to hell (even after the real Aslan has shown up) and the Last Judgment pretty much happens, only with the Talking Beasts. So... that's cool, I guess.
One thing I love about this book that instead of just a few children coming to Narnia, all the children but Susan come back--and Digory and Polly are young again. Not children, but I wouldn't say any older than 30. (Susan doesn't come back because she no longer believes--all she cares for are boys, and being an adult, and so on. When her siblings try to speak to her about Narnia, she waves it off as silly children's games.) But I get all excited. AND THEN DIGORY AND POLLY GOT MARRIED BECAUSE THERE WAS NO REASON WHY THEY WEREN'T BEFORE AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
"'If she was a boy she'd have to be knighted, wouldn't she, Sire?' 'If she was a boy,' said Tirian, 'she'd be whipped for disobeying orders.'" Wow, you're kind of a jerk. The day was just kind of saved, Tirian.
"'I thought it was the beginning of a railway accident. So I was jolly glad to find ourselves here instead.'" Foreshadowing... Can you say foreshadowing... (SPOILER!!! It was a train accident. It turns out it is an accident and somehow all the children are dead and they go into Aslan's Country, uh duh heaven. More on this later, look for the asterisk!)
"'It seems then,' said Tirian, smiling to himself, 'that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from the outside are two different places.' 'Yes,' said the Lord Digory. 'Its inside is bigger than its outside.'" Aslan=the Doctor? Stable=the TARDIS? It's starting to look that way...
Here's a big paragraph of spoilers so get ready: 1. The Last Judgment happens in Narnia with Aslan opening a gateway to his world--Talking Beasts look upon him and if they look at him with hate, they become regular beasts and die with Narnia. If they look upon him with still love in their eyes and hearts, they go into what is basically heaven. Dragons and such destroy what's left of Narnia and then die themselves--and Narnia is but a 'shadow-land' to Aslan's Country, just like London and anywhere else that's not Aslan's Country is. As for the children being dead, * it turns out they were really dead and are also drawn into Aslan's country: "All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is greater than the one before." Wow, someone's a little colon happy, CS Lewis! But yeah, they end up going to heaven, which is a rather satisfying ending, I'd say. It made me sad when I was a kid that Narnia was over, but now I'm quite happy with the ending. I can dig it.
Like I said, I LOVE this series. I can't even attempt to be objective. READ THIS SERIES TO YOUR CHILDREN. Just do it! (Will I get sued for saying that?) And if you haven't read it yet... Well. You know what you must do!
I found a wardrobe in my garage recently. No signs of Narnia yet, but heck if that will stop me from trying. You have no idea how excited I got when I found it... Well... I bet you can nary a guess...
Oh, and fun fact! CS Lewis apparently got quite uncomfortable around children. And, this entry took me six days to write--but I noticed during the course of those days there happened to be two Narnia comics on differing webcomics. Do I dare declare... destiny? Randall Munroe had a more modern take on Lucy's reaction to finding Narnia, and Duke AKA Ben Kahan who just had his eternally high take on Larxene think she was in Narnia. Good enough for me!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
You know November has come when it's gone away
Good news, I'm back sooner than expected! Also good news, I officially have finished the entire Chronicles of Narnia (You'll be hearing more on this later, promise!) which means I have read the entire series (plus the included excerpts from the official guide) in eight days! Go me! I do love my Narnia, indeed. I really want the official guide now, too... Oh, and like my copy of War and Peace, it's absolutely gorgeous: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/imageviewer.asp?ean=9781435117150 Feast your eyes. Also bound and leather and has the golden pages... it's so pretty! And Rob, uh, I mean, Mr Tumnus is on the cover, which is cool. And the lantern, of course. So shiny! And, unlike my copy of War and Peace, it actually fits comfortably in my 'classics' shelf so it can look all nice and cool up there. Yayyy. Anyway, now to depress you!
Today's book is Nicholas and Alexandria by Robert K Massie. Obviously, Czar Nicholas II and his wife. A million years ago (as in, my first or second post) I wrote about Edvard Munch's (I remember his first name was Edvard, but I'm not as sure on the 'Munch' part) book on the Russian Revolution. Compared to Massie's version? It was a pathetic sprawling. His book was, as I've complained about already, poorly written. Extremely poorly written. Edvard also had an annoying habit of bringing of the fact that he was one of a select view who could actually view particular documents and pictures regarding the revolution and Romanovs. After the third or fourth time, you kind of get an urge to punt him out a window, you know? And he overlooked important details (Alexandria's confinement to a wheelchair and worsening health, for example) and the exact details of Rasputin's death. He often skipped around as well, didn't have quite a clear head for facts, gave no historical background.... What I'm trying to say is, Edvard, I'm disappointed in you. Robby Massie? Good job! Hang out sometime?
I think aside from that there's not much to say beforehand. I think my love of Russian history has quite preceded this post (my love of Russian history led me to reading War and Peace before my teacher in MENSA has, hahaha!) and my interest in the revolution as well so cool let's go, huh? (I'm not giving you much of a background here, other than Czar Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia and the actual history of it is nothing like the animated film Anastasia. In fact, I did the math out [kind of] and discovered that if you were to make a drinking game out of it and drank for every one historical inaccuracy, you'd be OD'd about halfway through. NO, I did not try, and I disclaim any idiots who do decide to try it. IT WILL KILL YOU.)
In the very introduction to the book, Czar Nicholas II is praised--or honored--highly. Throughout the whole book he is. Very often the sentiment expressed appears to be, maybe he was not cut out for ruling, but he was a kind and fair and just man all the same. He was good to his family and friends and was a gentle fellow. All anecdotes about him seem to reflect this; him as a kind grandfatherly man who wouldn't willingly harm anyone. He was even kind and civil to those who had him in confinement, even when they were cruel to him. He reminds me of (though I suppose this means little to those who haven't read the book) the father in Baby by Patricia MacLachlan. A kind of melancholy but sweet person all the same. Kind and sad.
My first note is on a page giving a quick background of Nicholas II's grandfather and father's lives. It mentions the Empress Marie (Anastasia's grandmother; Nicholas II's mother. I feel the need to refer to her as Anastasia's grandmother mainly because it's more likely a reader will be familiar with the movie. She was the old lady who gives Anastasia the locket in the beginning) and her love for the winter palace--often I will be making notes in reference to the animated film--which is the palace the film starts out in. I looked it up and everything. Man, I love that movie. Hold on, I'm going to run upstairs and grab that soundtrack.
One bit I noted was when Nicholas II and Alexandra visited France. It was shortly after their daughter, Duchess Olga, had been born. I'm going to say she was a little under a year at the time, nine or ten months, but I could be lying a little. Anyway, Alexandra was put up in Versailles to sleep in Marie Antoinette's room. Alexandra was also generally disliked by the Russian people, called "that German woman". It sounds like a certain someone whose name I just typed... okay, I know. It's a little ridiculous to go back and be like "Oh she died because there were bad omens!" and it's easier to notice these similarities in retrospect. But it's still enough to make you blink a little. I'm not saying bad juju, but I'mtotallytyping'badjuju'onthisoneIfeelobligedto. (Marie Antoinette was the famous queen who was beheaded in the French Revolution, also strongly disliked by her new people. The French referred to her similarly as Alexandra was by the Russians--but it was "That Austrian woman" instead.)
A cousin--and worm of a man--of the Czar's was the current Kaiser, William. I call him a worm because he had several chances to help Nicholas out in general, and also he had several more chances to save the Romanovs from their fate, which he never took. The other chances to help were military chances, in which he misled and misinformed and purposely weakened Nicholas, or flat-out spurned him. Because of these discrepancies, when Nicholas in captivity was told the Kaiser had had a chance to save him and could possibly still he said he'd rather die than be saved. Yeah, the Kaiser seemed like (and was) the older cousin or sibling who is constantly picking on the youngens and leading them to despair. Unlike in Rugrats, however, it didn't turn out okay in the end, though as far as I'm concerned, the Kaiser got his just deserts when he was exiled. To so purposely whittle away at his cousin's life and ending in his murder and the murder of five children--Of course, I suppose we must keep this in perspective with the fact that Hitler took over after the Kaiser.
Anastasia was bratty as well. Massie never goes out and says if Anastasia really threw the cook in the brook, but she did behave when her father gave "that look" (she would climb trees and refuse to climb back down until her father directly ordered her to) and when saluting the cannon on the yacht at sunset she would make faces and run into corners. She also was apparently quite a tomboy. Apparently Alexei (the youngest child, male, would-be heir to the throne) also had this wild personality; of course, he could not act quite as madly as his sister--he had hemophilia. Basically, it means your blood will not clot as usual and can bleed unchecked. Massie goes into gory detail about this, being that his own son was born with hemophilia (his research led him to researching the Czarevich--Alexei, that is, Czarevich basically means 'prince'--and beyond that, how the whole family dealt with his disease, and eventually, the whole tail end of the Romanov house rule) so he is well-versed in what it does and goes in detail often explaining how it can afflict the victim. Honestly, it makes my stomach lurch. And as I speak of Alexei, one thing that did bother me about the novel is that Massie anglicized names--no biggie, but it bothered me a little. Alexei is referred to as 'Alex' or 'Alexis' and Grigori Rasputin as 'Gregory' which sounds about ten times less cool. I'm just being honest, okay?
In general, though, the girls were very much common and not stuck up because of their status. It is said they were not rude to maids and often worked in cleaning their rooms and making beds alongside them. The girls also were not rude and treated the maids and servants as equals. A Baroness once referred to Tatiana as "Imperial Highness" and she got most agitated and embarrassed and upbraided the Baroness for speaking so grandly of her. The girls were quite embarrassed when treated like the royalty they were. What I'm trying to say is, they weren't bad people. And--Olga once met a poor child on crutches, too poor to afford doctor's bills. She started taking money from her monthly allowance to pay those bills. I don't care of it looks biased. These were good people.
Alexei--moreover his hemophilia--is often blamed as the root of the Romanov problems. (Along with the changing times and ideas and Nicholas being uncut-out for rule.) Had he not been afflicted with hemophilia, Rasputin most likely would have never entered the picture, and Alexandra would not have only been a lot more stable, she would not have been a zealot and a puppet to Rasputin. Of course, the constant threat on Alexei's health and his sadness also weighed heavily on his parents' minds. (Rasputin had 'mystical powers' which he used several times to cure Alexei or miraculously stop his bleeding. Reports of the healing powers are vague and rare. The powers are up to speculation, Edvard bent more towards mystical powers, Massie attempts to give scientific explanations. I'd do more research on Rasputin himself, but so far the only book on him I've found was a book by Edvard. Not again. As for using Alexandra like a puppet--he cared not for his own power, but put random people in office. Alexandra automatically accepted them because her "dear Friend" recommended them, and Nicholas, not wanting to start a row with his wife, would put them in the position of power with a sigh. This made the upper class quite mad, understandably. In the end, she was worshiping him, and after his assassination at Yusupov's hands, she prayed to icons with his visage, or pictures of him, I can't remember exactly which.) The point I'm trying to make is that Russians did not know. The Czar and his wife didn't want the heir to the throne to appear weak and dishearten the people; or for a successor wanting to claim the throne by force to turn up, upon learning the heir was "an invalid living under the constant shadow of death". (The grand duchesses could not be heirs because of a law passed after I believe Catherine the Great's death--her son hated her and said women could no longer rule. I wondered why Nicholas II didn't just change it myself, to be honest.) Not saying anything about Alexei's illness is retroactively believed to have been a bad move--it certainly would have garnered sympathy from the Russian people.
Ah, yes--and when people spoke up against Rasputin or criticized him in court or were of higher order... Alexandra would have them dismissed. Nicholas again, would avoid a row and dismiss them. So Rasputin wasn't helping and Nicholas's nature towards his wife wasn't either.
There my notes end, but in conclusion, I must share my own opinion on the matter: I can't believe anyone could do this. Send them into exile if you must, even kill Nicholas and Alexandra (political adversaries and all), but it is the killing of the children that disturbs me. I can't imagine who would murder five defenseless children and in such a brutal manner (Alexei was kicked in the head and stabbed with bayonets, along with being shot). I can't imagine anyone who could harden their heart that much and do such a thing with a clear conscious. Nicholas and his wife were scapegoats, so I can see them being assassinated but my heart is not stone for them either. It's just, they were all innocent, and the daughters and son still children, really--No, I can't go on. I find it hard to believe people are really inherently good after learning in detail these events. To do something like this... I don't know. It upsets me incredibly, maybe more than it should. It just doesn't seem right. It isn't right. It was never and will never be right.
*Apparently in 1996 Massie followed up this book with another book on the Romanovs. God willing, I'll be able to find it without too much trouble.
Today's book is Nicholas and Alexandria by Robert K Massie. Obviously, Czar Nicholas II and his wife. A million years ago (as in, my first or second post) I wrote about Edvard Munch's (I remember his first name was Edvard, but I'm not as sure on the 'Munch' part) book on the Russian Revolution. Compared to Massie's version? It was a pathetic sprawling. His book was, as I've complained about already, poorly written. Extremely poorly written. Edvard also had an annoying habit of bringing of the fact that he was one of a select view who could actually view particular documents and pictures regarding the revolution and Romanovs. After the third or fourth time, you kind of get an urge to punt him out a window, you know? And he overlooked important details (Alexandria's confinement to a wheelchair and worsening health, for example) and the exact details of Rasputin's death. He often skipped around as well, didn't have quite a clear head for facts, gave no historical background.... What I'm trying to say is, Edvard, I'm disappointed in you. Robby Massie? Good job! Hang out sometime?
I think aside from that there's not much to say beforehand. I think my love of Russian history has quite preceded this post (my love of Russian history led me to reading War and Peace before my teacher in MENSA has, hahaha!) and my interest in the revolution as well so cool let's go, huh? (I'm not giving you much of a background here, other than Czar Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia and the actual history of it is nothing like the animated film Anastasia. In fact, I did the math out [kind of] and discovered that if you were to make a drinking game out of it and drank for every one historical inaccuracy, you'd be OD'd about halfway through. NO, I did not try, and I disclaim any idiots who do decide to try it. IT WILL KILL YOU.)
In the very introduction to the book, Czar Nicholas II is praised--or honored--highly. Throughout the whole book he is. Very often the sentiment expressed appears to be, maybe he was not cut out for ruling, but he was a kind and fair and just man all the same. He was good to his family and friends and was a gentle fellow. All anecdotes about him seem to reflect this; him as a kind grandfatherly man who wouldn't willingly harm anyone. He was even kind and civil to those who had him in confinement, even when they were cruel to him. He reminds me of (though I suppose this means little to those who haven't read the book) the father in Baby by Patricia MacLachlan. A kind of melancholy but sweet person all the same. Kind and sad.
My first note is on a page giving a quick background of Nicholas II's grandfather and father's lives. It mentions the Empress Marie (Anastasia's grandmother; Nicholas II's mother. I feel the need to refer to her as Anastasia's grandmother mainly because it's more likely a reader will be familiar with the movie. She was the old lady who gives Anastasia the locket in the beginning) and her love for the winter palace--often I will be making notes in reference to the animated film--which is the palace the film starts out in. I looked it up and everything. Man, I love that movie. Hold on, I'm going to run upstairs and grab that soundtrack.
One bit I noted was when Nicholas II and Alexandra visited France. It was shortly after their daughter, Duchess Olga, had been born. I'm going to say she was a little under a year at the time, nine or ten months, but I could be lying a little. Anyway, Alexandra was put up in Versailles to sleep in Marie Antoinette's room. Alexandra was also generally disliked by the Russian people, called "that German woman". It sounds like a certain someone whose name I just typed... okay, I know. It's a little ridiculous to go back and be like "Oh she died because there were bad omens!" and it's easier to notice these similarities in retrospect. But it's still enough to make you blink a little. I'm not saying bad juju, but I'mtotallytyping'badjuju'onthisoneIfeelobligedto. (Marie Antoinette was the famous queen who was beheaded in the French Revolution, also strongly disliked by her new people. The French referred to her similarly as Alexandra was by the Russians--but it was "That Austrian woman" instead.)
A cousin--and worm of a man--of the Czar's was the current Kaiser, William. I call him a worm because he had several chances to help Nicholas out in general, and also he had several more chances to save the Romanovs from their fate, which he never took. The other chances to help were military chances, in which he misled and misinformed and purposely weakened Nicholas, or flat-out spurned him. Because of these discrepancies, when Nicholas in captivity was told the Kaiser had had a chance to save him and could possibly still he said he'd rather die than be saved. Yeah, the Kaiser seemed like (and was) the older cousin or sibling who is constantly picking on the youngens and leading them to despair. Unlike in Rugrats, however, it didn't turn out okay in the end, though as far as I'm concerned, the Kaiser got his just deserts when he was exiled. To so purposely whittle away at his cousin's life and ending in his murder and the murder of five children--Of course, I suppose we must keep this in perspective with the fact that Hitler took over after the Kaiser.
Anastasia was bratty as well. Massie never goes out and says if Anastasia really threw the cook in the brook, but she did behave when her father gave "that look" (she would climb trees and refuse to climb back down until her father directly ordered her to) and when saluting the cannon on the yacht at sunset she would make faces and run into corners. She also was apparently quite a tomboy. Apparently Alexei (the youngest child, male, would-be heir to the throne) also had this wild personality; of course, he could not act quite as madly as his sister--he had hemophilia. Basically, it means your blood will not clot as usual and can bleed unchecked. Massie goes into gory detail about this, being that his own son was born with hemophilia (his research led him to researching the Czarevich--Alexei, that is, Czarevich basically means 'prince'--and beyond that, how the whole family dealt with his disease, and eventually, the whole tail end of the Romanov house rule) so he is well-versed in what it does and goes in detail often explaining how it can afflict the victim. Honestly, it makes my stomach lurch. And as I speak of Alexei, one thing that did bother me about the novel is that Massie anglicized names--no biggie, but it bothered me a little. Alexei is referred to as 'Alex' or 'Alexis' and Grigori Rasputin as 'Gregory' which sounds about ten times less cool. I'm just being honest, okay?
In general, though, the girls were very much common and not stuck up because of their status. It is said they were not rude to maids and often worked in cleaning their rooms and making beds alongside them. The girls also were not rude and treated the maids and servants as equals. A Baroness once referred to Tatiana as "Imperial Highness" and she got most agitated and embarrassed and upbraided the Baroness for speaking so grandly of her. The girls were quite embarrassed when treated like the royalty they were. What I'm trying to say is, they weren't bad people. And--Olga once met a poor child on crutches, too poor to afford doctor's bills. She started taking money from her monthly allowance to pay those bills. I don't care of it looks biased. These were good people.
Alexei--moreover his hemophilia--is often blamed as the root of the Romanov problems. (Along with the changing times and ideas and Nicholas being uncut-out for rule.) Had he not been afflicted with hemophilia, Rasputin most likely would have never entered the picture, and Alexandra would not have only been a lot more stable, she would not have been a zealot and a puppet to Rasputin. Of course, the constant threat on Alexei's health and his sadness also weighed heavily on his parents' minds. (Rasputin had 'mystical powers' which he used several times to cure Alexei or miraculously stop his bleeding. Reports of the healing powers are vague and rare. The powers are up to speculation, Edvard bent more towards mystical powers, Massie attempts to give scientific explanations. I'd do more research on Rasputin himself, but so far the only book on him I've found was a book by Edvard. Not again. As for using Alexandra like a puppet--he cared not for his own power, but put random people in office. Alexandra automatically accepted them because her "dear Friend" recommended them, and Nicholas, not wanting to start a row with his wife, would put them in the position of power with a sigh. This made the upper class quite mad, understandably. In the end, she was worshiping him, and after his assassination at Yusupov's hands, she prayed to icons with his visage, or pictures of him, I can't remember exactly which.) The point I'm trying to make is that Russians did not know. The Czar and his wife didn't want the heir to the throne to appear weak and dishearten the people; or for a successor wanting to claim the throne by force to turn up, upon learning the heir was "an invalid living under the constant shadow of death". (The grand duchesses could not be heirs because of a law passed after I believe Catherine the Great's death--her son hated her and said women could no longer rule. I wondered why Nicholas II didn't just change it myself, to be honest.) Not saying anything about Alexei's illness is retroactively believed to have been a bad move--it certainly would have garnered sympathy from the Russian people.
Ah, yes--and when people spoke up against Rasputin or criticized him in court or were of higher order... Alexandra would have them dismissed. Nicholas again, would avoid a row and dismiss them. So Rasputin wasn't helping and Nicholas's nature towards his wife wasn't either.
"'Poor fellows, they are ready to give their lives for a smile.'"
Ah, and Rasputin was known for his affairs and sexual... uh... forwardness. (Once, he even came on to the Duchess Olga! She promptly left the room.) He became close friends with policeman and so when women reported rape they just wrote it off, even though a few policemen wrote very well-detailed and -documented notes on the situation. Alexandra was blinded by her reverence and refused to believe them, thinking everyone was just out to get her 'Dear Friend'. Even though he exposed himself in public in one case and basically announced he did whatever he felt to Alexandra whenever. (Later on, lewd cartoons were published of them together, and even him with the girls. In one of the places the family was confined to soldiers drew Alexandra and Rasputin together sexually in the bathroom. Whenever they led a girl to the bathroom they'd make her look upon it. Rumors also proliferated of these goings on, and even that Nicholas had been kicked out of the bedroom so Rasputin could get to Alexandra, and even that Rasputin treated Nicholas as a dog before being ordered out.) Rasputin's daughter wrote a book and claimed that this was planned by an actor to imitate him and disgrace her father's 'good name'. It falls apart under close inspection.
Yusupov, as I believe I've said earlier, finally was fed up. With a group of others hankering for Rasputin's ejection he made a plan to murder Rasputin. (Random fun fact: in his castle, when dungeons were poked into, skeletons hanging from chains on the wall could still be seen! Just thought I'd mention it. Fun fact two, he loved Oscar Wilde and was compared to Dorian Gray.) He grew close to Rasputin and invited him over late one night. Rasputin was weary about the invitation at first, but Yusupov mentioned a certain princess would be around--and Rasputin, instantly lustful, accepted without another thought. In preparation for the murder, Yusupov and his men poisoned cakes and wine. One cake supposedly had enough poison to kill "several men instantly". Rasputin ate two and remained unaffected. Rasputin drank wine and remained unaffected. He rushed upstairs where a party was being simulated (where the princess, really in Crimea, was supposed to be) and asked what to do--they suggested shooting him. Tricking Rasputin into turning with his back to Yusupov, Yusupov shot him in the back. A doctor came down, felt for a pulse--none. Rasputin was declared dead... Until a moment later he sprang up and attacked his would-be murderer. Yusupov ran up the stairs and out of the house, Rasputin bounding after him--and was shot by a different man twice, once in the shoulders and once "probably in the head". Yusupov then began to beat Rasputin with a club until he stopped moving. When he stopped moving, they rolled him in a curtain and tossed him in an iced-over lake. Massie writes that Rasputin had officially been killed by drowning, but more recent reports and studies say pneumonia. Either way, that of all things killed him. Then, when he was to be cremated, his tendons tightened and his body sprung up as though sitting up, returning from the grave to enact revenge. Which--in a way--he did. He warned that should be assassinated by someone of royal blood that was related to the Czar the Romanov house would fall in six months to a year's time. I personally think Rasputin had no mystical powers in that, however--HG Wells predicted pretty accurately of trials and tribulations in the 'future' (now) in The Shape of Things to Come and he was no holy man or starets. He simply could see from point A to point B better than most. I think the Romanovs were destined to fall somehow, and Rasputin just saw from point A to point B and knew it.
The murder itself is a curious thing. In Edvard's book, it appeared the royal family knew what was coming. At midnight, the family was awoken along with the doctor and maids and brought in a room to wait "until the automobiles arrived." (They were told they would be moved.) Alexei had been injured some days before and could not stand. According to Edvard, Nicholas asked a chair be brought in for him and his son to sit down (Edvard doesn't even mention that Alexandra could hardly stand and required a chair of her own!) and the soldiers mocked them by saying that they (Nicholas and Alexei) wanted to die sitting down. From Edvard's book, it seems quite clear that they knew they'd be shot. From Massie's book, however, they were completely caught unawares. The ex-Czar, his Empress, and Alexei sat, backs to the wall. The duchesses, the doctor and the maids were lined up behind their chairs. Yurovsky (killer of Nicholas) reentered the room with a shooting squad and said to Nicholas, "'Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and we must now shoot you.'" Then he shot a confused Nicholas in the head, killing him instantly. The entire squad open fired on the family, and everyone, including Anastasia and Alexei, was killed. (Even in a time before DNA testing was available, Massie was sure that she had been killed, regardless of what was believed. Edvard seemed unsure, even though he mentioned the testing. However, one thing he mentioned which Massie did not was an account of a general who, while moving the corpses, was startled when a dog's body fell from a girl's sleeve. Anastasia was known for carrying her small King Charles Cavalier Spaniel in such a manner.) According to reports, however, the two youngest Romanovs did survive the longest of all shot.
Contrary to popular belief, Nicholas II's mother, Marie, never interviewed anyone claiming to be Anastasia or, in one case, Olga. Nicholas II's sister interviewed a few of the women, but apparently remained unsatisfied.
There my notes end, but in conclusion, I must share my own opinion on the matter: I can't believe anyone could do this. Send them into exile if you must, even kill Nicholas and Alexandra (political adversaries and all), but it is the killing of the children that disturbs me. I can't imagine who would murder five defenseless children and in such a brutal manner (Alexei was kicked in the head and stabbed with bayonets, along with being shot). I can't imagine anyone who could harden their heart that much and do such a thing with a clear conscious. Nicholas and his wife were scapegoats, so I can see them being assassinated but my heart is not stone for them either. It's just, they were all innocent, and the daughters and son still children, really--No, I can't go on. I find it hard to believe people are really inherently good after learning in detail these events. To do something like this... I don't know. It upsets me incredibly, maybe more than it should. It just doesn't seem right. It isn't right. It was never and will never be right.
*Apparently in 1996 Massie followed up this book with another book on the Romanovs. God willing, I'll be able to find it without too much trouble.
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