Questions from the reading Bloodchild by Butler, Octavia

1. It seems this story is about child birth and viewing it as a relationship of parasite and host. Did the author go through a situation where she was left to care for a child in early pregnancy?
What does the "Preserve" represent?
The authors talk about making men the host and how they prefer it, does this have something to do with divorce and who takes custody of the children?

2. Is it truly ok to to have child rearing without having some sort of law or different arrangement?
Should people really be put through child birth?

3.Looking at a picture of the author it looks like she has had a hard life and possibly went through a similar situation as her story

A Wild Sheep Chase

This week’s reading was a very different sort of ghost story. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami is an almost mock tale of a detective following the ghost of a man called the Rat Man. Here in which we are also following a ghost sheep which hasn’t been seen for years and has a black star upon its back. Inevitably it turns out to be the spirit of a dictator that has taken over the Rat Man and has jumping bodies this entire time seeking power. The whole book had a feel of transcendence and almost unreal quality to it as if I was expected to suspend my disbelief similar to watching movies.
            First off her ears! Our main detective falls erotically in love with his newly found girlfriend’s ears, and not just a set of them, more like a couple of them. Especially when he was describing his sexual encounters with her ears exposed it was, at least, a bizarre feeling of awkwardness.
            His next encounters were following the trail of an old friend he had met in a bar called The Rat Man. This man, with characteristics of a filthy rat undoubtedly, is sending letters to our hero which turn more and more coded and full of warning as they are being sent. By following this man you can’t help but feel like we are never meant to meet this man and that he is some figment of our hero’s imagination.
            Next we meet up with the sheep man who promptly tells us about the holy grail of our quest; the dark star sheep. This sheep has not been seen in a long time and apparently has driven both the sheep man and the rat man to the brink of insanity. “Eating” their minds and ruling over their bodies this mythical sheep is our shadow in the night.
            Through this entire time we are being loose handedly guided through the book with estrange writing. I feel as if this book itself was set in some other worldly dement ion where they themselves are ghosts. It was a bizarre experience to say the least but one that left tiny chills that I couldn’t quite explain. Did I believe in the Rat Man and the overlord ghost sheep who stole you body and soul or was it so weird that I couldn’t comprehend. Maybe both.

Mmmm I'll have twelve more please

Stranger in a Strange Land

Stranger in a Strange Land is in every sense a hippie inspired book. I’m not saying this with spite or malice but just matter of fact. While following Valentine Michael Smith, an orphaned human raised by Martians, we are taken multiple ideals of controlling ones entire body, starting a church with your own values/ideals, and finally realizing the void between someone who is “different” than one’s self. This last bit I found to be the very core of the novel. Sure everyone is going to have its followers but realizing the major influence of the world, in our case the Catholic Church and Muslim religion, and how you “grok” both their ideals and that of the world is something this book hits a cord on. We see Smith simply except where he is and instantly begin trying to understand by reading, watching and learning everything he can about this planet. He finally contends with the major power of religion on this Earth planet; the Fosterite church who at first accept him in. Once he founders his own values however he is swiftly booted and starts up his own following of the “Church of All Worlds” which is a good display how typically cults in this day and age are treated by more popular churches or alternatively how major religions treat people who don’t “think” the same way.

Featured the Church of All Worlds god

                Growing up in a polish die hard catholic family on one side and being sent through catholic high school (surprisingly by choice) I was exposed to a lot of the stories of the Church. With great interest I set out and am constantly learning different theories about how people view the world around them. The one main aspect I seem to find throughout the board is how people deal with death. It seems like it is the main reason, if not the only one, for a religion. It’s the doctor’s sucker you put in your mouth to feel better about the terrifying ordeal that is life. Depending on how comfortable you feel with yourself is what religion you lean on. Now there are other qualities of religion and moral ordeals that you can hold but frankly morals are not made by religion is it made culturally whether that is heavily influenced by religion or not. Let’s be real again, the bible is the most fictionally read book right alongside the Torah, emphasis on fictional. “Grok” can explain how clouded your looking glass is while you view the world around you. To quote the karma theory,  it is which plane of ignorance you are currently on when experiencing the world, and how much you truly can understand without it.

                That’s what I got from this book at least. Some of it is mostly my deep seeded anger towards people with narrow minds and narrower understanding but to be truthful we know nothing about this world we are on. We write and rewrite our history, science, and countless other books to fit the new discoveries we find. It’s no wonder people flock to stories to make them feel like they have a grasp on this massive chaos of understanding. Hell what do I know? I am only an egg after all.

Bladerunner

Bladerunner is a very unique film in its' own right. When it was released in 1982 it was one of the most technologically advanced films America had seen in that time. They wisely picked Harrison Ford to further their tech-prowess by simply being his don't-give-a-damn-the-world-sucks acting attitude in which he isn't looking around everywhere and ogling at the world around him.

    The concept behind the movie itself is very intriguing. A large corporate company, Tyrell Corp., decides to invest in human replication with a  catchy jingle that just gets investors; “More human than human.” Out of this demon seed spawns a ban on all the replicants from earth with the basis of it being that they are not conducive to the world. With their lifespans only lasting 4 years, time in which Tyrell believed they could not able to produce genuine ideas or experience. Sooner before later some of the replicants come back to Earth requesting more time and contradicting Tyrell's theory. This is a huge issue which can be taken on by today with our vastly growing technology. With such machines as Walice, the jeopardy playing program and even one that tells jokes depending on the reaction of the audience its truly terrifying that we can give judgment to machines. Large wiffs of Terminator always resonate in my brain whenever I hear of these types of machines.

For everyone's benefit in humor I hope they turn out like Schwarzenegger

It seems like Bladerunner is not so off when we need to truly consider if such “inhuman” beings can create or feel true human emotion.
    Throughout the movie there was a strong leit motif of eyes. Everywhere; testing Rachel (the replicant who believes she is human), the consultant who specifies in eye enhancement, multiple shots all involving the eye. What does it mean? Going back there are references in the bible that focus strictly on the eye;
     Matthew 6:22-23 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

It has been traced back further to even Cicero (106-43 B.C.) who is quoted saying, 'Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi' (The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter).

The ability to judge and form ideas are all conclusive to what we call the soul. So will we give our robots souls in the future? Will we need to contend with what we sow? Movies such as the Matrix, Bladerunner, and Battlestar Galactica so far off? Time will only tell.

Please future?

The Magicians

The Magicians House by Oliver Wallice

To say the least the Magicians is a delightful tale of a young wizard and his journey through Wizarding School, Brakebill, and beyond. As we follow our main character, Quentin, he undergoes a form of transformation of character which he blazes down with full force. The time span is roughly 4 years but in that time he goes from being an awkward third wheel, nobody to essentially a weathered king in another dimensional universe… wait what? I wish I was making this up. Even though it is a tad of a stretch I frankly willing to overlook it considering half of this journey is spent in an alcoholic daze which I wish I could say I couldn’t relate to.

Pretty much every night

                I was enthralled by the pure amount of events that happen in the story as well. We start off rather slow through his wizarding school years, mostly experiencing drugs, learning wizarding hoopla and cultivating a long life of alcohol addiction. Then the pace immediately slaps us in the face when the kids are turned into geese and forced to migrate miles to a secret society training grounds where they promptly have kinky fox sex and shove demons into their spines. Yaaay

Are you trying to seduce me? - Isabella Rossellini

                There was an interesting take on the philosophy of magic as well. A lot of them were almost depressed to have it. Magic was definitely not this wonderful, mystifying feat of nature but rather a skill set you found within yourself whether it be for the better or not. Magic also seemed to be the secret ingredient for a lot of characters changing’s. The obvious ones would be the main party such as Quentin and Alice but even characters such as Julia. Julia, a high school crush which failed the entrance exams to Brakebill, went mad after just a taste of it and made another changer her appearance for love which ultimately brought grave bearings on her life and others.



Magic works something like this



                Addiction plays a giant role in this novel as well. Whether or not it’s directly attached to magic or not (usually is) the kids go through bouts of constant party and liquor the second year in. The drains run yellow with vomit as the kids live out their years through Brakebill. Sex also is a huge element as well. The only monogamous couple seems to be between Alice and Quentin which doesn’t last long before he drunkenly cheats on her and she returns the favor. Not saying having a bout of fun here and there is bad but it gets to the point of polygamy on steroids. Another serious addiction seems to be in Quentin’s need for the once thought fictional Fillory. He is always wishing he was at Fillory and is very dissatisfied until he goes there. Even then he spends a very long time in the aftermath of the civil war trying to get out of Fillory from being stranded by his friends due to him being in a coma for so long only to skip and hop with his friends right back into it at the very end of the book… reminiscent of a recovering addiction anyone?

                There is a whale-ton of references in this book! Most of them are even directly spoken about and made fun of. It starts out almost exactly like Harry Potter with the exams being the sorting hat and him entering the school (Hogwarts) through a secret maze (the train station) which normal people who aren’t supposed to know where Brakebill can’t enter or find Brakebill (Hogwarts. Hogwarts. Hogwarts.) Then the wizarding chess game seems copy and paste from Harry Potter as well but Grossman admits this and carries on with the novel. It then switches gears to Chronicles of Narnia as Fillory becomes Narnia for Quentin and the troop and even the Fillory and Furthur series within the book are loosely following the Chronicles of Narnia. Oh and let’s not forget her last minute nod to Tolkien’s Middle Earth in the end.

                Essentially this book is one giant magic satire rip on other novels who write about magic with a down and dirty real feeling to their adventures while under toning magic as this self-destruction element given to these young adventurers. One for the shelf indeed

All rocks go to heaven

http://wizardstimelordsandstarkids.tumblr.com/post/2822022225/two-churches-located-across-the-street-from-each-other

Interview with the Vampire

   
    Vampires – There can only be one! When we look at vampires in this day and age we generally start to see a vast divide amongst  the groups; “the sparkles” (romantic, gothic type) and “the matadors”(masculine, macho fighting types.) Both are pretty much the evolution on steroids version of where they actually came from. Originally being more of “witch calling” event, people used to acuse others of vampirism as well as going out of their ways to actually stake the bodies of the dead.
From the novella The Vampyre by John Polidori's vampires started to gain ground in the gothic stereo type of being charismatic and educated. This lead to Bram Stoker's Dracula which spawned an entire cultural current. Things started getting tense in the house so the genre split, taking two distinct turns.

Not nearly enough guns or blood

The lonely steward started popping out True Blood, Count Dracula and Twilight like it was none of her business while the roid-raging preteen divulged into Underworld, Van Helsing and Castlevania.
While i'm partial to both I have recently had my weights tipped in favor of the shotgun wielding bunch. Why? Two reasons, Twilight and Anne Rice.

    Since most of the reason why Twilight is just plain ridiculous (never said not well written.. just ridiculous) are in plain view i'm going to pick on Anne Rice.
I give her recognition and a bow at keeping many middle aged woman's clits in good use but frankly I get irritated when the same staple of the good girls falling after the bad boys comes into a serious novel. Maybe its just my cynicism about the subject but i'm frankly a little bored by the entire “i know more than you or lead you to believe I do, therefore you must swoon me compassionately” act. Mrs. Rice gave us this role in the embodiment of Lestat- one of the first, and supposedly, oldest vampires we see in the book. Why is he not held to his actions and words? Why is no one truly challenging him of his supposed knowledge? I see no validity other than literally sucking you for what your worth. I'm going to pretend to stand for a higher class of relations so i'm not buying his sack of potatoes.

Tempting.

 I thought maybe Rice would go farther with the relationship between Armond and Louis but once again it was somewhat fruitless and I didn't see much in it.
     Practically every character had some huge inexcusable character flaw... all except for one. That single candidate was the youngest vampire in the troop named Claudia. Not only is she one of the few kid vampires you see roaming around she actually has a lot of depth. Not only does she pose as an innocent young girl she rides the undercurrent in her favor, single handedly allowing the other two to take care of her needs while she reins as ignorant queen bee. While she's using her witty guise she is actually dealing with very real and interesting internal problems concerning her age. The struggle between her mental age and that of her body is something I think a lot of people can relate to. This escalates and Claudia becomes the true monster of the book, taking what she pleases in what seems to be pure evil. I loved Claudia and not quite sure why a lot of others didn't.
    In Rice's defense she does what she does very well and is an excellent writer just this kind of half serious novel I didn't enjoy.

The only vampire that can get me weak at the knees

Monster Island

 
Blood, guts, maggots and bRRAaaaiiiiiNNNSS! Everybody loves zombies! They're stunningly soulless eyes and ways about peoples necks bring out chills of excitement when spoken about in these present times. Ironically it was very much the opposite when they were first introduced to the public in the late 20's and 30's. Then they were monsters shrouded in voodoo and ancient lore. Terrible creeping undead that knew where you hid and scared young, unsuspecting actors into catatonic states. Where as in current times you are the ex marine fighting for survival against fast, blood thirsty infected.
    Zombies have evolved over the decades with the early movies such as White Zombie and Night of the Living Dead. In these classics we see some of H.P. Lovecrafts original ideas of horror take root into film. Zombies were direct connections to the human consciousness of death and mortality. They were a symbol of the ever creeping, ever knowing end that strikes high keys on everyones piano.
    As years past and more and more movies were produced involving these creatures, and zombies became something else, instead of these mythical risings from the grave people gave them scientific explanations. Disease, infection, biohazard, air born germs. We started to see these concepts pop up in multiple facets of zombie culture and thus the meaning behind these monsters changed. It was no longer a mental tie to the ever coming death that befalls all of us but more of an example of human survival. From inching death they turned into sprinting, infectious death traps. This concept exploded - books like Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, City of the Dead, Generation Dead, and the Resident Evil franchise spun into popularity thus spawning zombie walks all over the nation. Max Brooks had a lot of us planning our escape routes, armory list, who and how many people we feel the need to join our small apocalypse squad.

    The same can be said about this recent novel, Monster Island by David Wellington. He embraces the young concept of infectious, disease spreading zombie while putting some classic swing into the tango. We start out in Africa with a sir Dekalb and his young child Sarah being held prisoner by few Somalian child soldiers. Turns out they need crucial AIDS drugs and he is the only American/UN they can use to help them find it over in New York, Manhattan area. So he ventures forth  leaving his spawn behind to be taken care of by the dictator of these soldiers to find drugs. Already sounding amazing as a story, I know, but it gets better. After failing first attempt at finding drugs in the hospital we encounter an speaking undead named Gary. Gary, as it turns out, was able to save his brain due to him keeping it under oxygen during the dying process. Its at this point where we also start to see some of the old voodoo/good and evil show its colors in the novel. It turns out Gary has the ability to connect to other zombies through an unseen dark network called the eididh. Wellington also brings a clear sense of good and evil into the story. Gary can also sense other undead as dark energies while living things have a warmth and light energy emitting from them. Later in the novel we also discover an ancient egyptian willing to bring judgement upon the world. If this wasn't enough of a time mash up we basically end the novel on the steps of an almost erected broch (or alter per say) as Gary, the new head zombie, was preparing to farm humans for life source.
    Not only was this one of the better endings to a zombie novel (total brain rape) I thoroughly enjoyed this novel for its clear head nods to its undead roots as well as bringing new ideas and theories to the table.

The Forever War

Illustration by Steve Simmons

In a quick bite The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is the tale of one soldier who is caught in a thousand year interstellar war against a race called the Taurans while watching history, and everything he’s ever known, slip through his hands.  Said soldier is William Mandella who is originally born in 1975 and product of hippie parents. This tale takes the reader through an interesting tale which, at first, seems to be just another war book labeled under sci-fi because of its space aspects.  Little before half way through the book you’ve hedged your way through the technical space jargon and theory that you get to the grit of the plot. It’s here where he returns home after his first battle with the Taurans due to a battered ship with his newly found mate, Marygay Potter. What he finds isn’t open arms of the people he once knew but rather a much altered world where body guards things of normality, homosexuality runs popular whilst encouraged by the government and a food war is raging due to over population. This, I find, is a very easy feasible a future. Not only is our world currently pushing towards technology and globalization there is a decline in educational. Not to mention the world could be ruled by one political system or country that just decided to go bat-shit insane on the world but I doubt that it would be just in one life time. At least it wouldn’t be as established as what Mandella returns to.

After the shock of discovering his mother a bit of a lesbian herself he seeks his old war companion. Where we find that a type of guarded work camp system has been set up. It isn’t long before a shoot out happens where both Marygay’s parents die and both Mandella and she return back in the service. After new recruits and a few more time dilations Mandella finds himself once again encountering drastic future changes. This time he finds out that he is now a rare breed of heterosexual where the people of earth actually frown upon it and deem it a defect if you were. Somewhere along the lines he and Marygay are separated and Mandella goes on his final mission. After nearly surviving an attack by the Taurans he and his crew return back to the main hub where they once again notice times have changed once more. They are the last vessel to return from war which has now ended in a twist of almost comedy. The world is now dominated by clones and the war simply ended because both human clones and Tauran clones came together to decide they had no idea why they started in the first place other than an old administration craving war. Comically went their ways and ended the entire feud. Mandella receives a message from Marygay telling him she has been waiting on one of the few non clone based and heterosexual planets in a time capsule to keep her from aging too far beyond himself. He goes and finds her; they have a baby....

noooooooooooo

I personally enjoyed this book more for its theories of time dilation and comical ending than anything. Let’s face it, we’ve all either used or heard the phrase “well this wasn’t here when I was a kid” or “things were different then”  or even “back in my day.” You get to an age where you see visible differences in the small dwellings you live in, starting a small way; like homosexuals dominating the sexual preference board or in our case they put in a new Ihop, then eventually escalates to something giant like clones now predominantly owning the world and colonizing others or once again they moved the barber shop over two blocks. We all experience this floating feeling as we get older.

I also heavily enjoyed that everything that he had worked and fought for was almost entirely for nothing. Not even money for booze and cheap microwave dinners to drown away the war time sorrows. I realize that this was mostly in reaction to the Vietnam War but it’s also comical that he could have been just as or even happier if he had just stayed and worked out his days on earth. Yes he may have not found this century old love, Marygay, but hell he could have found another and possibly not have the traumatic events that he seems unphased by.

Frankenstein

Victor from Young Frankenstein

To give a one sentence over view, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a “horror” novel following a dying mans tale about his life and that of his creation; a wretched monster put together from the dead. The reason I question horror is simply because I don’t think that was Mary Shelley’s direction what-so-ever. If anything it was her convection of emotional pain by being the child that took her own mothers life at infancy. She grew, as the Monster, without the love of her maker to teach her the lessons of being a human in their world. As the monster, she self educated herself, felt the pains of loneliness and betrayal. Due to her running off with Percy Bysshe, her unmarried lover, to Europe she felt the desperation of poverty, and when she returned, the sting of rejection met by her father and friends. In many aspects this novel is simply her life told through the brilliant story of Frankenstein. Now as the story itself I do not acquit that there are definite elements of horror sprinkled within its words. For instance close attention she pays to weather cannot be ignored. It seems whenever Frankenstein meets his monster or is in better of moods storms follow him, as to signal some natural defiance towards him. The current itself carries him into the arms of police who have believed he had strangled his friend Clerval.  

What interested me the most though was following how close each person came to the line of innocent and evil and how plagued the monster was. At first glance it’s easy to say who the “bad guy” and who the “good guy” was in the story. Obviously the bad guy was the monster because he is damned by the “all mighty”, killed and plotted against numerous people. Frankenstein cannot be blamed for following his passions into a dark alley correct?

 Well not exactly. True that Frankenstein was just following his love of science and alchemy but question is whether or not he should be blamed for the creation of this monster. His obsession drove him to the point of insanity. He longed for this creation, loved his workings involving this creation. This was the big mamba of alchemy and it was within his grasp to accomplish. He should have never accepted the challenge. I don’t know about you but when I start hanging around graveyards and playing with dead bodies I think I’ve either driven one fantasy a little too far or reconsider my interests in Animation. This is a man who becomes sick just by looking at the monsters eye and drops ill by hearing how unhappy his family is at home. His instincts should have been tearing down the bell tower telling him something was amiss. Instead he blatantly drives on, giving life to something he is not ready for, therefore abandoning it.

                I don’t think the monster can rightly be judged for just about anything he has done in the novel.  This monster is born into a world which completely rejects him by no fault of his own. Cursed by unbearable appearance he is often beaten and thrown out of towns. By seeking company and shelter he happens upon what appears to be genuine people of care. Eaves dropping and careful listening he educates himself from these cottage (De Lacy) people in return helping them with their jobs on the land in secret. His only reward is to be judged again by his hideous appearance and driven away. He even saves a young girl from drowning only to be shot in the shoulder. I mean c’mon how much does a guy gotta do to find one caring soul.

                He eventually ends up killing all that are close to Frankenstein by the only gift given to him- his strength. I, by no means, blame him for anything that he has done.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and felt like I could relate to both parties in their dubious acts (not so much the marrying of the cousin) as well as really dig my heels into what Mary Shelley herself was feeling at the time. For this book is mostly her as she was during her life.

Lies

At any rate what I took away was this; at times everyone feels alone in their lives but at least they have brothers or family or even people around them who are as ugly as them to share their miseries either against or together with.