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