[  Mood: Amused ]

You know how people are always typing LOL? Well, I actually did. I wasn’t exactly ROTFLMAO, but I was LOLing.

I’ve also enjoyed discovering Order of the Stick a few weeks ago–pertinent to this discussion, I wonder when they’ll make fun of D&D 4th Edition. Mainly, though, I’m just hoping Hayley and Elan get together.

And then there’s this little piece of genius. I think it was posted in the Links section of these Boards already, but it’s worth pimping again.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to old German love songs. ]
We’ve just added a new member to our family: Lili Marleen.

Lili is a miniature schnauzer. I really thought about continuing our weird tradition of naming our pets after food, but all the German food names were too butch. Still, I almost tried to convince Junko to name her Schnitzel.

But then I remembered Junko’s hobby, singing old love songs, and she loves that WWI German song, "Lili Marleen." It felt right.

She’s been through a lot: her first owners had her "debarked"–that is, they had her vocal chords cut, so now she just kind of gasps when she tries to bark. I was kind of depressed and angry about that, but I just read something about it and it seems that the chords can eventually grow back, so maybe someday she’ll be able to bark again.

She was being kept by an old man who takes in unwanted pets and resells them. Junko saw her about 2 weeks ago and started to have trouble sleeping, thinking about that cute, sad-looking schnauzer. I saw the man a couple of days ago and got his phone number, and after thinking it over, Junko, Natsumi, and I met him and bought her and brought her home. We fed her and bathed her and picked about two dozen fleas off her. Tomorrow she goes to the vet to remove some ticks and get a thorough checkup. The old man claims she’s about 4 years old, and she’s very well behaved. She’s just starting to settle in and relax.

Lili is my first dog since I moved out of my parents’ home. We’re going to take an obedience course together–she needs to learn to walk on a leash, and I need to relearn how to be a good master. But after knowing her only 3 hours, I can say this: she’s a good dog.

I finally got around to Simpsonizing myself and the missus.

Sixty-two years ago today, at about 8:15am, a nuclear weapon was detonated in the sky over Hiroshima, Japan, killing about 70,000 people. About an equal number would die later as a result of injuries and radiation-induced illness. Only three days later, another bomb, more powerful, was dropped on Nagasaki. The hilly terrain limited the deaths to about 74,000 total. That’s a low-end estimate, by the way.

Two bombs. 214,000 humans.

These weapons were tiny by today’s standards, yet the effects were so horrific that they are practically impossible to conceive. I’ve visited the museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’ve spoken with a survivor, and I’m sure I’ve only absorbed a tiny fraction of the horror. And I’m glad that’s all I can get. This isn’t HP Lovecraft; it’s the real thing. Too much of this kind of horror really can drive you insane.

I’m not trying to be political. I just think, if there’s any day on which people ought to take a moment to meditate on what "Nuke ’em ’til they glow!" really means, this is it. I remember, back during the Cold War, sitting in the high-school cafeteria with my fellow geeks, talking about world problems, and how, at some point, someone would always offer the stock solution: "Just nuke ’em."

Well, we had an excuse: we were testosterone-fueled, sexually frustrated kids, with textbooks that insisted that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings saved far more lives than they took. Turns out that’s not exactly true, that Japan was already offering to surrender. Turns out our leaders weren’t all that different from a bunch of high-school Judas Priest fans. They had the most powerful weapon ever created…do you really think they wouldn’t use it?

Seeing as our leaders don’t seem to have improved one bit, I call on you to just stop and think about it, if you haven’t already done so: Two little bombs. Two hundred and fourteen THOUSAND people.

Not 214,000 enemies. Yes, their country and our country were at war, and as wars go, it was about as unavoidable (on the American side) as wars can get. But now America isn’t the only country with nuclear weapons.

It could be us, someday. In fact, it probably will be. Somebody is going to use a nuclear weapon on somebody again one of these days, and we’re a big target, and we have this tendency to piss people off.

So–I’m serious here–think about your mom, your brother, your girlfriend, your child. Think about them reduced to a shadow on the wall. Or worse, surviving the initial blast, but being crushed under flaming debris, their faces melted off. Or covered with burns and vomiting out their stomach linings as radiation poisoning slowly kills them.

Sorry, I know that’s nasty, and I feel bad for writing it. But it happened to 214,000 people. And what makes it different from all the other ways we humans have developed to murder each other, is that it was just two little bombs.

How many bombs do we have now? And each of them far more powerful.

Am I calling for an end to nuclear weapons? Not really–though I’d certainly like to see it happen, that’s not my immediate purpose. I just hope that more people will stop and think about it. Let the comfort shields down for just a minute, and meditate on that horror. It’s already there, buried deep, I know. Let it rise to the surface, just for a minute.

This is the anniversary of the day that a nuclear weapon was first used to destroy a city. Soon, the last of the survivors of that event will be gone. We need to remember. We need to feel it, deep in our guts. We can’t just make nuclear weapons disappear. I’m realistic; I know America can’t unilaterally get rid of them while countries like North Korea have them. But we have to start somewhere, in order to get to the point where someday we can get rid of them.

And that starts with feeling that horror. Not horror-movie horror. The real thing: Hiroshima horror. It’s amazing how many people trivialize it. We need people to take it seriously, and hopefully, some of those people will get into positions of power, and over the next few generations they’ll find a way to get rid of the evil devices forever.

Today is the day to feel one minute of horror.

Stuff I’ve snapped pics of recently:

A convenience store display. "…the needed elements for the world of today." Probably one of my former students wrote that. Sigh.

A sign in the subway encouraging people to be aware of terrorism. I love the big-eyed super-cute anti-terror cop.

Another subway sign, warning perverts that grabbing ladies’ behinds on the train is illegal.

A new TV show. I think I need to check this out.

Cool! Sculpture in front of an art shop.

OK, I’m on Facebook. Here. I’m still not sure about this, but what the hell–gotta keep up with the kids.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
I finished Deathly Hallows at 2am. Again, no spoilers here, but on finishing I had tears rolling down my face and a big goofy grin. I held the book in my hands staring at the picture of JK Rowling on the back cover for about five minutes, just feeling that warm satisfaction that I had hoped for but feared not finding. Then I got up and walked into the living room and gently shelved it.

Even when I was writing all the praise in the entry below, I was worried. Would she be able to put it to bed? Could she really tie up all the plot threads elegantly, and make a powerful ending, and make us believe it? Could she earn whatever ending she writes? That’s the hardest part, I think–making an ending we’ll believe in. So easy to fall flat, especially with such a weight to bear.

Well, she did it. I don’t know if I cry over books more or less often than others, but this one had the tears rising, man, four or five times–and it didn’t just feel like emotional manipulation, either. Tear-jerker writing doesn’t move me. These were characters I’d fallen in love with (more than I’d realized), going through intense pain that felt truly necessary for the story to work. And the ending–absolutely satisfying.

What I wrote below about Rowling challenging herself and taking risks more and more with each book, and how it goes double for this one–well supersize that double. I kept thinking, this is a VERY risky book. When I would stop reading to go do something, I often found myself thinking about those people who started reading this as preteens, now in their early 20s, and how this book could really turn a lot of them off. They could very justly say, "This is not what I signed on for!" When I say it’s serious, I don’t mean it’s just grim–I mean it’s breaking through into being serious literature. Rowling destroys cherished preconceptions, forcing readers to question everything they know. For someone who grew up with this series, that could lead them to question everything in their own lives, right at the age when they should begin doing so, but so many don’t.

But it’s a dangerous thing to ask your readers to do that. It’s not exactly a pleasant process, even if it’s necessary to becoming an adult. And that’s the thing–the ending of the series is not for kids. I can’t think of any other series of books that does this: It takes readers from childhood to adulthood, and forces them, if they stick with it, to think like adults–something a lot of adults refuse to do.

In a way, it’s the opposite of what Lucas did with (to?) Star Wars. It started out as a kid’s action-adventure story, and got a bit more mature by the 3rd movie–and then it went back to kiddieland with the prequels. Lucas shied away from the challenge that Rowling seized.

Ms. Rowling, I salute you, and thank you. You have added far more pleasure to my life than I would have imagined possible after reading Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone. You’ve gone from a fun, light, inconsequential writer to a knockout-punch heavyweight champion. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next.

[  Mood: Cool ]
When I picked up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday, I thought about blogging a chapter-by-chapter reaction to the story. However, this is grading season for me–lots of essays on Melville and Thoreau and Black Superheroes to read and mark. So no time, and anyway, it would’ve taken me a lot longer to read the book that way. On top of that, one of our esteemed writers, Robert E. Howard scholar Mark Finn, is working on something similar. I’m not sure how similar, because I don’t want to read his piece before I finish the book, but it’ll be up on the RevSF front page soon.

I’m still a few chapters before the end–I almost decided to just finish it at the breakfast table this morning, but I must be responsible to my students. I’ll get it done before I go to sleep tonight, I’m sure. Anyway, I’m quite impressed. I believe I mentioned in one of our "Harry Potter Sucks/Rocks" segments that Rowling is becoming a better writer with every book, and that goes double for this one. I’m a bit of an amateur writer myself, and man, if I had written a light, fun kids’ fantasy that had turned into an enormous hit and made me the richest author in the world, I have to admit I’d probably just try to follow it up with formulaic book after formulaic book and not really try anything new. That’s what most writers do, after all.

But not Rowling. OK, she did for the first three books, but come on. Since Book 4, you can see (if you look for it) that she’s pushing herself, learning her craft, and becoming a damn good writer. She’s taking a lot of risks, too. The vast majority of her fans fell in love with the first book–why risk turning them off by making the stories darker, more realistic, more political, more complex? Why mess with success?

Because she’s a dedicated writer, that’s why. It’s easy to make fun of Harry Potter as mere light entertainment, but in the later books, especially this final one, that’s not really true. She’s not quite at, say, Ursula K. LeGuin’s level, but she’s become a real pro of a writer, in plotting, characterization, description, prose style, what have you. I’d say she’s become the equal of Philip Pullman now.

And it’s easy to make fun of Rowling for getting rich, but while I don’t think financial success has more than a superficial connection to talent and skill (as a scholar, I specialize in an author who made a pittance in his whole life from writing, and who’s now considered America’s Shakespeare), I think a lot of anti-Rowling grumbling is just jealousy. I bet she can reach LeGuin’s level. I hope she really does leave Harry behind and do something totally new, the way LeGuin did with the Earthsea books (I know, she wrote other books before Earthsea).

Right, enough blogging–must grade.

[  Mood: Very Sad ]
Coco scampered off to Hamster Heaven about three hours ago.

I think she was quite relieved it was over. She was just exhausted. She went so gently that, although she was in Junko’s hands, there was about a five-minute period when we weren’t sure if she was alive or dead. I cleaned her up and wrapped her in clean blankets (an old t-shirt cut into strips that she liked to nest in), and put her in a small box filled with sweet-smelling dry grass. We added her favorite foods, and let her lie in state in the family butsudan, which has statues of what I think of as our "Three Intercessors": Kannon, Boddhisatva of Infinite Mercy; Jizo, Boddhisatva of Lost Children; and Mary Mother of Jesus. We burned incense and prayed for her.

However, as it is a hot and humid day, before leaving for work I put her in a tupperware container and put that in the fridge.

We’ll take her to the local park tomorrow and, when no one is looking, bury her in the same area as our other pets. We have four hamsters there already, plus a turtle and several tiny fish. We call it Hamster Hill. It has a good view, and a couple of sakura trees to provide gorgeous cherry blossoms in the spring.

Our beloved, very old hamster Coco is in a bad way. Something going on in her reproductive tract, leaking blood. She’s weak, but struggling to survive. She’s tired, but doesn’t seem to be in pain, and the doc thinks it might stem from an infection (couldn’t find a tumor), so we’re giving her antibiotics.

She’s 3 years and about 3 months old, which is the longest any of our hamsters have lived, and something like the equivalent of 80 in humans. I hope she pulls through, but I’m not expecting her to be around much longer.