Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Narnia and Christianity — does it matter?

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After reading Terrence’s ‘Saying No to Narnia‘ and Pharyngula’s ‘Narnia as an inoculation‘, both of which pointed to a Guardian UK article titled ‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion‘, I was somewhat annoyed. As an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal who was brought up in a Christian household and counts Christianity as a major part of who I am and why I’m an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal, it occasionally gets under my skin when I’m reminded yet again that ‘Christian’ has become a dirty word synonymous with the worst of the bigoted bible-thumping set, tainting anything that it touches.

It was quite nice to see Arcterex’s take on the same article, then:

I read the Narnia books as a child, and absolutely loved them. They had a similar draw as modern day Harry Potter. The downtrodden who think they aren’t anybody in the world finding out that they are a heros in a magical world.

Of course, then I found out later on in live about the religious overtones in the books…

And couldn’t care less. A good story is a good story, and personally I find this sort of ignorant reporting as bad as the Christian groups who go around saying how Harry Potter is promoting kids to become satanists and how it’s an evil book. It’s a friggin’ book and a good story. Geez.

Damn skippy. Sure, there are Christian overtones to the Narnia stories. There are Christian overtones to the Matrix stories, the Lord of the Rings stories, the Star Wars stories, and countless other stories (both printed and filmed), too. Why all the rancor? Just because the religious right (who all too often seem to embody the antithesis to the Christianity I grew up with) has jumped all over The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is it suddenly impossible to go out and enjoy a fun fantasy movie?

Sure, you can read all sorts of meaning into the stories and why they’re being brought to the screen now — religious indoctrination, right-wing propelled mass media conspiracy theories, whatever. You can also tell your inner Fox Mulder that every so often it doesn’t matter and go watch a movie.

That’s what I’m planning on doing.

LibraryThing Redux

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Well, it took a few hours (spread over the past few days) of free-time puttering, but my entire book collection (that isn’t loaned out, loaned out and not returned, lost, or still sitting somewhere at my folks’ house in Anchorage) is now entered into my LibraryThing catalog.

A paltry 373 books in total. Meh. I thought I’d be doing better than that…but then, I know there’s quite a bit that’s missing for one reason or another (books I remember having that aren’t there, series that are only half-complete, and other similar things). Still, it’s not a bad overview of my reading habits.

I may end up creating another account for Prairie and cataloging her collection also. That particular project is going to wait for a little while at least, though…getting mine done in two days is a good enough accomplishment for now.

Wishlist time!

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Seeing how it’s less than a month before Christmas and we’ve run full-bore into the season of greed and avarice giving, I figured I’d put up my wishlist. Of course, the one thing standing in the way is that for the most part, I really don’t have a wishlist…at least, not a serious one.

As far as wishlists go, there generally seem to be two basic types: the more serious “these are things I’d enjoy having because they’d be useful and good to have”, and the more frivolous “these are things I want because I’m a greedy boy and they’re cool”. Needless to say, I’ve always been far better at creating the second type of list.

So, in all seriousness, I’d be quite happy with good wishes, hugs from friends, and other such low-cost things. Socks are often good, as is clothing (preferably black, of course) — I’m long past the stage where I’d look down on getting clothing as opposed to “stuff”. As big a fan as I am of “stuff”…clothing’s just more practical, and at some point along the line I became mature enough to actually realize this. In other words, I don’t need anything.

However. If you’re in more of a mood to get me “stuff,” I’m not about to complain. ;)

My current “stuff” list tends to vary wildly by the month (or day, or even moment), but I have been occasionally tossing items into my Amazon Wishlist for a while now. What follows, then, is a rundown of what’s on my wishlist as of today, going from more realistic (that is, cheaper) on up to the wildly unrealistic (in some ways my favorite category, as the amount that I covet something seems to be inversely proportionate to the chance of my actually ever getting it).

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Tweaking the ads

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I’ve done a bit of tweaking on the ads served up on the pages of my site. While I certainly have no intentions of becoming an adfarm — I’ve seen weblogs where it’s difficult to find the content in the midst of a sea of ads, and that’s the last thing I want to do with my site — I finally decided that I didn’t mind at least slightly increasing the possibilities of having a few pennies slide my way from time to time.

To that end:

Donations: Two methods of simply tossing money at me are now displayed towards the bottom of the sidebar, using Amazon’s Honor System paybox and a PayPal donate button. No, I don’t really expect these to generate much (if anything), but you never know…I’ve been surprised a time or two in the past.

Advertising: For some time now, I’ve had one Google AdSense box just below the first entry, and an iTunes ad box in the sidebar. To these, I’ve added an Amazon ad box and a second Google AdSense box in the sidebar. Clicks through the Google ads and purchases made after clicking through the Amazon and iTunes ads will send a few fractions of a penny my way.

Now, as I’ve said, I don’t want the ads to overwhelm the content, so for the most part, I’ve made them as unobtrusive as possible — only one Google ad box is visible “above the fold” (visible when the page is first loaded), and the other ads don’t show up until you’ve scrolled through four full screens. Advertising mavens would probably tell you I’m doing this all wrong, but for me, it seems a good balance between having the ads out there and not overwhelming my few visitors.

It’s worth a shot, at least.

Quarrantine

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Urgh.

I have The Ick.

It started creeping in yesterday afternoon with a slight tickle in the throat, and has progressed steadily from there. Joy of joys, this is just what I needed.

Meh.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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Prairie and I just got back from (finally) seeing the latest Harry Potter movie. In brief, I think this is my favorite of the series so far. Rather fast-paced (though it would have to be to pack everything in that it needed to) but still quite coherent and hitting all the key points, and absolutely spot-on performances from Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody and Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort.

Plus, I think I’ve got a crush on Cho Chang. ;)

Post-Thanksgiving Wrapup

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Heh…I guess after three days, I should really move my ‘happy Thanksgiving’ post down the page a touch, eh?

Thanksgiving was quite nice. I had both Wednesday and Thursday off, and Prairie’s dad Lon came down on Wednesday afternoon to spend Thanksgiving with us. I got to take him shopping to help him pick up an iPod Nano, and then we watched Star Wars Episode II in the evening.

Thursday was spent entirely at home, relaxing and puttering around. Prairie cooked up an incredibly good dinner (in the words of Arlo Guthrie, “a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat”):

A Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat...

Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows, gravy, rolls, jello salad, cranberry jelly, and pecan tartlets and pumpkin pie for dessert. Yum!

Unfortunately, eventually all that ended, and Friday rolled around. Black Friday, to be precise. There are definite pros and cons to having a mall-based retail job…and wow, but that day was insane. I had a split shift: 7am-11am, off for six hours, and then back from 5pm-10:30pm. Uff-da. Busy all day long (there were actually people waiting at the store gate when we opened at 7am) — and unfortunately, I just didn’t seem to be getting the right customers, as I ended up having the least sales of any of the sales staff that day. “ Ah, well…I know I’m not a born salesman, I just do the best I can while I’m there.

More long days Saturday and today, but I’ve got Monday off to rest. Quite looking forward to that, too…