Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

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.

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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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.

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…

Buying a camera?

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Oh, by the way…

On the off chance that any of my Seattle-area readers are considering or planning on buying a camera this holiday season, I’d love you forever if you came by the Kit’s Cameras store in the Northgate Mall while I’m working. I can’t do anything like dropping prices or some such thing, but not only will I do my best to get you set up, it’d make my sales numbers look that much better. ;)

Make it stop!

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Apparently, sound carries through the ventilation ducts in our apartment building.

The downstairs neighbor — on the other side of the building — has had “All I Want For Christmas is You” from the Love Actually soundtrack playing on repeat…

For.

Six.

Hours.

It’s most clear in our bathroom, but it can be heard throughout our apartment. I’m actually lucky that I had a three-hour training meeting tonight…Prairie’s actually been here all evening (hiding in the bedroom with all the connecting doors closed and watching TV has been saving her sanity).

I just called the landlords and let them know. “Oh, you’re kidding!” Heh. Our best guess (I tried knocking on their door) is that they’re not home, and left a clock radio alarm on or something.

Whatever it was, it looks like the landlords just got in — it finally stopped.

Six.

Hours.

Bless our landlords, for they make Christmas stop.

Reconnecting

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This is great.

Some time ago — back in April of ’04 — I came across an old Anchorage Press article talking about the “glory days” of the underground/punk/alternative music scene in Anchorage, from the late ’70’s up to the early ’90’s, which touched off my own post reminiscing about my days running around the local scene, from the ’90’s to the early 2000’s.

Touched off by a couple of random Google searches, over the past couple of weeks (starting in August, and really picking up steam in November), that post has become an impromptu meeting point and simple message board for quite a few of the Anchorage scenesters of the ’80’s. While I was just a few years younger and don’t know any of the people who’ve been posting, I have been having an absolute blast watching all the various comments come in as this group of old friends re-connect after twenty-odd years or so.

All I did was provide the right Google keywords and a comment form that these guys have been using to get back in touch…but it’s enough to get a grin on my face whenever I see another comment roll in.

Lots of Pictures

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I’ve spent much of the afternoon and evening continuing to work on scanning in old photos that I’ve had lying jumbled up in various boxes. Quite a few have been scanned in and uploaded to my Flickr account. They haven’t been done in any particular order — roughly chronological, but it’s been a bit hit-and-miss here and there as I come across mis-ordered sections — but to make things at least a little bit easier, I did end up creating a ‘Narcissism’ photoset that has all the pictures of me collected together and presented in chronological order.

Other bits that may be of interest to various people: Royce, who’s been in my life since fourth grade; City Lights, the first (though very short-lived) public DJ’ing gig I talked my way into; and The Lost Abbey (possibly NSFW, though not very), my first major (regular, longer than a couple months) DJ’ing gig.

More will come as I get time — I’ve only made it up to 1995, and I’ve got at least a few from ’96 and ’97, and that doesn’t even go into the three rolls from Gig’s that are sitting here too. For now, though, I need to do a little housework and get dinner in the oven before Prairie gets home and Hope and Peter show up to watch Lost.

Update: Prairie’s pointing out that when I said I needed to “get dinner in the oven”, I meant that literally — she’d actually made the dinner. I was just putting it in the oven so it would be ready in time for everyone to show up. It’s not like I’m actually cooking or anything here…. ;)