It's like a thriller.

I'm afraid I will not be able to top the controversy of the last post. (Unless I say this: I was at a middle school today where I had access to "P of A" in the room and realized I needed to finish the book.)

Anyway, so you should all know that we will be leaving for Vancouver in nearly two weeks. Can't say how totally thrilled we are. The dream is becoming reality.

Another thought: Elise and I just saw "The Graduate" for the first time. What a brilliant movie. Says so much about the America of the late 1960s in such an efficient way. So beautifully directed, scripted and acted. See it if you haven't yet. See it again if you have.

A broom now in pieces like a raisin in the sun.

Have read about 200 pages of "Prisoner of Azkaban" and decided that it is such a compulsively formulaic and utterly ridiculous drag that I will not read any more. Why should I care about H.P. in the first place? Well, to start with, because I was in Holland when it got big and so many of those pathological, uptight, Evangelical moralists made a big deal of it. Then I got a shirt from the thrift store that was a kind of Gryffindor quidditch team jersey (which embarrassingly enough I was too chickenshit to wear because of the witch-hunters that were going to burn me at the stake). Then everyone surmised that I was "Harry Potter, The College Years" incarnate. Later we discovered many new friends that were all up-ons about H.P. and finally I decided to get sucked in. I quasi-enjoyed "Chamber of Secrets" but the third-in-series just plain blows. You see, I wanted to read for myself what was all the Hula Hoop about this series of hopelessly Scooby-Doo-ish books that made the once-homeless Rowling into multi-gazillionaire (second only to Dan Brown in the literary world).

Hell, I'm not even sure why I rant.

In other news, I recently found out that I am a "4" which means I am something of a Romantic/Individualist, although I have very Observer/Investigator tendencies. This is my latest obsession. It is called the Enneagram and it is a personality categorizer similar to - yet quite different from - the familiar Psych 101 Myers-Briggs test.

By the way, I am positively uninterested in this blogging nonsense. How ironic, eh? It strikes me as some kind of reverse-voyeurism, a self-absorbed and narcissistic indulgence - and in the most graphic terms, a sort of psycho-analytic masturbation. The more forthright and gruesome, the better: read, read, read and never get enough!

I prefer human relationships. Let this ugly cur-bastard-child of a replacement for personal human contact pass away, and dry up like a raisin in the sun.

Man, I love to rant. What a self-congratulatory waste of time for all parties involved.

But the 4 in me gives this last caveat: I'm a passionate SOB when I want to be (which is usually always), so take my words with a salt shaker handy (is that mixing metaphors?)

Recentish.

Still substitute teaching. Still planning our big move to Vancouver. Still reading books (see more additions to the right!). Haven't written/posted in awhile. I'm not as in to blogging as I used to be, and hope never to become addicted. If we had internet access in our place of dwelling, how much time would be sucked up by the blogmonster? We'll see yet.

More pictures of the little ones? The only thing that matters. These are sorta recent. More later (someday, of course).

All the muss/fuss/cuss about books and books we should read and books we should keep our kids away from and speculative fiction, etc.: Part 3 of 8.

So I'm back to reading several books at once again. I was good for awhile. The Brothers Karamazov was a highly absorbing book and quite long besides, so I absolutely had to focus on that book alone. And I finished finally (this was about a month ago and it was started in early fall of last year). Then I read one of Elise's favorite stories, Their Eyes Were Watching God and had no trouble finishing that one without picking up something else because it was short and highly absorbing.

***

I'll admit that I actually did pick up another book, but read only a little of it. That book was The Mystery of Things by A.C. Grayling. I saw it on the new books shelf at the library and on a whim checked it out. I came to enjoy it quite a lot. From there I got interested in quantum mechanics and got a book about it. I'd like to read some more (I've only just begun) but am distracted by other books, and plus I have misplaced it somewhere in our apartment. I have recently read a little T.C. Boyle short stories and also decided to read Catch-22 because it is supposedly one of finest works of 20th century English fiction. It is a difficult book to read.

I found a stack of the book The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood in the classroom where I'm substituting today. I've been wanting to read that book and even requested a hold on it at the library. So I decided to try reading a little of that instead of reading Catch-22, which I even brought with me.

***

One last book that is in the process of being read is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which I read snippets of here and there during freetime substituting at elementary or middle schools. I'll admit that I like this one better than the first, which, after reading, I decided I would not read any of the rest. Now I can probably see myself doing just the opposite.

Still, I'm not sure what the big fuss about these books is.

But don't get me wrong... I've drastically reversed my once-held belief (espoused at least three and half years ago) that the Harry Potter books were pure evil and it was a shock that every pulpit in America was not denouncing them or some such utterly moronic ridiculousness. I have no problem with them whatsoever. They are fiction and fantasy and if a child cannot see the difference between the books and reality then I feel terribly sorry for their well-being. I might even read the books to my own child when he is ready for chapter books.

That said, I'm not exactly sold (yet) on their literary brilliance or something. There is perhaps much better writing to engross ourselves in, many such works of classic literature that should be read first. And I'm not worried about my child not reading (for those of you thinking that, well, at least they are reading). Still, I would not bar him from reading Harry Potter for any reason whatsoever.

***

This page of inquiry of idiosyncracy started as a discussion-blurb about my compulsive desire to read many things at once. It ended with a small discussion-rant about Harry Potter. I don't know what that means, but if anyone can tell me, Great!

The mystery of being godless: an inquiry of idiosyncracies part 2 of 8.

Well, it turns out that my new little friend, Mr. A.C. Grayling is something of a secular humanist. I still like his writing, but boy-oh-boy is he critical of "the Church" which I take to mean the Roman Catholic Church, because much/most of what he says in regards to "the Church" is more or less true of that Western institution (sorry, now I sound slightly critical).

But now, let's see, I once read somewhere that the Christian faith, that is true Christian Orthodoxy, is the true materialism; and it would not be a stretch to say that it is the true humanism (after all, didn't Christ exalt humanity by His very embodiment of it?).

"The Mystery of Things" has made me think and there is much, much, much that is quite good about it. Still, I'm not about to become a secular humanist. There is too much stain and fallen-ness upon the human record to exalt it to an "ism". I prefer to aspire to be a little Christ. Christ is the true religion, and yet devotion of Him is ultimately the opposite of religion.

Yes, I've said enough.