1. The bass player from the Chesney Hawkes hit ‘I am the One and Only’
2. The guy from The Village People
3. Sequoyah. He invited the Cherokee written language, or at least the modern version.
4. Michael Horse. Deputy Hawk from Twin Peaks
5. Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman. Albert Hostein in The X-Files amongst many other things.
Harrowing and fascinating by turns this book tells of the true story of a shipwreck and subsequent mutiny of a small group of sailors of the ship Batavia. To sum the book up in one one sentence, I could say it’s a look at the senseless cruelty and brutality of humankind, however that would do the book and indeed SOME of the people involved a disservice.
To start with the book gives a good grounding on the problems of the day: the troubles with the different maritime powers and all the geopolitics that comes with it, the problem of not being able to work out longitude, the rise of Amsterdam and the Dutch East India company(VOC) and some highly heretical theologies doing the rounds at the time. All this is worked in neatly with details of the harsh conditions of the passengers on the ship, where a trip form Europe to Holland could take upto two years such as lack of food and water, scurvy and suchlike.
The three main protagonists are each extensively researched to give some understanding and insight into how they were influenced by and indeed influenced matters. The latter half of the book is taken up with the moral decay and depravity of men seeking riches and power. A tale of struggles on a small archipelago against not just the elements but of corruption, madness, blood lust and weakness of will. All this taking place miles from any help without much hope. None of the details is glossed over, and some people may find the book positively ghoulish in places. Two in every three people dies, which is worse than the as death count.
However don’t let this put you off, if you would like a glimpse into the psychological state of humans, written in a neat and clear way, that is impeccably researched and unputdownable then give this a go. It’s not all doom and gloom either, there are acts of courage that really stand out and the final paragraph before the epilogue is poignant and good ending. This is a book that will gain you a real insight into history.
Possibly my favourite Shakespearean character has to be the Fool from King Lear. He sees the world as mad and the only way to view the world as anything but, is to become mad and then the world will seem rational. In many ways the Fool seems aloof from humanity, with our laws and morality(or lack of it). What fascinates me most is the lack of any beliefs in anything, no hope of retribution or, otherwise, eternal damnation, no hopes or dreams, just the here and now, life is how it is and always will be. In a way he is right to do so, violence and cruelty remain the human trademarks but at the same time, love and faith are sacrificed.
Although seemingly Godless and alone, he shows the ultimate loyalty to Lear in his madness and follows him through all his pain and ridicule to eventually die off stage, or at least this is hinted at. I always wonder on this most ambiguous character and his oddness. For me this has to be one of the enduring characters of any play. The modern world may well have suited the Fool, in fact he probably would have fitted right in.
T’other night I had one of those dreams where you know it is a dream, but unlike usual I decided to try and bend the dream to my will and make it do what I wanted. Sadly it didn’t work, I tried to chat up a girl, who was on a church roof, and she told me to ‘get off her face’ which was inexplicable as I was just talking to her. Then a man in a library tried to start a fight with me and I will myself to win but he was better and I had to force myself to wake up. The most unusual bit though, was on waking where in front of my eyes was an old victorian town turning around in kaleidoscope fashion while rippling, like someone had dropped a stone into a pool of water. It remained in front of my eyes for about 20 seconds before disappearing.
What conclusions did I draw from this unusual business? Well firstly my subconscious is utter rubbish, even in a dream state I can’t do what I want to do because it holds me back, maybe I should try cutting it out. Just a thought. According to a dream website(if we suppose the village was part of the dream)
‘To dream that you are in a village, represents restrictions. It may also indicate that you are unsophisticated, but well-balanced. Alternatively, it signifies community, simplicity, and tradition.’
The first part makes sense but the unsophisticated bit is ridiculous, after all I have read ALL the Famous Five books and I stick my little finger out when I drink tea. Come to think of it I am well balanced as I don’t fall over much. All dreams though are subjective, with either memory or the person ‘interpreting the dream’ so like a lot of things it is all down to your own personal experiences. So on that note, my dream means that I am actually brilliant, an enigma if you will, and that I live near a village. Sorted!
If I could live anywhere, i’d pick the Pitcairn islands, those isolated islands of Polynesia in the Pacific, where the H.M.S Bounty mutineers(failed) were marooned. Now people who know me may think that fits in with my unsocial or maybe even anti social behaviour that i have acquired of late. Not so, firstly I am neither of the aforementioned words, i am mere;ly a product of the times we live in. Facebook, MSN, Mobiles would be the order of the day to communicate and such are peoples lives these days that they become the default way to connect even if you live in the same town.
I can’t remember the last time i rang someone up purely for a chat, normally there is a motive for me getting in touch and then i text or Facebook as it is cheaper. I very reallymeet people i like, perhaps i have high standards or more probably i am being picky. I am happy with the few friends i have but sometimes wonder if i am missing out, then i consider that i am not a social animal really so i am actually better suited to communicating with most people online. Although i am a classic loner type figure, i am never bored with my time which is filled up with trying to learn and understand everything.
Would it matter if i was on the Pitcairns? Maybe, as i’m not to keen on fish but really but on the plus side if anyone came to visit me, or i them, it would be an epic and scenic journey. I think this idea has legs i may see where it leads.
Today i was reading all the negative one star reviews on Amazon. It’s an amusing pastime and it’s odd to realise there are people out there who will give a book one star purely because everyone else likes it. These people are usually misinformed and many seem to apply to Godwin’s Law. For those of you unfamiliar with Godwin’s Law it is an observation made by Mike Godwin asserting that the longer an online internet discussion goes on the likelihood of a comparison or reference increases. It matters not if the referencing is appropriate just that it is there and so when the reference is invalid it should not be used so the valid comparisons have the weight they should.
This got me thinking and checking all the Hitler/Nazi comparisons that are made on Amazon and random blogs. There are so many out there it borders on the ridiculous, also humourous as most of these people do not understand what terms such as Nazi and fascist(for example) actually mean, they seem to be blanket term for ‘bad people and things’ or indeed for people who just disagree with their own point of view. Luckily according to Godwins rule if any of the above terms are used in the wrong context then the argument is lost by that party and if you don’t agree, then you are probably a fascist too.
As a postscript the title makes it seem like i’m railing against the government(indeed any government) but i am not bemoaning the stat of anyones politics,although certain systems of late need to be shaken up… it was meant to be fascination but with the ’st’ inserted it takes on a new meaning. Words are fun!
I’m in one of those moods today, that is a tiny bit melancholy but also quite elated at the little nooks and crannies of life that are so trivial as to be pointless yet very romantic. These games encapsulate this perfectly. Let me know what you think of them…
http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/fullscreen.php?game=6-Differences
Yes they can indeed, or rather they can’t as that would deny the laws of physics but they can APPEAR to roll up hill. In various places around the world there are places, usually hilly, where all the scenery suggests that you are going up hill when in fact, putting the car in neutral will roll you down the hill but with the optical illusion of going up. It also helps if the horizon is obscured so as not to be able to get your sense of equilibrium. Fascinating stuff but sadly not the supernatural places that various tourist boards claim them to be.
Where has the mystery gone? Thee are a few left but it’s not like it used to be when parts of the world map were left blank but for a phoenix or sea serpent. Maybe that should be put on all these celestial maps that come in astronomy magazines, it would make them seem exciting whilst harking back to the olden days when they could make proper mysteries. Whilst we are on the subject i have noticed that when TV documentaries air, after every ad break they repeat what has happened and what the point of the programme is. It depresses me that TV bosses either think we are to thick to understand the concept of what they are saying or that they think they can get away with half a show full of repetition filler. Still maybe this is just me showing i’m old before my time. Again.
Today’s blog will have to be just whatever comes into my head because i can’t think of what to write about. This is odd as there are apparently 25.21 billion pages as of this March. Are we to overloaded with information? There seems to be no challenge, if i want to know something i go to a search engine and come up with the answer in under three seconds, where’s the challenge? I even feel lazy when i learn now, there is no end to the madness of the world.
Having said that i started a beast of a book today. namely War and Peace, at 1444 pages it will be the longest book i have ever read if not the longest story(that would be Stephen king’s Dark Tower series). It looks intimidating but that’s not the reason for my trepidation at tackling such a lengthy tome, the thing that worries me is the names of people. As with Crime and Punishment it took me a good eighty pages to get all the characters sorted in my head even though the number was relatively small. Characters were referred to by either first, last or patronym (generally a middle name based on the fathers name or any other ancestor, of course for ladies see matronym), coupled with the fact that three characters have the same name and a few had similar names then you can see why i struggled. Apparently War and Peace has a total of 500 characters gracing it’s pages so we shall see how i get on.
Something else that has occupied my time today is uncommon typography, i tackle all the trendy issues, me. Some have amusing names, like fist, lozenge and interrobang, my favourite being the interrobang which combines a speech mark and an exclamation mark. In these lazy days when kids think punctuation marks are on a keyboard solely for the purpose of making faces we should bring back the interrobang. It saves time and ink, in fact if you added all the spaces together when people needlessly end a sentence with ‘?!’ and we could save a lot of trees. People we could save the world just with one punctuation mark. I propose that we stand using the mighty interrobang whenever we need to or indeed whenever we can until people catch on. All we need now is a punctuation mark that can somehow trap carbon and stop wars at the same time, the search continues….
http://ratemyturban.sgdevserver.com/