Fantasist's Scroll

I finished Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn last week.

It was good, but light. For one thing, the author, who uses a pseudonym, claims she was trying to represent a fantasy world that was Japan-like without actually referring to the classes of people involved by their Japanese names and titles. So, while it was obvious that she was referring to ninja and samurai, she never used those terms, but instead used vague descriptions or descriptive words. To me, it seemed a little forced sometimes. Also, I felt as if the book was written for someone in about the 8th Grade. Of course, USA Today is written at that level, so maybe I’m just biased towards the more well read.
In any case, those two small issues aside, it was a good book. The story focuses on an orphan who is taken in first by a great lord in exile or disgrace, depending on your point of view, and, later, by a clan of enigmatic mystics who are basically ninja. There are numerous plot twists of varying degree, though none are too surprising to the well-read. The themes are classically Japanese and the author is unabashedly enamored with Japanese culture. In fact, on her website, she cites a trip to Japan as the inspiration for the novel. Well, series, actually. This is the first book in the Tales of the Otori series and the last has just recently been published.
As a fantasy book goes, Across the Nightingale Floor is rather similar to any of a number of others, but as a novel about a fantasy Japan, which is not historical fiction, it stands virtually alone. In fact, I haven’t seen a book similar since I read Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds, which is about an Ancient China that never really was. And, though I have to admit Lian Hearn could have done more with her work, I still liked the first book enough to buy, and read, the rest of the series.

It’s nice to have a quality journal to write in.

I may not be an Oscar Wilde, who was famously in love with his own journal, but I do occasionally like to write in one. And, I have to tell you, I’ve scribbled in everything from cheap, spiral-notebooks to heavy, leather-esque tomes, but the best that I’ve ever seen is Moleskine. My mother got me one for Christmas one year and it was so beautiful that I was afraid to write in it. It’s bound with real leather and the paper feels, well, creamy. It takes ink like a dream from any pen. And, they have a built in book mark to mark where you stopped! Not to mention the elastic band to hold it closed and the pocket for small papers in the back cover. Really, these are superior journals. And, no, I don’t get a commission off this.
If you like writing in journals, you owe it to yourself to at least look at these. (You can buy them here.)

I finished The Hiram Key: Pharoahs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus last week.

It was, er, well…. “Interesting”, to say the least. I’m not sure I agree with everything they claim, but it sure made me question what I thought I knew about my own faith and Freemasonry. In a nutshell, the authors claim that Freemasonry is the repository of the “secret” teachings of Joshua ben Joseph (aka Jesus Christ), by way of the Knights Templar. Now, the idea that Freemasonry is derived from the suppressed Knights Templar is not new, and, frankly, one I believe. Too much just fits together too well for that part to not be true. Where it starts to get a little sketchy for me is that they claim the Knights Templar got ahold of some secret, forgotten scrolls that were hidden under the Temple in Jersualem at it’s building. And, that the knowlege in those scrolls goes back to ancient Egyptian kingship rites which themselves may be derived from ancient Sumerian religious beliefs. It’s all a kind of a stretch to me, but the authors make it seem frighteningly plausable.

It’s an interesting book, but probably not the best place to start if you’re interested in Masonic history. But, since this book got me so interested in the history of Freemasonry again, I’ve set myself the goal of reading at least one Masonic book a year. So, keep an eye out for other reviews!

(And, yes, this review first appeared on my other blog.)

It’s about time I did!

I was on a web BBS for role-playing game development this past week, arguing with someone again, of course, mainly about what seemed to be a willful misinterpretation of a semantic point. But, I got really, really upset by it. As my Dad would say, it “punched my buttons”. Boy, howdy! Frankly, that disturbed me. Why should what some faceless, nameless person think about my point bother me? What did I have to prove? Who was I trying to impress?
Well, I don’t know. However, what struck me about all that was how childish it all was. Not just the whole arguement, because it got rolling, I felt, as a result of someone else trying to impress everyone with their credentials, but specifically my reaction to it. I was rather like a child throwing a tantrum. And, that’s really sad. So, I’m going to stay away from BBSs for a bit. At least until I can get a handle on whatever that all was for me. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m growing up a bit. (About time! After 35 years, you’d think I’d have grown up already!)
So, with one last parting shot, I’ll quote the Bible:
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ”
Corinthians 13:11

What, my story starter isn’t good enough for you?

Well, okay, I have to admit, it’s hard to beat Writer’s Digest for writer’s resources. I mean, they are the tops. Though, I recently let my subscription to their magazine lapse because I didn’t like the way the articles or format was going. I still love thier books, though. Nothing better in the “how-to” market for writers, in my opinion. Anyway, if you’re still looking for inspiration of somekind, you can try their writing prompts. There’s an “inspirational” thought for writers for every day of the year there. Hopefully, something will get your creative juices flowing.

Can it be done?

They used to say that an army travells on its stomache, meaning that supplies and supply lines, especially food, determine how and why an army moves. But, what can you do about that? Well, according to this article on Wired News, DARPA is trying to make a soldier that doesn’t need to eat for five days. The project is called “Metabolic Dominance” and it’s an attempt to use biochemical “cocktails” of various kinds to overcome or get around the body’s need to ingest food for long periods of time. It’s a fairly radical step in both biochemistry and military science. Imagine what might have happened to Moscow if Napolean’s troops hadn’t needed as many supplies. Awsome. This technology, if they can perfect it, combined with the other things DARPA has in the works, really could change the face of war so radically that it may just become science-fiction. Joe Haledman may have been far more prophetic than he imagined with The Forever War, not to mention the classic Starship Troopers by Heinlein.

I honestly believe that this happens all the time. If you live long enough, you’ll see yesterday’s science-fiction become today’s reality.

Not the usual Fantasist’s Scroll book.

But, well worth looking into. I first got interested in Rastafarianism by way of William Gibson, who had several characters who were Dreadlocks. My ignorance of what that was all about was, well, somewhat shocking for me at the time. So, I started poking around. Quite a few years ago, I found Rastafari: Roots and Ideology by Barry Chevannes. It followed me around, unread, in a box for several years. Well, I finally read it this past week. What a shame I waited so long!
This was a very good book about the history and origins of a relatively new religion. Among other things, it was fascinating to track the birth of a new faith from its very start through the modern day. As a sociological look at a small, but growing, religious or spiritual movement, this is a great book. It is, however, a rather schollarly look at this movement and, as such, is somewhat dry at times. Still, it presents not only a well-rounded look at the religion, but also the socio-economic forces that shaped it. One of the main “pillars of faith”, for instance, is the concept of “repatriation” to Ethiopia. This would never have come about if not for the practice of black slavery in the New World.
I’ll not attempt to describe the intricacies of Rastafarianism in a short message, but, if you’re interested in knowing more, this book is a great place to start.

Noticed a few changes?

Well, that’s because I’ve relocated, yet again. Apparently, my old web host thought that my scripts were killing their server. Oddly enough, they seemed to think they were okay when I asked them to test them and make sure there were no problems before I released them to the public. Funny how that works.
In any case, I’ve found a new home at Amzia.net. And, I’ll probably be a little scarce for the next week as I move my other domains over, too. Oh, and, should it turn out that the last folks were right, I’ll be modifying my scripts to slow them down. Actually, to make sure that they only run one at a time. Though, I have to admit, I doubt there’s really a problem. Unless, of course, the problem occured when they moved my account from a Unix server to a Windoze server. But, that’s an entry for my other blog.