Call me Ishmael
Well, Ismael actually – he lives in Guatemala, and we are now his parents. Well, sponsor parents anyway. He’s four (nearly), and he looks pretty cute…. Anyway, we’ve been meaning to sposnor a child for ages, and a dude came by this afternoon to spruik it. So we took the plunge. Pretty cool.
History Carnvial XLI
The latest History Carnival, History Carnival XLI is up – and hey, look at that! I got in, for the first time! Welcome, if you happen to be visiting from ClioWeb!
So you think we have religious tolerance?
Ha! If you’re a Christian, we are increasingly being stamped on. I say this after seeing a piece on a woman who worked for BA who got sent on unpaid leave for refusing to remove a small cross on a necklace. I still uphold that this is because Christianity is associated with white, male, colonialism (because everyone forgets that it started in the Middle East, not in England), all of which are naturally ‘bad’. Of course, Muslims and Sikhs and other religions are also being subject to intolerance; it’s just a bit more remarkable, and also less reported, that Christians face any at all.
I think about the only people who don’t get active persecution in the West are atheists and agnostics. I guess they too suffer a bit in countries that are as a whole more overtly religious… and yes, I guess I am thinking here mostly of Muslim countries, since those are the ones we here about. I wonder how an atheist gets on in India? or Mexico?
North Korea… yadda yadda…
Is it really only me that thinks the US et al are hypocrites? Surely not, but I haven’t heard anybody else saying it… who does the US really think it is, that they are genuinely to be the world police? That they somehow have the right to decide who gets to have nuclear weapons? Of course I don’t think NKorea should have them – I dont think the bloody US should have them either! And I don’t think the US should get to tell anybody – NKorea, Iran, East Timor – what they can or can’t do. I love the United Nations – the idea of the UN – with all my heart, and I wish – I wish – that there was some way in which the UN could actually work as an impartial body, to whom the international community really did pay serious attention. Hello, League of Nations all over again.
Argh!
Seems to me that the US is the greatest single threat to the peace of the world at this point in time. Maybe I’m being dramatic.
The Neverending Story
I am watching JTV, and the dude from Butterfly Effect has chosen the song from The Neverending Story as his request!! Ive never seen the film clip, which is of course just clips from the movie, with the occasional shot of the dude who sang it… who has really, really bad 80s hair: half blonde (the top half), the other half black; spiked on top… and long at the back. Urgh. It has, however, reminded me of just how much I loved that movie. And, to be honest, still do: I haven’t seen it in years, and I feel the urge to find it. Or to read the book, which was of course much better than the movie; and let’s not even mention the second (although at the time I liked it… only because of Jonothan Brandis…), and the third – which I watched only because of my sister – was enough to make me do something drastic.
The vid clip show Atreyu losing Artax in the Swamp… that was one of the saddest things I had ever seen on film at that point, barring only Watership Down.
New book!!
My friend B is wonderful. We’ve had a bit of a tradition that she organises my birthday present months in advance, and in the past she has taunted me with this for said months. Not this time, though, so opening a package to discover Borges and the Eternal Orang-utans (by Luis Fernando Verissimo) was a delight. She did the IB, and had to read Borges, which she didn’t really like; I borrowed it from her and loved it – absolutely loved it, and I can’t think why I haven’t gone out and invested in more of his stuff since then. Anyway, it’s perfectly apt from her to me.
I can’t wait to read it… I haven’t heard of the ‘Eternal Orang-utan’ before, so whether this is an invention of Verissimo’s put into John Dee’s mouth, or not, I am not sure… but if it is Dee’s original, I wonder if this is where Pratchett got his idea of the librarian being turned into an orangutan from?
Tricolour Alpacas
Who knew they came in three colours?
Books read in the last three days…
More as a remnder to myself that I really must post more substantial reviews, I read The First Crusade on the weekend – at last – and last niht finished My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Not at all my normal read – am doing it for a programme at school – but it certainly surprised me….
Sadly… another fish down
This time, it’s the sole remaining Algae Eater. He, admittedly, has had a white patch on his bck, which has come and gone… it looked like he was losing scales, but I was never sure what to do about it, or whether it was actually a problem. Of course, I’m still not sure, but there you go. He died.
Dead fish
I’ve lost three fish in the last week or so – two widows and a neon tetra. Bit sad. I think, I hope, that this is only because they’re getting old… we’ve had them for a while now. Haven’t seen any problems with them before death, anyway.
Randomly Yours, Alex 