fuck it

08.01.05 @ 12:29 a.m.

start going here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/quadro_ellen/

fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come

07.20.05 @ 10:59 p.m.

My mom got back from the yearly odyssey to Los Angeles, which I opted to skip this year. I had other things to do, you know. School and such. (Dear god, I am a college graduate. Now what?) She brought back a ton of silly things, which is generally what happens. My aunts and grandmother like to press things on people. Mostly regifting, too, which is tragic and funny at the same time, because it's utterly blatant. ("Patricia brought these bags from Australia... I took the ugliest one so no one else would get stuck with it. Do you want it?" It's now my sack of trashy novels, shoved under my bed when company comes.) My haul is a lovely bag from India (from where? "Uncle" Anil, the Indian man who lives in sin (sort of, they have separate places, actually) with my Aunt Sheila, because his family is upset with him for not agreeing to an arranged marriage? I think it's from Sheila, at least) which will become my universal short-stay overnight bag, I think, or generic airline carry on. It doesn't hold much, but it's bigger than a purse. I also have a Four-Leaf Clover kit (the sort of thing you see in a rack at the bookstore), a book called How the Irish Saved Civilization, a small, stuffed "Class of 2005" dog, an unopened DVD of Office Space (why the hell did this get given to Mom?), a journal with a cover from the New Yorker on the front, a tweed jacket and a pair of earrings. I also got a little telescope that seems to be my informal inheritance from my Uncle Kevin, who died two and a half years ago of throat cancer brought on or exacerbated by his intense smoking and drinking. He was a scruffy hippie sort of fellow, but interesting enough. I will always remember the visit where (just before the pog craze) we built towers out of dominoes and a set of free pogs I got at Knott's Berry Farm. It was great. He gave me the domino set, too. I still have it in my room.

I like my little telescope. I want to keep it forever to remind me of him. I feel like a pirate or a sea captain with it.

*dies*

07.19.05 @ 1:54 a.m.

Medium Large

more ootp

07.17.05 @ 10:41 p.m.

Also, all the pureblood stuff and Voldemort not being pureblood himself makes me think vaguely of Hitler. I think that Rowling's real gift is a talent for assemblage. This is 90% folklore well constructed and arranged. People will just eat up certain narratives (which explains the fact that there is a journey of the hero framework--well, more than one--and commonalities found cross culturally) as if we're wired, as humans (or by our particular culture) to find certain stories compelling.

It's brilliant. I say this as an aspiring scholar of folklore, of course. Sharon Shermon, during zero week, told us the way to make millions of dollars was to take the hero frameworks from folklore scholarship and build a story around them. I had a brilliant idea for creative writing prompts recently, too, which is to find the Tale Type Index (or a similar motif index) and pick, like, three random entries and create a story.

EXAMPLES from the motif index:

And so on and so forth.

If this thing I have from Morphology of the Folktale made more sense to me, I'd type it out, because while they don't necessarily appear in this order, almost all 31 parts of this heroic story structure appear in Harry Potter books. I mean, #16 & #17 are "The hero and the villain join in direct combat" & "The hero is branded." HELLO LIGHTNING BOLT SCAR.

I'm-a cross-post this again, because it is a day of experimentation.

harry potter: driving our children into devil worship

07.17.05 @ 3:24 p.m.

I'm nearly at the end of Order of the Phoenix (bad! I should be writing a lenghty paper on Paradise Lost allusions in Sometimes a Great Notion, but clearly I am not,) and I just noticed something. The number to get into the Ministry of Magic is 62442. If I were one of those people who thought that JK Rowling has no greater desire than to drive the children of the world toward Satanism, I'd be gleeful in finding such proof. Er, 6 2+4 4+2 = 666.

OMG the scar is the mark of the beast.

Hurrr.

And even though my good intentions were to hold off on purchasing Half Blood Prince until Tuesday, when I could con Dad into taking me to Costco, I figured that they weren't going to give me a better deal than Fred Meyer's 40% off list. So I bought it. It's sitting on my bed, taunting me.

Think I'm going to double-post this to my LJ (yeah, I have one, so I can comment in Liz's LJ), because I'm strongly considering a move; a lot of Dumbrella is there, plus Liz... And frankly, the weblog style posting here is crap.

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Previously

fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
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