The new bedroom has been activated and it's a bit like being in a hotel. A nice hotel, I should add, not a Novotel or the ghastly place in the Frankfurt red light district I was once booked into by a cost-saving secretary, where to use the facilities I had to open the shower door in the bathroom so there was room for my knees to stick out, and to dry off after said shower I had to stand in the middle of the room to give myself some towelling space. No, definitely a nice hotel, but everything subtly different and considerably more road noise than before. Which will change when/if the double glazing arrives.
It's made for some interesting dreams. Last night's was about a toddler - a cute little blond boy of 3 or 4, I would say, though not one I know or recognise, not even my nephew who really is 3 and blond. But in the dream I obviously knew him and was fond of him, because he was sitting on my lap and playing with a toy and chatting as toddlers do, and I was talking to him in the sing-song tell-you-a-secret way grown-ups do, and he was -um - asking where babies came from. My exact reply in the dream was "a boy and girl get together and do something very special and private, and that makes a baby." He then asked what this process was called, whereupon I pleaded the Fifth.
The strange thing - apart from the fact that I can remember this in any detail, which is itself unusual - is that I probably would give an answer like that to a toddler in real life, if one actually asked me that question and for some reason I couldn't just refer them up the line to Mummy and Daddy. This dream was weird but made sense. Which is even weirder.
Moving on to slightly older male children, the Boy yesterday took it upon himself to watch Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged. I bought this a few years ago for reasons of personal education - you can't refute someone's arguments, let alone despise and pity them as wilfully ignorant paranoid fools, if you don't know exactly what they're saying. In Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged, a group of (guess what! American) evangelicals feel so moved by the need to save a generation from the fires of Hell that they make up their minds that Harry Potter is evil, and then with malice aforethought proceed to throw out the Ninth Commandment* and do as thorough a hatchet job on him as they possibly can. Into the melée they throw Harry's pointy hat (phallic symbol), the sacrifice of his mother (goddess worship) , even his very name (Potter = maker of pots = cups and bowls used in pagan rituals). At one point the Boy came into the room tearing his hair out - or maybe that's just how he wears it nowadays - shouting "they're saying his scar is like the symbols used by the SS!" Yes, unfortunately they do. They are silly people. I was pleased to see that at the tender age of 13 he can spot the flaws in it without undue coaching from myself.
I've ranted about this subject on my more regular site: www.sff.net/people/ben-jeapes/potter.htm. The one thing they don't throw at him in the video - probably because theywouldn't get the joke - is that if you change one letter of the word "wand" then you get a whole new story. See http://www.bash.org/?111338 if you doubt me.
[* False witness, of course.]
It makes you wonder how long it will be before someone (Pat Robertson? Why not, he suggested the US bump off Chavez – elected president of a sovereign state!) places a bounty on JK Rowling's head, a la Salman Rushdie. Sadly, I can't hear about people (Americans) trying to ban Harry Potter without wanting to be an apologist for my country. We're not all pointy headed philistines; some of us are just pointy headed. Unfortunately this sort of book burning nonsense has been going on as long as there have been books (and where books are in short supply, authors will suffice). Think of the great library at Alexandria, for instance, home of vast amounts of gnostic and esoteric writings (not to mention those of the pagan Greeks). Burned to the ground. Or more recently, the famous images of Nazis celebrating around bonfires of books. There will always be pinheads issuing fatwahs against this and that, whether they be the American Christian Right, Islamic fundamentalists or whatever. In fact, remove 'Islam' from in front of fundamentalist and you can substitute any virulent strain of religion or political philosophy. These people would have us all wear headscarves or pray ten times a day or in the case of the Taleban, stop flying kites. Yes, they are silly, but only if there is someone around to point out that the emperor has no clothes. If you happen to live somewhere where everyone agrees the emperor's bare backside is de rigeur, then watch out (and isn't that a lot like America today, in the thrall of a collective delusion? Who in the asylum is pointing at the emperor anymore?). Ray Bradbury (American) probably wrote the definitive satire of such ideological monomaniacs with 'Fahrenheit 451' – as valid now as it was when it was published in the 50s. Too bad there aren't more authors like him around today. But you're definitely a light in the wilderness, Ben. I enjoy your writing. Please keep it up. Cheers, Mike
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words, Mike. I guiltily admit that the jibe about Americans was a cheap shot. We have them over here too. I blush to be mentioned within a hundred miles of the (American) Mr Bradbury - the man is mighty.
ReplyDeleteI take solace in the thought that it is very rare for any extremism to last beyond a generation or two. Yes, it's a somewhat long-term outlook, but if you can manage it then the only worry becomes who they can drag down with them...
The wang thing was disgusting, but made you think... ewwwww...
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