Danger Syndicate

If any of you are as addicted to Tolkien and his works as I am, and find yourself constantly pining for new knowledge and insight into his rich and vibrant secondary world of Arda, then have I got a link for you! As I was searching iTunes last week for music inspired by Tolkien (yes, I am that pathetic), I came upon a delightful free podcast by the name of Tolkien Professor.

No, not that Tolkien professor!

Tolkien Professor is done by college professor and Tolkien fanatic Corey Olson, who delights in the world of Tolkien and has made available multiple lectures (currently 10) on various themes found in Tolkien’s work. In addition to several non sequitur podcasts about various issues such as the origin of dragons and whether or not the balrog in The Bridge of Khazad-dum had wings (very important!), he is working through the entire trilogy and the Hobbit, doing an in depth reading and analysis of each work.

The lectures are extremely well thought out, not to mention entertaining, so I highly recommend that you subscribe to the podcast, sit back, relax, and get your nerd on.

Today I feel like sharing with all of yous a few short writes I’ve put down on paper lately. Mind you, these aren’t really that refined, and their length makes them more like sketches than stories, but I enjoyed writing them, so I figured I might as well try them out on you.

This first one I got an idea to do when I interpreted the following picture somewhat oddly in my creative writing class at school (it was used as a writing prompt):

All props go to newmexico51 from Flickr for the image.

John sighed, shoved his feet into his black leather boots, and stood up. Walking over to his closet, he pulled out a pair of faded jeans and his favorite flannel shirt. Why did I put my boots on first? he wondered as he struggled to pull the pants on over the boots’ angled heels, his foot straightening out and getting caught halfway up the leg, causing a minor crisis. He debated not wearing pants at all today - no one would see anything anyway. Finally he forced them up, buttoned and zipped them, flung on his shirt and exited the room, walking down the hall towards the cafeteria.

The others have it so easy, he thought, they can turn on and off, choose whether or not to use their gifts. They can walk through civilization if they want to, head held high, no one suspecting their true nature. Of all the freaks on this island, John decided, he had it the hardest. What kind of other life could there be for the Invisible Man?

The other is about a bridge.

This bridge is long. Very long. Just how much time I’ve spent traversing this walkway I’m not certain, but it’s been enough that I can’t remember feeling the sun anymore, or the wind on my face, or laughter.

It’s always dark here, save for the phosphorescent glow of the planks themselves, and the black abyss extends down on either side. I threw a penny over the edge once - after about an hour I gave up on hearing it hit. It is truly horrid here.

At least you’re alright - you are alright, aren’t you? They said that they would take care of you, that they would keep you from harm. All I had to do was cross this bridge and talk to a man on the other side. Of course, I’m realizing now that it’s not so easy as that.

Day after day, I never cease; I don’t even get tired or hungry any more. It drives me so crazy sometimes that I have to walk along with my hat pulled low over my face, just so that I don’t have to look at these sickly green, glowing boards of wood, rotten almost to the point of breaking. And even then I can hear their sinister creaking, like laughter, driven to tears by my torment.

Maybe some day I’ll snap. Maybe some day I’ll do a swan dive off the side, or I’ll leap out from atop the railing like a wrestler about to deliver his finishing blow. Maybe someday I’ll see if this damned pit really does have a bottom. But for now, at least, I’m still content to just walk, and think of your face.

Alright! It’s certainly no Broken Chair Essay, but It’s all I’ve got. As I get back into the habit of writing more often, I’ll start to post things I’ve composed more frequently. I hope you enjoyed reading.

While at the library the other day I came across a book by one of my favorite living authors, Neil Gaiman, which I had not seen before, entitled The Graveyard Book. Published last fall, it won the 2009 Newbery Medal and the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel (!).

It is categorized as a book for children of grades 5-8, but since I like Gaiman so much, and the synopsis looked intriguing, I checked it out. I haven’t started it quite yet (I’m currently reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), but from what I could glean from the cover it’s a re-telling of The Jungle Book by Kipling, the twist being that this young orphan has been raised by ghosts in a graveyard rather than by wolves in the jungle. Having recently read (or tried to read) East of Eden, of which I was not a huge fan, but which is a modern re-telling of the story told in Genesis, it got me to thinking as to what the specific merits and implications of such re-tellings are, aesthetically and philosophically. Once I finish the book I will let you know my thoughts. I’m expected great things from an already highly-acclaimed book by one of my favorite storytellers.

Disclaimer: I tend to ramble. A lot. If you just want to read about the topic at hand, feel free to skip down to the fourth paragraph, but after that’s over, I won’t make any promises…

Ladies and gentlemen, everyone has their pet peeves, it is true. Steven, for example, will murder you if you come within one foot of his laryngeal prominence, Zach hates sugar so much that his pancreas refuses to process it, and Jonesy doesn’t like it when people laugh. I consider myself a fairly relaxed person, one might even go so far as to say “chill”, but there is one thing that gets me so tense I can hardly think; I absolutely cannot stand the word “talk”. It is true, yes! I hate hearing the word, completely loathe it, and take all precautions to avoid using it in conversation.

If you have any trouble understanding my distaste, let me make it perfectly clear; “talk” is, quite simply, a hideously ugly word. It is a word that reminds me not of the arching balustrades of an ancient college, or the romantic vistas atop a mist-cloaked mountain, but of a harsh, barbaric swampland, of kill or be killed, and of a primal animal fury. It’s a problem. Now, all of this intense imagery based on a single word sound might flabbergast (a fun and bubbly word, by the way) some of you, so let me give you a short background of my linguistic leanings.

I grew up reading Tolkien. Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien. I am fairly sure that the majority of my posts will in some way relate to him and/or his body of works, so I think I should get it out of the way right now that I LOVE TOLKIEN. As many of you perhaps know, Tolkien was by trade a philologist, and the base of his writings, specifically the Lord of the Rings and beyond, were always langauges, which influenced the look, actions, and even architecture and climates of the peoples who spoke them; in fact, Tolkien invented Quenya before he even thought of elves or Middle Earth, in the trenches during WWI, to pass the time. The reason that this is at all relevent is that Tolkien’s languages, especially Quenya, sound beautiful. In fact, this recording may be my favorite recording of a person speaking. Ever. In short, I am used to reading and hearing phrases like “i arani nar assaile ar antuare nu Anar”, and am thus acclimated to language that looks and sounds elegant.

Elegant. This is a word that only applies to English when it is properly spoken or written, but in my opinion it is a word that never applies to “talk”. “Talk” is harsh, strident, and cutting word, a word that sounds like an onomatopoeia, but not a nice one like “purr” or “moo”. It reminds me most of the noise a seagull makes, an “awk” sound, and being preceded by a very articulate consonant, T, it really doesn’t have much going for it in the way of aural grace. And to be honest, the reason I hate the word “talk” isn’t actually because of how it sounds, but because of the relationship between its sound and its definition. “Talk” is a word that describes a very frequent and, frankly, mundane act, that of communicating in some way, which we do every day. Yet “talk” has none of the smooth, familiar sound that one would expect from a word of that usage. “Talk” would be fine if it represented something that was both infrequent and perhaps undesirable, like “kill”, but as is it has the same effect as a bluegrass band named “Bloody Deathcorpse 3000″.

You get the idea.

It often baffles me when people use the word “talk”, since there are so many better words at one’s disposal. “Speak”, for example, is not only an incredibly smooth word, but is easy and fun to say, most likely because of the “s” and the long “e” that takes less muscle to form than “talk”’s hard “a”. Another great substitute for “talk” is “colloquy”, which not only sounds badass but makes you seem really intelligent and Shakespearean. Other options are “converse”, “discourse”, “orate”, “convey”, etc.

I know that this issue will probably never end for me. People will continue to use “talk” in conversation, causing me to grit my teeth, as nothing short of an oppressive government would likely be able to erase a word from the English language (hmmm… good idea), but my hope is that after reading this some of you out there will throw of the bonds of the vernacular and turn to some better everyday alternatives for “talk”.

-Jeff

Well, here it is, the (not so) long awaited first post by the new “Sam”-based member of the DS team! You can imagine me (Sam, or “Jonesy” as it were) as the lazy-ass yellow suited one in our super morphing ignorance-fightin teen robo-team. I’m here to be your guide into whatever I damn well feel like. Today it shall be King Arthur and comic books and the connection betwixt the two.

So, just as some background, I’m reading “The Once and Future King” by T.H. White

This guy right here. What a crazy mofo. Nice beard though.

(which is about King Arthur for those of you who don’t know or are too lazy to google it) for an English class of mine. Now, I was familiar with the story of Arthur and his knights before reading this book (I’d seen Monty Python’s Holy Grail, I’d read some illustrated versions, I had the Odds Bodkin version of The Fisher King, watched whatever “Sword in the Stone” Disneyshit) but I had never come to realize exactly how sprawling and in depth the Arthurian legend/universe was.

Of course I noticed this as I ventured to explain to someone (my mom, I’m sure) what exactly had happened at some point in the book and realized that I needed to explain the origins and character traits of about 5 extra people before I could actually tell them what the fuck happened in the story. Now, this may seem like a serious case of NBDitis, but it got me to thinkin some (like I’m know to do) about why it felt so peculiarly familiar to me and slowly it dawned on me: The Arthurian Legends are almost exactly the same in the depth and breadth and complexity of their stories as The Marvel Universe is! Marvel happened to come to mind first (because its better and I like it more), but DC is just as notorious.

Of course this means that not only did Arthur start a million tropes of the fantasy/adventure world, he also was also the first character to ever have to worry about continuity between stories and how to connect multiple crazy story lines. AWESOME. So you know, there’s a bunch of crazy characters–Arthur, Lancelot, Guenever, Merlin, Gawaine, Mordred, Grummore, Galahad, Percival, Bors, Tristan, Elaine, Nimune (and those are all just off the top of my head, there’s like a million more. Seriously) — who all fight evil, team up sometimes, fight sometimes, father each other’s illegitimate chilluns, go on quests, save lives, and all that stuff, then there’s some historical fact (maybe, its debatable), and multiple versions of different stories, stuff that gets added in or taken out depending on who’s in charge…

This is my proposed idea. Minus the crappy.

Basically, its a big jumble of characters and adventures and other nonsense that was told episodically to the people of the world. They were even superhuman! For example, Lancelot (Batman? Wolverine? this one is not so clear) goes crazy multiple times and has what could be considered superhuman strength (he is the best knight in the world after all), Arthur dies, comes back and has a “fortress of solitude” (Superman, I guess), Merlin can do fucking magic (the original Dr Strange), Galahad is an angel and is pulled into heaven to live with God and drink from the Holy Grail and shit (ask Jeff about who this could be), and the list goes on.

So, in a partial conclusion, I put forth that King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (aka “The Matter of Britain or the Arthurian Cycle) was the first “superhero” universe in our history, which makes the origin of superhero comics and the Arthurian legends both a lot more interesting in my opinion.

Well, I hope I learned you something, or at least got your mind working for a bit. Feel free to bitch, discuss, argue, etc in the comments.

Love and hugs, Professor Sam

Also, I know I’m mixing the DC and Marvel Universes (sorry to all you comic nerds out there) and I’m mixing different versions of the Arthurian Legend together, but to me that seems to support my point that they come from a similar place even better.

P.S. for those of you who are hoping for a review of “The Once and Future King”: It’s tolerable.

Edit/Response By Jeff

I felt somewhat obligated to provide input on this story since it pertains to comics, one of my passions and something which, like the mythology of Arda, I know entirely too much about, and I decided that editing the original post would be the most public way to do it. I just wanted to put forth a few hypothoses as to a current comic character (they are Marvel characters, as I prefer Marvel to DC) which might relate to Galahad. I am of the opinion that the superhero Nova (a.k.a. Richard Rider) is the most likely candidate.

Nova, here pictured fighting Drax the Destroyer on an asteroid. Just normal stuff, really

To give you a (very) brief bio, Nova is a normal earth man who, upon the death of Nova Centurion (read: intergalactic sheriff) Rhomann Dey, inherits the super powers and responibilities of the deceased galactic gaurdian as he takes his place as a member of the Nova Corps, literally being raised into the heavens to work with the “gods”. Funnily enough, in Marvel Comics continuity there is a character who’s story is almost the exact opposite of Galahad’s - Thor. While in Arthurian legend Galahad is exalted into heaven for his exceptional behaviour, moral standing, smooth talkin’, etc., Thor is forced to inhabit the body of a mortal, Donald Blake, by his father, Odin, who is displeased with Thor’s behaviour and wishes him to learn some humility. Of cours, this is just a small tacked-on note, but it serves as a reminder that tropes not only spawn imitators but also deliberate deviations.

Woo!

-Jeff

Greetings and salutations dear readers! ‘Tis I, Zach. Presumably, if you are reading this blog, you know me. Personally. S-Dogg and J-Dizzle were kind enough to allow me to become involved in their fine blog. I hope you guys are excited to read what I write. Because I am pretty excited to slowly but surely subliminally subvert your personage to do my bidding. So get ready to read a lot of awesome words.

I went through a whole lot of ideas about what to write about for my first post. I shan’t bother you with the details, but my ideas were; Jet Li, Purple Rain, and Nutella. But I wrote a tithe for those, and they are either boring or really long. So instead, I decided to review a book.

Pride and Prejudice And Zombies. Now, I’ve never read Jane Austen. And I don’t really ever plan to. But when I heard that someone (Seth Grahame-Smith) was going to take the original text and add zombies to it, I was pretty excited. It is, after all, a mathematically proven fact that by adding zombies to anything, it automatically becomes exponentially more awesome. A helpful formula for knowing exactly how much more awesome is

X(Z+B)=A

Admittedly, that equation may look somewhat intimidating to someone who doesn’t have a doctorate in Mathematics, so allow me to explain in layman’s terms. X is the awesomeness of the original work (be it a novel, film, television show, or what have you). Z is the amount of zombies being added in, and B is equal to the number of brains that are eaten throughout the work. This all adds up to A, which is the work’s new level of awesomeness.

So one day, I went down to my local booksellers to purchase a copy of the novel, after spending about 20 minutes trying to figure out where they put the copies. For some reason, it was in the teen section, next to all the ridiculous novels about angsty youths who overcome the oppressive man all the while learning to accept themselves for who they are. But back to the book itself-PPZ is a full of ridiculously awesome stuff; Zombies, Ninja, and Victorian-Era men and women who spend their time being members of High Society, and shooting, stabbing, and kung-fu’ing the undead to their permanent death. The new parts added to the novel are pretty well-written, especially if you are as much of a sucker as I am for Victorian lingo. A new level of humour is added to the novel as well, as many a clever line have been penned for your reading pleasure. Here is an example of one of the scenes, between Lady Catherine (a total biznatch), and Elizabeth (the main heroine)

“Have your ninjas left you?”
“We never had any ninjas.”
“No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety.”
Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been the case.

An Important Scene From The Novel

So yeah. That’s the type of situation that occurs in the book. You can’t forget though, this is still a book that Jane Austen wrote, so there are parts where the characters spend a long time just talking about getting married and boring stuff like that. But those parts are generally encompassed by loads of awesome zombie scenes and the like.

But in the end, your best bet for determining whether or not you’ll like this book is by simply considering the subject matter. If you like zombies and awesome things, then you’ll like this book. If you prefer your Austen to contain absolutely nothing exciting, then you might want to pass on it.

Overall, I give Pride And Prejudice And Zombies an A. And if that’s not enough Jane Austen madness for you, Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters is going to be released in the middle of September.

Sorry for not posting for a while, but Steven and I have been really busy with school, so we haven’t had the time to have any cool ideas to blog about.

Mischmasch is another game proposed by our favorite Logician/Author Lewis Carroll for two (or two sets of) players. The aim of the game is to score 10 points before the other player.

To start the game, each player proposes a ‘nucleus’, that being a group of letters that are contained in a word (you don’t have to know a word that contains it, but I highly recommend that you do). The goal is for the other person to either think of a word containing that nucleus, determine that there is no such word, or give up within a set time limit.

ex. nuclei (’aj’,'ims’)
ex. answers (’major’,'himself’)

After both players are ready, they state their respective answers. Points are assigned as follows:

= Guessing a word correctly (it doesn’t have to be the same word the other player thought of) - gain 1 point

= Guessing a word incorrectly - other player gains 1 point

= Guessing ‘no word’ correctly - gain 2 points

= Guessing ‘no word’ incorrectly - other player gains 2 points

= Giving up - other player gains 1 point

If someone gives up on a nucleus, it can’t be used again during the game, though a variation can. If a player fails to answer at all during the time limit, they are not penalized, but must continue with that nucleus until they give one of the three responses. Obviously, if in a turn both players reach 10 points, the game is drawn.

This game is crazy fun! Steven and I, upon learning this game, played it for about 2 hours straight. Seemingly easy nuclei can be intensely difficult, and if one isn’t prepared for the mental load, the intellectual workout can be quite shocking. Since this is a real time game, we can’t very well play it through a blog, but I’ll leave you with a couple nuclei that stumped Steven. See if you can figure them out (and no Googling!!!!!!!).

‘rax’

‘isj’

Sorry that no one’s posted in a while. The second semester of school started, and damned if it isn’t really really time-consuming.

BUT!

I got the complete works of Lewis Carroll for x-mas, and I am pleased to announce that it is pretty much awesome. A large portion of the book is dedicated to various card and word games that Carroll developed, ranging from simple to extremely complicated (the guy had a lot of free time!), and that is what brings us to todays topic:

Doublets

Doublets, or Word Ladder, is a game invented by Carroll that is endless amounts of fun and intellectual workout. The way it works is this: you have a starting word and a target word, usually related in some way, and you get from the original to the final word by linking to other English words. The way you can do this is by 1. adding a letter 2. removing a letter 3. changing a letter or 4. rearranging the letters (making an anagram). However, in the “purist” version, which is how Carroll originally proposed it, only allows for changing letters. Here is an example:
Evolve MAN to APE. MAN>RAN>RAM>RIM>AIM>AIL>ALL>ALE>APE.

Here are some by Carroll that I have solved:
Add FOUR to FIVE.
Get COAL from MINE.
BLACK fades to WHITE.

And here are some ones I came up with on my own:
READ a BOOK.
RING the dinner BELL.
KNIT her a SOCK.
The ARMY WANTs you.

Carroll also proposes the Doublet “Make a KETTLE HOLDER” using the purist method, but I haven’t solved it yet. Please feel free to try and solve any of these Doublets, and post them in the comments! I want to see if other people come up with better word routes than the ones I used (often there is more than one way to solve a Doublet).

So, I just got back from a borrower my copy of The Oath, a short series featuring Dr. Strange, written by Brian K. Vaughan. The reason I bring this up is because The Oath is a great example of comics, which are treated by many non-readers as very flat and superficial, dealing with thought-provoking issues.

The premise of the comic is essentially this: Dr. Strange (who is often criticized by readers and writers as being too overpowered, the deus ex machina of the Marvel universe, if you will) stumbles upon the Panacea in an alternate dimension. Obviously overjoyed, the good doctor plans to use the cure-all to end many of the worlds problems. However, through multiple unfortunate encounters with nefarious sorcerers and big-pharma heads (ya, it’s true), Strange is left with only one drop of the stuff left. Of course, being a master magician, he could easily replicate it in his cauldron, but a new variable enters the mix - Strange’s man-servant Wong reveals to his master that he has an inoperable brain tumor, and on top of that has a stroke in a very inconvenient time and place. So, the doctor (and, hypothetically, we) are left with two questions:

1. If you had to choose between saving your friend and curing, say, AIDS or cancer, which would you choose? Certainly it would be cold-hearted to let your friend die, but what about all those children in Africa?

and,

2. Maybe more importantly, if you had access to the Panacea, would it be right to allow its use at all? Introducing a cure-all into the process of human evolution could cause numerous problems, and it is debatable whether the benefits would outweigh the costs.

So, chew on that for a while and let us know what you think (hint: use the comments feature!). As for what Dr. Strange decides, you’ll have to read the book.