srkriger

Hi everyone,

As some of you may know, I’ve been working for the past few years on a young adult novel. As others of you may know, at the suggestion of my instructor from the Highlights Whole Novel Workshop this summer, I’m looking for readers.

Although of course I welcome constructive criticism from everyone and would be happy to send the manuscript to anyone who’s interested, I’m looking in particular for girls and boys aged 12-14 who enjoy fantasy novels.

What would these readers be volunteering to do? ( Details after the cut... )

For those of you interested in Sherlock Holmes treasure hunt pics, you can find them on my blog at http://srkriger.com/blog/?p=156

Egad, old chums, Professor Moriarty has stolen a private letter from among the papers of Her Majesty Queen Victoria! Were its contents to become public, the results could bring the British Empire to its knees!

HRH has engaged the services of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, but the case is too dire for even the world's foremost consulting detective: he needs your assistance! For Britannia!

( EVERYONE is invited - yes, even you! )

PS. For those of you who have no idea what the heck is going on, your questions may be answered here. If you still have no idea what's going on, try here. If you still have questions, fear not: all will be explained on this LJ and also here in a few weeks.

Hey everyone,

Just to let you all know, I have a new writing website at www.srkriger.com (YAY!), and I will probably be updating the blog there more often than the one here. And I may or may not make this friends-only. It depends if I actually post here...

Hope you're all having a great summer!

Sonnet to a Woman Turning Thirty:

*ahem*

Leonardo, Donatello, and Raph
Loved Michaelangelo's pizza pie-a
But my tastes arrrr better than those riffraff
And just for mature women I sigh-a
O birthday girl, you shiver me timbers
And thy buxom cannonballs raise my mast
Cast me not aside like other him-curs
But permit me to board thy ship at last
The shuriken of your gaze pierce my heart
Love steals upon me with its ninja stealth
WIth katana of lust, you cleave me apart
On your day of aging, I wish you health

As doth all words stem from keyboard's QWERTY,
So does all joy from a lass of thirty.

Tho' I have wenches o'er the seven seas, you're my one land-ho!

Meerkat Manor - TVO 7:00 Wednesdays :)

How Summer Reading Has Bettered My Life:
interesting quotes and facts I have come across and opinions I have formed as I continue my efforts to read every book I own...

If you want meatloaf but don't want to wait an hour for it to bake, you can put it in greased muffin tins and stick it in the oven at 400F. It'll be done in 20 minutes.

"Cymbeline" and "Pericles" are totally not tragedies. WTF, Shakespeare?

Why to ignore the What Not To Wear people: "Some people follow fashion to hide the fact that they are Jewish... They seldom fool anyone. People usually see past fashion and identify the Jew inside." (Maurice Lamm, Living Torah in America) Just a little freaky.

Fantasy writer Clive Barker doesn't grasp the subtleties of evolutionary theory.

Victorian music hall star Marie Lloyd's signature song was "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas". However, at a particular venue, she was told it was too obscene and would hence not be allowed onstage in its current form. So... she changed it to "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Leeks".

"Ha!" is a suitable and sufficient expression of triumph or joy. (Props to Sherlock Holmes.)

"One of the great mysteries of literary history is what exactly the supremely respectable Henry James meant by calling one of his characters Fanny Assingham." (David Lodge, The Art of Fiction)

Harold Pinter's "Family Voices", Edgar Allen Poe's comic stories, Anton Chekov's "Uncle Vanya", and John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" are all pretty funny.

Miguel de Cervantes really, really thought poo, pee, and vomit were funny.

Historians aren't very good at judging what from the recent past will be important in the future (sorry, US internal politics are more important than the worldwide advent of the Internet? Don't think so.)

Also, "World History" apparently means "Western history, with a couple token mentions of the rest of the world so we don't look racist".

You know what most Torah scholars agree will bring you peace and long life and a portion in the World to Come? Being respectful and nice to Torah scholars... Hmmmm...

Predicate logic is a lot like set theory.

"That's why just being around AIDS patients... is safe. Sharing [...] genitals is not." (Sara Stein, The Body Book)

Beethoven was a lousy father. When his brother died, leaving Ludwig joint custody of his nephew along with the boy's mother, Beethoven fought to get sole custody because he didn't want to have to deal with women. He won, and the kid attempted suicide at age nineteen.

James Bond isn't the one with sexist views. It's Ian Fleming.

If I ever write an epic fantasy, the syntax of the demonic embodiment of Evil will resemble not that of the King James Bible ("Beware My wrath! For generation after generation hath sought to imprison Me through enchantment in the Vortex of Time, and time and time again escape have I achieved!") but that of 50 Cent ("I been bespelled nine times, yo!").




P.S. Also, I have resolved that the next time the telemarketers phone and ask for Mr. Brown, I will lower my voice, assume a British accent, and say, "This is he."

If the conversation proceeds past "Uh... no, you're not.", I will then inform the caller that, "I can moo. Can you?"

My old plan for life was boring. Here's my new one:

1. Become a celebrity.

2. Form a coalition of celebrities and annex Hollywood, soon to be known as the grand republic of Celebritania.
2.1 Only celebrities will be allowed to live in Celebritania.
Major celebrities will live in the city. Minor ones, like Joe Shmoe who just got voted off American Idol or Jane Shmane who is on Reuters Oddly Enough for sticking a cat up her nose, will be allowed to live in the Celebritanian equivalent of Barrhaven. Guinness Book of World Record holders will be allowed temporary visas. Internet celebrities can have Celebritanian domain names.
2.2 Since all pop stars and composers of renown will be citizens of Celebritania, there may be some slight competition for the writing of the Celebritanian national anthem.
2.3 We will have famous criminals living in Celebritania, but it'll be okay because we also have the famous cops. And Batman.
2.4 All corpses of hitherto deceased famous persons will be exhumed and brought to Celebritania so that they may be buried in the land of their people. This may take a while.
2.5 Celebritania will be a democracy, but there'll be no campaigns, parties, or debates, since anyone who runs for a government position will already be well-known by the populace.
2.6 We also might have some arguments over who gets to write the charter of Celebritania; at present, it is titled "Harry Potter and Constitution".
2.7 With regards to reporters: you don't talk about Celebritania.
2.8 You DON'T talk about Celebritania.
2.9 Actually, you totally do talk about Celebritania, because, if you didn't, the international populace might forget about you and then you wouldn't meet the requirements for citizenship anymore. For the love of monkeys, talk about Celebritania!
2.10 When you get married in Celebritania, your new name will be a combination of the first names of you and your partner (e.g. if Romeo and Juliet wed, their new name will be Romiet). And it will be covered in all the tabloids.
2.11 Also, only famous people are allowed to visit Celebritania. That's right - if we need a passport to identify you, you're not welcome.
2.12 Vive la Celebritania libre!

3. Eventually rule the world.

Dear J. K. Rowling,

I'm sorry. Unfortunately, you can no longer be my celebrity imaginary friend. It's not you, it's me. Specifically, it's my reaction to this.

Don't get me wrong - I am proud that you disapprove of judging people based on their weight and thrilled to see you condemn the Western cultural obsession with thinness. It's wonderful that you are spreading this message to your fans and the rest of the public. I do wish you had thought to extend these ideas to the male self-image (*cough cough cough*), but I can understand, if, being a woman yourself, you overlooked that facet of the problem in your understandable enthusiasm to share your personal conviction.

The thing is, I can't help but notice that, while you admirably identify these issues, you seem to have taken little initiative to resolve them. I admit, judging from what I've read of The Mail's article accusing you of hypocrisy, it is largely hyperbolic*, but the fact remains that you are likely the single person in the world most influential with today's youth (and today's not-so-much-youth). Imagine the difference in perception of thinness if all you wrote was "Ginny Weasley was Ron's younger sister and Harry Potter's girlfriend. She had red hair, and she weighed two hundred and fifty pounds."

Your descriptions of Uncle Vernon, Dudley, Crabbe, and Goyle promote social stereotypes of large people as lazy, bad-tempered, and stupid. In particular, you often associate the two Dursleys' physical girth with their poor characters. Peter Pettigrew, the traitor Marauder, is described as plumper than his three virtuous friends, the inference being that his personal weakness and lack of self-control manifest themselves physically as well as mentally. In your latest book, Horace Slughorn's roundness appears to be linked to his propensity for self-indulgence. Though certainly unintentionally, your work reinforces the widespread popular myth that being overweight is a psychological flaw rather than a physical fact.

(By the way, I'm aware that Snape, Malfoy, Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Quirrell are all described as both thin and disagreeable, to say the least. This is irrelevant to my argument. I'm not trying to prove you have it in for large people and large people only - I'm just inquiring into what implications can be drawn from your portrayal of them as it exists.)

Some might suggest that this is use of visual metaphor; however, I think we can all agree that the fact that a physical feature is widely associated with a particular character trait does not justify the propagation of the association - and implied support of it - in new works of literature. Less than a century ago, lighter skin colour was thought to correspond to a higher degree of moral worth, and fiction depicted characters accordingly. Now, of course, we recognize this idea as racist, and we'd have a word or two to say to any writer who used it.

Even sympathetic characters who are larger-than-average get the short end of the stick. They are not portrayed as attractive, nor as particularly able. In the romantic department, their efforts are seen as comical - Hagrid's courtship of Madame Maxime, for instance, or Neville's incompetence when he takes Ginny to the Yule ball. Mrs. Weasley is, of course, a loving mother, but she is also completely de-sexualized. Have we seen a large girl become romantically involved with one of the heroic boys? Do you ever, without qualification, describe a large girl as "beautiful"?

I am not, of course, suggesting you have purposely and maliciously put these ideas into your books; I'm sure they horrify you as much as they horrify me. Nor do I believe that it is upon you, personally, to provide positive overweight role models for contemporary society. We all have to take responsibility for what we and our culture believe. I don't think you're a hypocrite, just human, like the rest of us. I, for one, despite the best of intentions, have certainly made judgements in the past based on weight and will likely do so again in the future. My point is, there are deeper reaches of this weight-obession problem into which you - and everyone else - can and should delve. While I commend you for your efforts thus far, I can't help but wish you would pave the way and take your beliefs to the next step,or at least consider your own role in the popular mind.

So, um, maybe we should see less of each other, okay? We can still like, you know, do imaginary coffee once in a while.

One of the many complete strangers you don't know,
SRK

*EDIT: Actually, having now read the offending article itself, I find it rather reasonable and quite courteous. It is the reaction to it that has become hyperbolic. To my mind, it has perfectly valid points to make, and I am deeply saddened that much of the reaction has been vitriolic personal attacks. Can't we discuss things as reasonable, mature human beings?

Best $4 purchase ever...

( The front cover )

( The back cover... ... Ringworld? Dragon riders? )

( Banquo's murder )

I like anchovies.

I have been tagged by umbrellahouse. So now you have to read this. Or scroll past. C'mon, you know I'll never know if you do... (not a scene, thesoundofduck, lougheed, umbrellahouse, and phoenixdagger. For the rest of you, who are probably wondering what the hell that means or whether I'm on crack, you are the lucky ones.)

Still here? Then read the cut-and-paste, my friend.

Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic. - Topic: "Five Weird Habits Of Yourself" and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and list them. Pass it around.

( Do you really want to know? )

So that means I have to tag five people myself. So that means, in no particular order, dear people whose five usernames I randomly happened to spot first (ha ha), you're It!

TT no touchbacks:
1. deathbra
2. darktessai
3. blueeyed_gal
4. exaggeration
5. barcodegurl


OK, I lied. It's totally the Jewish...es. Uh... Happy... Hannukah... *runs*

I believe I ought to be more than slightly ashamed that thesoundofduck had a plug for this before I did:

Do you like absurdism? How about young men in maid costumes? Or even the word "pistletoe"? Then come out and see Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano".

Directed by... me. Starring... some people you don't know but who are nevertheless very talented (well, actually, barcodegurl knows one of them... but I digress)

8PM - Thurs. Nov. 24 - Sat. Nov. 26
10PM - Sat. Nov. 26
Kingston Hall Red Room @ Queen's University
Tickets $5/person

Shows run about an hour and ten minutes. If you're in Kingston, hope to see you there! If you're not in Kingston - why the heck not? I propose: moral bankruptcy. Kids these days.

The moment has come. I am doing what, after Hillel, I swore I'd never, never, never do.

I am writing a secular essay for a secular class and - completely VOLUNTARILY - writing on such a subject that my title is likely to include the words "The Jewish Perspective".

Oy.

I am back in Kingston. Have been for a little while now, but I'm finally on top of that moving-back-in organization dealy.

If you live in Kingston, drop me a line. Or a ring. Or an LJ comment.

Even if you don't live in Kingston, do the same.

And now, a very short anecdote for your reading pleasure:

*In the grocery store. Mom, lougheed, and I are grocery shopping*
MOM: *suggests something*
ME: But we could always get that instead, and -
MOM: Your mom!

I want to visit this museum:

www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com

Edit: the site appears to be down at the moment. But I swear it is really cool.

Edit: no, really.

( For those who asked me to pass on the info re: Ottawa movies goings-on.... )