See previous post ("Holy crap! I just saw a car plow into a baby store!") for the background on this one.
OK, so now they're (still) clearing wreckage away from the store. The entire front face is just about gone, with only the doors left, really. The cinder-blocks seem to have mostly pulled apart, more than they actually broke; in fact, I saw a guy walk right on top of a loose one with no trouble. When they were hoisting the car onto the tow truck, a cinder-block was stuck to the bottom, too - an entire block, mind you - and it simply fell limply to the ground, with a small, pathetic sort of ka-chunk, as if it were no more surprising or impressive then the tiny shards of glass that were falling off at the same time.
The support frame for the windows is just about completely gone; hanging down in its place is a long, silvery metal-encased thing supporting either a light switch or an outlet - probably still working, though I don't bother getting close enough to see for sure, let alone bother to ask. Some of the Styrofoam-y ceiling tiles are gone now, as is much of the insulation material for the front part of the ceiling; you can the whitewashed metal bones of the ceiling from below. Apparently, though, the roof is stable; the crime-scene tape that was wrapped around the car before the tow truck came is both gone, and has gone unreplaced and workers are already clearing the wreckage from the storefront.
There's still a scattering of the shattered remains of what used to be tempered-glass windows all around the front of the store. It's bizarrely pretty; like chunks of ice or crystal if you look at the little piles, or like stained glass without the stain if you look more closely at the larger of the individual pieces. There's tiny fractures inside each smooth-faced chunk, in an almost cobweb-like pattern. Not the stereotypical, Halloween-y cobweb pattern, but the one you get with less predictable spiders, the loose and scraggly kind that still manages to look like it's got a purpose or pattern to it. The sunlight catches in the cracks, and it's honestly kind of cool-looking. It seems so strange to see something so beautiful come out of a moment of chaotic, terrifying destruction. I actually have a mad urge to take some chunks to use in an art project, but the owners of the store are so shaken up and I'm sure that would be just plain rude not to mention outright insensitive right now, so I don't.
Apparently, this is what happened: the older woman in the car was trying to park in front of the store and, well... she hit the wrong peddle. Very much the wrong peddle. Thankfully, she must have realized it pretty quickly, since it stopped only a few feet into the store. But the lady working there said she was terrified, thinking it wouldn't stop at all. I know exactly what she means, actually; anyone who's been hit by a car or been in a serious accident would (I got hit while riding my bike when I was 13, if you're wondering). It's the adrenaline kicking in; it makes everything seem to happen so slowly that whatever's coming at you seems like it really will never stop, and afterwards you realize that you can barely remember anything of the experience except for a few snapshot-like images (a momentary view of azure sky as you fly off your bike, the tire or headlights of the incoming vehicle...) and the slow-mo horror of HOLY CRAP CAR WHAT THE HELL CAR CAR CAR COMING CAR WHAT THE-! And you remember it as so being so tortuously long that you in hindsight wonder why you spent so long standing there or laying there flinching, instead of running or rolling out of the way a little more.
The woman's still shaken up, even over three hours later. I don't blame her in the least.
She also said that not five minutes prior to the car crashing through their front window, a woman her adorable little blonde, blue-eyed infant daughter were browsing the front of the store. Yes. In exactly the same part of the store where the car came through a couple of minutes later. The store owner informed me that a couple of cribs that had been in the front were damaged from the force of the crash.
If that child had still been there...
If that child had still been there...
Yeah.
It's like 80 or 90 degrees out there... but a shiver went through me just then.
-Jamie
Monday, April 21, 2008
Holy crap! I just saw a car plow into a baby store!
As we were pulling in to the shopping center parking lot, a taupe-colored car, a sedan I think, just... plunged would the the appropriate word I think, front-end first into the Once Upon A Child baby goods store on W. New Haven Avenue. The driver - an older lady who was very surprised and immediately jumped out to ask if everyone was all right - claimed she was trying to park at the time. The car bounded right over the curb and plowed through the glass-and-cinder block storefront, shattering tinted shards of window glass everywhere. I heard the deep, dry crunch-thunk of the crash and the high-pitched shatter of the windows from halfway across the parking lot, through a closed car window no less. Its airbag also never managed to deploy, which everyone there agreed was a bit of a surprise (I had to wonder if it had not been properly installed or something; you sometimes hear about that kind of thing with used cars, for instance, and considering it looked as if the brakes hadn't even been used...). Incredibly enough, no one, including the driver, was injured despite the store being open at the time.
The owner had the presence of mind enough to call 911 immediately, as did at least one other person at the scene, so police arrived quickly, and the store was evacuated just in case, on account of it was missing a huge chunk of the front now. Some of the ceiling tiles are even screwed up; the metal that holds the windows up and against each other crumpled like tin foil, taking part of the ceiling with it, I think. You can right now still see the insulation from the ceiling poking out in places. The glass is in about a million and one pieces, and it's scattered in little piles all over the sidewalk and everything. Weirdly enough, both front doors seem fine, though. They're just now towing the car out of the store front. I'll probably go and talk to them, see how they're doing.
Sorry, I don't have pictures - I don't have a camera with me. It was pretty impressive, though. Hope insurance covers the repairs...
UPDATE, 11 AM-11:15 AM: One of the other-store owners in the same shopping center at the scene said they'd post it on YouTube, so I'll probably be able to link it at some point. The front of the store is just... havoc, right now. Said other-store owner said Once Upon A Child probably won't be able to open that location for another month, with that kind of damage. Bizarrely, it turns out the car may not have even been going fast enough to trigger the airbags. Which is kind of dumbfounding, given how easily it plowed through cinder-blocks.
I watched as they loaded the car slowly onto the tow truck, with the musical tinkle of falling glass accompanying every jerk of the the chain (in one of those odd cases of your brain making weird and totally inappropriate connections, my immediate thought was "wind-chimes!"). The car itself, turns out, has only one busted mirror and some scratches. Kind of hard to believe, but there ya go.
If I can find that other lady's YouTube posting, I'll link it soon as I find it, all right?
-Jamie
The owner had the presence of mind enough to call 911 immediately, as did at least one other person at the scene, so police arrived quickly, and the store was evacuated just in case, on account of it was missing a huge chunk of the front now. Some of the ceiling tiles are even screwed up; the metal that holds the windows up and against each other crumpled like tin foil, taking part of the ceiling with it, I think. You can right now still see the insulation from the ceiling poking out in places. The glass is in about a million and one pieces, and it's scattered in little piles all over the sidewalk and everything. Weirdly enough, both front doors seem fine, though. They're just now towing the car out of the store front. I'll probably go and talk to them, see how they're doing.
Sorry, I don't have pictures - I don't have a camera with me. It was pretty impressive, though. Hope insurance covers the repairs...
UPDATE, 11 AM-11:15 AM: One of the other-store owners in the same shopping center at the scene said they'd post it on YouTube, so I'll probably be able to link it at some point. The front of the store is just... havoc, right now. Said other-store owner said Once Upon A Child probably won't be able to open that location for another month, with that kind of damage. Bizarrely, it turns out the car may not have even been going fast enough to trigger the airbags. Which is kind of dumbfounding, given how easily it plowed through cinder-blocks.
I watched as they loaded the car slowly onto the tow truck, with the musical tinkle of falling glass accompanying every jerk of the the chain (in one of those odd cases of your brain making weird and totally inappropriate connections, my immediate thought was "wind-chimes!"). The car itself, turns out, has only one busted mirror and some scratches. Kind of hard to believe, but there ya go.
If I can find that other lady's YouTube posting, I'll link it soon as I find it, all right?
-Jamie
Thursday, August 2, 2007
"Ersatz" Erudition
The title of this post is deliberately pompous. It's also a very bad pun, for which I apologize. I also apologize for being fairly random in my musings today (more so than normal, heh). This is just something I wanted to get out of my head, really, something that popped into my mind today.
Is it just me, or has the word "ersatz", a word I had never heard or read much at all in English until about a year or so ago, suddenly and inexplicably popular?
I'd like to note here that I'm actually pretty well-read, perhaps not in all the classics (some of which - The Scarlet Letter for instance - are better seen as something of historical value that happens to have some valid, lasting social commentary, then as a "good read". As books go, some of the "classics" are often painfully bad writing by today's modern standards, but the other factors make them interesting or worth studying. An exception of course being Frankenstein, which is a damn good thriller considering it was written in a time when people didn't mind wading through three pointless but pretty pages of botanical description before they even see a character)... but I digress; my point is, I do read a great deal. And not stuff that talks down to you, either. I read books for fun that include such turns of phrase such as "argent light" or words like "salacious", and actually damn near applaud when I find something written in modern times where words like "trollop" are used (then again, can you get more fun than "trollop"? "Harlot" may be wonderfully snide and educated and vaguely British-sounding and almost pretty really, and "slut" may have that great, brutal, guttural, spat-out swearword feel, and "whore" may have its delicious, hiss-like brute force as well as the implication that not only is the woman promiscuous she's also an actual prostitute, but you can't get much more fun than a word for "sexually wayward woman" that sounds kind of like it could be an edible fungus). But, again - I digress, don't I?
The first time I recall seeing the word "ersatz" - and this is when I initially looked it up - it was in a book called Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All, by Tom Fenton, which is about the systematic dumbing down and filtering of modern news production and how it has hurt us. In the first chapter - or perhaps it was the introduction or something, I'm not sure which - it refers to people getting all their news from "ersatz news shows" like The Daily Show, and how this is supposedly a bad thing (never mind the fact that The Daily Show is actually surprisingly informative at times, especially if you actually watch the interview segments with book authors, and that if you ignore the occasional off-color joke - after all, it is on Comedy Central you know - it practically trains the viewer to recognize the difference between satire and fact, or for that matter, the lines that are fed to us versus what common sense should tell us, and that it also practically trains us to be perceptive enough to understand all the semi-obscure references it makes not just to pop culture but to history and current events as well, making, in my opinion, for a surprisingly and impressively informed and cynical viewership considering the same show also makes jokes about bodily functions or hookers from time to time. Er, but I digress again, don't I?). I'll note here that I actually didn't mind the book from what little I got to read, it just bugged me, both that implication and the translation of "fake news show" (which is literally what the Daily Show bills itself as) to something ridiculously pompous like "ersatz news".
Suddenly though, in the past year or two, everybody seems to use it. Even (ironically, given the above paragraph) at least one person on The Daily Show (possibly even Stewart himself, I can't recall).
My question is: why?
It's like it's all of a sudden a buzzword, much like "paradigm" or "synergy", something everybody uses without even stopping to think that maybe it might be better to just out and out say what you really mean, instead of trying to sound smart by using fancy words. Don't forget that I say this as a person who likes the word "trollop", to boot.
I won't deny that "ersatz" does, in point of fact, have a delicious feel to it. It sounds almost Yiddish, and it comes directly from German (in which it means "replacement" or "substitute"), it's got that lovely z on the end, and a throaty, grunty beginning and I could go on and on, really. My point is, though, that it is not often necessary, and it's overused a bit, when a simple "fake" or "faux" or "imitation" would do. "Ersatz" is a great word, it really is, but much like "harlot" or "trollop", it will lose its power and effectiveness and deliciousness the more you use it in such pointlessly translated descriptions as "ersatz news".
"Ersatz news" sounds vicious, malicious even, a better description of Fox News (which is often grossly or weirdly distorted or just plain greatly over-sensationalized*, but tries to pass itself off as "fair and balanced") than The Daily Show, which while it parodies newscasting, also points often to the flaws in "real" news coverage. The feel, the sound is I think all wrong for what the author of that book surely intended, which was "parody" or "fake". Even "pseudo" would have sounded less pompous and less unnecessarily Germanic than "ersatz". I realize that he was implying that it was literally a replacement for "better" news, but the end effect is that he almost sounds like he's insulting what's actually a (surprisingly) good informational source.
Now, I get that the way Fenton was using it is normal. I get that that's what it means in English, really. But it always seems like it's used where such a wonderfully snarky-sounding word doesn't need to be used. It's overkill. It's showy erudition where one does not, honestly, need to sound all that erudite. It's like "paradigm"; a word that is used because it sounds cool and sounds vaguely "educated". Or an unnecessary foreign substitute, like "faux fur" instead of "fake fur", only to my mind, it's more of a shame to use it than "faux" because of the wonderful sound of it.
In short, it doesn't deserve to lose the power awarded it by its great sound, especially since, unlike zeitgeist, there are perfectly legitimate, less pompous-sounding equivalents in normal, plain English that would work just as well if not better in most of the cases I have seen it used lately.
*It still amuses me to recall that when those chimps in the wild started fashioning and using spears to hunt smaller animals for food, every online news report I saw on it described it in their headlines as "Chimps Learn to Use Spears" or somesuch... except for Fox News' website, which described the respective animals in its headline as "Killer Chimps". I kid you not.
Is it just me, or has the word "ersatz", a word I had never heard or read much at all in English until about a year or so ago, suddenly and inexplicably popular?
I'd like to note here that I'm actually pretty well-read, perhaps not in all the classics (some of which - The Scarlet Letter for instance - are better seen as something of historical value that happens to have some valid, lasting social commentary, then as a "good read". As books go, some of the "classics" are often painfully bad writing by today's modern standards, but the other factors make them interesting or worth studying. An exception of course being Frankenstein, which is a damn good thriller considering it was written in a time when people didn't mind wading through three pointless but pretty pages of botanical description before they even see a character)... but I digress; my point is, I do read a great deal. And not stuff that talks down to you, either. I read books for fun that include such turns of phrase such as "argent light" or words like "salacious", and actually damn near applaud when I find something written in modern times where words like "trollop" are used (then again, can you get more fun than "trollop"? "Harlot" may be wonderfully snide and educated and vaguely British-sounding and almost pretty really, and "slut" may have that great, brutal, guttural, spat-out swearword feel, and "whore" may have its delicious, hiss-like brute force as well as the implication that not only is the woman promiscuous she's also an actual prostitute, but you can't get much more fun than a word for "sexually wayward woman" that sounds kind of like it could be an edible fungus). But, again - I digress, don't I?
The first time I recall seeing the word "ersatz" - and this is when I initially looked it up - it was in a book called Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All, by Tom Fenton, which is about the systematic dumbing down and filtering of modern news production and how it has hurt us. In the first chapter - or perhaps it was the introduction or something, I'm not sure which - it refers to people getting all their news from "ersatz news shows" like The Daily Show, and how this is supposedly a bad thing (never mind the fact that The Daily Show is actually surprisingly informative at times, especially if you actually watch the interview segments with book authors, and that if you ignore the occasional off-color joke - after all, it is on Comedy Central you know - it practically trains the viewer to recognize the difference between satire and fact, or for that matter, the lines that are fed to us versus what common sense should tell us, and that it also practically trains us to be perceptive enough to understand all the semi-obscure references it makes not just to pop culture but to history and current events as well, making, in my opinion, for a surprisingly and impressively informed and cynical viewership considering the same show also makes jokes about bodily functions or hookers from time to time. Er, but I digress again, don't I?). I'll note here that I actually didn't mind the book from what little I got to read, it just bugged me, both that implication and the translation of "fake news show" (which is literally what the Daily Show bills itself as) to something ridiculously pompous like "ersatz news".
Suddenly though, in the past year or two, everybody seems to use it. Even (ironically, given the above paragraph) at least one person on The Daily Show (possibly even Stewart himself, I can't recall).
My question is: why?
It's like it's all of a sudden a buzzword, much like "paradigm" or "synergy", something everybody uses without even stopping to think that maybe it might be better to just out and out say what you really mean, instead of trying to sound smart by using fancy words. Don't forget that I say this as a person who likes the word "trollop", to boot.
I won't deny that "ersatz" does, in point of fact, have a delicious feel to it. It sounds almost Yiddish, and it comes directly from German (in which it means "replacement" or "substitute"), it's got that lovely z on the end, and a throaty, grunty beginning and I could go on and on, really. My point is, though, that it is not often necessary, and it's overused a bit, when a simple "fake" or "faux" or "imitation" would do. "Ersatz" is a great word, it really is, but much like "harlot" or "trollop", it will lose its power and effectiveness and deliciousness the more you use it in such pointlessly translated descriptions as "ersatz news".
"Ersatz news" sounds vicious, malicious even, a better description of Fox News (which is often grossly or weirdly distorted or just plain greatly over-sensationalized*, but tries to pass itself off as "fair and balanced") than The Daily Show, which while it parodies newscasting, also points often to the flaws in "real" news coverage. The feel, the sound is I think all wrong for what the author of that book surely intended, which was "parody" or "fake". Even "pseudo" would have sounded less pompous and less unnecessarily Germanic than "ersatz". I realize that he was implying that it was literally a replacement for "better" news, but the end effect is that he almost sounds like he's insulting what's actually a (surprisingly) good informational source.
Now, I get that the way Fenton was using it is normal. I get that that's what it means in English, really. But it always seems like it's used where such a wonderfully snarky-sounding word doesn't need to be used. It's overkill. It's showy erudition where one does not, honestly, need to sound all that erudite. It's like "paradigm"; a word that is used because it sounds cool and sounds vaguely "educated". Or an unnecessary foreign substitute, like "faux fur" instead of "fake fur", only to my mind, it's more of a shame to use it than "faux" because of the wonderful sound of it.
In short, it doesn't deserve to lose the power awarded it by its great sound, especially since, unlike zeitgeist, there are perfectly legitimate, less pompous-sounding equivalents in normal, plain English that would work just as well if not better in most of the cases I have seen it used lately.
*It still amuses me to recall that when those chimps in the wild started fashioning and using spears to hunt smaller animals for food, every online news report I saw on it described it in their headlines as "Chimps Learn to Use Spears" or somesuch... except for Fox News' website, which described the respective animals in its headline as "Killer Chimps". I kid you not.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Upon Finishing Deathly Hallows
The book was great, it was exciting and suspenseful with a great, epic finale battle and in the end, it was, I thought, a thoroughly satisfying ending after all these years (some have complained on a small level about the epilogue not being as good as the final chapter or not giving enough information about what happened to certain characters, but if you've read the book and felt that way, just read Mugglenet's "All Was Well" editorial, and if you're anything like me it will make the ending that much more poignant). Yet the way it made me feel was more interesting, it in a way, than my reaction to the book itself. From my post on one of the many Harry Potter message boards out there:
I spent an hour waiting(! Yes, only an hour, even though I actually ARRIVED at midnight because my family wanted to go to dinner and a movie, and even though I was almost the last people to pick up their copy. Apparently our local Barnes & Noble has learned well from its previous Midnight Magic parties), chatting it up with the fellow fans in line, who all agreed we were all completely mad to be standing out in that humidity (we live in Florida) in the middle of July in the middle of the night to pick up a book we could easily have picked up the next day (we didn't get armbands, but we had all preordered, we just arrived too late to get the armbands for it because they ran out by midnight). But it wasn't about just getting the book. It wasn't even about getting it quickly, or first. It was the wait; the last hour of anticipation, the last hour of mystery, and the last hour of hilarity as every so often somebody would peel off in a car yelling something like "HARRY POTTER DOESN'T DIE" only to not ten minutes later have somebody else do the same, except yelling "HARRY POTTER LOSES HIS POWERS AND DIES!". (Most amusing I think was the guy pushing a wheelchair-bound friend or relative of his, who left the store - we had to wait outside due to the Fire Marshal saying the building wasn't meant to hold that many hundreds of people - moments before our patch of people , the very last group, was let in. His joyful declaration? "VOLDEMORT SEEKS THERAPY!", which somehow is even funnier to me now and almost makes me cry from treasuring it now, that last spoiler-joke moment, you know?). It was... it was being a fan again. It was joyous. I was exhausted, I hadn't slept well during the week and I really, really should not have stayed up that late I know but damnit it was the last chance to experience that feeling that I shall probably never feel again, that experience that will be once in a lifetime for me.
I think I'm really going to cry now for real, if only just a little. But honestly?
It's the good kind; the kind that says:
Aw, man, that was a rollercoaster. Such a rollercoaster. Such a rollercoaster. But it was so beautiful, so utterly, inexplicably, indescribably beautiful, wasn't it? Years and years, wondering and worrying and anticipating and staying up way past when all logic told us we should be asleep and we'll never have it again, that exact feeling, that exact , singular moment, but it was so bloody worth it to stay up 'till 1 for the book and 'til 5 reading the first 8 chapters. It's gone now, but it was amazing when it happened, so utterly, completely , indescribably, wonderfully amazing. I'm glad to have lived it. I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to have been a fan, living with millions of others in hundreds of languages and thousands of cultures and one decade, yet through a time no other fans will be so brutally, wonderfully, agonizingly lucky to have lived through. A shared experience that nonetheless will never be repeated, not ever, not exactly, not quite. I love... I love. I'm not sure what, but I love. And it hurts, you wouldn't think it would, I didn't think it would, and some people will never understand that it does, but it does, oh man it does, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. Not ever. I love. I ache, and I love.
...and now I'm crying.
And (coming back to the present again) in conclusion, tearing up like that makes me hungry, apparently. Suffice it to say though that I was happy with the book and even happier to have lived through being a fan anticipating and loving it once again. Thank you, Jo Rowling. Thank you.
-Jamie
I spent an hour waiting(! Yes, only an hour, even though I actually ARRIVED at midnight because my family wanted to go to dinner and a movie, and even though I was almost the last people to pick up their copy. Apparently our local Barnes & Noble has learned well from its previous Midnight Magic parties), chatting it up with the fellow fans in line, who all agreed we were all completely mad to be standing out in that humidity (we live in Florida) in the middle of July in the middle of the night to pick up a book we could easily have picked up the next day (we didn't get armbands, but we had all preordered, we just arrived too late to get the armbands for it because they ran out by midnight). But it wasn't about just getting the book. It wasn't even about getting it quickly, or first. It was the wait; the last hour of anticipation, the last hour of mystery, and the last hour of hilarity as every so often somebody would peel off in a car yelling something like "HARRY POTTER DOESN'T DIE" only to not ten minutes later have somebody else do the same, except yelling "HARRY POTTER LOSES HIS POWERS AND DIES!". (Most amusing I think was the guy pushing a wheelchair-bound friend or relative of his, who left the store - we had to wait outside due to the Fire Marshal saying the building wasn't meant to hold that many hundreds of people - moments before our patch of people , the very last group, was let in. His joyful declaration? "VOLDEMORT SEEKS THERAPY!", which somehow is even funnier to me now and almost makes me cry from treasuring it now, that last spoiler-joke moment, you know?). It was... it was being a fan again. It was joyous. I was exhausted, I hadn't slept well during the week and I really, really should not have stayed up that late I know but damnit it was the last chance to experience that feeling that I shall probably never feel again, that experience that will be once in a lifetime for me.
I think I'm really going to cry now for real, if only just a little. But honestly?
It's the good kind; the kind that says:
Aw, man, that was a rollercoaster. Such a rollercoaster. Such a rollercoaster. But it was so beautiful, so utterly, inexplicably, indescribably beautiful, wasn't it? Years and years, wondering and worrying and anticipating and staying up way past when all logic told us we should be asleep and we'll never have it again, that exact feeling, that exact , singular moment, but it was so bloody worth it to stay up 'till 1 for the book and 'til 5 reading the first 8 chapters. It's gone now, but it was amazing when it happened, so utterly, completely , indescribably, wonderfully amazing. I'm glad to have lived it. I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to have been a fan, living with millions of others in hundreds of languages and thousands of cultures and one decade, yet through a time no other fans will be so brutally, wonderfully, agonizingly lucky to have lived through. A shared experience that nonetheless will never be repeated, not ever, not exactly, not quite. I love... I love. I'm not sure what, but I love. And it hurts, you wouldn't think it would, I didn't think it would, and some people will never understand that it does, but it does, oh man it does, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. Not ever. I love. I ache, and I love.
...and now I'm crying.
And (coming back to the present again) in conclusion, tearing up like that makes me hungry, apparently. Suffice it to say though that I was happy with the book and even happier to have lived through being a fan anticipating and loving it once again. Thank you, Jo Rowling. Thank you.
-Jamie
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Rekindling the Magic (Now Let's Hope She Don't Let Us Down)
When the last few Harry Potter books came out, here was my reaction, generally:
Book four...
Initial release: "Oh, hey, the new book's out already! Awesome!" I had only started reading the books after the third one came out; my first HP book was a softcover copy of the first book, and I got hardcover copies of the second and third for Christmas that same year, devouring each of them in a day or less. Actually, two days combined for the second and third, which I read back to back, staying up 'till sunrise to finish Chamber of Secrets, sleeping a little during the day, then starting immediately on Prisoner, which I similarly finished at about sunrise the next day. I had heard another book was coming out and was very excited to read more. My family went to somewhere, Atlanta I think, for a trade show or something, and I walked into the local Barnes & Noble one day and there was a whole stack of them by the door. It wasn't until after the fourth one that I started watching release dates for the books more carefully, so this was akin to me getting them months early without warning; a pleasant surprise. Especially pleasant, actually, since I had very little to do in the hotel room that weekend except read anyway.
During the two-day span I read it in: "OMG SO GOOD"
The last minutes of reading it: "Well, that was really good! But is it just me or did the ending seem a little rushed, like it needed just a tiny bit more editing?"
Book five...
Initial release: "OMIGODOMIGOMIGOD I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS". By this point, I was relatively active in the HP fan community online, and most of my friends and family had also gotten into the books. I was actually reading editorials and theories about this one. I even went to the Barnes & Noble "Midnight Magic" party for the release, dressed up (if you can call putting on a black pleather duster, carrying around a Hedwig-like stuffed owl, and marking a roughly lightning-shaped "scar" on my forehead in a makeup distinctly not intended for foreheads which is something you should apparently never, ever do unless you don't mind getting an awful lot of zits... "dressing up".) Yeah. I was a dork. Also, I totally got shown up by the people actually getting paid to go to the event, because one of the employees - I s*** you not - was dressed like Snape from that scene where Neville's bogart gets itself reimagined into snape in a frilly dress and ridiculous hat. Still, I saw a lot of friends at the release and damn, was it fun. It was a tiny bit annoying that so many of the activities were so obviously aimed at little kids, even though most of the people there were actually older than that, but still, fun. I hung out, I sat and read, and then I got the next book in an awesome series, what more could I want?
Reading it: Somewhere in between "Eh, it's not quite as riveting as the last one" and "OH MY GOD I MUST FINISH THIS". The genius of that one was Umbridge, of course, a villain so vile that you have to keep reading, just to see if she gets her comeuppance. A villain so wonderfully vile, in fact, that even though he complained about the quality of Rowling's prose (something about an "amateurish" overuse of adverbs or something), Stephen King nonetheless could not resist praising that very same villain. Stephen King. Yes, that Stephen King. The themes of oppressive regimes was also pretty interesting, especially in what's ostensibly a "children's book". I was not surprised to find a few months later that it was the first of the books to be nominated for an adult fiction - as opposed to just children's fiction - award. I was a little perplexed with a couple of the characters, but hey, Tonks was cool, we saw more of Mad Eye Moody, more of Sirius Black and Remus and really, it was a good book.
Upon completion: I was sad to see a certain someone go, but it was a very good ending, really excellent and cliffhangery and "oh damn how'd I not catch that and that and that...!?", and just really a great setup for another book.
Book Six...
Initial Release: "Woot! I can't wait to see what happens next!" Got it the day of the release after preordering it. Did not dress up, but did come in at the end of Midnight Magic, and chatted with a few friends before picking up the book. It was nice. Also, I had been wanting to see what happened since the end of the fifth book, which had, again, a great opening for a good sequel.
Reading the first chapter or two: "OMG SO FUNNY TAKE THAT FANGIRLS I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH THANK YOU JO!" (It was common practice amongst many a Snape fangirl at the time to inexplicably have Snape living in "Snape Manor" or some such, a ridiculous idea considering he's a bloody teacher. It was really great to see this subverted in a major way. Also, kind of interesting to see a book of hers start with another character for a change, instead of with Harry at the Dursleys'. Sidenote: fans affectionately call her "Jo", since she didn't particularly care for being called "JK", which had been something her publisher decided because they thought - in hindsight, foolishly - that boys would refuse to read a story about a schoolboy that was written by a woman).
Reading most of the rest of the book: "ROWLING, YOU TRAITOR!" Despite the subversion in the first chapter, Rowling spent most of the rest of the book basically feeding fangirl fantasies and, dare I say it, almost writing as if she had been reading more fanfic of her work than she had her own work. Secondary characters act inexplicable considering previous actions or are barely touched on or both, and Harry randomly gets the hots for Ron's sister, gets over a loved one's death with almost absurd alacrity, and develops a paranoid (well, seemingly paranoid) obsession over Malfoy that, while completely non-sexual, sure enough, got interpreted as such by the subsequent fangirl entourage. It was nice to see updates on certain characters (especially the Weasley twins), but most of the book was a shipper's paradise, and not too awfully much more. YARGH. The first time I was seriously annoyed with a Harry Potter book, and the first time I honestly started to think "Maybe she really isn't getting enough editing or something... I think she's maybe under a wee too much pressure and in a wee bit too much of a rush to get the next book out. Make that a WAY bit too much of a rush". I later heard an urban legend that she had caved to pressure to finish the next book and just out and out hired a ghostwriter. Sadly, while I did not quite believe it, I saw where people were coming from. I did, however, admire Slughorn 's character of all things (or rather, I liked the more nuanced portrayal of a Slytherin), and thought the fact that vampires finally make an appearance - vampires being one of many fangirl obsessions - and it's only for one page, and the vampire himself is bored stiff, was very amusing. Still, the whole middle part of the book drove me bananas.
Reading final few chapters: "Oh thank GOD. We're back to the plot again, instead of all the poorly-handled 'ships." The Inferiori and the idea of horcruxes and the like, was all very interesting, and I liked the semi-ambiguous ending with Snape and all, and the guts Jo must have had in order to kill of a certain someone... also, the 'ships were less sucky at the end than at the beginning, and is it just me, or is the concept that Ginny might have been dabbling in her brothers' stock in love potions, but matured towards the end, not all that crazy?
Afterwards: "Eh, I'm annoyed at her, but I want to see how it ends, so I'll buy the next book anyway."
And so has been my feelings toward book seven for the past two years.
And then, I saw an article on Reuters about the HP online community. I remembered that I hadn't really been a part of it for ages, and I got a little nostalgic. Then I was reminded that this is it. This is the end. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, one that will never, EVER come again, one that has been infuriating and yet, so fascinating and so great, and all the speculations and all the bets hedged and the wild theories and the insanely intricate analysis and the books examining every little symbol or literary or mythological or folkloric reference every little chapter or scene or sentence or word or implication and the wondering and the waiting and the excitement and the exhilaration and the anticipation and the mystery and and and and... IT'S ALL ABOUT TO BE OVER. This is, in complete and utter truth, the last chance I get to have all that. This is it, the moment of truth, the piece de resistance, the final word. The final book. All that teasing, all that pouring over the books, all that everything. It comes down to this, the final, final FINAL book. The last chance to excited, exhilarated... the last chance to feel that nervous, hopeful, beautiful anticipation, and I happen to be on that time of the month anyway, and so it's all just about making me cry with just sheer emotion.
Two years of barely caring, a few months of "oh, so that's when it's going to come out." Two years of utter, unadulterated apathy. Hundreds upon hundreds of days and thousands of hours of either barely thinking about the whole damn franchise, or thinking "I suppose it'll be nice to see how it ends", if I thought of it at all. Two years of figuring "I'll just put it on preorder again, and I'll pick it up over the release weekend, no need to bother with silly parties or anything, right?"
Two years of that, two YEARS of that. And now, after yesterday? After one little news story, one dinky, space-filling "hey look another Potter book and the fans are nuts about it and what do you suppose will happen to the fandom once the source material's all dried up?" story? Suddenly, I'm thinking like I did when books five and six came out.
Suddenly, I'm excited.
I'm remembering that at one point, I really did love and even obsess over this series...
I'm remembering how much I was dying to know how it ended...
I'm remembering how much I cared about the characters...
I'm remembering what it's like to be, in short, a fan again.
Suddenly, everything is all sunshine and roses and camaraderie with fellow fans and just sheer, physically tangible, heart-fluttering, breath-quickening, near tear-jerking anticipation and God DAMN will I want to cry if this book isn't any better than book six, but I can't even conceive of that at this point, because all I can think of is the cliffhangerish book six ending and the characters I once loved and the series that was, at one point, my absolute favorite. All I can think about is how good books 1-5 were, and think, "What if this is just as good as those? What if she's gotten the magic back? What if it's even better than the first five?" Or Hell, at very least, "What if it's at least better than book six and has a real good ending?"
...as well as, admittedly, both "I wonder if all the nut jobs predicting that the chess game was completely symbolic were really all that nuts?" and "WTF did she mean by 'the last word of the last book will be scar'? WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN ARGH ITS DRIVING ME NUTS JO YOU HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE TEASE". And if that don't show how high my Nerdy Fan Quotient is, I don't know what does.
Thanks for the rollercoaster ride, Jo. It's been frustrating at points, sure, and I'm so very scared that the best part is already over, but honestly, it's been a great ride. And you have been a wonderful, mind-bogglingly good tease, for which I enormously applaud you.
Book four...
Initial release: "Oh, hey, the new book's out already! Awesome!" I had only started reading the books after the third one came out; my first HP book was a softcover copy of the first book, and I got hardcover copies of the second and third for Christmas that same year, devouring each of them in a day or less. Actually, two days combined for the second and third, which I read back to back, staying up 'till sunrise to finish Chamber of Secrets, sleeping a little during the day, then starting immediately on Prisoner, which I similarly finished at about sunrise the next day. I had heard another book was coming out and was very excited to read more. My family went to somewhere, Atlanta I think, for a trade show or something, and I walked into the local Barnes & Noble one day and there was a whole stack of them by the door. It wasn't until after the fourth one that I started watching release dates for the books more carefully, so this was akin to me getting them months early without warning; a pleasant surprise. Especially pleasant, actually, since I had very little to do in the hotel room that weekend except read anyway.
During the two-day span I read it in: "OMG SO GOOD"
The last minutes of reading it: "Well, that was really good! But is it just me or did the ending seem a little rushed, like it needed just a tiny bit more editing?"
Book five...
Initial release: "OMIGODOMIGOMIGOD I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS". By this point, I was relatively active in the HP fan community online, and most of my friends and family had also gotten into the books. I was actually reading editorials and theories about this one. I even went to the Barnes & Noble "Midnight Magic" party for the release, dressed up (if you can call putting on a black pleather duster, carrying around a Hedwig-like stuffed owl, and marking a roughly lightning-shaped "scar" on my forehead in a makeup distinctly not intended for foreheads which is something you should apparently never, ever do unless you don't mind getting an awful lot of zits... "dressing up".) Yeah. I was a dork. Also, I totally got shown up by the people actually getting paid to go to the event, because one of the employees - I s*** you not - was dressed like Snape from that scene where Neville's bogart gets itself reimagined into snape in a frilly dress and ridiculous hat. Still, I saw a lot of friends at the release and damn, was it fun. It was a tiny bit annoying that so many of the activities were so obviously aimed at little kids, even though most of the people there were actually older than that, but still, fun. I hung out, I sat and read, and then I got the next book in an awesome series, what more could I want?
Reading it: Somewhere in between "Eh, it's not quite as riveting as the last one" and "OH MY GOD I MUST FINISH THIS". The genius of that one was Umbridge, of course, a villain so vile that you have to keep reading, just to see if she gets her comeuppance. A villain so wonderfully vile, in fact, that even though he complained about the quality of Rowling's prose (something about an "amateurish" overuse of adverbs or something), Stephen King nonetheless could not resist praising that very same villain. Stephen King. Yes, that Stephen King. The themes of oppressive regimes was also pretty interesting, especially in what's ostensibly a "children's book". I was not surprised to find a few months later that it was the first of the books to be nominated for an adult fiction - as opposed to just children's fiction - award. I was a little perplexed with a couple of the characters, but hey, Tonks was cool, we saw more of Mad Eye Moody, more of Sirius Black and Remus and really, it was a good book.
Upon completion: I was sad to see a certain someone go, but it was a very good ending, really excellent and cliffhangery and "oh damn how'd I not catch that and that and that...!?", and just really a great setup for another book.
Book Six...
Initial Release: "Woot! I can't wait to see what happens next!" Got it the day of the release after preordering it. Did not dress up, but did come in at the end of Midnight Magic, and chatted with a few friends before picking up the book. It was nice. Also, I had been wanting to see what happened since the end of the fifth book, which had, again, a great opening for a good sequel.
Reading the first chapter or two: "OMG SO FUNNY TAKE THAT FANGIRLS I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH THANK YOU JO!" (It was common practice amongst many a Snape fangirl at the time to inexplicably have Snape living in "Snape Manor" or some such, a ridiculous idea considering he's a bloody teacher. It was really great to see this subverted in a major way. Also, kind of interesting to see a book of hers start with another character for a change, instead of with Harry at the Dursleys'. Sidenote: fans affectionately call her "Jo", since she didn't particularly care for being called "JK", which had been something her publisher decided because they thought - in hindsight, foolishly - that boys would refuse to read a story about a schoolboy that was written by a woman).
Reading most of the rest of the book: "ROWLING, YOU TRAITOR!" Despite the subversion in the first chapter, Rowling spent most of the rest of the book basically feeding fangirl fantasies and, dare I say it, almost writing as if she had been reading more fanfic of her work than she had her own work. Secondary characters act inexplicable considering previous actions or are barely touched on or both, and Harry randomly gets the hots for Ron's sister, gets over a loved one's death with almost absurd alacrity, and develops a paranoid (well, seemingly paranoid) obsession over Malfoy that, while completely non-sexual, sure enough, got interpreted as such by the subsequent fangirl entourage. It was nice to see updates on certain characters (especially the Weasley twins), but most of the book was a shipper's paradise, and not too awfully much more. YARGH. The first time I was seriously annoyed with a Harry Potter book, and the first time I honestly started to think "Maybe she really isn't getting enough editing or something... I think she's maybe under a wee too much pressure and in a wee bit too much of a rush to get the next book out. Make that a WAY bit too much of a rush". I later heard an urban legend that she had caved to pressure to finish the next book and just out and out hired a ghostwriter. Sadly, while I did not quite believe it, I saw where people were coming from. I did, however, admire Slughorn 's character of all things (or rather, I liked the more nuanced portrayal of a Slytherin), and thought the fact that vampires finally make an appearance - vampires being one of many fangirl obsessions - and it's only for one page, and the vampire himself is bored stiff, was very amusing. Still, the whole middle part of the book drove me bananas.
Reading final few chapters: "Oh thank GOD. We're back to the plot again, instead of all the poorly-handled 'ships." The Inferiori and the idea of horcruxes and the like, was all very interesting, and I liked the semi-ambiguous ending with Snape and all, and the guts Jo must have had in order to kill of a certain someone... also, the 'ships were less sucky at the end than at the beginning, and is it just me, or is the concept that Ginny might have been dabbling in her brothers' stock in love potions, but matured towards the end, not all that crazy?
Afterwards: "Eh, I'm annoyed at her, but I want to see how it ends, so I'll buy the next book anyway."
And so has been my feelings toward book seven for the past two years.
And then, I saw an article on Reuters about the HP online community. I remembered that I hadn't really been a part of it for ages, and I got a little nostalgic. Then I was reminded that this is it. This is the end. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, one that will never, EVER come again, one that has been infuriating and yet, so fascinating and so great, and all the speculations and all the bets hedged and the wild theories and the insanely intricate analysis and the books examining every little symbol or literary or mythological or folkloric reference every little chapter or scene or sentence or word or implication and the wondering and the waiting and the excitement and the exhilaration and the anticipation and the mystery and and and and... IT'S ALL ABOUT TO BE OVER. This is, in complete and utter truth, the last chance I get to have all that. This is it, the moment of truth, the piece de resistance, the final word. The final book. All that teasing, all that pouring over the books, all that everything. It comes down to this, the final, final FINAL book. The last chance to excited, exhilarated... the last chance to feel that nervous, hopeful, beautiful anticipation, and I happen to be on that time of the month anyway, and so it's all just about making me cry with just sheer emotion.
Two years of barely caring, a few months of "oh, so that's when it's going to come out." Two years of utter, unadulterated apathy. Hundreds upon hundreds of days and thousands of hours of either barely thinking about the whole damn franchise, or thinking "I suppose it'll be nice to see how it ends", if I thought of it at all. Two years of figuring "I'll just put it on preorder again, and I'll pick it up over the release weekend, no need to bother with silly parties or anything, right?"
Two years of that, two YEARS of that. And now, after yesterday? After one little news story, one dinky, space-filling "hey look another Potter book and the fans are nuts about it and what do you suppose will happen to the fandom once the source material's all dried up?" story? Suddenly, I'm thinking like I did when books five and six came out.
Suddenly, I'm excited.
I'm remembering that at one point, I really did love and even obsess over this series...
I'm remembering how much I was dying to know how it ended...
I'm remembering how much I cared about the characters...
I'm remembering what it's like to be, in short, a fan again.
Suddenly, everything is all sunshine and roses and camaraderie with fellow fans and just sheer, physically tangible, heart-fluttering, breath-quickening, near tear-jerking anticipation and God DAMN will I want to cry if this book isn't any better than book six, but I can't even conceive of that at this point, because all I can think of is the cliffhangerish book six ending and the characters I once loved and the series that was, at one point, my absolute favorite. All I can think about is how good books 1-5 were, and think, "What if this is just as good as those? What if she's gotten the magic back? What if it's even better than the first five?" Or Hell, at very least, "What if it's at least better than book six and has a real good ending?"
...as well as, admittedly, both "I wonder if all the nut jobs predicting that the chess game was completely symbolic were really all that nuts?" and "WTF did she mean by 'the last word of the last book will be scar'? WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN ARGH ITS DRIVING ME NUTS JO YOU HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE TEASE". And if that don't show how high my Nerdy Fan Quotient is, I don't know what does.
Thanks for the rollercoaster ride, Jo. It's been frustrating at points, sure, and I'm so very scared that the best part is already over, but honestly, it's been a great ride. And you have been a wonderful, mind-bogglingly good tease, for which I enormously applaud you.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
I Should Probably Find Something Interesting To Say Here, But Apparently That'll Have To Wait
I had a Blogger account previously, but no blog on it. Now I do. Why not Diaryland, or MySpace, or Livejournal you may inexplicably want to ask despite that being a pretty damn boring question. Well for starters, Diaryland was nice and it was cozy, but a little clunky and I just plain moved on. MySpace is the ungodly spawn of Satan, if Satan were possessed by way too many wannabe hit bands and teenage girls and chose to tattoo himself with clunky flash banners, subsequently bought up by Rupert Murdoch, who then chose to implement an "anti-pedo" defense system that is pointless and infuriating to the extreme (did you hear about the poor woman who happened to have a name similar to a registered sex offender who had a birth date over two years apart from hers and didn't even live in the same place and whom she looked almost nothing like, yet the poor woman got deleted from MySpace? They thought her having a birthday - but not birth year- a few days away from a sex offender somewhere with the same name couldn't even conceivably be a coincidence, despite the fact that the database they use covers the entire country, a country with a population of over 300 million people, half of whom happen to be female, and no doubt many of whom have similar names - hers was something really common like "Michelle", too), not to mention it's pointless as a system, because all they need to do is give MySpace a different name and address and the like, and they may well slip through the cracks and at any rate, from what I've heard it's ANY sex offender, not just say, rapists and child molesters, and surely you've heard of those myriads of ridiculous cases where somebody ends up being labeled a sex offender for say, stopping on the side of the highway to take a piss in the bushes or mooning someone out a bus window during your "stupid git years" in college, and the person gets labeled a sex offender and has trouble finding jobs in certain fields and everybody anywhere he moves to knows he's branded as a "sex offender" with some vague and scary-sounding offense descriptor like "indecent exposure" or "indecent exposure in front of a minor" (the guy who peed by the highway allegedly was arrested under some similarly-named charge, because back up in the car and presumably out of view and too young to notice anyway was the guy's infant son), or whatever, oh and the thing is probably THE single slowest blogging server I've ever seen, and while it's nice to be able to adjust the backgrounds like that and all, honestly, it's too much hassle, especially if, like me, you're one of the many people still stuck with a 56k internet connection the majority of the time... really, need I say more? Because I could, I really honestly could, I could go on all day with how infuriating and mind-bogglingly stupid and inconvenient and overly-restrictive and yet completely incompetent MySpace has always seemed around me, but really, I've already devoted way too much space to it, haven't I? Suffice it to say, having tried MySpace, honestly really tried it for several months on and off, and having tracked news and updates about it, I can honestly say that in my humble opinion MySpace sucks. Royally sucks. And that is why I do not use it.
As for Livejournal, I've been using it for some time now actually and if MySpace is the spawn of Satan, Livejournal (to continue the already trite and silly metaphor as far as I can into the nearly-inexplicable) can honestly be compared to what in my experience is the average normal American Christian - for the most part, honest, hard-working, often criticized but not always justly, clean, presentable, lets you keep to yourself for the most part, doesn't always like what you say but will usually let you say it anyway, imperfect but not too awfully bad, and occasionally they sell little trifles online. Also, way, way better than the Spawn of Satan, for obvious reasons.
However, their servers no longer seem to like me anymore. I have been completely unable, every time I've tried for the past few weeks, to log in to my account and today - where I can't even get the LJ main page to load for me - was kind of the last straw.
Thus far, Blogger actually seems pretty good. It's clean, efficient, easy to register with if you've already got a Google account, loads quickly, and seems overall to have good healthy servers that don't inexplicably hate me, and a very easy to use text-editing box. I don't know what to compare it to, and considering my boyfriend just popped in to pick me up for something and has people in the car waiting for him, perhaps methinks I shouldn't bother with continuing the increasingly overextended metaphor anyway. Ooh, and look, it saves drafts as you type! Always handy.
Suffice it to say, though, if you're one of the, let's say, six or seven people who even remotely cares about where "Runa27 from Livejournal" has gone to, um, here I am.
For the moment, that's really all I have to say. Or can. Considering the people in the car and all.
As for Livejournal, I've been using it for some time now actually and if MySpace is the spawn of Satan, Livejournal (to continue the already trite and silly metaphor as far as I can into the nearly-inexplicable) can honestly be compared to what in my experience is the average normal American Christian - for the most part, honest, hard-working, often criticized but not always justly, clean, presentable, lets you keep to yourself for the most part, doesn't always like what you say but will usually let you say it anyway, imperfect but not too awfully bad, and occasionally they sell little trifles online. Also, way, way better than the Spawn of Satan, for obvious reasons.
However, their servers no longer seem to like me anymore. I have been completely unable, every time I've tried for the past few weeks, to log in to my account and today - where I can't even get the LJ main page to load for me - was kind of the last straw.
Thus far, Blogger actually seems pretty good. It's clean, efficient, easy to register with if you've already got a Google account, loads quickly, and seems overall to have good healthy servers that don't inexplicably hate me, and a very easy to use text-editing box. I don't know what to compare it to, and considering my boyfriend just popped in to pick me up for something and has people in the car waiting for him, perhaps methinks I shouldn't bother with continuing the increasingly overextended metaphor anyway. Ooh, and look, it saves drafts as you type! Always handy.
Suffice it to say, though, if you're one of the, let's say, six or seven people who even remotely cares about where "Runa27 from Livejournal" has gone to, um, here I am.
For the moment, that's really all I have to say. Or can. Considering the people in the car and all.
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