In the wake of almost every mass shooting in the past year or two, I have seen dozens of people use the analogy of "well people die from cars too, should we ban them? should we ban cars that can go above 75 mph, since higher speeds aren't legal outside of race tracks?" Frankly, I am sick of it.
Mainly: cars are already heavily regulated.
You can't legally learn to drive until you are 14 years and 8 months of age in the US. From there, you take Driver's Education. I'm sure the types of programs offered vary from state to state, but in my home state of Michigan, it's 24 hours of classroom time, 6 hours of in-car learning, and 4 hours of observation time while driving. That classroom time is limited to a maximum of 2 hours per day. After all of that plus a written test, you can get your Segment 1 Learner's Permit. From there, you have to wait a minimum of 3 months before taking another 6 hours of classroom instruction and another written test before you can take the final test to get your driver's license at the age of 16. That is a LOT of work.
I will interrupt myself to give you my example. I never took Driver's Ed because of reasons that I don't want to go in to. Instead, I took a written test after I turned 18 and got a learner's permit, and then I learned to drive from my sister. Then, I was able to take a driving test and get my license without having to go through all of that coursework. This was a much cheaper and technically easier route to take, but it had its sacrifices: I didn't know how to drive until long after I graduated high school, so I was entirely dependent on my parents and friends for rides in high school and half of college. This was a few years ago; I don't even know if you're allowed to get a permit without going through Michigan's Graduated Driver Licensing program anymore.
So, obviously, it is hard to obtain a driver's license. It takes time, learning, and testing. I nearly failed my road test because I was bad at parallel parking and backing into a spot - two things which are not guaranteed to be a part of every driver's life.
Then once you get a car (which can be very difficult if you are not financially blessed), there are all kinds of rules for driving. Speed limits on every road. Tickets for speeding, for making illegal turns, for running red lights even if nobody was around, for using your phone while driving, for not wearing your seat belt, for driving hazardously (guy who always swerves through traffic cutting everyone off going 25 mph above the flow of traffic, I'm looking at you). Points on your license for getting caught breaking the laws. Too many points and they suspend your license or take it away all together. DUI laws that have become so severe, you don't even get a warning anymore - one instance of drunk driving and you're done. If your reaction time and/or vision can be proven to have deteriorated to the point that you become a hazard on the road, your license will be taken away.
And then there's registration. Every car must be registered with the state in which it resides, even if it's not in use. To illustrate: years ago, my parents were selling their old car to a friend. They had already gotten a new car, so they took the license plate from the old one and used it for the new one. The old car was parked at the top of our driveway for maybe a week without a license plate. A nosy neighbor saw it and phoned the city, and then we got a notice from the city stating that we needed to register the car or either it would be impounded or we would be ticketed/fined.
And then there's insurance. Each state varies slightly, but in the US it is illegal to drive an uninsured car. Insurance covers you causing an accident, someone causing an accident against you, unnatural damage to your car (such as a branch falling on it in a storm), etc. Any time you make a claim on your insurance - any time you ask for your insurance company to pay to fix something - your rates go up and it becomes more expensive for you to drive.
Okay, so all of that to say: Cars are heavily regulated to protect both drivers and pedestrians. The ability to drive a car is heavily regulated. Sure, one can steal a car and drive it without a license, but the penalties for that would be huge.
On to some other types of reasons why banning cars is a stupid analogy when talking about gun control.
Cars were invented for transit and recreation. People rely on cars to get to work, school, the store, etc. Some people also drive their cars for fun. But cars were not invented to be weapons of mass destruction, or of minor destruction for that matter.
Guns, on the other hand, were invented strictly for the purpose of killing. The earliest gun was invented in China in the 13th century AD and it was meant to be a weapon of war. "But some people use guns for recreation, like skeet shooting!" Yes, true. But that sport did not surface until the 1920s. And guess what? That sport was invented by a guy who liked to hunt (read: kill) birds. So it's safe to say that that sport is meant to practice or imitate hunting (read: killing). I don't inform you of this to judge anyone who likes to shoot skeet or go to the firing range; I merely want to remind you that guns were invented with the intent to kill. So there's another reason why we shouldn't ban cars even though sometimes people die from them.
Now, I really wish I could provide you with factual, statistical evidence regarding the way in which people die from cars. By that, I mean comparing the number of accidental car crashes to the number of purposeful car crashes. I've looked, but I haven't been able to find any of that type of data. This causes me to suspect that the number of purposeful car-related deaths in the US is statistically insignificant. Meanwhile, the number of purposeful deaths caused by guns in the US is, well, staggeringly high.
Cars have an incredible amount of built-in saftey features in order to prevent accidental deaths. Air bags, side air bags, bodies that crumple on any impact (example: I once hit a parking structure pay station, going about 2 mph, and the body of my car crumpled so badly that I couldn't open my front passenger door all the way), seat belts, child locks, the design of head rests, etc, etc, etc. Upgrades such as rear-facing cameras to avoid backing over things. Millions of dollars have been spent on research in order to make cars safer.
And yet.
Guns have one little button or switch to prevent them from being shot. Children and toddlers are constantly fining Mom and Dad's gun, which is for some reason stored unlocked within their reach and loaded, and shooting themselves or their parents.
How many toddlers do you see accidentally unlocking and starting the car, putting it into gear, and rolling into traffic or crashing into the house?
So please, for the sake of everything that is good in this world, STOP suggesting that we ban cars because they are dangerous. It is a BAD analogy and using that analogy makes you sound desperate. Over the last 60 years, cars have proven themselves to be safer and safer, while guns have become a bigger and bigger threat. Sure, the linked chart shows that guns and cars kill the same number of people every year right now; but car deaths have declined drastically while gun deaths have increased drastically over time. That right there should be enough reason for us to not ban cars, and reason enough to place stricter control (and perform more research) on guns to avoid gun deaths.
/endrant
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Saturday, June 18, 2016
2016 Reading challenge: a book you can finish in a day
A book I can finish in a day turned out to be a book I can finish in one sitting. It took me less than an hour to read Haruki Murakami's The Strange Library.
I saw this book on the shelf while I was looking for Nabokov's Lolita - M being close to N and all that. And it looked so cool. I was intrigued by the flaps, and then when I realized that underneath the flaps was the first page instead of another cover page, I was pretty much sold. I didn't even read past the first page or the back of the book - I totally judged a book by its cover. But can you blame me? Just look at it!
Almost every other page is an illustration, and the font is pretty big, so it was a super short read. It would have been even shorter if I didn't take a few moments to absorb every illustration - but there was pretty much no way I wasn't going to study each illustration.
The book is about a young boy who gets lead through a strange labyrinth in the basement of his public library. I honestly don't want to say much more than that because the book is so short that the journey through the labyrinth takes up nearly half the book. But it's..... weird. It escalated from "hm, okay, this book is getting started" to "HOLY CRAP this book is weird" in less than 20 pages (out of 96).
I don't think I really understood it. I mean, I was easily able to follow what was happening, but... I feel like there must be more to this book. A high school English teacher would probably go crazy over it and force their students to write a 10-page essay on what they think was actually happening to the boy or if the boy was even real or if this book actually exists (because, let's face it, high school English teachers make up so much that they might as well make up an entire book).
Anyway, it was a pretty neat book. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes cool illustrations or really weird books or very pretty books. Because it was very pretty. There was a character who didn't have a voice and spoke with her hands, and her dialogue was printed in blue. I liked that a lot.
Being so short and odd, there wasn't much that truly resonated with me, but there was one quote at the beginning that I liked. The boy had asked for some books, and when the old man brought them to him, he told the boy (yeah, nobody had actual names in this book) that they couldn't be checked out and he'd have to read them in a special Reading Room. The boy wanted to go home because his mother would worry, but the old man got so angry about having gone to the trouble of getting the books for the boy that he agreed to stay and read for a half hour. Then the boy thought to himself:
"Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?" (p 21)
Oh, little boy, how well I know how you feel. OH WAIT I THINK THAT THE BOY'S ANXIETY KIND OF MAKES THE WHOLE BOOK INTO A SYMBOL OF HOW PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY ACT IN ORDER TO AVOID DISPLEASING OTHERS. Have you ever been at a party and kind of wanted to leave but didn't want to seem rude so you ended up being the very last person to leave? And the whole time you just felt trapped under these societal pressures to be social and polite and seem normal? I would say with about 65% confidence that what happens to the boy in the Reading Room is a symbolic representation of that feeling. Ha, take that high school English teachers, I could write a good three or four pages about that!
So now I have two other books that I got from the library last week. One of them is my banned book, and the other may or may not be the book that I abandoned at some point. I'll explain that when I write my blog post for that part of the challenge! In the mean time, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child releases in 42 days and 10 hours. I'm so excited for my book that was published this year ahh!
I saw this book on the shelf while I was looking for Nabokov's Lolita - M being close to N and all that. And it looked so cool. I was intrigued by the flaps, and then when I realized that underneath the flaps was the first page instead of another cover page, I was pretty much sold. I didn't even read past the first page or the back of the book - I totally judged a book by its cover. But can you blame me? Just look at it!
Almost every other page is an illustration, and the font is pretty big, so it was a super short read. It would have been even shorter if I didn't take a few moments to absorb every illustration - but there was pretty much no way I wasn't going to study each illustration.
The book is about a young boy who gets lead through a strange labyrinth in the basement of his public library. I honestly don't want to say much more than that because the book is so short that the journey through the labyrinth takes up nearly half the book. But it's..... weird. It escalated from "hm, okay, this book is getting started" to "HOLY CRAP this book is weird" in less than 20 pages (out of 96).
I don't think I really understood it. I mean, I was easily able to follow what was happening, but... I feel like there must be more to this book. A high school English teacher would probably go crazy over it and force their students to write a 10-page essay on what they think was actually happening to the boy or if the boy was even real or if this book actually exists (because, let's face it, high school English teachers make up so much that they might as well make up an entire book).
Anyway, it was a pretty neat book. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes cool illustrations or really weird books or very pretty books. Because it was very pretty. There was a character who didn't have a voice and spoke with her hands, and her dialogue was printed in blue. I liked that a lot.
Being so short and odd, there wasn't much that truly resonated with me, but there was one quote at the beginning that I liked. The boy had asked for some books, and when the old man brought them to him, he told the boy (yeah, nobody had actual names in this book) that they couldn't be checked out and he'd have to read them in a special Reading Room. The boy wanted to go home because his mother would worry, but the old man got so angry about having gone to the trouble of getting the books for the boy that he agreed to stay and read for a half hour. Then the boy thought to himself:
"Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?" (p 21)
Oh, little boy, how well I know how you feel. OH WAIT I THINK THAT THE BOY'S ANXIETY KIND OF MAKES THE WHOLE BOOK INTO A SYMBOL OF HOW PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY ACT IN ORDER TO AVOID DISPLEASING OTHERS. Have you ever been at a party and kind of wanted to leave but didn't want to seem rude so you ended up being the very last person to leave? And the whole time you just felt trapped under these societal pressures to be social and polite and seem normal? I would say with about 65% confidence that what happens to the boy in the Reading Room is a symbolic representation of that feeling. Ha, take that high school English teachers, I could write a good three or four pages about that!
So now I have two other books that I got from the library last week. One of them is my banned book, and the other may or may not be the book that I abandoned at some point. I'll explain that when I write my blog post for that part of the challenge! In the mean time, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child releases in 42 days and 10 hours. I'm so excited for my book that was published this year ahh!
Thursday, June 16, 2016
2016 Reading challenge: A book you should have read in school
This is the first challenge that I kind of had to interpret loosely. I was a pretty great student who read almost every book she was supposed to (except for textbooks in college). There was one book in my Greek mythology class that I kind of skipped over, but I can't remember the name of it or what it was about, so I have no way of finding it again. I also gave up on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in high school - it was not at all what I expected and I literally couldn't read more than two paragraphs without falling asleep, even when I got well into the Rising Action. Plus it was the end of my senior year and I'd already been accepted to college, and bombing one unit in English class wasn't going to lower my GPA so drastically that I'd lose my spot at MSU. So sue me.
Anyway, I decided to interpret this challenge as a book I feel should have been a part of my curriculum in school. And so I chose the book that my eleventh grade English teacher talked about almost more than some of the books that we actually read: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Junior year honors English focused heavily on existentialism, a theory (religion? lack thereof?) that I never really understood. We read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle that year, and I remember Mr. Duffy frequently talking about Slaughterhouse Five as well. He also talked about Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita a lot, but I'll get to that later. :)
I've sort of been meaning to read Slaughterhouse Five for all of these years, but never really had a reason to until this challenge. The moment I saw this particular challenge I knew that I was going to read it. To paraphrase Vonnegut, me reading this book was meant to be, and it always was and it always will be.
So, it took me less than a week to read Slaughterhouse Five. I can't even remember the last time I read a book that quickly! (Okay, it was probably two summers ago when I re-read Harry Potter, because the first three books are so short.) The quick pace of this book was a huge breath of fresh air after crawling my way through The Fellowship of the Ring. Vonnegut's short, easy sentences were so easy to get through that I occasionally caught myself wondering why he didn't combine a few of those sentences.
Overall, I liked it. I've always enjoyed satire. I even noticed a few bits of symbolism in this book, which is rare. I don't really know what they mean, but I noticed them. The train that Billy Pilgrim and the other prisoners of war were transported in was marked with orange and black, to denote that it was not to be bombed. The tents at Billy Pilgrim's daughter's wedding were also orange and black. I noticed that, said "huh, that must mean something," and then kept reading because interpreting symbolism has never been one of my strong suits. (I struggled very hard in all four years of honors/AP English. I think the only reasons I managed to earn good grades were a) my teachers could tell that I was honestly trying and b) I had an English major for a mother who helped me to write my papers.)
The whole Tralfamadore thing and their view on time was at once interesting and obnoxious. After their first introduction, I was like, "wow, they seem to be able to handle death in a very cool way, I wish I could see it like that," and I kind of liked their tradition of saying "So it goes" whenever they learned of a death. But the more I read about the Tralfamadorians, the more Billy Pilgrim learned about them, the more I was kinda like "they sound really pretentious." And the more the narrator said "So it goes" every time death was mentioned, even so much as "they were going to discuss whether the novel was dead or not" (p 205), the more it got annoying. The sentence feels like you're distancing yourself from the death, shrugging it off and basically saying, "whatever." Of course, I understand why Vonnegut uses the phrase that way. This book is a satire of war, or more precisely a satire of American films/books/TV shows that glorify war. This book is criticizing people who look at war as a big, beautiful thing fought by strong, valiant 35-year-olds and say, "Well, the millions of deaths were necessary and not that bad when you consider the alternative to fighting." (Just gotta point out that I don't know how well I would have picked up on that if it wasn't literally spelled out for us on pages 14-15.)
As usual, there were a few quotes in this book that really resonated with me, and I'd like to share them now.
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep" (p 18). The narrator says this after talking about visiting the World's Fair and seeing what the past was like and what the future might be like. (I wish I could have seen a World's Fair!) I just really liked that quote. How big is a moment? Can we hold on to a moment forever? Do we get to keep moments that were once the present with us as they become the past? Deep stuff.
"It isn't much fun if you have to pinch every penny till it screams" (p 104), spoken by Billy Pilgrim's mother. All I have to say about that one is: Amen sista, I hear you on that.
So, yeah, certain aspects of the book got a little annoying at times but overall, I really liked it. I wish I'd stayed in touch with Mr. Duffy so I could tell him that I finally read it!
Interjection: has anybody noticed how my writing style in each blog post is influenced by the book that I've been reading? I've always struggled to find my own voice when writing. I also struggle to find my own voice when singing - I tend to try to copy every sound, every fluctuation of the singer whether I'm listening to The Beatles or Regina Spektor.
When I checked Slaughterhouse Five out from the library, I also snagged three other books. Two of them are definitely for the 2016 challenge, while I still have to decide if the third one is or not. So I'm not entirely sure which one I'll read first, but I'll definitely be getting started on my next book and challenge soon oh boy!
And uh. A book published this year? You KNOW I'm gonna go with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which releases in 44 days AHHHHHH! I'm so stoked for my first Potter-related midnight release in five years!!
Anyway, I decided to interpret this challenge as a book I feel should have been a part of my curriculum in school. And so I chose the book that my eleventh grade English teacher talked about almost more than some of the books that we actually read: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Junior year honors English focused heavily on existentialism, a theory (religion? lack thereof?) that I never really understood. We read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle that year, and I remember Mr. Duffy frequently talking about Slaughterhouse Five as well. He also talked about Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita a lot, but I'll get to that later. :)
I've sort of been meaning to read Slaughterhouse Five for all of these years, but never really had a reason to until this challenge. The moment I saw this particular challenge I knew that I was going to read it. To paraphrase Vonnegut, me reading this book was meant to be, and it always was and it always will be.
So, it took me less than a week to read Slaughterhouse Five. I can't even remember the last time I read a book that quickly! (Okay, it was probably two summers ago when I re-read Harry Potter, because the first three books are so short.) The quick pace of this book was a huge breath of fresh air after crawling my way through The Fellowship of the Ring. Vonnegut's short, easy sentences were so easy to get through that I occasionally caught myself wondering why he didn't combine a few of those sentences.
Overall, I liked it. I've always enjoyed satire. I even noticed a few bits of symbolism in this book, which is rare. I don't really know what they mean, but I noticed them. The train that Billy Pilgrim and the other prisoners of war were transported in was marked with orange and black, to denote that it was not to be bombed. The tents at Billy Pilgrim's daughter's wedding were also orange and black. I noticed that, said "huh, that must mean something," and then kept reading because interpreting symbolism has never been one of my strong suits. (I struggled very hard in all four years of honors/AP English. I think the only reasons I managed to earn good grades were a) my teachers could tell that I was honestly trying and b) I had an English major for a mother who helped me to write my papers.)
The whole Tralfamadore thing and their view on time was at once interesting and obnoxious. After their first introduction, I was like, "wow, they seem to be able to handle death in a very cool way, I wish I could see it like that," and I kind of liked their tradition of saying "So it goes" whenever they learned of a death. But the more I read about the Tralfamadorians, the more Billy Pilgrim learned about them, the more I was kinda like "they sound really pretentious." And the more the narrator said "So it goes" every time death was mentioned, even so much as "they were going to discuss whether the novel was dead or not" (p 205), the more it got annoying. The sentence feels like you're distancing yourself from the death, shrugging it off and basically saying, "whatever." Of course, I understand why Vonnegut uses the phrase that way. This book is a satire of war, or more precisely a satire of American films/books/TV shows that glorify war. This book is criticizing people who look at war as a big, beautiful thing fought by strong, valiant 35-year-olds and say, "Well, the millions of deaths were necessary and not that bad when you consider the alternative to fighting." (Just gotta point out that I don't know how well I would have picked up on that if it wasn't literally spelled out for us on pages 14-15.)
As usual, there were a few quotes in this book that really resonated with me, and I'd like to share them now.
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep" (p 18). The narrator says this after talking about visiting the World's Fair and seeing what the past was like and what the future might be like. (I wish I could have seen a World's Fair!) I just really liked that quote. How big is a moment? Can we hold on to a moment forever? Do we get to keep moments that were once the present with us as they become the past? Deep stuff.
"It isn't much fun if you have to pinch every penny till it screams" (p 104), spoken by Billy Pilgrim's mother. All I have to say about that one is: Amen sista, I hear you on that.
So, yeah, certain aspects of the book got a little annoying at times but overall, I really liked it. I wish I'd stayed in touch with Mr. Duffy so I could tell him that I finally read it!
Interjection: has anybody noticed how my writing style in each blog post is influenced by the book that I've been reading? I've always struggled to find my own voice when writing. I also struggle to find my own voice when singing - I tend to try to copy every sound, every fluctuation of the singer whether I'm listening to The Beatles or Regina Spektor.
When I checked Slaughterhouse Five out from the library, I also snagged three other books. Two of them are definitely for the 2016 challenge, while I still have to decide if the third one is or not. So I'm not entirely sure which one I'll read first, but I'll definitely be getting started on my next book and challenge soon oh boy!
And uh. A book published this year? You KNOW I'm gonna go with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which releases in 44 days AHHHHHH! I'm so stoked for my first Potter-related midnight release in five years!!
Saturday, June 11, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: a book that intimadtes you (part 2)
Well, it's taken me over two months, but I finally finished The Fellowship of the Ring!
Part of the reason it's taken me so long is that I simply stopped reading for almost a month. I went on a 2-week vacation back home, and that was long enough to pull me out of the habit of reading, and then I kind of had to force myself to start again. And even if I read for half an hour a day, which is a fairly small goal, that's still only like 4 pages of this tiny-text, long-ass-paragraphs book.
I read a review of this book on Goodreads that started off, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." I could tell exactly where that person was going with their review from that. They weren't sorry about spoilers or the length of their review or their bad English. They were sorry for not really liking the book.
And that's honestly how I feel, too.
I'm so sorry that I can't say that I absolutely loved it. That it didn't thrill me the way it thrilled my friend in elementary school, the way Harry Potter thrilled (and continues to thrill) me. The story, the message, the meaning, are absolutely wonderful. But. If I hadn't already seen the movies, or if they never existed, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. If I didn't already know the overall plot and most of the events that take place, I probably wouldn't have remembered what was going on after I took a month-long break from the book, and therefore probably would have felt like giving up on it all over again. Hell, if I didn't have a face to put with each character, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep track of who was a dwarf, elf, man, or hobbit except for Sam, Frodo, Gandalf, and maybe Aragorn. (Although, we do get plenty of frequent reminders of Legolas' and Gimli's races and their relations to each other, so, maybe.)
It's just..... so slow. So much history and geography and mere passage of time is intertwined with the action that I often didn't even notice when the description of the land had turned into something happening to someone. And not in a good way, like when an author seamlessly transitions from one thing to another. More in the bad way, like when an author has been rambling on for so long that you're barely absorbing the information anymore and you forget to pay attention to what's happening.
Again, I am sorry.
I know that these are classic books, canonical texts, and truly beloved by many. But to each his own, right? The adventure and the undying friendship and loyalty and the Chosen One To Complete A Very Dangerous Mission aspects of this book absolutely appeal to me. But, unfortunately, Tolkein's writing style does not.
So right now, I'm left with a decision to make. Technically, I have read an entire book that intimidated me, which fulfills the challenge, so I can move on to the next category. However, The Lord of the Rings is all technically one very long book that gets published in three volumes. The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume, which means that techincally, I have only read 1/3 of the book as a whole. I would like to read The Two Towers and The Return of the King some day soonish, but I really think that if I try to read them both next, it'll take me until October and then I'll barely have enough time for the rest of the 2016 challenge. So probably what I'll do is I'll move on to the next challenges, perhaps reading one or two other books before tackling The Two Towers, then another book or two before The Return of the King.
Oh, and - spoiler, I guess, though I can't imagine anyone reading this hasn't seen the movies by this point - I was really surprised that Fellowship didn't end with Boromir's death and Merry and Pippin's kidnapping! The final chapter ended with Frodo and Sam leaving Amon Hen, as the film does; but the rest of the Company is still running through the woods looking for Frodo. I suppose Two Towers starts with Boromir's death and the kidnapping? I guess I'll just have to read the next book and find out!
Part of the reason it's taken me so long is that I simply stopped reading for almost a month. I went on a 2-week vacation back home, and that was long enough to pull me out of the habit of reading, and then I kind of had to force myself to start again. And even if I read for half an hour a day, which is a fairly small goal, that's still only like 4 pages of this tiny-text, long-ass-paragraphs book.
I read a review of this book on Goodreads that started off, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." I could tell exactly where that person was going with their review from that. They weren't sorry about spoilers or the length of their review or their bad English. They were sorry for not really liking the book.
And that's honestly how I feel, too.
I'm so sorry that I can't say that I absolutely loved it. That it didn't thrill me the way it thrilled my friend in elementary school, the way Harry Potter thrilled (and continues to thrill) me. The story, the message, the meaning, are absolutely wonderful. But. If I hadn't already seen the movies, or if they never existed, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. If I didn't already know the overall plot and most of the events that take place, I probably wouldn't have remembered what was going on after I took a month-long break from the book, and therefore probably would have felt like giving up on it all over again. Hell, if I didn't have a face to put with each character, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep track of who was a dwarf, elf, man, or hobbit except for Sam, Frodo, Gandalf, and maybe Aragorn. (Although, we do get plenty of frequent reminders of Legolas' and Gimli's races and their relations to each other, so, maybe.)
It's just..... so slow. So much history and geography and mere passage of time is intertwined with the action that I often didn't even notice when the description of the land had turned into something happening to someone. And not in a good way, like when an author seamlessly transitions from one thing to another. More in the bad way, like when an author has been rambling on for so long that you're barely absorbing the information anymore and you forget to pay attention to what's happening.
Again, I am sorry.
I know that these are classic books, canonical texts, and truly beloved by many. But to each his own, right? The adventure and the undying friendship and loyalty and the Chosen One To Complete A Very Dangerous Mission aspects of this book absolutely appeal to me. But, unfortunately, Tolkein's writing style does not.
So right now, I'm left with a decision to make. Technically, I have read an entire book that intimidated me, which fulfills the challenge, so I can move on to the next category. However, The Lord of the Rings is all technically one very long book that gets published in three volumes. The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume, which means that techincally, I have only read 1/3 of the book as a whole. I would like to read The Two Towers and The Return of the King some day soonish, but I really think that if I try to read them both next, it'll take me until October and then I'll barely have enough time for the rest of the 2016 challenge. So probably what I'll do is I'll move on to the next challenges, perhaps reading one or two other books before tackling The Two Towers, then another book or two before The Return of the King.
Oh, and - spoiler, I guess, though I can't imagine anyone reading this hasn't seen the movies by this point - I was really surprised that Fellowship didn't end with Boromir's death and Merry and Pippin's kidnapping! The final chapter ended with Frodo and Sam leaving Amon Hen, as the film does; but the rest of the Company is still running through the woods looking for Frodo. I suppose Two Towers starts with Boromir's death and the kidnapping? I guess I'll just have to read the next book and find out!
Side note: I have no idea what to choose for a book that I previously abandoned. The only reason I have ever abandoned a book is because it bored me too much to continue. Do I really want to force myself through the boredom yet again? Isn't the point of reading to be intrigued and absorbed into the book? Can I maybe count a series that I abandoned? Because that would work for me. I kind of abandoned the Maze Runner series when the wait list at my library was too long for the third book and then I got busy moving in to the new apartment/abandoned reading all together. But the series didn't bore me. But I also didn't ever start the third book in the series. Sigh. I'll have to think of something for that category.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Shit we don't say about other types of crime
Trigger warnings: rape, murder, theft.
You left your door unlocked that night. Are you sure you didn't secretly want to get robbed?
The victim never explicitly told the defendant, "No, I do not want you to kill me right now."
Your storefront does not have bulletproof glass protecting the cashier and cash register. Doesn't that just invite gunmen to come in and commit armed robbery?
A witness said that he overheard you joking about what you would do if someone ever tried to rob you. Doesn't that mean you wanted to get robbed?
Star Athlete and Community Servicer Accused of Murder, But Victim Was Kinda Suicidal Anyway
He was depressed and chose not to be on anti-depressants. He must have secretly wanted to be killed or he'd have lived his life in a way that said, "I don't want to die!"
The victim was in to such dangerous activities as skydiving and bungee jumping. Doesn't that exude the type of personality that says, "Please kill me because I like it"?
If you didn't want to get robbed, you shouldn't have left your blinds open at night revealing all of your expensive technology right there in the living room for everyone to see.
You should have known that walking down a dark street alone at night would lead to you getting mugged.
If you didn't want your child to get kidnapped, why did you let him walk home alone from school? Why didn't you pick him up instead? Everyone knows that a kid walking three and a half blocks alone in broad daylight is just asking to get kidnapped.
If you're so anti-murder, why do you watch shows like Dexter and CSI?
He was living in sin with his girlfriend anyway, so he deserved to be killed.
If you didn't want your identity stolen, why would you use a credit card and not cash?
The robber got in through your cracked window. You should never leave a window open in your apartment because that's just asking for someone to come in and steal your stuff.
The defendant can clearly be seen in this security footage killing that man. There is no question that he is guilty. But this is his first offense ever, so we'll let him off easy because so far he's been a pretty good person in life.
My daughter has lived for 24 years on this planet as a good, law-abiding citizen. It only took her thirty seconds of drunk driving to run over that child. You can't condemn her for a crime that took up so little of her life!
We don't fucking look at murder, theft, or kidnapping victims as if they wanted it, as if their lifestyle opened them up to getting killed or robbed. So why the fuck do we look at rape victims as though they had it coming? What is it about getting sexually assaulted that leads people to believe that it's the victim's fault? Doesn't anybody fucking realize that rape is just as much about violence as murder is? That rape is about power, control, force, anger, hate, and not about getting laid?
If I hit you in the face with a frying pan while we're both in the kitchen, we don't call it cooking. We call it violence. Yet if a rapist forces themselves upon a victim, conscious or not, sober or not, we say, "oh, are we all sure that the victim didn't actually want it? are we all sure that the victim doesn't just regret sleeping with that person? are we all sure that the victim just doesn't remember saying yes?" Even though an intoxicated person is legally unable to sign a contract in most states (or all states? I'm no lawyer). Because an intoxicated person's consent is meaningless. But apparently a drunk person not saying "no, please don't rape me" is the same thing as a sober person saying "yes, please have sex with me."
Apparently sexual felonies aren't that big of a deal. Apparently rape is actually pretty okay. Apparently rape is some magical crime that garners sympathy for the criminal instead of for the victim. Apparently rape is just sex that the victim regrets. Apparently rape is not a crime that you need to serve time for. Apparently rape is totally expected if you're a drunk college kid. Apparently there's nothing anyone can really do from stopping themselves from raping someone. Apparently rape just happens when you're drunk. Apparently rape isn't even rape if the victim is unconscious, intoxicated, or both. Apparently rape isn't really rape if the rapist insists that s/he had consent.
You left your door unlocked that night. Are you sure you didn't secretly want to get robbed?
The victim never explicitly told the defendant, "No, I do not want you to kill me right now."
Your storefront does not have bulletproof glass protecting the cashier and cash register. Doesn't that just invite gunmen to come in and commit armed robbery?
A witness said that he overheard you joking about what you would do if someone ever tried to rob you. Doesn't that mean you wanted to get robbed?
Star Athlete and Community Servicer Accused of Murder, But Victim Was Kinda Suicidal Anyway
He was depressed and chose not to be on anti-depressants. He must have secretly wanted to be killed or he'd have lived his life in a way that said, "I don't want to die!"
The victim was in to such dangerous activities as skydiving and bungee jumping. Doesn't that exude the type of personality that says, "Please kill me because I like it"?
If you didn't want to get robbed, you shouldn't have left your blinds open at night revealing all of your expensive technology right there in the living room for everyone to see.
You should have known that walking down a dark street alone at night would lead to you getting mugged.
If you didn't want your child to get kidnapped, why did you let him walk home alone from school? Why didn't you pick him up instead? Everyone knows that a kid walking three and a half blocks alone in broad daylight is just asking to get kidnapped.
If you're so anti-murder, why do you watch shows like Dexter and CSI?
He was living in sin with his girlfriend anyway, so he deserved to be killed.
If you didn't want your identity stolen, why would you use a credit card and not cash?
The robber got in through your cracked window. You should never leave a window open in your apartment because that's just asking for someone to come in and steal your stuff.
The defendant can clearly be seen in this security footage killing that man. There is no question that he is guilty. But this is his first offense ever, so we'll let him off easy because so far he's been a pretty good person in life.
My daughter has lived for 24 years on this planet as a good, law-abiding citizen. It only took her thirty seconds of drunk driving to run over that child. You can't condemn her for a crime that took up so little of her life!
We don't fucking look at murder, theft, or kidnapping victims as if they wanted it, as if their lifestyle opened them up to getting killed or robbed. So why the fuck do we look at rape victims as though they had it coming? What is it about getting sexually assaulted that leads people to believe that it's the victim's fault? Doesn't anybody fucking realize that rape is just as much about violence as murder is? That rape is about power, control, force, anger, hate, and not about getting laid?
If I hit you in the face with a frying pan while we're both in the kitchen, we don't call it cooking. We call it violence. Yet if a rapist forces themselves upon a victim, conscious or not, sober or not, we say, "oh, are we all sure that the victim didn't actually want it? are we all sure that the victim doesn't just regret sleeping with that person? are we all sure that the victim just doesn't remember saying yes?" Even though an intoxicated person is legally unable to sign a contract in most states (or all states? I'm no lawyer). Because an intoxicated person's consent is meaningless. But apparently a drunk person not saying "no, please don't rape me" is the same thing as a sober person saying "yes, please have sex with me."
Apparently sexual felonies aren't that big of a deal. Apparently rape is actually pretty okay. Apparently rape is some magical crime that garners sympathy for the criminal instead of for the victim. Apparently rape is just sex that the victim regrets. Apparently rape is not a crime that you need to serve time for. Apparently rape is totally expected if you're a drunk college kid. Apparently there's nothing anyone can really do from stopping themselves from raping someone. Apparently rape just happens when you're drunk. Apparently rape isn't even rape if the victim is unconscious, intoxicated, or both. Apparently rape isn't really rape if the rapist insists that s/he had consent.
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