I’ve found promising new blog; apparently it’s going to focus on linguistics, with excursions into linguistics in science fiction.

Ten extra credit points if you know where the title of the blog (and this post!) come from without peeking.

Having finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings, it seemed reasonable to
keep moving along and re-read The Silmarillion. And I’m glad I did; but at
the same time I find I don’t have much to say about it. It’s history
rather than narrative, and except for a few points (notably the story of
Beren and Luthien) I don’t find it nearly as moving as the trilogy.
There’s pleasure in it; but it’s a different kind of pleasure.

So I took my PowerBook down to the Apple Store today, and discovered that there was Good News and Bad News.

The Good News is that all I needed to replace was the power adaptor–effectively, the power cord. This makes no sense to me at all, mind you. How can it be that the power adaptor can power the computer, but can’t charge the battery? I don’t get it. Nevertheless, it’s good news–they gave me a new power adaptor under the warranty (which has a couple of months left to run) and I got to take my laptop home.

The Bad News is that my laptop has a nasty dent on one back corner that I wasn’t aware of. It probably got there last Spring when I went to Australia; I slipped and fell in the airport and dropped the laptop case. But I looked the laptop over then and I don’t remember seeing it. If it didn’t happen back then, I’m at a loss–it clearly got a pretty good whack. It doesn’t seem to have affected the computer’s behavior at all, but I was informed today that it’s enough to void the warranty if I ever do have to send the whole thing for service. Ugh.

I have an Epson C82 inkjet printer. I got it because according to the reviews it’s a good light-duty printer, prints photos reasonably well, and uses non-fading inks.

I’ve also decided that it’s a royal pain.

I tend to use it once a month or so. Every time I use it, practically, I discover that I need to run through the nozzle cleaning procedure, which wastes ink.

Today, I found out that I needed to do that after wasting about an hour and several sheets of photo paper. So I fixed it, and printed the pages again, and on the third page I discovered that I needed to do the nozzle cleaning again. Net result: after two hours of wasted time I’ve got lots of wasted sheets of paper, half the pictures I wanted, and a printer that I don’t trust.

Can anybody point me to a nice, reliable color printer that doesn’t get bitchy if it’s ignored most of the time?

This is the second book of Green’s series The Blending, which I
panned
back in November. So why did I read the second book if I disliked the
first? I have three answers. First, Jane liked it rather better than I
did, and wanted to read the second book. Second, the premise is somewhat
interesting; I’m curious to see how it plays out. Third, I didn’t read
this book–rather, I got through a hundred pages or so and decided I
didn’t want to read any further thanks to a case of acute moral
indigestion.

It’s dangerous, of course, to guess a novelist’s views from their work;
one is all too likely to take some sentiment vehemently expressed by some
character or other as a statement of the author’s beliefs, only to be
proved ludicrously wrong. Nevertheless an author’s worldview generally
does show up in their writing–and Green’s world view, as I see it
reflected here, is one that I find particularly pernicious, as well as all too
prevalent. It is, quite simply, the belief that spiritual growth equals
mental health, that religion equals therapy.

An examination of Green’s characters is illuminating. The “good”
characters are open, thoughtful, and friendly (with each other, anyway).
They are mostly emotionally damaged in some way: one is claustrophobic;
one fears sexual intimacy because of a prior marriage to a cruel husband;
one has little understanding of people because his domineering mother attempted to
fixate him on her; another has a heart of gold but is unreasonably
jealous (that is to say, he believes in traditional monogamy!). But
because they are “good” they are all trying to overcome this damage and
grow into full emotional balance. And–this is where the book becomes
particularly wearing–those passages which don’t advance the plot are
dedicated to the characters administering therapy to each other. It’s
not called that, but that’s what it is.

The “bad” characters are also mostly emotionally
damaged, but unlike the “good” characters have no desire to grow into
health. Instead, they glory in their infirmity, which generally
manifests as some kind of sexual perversion. They are sadists (genuine
sadists who really enjoy causing pain to non-consensual partners), or
masochists, or indulge in unloving promiscuity, that is, promiscuity for
pleasure only, with people you don’t care about. It’s clear that in
Green’s world, promiscuity with people you love isn’t a problem–as I
noted above, a hangup about this is the obstacle one of the “good”
characters has to overcome.

Tellingly, the only major characters I’ve noted who are not emotionally
damaged, that is, who are “well”, are adepts of Spirit. In Green’s
world, every person is aligned to a greater or lesser degree with one of
the five elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Spirit. Adepts of Spirit
are able to read very clearly the emotions of others, even those
the others might wish to keep hidden, and if strong enough can manipulate
the emotions of others as well. Supposedly, strong adepts of Spirit have
to be emotionally stable, because otherwise the emotions of others would
destroy them.

One of the two “healthy” characters, Jovvi, is not only an adept of Spirit
but a prostitute by trade who has grown rich in her profession by
manipulating the emotions of her customers with her magic talent. She
never manipulates the emotions of the other “good” characters, of course,
except for their own good.

And there we have the pinnacle of Green’s moral pyramid: emotional
stability, along with the ability to manipulate the emotions of others
“for their own good.” It’s a world in which the only saints are
therapists.

It’s a world view that’s becoming increasingly popular these days; as I’ve
written elsewhere
it’s a world view that has nearly consumed the Episcopal Church, of which
I’m a member. And it’s a lie. Most people are not emotionally damaged
and in need of therapy. Spiritual growth is not the movement from a
position of emotional injury to one of emotional stability (though it may
involve that). Spiritual growth is a movement from being centered on
one’s self to being centered on God, a process which can involve
considerable discomfort, and which has little to do with being a
well-adjusted member of society.

The ironic thing is, I could probably tolerate Green’s world view if
she’d just leave out all of the therapeutic conversations and sexual healing
(by the good guys) and weird sexual power games (by the bad guys–one of
whom is purely disgusted when he finds out that a woman he knows is a
dominatrix. In his view, the man ought to be holding the
whip)–if, as I say, should discard all of that and just get on with the
damn story.

But where the first book was told from five good, ever more healthy
viewpoints, this book adds five additional mostly sick and twisted
viewpoints. And there are three more books to follow before we get the
payoff. Frankly, I decided that I couldn’t stomach it and put the book
away.

Please note–I’m not rejecting therapy altogether. It fills a need, and sometimes it’s lifesaving. But it’s a really bad way for most people to approach spiritual growth.

J.W. Hastings has some things to say that mesh interestingly with some things I said about values last week.

Some while back I read an article about the social dynamics of high school girls. The article divided high school girls into three groups: Alphas, Betas, and Gammas. The Alphas are those who maintain a position in the upper ranks of the school pecking order by constant attention to their position and by continual politicking and infighting. The Gammas are those who fall to the lower ranks because they can’t compete socially or politically with the Alphas.

And then there were the Betas. The Betas have two notable features: they don’t play the political game and indeed are almost outside the social hierarchy that defines the lives of the Alphas and Gammas–and they are able to do so because they are good at something else. It might be academics, it might be athletics, it might be music, it might be drama. They win a place for themselves because of their obvious competence, and consequently have no need to scrabble for position. They might not be the prettiest girls, and they generally aren’t the most popular girls, but they tend to be the most interesting, and the most content.

Now, what I know about feminine social dynamics you could lose in a thimble. But I related this article to my wife (a classic Beta, she got good grades and was in both choir and track & field in high school), and she assured me that it was spot on. And I’ve paid attention since then, and observed that most of the women I know well and like are also classic Betas.

Now, today was my son David’s birthday party. (He’s just turned 7.) At the party were many little boys from David’s class, and just one little girl, Kayley. And I was fascinated to discover, as I listened to Jane talk to a couple of the other mothers, that the politicking and infighting are already going on among most of the girls in David’s first grade class. But David’s good friend Kayley isn’t one of them. And in addition to being straightforward and friendly, she’s apparently also very creative–constantly jumps into art projects on her own initiative. In a word, she’s a budding Beta.

Fascinating. First grade, and it’s already begun–and David already knows what kind of girl he likes. Bodes well for the future, I think.

The plot of this, the second of the Chronicles of Prydain, is simple.
Arawn, Dark Lord of Annuvin, has a black cauldron which he uses to turn
the bodies of his slain enemies into deathless, fearless, pitiless warriors known
as the Cauldron-Born. Recently he’s been gone even farther–he’s been
sending his servants out to catch and slay the living, and bring their
corpses back to Annuvin and the cauldron. This clearly cannot be allowed
to continue, and so Gwydion Prince of Don plans to steal the cauldron and
destroy it, gathering a team of men to help him–a team that
includes our hero Taran of Caer Dallben and his friends. And naturally,
it’s Taran who will succeed (with the help of his friends) in finding the
cauldron.

So much for the plot. As with the previous volume, the real story is
the story of Taran’s own moral growth, the mistakes he makes, the lessons
he learns, and the hard choices he makes. And most of the characters in
the book are there as moral exemplars of one kind or another.

Several of the characters return from the previous book.
Gwydion, Prince of Don, represents the ideal man–that which Taran most
admires. Princess Eilonwy, with her matter-of-fact analysis and her
resourcefulness, is common sense. Fflewddur Fflam, whose accomplishments
so often fall short of the desires of his great heart, represents
perseverance in the face of human frailty.

But it’s the new characters who provide most of the interest. Ellidyr,
youngest son of the King of Pen-Llarcau, is haughty, thirsty for honor,
and hag-ridden by envious pride, and not much older than Taran. Taran
and Ellidyr clash badly at their first meeting, and at regular intervals
thereafter–and the conflict forces Taran to confront his own pride and
thirst for honor.

And then there’s King Morgant, who stands to Gwydion much as Ellidyr
stands to Taran, except that he’s older, wiser, and sneakier, and knows
how to bide his time.

But the book isn’t entirely, or even mostly, filled with somber morality
and growthfulness. It’s also graced by considerable good humor, and
nowhere more than in Taran and Co.’s encounter with Orrdu, Orwen, and
Orgoch, as merry (and terrifying) a group of Fates as I’ve yet seen. I’d
completely forgotten how much fun they were.

…but it’s nice to know that other parents have too.

The Old Man in the Hat Comes Back has miraculously acquired two more verses!