Thank God Almighty. John Howard is out. The Liberals are out. After 11 years we finally have a government who might return some balance, reason and compassion to this country.

Today, I send love to EVERYONE! :D

Hydee-ho lovely people. Long time. My apologies. At the behest of the lovely Darynthe, I thought I'd update my much ignored journal.

Am still alive and very much okay but has been a manic time for me of late. Have moved house, started Wing Chun Kung Fu, made mucho head-way with my book, walked against warming, and generally been trying to do ten things at once.

Just let me vote already!

In the backdrop has been the world’s longest ever election campaign. The Oz election only got called just over a month ago, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s been going on much much longer than that.

And, as people get increasingly sick of the pork-barrelling and empty promises lined with tax-payer money, one thing has become blatantly clear to me: that there are basically TWO types of people in the world.

The first care about the world and the people in it. The second basically care only about themselves.

The first will vote Greens or Labour in this election. The second will vote for whoever offers them the biggest bribe (and if that’s the Liberals, so be it, eh?).

Okay. I know that’s extremely simplistic. I’m sure some liberal voter somewhere has a heart. I mean look at Petrou Georgiou. He’s a liberal candidate and he beats many Labour members hands down in the compassion and reason department.

But really lets take a look at the wider situation here. The poles are melting. Refugees in my country are abused every day in appalling ways. A high court judge has recently had to step in to prevent ASIO abuse of draconian anti-terror laws that have slowly but surely whittled away people’s civil rights right in front of their sleepy noses. The poor and needy and disadvantaged of my country are now considered ‘greedy welfare cheats’ by an over-consuming mainstream that has grown fat, ungrateful and apathetic. Any idea in Australia of the ‘fair-go’ has basically come to mean anyone who can afford it. And our major national newspaper – the Australian – says the soft-left (read ‘compassion’) is ‘out-dated’ and accuses us of wanting to turn the country into a ‘mung-bean eating Arcadia’.

(Cause yeh – that’s what I really meant when I said ‘hey, it’d be nice if we could… you know… treat people better’).

Do you get my point. The lucky country has become the mean country. In a ‘yeh, we’ve got heaps but the rest of you black, muslim, asian, insert-scapegoat-here, needy, greenie, bludger, pinko, lefto, communist, howard-hating hacks ain’t gettin’ any’ kind of way.

Greedy mo’-fo’s. I don’t want to you to eat mung-beans bro. I just want to save my planet for my children and yours. Capiche?

Wading into HP waters once again

It would probably not surprise anyone that in the latest Rowling vs Vander Ark muck, I'm siding with Steve. (Yes... once out of favour, always out of favour).

But my biases aside, there is one slightly pertinent point that I kind of wanted to make - because, hell, somebody had to.

And that is this: Steve will be profiting just as much from his own work as from Rowlings. If not MORE. Anyone who thinks the lexicon is just a mere 'rearrangement of Rowling's work' hasn't visited the lexicon.

The idea of people not having the right to publish analyses, studies and critiques of authors' works is absurd.

Steve hasn't merely rearranged the books and offered them up for money. He's created something much more than that. It's part encyclopaedia, it's part analysis (is everyone forgetting the essays?); there's stuff in there that none of us would have pieced together if not for Steve and his amazing group of tireless workers. The timeline alone would have taken hours of analysis to accurately produce. A timeline that was essentially pinched by Warner Bros and co. Rowling herself has admitted to utilising the lexicon for her research work and to check facts when writing the books.

How now do we claim that Steve would essentially be profitting off Rowling's back alone? That's an insult. Is there any sane person who could confuse a librarian with a creator?

At the very least, make a deal (or pay the man proper compensation).

Or, has this really become the age of Ebineezer Scrooge? Is the richest women in England so lacking in imagination that she can't imagine a third way through?

God I hate close minded people.

You know the kind.

You're wrong. Just wrong. Wrong wrong wrongety wrong. I'm right you're wrong. Only one way to see things and it aint yours. I'm right you're wrong.

Didn't you know? I'm fucking omniscient. Yes. God's dead. He made me king.

Does anybody like them? No. They're the suck-holes of the universe.

Not talking about personal experience here by the way... I just had a great and lively discussion about the existence of God with my mum, sister and brother in law (read Christian, Agnostic and Atheist in that order) and it was fucking brilliant and open minded and great and... did I say brilliant.

Then I get online and someone's telling me I'm wrong because I don't agree with La Rowling.

Please. Some fucking perspective.

I've come across an excellent essay that I highly recommend and that for me, outlines precisely my frustration with JK Rowling's heavy-handed attitude to her books and her readership.

You can find it here:

http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-160.html

This part in particular resonates with me (bolding mine):

"The Harry Potter books are not written to be read in any sense that I would understand it. They're there to be passively received and carefully cross-checked against the author's (externally established) intent. It's like a hundred and fifty years of literary theory never happened."

I can't agree completely enough. Directly after HBP, I posted a journal entry in which I wished to examine this very thing. I'd be interested in people's thoughts as to when this started happening in the HP world and why so many of her readers are so eager to be told exactly how they are meant to be reading the books.

Is it perhaps as much because we have become a lazy readership, wanting quick answers and to be told who's right and who's wrong, that we have so quickly abbregated our right (and I would argue responsibility) to think and interpret for ourselves?

And how nervous does an author need to be exactly to feel compelled to so direct her readership?

Sienna

Happy Birthday Estrella!

Sorry appears am a day late (because I suck at remembering these things and I can't figure out how to be reminded).

I hope the coming year is full of love and laughter. :)

On 27/07/2007, at 6:21 PM Noodles (alias Sienna the younger) wrote:

Hey moo-

Can i assume you have finished potter? If not dont read on but here are my thoughts on it.

Well, i finished it just last night and I think it was good and bad and sometimes somewhere in between. I found most of the middle when they were just camping all around the place a bit stagnant and i think i agree that this book needed some serious editing. i found the whole harry having to voluntarily go to death pretty cool and moving and a highlight of the book. Actually generally i liked the whole end at hogwarts and the horcruxes vs hallows stuff cool when one finally got there. even the ron and hermoine kiss is pretty cool, the growth of ron, the role of hermoine and ginny good BUT DEAR GOD that last chapter is crap. I am going to pretend I didnt read it. i mean, ok with the wanting to provide closure on what happens in the future but the way she did it was just so sloppy and without any nuance.

anyway, i reckon if you finish at the second to last chapter it works better, dont you?

On other news, berlin is such a great city. my paper went reasonably well but I had an early night last night after it cause i was just too sleepy (ie getting ready for bed at nine!). but today we are ditching most of the conference and kath and I are going to go shopping and then gonna check out some flea markets on sunday and maybe a show if we can find it. I am taking pictures to
show you- it really is a great city. kath is lovely- we are getting along really well.

anyway, send me your news. i get to check email pretty much any time i want.

love ya guts sis!
noodles

Sienna the older responds:>

Yay! Hello moo moo!

So good to hear from you. Berlin sounds awesome. Am so glad you're hanging out and getting to see something other than just inside of conference rooms.

Things here have been good. Went to state library on Thursday to write and was a good move. They have a books & ideas exhibition on at the moment and are showcasing all their old and rare books. Needless to say, was just the inspiration needed. Was in book heaven. Think
will make it a bit of a ritual.

Agree completely on your take on HP. As always, her editors should have been braver than they were in parts. But once you get to the good stuff, it is really quite cinematic and spectacular. The epilogue is indeed, however, quite quite crap. And almost universally the fandom has passed that judgement on it.

She's since said she intended it to be poetic. But I think that's Rowling speak for crap.

Would be much better if she'd ended it on previous chapter and will pretend that's where it ended too. Only difference I think is that I thought Ginny's role was awful. Other than offer herself to Harry early in the book and a few weird cliched moments between them, she did nothing. Which I thought disappointing. Still... thought it a satisfying end all up.

When you off to Krakow? Can't wait to see your piccies when you get back!! Write me your news when you can.

Love ya sis!
V
xxx

PS. Got present from Wendy and Valery. How lovely of them!! I wasn't expecting it at all. It's a really nice book by Alice Walker - the lady who wrote the Colour Purple. Will have to thank them when i geta chance. xxx

Am I the only one who is honestly happy that this Harry Potter stuff is coming to an end?

Perhaps once I finish the last page I'll shed a nostalgic tear, but I'm honest to god relieved that in two weeks time, all the fandom will be irrevocably changed.

One can only hope, eh?

Also... why did god invent people who can't  help but constantly play devil's advocate? Is there anything more irritating than someone who has to contradict every passing comment you bloody make? (Possibly an itchy bum is the only thing more irritating). I mean jesus in a handbasket... sometimes I'm just making fucking chit chat. Not every freaking comment has to turn into a bloody debate. 

Some people are just itching for the fight.

Oh my GOD. Two posts in three months. I must be on some sort of a roll.

I am so mean to my LJ... *pets LJ*.

My life is one big weird adventure after another at the moment.

In the last two months:

* A friend got drunk during a weekend away, cursed me and threw a sneaker at me (seriously)
* I accidentally, kinda, sorta snogged my flat mate
* Had to have a TALK with my other flat mate as a result
* Dated a man 9 years younger than me
* Had a man profess to be in love with me
* Figured out something BIG about my children's book series (stay tuned)
* Seen a psychic who had some BIG and very weird things to say to me
* Done a lot of meditation and breathing exercises to deal with it all

It's like someone's thrown some Sex in the City dust on me or something and I'm living in some sort of weird TV series reality. This can't be MY life. Surely?

The little drama-rat in me is loving it. The peacenik wants some time out. 

I'm so conflicted.

*Sienna opens the door to her much neglected LJ and peeks in.*

Ahem. Hello there.

*Dusts off keyboard and chair*

1. These things I know to be true:

• Always be nice to your mama, cause she'll be there to tell of your flatmate for you when you've come to the end of your tether.
• Always be nice to your siblings and friends because they'll be there to cheer you up when you want to kick someone in the head. Hard.
• Don't bother being nice to shitty, craptapulous, arse-hat flat mates who figure... hey... I'm leaving in two weeks... I'm just gonna let it all hang out. In fact, stop being reasonable with such people. Being reasonable for two years has got you nowhere. And start treating her and her boyfriend with open disdain and contempt. And when they think they can do whatever they want because... hey... they're leaving in two weeks... tell them that if they don't pull their fingers out of their arses... you'll keep their goddamn bond. Take pleasure in watching their faces fall when they realise you actually DO hold all the cards.