Isn't life funny?

First let me finish my thoughts on Mockingjay.
Things I liked since at times they were hard to remember.
1. There was the dichotomy of the Arena. Once Katniss went to the Hunger Games, she never really left them.
No tribute ever left them. It was a useful engine for talking about the human condition and it's undying need to punish others for perceived hurts more than actual ones. In the end the oppressed turn out to not be that different than their overlords were. That is until Katniss kills Coin. Unlike the rest of her people, the Mockingjay does transcend and become something more than she was. She does come to terms albeit briefly with her inner demons.
2. At least there is some reprieve for Peeta. He suffers the most in many ways and reflects that he might have been the one to save instead of Katniss. This was well down. I liked how he kept figuring into the books even though Gale looked like the more promising of the two. It is Peeta who grows and Gale who does not- well not much.
3. The books have a terrible beauty to them and the promises of hope turn out to be more internal than external. If you look for beauty you will find it in the ugliest and often most unlikely places. If you go to beautiful places you often find an ugliness there that defies understanding.

So my final judgement on the Collins' books. I would recommend reading them, but I would not own them. I think that they should have been rewritten one last time since for me there were things in them that robbed them of any lasting endearment. By contrast Harry Potter series has lots of more endearing and lasting impact in the story. I could see owning them in a collection one day. The stories are not unlike each other but at the end of things I will read Harry Potter again whereas I won't reread the Hunger Games.

In other news.
I find I want to write more and more as time passes. I am feeling an all consuming voice or voices surging within me. I know part of it is thanks to the Kindle -which has given me a freedom to read in many places I would have just surrender to the complexities that come with them. For me, John Manchip White's words of advice are becoming truer by the day.
"Mike, Reading is like inhaling of breath, and thus your writing must become its exhaling. If you want to write and write well, then read and read well."

In the end, I may become the Isaac Asimov of Blogging Fiction.

Life is funny.

I like doing this better than video games.
better than words with friends
better than sex (actually since I am not having sex nor about to- this is MUCH easier to say)

I also recognize that
if I met someone it all could change
but I suspect that I would write more rather than less

since
Life is funny that way.

Worn out and other inviting problems of modern day life

I have been so busy lately and so tired that getting through all the blogs sometimes makes me wonder if I have lost my mind somewhere along the way.
I finished Mockingjay yesterday. It was a mixed bag. I once told a Mel Gibson fan and friend of mine- that the reason that I could not enjoy THE PATRIOT was that it was too much tragedy, too much killing, too much pain. Now I suspect that Suzanne Collins has bypassed old Mel by miles and miles.
Mockingjay and the Hunger Games books have a similar problems.
I will list them in no certain order.
1. Katniss is really a confused teenager who is in no way an adult until the epilogue. What she faces as a character is unbelievably harsh and yet there are times when I want to take her out to her woods and yell at her to stop acting like a befuddle 16 year old and pick someone to love. Then I realize she is a befuddle 16 year old who would act this way. How in the heck is she supposed to understand love when everyone seems to be out to exploit her and or kill her? Still I wish that Collins would have given Katniss a break, like not killing Prim. Prim might have had to die, but I have a hard time with it. Katniss had pleanty of Motivation without it.
2. Why couldn't Madge have survived?  Back to the too much aspect and the general round robin beatings on Katniss' ego. What's worse was that Madge was in fact a really good character and it was a real waste to write her off as just another expendable. Her death was in fact meaningless in the extreme especially since she ended up having no key roll in the plot at all. Her surviving the books would have been at least some reprieve for Katniss- some connection that would have repaired some of the lingering damage.
3. The pods drove me crazy about midway through the capital. The book descended into a poorly thought out video game. Ironically I suspect if they end up making a movie of Mockingjay that the video game adaption will have even more pods in it. What pods really say to me, is that the author was not satisfied that her world was horrifying enough. Overkill in so many words and also robbed the meanings of the deaths of Katniss's companions. There are plenty of other options instead of resorting to this kind of "cheating." It all goes hand in hand with the "STEVEN SEAGAL" approach to the books where the point of the book is to rack up a visceral body count.
4. Finnick did not have to die- frankly I am surprised that he was there in the first place. He gets married and know 5 minutes of bliss then happily goes to his death instead of doing the most logical reasonable thing that he has been described as doing up until that point. HIS DEATH IS ALMOST THE MOST POINTLESS in all the books.
5. nuclear weapons. need I say more. (rhetorical question) Okay, let me clarify. Don't use stuff that you don't explain or want to actually deal with. It's like we got to have a reason that the Capitol and 13 don't wipe each other out- but the fact of wanting to regain the district intact is not enough. And then there is the chemical bombs- only mentioned in passing and never realized.
6. I really just felt that plot devices and gadgetry was used to invoke the tragedy and thus the point of the series instead of relying on drama and angst and conflict between the main characters There was plenty of that without all the sidetracks the books ended up taking.

Tomorrow, I will try to blog about what I liked about the books and why I might even read them again one day.
For the record. The Hunger Games was my favorite book out of the three.

thoughts on the infinite capacity to make a mockery of... well everything actually

Today has been another rainy day filled with a sweet sense of irony.
How can things be so completely chaotic in life as it is?
Confused? Little wonder there.
Scenario 1) I got a traffic ticket and for the life of me I can't pay it. Turns out the issuing cop has never filed it. In a perfect world the court clerks would have a clear cut off date. But they don't instead I spent about an hour today playing musical chairs with three clerks who continually denied and transferred me from one court to the next and back again. Final result. I need to find the cop who wrote the citation and find out if he is still going to prosecute it or not. Likelihood of this happening?
Zero.
Haven't found him so far nor gotten one clear answer except judging from the lack of progress one clerk has suggested that he has dropped it altogether but failed to make any formal statement to indicate to anyone he has in fact done anything except jerk my chain. I suspect that I will get to spend the next 2 days trying to get an answer that will lead me to the courtroom whether I want to go or not.

Where there are signs of life

Lately, I have been surrounded by weddings of strangers, friends and the memorials of strangers and friends. It is often overpowering how close death is to us as we go from day to day. I sometimes feel the weight of life pressing me flat as if preparing me for the habitual grave. I don't equate death with rest but sleep. The big sleep. You can probably guess what I do on long dark, lonesome nights.

Today, I found what rescuers and negotiators call the "proof of life" at the birthday for a cousin with a remarkable story all on her own. I can tell you a few things.
Amber has been given a new life from God. She is making good use of her own personal miracle. For me, Amber's story begins on a Maundy Thursday several years ago. For those of you who are religiously educated or go to a church that acknowledges Maundy Thursday- the significance of this might occur to you. To the rest of you who are about to start Googling this, I will explain what Maundy Thursday represents to me and many Episcopalians and probably several other high churches do too.
To be brief, Maundy Thursday is the day in which Jesus (who I call the Christ) shared the Last Supper with the Apostles and then was betrayed by Judas Iscariot as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He would have been delivered to the Sadducee and Pharisees  for trial and torture. It is marked by a evening/night time service in which all this is read from the bible and the altar and the church is stripped of all decorations, icons, relics, clothes, etc. It is a solemn and often heart wrenching service for me. Each year, I relive what I have imagine happened to Jesus that night and what happens to all those who have been betrayed and delivered into the wills of evil and hostile men. It seldom passes by each year, that I don't weep for what was done and what is still being done by men to other men, What was done to Jesus.

Okay, not so brief.

Amber had a Grand Mal Seizure on Maundy Thursday and for all intents and purposes died. Well, maybe died is too strong a word. It seemed a weak word for all those who were there that night. She was at Children's Hospital after taking an overdose of a powerful drug. At the time no one knew why or how. There was a lot of finger pointing and speculating. Through it all, one man had faith and held on to hope. Others hoped and gave up. I did. Others may have held on, but only her father held the line and refused to accept what seemed unavoidable.
The result?

In my view, Amber died that night and was reborn. The mystery and miracle of all this did not escape me.
It's my story of what happened. I suspect some people might disagree with me. I was there. I held her hand as I was sure she was slipping away from hope. I was there to see her open her eyes and look around at her new world. It did not solve world hunger or even make peace between her parents. It did not take affect immediately and her recovery has been slow and at the same time amazingly fast.

This is what I know as I sit here at the computer after going to her 16th birthday party.
What happened to Amber that night in April saved her father's life.
It gave hope where there was none.
It helped bring a lot of people together who would have always been strangers.
It brought the power of God into the lives of all of us, those who believed, those who only thought they believed and found they didn't and those who had not known to believe but now could.

If that is not a miracle. If there is no God. If there is only what the Atheists would have us believe it is still as un-explainable as  phenomenal as unprecedented as anything I have ever seen or live through in my life.

To me Amber is the promise of what all of us can be, can achieve if we choose to believe that it is possible.

So that is a lot to take in, but as Father Ross would say: "I got one more for you."

Sometimes miracles and love are right in front of you and you don't realize that you are looking at them.
I think about all the life that was around me today at Amber's party. It was held at My cousin Gary's house which was filled with happy people- well 99% of them were happy unless you count for the brief dramatic crisis-es of the really young children.
I will give you this proof of life in parcels.
1. 3 young girls, sisters. Amazing beautiful and surprising to someone like myself who can see them from over here. Their parents are fortunate though I wonder how often their father looks up from breakfast and know what a gift they are when they aren't feuding with each other and with their brother. The 4 of them must remind their mother, my cousin that some prices are worth paying every time. Theirs is a miracle all on their own and I am grateful that I am allowed brief glances into their lives. I can only hope that I might somehow help to enrich theirs as they have enriched mine.
2. 2 sisters, both mothers in their own rights, both successful although it probably is hard to see how successful at times. But again I am looking from way over here, I do know that the appearance often comes at a great cost to them and those around them BUT I am fortunate to have them to talk to and consider it my good luck to have someone to beat @ words with friends on a daily basis (oh and share books and thoughts with too).
3. There is this woman who always puts this idea in my mind that I should have a tiny book of Domestic Saints nearby. She is long suffering, always patient, never perfect but always loving and endearing and the best person one could hope for on a stormy day. She makes the best Chicken Casserole and Chicken Salad to boot.
4. Family- love them, dislike them, you might even want to hate some of them from time to time. I have to remind myself (since I believe in this stuff) that Family is a gift from God. If you have a family, most of the time they are worth finding, forgiving, and loving. Sometimes not but almost always better than having known. Just remember this, Family is not necessarily people who are blood/kin to you. My family includes people I am not related to directly.... well this is Tennessee- so you never know I may be a cousin after all.

That's it from Mike, I am off to write certain fiction and tell some awesome lies.

"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." (John Wooden)
   

Lenore? quoth the Raven except I am too tired to ignore

Yep, the last few days have been exhausting with me working all day and then being too tired to blog except in snatches like Poe damned hero from the Raven.
tonight I will struggle through. I am reading Catching Fire this week and I have to say it is getting better by the chapter. What I am enjoying most is seeing Katniss transform from what she was into a hero. I have to hand it to the author.Reading it on the Kind has proven to be largely the reason for me doing it too. The Kindle is easy to use as long as you don't demand much from it.
I am fairly sure that I am going to start at least 1 more if not 2 more blogs (just so I can really torture myself with keeping them all updated since 6 is not enough right now. But I must stop this one as my mind and hands are no longer agreeing on what I am typing exactly.

Here I sit constantly tapping over a piece of forgotten Lore

Sometimes my life feels like a Edgar Allan Poe Poem. Lenore forevermore!
In other news, I finished The Hunger Games on my Kindle yesterday (my first fully read ebook and Kindle book- even though I have had a ebook reader on my cell phone which I never used more than out of morbid curiousity)
What did I think of The Hunger Games?
The short answer is that I liked it.
The long answer is more complex.
1. I liked how it was not a book like Battle Royale which was a rampant blood fest. What I mean is that the main characters did not wade into the action like Steven Segal and start tallying up a body count. Katniss only kills a one person directly, the rest of her kills are indirect albeit intentional. She comes through the book changed but she isn't a cold blooded killer with a notebook full of one liners.
2. I liked everything but the weird Mutt-werewolf-things. They were too much. I won't say that I did not get the sense of something more but rather it was a convenient plot device that was poorly executed. I would have rather seen Peeta and Katniss confront the killer Cato and defeat him in combat then face their own dilemma then the way it was played out instead.
3. The best part of the first book was the memories of Katniss as they formed a more complete picture of her world than her present. It was a very good use of flashback and worked effectively in keeping me interested in the principle characters that have been introduced.
4. The worst part of the book was the total lack of reality when it comes to cameras and how they could or could not work. I guess this comes from being a camera/tv/video professional. There was no science in the science fiction on this one (let me clarify): while I appreciate the story being told from Katniss' experience and knowledge- there were things that were fully explained that she probably did not actually know like the nature of several of the weapons, the workings of the arena. I could suspend my disbelief on these things since it was sufficiently backed up. My problem with the cameras goes like this:
      1. Cameras are troublesome at best of times. Light exposure/color temperature/white balance non-withstanding. For the cameras to be unseen is one thing but to hide them and then have them see inside caves, in trees, in sleeping bags and the like is almost too much of stretch. The only explanation the author gives is through a tiny implant that Katniss and the other tributes are impregnated with. There are no visible signs that this is anything other than a tracking device rather than some kind of camera. If it were a camera how could it see/film itself?
    2. If the cameras are coming from satellites then why not say so. If they are they bust be using a completely fictional format since the can see through solid and liquid objects. differentiate without much inference and what is more be amazingly selective all without being seen by any of the characters except when the plot necessitates it.

More tomorrow on The Hunger Games 

Life & it's complications

So here we are on Wednesday unblogged for last few days. Unblogged is my new word for being unplugged from being up for blogging
I am making this post from my cell. One digit iPhone typing is much fun!