Motivation

Productivity, constructiveness, profitability, usefulness, effectiveness.

Defined by whom?

And thus continues the struggle to be defined only by myself and God, and not by how many marks I get out of 100 or how much I study or what scholarships I win or which university I go to or what clothes I wear or who my friends are or what I do with my spare time.

I'm not using the word 'productivity' this week. I've found it hackneyed, vague, and ultimately dissatisfying. I might use some synonyms, but the point of the exercise is to realize that I define my own productivity. For example, because I am sitting here putting thought into this post, this is productive. In a minute, I will pick up my One Year Bible, and that will be productive, and then I will curl up in my chair and attempt to make my most important relationship less lopsided - the other side needs a chance to talk, you know - and that will be more productive than the essay on cohabitation vs. marriage I'm going to write or how many times I play The Entertainer on the piano.

Here's signing off productivity.

I am unwritten,
Can't read my mind
I'm undefined
I'm just beginning
The pen's in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words
That you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten, yeah

Oh, oh

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries
Are outside the lines, oh yeah yeah
We've been conditioned
To not make mistakes
But I can't live that way oh, oh

The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten

-Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten

Switchfoot

Does it have to start with a broken heart
Broken dreams and bleeding parts
We were young and the world was clear
But young ambition disappears
I swore it would never come to this
The average, the obvious

I'm still discontented down here
I'm still discontented

If we've only got one try
If we've only got one life
If time was never on our side
Well, before I die
I want to burn out bright

A spark ignites
In time and space
Limping through this human race
You bite and claw your way back home
But you're running the wrong way

The future is a question mark
Of kerosene and electric sparks
There's still fire in you yet
Yeah there's still fire in you!

I keep cleaning up the mess I've made
I won't run away
I can't sleep in the bed I've made

- Burn Out Bright, Switchfoot

This has recently made it into my Favorites playlist. I got my dad a Switchfoot CD for Christmas, and since then we've been playing it frequently in the car, but I've only recently been actually listening to the lyrics, and I only get more impressed as I do. They achieve both catchy songs and thought-provoking lyrics (which are my favorite kind.)

So next time I'm wasting time doing nothing, someone remind me to burn out bright.

Inkheart

A good writer can make characters ‘jump off the page’. Mortimer Folchart, however, is a good reader. By reading aloud, he can make characters appear in flesh and blood from their prisons of paper and ink. But even his spellbinding voice cannot protect him from the dangers of this ability. For every fictional character that escapes from their story, someone from the real world disappears into the same one. And once loosed, there’s no telling what havoc these literary creations can wreak.

From New Line Cinema and director Iain Softley (The Skeleton Key) comes Inkheart. Based on the bestselling children’s book by German author Cornelia Funke, the movie follows Mo (Brendan Fraser) and his teenage daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) on their quest to retrieve the book that will solve their problems - a rare volume called Inkheart. Nine years previously, on an evening when Mo had been reading aloud from Inkheart to his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) and Meggie, the magical power of his voice took hold. The villain Capricorn (Andy Serkis) and the fire-eater Dustfinger materialized from the book, and Resa vanished into it. As the movie begins, Dustfinger rediscovers Mo after years of searching and demands to be read back into Inkheart. Mo refuses, afraid to read aloud after his wife's disappearance, and a desperate Dustfinger makes a deal with Capricorn, who has settled in the mountains of Italy. In exchange for Mo’s location – intending to kidnap him for the power of his voice – Capricorn agrees to force Mo into sending Dustfinger back. However, he breaks his promise, and the angry, homesick fire-eater switches sides once more.

During Mo’s quest to send these displaced characters back into their story, Dustfinger continues to hover on the sidelines, switching allegiances as it suits him. This makes him the story’s deepest and most compelling character. Where Mo is the hero and Meggie the apprentice, Capricorn the villain and Resa the damsel in distress, Dustfinger defies common stereotypes and draws the audience in with his enigmatic and sometimes volatile mien. When it looks as though Mo and Meggie may get the happy ending they seek, Dustfinger’s future is not so certain. He viciously combats his fate with no assurance of victory, a situation with which many viewers can sympathize.

At its core, Inkheart is a fairy tale. Set among jagged mountain peaks, the set is whimsically endowed with thick woods and a foggy coastline. Also, several well-known characters from children’s literature are conjured from their books at various points, including Rapunzel and Toto the dog. These lighthearted qualities are juxtaposed with the ugly reality of Capricorn’s concrete stronghold, where the atmosphere echoes the Nazi occupation of Italy. Also similar to a fairy tale is the dialogue between characters, which is simplistic and only occasionally humorous. The acting is for the most part average and veers toward the stereotypical, with the exception of Paul Bettany’s masterfully turbulent portrayal of Dustfinger. Rated PG for fantasy adventure action, a few scary moments and some brief language, it is nevertheless an excellent kids’ movie. Though not a blockbuster, Inkheart provides a few hours of engaging fun, as well as the classic enchantment of a fairy tale and enough excitement to keep its audience watching.

(Review for my English course. I went slightly over the word count as it was, but I would have liked to discuss Inkheart's merits as a book-to-movie adaptation. Perhaps that's another essay.)

Conquering Heroes

Okay, not quite. But in the spirit of that grand sentiment, Southgate 1 made it to the finals at this latest quiz meet in Innisfail, Alberta. After the three preliminary quizzes, we were in third place overall, and during the course of the afternoon we worked our way through the elimination rounds and into the final quiz. Us [left to right: Josh, Ben, Everett, Sarah (both coaches), Amy, Carissa]:


And here we have a question-by-question record of the final quiz, up against our longtime rival Sturgeon, and Edmonton Chinese. (Thanks Dad.)

SG = Southgate Alliance team 1 (us)
St = Sturgeon Alliance team 1: Breanna, Kyle, Rachel
EC = Edmonton Chinese Alliance team 1: Carolyn, Carisse, Levin

1. Chapter Reference; Breanna jumped on 'who was?' [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 20 St: 40
2. Josh [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 40 St: 40
3. Ben [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 60 St: 40
4. Chapter Verse Reference/Multiple Answer; Carolyn, called incorrect, challenges the ruling and is overruled. [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 60 St: 40
5. Breanna on the toss-up question [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 60 St: 40
6. Bonus question for Ben "Take their places where?" [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 60 St: 40
7. Josh [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 80 St: 40
8. Chapter Verse Reference; Amy [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 80 St: 40
9. Levin on the toss-up question [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 80 St: 40
10. Bonus for Kyle, "Quote Luke 16:13." [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 80 St: 60
11. Situation question, who said it?; Breanna [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 80 St: 80
12. Amy; "Treasure where?" [Correct] *3rd quizzer in (bonus of +10)
EC: 20 SG: 110 St: 80
13. Chapter Reference; Ben, right information but gives the wrong question. Amy challenges; Carolyn opposes; challenge overruled. [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 110 St: 80
14. Rachel on the toss-up [Correct]
EC: 20 SG: 110 St: 100
15. Carissa [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 100 St: 100
16. Finish the Verse; Kyle on the toss-up [Incorrect]
EC: 20 SG: 100 St: 100
16A. Bonus for Levin [Correct]
EC: 40 SG: 100 St: 100
17. Ben [Correct]
EC: 40 SG: 120 St: 100
18. "Quote Luke 11:1," Ben again! [Correct]
EC: 40 SG: 140 St: 100
19. Breanna [Correct]
EC: 40 SG: 140 St: 120
20. Finish the Verse; Kyle [Incorrect]
EC: 40 SG: 140 St: 110
20A. Quote 2 verses; no one jumps on the question. SG wins!

The Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb

A lot of fantasy carries an agenda. Specific types that come to mind are feminist fantasy, notable authors including Marion Zimmer Bradley and Tamora Pierce; environmentalist fantasy; Christian fantasy, which I don't typically enjoy unless it's done more subtly than is usual; there's probably even gay fantasy out there, which I've only encountered in The Mists of Avalon and then my aversion to it was violent. Now that I've finished the Soldier Son trilogy, I can point out the hints of an agenda beneath the story, but Hobb does something distinctive with her agenda: she portrays both sides.

The basic premise: Gernia, a somewhat generic fantasy kingdom on the surface, has the usual trappings of medieval nobility. Lords, commoners, even a pretty basic monotheistic system not unlike the Judeo-Christian one. One twist that Hobb adds in is the specific ranking of a Lord's children. The first son is the heir, the second son the soldier, the third son the priest, and the list goes on. Also, as Gernia expands, it has encroached on the territory of two somewhat primitive native groups. One, which has already submitted to defeat, is a tribal, nomadic race of plainspeople that reminded me vaguely of Native Americans. The other, which has emphatically not submitted to defeat, is a race known as Specks. Both races have magic that can be negated by the presence of iron, and the culture of the Specks is strongly based around the forest they live in. However, the king wants to build a road straight through said forest, and the Specks are not okay with this.

At this point I got a bit doubtful about the possibility of this being yet another 'save the trees! Industry and expansion are bad!' fantasy, but I kept reading anyway. I'm glad I did.

[Minor spoilers to follow.]

The main character is Nevare Burvelle, a solder son of a minor Lord who dreams of growing up and achieving glory. Through a succession of circumstances, he finds himself effectively split in two by a Speck entity known as the Tree Woman, and seized by a brand of Speck magic that continues to bend his destiny according to its will. One half of him continues as a normal soldier son - he attends an academy for training - and we don't find out what happened to the other half (or that there was an other half, actually) until midway through the second book.

By this time, Nevare has been expelled from the Academy, basically for getting fat, a strange phenomenon that he can't control. Later we learn that it is (like many other things in the trilogy) the fault of the 'magic', which is explained very vaguely and seems to be a sort of deistic force. The reason for this is that the Speck Great Ones, the magic-users of the their forest clans, accumulate magic by eating a lot and therefore getting enormously fat. As an aside, I quite admired that Hobb was okay with having her main character get this way, because I can think of a lot of Mary-Sues that stay in possession of a practically perfect physique no matter what happens to them. But back on topic. In the second book, he meets the other half of him, known as Soldier's Boy, and discovers that his personality has effectively been split into a Gernian half and a Speck half.

The Speck half ends up overpowering, and Nevare spends a lot of the third book trapped in his own head as a helpless observer while his other self mercilessly attempts to halt work on the King's Road, which is progressing through their forest. The two sides continue to conflict throughout the book, and it turns into the Gernians vs. the Specks - with one half of Nevare on both sides.

What I really liked about this conflict was that Nevare forms relationships with people from Gernia and continues to feel loyalty for his country even though they ridicule him for his appearance and ultimately try to kill him. His other half forms relationships with people of the Specks, going so far as to fall in love with the Tree Woman. The conflict is emphatically NOT clear-cut, and it's not good vs evil as much as it is the desires of two conflicting cultures. The theme of preserving the environment was a bit blatant at times, but in the end it's not really the sole goal of 'save the trees!' that mattered, so I was okay with it.

I do recommend these books, but there's some strong adult content especially in the later two. I found it off-putting at times, and skimmed those parts. Hobb is very good at suspense (I know because I stayed up pretty late last night finishing the last one) and her writing style is vivid and refreshingly NOT overladen with flowery description. (*cough* Christopher Paolini.) She may be one of the only authors I know who writes fantasy from a first-person POV, and it works very well, only becoming just a tad confusing when Soldier's Boy and Nevare are both occupying the same head. There's also just a hint of feminist fantasy, but the one character that's all headstrong is basically considered a weirdo and everybody else is fine with the concept of an arranged marriage.

If I were assigning stars out of five, I would give the trilogy as a whole four.

The three are:
Shaman's Crossing
Forest Mage
Renegade's Magic

I'm determined to get better at this whole book review thing. I always end up wandering off on irrelevant tangents and forgetting key plot points and making stuff way too long. Here's another option, of the first book, but with the next two available.

On to reread Inkheart, and then reread Inkspell, and then finally Inkdeath.

Two Things

1: 7 Men Who Rule The World From The Grave
2: Break Forth 2009

I meant to give these each an individual post, and I also meant to give 7 Men a better review, but alas, time does not permit.

Anyway, we'll start with #1. This is the blurb from the back of 7 Men Who Rule The World From The Grave:

Though their bodies lie cold and dormant, the grave cannot contain the influence these seven men have had on today's world. They continue to rule because they have altered the thinking of society. They generated philosophies that have been ardently grasped by masses of people but are erroneous and antiscriptural. Today these ideas pervade our schools, businesses, homes, even the church. As we continue to unknowingly subscribe to their philosophies we keep the grave open for:

Charles Darwin, who systemized and advanced the principle that evolution was behind the origin of the species
Karl Marx, who developed and advocated the notion of modern Communism
Julius Wellhausen, who initiated 'higher criticism' and 'modernism'
John Dewey, who argued for an educational system focused on problem solving and the growth of the child in all aspects of his being
Sigmund Freud, who promoted the view that sexual instinct is the driving force behind all human action
John Maynard Keynes, who advocated the politics for reducing unemployment and expanding the economy that today finds their expression in deficit spending and government activism
Søren Kierkegaard, who stressed the obligation each person has to make conscious, responsible choices among alternatives, a major tenet of existentialism

Dave Breese warns us of the dangers of believing unreservedly the ideas of these seven men. He also reminds us of the only man whose life and words we can trust completely - Jesus Christ.

Though I agree to an extent, Breese sounds mildly alarmist here, and he does inside the book as well. That said, however, he makes some very compelling points about these ideologies that have permeated our culture, and breaks their flaws down into clear, concise descriptions. I recommend it, even if you disagree with him and think the seven listed above have had positive impacts on the world as it is. Also, in addition to the official seven, Albert Einstein has a chapter in the middle about his Theory of Relativity, and how it impacted society in a manner beyond science and inspired concepts like moral relativity. I give the book four and a half stars out of five.

On to topic #2. I went to Break Forth 2009 this weekend, and it was phenomenal. Every single main speaker was engaging as well as spiritually thought-provoking and practical. I liked it so much better than YC last year, which was fun, but heavy on the fun and light on the applicability. Anyway, it made for a very busy weekend, but it was definitely worth it.

However, next year I'm going to plan my elective sessions (in between main speakers) better. This year I signed up for the youth ones, and found them not only not engaging but downright boring. When speaking to youth, it seems as though people think that they need to be super funny and trendy or else we'll all lose interest, and so often it just ends up being the same message I've heard over and over again. Also, I know that teenage years can be rough, and a lot of teens are hurting - but some of them aren't. Like me. I'm pretty normal, I've never had any majorly traumatic experiences. I recognize that it's important to be encouraging and uplifting to those who have, but it would be refreshing to hear a youth speaker that sat down and said, "Okay, you're almost adults, and I'm going to treat you like adults. Here's what you're going to face as an adult spiritually, and here's what I'd like to tell you." I don't like hearing only funny stories and morals added as an afterthought.

Coming soon - a review of Inkheart. (I do mean it. It's sitting in a Word document half-edited right now.)

Quote: "Why is he so literal?" "It's because of the Y chromosome."