Filed under: Books | Tags: A. A. Milne, Edward Bear, Eeyore, Emo, Pooh Bear, Winnie the Pooh
Emo: Pre-Charlie Brown Period
“Good morning, Eeyore,” said Pooh.
“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning, which I doubt,” said he.
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”
“Can’t all what?” said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
“Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.”- Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
“I might have known,” said Eeyore. “After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother!’. The Social Round. Always something going on.”
I’ve never felt so connected to a character in a child’s book.
- “It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.
- “So it is.”
- “And freezing.”
- “Is it?”
- “Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”
Filed under: Books
Lost Boy by Brent W. Jeffs
The story of Warren Jeffs’ nephew, Brent Jeffs, and his life before and after leaving the FLDS. An entertaining and easy read by a cocky, uneducated and bias point of view. I should have expected less seeing how the author was poorly educated, was not actually an author and was a victim himself of Jeffs’ abuse. But it’s still kept me interested enough to finish. I’ll continue reading more about the FLDS – focusing now on church leaders such as Smith, Young and up to Jeffs.
Filed under: Books | Tags: FLDS, Joseph Smith, Krakauer, Lafferty murders, LDS, Mormon, Mormonism, Under the Banner of Heaven, Warren Jeffs
Before there was Hitler there was Joseph Smith. This isn’t a stab at the Church of Latter Day Saints – I’ve made it very clear how important Hitler is to me and a comparison is by no means an insult. I love Joseph Smith and I love Mormons. I’m hooked on American religions. 19th century to the present. Prophecies, massacres, assassinations, castrations, incest, polygamy, conspiracy……it is all truly fascinating. Is this how the Romans felt in the aftermath of Jesus? “AHH! Something new, something different. How could intellectual people believe the prophesies of a random carpenter??” I wonder where those Romans are now…Oh right. That carpenter kinda stole the show. Could this happen in the 21st century? Mormonism grew at a rapid rate and is still progressing rather quickly. Christianity seemed crazy back in 30 AD and now look at the world.
Fundamental is a word I have issues with. One of the papers I wrote this summer was about the word in relation to Islam. Is Fundamental Islam a legitimate definition? In the case of Islam I do not believe so. For Mormonism I do think it fits. The history of the LDS is a textbook story of persecution, murder and separation. Evolution. Dissenters are always going to emerge (Hi, Luther!). I guess Washington can be blamed for creating laws against polygamy. LDS had no choice but to obey and ban plural marriages. But what about what God told Joseph Smith!?! Apparently God’s demands are ranked lower than the government. Well this was unacceptable for a small group of Mormons. Plural marriage continued, excommunication began and the Fundamental Church of Latter Day Saints was born. Fundamental = Joseph Smith. Jon Krakauer does a kick ass job of laying out the history and circumstances that led to this split. Under the Banner of Heaven identifies many issues within the FLDS community and the controversies that result. I think recently (1980s) people were bouncing back and forth on the issue of polygamy. It would have been tough – I mean, you needed at least three wives to get into the highest level of heaven. But it was still against the law. What a dilemma. 
A personal relationship with God is an important part of being Mormon. Revelations from God are the norm and prayers seem to always be answered. In Mormonism, God talks directly to the laity as well as the Prophet. The concept of conversating with God is no different than the concept of a virgin giving birth. “All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith” (68). Ron Lafferty received a revelation from God instructing him to eliminate the people that were a threat to God’s ultimate plan. The fact that murder was a crime was not unknown to Ron and his brother Don, they were not insane or stupid, perhaps just delusional. It would not be a crime in God’s eyes since he had asked them to do it; thus, to these relatively average men a revelation from God justified the means. I believe that Ron truly believes God asked him to murder his sister-in-law and niece. This type of thinking was/is so common in FLDS that I actually understand why the murders happened. If I was a fanatic and I thought God told me to rob a bank I’m sure as hell going to rob the bank. There is no judgment worse than God’s. Apparently. Obedience is another crucial part of the Mormon faith. Brainwashing helps, too.
Dan Lafferty actually was the one who completed both murders. At the time of Krakauer’s research both men were still in prison – Dan serving a life sentence and Ron on death row. I just wasted ten minutes searching and came up with no news later than 2005. Apparently they’ve disappeared or no one cares anymore in light of Warren Jeffs. I’m pretty sure Ron is still on death row because Utah has issues with actually killing people when they are supposed to. He chose death by firing squad which, even for capital punishment, seems a bit…inhumane? Outdated?
All modern religions are fraudulent, Dan contends, not just the LDS Church. “Organized religion is hate masquerading as love. Which inevitable leads you back to the religion as it originally existed, before it was corrupted. It leads you to become a fundamentalist. You can see where the Church lost the answers by giving up its fundamental principles. So you find your beliefs evolving toward fundamentalism.” (313).
Dead on. Even for a murderer. (No pun intended).
Krakauer, Jon. Under the Banner of Heaven, (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
Filed under: Books
Best. Ending. Ever.
…and with no one to kill him except himself.
And he couldn’t do it. He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here.
Sabbath’s Theatre written by Philip Roth
Filed under: Books
What is longer than ”Moby-Dick,” ”War and Peace” or ”Ulysses”? If you guessed the Bible or the Manhattan telephone book, you would not be wrong (though there are small-print Bibles that are under a thousand pages). There are, of course, other longer books, but not many are novels and few of those have been able to sustain a hold on the popular imagination. ”The Stand,” unabridged and 1,153 pages long, may prove the exception. – Robert Kiely, May 13, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition – Final Section 7; Page 3, Column 1; Book Review Desk
If I wasn’t paranoid enough already….being on the bus makes me nervous, someone coughing in a movie theatre makes me want to run for the door and I’m constantly checking my glands to make sure they aren’t swollen. All in all, great book. I have only read the ‘uncut’ version – it’s hard to imagine what King had left out because every part of the book felt necessary. Sometimes I felt physically ill while reading because King describes every little detail so vividly from dead corpses being pitch-forked into the ocean, the effects of radiation or even simply a bone breaking was made to sound ten times more revolting than normal. I was terrified to leave my bed but so addicted that I couldn’t put the book down. Yes, it’s a fantastic book.
Now, not only am I obsessed with Russion literature, I have a new obsession for Post-apocolyptic fiction. Not that “Left Behind” shit. More like “The End of an Age”, “Deus Irae”, “Swan Song”, “The Road” etc. Just read.
Filed under: Books
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
Phenomenal book. Very English. That dry humor that always pops up at inappropriate times – to me this is the charm of British humor. It’s real.
From the jacket:
The Autograph Man is a whirlwind tour of celebrity and our fame-obsessed times. Following one Alex-Li Tandem – a twenty-something, Chinese-Jewish autograph dealer turned on by sex, drugs and organized religion – it takes in London and New York, love and death, fathers and sons, as Alex tries to discover how a piece of paper can bring him closer to his heart’s desire. Exposing our misconceptions about our idols – about ourselves – The Autograph Man is a brilliant, unforgettable tale about who we are and what we really want to be.
My favourite quotes so far.
“It was just one hairless animal stabbing another repeatedly through an open wound.”
“What now is just what is.”
Alex is working on this book that compares Jewish things to Goyish things, he basically puts everything he can think of into these two categories. For example, suicide. Suicide involving “stones in the pocket, head in the oven” is Goyish. Then there’s the type of suicide that “embraces you”, that you don’t struggle with. “No complicated knots or car exhausts.” That’s Jewish. I love it, it’s absolutely brilliant. I want to start categorizing everything into Goyish or Jewish.
One of Alex’s best friends is a Rabbi named Rubenfine. There are repeated events througout the book that invlove Rubenfine and two other rabbis. The three always seem to be lurking around the neighborhood trying to move furniture and fit impossibly large items into tiny European cars. They always want to pass on words of wisom, stories from Zohar and the Talmud or just to meddle in Alex’s life. Truly English, truly random.
Filed under: Books
Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
One of my favourite books of all time. More quotes to come.
