Eustace Clarence Scrubb died for your sins

There’s a film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s fantasy The Chronicles of Narnia on the way, and already people are fighting about it.

The books are explicitly Christian allegory. The Narnia universe is parallel to ours and has a creation narrative, a Savior, stories of temptation and redemption, unbelievers, resurrection, an apocalypse, and an opposing faith that’s an obvious parallel to Islam.

It’s also a kids’ fantasy book with talking animals, magic, an evil ice witch queen, ordinary children who become powerful adults in a different universe, dragons, and magical sea voyages to the end of the earth. So this isn’t The Passion of the Christ, here. I read the entire series many times as a kid and remained a loyal secular humanist agnostic intellectual liberal.

Naturally, atheists are annoyed by the arrival of this film and evangelicals are delighted. I’m sure the churchy folks will press the opportunities they get as hard as possible, and lots of us will be invited to see the movie and have a “discussion” afterwards. I think you have to be pretty hardcore antireligious to object to that.

The more serious problem is Lewis’ pseudomuslims. They seem culturally to be Turkish or Persian, and their God is a terrifying war-daemon. It’s as though he conflated the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire, and Thuggee into one generic Eastern Challenge to Christianity. For his time it was an awfully enlightened picture of the Mysterious East; the worshippers of Tash aren’t bad people, their cultural differences are shown as interesting rather than abhorrent, and there isn’t any over-the-top Fu Manchu racism. But it’s not very helpful in 2005 to imply that nonchristian turban-wearing people from the Mediterranean area are demon-worshipping empire-building militarists. I have no idea if this part of the story is addressed in this first movie; it won’t be if it’s just a filmed version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe so that will be a future problem for the filmmakers to work out.

For my own part I hope they didn’t castrate Lewis’ story and make it less of a Christian allegory. The temptation to make it easier to swallow for a large audience must be great, but it would be doing the works and the author a terrible disservice to “improve” this into a sword & sorcery romp without a point. As a lifelong Lewis fan and ex-Christian I’d rather be bothered by a simplistic Bible analogy than patronized with meaningless Masters of the Universe quality entertainment.

If you read Lewis’ autobiography, you can see him as a child completely absorbed in the Norse myths, reliving the doomed and noble fight of the Gods against evil. He didn’t grow up to practice Viking religion, but he wrote some damn fine myth-based kids’ books. Leave the myth in there, whether you believe in it or not. Please!

Al Qaeda position on designated hitter rule is unknown

From the New York Times via cruel.com, soccer rules for hardcore jihadist Muslims:

IN the name of God the merciful and benevolent:

1. Play soccer without four lines because this is a fabrication of the heretics’ international rules that stipulate using them and delineating them before playing.

2. International terminology that heretics and polytheists use, like “foul,” “penalty,” “corner,” “goal,” “out” and others, should be abandoned and not said. Whoever says them should be punished, reprimanded and ejected from the game. He should be publicly told, “You have imitated the heretics and polytheists and this is forbidden.”

3. Do not call “foul” and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a hand or foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whoever was responsible for the injury or tackle. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries. The injured player should exercise his Sharia rights according to the Koran and you must bear witness with him that so-and-so hurt him on purpose.

4. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Instead, add to this number or decrease it.

5. Play in your regular clothes or your pajamas or something like that, but not colored shorts and numbered T-shirts, because shorts and T-shirts are not Muslim clothing. Rather they are heretical and Western clothing, so beware of imitating their fashion.

6. If you have fulfilled these conditions and intend to play soccer, play to strengthen the body in order to better struggle in the way of God on high and to prepare the body for when it is called to jihad. Soccer is not for passing time or the thrill of so-called victory.

7. Do not set the time of play at 45 minutes, which is the official time of the Jews, Christians and all the heretical and atheist countries. This is the time used by teams that have strayed from the righteous path. You are obliged to distinguish yourself from the heretics and the corrupted and must not resemble them in anything.

6. Do not play in two halves. Rather play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the polytheists, the corrupted and the disobedient.

9. If neither of you beats the other, or “wins” as it is called, and neither puts the leather between the posts, do not add extra time or penalties until someone wins. No, instead leave the field, because winning with overtime and penalty kicks is the pinnacle of imitating heretics and international rules.

10. If you play soccer, do not appoint someone to follow you called a “referee,” since there is no need for him after doing away with international rules like “foul,” “penalty,” “corner” and others. His presence would be in imitation of the heretics, Jews and Christians and would follow international rules.

11. Young crowds should not gather to watch when you play because if you are there for the sake of sports and strengthening your bodies as you claimed, why would people watch you? You should make them join your physical fitness and jihad preparation, or you should say: “Go proselytize and seek out morally reprehensible acts in the markets and the press and leave us to our physical fitness.”

12. If you finish playing soccer, do not talk about your game and say, “We were better than the opponent,” or “So-and-so plays well” and so on. Instead be concerned with your bodies and their strength and muscles, and say, “We played only to drill in running, attacking and retreating, and to prepare for jihad in the name of God on high.”

13. You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish and reprimand him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practicing?

14. You should use two posts instead of three pieces of wood or steel that you erect in order to put the ball between them, meaning that you should remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system’s despotic international rules.

15. Do not do what is called “substitution,” that is, taking the place of someone who has fallen, because this is a practice of the heretics in America and elsewhere.

These are some conditions and precepts so that morally aware youth do not inadvertently imitate heretics and polytheists when playing soccer … Hell awaits those who die playing soccer according to rules established by heretical countries, at the head of which is America.

MP3 tech note: lame 3.9.7b1

The most recent version of LAME (a new one after a very long time) is a huge improvement at least for me. I was previously using 3.90.3 which the mavens at hydrogenaudio said was the best version. They started recommending this new beta and wow! I’m getting 8.5x instead of 2.8x ripping speeds with “–preset fast standard”. Sounds great, too. Highly recommended. Source is at this sourceforge link, and binaries for those who do not compile are at Rarewares.

Proust and Procrustes

Listening to these Mozart piano sonatas is evocative. I played some of these, and listening to them takes me right back to adolescence. I was an earnest and focused pianist who hated to practice but really loved playing when I got into the zone.

The whole world of me-as-classical-musician encompasses me as a 14 year old in dorky corduroy pants and a polo shirt and deck shoes, me with a mop of hair that fell into my eyes, me the scholar. Playing the piano was one of the things I did for my parents and also sometimes enjoyed myself. Like sailing, and excelling in school. Left to my own devices I would not have played or sailed or been the smart dorky kid. Sailing well or playing effortless Bach on the piano felt good.

And when I was left to most of my own devices in college I didn’t do any of those things either. No piano or sailing since 1983, and no academic success since 1984.

The circumscribed life I had when my parents owned me worked a lot better than the decade afterwards. In that bubble world I was a huge success. My total misery was fairly unimportant, since it was expected that anyone my age would be miserable. As long as I played my piano well (on every level), everything was okay. I’m still angry that they never took my fucked-up emotional life seriously.

So I see in my mind’s eye this serious young guy in his sweater and slacks sweating out a sonata and I think: you poor fucker. You’re about to step off a dive board into a huge pool of shit, and no one’s going to lift you out or even explain what’s going on for a decade.

Annals of Finance: Those Loan Checks in the Mail

You may have seen these things, I get a couple a month. A check arrives in the mail. Sometimes it’s an actual negotiable check, or if not it’s a binding voucher of some kind. It’s for a large sum of money, made out to me. If I cash it, it turns into an unsecured loan. I’ve always been curious why everyone wants to loan me $5000-$8000 without security.

I always shred these, since I don’t need any more debt. But I can imagine getting one of these and saying “Okay, I sure do need five grand right now” and cashing/redeeming the thing.

I looked at the latest one more carefully. The “check” is bilingual; they sent it to me Spanish side out. It’s for $6,000.95 (love the 95 cents). I can redeem it at any HSBC office. I have then taken out a loan for this amount at 29.980% APR. Because we still have some vestiges of government they have to tell me this in bold type, and also tell me my payments, how many payments there will be, and the total finance charges. This is a five year loan with monthly payments of $194.08 and:

The total finance charges are $5,643.85.

So that’s why they’re happy to loan that much.

Last Dance with Mary Sue

  1. Some of the genetic background of Tourette’s Syndrome in a careful and fascinating article at Pharyngula. Neuroscience geeks only though, it’s kind of detailed.
  2. To some folks, it’s only copyrighted if it’s their stuff. (WFMU)
  3. South Korea is to Spam as France is to Jerry Lewis. Inexplicable phenomenon is described in an LA Times article. Bugmenot or genital/genital for registration.
  4. Yamaha is showing a concept of a hybrid motorcycle, 600 cc engine + electric, which they say has the performance of a 1000 cc bike. Also, it has an awesome supervillain look:

    futurebike

  5. Here’s an interesting summary of the drug-resistant bird flu report from Vietnam. Alert: science jargon here, may cause spirally eyes.