The time has come, [the Walrus said]...

It's been a few days since I saw HP 7.2, and I now feel solid enough in my opinion of it to review it.  Not in-depth, as I don't think anyone who reads this blog really cares about the play-by-play of a movie they could easily watch themselves, but at least enough to discuss the parts that struck me the most.

WARNING: Spoiler City up in hurr.

I walked into the theater last November for the midnight showing of HP 7.1 with very low expectations.  I've been to every midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie since Prisoner of Azkaban as a tradition, but have never actually liked the movies.  But after HP 7.1 was over, I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised by its quality.  The filmmakers had definitely made choices that I didn't understand, like not including the invisibility cloak, rushing through an introduction of Bill Weasley, and skipping over so much of Harry's Dumbledore-related angst.  But the movie did a much better job than its predecessors of staying true to the depth, vision, and feeling of the book.  Things were dark, scary, and hopeless, and the comic relief came in short bursts of smiles before nail-biting drama struck again.

So Thursday night, my expectations were high for a Harry Potter film for the first time in seven years.  And when the credits rolled, I was less disappointed than I could have been. I think the movie did as good a job adapting the book as it could have, given the circumstances.  Ending a series beloved by so many people and trying to include all of the bits that audience would expect--"The Prince's Tale," Molly-Bellatrix dueling scene, Neville's defeat of Nagini, many of the priceless bits of dialogue sprinkled throughout, etc.--while still creating an enjoyable movie that wasn't absolute Hell to sit through is a task that I do not envy.

Because the job was such a hard one, I'm quite happy with the way the movie turned out.  It does, however, solidify in my mind that the books outstrip the films in every way that counts.

The movie didn't really include anything about the Hallows at all.  It registered their existence and sort of nodded to the fact that Harry possessed all three by the end of the war for Hogwarts, but it didn't show the struggle that Dumbledore had faced, like so many others within and -out of fiction have faced, throughout his life of trying to use them to overcome death.  Dumbledore's ascension to the position of Hogwarts' Headmaster and decline of the position of Minister of Magic was hardly mentioned, if at all.  Harry's choice not to try to beat Voldemort to Dumbledore's tomb and take the Elder wand didn't happen.  Voldemort's fear of death was downplayed in favor of his fear of defeat.  These choices changed the entire point of the Harry Potter story.  The saga went from a relatable tale of young people overcoming internal and external obstacles by learning to think for themselves while still relying on others, a tale of friendship and bravery, of unity and mutual respect, of trusts lost and regained, to a coming-of-age story that no one can ever identify with, since it's set in a fictional world whose struggles are nothing like ours.

In the first book and movie, Quirrell/Voldemort says, "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it."  This is the theme of the Deathly Hallows; the internal battle between action and inaction, the conscious decisions Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort each make in their separate quests to "win," and each person's individual definition of what "winning" means.

All three of them have different relationships and responses to power.  Voldemort obviously desires to increase his own power.  As a child and a student he uses his innately strong magical power to bully and coerce those around him, to make them see how strong he was, to make others see how week they were.  He also hones his social power to ensnare people who have more actual authority than he does in order to use their power to his advantage.  But the only reason he wants any of this power is his fear of death.  He fears the unknown that comes after death, and he spends most of his life ensuring that he will never have to face it.  It is his search for ways to overcome death that brought so much of his power, and once he believes he has achieved immortality, he knows that he is better, stronger, smarter than everyone else in the world, including Dumbledore.  Because, if anyone else were as talented and as driven as he was, they would have created horcruxes as well, they would have done the things he had done, because death was something everyone feared.  How could they not?  He could not see any other way of approaching the power he had discovered.  He could not see why anyone would not want to live forever.  What was the point of a whole and pure soul if it could be destroyed?

Meanwhile, Dumbledore also desires power his whole life.  Similar to Voldemort, he sharpens his magic and knowledge from a young age.  Perhaps it is Dumbledore's habit of (born out of his opportunities for) relying on other people that allow him to have friends at school who then keep him from becoming the lone-ranger that Voldemort is.  Maybe Dumbledore's quest is more for knowledge and study than it is for power.  But for whatever reason, Albus gets through school without attempting to take over the world.  However, once school is over and his mother's death forces him to settle back in at home to take care of his younger brother and sister, he feels trapped in an inferior life.  His belief that he could do more with his talents, should be allowed to move forward, fuels his friendship with Grindelwald, someone who agrees with Albus that he was made for better things.  Maybe Gelert has a more straightforward desire for power for the sake of power than Dumbledore does, but Dumbledore, blinded by love and a feeling of partnership he probably didn't feel with anyone else and isn't getting from anyone in his broken family, dares to dream with Grindelwald.

Dumbledore's crippling fear that made him seek power wasn't death, but stagnation, discomfort, and intellectual restraints.  Where Voldemort wanted the horcruxes primarily to ensure his eternal existence and only secondarily used the power he had gained from making them to subjugate those he thought were weaker than him, Dumbledore and Grindelwald wanted the Hallows primarily to place their superior intelligence and talent rightly on top where it belong, and only secondarily to allow themselves to live forever.

Albus is shocked out of his desire for power by the loss of his brother, sister, and best friend/boyfriend in one fell blow, and for a while, his fear overshadows  his guilt.  His grief over his lost loved ones and his knowledge that he is at least partly responsible keeps him from grabbing power where he can. But that fear of discomfort is something he struggles with his entire life, between desiring power over other, lesser people, as he exhibits when he borrows the cloak from James Potter, and wanting power over his grief, as he demonstrates by attempting to bring Ariana and his parents back from the dead with the resurrection stone. But he is always disgusted by his relationship to power, which is why the Elder wand is safe with him. He doesn't trust himself, and he doesn't trust the wand, so he remains headmaster of Hogwarts and keeps his own power and the wand's in check.

Unlike Dumbledore and Voldemort, Harry does not want power. All his life he is powerless, alone, and mistreated, much like Voldemort, but at school, he gains friends and fame, like Dumbledore. His fame does not treat him well; it makes him as many enemies as friends, and it gives him as many problems as solutions. Some of his fame is based on his own talent, and some of his success comes from skill, but he knows that an equal, if not greater amount comes from luck, chance, and the providence of others, and between this knowledge and the pains his fame gives him, he doesn't get as big a head as he could. Instead of focusing on overpowering others, he genuinely tries his best to do what he thinks is right. What he thinks is right is not always the most intelligent course of action, but he is only a teenager, and he is often dealing with the complex power schemes and magic of adults much stronger and smarter than he is. He knows that he isn't good enough to do everything by himself, but he also knows that doing something was too important to leave entirely to someone else. He is the perfect combination of Voldemort and Dumbledore, of relying on himself and relying on others, of choosing to act and choosing to wait, of having a will to live without putting it above everything else. If he has a crippling fear, it is that he was not worth dying for: that his parents and his friends loved him too much and for no reason. Instead of driving him to take power wherever he can find it, his fear dives him to be the best person possible, fighting for the best causes he finds.  His fear makes him constantly reevaluate his actions and his goals, to know himself...something Dumbledore learned too late, and Voldemort never learned at all. Because of this, he gets all three Hallows and learns what it really means to be Master of Death. Not to live forever, but to embrace the inevitable end, to know that it's coming, and to not fight it once it arrives.

So many themes regarding life and what it means to be human float in and out of Harry Potter: persistence in the face of overwhelming adversity, unlikely forgiveness, the importance of friendship, the need for humility, and so on and so forth.  A lot of them feel cliché when said aloud, which is probably why people call Harry Potter fans "nerds."  The story is a coming-of-age adventure; how could it not be with a group of adolescents as the protagonists? But its fan base is proof that its characters and plots speak to more than just adolescents and that the series is more than a mere didactic fairy tale about the ideal human being.

The major overarching theme of the whole series is not cliché or nerdy, but a real question that people ask themselves constantly, whether they take note of it or not.  The theme is expressed in that striking quote of Quirrell's: "There is no Good and Evil; there is only power and those too week to seek it." The question Harry Potter asks is whether Good seeks power, and whether not seeking power is a weakness. Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort represent three case studies in dealing with power that can show us our own feelings about the subject.

But the movies do not focus on that aspect of the books. It makes sense that they wouldn't: in order to do so, all of the movies would have had to have been much longer and probably would have included more scenes of exposition and talking than of action and excitement, and that's not exactly what a movie is best at. As it is, the movies portray a good story about children becoming adults and overcoming the obstacles their parents and mentors could not.

So, while I certainly can't say I love the movies as much as I love the books, I'm not surprised or upset by their inability to match up with each other. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey, and when I drink water, I drink water.

And I'm sad that Harry Potter is officially over, but I can't afford to care too much for too long.  Everyone has different experiences with literature, and I have confidence in mine and shouldn't worry for anyone else's, since I can't control it anyway.

Here's to you, Harry. And here's to many happy years of your own immortality, one you gained without Hallows, without Horcruxes.

Now...if only Hogwarts were real...

<3 spadeALlcross

Rain that ever-loving stuff down on me.

This week was a massive catch-up week, so I did absolutely nothing exciting.  We went to Lincoln last Saturday, which was beautiful, especially the cathedral there, so I'll put pictures up of that later.

I'm a part of a GR writing group that has a blog, and it was my turn to write for that this week, so I think I'll share my post with you, too, as I have nothing else interesting to say.

---

It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that once someone has decided to consider themselves a writer—whether or not they're any good, whether or not they have any faith in their talent—their life as a casual observer is over.

When I was in early elementary school, I read books by the truckload. I've never been a quick reader, but at least when I was a kid, enjoying books came easy—all a book had to do to make me happy was have characters, a plot, and a puppy on the front cover. I don't remember most of the books I read before sixth grade, probably because they were all about the same, both in my mind, and on the page.

But I do remember the fateful day in sixth grade, during free-reading hour, when I took my book (some nameless member of that series with the adventurous alliteration…Dolphins after Daybreak, or whatever) up to my teacher and pointed to line about halfway down the page.

"Mrs. Rydquist," I said (yeah…that was a mouthful for a kid with a lisp and remedial rubber bands in her mouth) "what does this word mean?"

She picked her glasses up off her chest where they had been resting on her considerable bosom and slid them up the bridge of her nose. "Connectio…Oh, oh, that's just a typo, Mary. The word is supposed to be 'connection,' but you see, they've accidentally left the 'n' off." She smiled at me and let her glasses fall back onto their king-sized bed before going back to stapling things to the bulletin board.

In that moment, the core of my very humanity was rocked. Books could have mistakes?

Very soon after that, I began seeing the mistakes everywhere; it started, of course, with spelling and grammar, simple things that irked me, but didn't necessarily deter me from continuing to read the book. But then, in the summer after seventh grade when I started writing my first book, things began to go downhill.

Once I started to get a taste of the sort of choices authors have when writing books or short stories or poems or what have you, I started noticing every choice that an author made that I didn't like. This character should have been a boy, this bit of dialogue is about three chapters too early, this expository paragraph is totally contrived and I hate it! I hate it all!

Alright, so "hate" is a strong word. Nevertheless, after I became a writer, enjoying stories became a chore. I entered in to every reading wary of the potential monsters of mediocrity that I might face there, knowing that any second, the author would make a glaring mistake that would render the story impassible to my perfectionist brain. Gone were the days when I could sit down with a book and plow through it, not noticing the places where the story deviated from my ideals.

Thankfully, my "ideals" are not perched so high in the clouds as to keep me from reading anything but Encyclopedias for the rest of my life. But there have been whole series I've had to stop reading halfway through because of a crippling frustration that the author should have written some key element differently. The Halfblood Chronicles by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey, for one. The Dune Saga, for another. Books that I wanted to enjoy, stories I found fascinating, but enjoyment and fascination that was cut short…simply because I am a writer. It's not a hat I can put on and take off on a whim. It's something I always am, for better or worse.

The loss of my ability to casually read of book and stories (and watch movies, for that matter) was not all that my life as a writer took away from me either. Since taking up the bardic pen, I've had to give up the peace and quiet of good old American individualism, as well. Suddenly I've got to get into everyone else's business: every person I meet is a character, every bit of odd rubbish I see on the ground has an epic behind it, and every crazy dream I have I have after eating too much pork for dinner needs to be written down before it's lost to the ages, because it was inspiring and that sort of thing doesn't grow on trees.

Has this ever happened to you: Your friend (probably only kind of your friend…no one really close) is going through a messy break-up, or maybe there's an illness in the family, or maybe they're looking for a new job. You know there are questions you shouldn't ask—"Do you know how many times he's had sex with her, or is it just a ballpark estimate?" or "Will your aunt have to sell drugs to pay the medical bills?" or "Are you quitting because you're a racist and your old boss was Mexican?"—but a huge part of you is dying to ask so bad, because you're sure there's a good story there.

Or even more awkward, something bad is happening to you—you realize in your final year of med school that all you ever really wanted to do was be a concert pianist, or maybe you find out your brother really was adopted, just like you'd been teasing him for twenty years—and, in order to sort out your thoughts or just because you're a venter, you write about it. But the thing you write develops from a static memoir into exciting fiction, and you can't let go of the story, even though you know you're offending all of your friends and family by writing it.

Maybe I'm alone in this. My [non-writer] friends have often told me that I get too involved in movies and books and in the stuff I write, that it doesn't get this messy for anyone else they know. And the funny thing is that I really wouldn't want it any other way. I love how much energy I can get from watching a good film, or how fired up I get after a really bad one. I love how, when I go back and read those really long venting stories, I get excited and confused all over again, like I can relive parts of my life. I've always thought that the times I've most felt like a writer were the times I've most felt alive.

What about you?

When has being a writer really sucked for you?
If you could snag the copyrights to any story—book, movie, short story, poem, etc.—what would it be, and what would you do to it?
Do you have any journal entries that turned into stories you couldn't put down? What are you doing with those stories now?

Have a great week!

---

<3 spadeALLcross

How much is that doggy in the window?

Happy Friday, World!

This week has been a blur...I don't really know where it went.  But there were some definite highlights, so I'll just hit those up and let you go on your way.

Saturday, as I mentioned before, we went to Cambridge with the York St. John University international department.  We met up with Paul Chaplin, my RA from last year, who's been living there for five months, and he showed us around.  It was a great day, even though it was raining and freezing and I was wearing precisely the wrong shoes for walking around (I'd woken up five minutes after I was supposed to leave to catch the bus, thanks to my alarm clock being analogue and in Roman numerals...).

Sunday was church at St. Thomas with St. Maurice.  I love that church so much.  I wish I could take it with me back to the states.

After church five of us went to the Bratts' house for Sunday dinner/lunch.  So much food.  So much delicious food.  And I love those people.  Such a good day.

A little while after that was tea and toast (a fortnightly tradition at St. T's) which was mostly inhabited by Calvin students, but it was great to talk to everyone about their spring break plans, and talk to Stephen, Laura, and Hannah, who go to St. T's and organized the event.  Stephen used to work on the railways before he became a vicar, I guess, and he has some great stories about the old steam trains (including the Hogwarts Express!  He rode the real thing!) and is generally just a great and funny guy.

Monday, we went to Leeds.  [Insert excitement here.]  It was fun, but I'm kind of sick of talking about it. We saw the Royal Armoury Museum and the Leeds Art Museum, which were fun to see in conjunction with each other, because there was some interesting overlap between the wartime exhibits in the art museum and the parallel exhibits in the Royal Armoury.  And both were free.  Brilliant.

Tuesday...Wednesday...

Thursday! (This one's a long one...)
A bunch of us went to the National Railway Museum on Tuesday to ride the Hogwarts Express (just the engine was available, since the cars are just regular steam-engine cars, as I understand it), and while we were there, we saw that they had actors dressed up as Harry, Hagrid, and Dumbledore.  We didn't manage to get pictures with them, and some people had to leave to be on time for a meeting, so we left without any bounty.

But Lea and I weren't done trying.  We went back Thursday morning specifically to get pictures with Harry.  That's right; it's a half-hour walk one-way, plus we didn't know how long we'd have to wait for him...you only wish you were this hard core of a fan...of HP impersonators...

We got there around 10:30 because we knew that he would be in the 11:00 magic show and we didn't know if he'd be available for that first bit.  Turns out he wasn't, so Lea and I just hung around awkwardly, making jokes about how awkward we felt because this whole NRM wizard week was meant for primary school children on half-term holiday, and there we were, 19 and 21 years old, more excited about this than those kids, just because we wanted to take a picture with a guy who marginally resembled the guy who plays Harry Potter in the movies.

[The Magic show was awful.  Totally bastardized all the HP themes, made a fool out of Dumbledore, and made up all sorts of lies about Hogwarts and Muggle-Magic relations.  Very not okay.]  Then, after the show, the actors said they'd be right back to take pictures with people.  This was around 11:20.  From 11:25 to 12:00, we stalked Harry. Hard core (parkour! almost...).

[When they came back, Dumbledore was first, and he sot of knocked over the rope line around the little stage right next to where Lea and I were standing--everyone else had left--and he looked at us and said, "That's the Domino theory for you.  Except worse."  It was funny, but his voice was kind of creepy...]  Harry Came out eventually, and we just stared at him. Neither of us had the guts to ask him for a picture, so we were just staring.  [He asked if we were using "Muggle image capturing devices." Wtf?  Harry was raised by muggles.  He knows what cameras are...] He told Lea she looked like a Weasley.  Then he walked into the throng of children that had swarmed up behind us.  Lea and I, kicking ourselves for not being Gryffindors, followed him as best we could.  After a few moments, though, they said they had to go to the other end of the museum.  So they cut through the narrow path through the diner that stood in the middle of the room between Queen Victoria's train and a train marked "Winston Churchill" (whether it was his or not, I do not know).

The crowd of children was following them, so Lea and I made to cut around the diner.  As Harry Cut in front of us, he looked at us and said, "There are two girls who look just like you back there."  We started cracking up.  I felt so silly, but it was such a good feeling to laugh at myself for doing something stupid because of a book I've loved for half of my life.  I don't know how to explain it...

We walked around the side of the diner, which had half walls with frosted glass at the top that were just at the right height to make it look like we were trying to be sneaky.  We probably looked like such creepers as we kept perfect pace with Harry.  Once we got to the end, they started taking pictures again, and we tried to get in, but were too cowradly.  After a moment, they started working their way back through the diner, so we walked around again, crossed paths yet again, and got funny looks from Harry and Dumbledore.  Once they reached the platform stage thing again, they climbed up and started posing. So dumb.  Weird looking, too.  Like synchronized slow-motion disco.

Then finally, as they made to walk outside, Lea and I both, at least, managed to yell, "Harry!  Can we get pictures?" He said, "Sure, just follow us."  So we did.

Out into the sunlight, onto the platform of the Hogwarts express, where we finally got our pictures.  There were still crowds trying to get pictures with them, but Harry pointed at us and said, "These girls have been following us for a long time."  Facepalm.  As I took Lea's picture, Dumbledore asked her, "Where are you from?"

"Michigan."

"Oh, that's a long way to travel by broomstick."

Best. Morning. Ever.

Later that night, I made scrumptious homemade mac and cheese using real cheeses, mushrooms, onions, garlic, oregano...ahhhh.  There's some left over that I'm having for dinner.  I'm exited about that.

And last thing...I cut my own hair.  Below is my demonstration of what it looks like.

Tomorrow, we're going to Fountains Abbey and Ripon.  And next Thursday, Katri's coming!

There is so much to love about this world.  Being this far away from the people and things that I care about, from everything that's familiar, and watching other people's lives unfold without me while I sit in England, feeling like I'm not doing enough to experience the culture...there have been a lot of downer times.  With everything awful that's been going on in the world recently, in New Zealand, Libya, Egypt, and daily awfulness that happens everywhere, it's been so easy to see the terrible.  Life has never been a squeefest.  But this trip is teaching me to appreciate the little things, like the sheer ridiculosity that happens when you cut your own hair, because sometimes they're all you've got.

Granted, England, Harry Potter, Katri's visit, and macaroni leftovers are no little things.  We can't forget those, either.

Tell me how your life is!  This blog is all about me, but I don't want my life to be all about me.  Email me!  Facebook me!  Skype me!  Send me a link to your blog!  I want to know what is going on in your lives, too.

<3 spadeALLcross

Coming Soon to an Internet Browser Near You

I'm going to quickly jot down a few ideas for winter-break posts so I don't forget them.

- Summation of NaNoWriMo Experience
- Book Review of Machine of Death
- Year in Review (? this is very iffy, as I'm not a huge fan of writing them, and I don't know that anyone actually reads them)
- Summation of my birthday experience
- Freak-out session about the coming Spring Semester
- rant about Hipsters

Stay Tuned!

<3 spadeALLcross

...and the winner is...!

ME!



That's right, ladies and germs, I FINISHED MY NOVEL A DAY EARLY!

PWNED.

FTW.

YOWZA.

ALL OTHER CONCEIVABLE REJOICING PHRASES HERE!

And to put the topping on the cake, I will herein unfold the last chapter I wrote, including the last 1K words, which were specifically for one Kathy Rittenhouse (EDIT: for those of you who bet on my progress for NaNoWriMo and can't remember what you bet, you can find the details here):

The men and Uma came back to camp around the same time, each man carrying at least a brace of conies, if not some form of larger or more plentiful game.  Tony, now practically a member of the married women’s quilting circle,  he was introduced to all the husbands and children, and the women, particularly Rachel and Polonia, vouched for him with their families, saying that he was an asset to the camp and that they would gladly accept them into their homes if he needed a place to sleep that was more fitting than Uma’s tiny hovel.

And although the sensible and level-headed Poplar seemed to actually like Tony by now, Toleman did not seemed wholly convinced that it was safe to have him in camp.

“How do we know this isn’t some elaborate ruse and that he’s really trying to pull one over on us so he can slaughter us in our sleep.”

“The man could barely chop scallions,” Therese said, rolling her eyes in what Tony had discovered was her characteristic way.  “We would have to be a sorry excuse for a camp indeed if we could not defend ourselves against the likes of him.”

“All the same, I’ll not let him within twenty paces of my cabin.”

“You’re cabin is even smaller than mine,” Uma said with a sharp laugh.  “We wouldn’t want your help anyway.”

Toleman looked hurt by Uma’s words, and Tony realized in that split second of silence where he looked at Toleman’s expression of both longing and sadness when he looked at Uma, that if he really did want to woo Uma, he’d have to fight for her.

And then, with a pop that sounded like a central-vacuum turning on and opening, everything around Tony froze, and out of nowhere, the strange, long-haired, invisible-eyed witchy woman appeared right next to Uma, leaning on her shoulder.  

“Well well well,” she said, her voice on the brink of laughter, “what have we here?  It seems that Mr. Graduate Degree in Narcissism has actually found someone he can love as much as himself.  Is that true, or do mine eyes deceive me?”

Tony blinked and looked around, confused, at the frozen world.  It was as if his life was a television screen and someone had pressed pause.  “Okay, that’s it.  Who are you?”

The woman smiled, stood up, and thrust her hand out in front of her, as if to prompt Tony to shake it.  “My name is Bonjo, damsel of distress.  It’s really has been a pleasure working with you thus far.”

Tony just looked at her hand.  “What?”

“I specialize in tomfoolery, have a degree in ballyhoo, work part-time for mayhem, and generally thrive on total chaos.”  She saluted him eagerly.  “You’ve been one of my pet projects for the past couple days.  I’ve really enjoyed the progress you’ve made so far, but I’m afraid that it might be because of the unfamiliarity of your environment.”

“What do you mean, I’ve been your pet project?”

“Well, you have obviously figured out by now that I am the one who brought you here, right?”

“Yeah, that incident with the field and the wolves and the random treadmill  in the middle of nowhere kind of tipped me off on that one.”

“I’m proud of your observational skills.”  She nodded sagely.  “I did all of this for your benefit.  You see, you are, what we call in the business, an ‘orderly.’  You try to organize too much of your life, putting yourself into a dangerous box that keeps you from realizing your full potential.  I brought you here to take you out of that box.”

Tony raised an eyebrow.  “Excuse me?” 

Bonjo shook her head, as if she were mourning something.  “This conversation is a result of your self-imposed box.  If you would just let go of your death-grip on reality, let yourself go a little bit, give in to the imagination and spontaneity you were born to have, you would have a lot easier time believing me and moving on with your life, if you had any reason to talk to me at all.”

“So, basically, you’re trying to make me as crazy as you are?”

“Oh, gaawwd no,” Bonjo said exaggeratedly.  “I am the last thing I want  you to be.  If I were human, I would be so out of balance, I would hardly be able to breathe.  I simply want you to be more chaotic than you are, since right now, you are more lawful than you need to be.”

“Wait, you’re not human?”

“I’m technically only half a being,” she sighed.  “But you’re getting off topic.  This is not about me.  This is about you and your little female friend over there.”

“Who?” Tony asked feigning innocence.

“Let’s not try to play that game,” she said, raising an eyebrow.  “Little Uma over there is a real person, with real feelings and a real brother and all that.  Just because you think you’re in some sort of dream doesn’t mean you can treat her as if she’s a fictional character.”

Tony narrowed his eyes.  “Okay, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about now.”

“You’ve been doing a pretty good job since yesterday of keeping up with all the hitches I’ve thrown at you, from the wolves and the treadmill, to that walk through the cave, to the breakfast club this morning.  That dance epic while belting out Gloria Gaynor was quite the show, I must say.”

“Hey, now—“

“But I’m growing more and more leery that your seeming comfort with all of this is simply due to the fact that you’re convinced that all of this is fake, that you’re in some sort of dream state and are imagining all of this.”  She shook her head sadly again.  “It happens with my clients a lot, actually.  I throw too much at them at once and they get overwhelmed, and just blot everything out.  It’s one thing to become a balanced, contributing member of society in a fantasy dream world.  It’s another thing entirely to translate that way of life into your reality.”

Tony laughed.  “Okay, so you’re basically saying that I’m screwing up, but it’s your fault.”

“Oh, I certainly misjudged you, yes.  But you’re the idiot who thinks all of this is fake.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think when you’re messing with everything going on around me?  How could you do that if it weren’t fake?”

Bonjo laughed a high-pitched clear sound like tiny bells on a Christmas wreath decoration.  “You think I’ve waited until just recently to start interfering with your life?”  

Like a wave of color and fabric was washing over her, her shape changed into that of the woman at the coffee shop whom he had argued with for five consecutive days about the way he brewed her drinks.

“Recognize me?”

Tony didn’t say anything.  He just stared.

Then a second wave passed over her and she turned into his landlord, who he had been ripping off for the past six months by paying him in singles and leaving out at least $150 every month because he knew the man didn’t own a cash-counting machine and he secretly didn’t believe he could actually count for himself.

“Do you feel bad yet, for the way you treat people?”

“Not if that man was you the whole time.”

She rippled back into herself with a jolt like lightening and launched herself at him, tackling him to the ground and pinning his neck under her forearms.  “I told you,” she said, hissing into his ear, “these are real people.  You can’t just mess around with them and think there aren’t any consequences.”

He pushed her off of him with surprising ease and choked out, “Hey, it’s your involvement that’s got me thinking they’re fake—“

“I never said I became them.  I only manipulated them to affect you.”

“Oh, so it’s okay for you to manipulate people, but it’s not—“

“I told you, I’m not human.”

“So you’re above the law?”

“I am the law!” Her black dress turned into a flowing judge’s robe and her hair turned into a long, white powdered wig.

Tony deadpanned.

Her face cracked from a stern, even angry expression to an irrepressible grin instantly.  “Bah ha ha,” she blurted out, clapping her hand over her mouth.  “I couldn’t help it.  It was just so perfect,” she said from between her fingers.”

Her appearance returned to its original state, and she brushed herself off while clearing her throat.  “Anyway, this is all just to say that I think you need some continued intensive work.”  She snapped her fingers and everything around them fell away as if the Earth had dropped out from under them, leaving nothing but one of those vast white rooms that seems to go on forever that they use for car commercials and the Matrix movies.

“Wait,” Tony yelled, lunging at the empty space where Uma had just been seconds before.  He stumbled and fell onto his knees.  “What did you do?”

To his horror, Bonjo smiled.  “I see my plan is working,” she said, her voice soft.  “I just have a little test for you, and then you and your little lady friend can be merrily on your ways, galavanting about the world, having a gay old time.”

“What sort of test?” Tony asked, looking up at her from the ground.  

She didn’t say anything, but made a dramatic move with her hand, bringing it around and over her head, while bringing the other one down near her waist, and shaping her fingers in the poise of two snaps.  

“Ida Rango!” she said, then snapped twice, doing some sort of seductive salsa dance move with her hands and stomping her feet, and with a loud crack that echoed throughout the endless room, she was gone.

Tony sighed heavily and pushed himself to his feet.  By the time the soles of both his shoes were planted firmly and flatly on the ground, the starkly white room was replaced by a stage floor filled with fake fog and reaching arms whose bodies he could barely make out beyond the limited visibility of the fog.  There was scaffolding all around the perimeter of the stage, and women were dancing in cages hovering dozens of feet in the air  

He turned behind him and looked out beyond the blinding lights into the house, and he could make out the shapes of what had to be hundreds of people sitting in plush red velvet chairs.  He looked down at his own body and saw that he was wearing tightly fitting white pants that had artistically place rips along the thighs and shins, and he had a sort of torn sash barely covering a diagonal strip from his shoulder to his opposite hip.  He felt a headband constricting the flow of blood to his head, and felt sweat beading up on his arms, chest, and face.

It was his worst nightmare; he had been thrust into some perverted disco movie, and he knew in his heart, the only way to escape was to dance his way to freedom.

Suddenly, the thudding dance music that had been playing grew stormy, and Tony watched a spotlight move from him to a place up stage onto one of the scaffoldings.  There, sliding down banisters and suggestively wrapping slender athletic legs around poles and hand rails, was Uma, dressed in a red sequence unitard with a glittering gold headband around curly brown hair Tony hadn’t seen before.  Though the movements of her body were fluid, graceful, and beautiful, her face looked horrified.

Evidently, this was her worst nightmare too.  

“Curse you, Bonjo,” Tony said under his breath.  “I thought you said this was a test for me.  Why did you have to pull her into it?”

She came to a break in the scaffolding, and, held at the wrist by two men dressed like dominatrixes, began gyrating heavily, thrusting her pelvis at angles not seen in nature.

Tony was surprised by how calm he felt about all of this.  Not only was he not freaking out at the idea of being on a stage and being expected to perform dance feats he’d never even tried to imagine pulling off, but he was not even remotely turned on by Uma’s seductive dance movements.

The men holding her lowered her knees on to his shoulders.  He turned her slowly around and slid her slowly to the ground, where she gave him a quick look of terror, before taking off backwards into the fog with long, dancing steps.  

Tony chased after her like a panther stalking his prey, but he tried to convey to her with his face that he was just following a script already set out for him, that he didn’t want to scare her, and that he wasn’t any better at dancing than she was.

He grabbed her arm and spun her close to him, and they danced and lept together across the stage, before she did an amazing back bend and he followed the curve of her body with his chin.  Then they both stood up and he spun her again before dragging her off behind him slowly and rhythmically.  He whispered into her ear, trying to keep his ragged breaths even enough so that she would understand him.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I swear I’m going to get you out of this.”

She broke away from him and dance forward on gazelle-like toes, and they chased each other flirtatiously in an elegant game of cat-and-mouse.  When they met at center stage, he held her in another fierce backbend, and then spun her through the air in a sweeping circle, as if she were a banner he were waving for the whole world to see.  He held her on his back while she did slow, strong kicks in the air, and as the music grew in momentum, the zombie chorus dancers popped up out of the smoke like daisies and began pulsating like waves crashing against rocks on the beach.  

Uma made a violent dancing gesture that Tony couldn’t have described if he had been asked to, and disappeared.  Tony leapt like a frolicking white-tailed deer around the stage looking for her, and while he was standing in one corner, he was accosted by a woman who jumped on to his leg and began swinging herself around his pelvis.  If he hadn’t been caught by surprised and slightly revolted, he might have enjoyed it.  While she sat there on top of him, more of the zombie dancing women gathered around him and he felt compelled to push her off so that he could jump out of the crowd and skip across the front of the stage, spinning and dancing all the way.  Another zombie woman jumped him when he got there, but he fended her off with the grace and poise of a love-struck swan prince, and turned to find Uma running at him.  

She broke into his arms and he spun her around in the air again, letting her hips gyrate unnaturally again, and supporting her as she did nauseating backbends in his hands.  She kicked her leg high into the air, stood up, and ran off into a sea of zombie woman dancers, then turned around and ran at Tony.  

This was it.  The part he was most afraid of.  The part he’d seen in a couple dozen dance-related movies from the eighties that completely wowed him and made him awfully glad not to be a male dancer.

She leapt into his arms, and he caught her with his right arm, vaulting her into the air above his head while she held onto his shoulders and stretched her legs out behind her.  Then, as the drums in the song beat the final cataclysmic cascade of bass beats, he dropped her onto the ground, holding her back with his hands and looking down at her sweaty, frightened face.  Her eyes were squeezed shut in a wince, expecting the worst.

After a moment that seemed to Tony to last a lifetime (wherein he envisioned himself growing old and adopting two sets of twins whom he would name Reggie, Martha, Pongo, and Perdita) the unseen audience began to clap and cheer, and he felt the breath return to his lungs.  

Unlike his counterpart of the silver screen, Tony did not attempt to kiss his dancing partner.  He just looked down at her and smiled.  “It’s going to be okay now,” he whispered to her.  “It’s all almost over.  I just have to strut a little bit, and then we’re done.”

Then the clapping stopped, the stage disappeared, and Tony and Uma were standing in their sweaty dance uniforms in the middle of Kings Cross Station, between platforms nine and ten.  Bonjo was standing awkwardly close to them, her face pushing in between theirs.

“Good job,” she whispered, her voice light and clear like the ringing bells.  “You both passed.”  She then walked slowly away, and Tony and Uma were left to deal with the dozens of confused Britons who were staring at them.

I believe all (but one) bets have come to their respective ends at this point.  If you owe me money based on our wagers, click the monkey to the right and follow his instructions.

If you're Ben and your wager with me technically goes until tomorrow...don't fear.  Your turn will come soon.

If you just want to donate, I'm still open for that, for sure.  Click the monkey and follow his wise words.

Stay tuned in the next couple of days when I will update my NaNo merit badges (I've earned four more since the last update...) and tell you more about my NaNo experience.  But now I've got to shower.

Thanks for all your support this past month!

<3 spadeALLcross

We gotta stop meeting like this, hun.

Another crazy dream, not as terrible as the last, but still kind of hard to stomach in places. Americans had been enslaved, I think by some European nations, and we had pretty much given up hope of ever being rescued, since we'd never been very nice to anyone but the Europeans, I guess. Anyway, there was a class system among the slaves, and one guy in his twenties or thirties had a lot of "money" that he had used to build himself a really nice hut that stayed out of the heat, and a little corral for his car. He had also used it to buy one of the slaves; I think it was Megan Dincher. He had her stay in his hut all day while everyone was working, because he was afraid of this other slave who was in love with her and might have tried to steal her.

Meanwhile, Ben Verhulst, Ben Niewenhuis, Carley, and I watched all of our friends die off one by one [in a weird movie-like montage] from a plague that the slaves were all prone to for some reason. We carried of J$ and Jasmine, Breems and Luke, some of my more remote high school friends, etc. And then the four of us were all relocated and we thought we'd never see each other again.

I got to hang out with all the old people and the little tykes, which was creepy, because this wrinkly old woman [whom I shared a sleeping bag with because the nights got really cold] was evidently a very...excited lesbian. Then, one day, while working, I came across Megan Dincher's prison hut, and saw that there was a guy trying to break into it. I went to go stop him, and found Ben, Ben, and Carley, as well as some more of my remote high school friends had already tried to stop him.

Eventually, we were all crammed into this little hut, and I some how figured out that it was this guy who was in love with Megan (though she did not reciprocate) who had bought her prison hut and everything, by giving Megan's owner all the money he needed.

We decided that instead of turning the one guy in, we'd all try to escape. Somehow we made it to South America in a matter of a couple hours of a train ride. But there was still slavery down there; there were training camps for children who would one day be old enough to be slaves. We got stuck in one of those; they were going to hold us there until one of the camp overseers could come and pick us up and take us back to the states. So we tunneled our way out of there, and discovered all these wonderful places, including a place where Chilean children chase penguins into ice caves. We were all really scared that someone would find us, so we were soaking up as much of the landscape as we could, since it was much more temperate in Chile than it was in America, where it had gotten unbearably hot.

Then my phone went off and I decided it was not a good idea to try to go back to sleep in a dystopian society.

Other than that, today went pretty well. I washed off my new bookcase, packed up my car, finger painted with Annabelle, showered, watched some Royal Pains with Dennis and my mom, watched the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, ate dinner, then left Illinois. I listened to the tail end of The Prisoner of Azkaban and then switched to music for the last 45 minutes of the trip. Now I'm back in my Michigan room that smells like Thai Dragon Fruit or something like that. And I'm not dying of heat exhaustion. Life is good.

Goodnight, World.

<3 spadeALLcross

Tired of the insincere; gonna give all my secrets away...

Power was out this morning when I woke up. A little upsetting, but...meh. I wrote a letter (that's right, I handwrite things and put them in envelopes and even occasionally put stamps on them. Karazay!), did some paperwork for the bank, wrote an email (that didn't send until the power came back on) and then, once my dad's computer was up and running, I burned 4 of the 6 DVDs I needed to burn (as well as light-scribing them) ripped a bunch of audiobooks to my hard drive, including Dune and Old Man and the Sea and the beginnings of Nineteen Minutes and The Hour I First Believed. Through all this, I was running out, getting gas in my car, trying to find a CD case to fit all the DVDs I was burning, and generally making a fool of myself. But it's okay; I drive a Prius. Then we had dinner, I went out with a friend, came back, talked to God for a while, and am now going to bed.

Tomorrow, I'm watching Annabelle. During her nap, I plan on burning some more DVDs and ripping some more CDs, as well as possibly searching again for a CD case, and probably at least thinking about packing either clothes or books. Once her father gets home and takes over her care...I don't know what I'll do. Probably nothing of consequence. Certainly nothing productive.

But let me tell you, I love my friends. I've got a lovely bunch of them, and I don't know where I'd be without them. Each of them has changed my life in startling ways, some more recently, more often, or more positively than others, but whatever. If you are my friend (and, I'm kind of assuming you are at this point, since my readership is probably hovering around five people) I really appreciate you, even if I don't tell you often enough in person.

No sponsors. Go watch thedailyshow.com. It's a hoot sometimes.

<3 spadeALLcross

Eyelids...drooping...

>
I must have slept ten to eleven hours last night and this morning...crazy. I kind of putzed around until my mom and I left at 3 to see Dennis do the Green show in Bloomington at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. Then we saw the Tempest. Everything was great. I really enjoyed it. The Tempest is an odd comedy, though, I've found. In my experiences, Shakespearean comedies can often double as modern-day comedies, in that they're actually really funny as well as just having a happy ending. Tempest...mmm...not so much. It's just a happy ending.

Then I drove home, and now I'm watching Dirty Jobs. It's actually a good show. I like the guy; he's funny.

Of course, as the hour rolls over, the infomercials are beginning. DCN breaking special news report! (DCN stands for Dollar Coins News...aka Buy-Our-Collector-Presidential-Dollar-Series-Coins-That-We're-Going-To-Pretend-Are-Worth-More-Than-$1)

My cue to get to bed.

And now a word from our sponsors

<3 spadeALLcross