Language: drink

Language is wierd.
People say 'drinking' when they mean 'drinking alcohol'.
How did alcohol get to be the default?
And then you get sentences like 'he needs to quit drinking' which only make sense when you add the word that isn't there, because generally speaking human beings need to drink, but they do not need to drink alcohol. They need to quit alcohol. So why isn't alcohol in the sentence?
I'm sure it must make it a harder thought. I mean to have a word that means both a necessary and a nasty thing, two seperate things one word, could feel like quitting the nasty was quitting a necessary. More difficult.
Plus if you ever say 'I need a drink' then it gets read as 'I need alcohol' not 'I need lemonade'.
Since I dislike alcohol I end up either leaving the word 'drink' out of my vocabulary and saying 'need water' or adding extra words in all the time. Why isn't water or something harmless the default? How did it get to be alcohol?

(no subject)

Today I am reading 'Naked Empire' by Terry Goodkind
very slowly
for it is very, very, very bad.
This may well explain why I stopped buying the series and can't really remember what happened in the previous book.

The author needs 'show not tell' engraved repeatedly on sensitive portions of their anatomy until the message sinks in. "Putting it in little quote marks doesn't make it showing."

So far I'm about 300 pages in and maybe 5 incidents have happened, for a generous interpretation of incident. The rest of the time everyone sits around and discusses it.

Partly that is because this is a long way into a series and every time a character or situation is revisited for the first time in this book he stops to explain at length who and what they are. Personally I say if someone is picking up the, what, 7th? book in a series, they probably know that by now. Unless like me they've forgotten due to sheer boredom. But a short prologue with a summary of the last few books would have made infinitely better reading.

but the other part of the problem is its devolving into a series of philisophical lectures. He keeps on setting up straw man societies and using his marysues - I'm sorry, his main characters of infinite powerups - to knock them down. Newsflash - populating the world with stupid people doesn't make your pets look smarter!

And then there's the lectures themselves. Multi page epics on life the universe and everything. I'm all 'for gods sake just write some essays!' If you want a story to illustrate philosophical principles, *illustrate* them, don't have characters sit around expounding them. I mean it isn't even like we get the pretty. The author probably thinks all the characters are pretty. He puts enough of them in skintight leather. But we, the readers, aren't seeing pictures, just *incredibly boring* words. Get on with the story!

Also there's the problem that often happens in a book where the main character is a detective. Theres the balance between showing the reader enough for them to figure it out and making the detective look smart. The 'seeker after truth' is all about figuring things out. But in order for him to look extra smart the reader can't figure it out first. So he figures a thing, finds the evidence to support it, then explains it to the reader his adoring servants. This gets *very boring*. The few clues that we do get are overwhelmed with the not-caring, because we know we'll have to sit through a three page lecture about each of them and then, once they do make a pattern, a much longer and more detailed lecture about that. Take a risk! Let the audience figure it out first!

I really don't like this book.
I'm seriously considering not finishing it.
Actually if I didn't finish the last one that would explain the big lack of memory of later plot points.

I haven't even got started on the pervasive bad kind of sadistic elements and deeply creepy loving description of torture and death. I mean the books are getting so heavy on the sit-and-talk it stands out very vividly when entire chapters are spent describing impaling people on big wooden stakes in rather sexual terms. And really, gross. Ick. Bad.

I'm ranty, I have a headache, I'm sulky, and this book is *not helping*.

But the other three books that arrived are I think out of sequence. Like the sequels have arrived before the middles, because I ordered from different places. Might be only the one author thats true of though, shall have to check.

Anyways. Not only would I not recommend this book, I'd loudly warn people off. Big waste of time.

more Naked Empire

I read some more of that 'Naked Empire' book.
It doesn't get better.
The main guy is apparently going to be saviour and destroyer (why does that sound familiar?)
so he goes among these people who are so pacifist they give anyone who visits anything they ask for, including giving the invading army all their women
and obviously he will teach them how to kill, because that's the American Way.
So he just gave them this huge great speech, going over the entire plot of the book *again* for the benefit of this new bunch of people, telling them who they really were. And they all fall at his feet and kiss his boots.
And I'm like, hang on. These people have a few thousand years of unique culture. They are the Chosen Empire. They like their culture. It works for them.
So, you walk in there, and tell them that word they always thought meant Chosen actually means Banished, and for proof you offer a statue and a book they can't read. And they agree with you for this truth is so self evident? Oh and then you lift the banishment and they do the kissing thing.
I call bullshit. Somebody in a shiny cloak brings an illegible book and tells me they're the hereditary ruler of England and by the way we're his long lost cousins and I would not, in fact, kiss anything.

Plus he just had this huge great speech about the gift, magic, and how all these people haven't got any of it at all.

For thousands of years they have had no magic in the sense he uses the word. Why would they ever believe in magic? But they have their own magic, which he has just told them doesn't exist, based on the fact that they don't have the kind of magic he does. Obviously their magic is blind faith and his is real.

Obvious in what sense?

He hasn't researched it. He hasn't asked them to demonstrate their magic. He just decided it, and told them.

So far so plausible. He does a lot of deciding, and very much telling. He is in fact an arrogant preachy bastard.

But they believe him! In what universe is one speech going to overturn thousands of years of a culture that actually *worked*?

Plus he assumed that they had crime. They have this culture where you can't steal because people will give you stuff first, but he assumes that doesn't work. For why? I can understand it from the character, annoying though it might be. But from the author its just very annoying. He sets up a utopia, all about the caring and sharing, but assumes it would never work. Annoying!

I should really stop reading. But I very rarely stop reading a book before it is done. I think I'll start trying to skim instead. I keep finding sections where I could tear out four or five pages and replace them with 'plot summary, and much nodding' and not detract from the flow of the story at all.


The key thing is, everyone is going to react from their own individual experience and belief system. They aren't going to go 'wow, he's so right!' about the new guy just because the author thinks he is right. This is another meaning of show not tell - you have to show the other guys in the story what kind of person you are, what the truth is, what is good to do. You can't just tell them. It doesn't work.

And that is why it irritates me when his utopia doesn't work. They live their beliefs, caring sharing giving being nice to each other, so *why* isn't that enough for people to be happy with? We aren't given a reason. Just that 'evil people' would still do bad things. Not a show, just a tell.

Annoying book. Bad.

(no subject)

Okay, this book is history.
Apparently turning the other cheek is evil, and
"The right, the absolute necessity, of vengeance against anyone who initiates force against you is fundamental to survival. The morality of a people's self-defense is in its defense of each individual's right to life. It's an intolerance of violence, made real by an unwavering willingness to crush any who would launch violence against you. The unconditional determination to destroy any who would initiate force against you is an exaltation of the value of life."
That's just sick. It goes way beyond self defense. Vegeance? Destroy? Hell with that.
Stop them, yes, but vengeance and destruction unyaay.