Least Favourite Day

It is now April Fools Day. By all of an hour, but already I has seen an April Fools.
Do not want.
World confusing enough without doing more fooling on purpose.

My plan is to read and listen and stick with recorded stuff for a day.

And then I'll have to sift through a day of stuffs anyway so that probably won't help.
*grumpy*

Fool Day

Note to self: Never schedule anything on April 1st
While hiding from the fooling I missed my 6 month dentist check.
*facepalm*

They seemed quite cheerful when I phoned up and went "er, I think I missed an appointment this morning", so I have a new appointment for next week.

Still, is no helpful.

Dr Faustus and Theology

I am reading up on Dr Faustus for class. I find it dramatically less than compelling, a couple of good speeches to start and end but a bit of nothing much in the middle. But they are very good speeches.

I started reading the York Notes Advanced to go with it but I think they've very badly screwed up the theology. They say that the play involves an angry God who can't/won't save Faustus because contracts are binding even on God. I think that can't be supported either within the text or within relevant Christian thought. Faustus' fall is explicitly said to be because of Pride and Despair. He has the pride to think that his sin, of all the sins in history, is the only unforgivable one. He despairs, and turns away from God. He won't believe he can be saved, he won't ask for forgiveness, and when he calls on Christ he immediately gets so scared of the Devil he turns around and begs mercy off the evil ones instead. He denies that God has the power to save him, to protect him from devils. And finally he keeps trying to get God to save his *life*, to bring him bodily up to heaven, in a mirror of what he fears from the devil, being taken quick and in body down to hell. He's afraid of death, he wants *breath*, but he doesn't properly ask God to save his *soul*. ( Read more... )

Now I've spent all that long looking closer at it I think I like it more as a play. The scenes with Faustus in them hang together and plot a downward spiral. Maybe it's the other bits with the comedy I don't like... but there's a point to those as well. Hmmm.

Okay, so, done quite a lot of studying.

Tisn't exactly relevant for the assignment. Wonder how I could make it so.

I still like Hamlet better.

Intergalactic civilizations and how to run them

I was in the bath thinking about how I'd write a B7 clone
as you do.

Started thinking about names, words, meanings. Connotations are particularly tricky in F&SF. It's the invented words problem - old words accumulate connotations, assocative meanings, like onion layers. New words have to try and pull some together or sit there looking kind of naked and skinny. New words mean nothing until they mean something in relation to existing words. ( Read more... )

So, set out to have a bath, end up designing an interstellar civlization. One that entirely coincidentally duplicates ways people get categorised here and now. Mostly so I can poke them to pieces.

I was thinking of the White Wolf world books, with the different clans and paths. There's a section on how they're different, and a section on how they see all the other clans, and then a section on how each clan sees them. Diversified vampires real well. Could do the same for other systems. The irritation of having a preset personality to go with a skill set could be part of what people are rebelling against.


I should probably eat and go sleep and stuff.

... I kind of want to keep writing. ( Read more... )