felis_ultharus

Yeah -- I've been reading this marvellous biography, and I usually hate biography, but this one's been a pleasure. It's called Scanty Particulars by Rachel Holmes, and it's the story of the British doctor James Miranda Barry.

Barry has several biographies, but none is so well-researched or presented. Holmes was kind of annoyed that Barry's secret -- revealed at the end of his life -- eclipsed all the other astonishing things he managed to do. He was pretty adventurous.

In other news, maidenofirisa, I thought Phoenix Wright was a bizarre, Bizarro-world version of the legal system, like all those bad Hollywood dramas. Turns out that -- except for the time constraints and the cravats and evil spirits -- it's actually a fairly accurate depiction of the Japanese legal system, right down to the manufacturing of evidence and prosecutors running things. Remind me not to get arrested in Japan.

(As I've encountered Dahlia Hawthorne now, I'll also say that it gives a fairly accurate depiction of literature majors, too.)

I'm not entirely sure where I'm getting poetic inspiration, but it's just getting better and better. Maybe I'll be a published poet before I'm a novelist. If I can gather together six pages of prime poetry, The Antigonish Review will deign to look at it ^_^

I'm getting better at working in traditional forms, but I want to branch beyond iambs. My one foray into Old English styles worked well.

I went to Matt R's graduation this morning (waves at metawidget, who was also graduating, along with a certain Jesse whom foi_nefaste knows). It was much better than my own. Instead of raging homophobe, this time they gave the honourary degree to Heather Menzies, the Canadian activist, who gave a wonderful little anti-war speech in time for Remembrance Day.

(It was a nice little reminder that if we really remembered, we wouldn't be rushing headlong to support Bush's imperial wars.)

Oh, and on maidenofirisa's recommendation, I picked up Phoenix Wright. Couldn't find the first, so I jumped to the second. That game is campier than William Shatner in a production of Rocky Horror. My favourite line so far is "A lawyer is someone who smiles even when they're down."

So I just finished Kingdom Hearts I. I have to admit to admit I avoided this one for awhile -- Disney makes me squeamish and even a Disney-Final Fantasy crossover made me worry.

( Review of Kingdom Hearts, spoilers included )

For those with no interest in video games, I'll just mention that there's a black squirrel here in Verdun, living in a tree on fourth avenue.

This is significant -- Montrealers are always fascinated by black squirrels, and often tell me that there are no black squirrels in Montreal, that you only find them at Oka, or up in the Laurentians, etc.

I've nicknamed him Kokki. Fans of 12 Kingdoms will know why ^_^

Social Life

'Twas a marvellous party yesterday -- I think my most successful in 10 years. Last year, the highlight was the treats montrealais concocted, but greatly suffered from poor planning -- a two-day open-house ensured that no one arrived at the same time.

Things were pretty crowded last night, at least by the standards of entertaining here. I'm getting much better at dealing with crowds of people and loud noises -- I haven't had a panic attack in about a year -- so next year I might open it up not just to friends, but to friends-of-friends.

We'll see if we can fit that many people in this apartment, which is large but uses space strangely (the bedrooms are gargantuan, and the living room is tiny).

Thanks to everyone who came, and thank you for the gifts. I loved every gift I got, so maybe I'm not as hard to buy for as I thought I was.

Being inundated with manga is not a bad thing, the books were great (your friends really know you when you get the only two books by a favourite author you don't own, on the same night), and montrealais's homemade project was both thoughtful and beautiful. Also, I want the recipe for melting_penguin and bananality's Easter-egg-chocolate-chunk cookies.

'Course, no one's going to see me much for the next month, thanks to em_fish's and rougemacabre's gift. If you don't ever see me again, it's your own fault :p

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of my coming out as gay, at age 16, so I thought it deserved a post ^_^

It's been a quiet couple of weeks. Work has been non-stop lately, and we're mostly just trying to keep our head above water because the company is expanding so quickly. Everyone's a little frazzled. But I haven't been working as much lately, so it's taken less of a toll on me.

I'm almost two-thirds through my re-write. Some parts are being heavily re-written, others are mostly the same.

I finished Irving Layton. It's a little like reading poetry by the X-Men's Magneto, which makes me wonder who the Charles Xavier of Canadian poetry would be.

Otherwise, I've been quite immersed in Final Fantasy XII. It's a very long, very complex game. The story and character development are both good, but it seems that the main character gets the least development of all.

One aspect of the game that fascinates me is its use of archaic, rare, or very British words -- "sundries," "paling," "docent," "jape," "lambent," "grimoire," and "mummer" to name only a few. Only twice have I had to go running to a dictionary. They use "aceldama" as a general noun, and the word "togail" which seems to be Gaelic. Their use of "togail" seems incorrect. From what I can tell, the word means something like "building" or "construct," and the context seems to imply a part of a book.

You know, two literary forms have all but vanished from the West: the tragedy and the epic. The tragedy lingers on in romance novels, and the epic occasionally surfaces for air in science fiction or fantasy, but on the whole they've been banished -- especially in mainstream media of any kind.

The explanation for tragedy is that we're addicted to happy endings, and don't want anything depressing. As for the epic, a professor of mine offered this explanation:

"Epics are about nations, societies, and peoples. We're too self-absorbed to care about anything on that scale."

But I don't think either is necessarily true. I can't help but wonder if the incredible popularity of Japanese pop culture -- anime, manga, and video games -- is in part because the Japanese are not afraid to work with tragedies and epics.

And the same pleasure that's always haunted these two forms is still very much there.

I got to thinking of the later Final Fantasies as visual epics -- and got to thinking that maybe that's deliberate. The grand scale of events, the beginning in media res, prophecy, the elements of tragedy mixed in. Even the summonings are like periodic invocations of muses.

And in Final Fantasy 10, at least, there's a deus and quite a few ex-machina ^_^

Seriously, though, it's not as farfetched as it sounds. Video games are very slowly drawing the attention of people who are willing to look at their literary qualities -- though most critics are still thinking of them as empty escapism, the way novels were thought of 300 years ago when people were told not to waste their time with them.

This has been a good day already, and it's scarcely mid-morning. I did 20 pages of editing very early, and I'm now about a half-a-week ahead of where I need to be in school. I'm reading goood books, getting plenty of hours at work (but not too many), and gradually getting my space in order again.

I'll likely be finished my novel before Mabon (Solstice).

Now if only I could get my PS2 and computer monitor to speak the same language, things would be perfect.

As long promised to maidenoffirisa, I have uploaded the complete guide to the date with Barret in Final Fantasy 7. It was too long to do as an LJ post, so I did it as a webpage, which is here.

I was going to say that it would be probably of no interest to anyone besides her, but there are a fair number of my fellow video game geeks here, aren't there?

And I know two people here are playing the game and haven't finished it yet, so a SPOILER warning is in effect.

Feeling a lot better. Still very slightly queasy, but I haven't thrown up. The diarrhea seems to be gone as well. I managed to edit and write 15 pages today. I think I may brave the outdoors to do a few things today.

Well, montrealais is in Spain, and just posted that he made it safely to Madrid. This is good news.

However, his computer decided it couldn't bear to be without him, and after crashing every couple of hours for a week, it finally stopped loading. It won't even load up in safe mode.

This is why I'm posting from a commercial internet place. So if I'm scarce over the next few months, it's not because I'm avoiding people.

Other than that, little to report. My writing continues apace, and I may even have a haiku ready for the CBC Shortest-Imaginable-Story-So-Don't-Even-Think-About-Writing-A-Whole-Paragraph Contest next week. I spent the morning giving English Placement exams to engineers.

I fell off the video game wagon this week, succumbing to an old addiction. But I justify this by telling myself that Alpha Centauri has more intellectual meat than most of my courses, which unfortunately is true.