spinning
A thousand words on Tim Burton, in just under two hours. I've been stunned, and looking at the world slightly skew, all day. It's also been a bit of an abrupt transition into the next topic, which is George Macdonald, the Victorian Scottish minister whose Christian fantasies inspired both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. However, having just seen Narnia and re-read the series, I feel somewhat braced for maddened theological allegory.
I am forced to the realisation that the amount of socialising, and attendant house-cleaning, in the last few weeks has been perfectly ridiculous. The madness of Boxing Day and New Year were followed at a neatly week-long interval by the Evil Landlord's combination birthday party and garage-warming on Friday night. This filled the house to the brim with a slightly different assortment of friends, mainly his, obviously. I realise that they are, on average, considerably larger and more male in weighting than the crowd we have in common, and consequently, given all the height and deep-chestedness, create a noise level several turns up from previous parties. The demented neighbour did her usual stint of thunderous, pointed window-banging, swearing and the odd witch-like cackle, although this time she didn't actually sprinkle our back courtyard with her hosepipe. It was a pleasant evening, but, as aforementioned, loud, and full of large people. Other than Friday it's been a blissfully quiet weekend, generally, which was becoming highly necessary. I bunked an SCA event yesterday on the grounds not only of pressing Tim Burton, but the realisation that in my current post-festive state, putting me in a room with anything more than about two other people at once is a sure recipe for someone's kneecaps being gnawed. I enjoy socialising. Up to a point.
Today's perfectly delirious discovery: an actual justification for the existence of Harry Potter. The New York Times has an article on a medical research paper which discovers that the rate of admission to an Oxford emergency room for musculo-skeletal injuries in the 7-15 year age-group drops to half of the norm on the weekends when a new Harry Potter novel is released. The paper is pleasingly tongue-in-cheek in tone, although the science appears fairly real; the authors were interested in the effects of Harry Potter on injury incidence given "the lack of horizontal velocity, height, wheels or sharp edges associated with this particular craze." They conclude that there may be "a place for a committee of safety-conscious, talented writers who could produce high-quality books for the purpose of injury prevention." (I'm quoting chunks because NYT is a login-only site, and you may not wish to create a login.) Given that Rowling is, generally speaking, neither safety-conscious, talented or a producer of high-quality books, I can only regard their hypothesis as speculative in the extreme.
I am forced to the realisation that the amount of socialising, and attendant house-cleaning, in the last few weeks has been perfectly ridiculous. The madness of Boxing Day and New Year were followed at a neatly week-long interval by the Evil Landlord's combination birthday party and garage-warming on Friday night. This filled the house to the brim with a slightly different assortment of friends, mainly his, obviously. I realise that they are, on average, considerably larger and more male in weighting than the crowd we have in common, and consequently, given all the height and deep-chestedness, create a noise level several turns up from previous parties. The demented neighbour did her usual stint of thunderous, pointed window-banging, swearing and the odd witch-like cackle, although this time she didn't actually sprinkle our back courtyard with her hosepipe. It was a pleasant evening, but, as aforementioned, loud, and full of large people. Other than Friday it's been a blissfully quiet weekend, generally, which was becoming highly necessary. I bunked an SCA event yesterday on the grounds not only of pressing Tim Burton, but the realisation that in my current post-festive state, putting me in a room with anything more than about two other people at once is a sure recipe for someone's kneecaps being gnawed. I enjoy socialising. Up to a point.
Today's perfectly delirious discovery: an actual justification for the existence of Harry Potter. The New York Times has an article on a medical research paper which discovers that the rate of admission to an Oxford emergency room for musculo-skeletal injuries in the 7-15 year age-group drops to half of the norm on the weekends when a new Harry Potter novel is released. The paper is pleasingly tongue-in-cheek in tone, although the science appears fairly real; the authors were interested in the effects of Harry Potter on injury incidence given "the lack of horizontal velocity, height, wheels or sharp edges associated with this particular craze." They conclude that there may be "a place for a committee of safety-conscious, talented writers who could produce high-quality books for the purpose of injury prevention." (I'm quoting chunks because NYT is a login-only site, and you may not wish to create a login.) Given that Rowling is, generally speaking, neither safety-conscious, talented or a producer of high-quality books, I can only regard their hypothesis as speculative in the extreme.