Rant: The End of the World

Yesterday's Rapture was a bit of a bust... very anti-climactic...

You know, I was kind of thinking about the real end of world whilst walking over to a job that I had to do (deep thoughts, short distances) and I was thinking that when the real end of the world comes, no one is going to believe that it's the real end of the world.  This is because of all of the false alarms.  Not just the recent ones like what many believe will happen on December 21, 2012 and The Rapture on May 21, 2011.  Just for fun, I did a Google search about end of the world theories in history.  I'll tell you about some of my favorites.  I'll try and go in chronological order so as to avoid confusion.

1) January 1, 1000-- Christians in Europe had predicted that the world would end on this exact day.  Citizens had given up all of their possessions to the church knowing that they wouldn't need anything after the world ended.  Wars were waged against Pagan countries solely so that everyone in those countries could be converted to Christianity and be saved.  Unfortunately, the average level of education was so low that no one knew what the year was.  Luckily, the fear level was also relatively low due to this same reason.  Of course there were some consequences after this occurred.  The church did not return anyone's possessions after the world failed to end and many became critical of the church.

2) 1205-- Joachim of Fiore predicted (this is in the year 1190) that in this year, it would be realized that the anti-Christ was in the world and that King Richard of England would be the one to defeat him.  That's quite a job description for King Richard of England...

3) Circa 1832-- Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormonism) spoke to God who told him that he would see the son of man the year he turned eighty-five (which would have been 1890).  He wasn't sure whether this would be the year of the millennium.  What's interesting about this is so much mystery shrouds the real meaning.  It's not clear whether God meant something would happen in 1890 if he was alive or if something would happen regardless of Joseph Smith's living situation (dead or alive).  Either way, nothing ended up happening in 1890.

4) 1982-- John Gribben and Stephen Plagemen (two astronomers) predicted the Jupiter Effect, which is that all of the planets would line up with each other on one side of the sun.  This would cause tidal forces to create solar flares, temperature and rainfall disturbances, radio wave interruptions, massive earthquakes, etc.  The only flaw in this theory is that the planets line up more often than we think and nothing has happened yet.

5) 1986-- Moses David, the leader of a faith group called The Children of God predicted that Armageddon would take place in this year.  In short, Russia would defeat every country and communism would reign.  Christ would come again in 1993.

6) April 17, 2008-- An email was sent to Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry detailing the end of the world telling them that only 144,000 people were going to be saved and resurrected to create a new government 1,000 years after this date.

I'll stop there.  There were hundreds more on this website dating before the birth of Christ all the way into the apocalypses that are predicted in the future.  If you have time, they're quite interesting to read.  

My point is, there are so many theories out there (in the past, present, and future) that I'm wondering if we're going to be blinded when the world is eventually "ended," as it were.  And of course, I don't mean you, those of you who are reading this, because everyone, including me, will be long gone by then (unless the life expectancy of the average human shoots up significantly in however much time that is).  Many people I know, myself included, brush off the current end of the world theories and throw parties to mock them (okay, I haven't thrown a party yet, but I've mocked these theories before).  Billions of years from now, what are the future generations going to think when this crazy scientist, astronomer, theologist, what-have-you comes out and notices that the sun is bigger than he or she once remembered it or that he or she just had a revelation or received a personal message from [insert name of Deity here]?  They might have the same thoughts that many are having today and not believe the the end is near.  Maybe they'll be right and maybe they'll be wrong.  There's no telling.

This was the thought that I had on that short walk that I had to take.

Any way, we live to see another day.  Congratulations to you all!

Thanks for reading (and paying attention to my rantings, if you did).

--Jude

P.S. I'll get back to regular reviews soon.  I'm almost done with another book.  I'll finish it and write the review for it.  Also, my precalculus project has been completed as of today and my physics video is done.  I have a bit of make-up work to do and online gym to finish, but I will start working on the April LONTEM video.  It's super overdue.  And I'm actively gathering pieces for the May LONTEM video, which is due very, very soon.  It might also be late because of how late the April video is.  I just thought that I'd let you know that.

Rant: Bad Reviews

A little while ago, I book-marked the book blog page located HERE so that I may become inspired to write rants like the one I wrote for the re-editing of Huckleberry Finn.  Well, I've found an article that might be of interest to those that are apart of the book blogging community.  You can find the original article HERE.

We've had to write them before: Bad Reviews.  It's just a fact of life, I guess.  Not every book you come across will be worthy of a five star review.  Maybe something was off, but you still enjoyed reading it.  Maybe everything was completely wrong and reading the book was physically painful.

I've had the privilege of getting a response to a review by an author, but the review was positive, so it was a completely different experience.

According to this article, a self-published author reacted in an explosive manner to a negative review of her self-published book.  She had the nerve to respond to this reviewer in the comment box saying that she preferred the positive reviews she received for the book on Amazon.  The worst part is, the reviewer acknowledged her complaints and everything just went downhill from there.

I don't know how many writers there are reading this, but those of you that are, perhaps you can attest to the fact that it's no fun getting negative feedback.  No one likes it, but it's always going to be there and that's what makes us better as writers.

What I'm confused about is why this author felt the need to say anything at all.  It's one person's opinion, you can't change their mind no matter how much convincing you do.  In the end, a good book is in the eye of the reader.  This reviewer was putting ideas and opinions out into cyberspace.  The least she could have done was thank the reviewer for the honest review.

I don't mean to come off as particularly critical.  My point is certain things should be common sense, but only a few people understand what that actually means... it's a little frustrating... all of this could have easily been avoided.

What are your thoughts on this occurrence?

I'm going to try and post a review tonight.  You'll still have a review sometime next week, because I'm supposed to finish 'Invisible Man' this weekend.  Have a lovely day!

--Jude

Something That You Probably Weren't Wondering About, But Something I’m Going to Tell You Any Way

I kind of wanted to tell you why I use a pen name to claim my writing (creative or blogging).

It started when I sat down to write my first full-length book. It’s necessary to go into the birth of ‘Murder by Rulers’ in order for this part of the story to make sense. One day, my friends and I were at recess. I was in seventh grade and a couple of my friends were in sixth. My elementary/middle school had a prairie right next to the fence which was right next to the sidewalk. That prairie was where we spent our fifteen to thirty minutes of recess (I can’t remember how long it was exactly) nearly every day. One day, we were walking by the bar (which we often pretended was a few broomsticks when we played Harry Potter and also our gymnastics bar when we were feeling daring enough to swing upside down) and there was a pile of abandoned rulers just sitting there—abandoned measuring devices. At first, we brushed it off because one of us remembered that the art teacher had said something about some missing materials. In my school, this was no rare occurrence. We walked a few feet away and there was this huge red stain on the sidewalk! This was enough to get our sixth and seventh grade minds working. We immediately imagined that someone had been murdered on the sidewalk in front of school and the rulers were the murder weapon, left by the killer to avoid detection.

(Side-not: we were painting an aerial mural—a mural that can be seen from high up. The red stain was from the paint we were using).

Any way, we were talking and I happened to make the off-hand comment, “I should write this down.” By the end of the day, I had completely forgotten about this idea (either that or I just lost interest in it for one reason or another). Ezra rode the bus with me—most of the time she sat in the seat in front of me. She poked her head over the seat and said, “So how’s the story coming?” Like I said before, I was confused. “What story?” I asked. “The one where the rulers are the murder weapon and Richard and… yeah, that one.” I confessed that I hadn’t even started yet. Ezra convinced me to write it, read the first draft, helped make it pretty, convinced me to write parts one and three, and then continued to help make it pretty again. She helped me come up with ideas when I couldn’t think of anything to put down on the pages. She was my co-writer.

This brings me back to the whole reason why I decided to write this post. I wanted to put her name on the “cover” and I needed to know if she wanted her real name or a pseudonym.

I had to think about a name for myself, because I didn’t like the sound of my real name after the title.

I’m a Beatles fan, but the song ‘Hey Jude’ didn’t convince me to make that my pseudonym. In fact, it was the author of the book ‘Premonitions’ (Jude Watson). For a while, I went back and forth on whether that should be my name or not. After all, Jude Watson is male, so that must mean that Jude is a boy’s name. Yes and no. In the Beatles song, Jude refers to a woman named Judith. I can’t remember who she was related to or how she was related to them, but that Jude was a girl. I rested my case. As for the Rosenberg part, I looked it up on a baby names website. I went through the site looking for the names that I liked, then I went through that shortened list and paired each last name with Jude. Rosenberg sounded best to me and it felt right to say the words together. I had a winner.

Since ‘Murder by Rulers,’ I’ve been using it for all of my creative writing and once I started my blog, I used that as well.

I’ve considered using my real name, but then I thought again. My thoughts were, “No, not here… at least not now…” Because of this thought, I haven’t felt the need to switch over. My pseudonym hasn’t hurt me, it hasn’t hurt anyone that has read my blog… I’m no different on my blog than I am in real life (except I’m probably a little bit bolder and more coherent). I have very few reasons to let it go. I reserve my real name for everything outside of the internet. And outside of writing, of course.

Maybe this was a completely useless post… if that’s the case, I’m sorry. It just feels really good to write something, even if it’s a simple blog post. Thanks for putting up with this.

I’m going to finish ‘The Bucket List’ and then go to bed (we’ll see if I even finish ‘The Bucket List.’ I’m really tired right now…

In any case, have a lovely evening!

--Jude

Rantings: On Banning Books and Censorship

A few minutes ago, I was skulking around my Dashboard page on Blogger and I saw that my friend Ezra had made a post with a very interesting title: Censorship of Huckleberry Finn.

I started to type a comment at the bottom of her post, but then I realized that I had a lot to say about this. So I'm moving here and I hope that she'll see it (I'm pretty sure she will).

First of all, on the subject of banning books. I don't agree with this practice. I once read an article about something similar. Perhaps you've heard about this too. This woman's eleven-year-old daughter was reading this book with her classmates. Soon after they started reading, she began to have nightmares regarding this book. Her mother goes to the school board and tells them that this book is inappropriate for her child and for the other children in that class. First of all, who is she to say what the other kids in the class can handle? Yes, the fact that twenty-four people between the ages of twelve and eighteen are supposed to kill each other is disturbing and inappropriate, but that's the point of the book. Katniss and the others see how disturbing this practice is and that's why they begin to plot against the Capitol so that this madness can stop and the Capitol won't have complete reign over the twelve districts of Panem. Suzanne Collins meant for her audience to experience feelings like this; shock at what the people in the Hunger Games are having to go through, disturbance, etc.

Just to stir up some sort of reaction to this, don't you think that this is a good thing that this woman's daughter reacted the way she did? Nightmares aren't fun, we know this. But the fact that she had this strong of a reaction to this book shows that she isn't desensitized and a lot of people aren't desensitized about this either. I'm sure there were plenty of hearts pounding while reading this book, because it was powerful.

Returning to the general subject of banning books...

My personal belief is that if you have a problem or some sort of hang-up with a particular book, that should just mean that you don't have to read it or finish it. If you're bothered by excessive swearing or sex scenes of all types or different ideologies, you don't have to read it. No one is making you. If you're reading a book for school or for class that you're offended by, you should ask your teacher about the reasons for picking this book or asking if there is an alternative. Just because you don't like the book for whatever reason doesn't mean you should keep other people from being able to read that book. You don't know those other children. They have had different experiences than you and they can handle things better than you [or your kids].

On that note, I'm thinking about that poor little eleven-year-old girl... what if the kids start making fun of her for being afraid of certain things in The Hunger Games? What if they start attacking her because her mother spoke up and demanded that the book should be banned? I feel bad for that girl... kids are cruel, especially to each other...

Back to what Ezra was talking about though...

The article she was referring to said that Huckleberry Finn was being banned because of the excessive use of the "N" word (a total of 219 times, according to that article).

This probably doesn't sound very good coming from a white girl, but I don't believe that they should have done that. Huck Finn is set in the Southern United States, where slavery was legal until 1865 when the 13th Amendment was passed on January 31. Before and even after that time, people used the "N" word. by taking out this word, you are removing a certain amount of authenticity, which doesn't seem quite right to me. By taking this word out, you are denying that there was a certain hatred towards a very celebrated group of people. Without that word, you are cutting the intensity of this hatred that many people felt and future generations-- my children, my children's children-- aren't going to know just what it was like to live in a society that was once this way. Words are powerful weapons are now you're just going to say that this never happened? I'm interested in seeing what the replacement word is...

Now I defend my integrity...

I do not believe that it is ever okay to use the "N" word or any of it's variations. It's offensive and just plain cruel. I'm always confused when I hear someone who is African American say those words. It hurts me, even as a Caucasian. It's like saying "That's so gay" or "retarded" as a synonym for stupid or dumb or something along the lines of that. It's not okay and it never will be, because every time you say that, you're offending someone out there, whether they hear you say it or not. I do not say these words or phrases. Not even when I read them somewhere.

One of my favorite holidays is Banned Books Week (September 25 to October 2). Okay, so it's not a calendar-recognized holiday, but it definitely should be. This week celebrates our freedom to read what we will, so banned or challenged are showcased and celebrated.

Some of my favorite banned/challenged books:

Forever-- Judy Blume (excessive sex scenes)

The Bermudez Triangle-- Maureen Johnson (Gay/Lesbian themes)

Jane Eyre-- Charlotte Bronte (I never found out just why this book was challenged or banned)

And of course there are others...

Hoo... Okay, so even though this was a really long and passionate speech up there, this was still a lot of fun. I think I need to respond to articles more often. I won't make it a weekly thing, but whenever a really interesting article comes up on the internet or in the newspaper.

Thank you so much for reading! Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts on anything mentioned above. Thank you Ezra (<--Clicky, clicky!) for bringing this to my attention, I don't think I would have posted otherwise :) If you haven't checked out Ezra's blog, I highly suggest that you do. She's a fun person and she talks about the most interesting things!

Thanks again.

--Jude