Which I originally mostly had while watching the crowning scene in the first film. Did Lewis actually intend these mappings? Perhaps. I may need to research existing allegorical analyses of the works.

Note: This is my attempt to read the mind of a dead Christian, which may well be invalidated because I am no such thing myself. Literary analysis is fraught with enough peril as it is. Oh, well.


Peter represents the Church. The death and resurrection of Aslan/Jesus result in a new institution to maintain the new order.

Edmund represents Judas AND the pre-existing priesthood. The betrayal of his family and friends maps to the Jesus-era priesthood's betrayal of their responsibilities in recognizing the Messiah. His redemption and crowning represent the birth of a new priesthood to maintain the new creed.

Susan represents the people. This might be why Lewis had her abandon Narnia/Aslan in the last book: She believes, but only when Aslan/Jesus is right there. When Aslan/Jesus is not immediately present in her life, her faith and interest weaken.

Lucy represents faith. As the youngest, her crowning emphasizes that faith is the new covenant; supplanting the law which is now fulfilled.

I suppose that that's as good as any allegorical mapping.


On a recent re-read of the opening chapters of The Last Battle, I noticed that Shift the Ape appears to be an obvious mocking representation of the Roman Catholic Church: A mockery of a man, an absolute authoritarian and cunning liar, wearing a cheap gilt paper crown and a tattered robe, claiming to be Aslan's mouthpiece, and demanding tribute/tithes, with the threat of Aslan's rage being used as a club against the poor scared faithful forest folk.

I wonder what Tolkien thought of that. Hm!

Dude #1: They have been underestimating my power.

Dude #2: What?

Dude #1: They have been underestimating my power for quite some time now.

Dude #2: What are you, a supervillain? Who's been underestimating your power? The justice league?

Dude #1: No, the electric company. They say I owe them eight hundred dollars.

Dude #2: Dude, you and I were having two totally different conversations.


(From Overheard in New York)

Possibly particularly funny because I have just recently read Soon I Will Be Invincible.

You speak, good Sir, as would one with a very large and prominent Scepticism bump. I am given to understand that this sad & lamentable condition can be cured with the proper application of a Faith Restorative procedure by a skilled retro-phrenologist. I believe they use a large mallet, most judiciously applied.

Chapter 1: Judaea is conquered by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Daniel is one of the conquered people, and is brought to the king. There's a bit about him not wanting to eat the food or drink the wine of the king, presumably because it isn't kosher food or wine, and him and his friends being healthy eating just legumes and drinking water. Whoop.

Chapter 2: Neb has a dream! He call his magicians and wise men, and orders them to tell him what his dream was. They can't, and he orders them killed.

Daniel prays to God for the answer, and gets it. There's a bit of groveling to God for giving the answer, and the Dan goes to Neb, and says that God told him what the dream was and what it meant.

The dream: A big statue, with a gold head, silver chest and arms, brass belly and thighs, iron legs, and feet made partly of iron and partly of clay. The whole thing gets smashed by a rock. The pieces fly away like chaff. The rock grows and becomes a big mountain.

The meaning: Neb ate too much before going to bed. OK, maybe not.

The meaning: The gold head is Neb. Everything else are empires to follow. They'll each fall. The crushing rock is God's eternal empire.

Neb is stunned by this awesome psychic reading, and tells Dan he should set up his own psychic hotline. OK, maybe not.

Neb gives Dan lots o' schwag, including a whole honkin' province to run. Dan in turn puts his buddies Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego in charge.

Chapter 3: Neb makes a golden statue, and launches a concert to dedicate it (statuepalooza?). People are supposed to worship the statue. Those who don't get down and boogie to the statue burn in a furnace.

Shad, Mesh & Abe don't get down. They say God will make them cool. Neb gets mad. He stokes the furnace, and tosses them all in. They don't burn. Neb is impressed. He orders that no-one should disrespect God.

More groveling to God follows.

Chapter 4: This chapter is told in first person from the POV of Neb. Neb has a new dream, about a tree that gets cut down. Dan says, "Dude, that tree is you. You are so totally busted." Except Dan is now called Belteshazzar. WTF?

Neb goes nuts and eats grass.

More groveling to God follows.

Chapter 5: The new king, Belshazzar, sees some weird shit. There he is, chowing down with his buds, and suddenly this freaking hand appears and writes something on the wall. Bel says that anyone who can read it will get schwag. He calls in Dan. Dan says, "I don't need schwag. Your dad was an arrogant swot, and so are you. The writing says that your kingdom was weighed by God, and he's going to split it between the Medes and the Persians". Bel is apparantly not particularly distressed by this, and gives Dan his schwag. Bel gets snuffed that very night.

Chapter 6: Now Darius the Mede is in charge. He wants everyone to bow down only to him for a 30 day period. Dan ignores this, and grovels to God as usual. Dar's ministers tattle on Dan to Dar. Dar tosses Dan to the lions. The lions don't eat Dan. Dar tosses the tattlers to the lions, and the lions chow down on the tattlers. NOM NOM NOM.

More groveling to God follows.

Following up from this. Here is the relevant section of The Beharistan (The Abode of Spring), by Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami, translated by Richard Francis Burton, starting at page 43. This contains a somewhat different translation of the quote I was interested in (in bold at the bottom there).

It is a bit disappointing to see the fuller context; Jami's "Thou mayst again oppression try", and "for the next world" (what about this world?) are less than I would have hoped for. On the other hand, he was presuming to dictate to powerful religious autocrats; perhaps his words should be considered in their historical context.

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Going through my notes for something I was researching years ago, I found the following quote:

Currently percolating inside my head: A Gnostic tale, taking place in and around the story of Genesis. The Demiurge and Sophia wander through a world of shifting wet clay. They begin the creation, but the Demiurge can only create when Sophia is nearby. The Demiurge does something....

Considering that I was complaining about quitting a book because it was grey and joyless, this is probably a bit inconsistent on my part, since this story will probably not end well. But sometimes that's the way the story goes. And, hey, almost none of the early stories in Genesis end well either.

Not that he didn't write lots of witty stuff, but this one, for whatever reason, hit the funnybone:

Everything is connected.
That's why it shorts out so often.
  — John M. Ford

The cool kids are doing it...

Doctor Frankenstein decided to make friends.

"Mom got lonely," explained the clone.

Armless telekinetic, arrested for pickpocketing, escapes.

"Biohazard, shmiohazard," sneered the other head.

[perhaps more later]

Inspired by a recent flamewar (a very rude creationist posting on an evolutionary biologist's blog), some mangled quotes:

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: This is not a book review. It is completely and utterly wrong to call this a book review. Nevertheless, it is about a book. And there will be some mention of my reaction to the first 40 pages of the book, after which I stopped reading...

A Princess of Roumania, by Paul Park.
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A cool-sounding name, for a cool-looking creature.

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A follow-up to this entry:

The local university library has magazine collections, including New Scientist. Unfortunately, the magazine collections are incomplete (what they will have instead of the missing issues is a thick wodge of blank paper, for pity's sake), so my attempt to find articles on astrophysics (and/or Chandrasekhar himself, of course) did not pan out.

However, the library does also have a physics and astronomy library, and there I found "A quest for perspectives : selected works of S. Chandrasekhar" (in 2 volumes), edited by Kameshwar C. Wali. An introductory note before the miscellaneous writings at the end of the second volume specifically mentioned dragonflies in one of Chandra's papers.
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Yesterday was such a nice day that I invented a new religion while waiting for the bus.

Heh.
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Frederik Pohl wrote a book called Starburst, which has a paragraph that I've always found to be memorable, about something called "Chandrasekhar's other limit" (Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an eminent astrophysicist, and the Chandrasekhar Limit refers to a mass around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun - the article linked to explains more).

Today, I dug out the book and typed out the paragraph about the supposed other limit:

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I have taken
the Illudium Q-36
that was in
your hideout

and which
you were probably
planning
for your doomsday device

You are an
evil mad genius
and I
am a rabbit

And what
is new
by you,
Professor?

-- Bugs Coney Bunny