I was/am a huge Lost fan.  This is partly due to my curious nature but also due to the fact that the series had a mythical edge to it.  Who doesn’t like myths?  I have the entire series and decided to catch up recently.

There are strong parts and weak parts.  Watching knowing what’s coming or rather why something is occurring now makes it a different experience yet a rewarding one all the same.  Those tiny details I might have missed the first or second or third time now shine as beacons of structure.  Also, since you know the “secret” of it all you tend to focus more on the characters and their intricacies.  It’s really the only part that remains a mystery since their inner workings are never truly revealed.  As the show progressed, they matured, grew and died.  You become attached to them and kind of fit into their shoes.

The other interesting factor is that I’m now a father.  The final episode aired a couple months before I had my daughter and re-watching the episodes with this new paradigm shifts my appreciation for it.  I have a new appreciation for the links between the various characters.  Their motivations, struggles, failures and triumphs have a tremendously different impact today compared to only 2 years ago.

The sense of loss of someone else when you yourself have little to lose is a fleeting emotion.  You’re unable to properly empathize with them and that provides a different view to the show.  With a new set of values today, I can better relate to all of the characters as I feel I’ve been in most of their shoes.  I have been Charlie and had a hate for the world.  I have been Bernard and dedicated to his better half.  I had not been Claire to understand the loss of a child.  Or Jack’s undying need for his father’s affection.  These characters were shells to me.  Great shells but shells that I could not see have any substance.  Add a new life experience to the mix and the missing pieces of the puzzle are starting to fill.  When the picture is complete, when you can grasp the intricacies that people put so much effort into portraying, you really gain a new appreciation of the art form.

Finally, the flipside is that as a human I can take those on-screen experiences and put myself into those situations.  This has an effect of making you reflect on your own priorities and values.  This added introspection is welcome and the true sign of personal growth.  So in a way, I have grown alongside these characters and though my struggles have been different, we each have gained insight into the true meaning of our lives and I am thankful for the trip.

Wikipedia has a decent article on the subject.  The topic comes to mind after reading Ender’s Game, where the main character is quite obviously gifted at at the same time, ostracized for it.  The gift is personal, the hindrance social.  People, especially kids, hate different.  Survival instinct.

I remember quite a few elements from my childhood after being identified.  First, I hated the idea of being alone, though in retrospect I’ve always been.  My parents wanted to put me in a better program at school and I purposely dropped my grades to avoid it.  That didn’t work and they moved me anyway.  I remember being in math class and understanding the solutions without understanding the methods.  The teacher would explain the problems for 30 minutes then give the class 15 minutes to complete them.  I usually just skimmed through and wrote answers.  My high school teachers really hated me for it since they thought I cheated.  I had to write out the solution long-form, which to be honest, I had trouble with.

You know that feeling when you know something is just right but you can’t say why?  I have had that my entire life, like the details don’t matter, just the big picture.

My social disabilities however have pushed me to focus on the details in order to better relate to people.  If I can do something really well but can’t explain how, that pisses people off since I seem high and mighty.  In fact I don’t know the answer off hand and it takes time to figure it out.  So flip that and I spend more time explaining why than actually doing.  The social disability is actually an intellectual hindrance but my only method of coping.

Back on point.  My wife recently asked me if I considered myself or the people I went to school with gifted.  In all honesty, I can only think of a handful of people I would call truly gifted, myself included, but nearly all of my social circle has an above average intellect and desire to perform.  People who work hard and succeed at it.  I don’t have particular regrets about life as most of it was out of my control but I do realize, as I get older, that I could have achieved more if I was given the chance/support to do so.  I don’t forgive people for their ignorance but I understand it.  It also tempers my judgment with my daughter and will help me frame options for her in the future.

As rambling as this post might seem, there’s a catharsis inherent to the process.  Let’s just say that if you want to have kids, it’s not a 5 year job, it’s a lifetime job and a calling.  My respect for those parents who truly want the best for their children is endless and society’s future is dependent on that particular gene overtaking the “have babies because you should” social stigma.

So  it was 2 days ago and I’m late.  Too bad.  Bell had a mental health day and I thought it was a good idea.  Two particular items were of interest and you can watch them online.

First is the Talk on Suicide special.  Some good stuff here and it’s nice to see people talk about it.  Too often people don’t talk and it’s the lack of information and acceptance that builds bigotry.  Sort of like gays while I was growing up.  People didn’t talk about it and it was taboo.  Now we can understand it a bit more, even though some might not accept it, they understand it.

Second is Michael Landsberg’s Depression and Sports.  Clara Hughes, Stephane Richer and Daryl Strawberry are in it as well.  This is more about showing that even elite athletes have “normal” problems than anything else and you truly feel for their situations.  It’s really good.

It’s not an easy road and there are very few people available to help you since they don’t understand the mechanics.  It’s the “suck it up” mentality really.  Well, life isn’t what it was 20 years ago.  People weren’t half a million in debt just to put a roof over their head.  People didn’t have huge hospital bills.  Life was physically harder back in the day but it’s mentally harder now.   People understand a broken leg, they do not understand a broken mind.  The more we talk, the better for everyone.

I have a Sony e-Reader.  Have had it for nearly a year now since I bought it before a trip south.  During that trip I’m pretty sure I read 6 books, so from a space perspective, great.   Just being able to have something to read at any given time is quite nice and it makes the bus rides into and out of work fly by.

As for types of books, don’t let Chapters or Coles fool you.  There are in fact very few quality books that come out each year and if you have a penchant for a given field (fiction, self-help, etc..) odds are you can read all the books worth reading if you only read a book every other month.  What this does not help with is the backlog of quality books already written.  I have a penchant for fiction, particularly sci-fi, though I can read just about any fiction book, if the quality is there.

I read the Harry Potter books and they were really “meh” but I could understand their importance.  They were easily accessible to a generation that had essentially given up on reading.  Dan Brown is another type of these authors.  Actually, he’s quite a bit worse than Rowling, probably one of the worst writers I have ever seen but his books are essentially tabloids, misconstruing facts and putting hooks everywhere.  Great page turners, great groan inducers.  I’m supposed to believe that the CIA computers can’t crack a 16 digit magic square cypher?  That a character that spends page after page talking spoilers all of a sudden shuts up for a chapter when a single sentence could sum up the entire book up to that point?  Wowza.

There is a reason there are classical authors and books that last for many many years.  They are not fads, they are poignant, well-constructed stories that you can re-read multiple times and get deeper meaning.  Fahrenheit 451, Foundation, VALIS, Divine Comedy, Iliad, Mice and Men, Sherlock Holmes.

The experience of reading, of taking the time to digest the words and transfer them into your head also makes you think about other things than what you see in the book.  If you read books and only see a movie in your head, then you are reading a script and not a book.  Books are more than the sum of their words, they are ideas that permeate the pages and make you want to keep reading once your done.  They make you want to re-read a chapter for that little item you think you missed that can open up a new story.  Books and reading and stories are humanity’s soul and will be the basis for the next human revolution – social interconnectedness.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, we still each only have one apple.  If I have an idea and you have an idea and we exchange ideas, we now have two ideas.

I don’t often link to MS stuff but this video is pretty cool.  Most exists already too.  Hand Waving is linked to Kinect, NFC (or RFID) exists on most credit cards and Proximity Sensors are being used in advertising.  Not to mention that new cell phones are coming with the last 2 items already installed.  Damn.

So I saw the final HP film this weekend. I had already read all the books in the winter. Took a week. I had conflicting issues with the books and the films – well – they didn’t help much.

To say that HK Rowling is a good writer is up for debate.  Her writing skills (the words) are adequate and the structure is relatively sound.  She doesn’t overexpose or use stupid allegories (hello Dan Brown!) and there’s a given logic to her stories.  Her messages are simple and I think that’s what people resonate with.

To say that she is a good author is a different matter.  The first two books are relatively simple in scope, with few large surprises.  Sure, you get the idea that the kids are just plain lucky at times but they are kids scrapping by and they don’t want the credit.  By the third book though, Harry is seen as some wizarding master yet in reality, he is bullshitting his way through every book, all the way to the end.  Think about it, does Harry change at all in personality from book 1 to 7 – after he finds out he’s a wizard?  Do any of the characters?  They are identical throughout and nothing changes but the setting.  The characters are bland and have zero self-discovery.

The last point I want to make, and it’s an important one, is that when you work in fantasy and specifically magic, you need to either make the items completely outside of reality OR an augmented reality.  Flying broomsticks?  Cool, it becomes the defacto method of transport in all the books – next to that portal thing they do.  Invisibility cloak?  Not cool.  You can use it to sneak EVERYWHERE and solve 90% of the problems found in the books – especially that only 2 people in the entire world can detect it.

The absolute worst culprit is the time turner, a device that lets you go back in time.  See, the thing about time travel is that it has no bearing on today.  If I want to go back and kill Hitler, I can do it today, tomorrow, 5 years from now, it makes no difference.  Why in the world is that device even in the books?  Oh, Diggory died in the graveyard at 8pm and at 7:55 the world’s baddest bad guy was reborn?  Let’s port back to 7:54 and stop it.  Pick a magical item in the HP world and you will find insane plot holes and luck.

So after reading the books I was mad as hell that HK is praised as some messiah for literature.  It’s a rip-off from dozens of stories already told (she’s been successfully sued for it too), written with the skill of a high school student and the technical prowess of a Cracker Jack box.  At least the films don’t take themselves seriously and avoid a lot of the absolutely retarded plot points from the books.

Oh, and Voldermort dying at the end of it all?  If you follow the plot points, he killed himself.  Just saying.