Matters Concerning my Encounter with Germaine Greer

Oh man. I've posted controversial blog entries before, but nothing I have previously posted can compare to the sheer provocativeness you are about to read...

This, is Germaine Greer:



And I went to the NSW Teacher's Conference Center book talk (organised by Gleebooks) to see what she had to say.

Her lecture was good. She had some original concepts to grapple with, her new book Shakespeare's Wife sounds interesting, and her side topics she talked about were as relevant as ever.

But quite a few things angered me somewhat about Greer when I stepped up to ask a question at Q & A, she said that "I will only let a woman ask the first question, not a man" (there was one man in front of me at the time), before remarking "And certainly not a BOY!".

I was the only young man my age there. Because I was a young man she referred to me as a "BOY!", which is rather insulting in itself, but more so was her remark that "You look like you're up to mischief" when I attempted to ask the question "What would you say to a young man who wants to repair the sad and sorry state of his gender, when all we have to look to for inspiration is Fight Club?"

She then said "You look to me like you are a conscientious eccentric", and "Do you really only have Fight Club to look to for inspiration?" as she raised her eyebrow. Because I was too intimidated to answer, she claimed "You seem to also want to take up as much time as possible, next question", before even answering my question properly.

She just didn't take me seriously. Not only because of my gender, but because of my age. Greer refers to Cambridge Dons who won't agree with women's intellectual life as "schoolboys". This is particularly telling, since it appears she thinks schoolboys lack the ability to do more than cause trouble at intellectual events, and the ability to have a rich intellectual life at all.

I was singled out for being a young man, because I was the only young man my age there. If I was older I might have been taken seriously, but I doubt it.

Makes you wonder whether this women's liberation supporter believes men deserve equality as well, doesn't it?

My Bone to Pick with "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

Audrey Hepburn may be remembered as the classiest women of all time, but that aside, as far as I remember, she plays a pretty annoying character in Breakfast At Tiffany's.

And don't say I hate romantic movies because I'm a man. That's just stereotyping. The reason why I didn't like Breakfast at Tiffany's was because having seen Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady previously, I expected far less gold-digging behaviour on Audrey's part in a movie with her in it.

Make no mistake, she acts well and is pretty, and talented too, but to me the fault may not be with Hepburn but with the role she plays.

It's a very hard to understand movie for a young man. I could barely figure out what was going on most of the time, apart from the Cat and the stereotypical angry Japanese dude played by Mickey Rooney. Audrey Hepburn may have been made famous by this movie, but for some reason I didn't like it. There's probably a lot of undertones my innocent mind of 18 years raised as a gentleman missed, but that's not the only thing I found annoying. The writer dude who courts Holly (Hepburn's character) assumes that he "owns" Holly because he loves her. This smacks of patriarchal ideology to me. I expected Hepburn to be a stronger female lead in this movie than what actually occurs in the film. And the whole glamour thing is alien to me. Considering I barely spend much money on clothes it's easy to see why this might be the case with my interpretation of the film.

I've probably missed the point of the movie completely, but I expected the story to be clearer and more comprehensible than what I got when I came to see this movie at FilmBuffery Club in school.

Two Short Book Reviews: 11th March 2008

I've found some particularly good books to review, and here they are:



Odd and the Frost Giants is the best Neil Gaiman book I've read in years. His children's fiction ranks very highly alongside J.K. Rowling's in quality, yet he has a very different style, using Norse mythology to weave together a heartwarming tale of a crippled boy who sets out on an adventure to Asgard, but not without help. Gaiman makes the historical harshness of Viking lore appropriate for children, not by censoring himself or talking down to his readers, but simply by pointing out just how silly some elements of Norse life were. A good read for little warriors of all ages.



The Stolen Child is a book I mentioned on my Ten Obscure Books You'll Love list that I posted on this blog earlier on, but the book is so good I'll give it another treatment. Two boys, one Changeling who becomes a Human, and one Human who becomes a Changeling, both lead very different lives after they are switched, and nostalgia for the lives they once had is contrasted with the realities of growing up in the real world. Faeries and their place in the real world is threatened by a loss of the old ways, as childhood comes to an end. Hardly a major analysis of a very deep and philosophical Fantasy novel which probably deserves to have more detail examined, but it now sits among my favorite books on my shelf, forever to be cherished as a classic in my eyes.

Something is rotten in Denmark

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/catalogue-of-complaint-as-ikea-walks-all-over-danes/2008/03/07/1204780065667.html

This is terrible. Reading Fight Club makes you guilty enough about resorting to buy IKEA furniture because you can't afford the fancy stuff.

But this is in a league of its own in cultural insensitivity. I just assembled a big fat BILLY bookshelf from IKEA the very day I read this in the paper. Yet every minute I was in the shop, the specter of the news item was troubling me.

- Jacob Martin
AKA Jake of All Trades

Two wrong numbers make a right

I got a new mobile phone. This can only mean one thing: Recycled phone numbers.

Basically, I found out firsthand how wrong a wrong number can get, to have it resolved by a second wrong number call.

The first was an SMS written by a woman who had been dumped by her boyfriend via SMS. When the phone suddenly rang, playing the new Master of Puppets ringtone I had put on it via USB, little did I know that the shock of what I was about to encounter was far greater than the shock of Metallica suddenly blasting from one's pocket at full volume.

After I read this masterpiece of foul-mouthery, this tour de force of threats of bodily harm, I immediately deleted it from my phone. Somehow I regret doing this, but with a curious mother wondering who called me I had to act fast. To put it simply, it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

Then today, some chap called me looking for a bloke called "Luke". I asked him if he or somebody he was calling on behalf of was responsible for the colourful and eyebrow raising text message I recieved yesterday, after I heard the screaming obscenities of a woman in the background.

In this man's despair, he bluntly put it: "Oh... SHIT!".

Before he hung up, I heard the woman scream "FUCKING KID!".

I know this, I probably wouldn't have liked the events that would have happened if I pointed out the text message went to an 18 year old schoolboy. Oh well, the Universe sorts things out in ways you can't imagine.

- Jacob Martin
AKA Jake of All Trades

Ask not for whom the dice roll, they roll for thee

http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2008/03/04/local_news/doc47cd95a012996795923538.txt

Gary Gygax is dead. Yes, he created Dungeons and Dragons, and yes, I never knew him in person. But I have played 3.5 edition of D&D and I loved it.

Is it possible to mourn a man's death never having known him in person?

For me, this isn't something everybody will mourn about, like what happened to Heath Ledger's death and subsequent media circus. Gygax will probably not get a fancy funeral (but he deserves one) and most people I know don't even know his name or what he did for the Fantasy genre games market.

I did not know him, but I played some version of the game that he gave life to. It's like how you can love an author having never met them in person, but you know them from the books they wrote. 3.5 edition D&D was not made by Gygax, but if it wasn't for him, D&D would not exist.

Unlike Heath Ledger, there are no suspicious circumstances to his death. He will get no media circus picking his bones. And this enables the right people to mourn his passing, not out of socially acceptable pity, but out of genuine emotion.

This man's contribution to Fantasy inspired me to write in the genre, and develop my research further than the Monster Manual to see where the many legendary beasts came from. I came across the game at a time in my life where my imagination was prepared to be sparked by something, something I could interact with, not a videogame, but a game purely powered by the imagination. And I thank you for the new direction you set my life in, Gygax. Without you I'd still be writing copy-cat LOTR dreck that I was working on in Year 8 High School.

I never knew you, Gygax, but I will still mourn your death, that came not at the hands of a Beholder or some monster like that, but a more mundane slaying from a medical condition. Maybe a Level 20 Necromancer cast a spell on you, I wouldn't be at all surprised. But it's odd, when you contemplate how simple and mundane the deaths of Fantasy writers and guardians of imagination are.

Terry Pratchett got Alzheimer's earlier this year. He's not dead yet, and is still useful, but we must remember that no mortal creator will live forever, and they must be cherished while they live. Gygax, you'll be rolling d20s in heaven, I know you're doing it right now, you lovable old geek-king.

- Jacob Martin
AKA Jake of All Trades

There once was a man named Professor Wilhelm...

And I helped him set up his blog.

He'll be arguing with me over his blog posts occasionally. Consider him the alternative voice of my head. You can find his blog on the Interesting Links and Blogs toolbar.

That is all for now.