Tuesday, December 5, 2006

You're Welcome

So, I've received some feedback from my "readership", and some people have checked out this here blog, but didn't read it because they realized there was writing on it --and reading, apparently, is not fun. I wish I could come up with a way to fun-i-fy the reading experience --oooh, like I could have a clown named Lusty Lester reach through the screen and pick their noses, or maybe make a ridiculously silly face. Well, I would find that fun.

Or, I could simply allow this blog be what it will be. You're welcome to read, or sometimes read, or mostly skim, or only look at the pictures, or just leave random comments. All or none of that is fine by me.

Choice is a crazy important thing, isn't it? It's freedom at its finest. I've been going through Huxley's Brave New World with my lovely grade 12s, and there is a passage that just gets me every time. Because I'm the sharing sort, I will provide a lovely excerpt for your READING pleasure:

"But I like the inconveniences," said the Savage.

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.


I will say nothing more. Ruminate, if you will. Well, I will say that if you haven't read this book and you enjoy thinking, you should go out NOW and get it. You won't regret it a whit. It is "one of the most bewitching and insidious works of literature ever written." Crazy prophetic, too (written in 1932).

Wow, I feel like a shameless peddler. Ah, well, I'd rather peddle knowledge than the Super Shammy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's great... whatever it was you said. i didn't so much read the words as note that there were indeed words there. many of them. and i respect that.. you know, the effort to put all those words up there. good job!

i especially enjoyed the picture. i really like reading pictures, more than words even.

mennoknight said...

I was just going to say the same thing. Way too long and I didn't read it, but it was probably really awesome.

Bott said...

You two are turds: noun (vulgar) 1. a ball or lump of excrement. 2. a contemptible person.

I'll try to be shorter next time to accomodate your wee little attention spans.

Allana & Ian said...

I read the whole thing. And it was great! Apparently, estrogen also gives girls a greater attention span.

~allana

Anonymous said...

I want the right to have less english homework (i ALREADY have the right to be unhappy) although i LOVE that book. the best novel study in all my years of high school by far. just thought I'd add that.