"Hello Devilfish!" by Ron Dakron: A Book to Avoid

I want to call this book bad.

                The only thing really keeping me from doing so is that it is, as far as I know, alone in its genre. There are no other books like it. Maybe that’s a good thing.

                I picked this up at my library. I’m not sure what the buyer was thinking. It sounded unique. Basically, it is the monologue of a giant stingray as he destroys Tokyo. A bigger monster, more of a squid, pursues him who the narrator thinks wants to make him his boyfriend.

                The narrator then falls into a vat of human growth hormone and become a human, albeit a blue human. Then he has to deal with being a naked human stranger in Tokyo that is still under attack from the giant squid thing. That plot resolves, but incompletely.

                The plot is bad.

                The author missed some weird character issues. Somehow the narrator speaks early about how he knows manglish – a jumbled English based on the aesthetic contents of the letters and not the meaning of the words. Think of the 90s vogue for kanji tattoos that “mean” strength but really represent the steadfastness of the peasant woman. But the narrator is also somehow very concerned and mock contemptuous of the modern study of language and big literature. I hate to apply the character’s faults to the author, but if this part of the book is an indication of the outsider status of the author, there is a very clear reason he’s an outsider – he’s just not that good of a writer.

                But don’t think the book is all bad. There is one redeeming quality. The book is very short. In fact, it was the reason I kept reading. Even if it was horrible, it was over soon.

 Edit:

One more thing. There's this annoying interjection the narrator uses all the time -- the title of the book, and variations of it. Is it an in-joke I'm missing? I don't know!

Symbology: An Academic Reflection

I realized

this morning

the Da Vinci Code

has been out long

enough that there is

probably an army of young

Symbology instructors

adjuncting

at directional schools,

wondering

why their lives are

nothing

like Robert Langdon's.

In their darker

moments,

they wonder

why they didn't listen

 to their uncle and

major in something

practical, like

engineering.

When they get

whimsical,

they go over

to the archaeology

department and swap

stories where they hear

about the exploits

of one Dr. Jones.

The funny thing about people that think the country is founded on "Judeo-Christian" values.

Moses ambled down from the mountain with ten laws, right?

"You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make idols.
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet."

Two of which are illegal 99% of the time. One that is illegal in court. And those aren't unique. Its not like all cultures were stealing and murdering with impunity until they came across this. In the first half the lord sounds like a bad boss.

Look also at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5- 7). Too long to reproduce here, but it also doesn't have that founders feel.

Because what so many people seem to forget is that the founders were not a homogeneous group. They disagreed and fought, especially about the scope of the state. That's why the constitution is a secular document, with specifically no religious tests and the very first freedom in the first amendment in the bill of rights is against an establishment of religion.

The one founding document that does express a creator is the Declaration of Independence, and that is very nonspecific. As I understand the idea of a creator was more akin to the idea of the watchmaker. As a watch implies a watchmaker, a universe implies a universe-maker. Also, I forget where in the Holy Book the fact that we are granted life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness comes from. It's closer to the formulation from John Locke about "Life, Liberty, and Property," but the Founders couldn't say that when they owned people as property.