The Pocket and the Pendant response

I found out about the audiobook version of the Pocket and the Pendant
by complete fluke. My friend Kelsey, who recommended it to me found
it by a complete fluke. The reason I’m saying these wild, crazy and
zany things is that the two stories of discovery are very
synchronistic which is one of the themes that the book explores.
“Ahhhhh, that’s brilliant” I most surely hear you saying.

The book focuses around a young teen named Max Quick. The book starts
off with Jack McNulty denying Max Quick a seat on the bus. Time then
freezes, leaving only a few conscious beings to roam around the face
of the earth. Max finds Casey, a girl also unaffected by the time
stop, or the pocket as they begin to call it. Together, they travel
eastward towards the suspected source of all this madness. The book
is about finding out about what the hell is happening, finding out
who the characters really are in their innermost selves, Max
especially among the others.

One of the reasons that I love this book so much, and that it’s
different than most that I’ve gone through is that I listened to it
in audiobook form. This book gave me faith in the world of
audiobooks, showing that I can enjoy and concentrate on one. The
Pocket and the Pendant in itself was done with a lot of spirit; it
was free, the music that went along with it was superb (a soundtrack
ran throughout the entire thing) and was all in all very enjoyable to
listen to. The way I preferred to listen to it was with wrapping a
bedsheet around my head to let my mind flow with the heaping amount
of superb imagery.

Imagery is created from great ideas, which this book was formulated
from. One of the most memorable chapters was the one focusing on the
lovely Mr. E. It was basically a conversation between Max’s group and
the philosophical, god type person. It stressed how much of a dream
we live in, with a memorable line being “Life is a dream and you are
the dreamer”. The book is formulated with ideas that are very down to
earth and creative. Mark Jeffery has a really interesting theory on
how the world was created, with us humans originally being slaves.
The reason it’s so interesting is that he’s formulating ideas for
things that we think we know, and also bringing to the surface things
he’s really been interested in throughout his life and presenting
them in a real interesting way.

One of the feelings I left with from just having finished the book
and listening to the question and answer period was “Wow, this guy is
flippin’ great, he has a life, and he’s doing what he loves!” I was
just so happy and proud of him that he has a life, when so many
people having lost theirs. He’s thinking below the surface,
theorizing and being receptive to all sorts of great things. I really
loved the question and answer period and I’ll definitely tell you
why. First of all, he reads the questions out and then answers them
in long and winding answers, going to the depths of his mind to
retrieve thoughtful answers. He openly shares his interests and
presents them in a way which we can understand. A piece that piqued
my interest in the q&a period was on the subject of time. He says
that time is a system that was created because humans cannot
understand eternity, it’s these sort of things that play the role of
the base guitar in the book. I’m just real happy that Mark Jeffery
hasn’t been seduced by $$$, has a life and is openly willing to share
it in a very creative way.

So overall, I’d definitely recommend this book to you, with it being
very deep, the author being a great person and the story being very
entertaining. (get it on itunes as a podcast to listen to).

- Joel Christopher Penner

Katamari Damacy Reflection / Review

Katamari Damacy. It’s one of the best video games in existence I’d say. It’s premise, spirit, and idea is all so original and amazing! The premise is that the stars have been destroyed by your comically self-centered father. The prince is commanded to fill the sky back up. You do this by getting your katamari (ball) and rolling around various places picking everything from colour televisions to skyscrapers up in your ever-growing ball of stuff, people and everything else.

Katamari Damacy doesn’t require you to figure out a complex story, idiotic control scheme or anything like that. It demands your brain at the moment it’s being played, and the more you use it the more you get out of it. It’s control scheme is simple, just using the two analog sticks in unison. The soundtrack is very uplifting, and the graphics are beautiful in their astounding colour and harmony. It’s also a very centering game to play, something that can get your soul back into place. It’s the only game that I play religiously, just because it always invites you to find something new in the amazing depth Katamari Damacy offers.

There are 3 basic worlds in which you roll around in. Each of the many stars and constellations you create are all so different in how they utilize the world and your mind. For instance, while creating the constellation Gemini, you’re finding twins; cats, campfires, humans and everything else. While going through the level, you’re constantly on the lookout for twins (not that they’re uncommon). This level especially makes you use your mind. You’re always on the lookout for the random twins, which requires a lot of concentration.

Katamari Damacy has also played a role in my changing view on videogames. It’s opened my mind up to the immense possibility videogames have, and how rarely a developer grasps that potential. Katamari Damacy shows you that it isn’t necessary to have a really powerful system and a bunch of add-ons to make a great game. On a personal level, it’s helped me to see videogames more openly in admiring their beauty in how imaginative this game is.

One of the more interesting parts is what people think the meaning of the game is. A while back, I posted a topic on the Katamari Damacy community asking everyone what they thought the game meant. The ideas people came up with were awesome! One of the best theories was how Katamari Damacy is a reflection on Japanese and north american culture in how people get so caught up in their materialistic desires. I’m sure we can all relate to that reality. By using the idea of the katamari (which means clump) taking away all of our material possessions and shooting them into space, the theory is supposed to reflect an ideal oneness of everything.

The ending song in Katamari Damacy (which means spirit by the way) definitely enforces the theory above. It’s talking about love and how we need to “roll” people into a ball of oneness. One could say that it’s easy to throw meanings together for such a random game, but I think there’s something in here.

Writing on Afraid

The first thing that came to mind when I thought of the overused word afraid was SINISTER. Sinister is something harmful or wicked, which are both definitely triggered by being afraid. You can also be afraid of yourself and the power within. Being afraid is usually a gut feeling, something that your intuition tells you, it’s also something that can be imposed on someone through intimidation. Gangs and the government use forms of intimidation, “come over to Jerry’s or I’m gonna pump you full of lead”, “Please return your tax forms to the Winnipeg main office, unless immediately done so we will evict you and DEPORT YOU TO HELL”. Yeah, that sort of thing. I was once intimidated by a gang member most likely when he tried to steel my bike. “Gimme your bike” is the phrase that rings in my mind, he then punched me, but his initial statement was just intimidation. Intimidation can be the basis for a lot of nasty things. We can be afraid of new experiences or processes, for instance I was afraid of doing the cluster that preceded this vignette which makes sense because I have nothing to base the idea of clusters on except for the lame school brainstorms we do. Brainstorms are a watered down version of a cluster without any instruction given on how to do them. This is part of the problem of the schooling system, it does not explain how to do things adequately, but that’s only part of it no doubt. Being afraid is often something people try to hide, because for a lot of people the thought of having a fear is not wanted. Trying to hide the natural emotion of fear is disastrous and can lead to crap. World leaders are afraid but try to hide it for the sake of their people. I think the concept of world leaders is kind of odd, one usually immature person trying to lead a nation of millions. I guess for me the word afraid triggers sinister ideas which ties in with my occasional cynical view on life possibly. It makes sense without that cynical view on things though because being afraid is fearing something which could quite possibly be sinister. Afraid, sinister, same thing, dictionaries are hard to read.

Writing: Chapter 1

Writing 1

I like playing with fire. It’s a fun thing to do, some may say it’s hazardous but I really don’t care. Of course I use my common sense, and it’s never gotten out of hand. The reason I find it so fun is because I guess of how the fire eats its fuel up. I like the fires that I can interact with, not the boring kind that are in a fire pit fueled by systematically fed wood logs. I like it when I steal some fire from it’s home and start another one, fueled by my creativity and intuition. The creativity and intuition in this case would be the little pieces of kindling I find around nature. It’s especially fun when I find little pieces of things that love to be burnt, for instance a dried pine branch or cooking oil (spray cooking oil on a spatula and burn it and it produces an amazing spatula).

I’ve had a few adventures with fire as the above paragraph would suggest. One of the most notable adventures I’ve had, or the one that comes to mind without effort is one I had with my friend Ben. We started off with a mosquito candle that gives off a slightly odd but pleasant smell if I recall correctly. It burned and burned with no variation until we got creative. Running to the kitchen and back with loads of wax paper added a ton of fun. After adding swaths of wax paper and other combustible goodies we had a hot enough fire burning that it was delightfully eating away at the very wax it was made of. We thought to ourselves and proclaimed “Wow! This is an amazing fire burning from a camilla candle!” Now comes the amazing part of the experience. I don’t know how we started it, but we started spitting water onto the fire. We got mouthfuls of water and spit it on, producing a 5 foot high tower of flame! Hardy (Ben’s dad) joined in, or at-least observed and we continued to enjoy this for a while. It eventually died from our water we were putting in it. In future days we tried this experiment again, but it hasn’t worked since.

Writing 2

I love my iPod. It may seem like an odd choice for when one thinks of love they usually think about love between humans. I love my iPod partly because of it’s creator, Apple, partly because it plays the music which I also love but foremost because of how well it’s design. To the general public, the iPod is perceived as an aesthetic masterpiece. It’s design externally and the software is all so simple and human. It’s easy to navigate without any useless bits of anything to deter you from the experience.

The other half of this is as I mentioned the company that created the iPod, Apple. I would say I’ve felt more love for the company and it’s products simply because I use computers more than music players. The main reason why I love Apple computers (I’m writing on an iBook right now) is once again in how simple and human most of it is. Apple has an amazing attention to detail and the looks of things. One of the main features I love in the Mac OS X operating system is how integrated everything is. For example, you make a movie with iMovie which is a very simple and well done program, you upload it to your .mac account and the whole world can see it with the click of a few buttons.

This seamless integration lets you use the computer more as a tool rather than a thing to get concerned with itself.

Writing 3

I care about my friend Kelsey. Overall, my lifelong friendship with him has proved to be good and worthwhile (but of course, which real friendships aren’t?). When we were younger we would most often meet in the context of the 4 watershed kids, Kelsey, Sean, Erik and I. This was good, although I often felt left out of the group since Erik and Sean seemed to be better friends and Kelsey would tag along with them, leaving me to ponder and loath their D&D games. As we got older, Kelsey started to relate to me more since we were both older than Erik and Sean. Their was a period when we didn’t get along very well, I guess since he was having a hard time getting used to being a teenager and I was dreading that stage and staying as the thing before a teen and pre-teen whatever. Now that we’re both teenagers our friendship is pretty good right now.
Their are a couple reasons for our friendship that I can come up with. For one, we’re both nines on the enneagram system, so I can maybe see myself in him a bit easier than with most people. We both like video games to an extent, me more than him, we both love reading, although he does it more, and we can also relate to each-other in the school context pretty well, making random jokes in the hallways. Our senses of humour generously compliment each-other, although I sometimes feel left out since he can laugh at almost anything remotely funny.

I’ve also experienced being inspired by him, for example. I’ve tried listening to audiobooks, but failed. I found them to be to hard to concentrate on. I also have really had a desire to listen to them since they are a new way to enjoy books and can provide a different experience with the author reading them and all. Kelsey on the other hand can spend a whole afternoon listening to one book for the 8th time (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). This has inspired me to listen to them as I have this afternoon.

Writing 4

The word write conjures up a few dry and wet, thus moist images. They’re a pen and pencil, a keyboard, with the most notable being countless days dreading writing a response to a book which I have committed myself to doing. I guess that’s partly why I’m going through this book though.

The word write also conjures up some of my friends’ responses to reading journals. On my side I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing responses to books over the year, whilst the majority of my peers have expressed their hatred for them five times over. I can understand why since writing is such a dreadful process but I wish they would give it a better chance.
The word write also makes me think of a forest with some prairies at the side of a gravel road leading to a cabin most likely because that’s what I was looking at a moment before.

Cereal Cereal Cereal CEREAL

So let’s make up this little story here. After a long, long day of pure work and NO play, I come downstairs for a bowl of cereal. I’m anticipating what it’s gonna taste like and looking forward to it with a grin. The milk is good, we got sugar so we’re all set to go.

Cereal is very popular. It has been completely entrenched in our north american culture for well over a century. Who hasn’t heard of the typical parent-kid argument of buying the sugar cereal which marketers try so very hard to sell to the kids . Most cereals have mascots to appeal to kids, making cartoons, giving away movies and anything to sell the endless boxes of grain. There’s the debate between health and sugar cereals, preservatives in the boxes. With this, it’s a pretty debated topic (specifically how marketers target kids) which enforces my point of how it’s entrenched in our culture.

Their is one negative aspect of cereal that I find, although it is influenced by my personality. I find that it’s easy to eat a lot of it. It feels and tastes so good to be crunching the slightly soggy cereal mouthful after mouthful. It’s a good boredom food meaning (easy to eat lots mindlessly, crunch pour sprinkle repeat). It’s like when you eat cereal, you enter another world sprinkled with temptations (milk says “Pour more of me in... MORE OF ME!!!” cereal “What he said”). You (or I) have to pay attention to this crazy cereal world, I guess this isn’t only for cereal but that’s what I’m talking about now so hah.

Sprinkling sugar on less-sweet cereals such as cheerios is also an issue (a very debatable one I might add). My friends and I have had quite a few laughs involving the sugar container, with me pouring it and them pushing it up so all of it comes out. It’s hilarious at the time, but it makes for a nasty bowl of crap, which reminds me of the saying “everything in moderation”. Back to my original point though, it’s easy to keep on sprinkling sugar on over and over again. It’s not a big issue, but it leaves a nasty aftertaste in your mouth.

Some of the typical cereals include Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes and All Bran. These cereals which have existed for near a century are the staples of breakfast cereal culture. My favorites depend on what phase of cereal eating I’m currently in. Sometimes I’ll love the bowl of cheerios without anything added, while other times I’ll like honey bunches of oats and vector (currently). It’s really just the battle between sugar and non sugar that determines these phases, because it’s hard to get off a sweeter cereal for plain cheerios if ya know what I mean.

I’m always slightly taken aback at how carelessly the cereal companies use the boxes. When I’m sitting down eating cereal, I’m usually looking at the box. It usually has some half-assed advertisement or an uncreatively put information piece on a charity etc. Personally, I’d love to have a story on the box, or something that’ll interest me. I guess the content on the back of the box isn’t really an issue for most people though... or is it?