StandingWater Creations

This week marks an anniversary for me. I will be writing more when that anniversary hits. Just be prepared for me to sit down and write something about what is going on in a few days.

Second, I am working a lot. Had my first manager review today and got scored pretty low, comparatively, on the call we listened to. That was fine, I didn't really expect to nock the ball out of the park on this review. The next one is a different story.

Went Candlepin Bowling on Saturday night with a group of friends from my branch. They are all single adults and we had fun. Candlepin bowling, for those that are like me and have no clue, is bowling with a small wooden ball that is slightly larger than a botchy (sp) ball, slightly heavier, and thrown, hurled, sent down a wooden lane (like in ten pin bowling) to knock over ten pins. There is a level of skill that three games and more than an hour of playing didn't sink in. Some of the people I was with seemed to pick it up, or remember it, far quicker than I.

I did purchase Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Saturday and enjoyed the book, yesterday. Not a long book and not what I was expecting. People told me that if my expectation of the book was based off of the kampy movie version than I was going to be disappointed. I have a vague memory, mostly nightmares, of the oompa loompa's from the kampy movie version, beyond that… not much of anything. I don't recall ever having read the book before, or at least not all of it, and after reading an article on Roald Dahl in the New Yorker the other day I felt that I needed to see what this subversive writers style was all about. Needful to say, I liked it.

Basically, the article in the New Yorker was specifically on Roald Dahl and his writing. Apparently, mothers and adults everywhere have, at times, been up in arms about his writing because the child generally comes out on top in the end, children are not just miscreants who are to listen to adults and eventually do what they say, and in the end potty humor combined with an overactive imagination leads to a ton of books sold worldwide (and six movies) based on one mans children's books. Roald Dahl's books are some of the most published and widely read books on the planet. Since he didn't write series (apparently this is extremely important) it is against type for him to be so popular.

For those of you that don't know what Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about, well… let me tell you. Basically we follow Charlie Bucket. A very poor child of very poor parents and very poor grandparents (four of them) trying to live on next to nothing. Mr. Bucket doesn't make enough to provide, in the beginning of the story, half of what that family needs - and later one quarter, and Charlie is the only child who never gets any chocolate bars, except for once a year on his birthday.

Willy Wonka is the owner of the local chocolate factory and world famous for his confections, and his eccentricities. He shut down the factory when corporate spies started stealing his ideas and opened the factory again when he had trustworthy workers who wouldn't sell him out.

He announces to the world that he is going to allow five children, the finders of five golden tickets, to tour his factory and to see his secrets. As a result of this each child will get a lifetime supply of chocolate and candy. The world goes crazy. Everyone begins looking for golden tickets, and in the end five children, Charlie included, find the tickets and are taken on a tour of the factory. Charlie, however, doesn't find the ticket until his lot in life becomes so miserable that he is practically starved to death and only by chance finds a dollar bill on the sidewalk and buys two chocolate bars.

The book then takes the reader through a fantastic factory where there are rivers of chocolate and mountains of fudge (literally) and blizzards of confectioners sugar, and where one child is sucked up a tube, another is blown up into a giant blueberry, another thrown down a garbage shoot, and the forth is shrunken to one inch tall. Each child gets the punishment that fits the personality, and the name, based off of their lack of willingness to listen.

In the end Charlie is told that he … well, Charlie doesn't do to bad in the end. There's a glass elevator and frightened old people and you learn that little boys are stretchy and that there's a vitamin Wonka and…. Needless to say, it's a good book even if you're an adult, no longer the child, looking at the world through mostly adult eyes. I really enjoyed this one and found it a relaxing, and amazing, Sunday read. I think I put all of two hours of total reading time into the book… you might be able to push that to three since I kept having to pause to help people at church and during meetings and for other responsibilities.

I'm also on a Hitchcock kick, in case I haven't said that at all, or enough, and watched Rope the other day. My review on that, and a whole pile of other movies, coming soon… I hope.