Skull Bearer's 'not to' list has been updated....

[skull_bearer]

...to include:

Do Not visit the Imperial War Museum while having a psychic day. You'll start picking up all the bad vibes around the renovated bombs and start to feel sick and dizzy. Also, visiting the Holocaust section is probably a bad idea too.

(seriously, I couldn't go near one of the exibits, I nearly fell over)

The whole list, which comprises of some several thousand tid-bits of information, remains one of the least heeded bits of advice in Skull Bearer's brain, thus she has nobody to blame but herself if she had to sit down on the floor halfway through her visit.

(It was a cool trip though, the museum's great and I learnt a lot. Sadly, the above lesson will not be one of those)

Incidentally, I am working on those lists.

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

Is there a full version of the 'not to' list?

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Not really, I forget a lot of them and keep adding to the list (as I've said, a completely futile action). Here are two I've bothered to write down.

It is impossible to read Terry Pratchett and listen to 'Change' by Deftones. Do Not Risk This!

Do not read George Orwell's 1984 while listening to the Cradle of Filth cover of Hallowed be thy Name, as depression will ensue.

Most of them are rather boring though.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

I promised myself I'd never read "1984" again at all (except if uni makes me). That book gave me the depression of my life. I don't know how old I was when I read it, but it was the first book I read in English (with a German copy for backup), except for the school crap, so probably about 12. After that I avoided books that were so close to reality like hell and only read soothing things like epic fantasy and sci-fi (the 50s space-battle kind where people really believed they could be attacked by Venusians, mainly, though some of the short-story anthologies I read held some frighteningly distopic stories of the 1984 kind as well). I read "Brave New World" a lot later, though both are said to be the two sides of the same coin, it frightened me a lot less. Maybe either because I was older and had gotten used to such things or, which I rather believe, it is too much like the world we really live in today, so it doesn't hold any terrors anymore. (Which in itself is also a frightening thought: we are living in one of the most disturbing dystopias ever written ...and just like the people in it, we don't even care.)
Oh god, I'm getting depressed again. I shouldn't, because I just finished reading Chetwyind's wonderful Dragonlance parody this afternoon and laughed so much my lungs and stomach are hurting now.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

It's bloody scary, and not in a good way. I can happily read Lovecraft until the cows come home (and sleep with the light on for a month afterward), but 1984 is terrible in a way that makes it no fun to read at all. I'd rather have Cthulhu eat the earth than see what people like those in the Ministry of Love would do with it.
I suppose that's because, while both Orwell and Lovecraft have the same theme that there is never a happy ending, and everything's an illusion, it's more comforting to believe that the bad guy's 'out there' than in our hearts.

Okay, I'm sorry, I'll go back to my X-men binge now. ;)

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's discomforting to know that we all have so much evil -or rather so much uncaring- in ourselves. For example, you can turn anybody into a killer by giving them the right reasons, be it bribing or threats. I suppose, under extreme circumstances, over 90% of all people would reveal some very nasty character traits. Also the saying that power corrupts I don't think is quite right. Everybody has these dark sides from the beginning, but as long as there's something to hold us back, they don't show.
It's fascinating, but it scares the hell out of me, too.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

There was this one experiment, I think it was done in the aftermath of the Holocaust, where they took a bunch of random people into a room where there was this person rigged up to an electrical generator. A person of authority then told them to pull a lever. The person tied to the generator started to scream, as though they were being eletrocuted. Again and again the authority told the person to pull the lever, and the vast majority did. The person connected to the generator was an actor, and no one was being hurt, but the person being tested didn't know this. Some continued to give shocks even after the actor feigned death.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

We did that in philosophy at school (that was one of the few subjects I liked!) and yes, it disturbed me, too. It shows how readily people do anything if they only can say "I had to!" or "They told me to do it!".
If I remember correctly, people accepted it best when the people who told them to push the button wore uniforms or medical attire, because that made them authority figures. People are always ready to clear their coscience by blaming others, even if it happens subconciously.

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

And yes, Chetwynd's parody is hilarious. I love his piss-take of my series! He wrote the next chapter, but didn't post it because it just crossed the line between 'parodying' and 'insulting'. Unconciously, of course.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

Insult you? Or Dragonlance in general?

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Me and my writing, basically I got the message that the continuity I had built up was being mocked because it was completely impossible and that I had written it badly. It was an accident, and Chetwynd apologied.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

Oh. But it's always hard to tell what people think is insulting. I hope Chetwynd will change it a bit and then put it up anyway.