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Feeling rather sadface at the moment, for various reasons - a list which includes "still feeling sick and exhausted despite sleeping all evening" - so shall talk about some awesome things, and should-be-awesome things. I want to put something about Barack Obama on that, but I suspect that I won't feel right posting about Barack Obama until I can devote the time and energy to explaining why I'm quite frustrated about him as well as still pleased by some things about him, too.
Earlier this evening I took on the guitar tab for Black Sabbath's Iron Man, mostly just the opening riffs - not only are they pretty awesome, but it's also good practice for learning to do hammer-ons and bends. I love my Vox Valvetronic AD50VT amplifier - it has a lot of settings that emulate a range of amp styles etc, so by adjusting a few knobs, I can get it to sound just right for different music styles. (For Black Sabbath: UK 80s amp style, crank the gain a bit, throw in some reverb, and go.)
The guitar practice is a good lesson in patience, actually. I'm enjoying it, and I know I'm getting better - I'm much, much better than I was when I started, and I'm gradually improving over time. But I want to be good at this already, I want to play awesomely, and I can't. I try to believe that I will be able to, but it's going to take a long time.
Usually it's hard for me to sustain interest in something like this - I think it helps that playing guitar is consistently fun, and errors don't persist. I don't practice guitar for a few minutes, then look at what I've done and sigh at how much it sucks. One day I'll probably work on recording music I play, and so I will then have something that persists after I put the guitar down, but right now, it's just the memory of enjoyment.
I find myself reluctant to watch the first few episodes of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, despite having heard good reviews of it. I'm wary of it, I think, because the same people who recommend the series are often people who recommend the books, and I have some trouble with the books. Alexander McCall Smith always seems to write a little condescendingly to me - even when he's dealing with very adult subjects, his African-native characters, up to and including the intelligent and resourceful Precious Ramotswe, seem to be written like children's book characters. Up to a point, they're written like children. It bugs me a lot, and I read the first book, but beyond that, I just couldn't bring myself to get into it.
It weirds me out that so many people give the series such outstanding reviews. I find myself doubting my perceptions of the book - I mean, so many people say it's so wonderful, so am I the one who's wrong when I find the writing so problematic? Am I judging too harshly because I know that the author of this series of books about a black woman in Botswana is a white man?
And yet, the reviewers are generally white non-Africans, and even the non-white reviewers who praise it whose responses I've read have been American, and y'know, not that I want to bag on Americans or anything, but Americans of all races have a tendency to be a tad reductionist in their assumptions about African people, especially African natives from rural areas. (As do people from Europe and Australia and quite a lot of Asia.)
I'm in kind of an awkward position, really, in terms of speaking on this one. On the one hand, I am, in some respects, African, and I care quite a lot about the peoples of southern Africa.
On the other hand, I'm white, and I'm also Australian. I don't have major Authenticity credentials for critiquing the depictions of Botswanan native women.
On the gripping hand, no, really, it read like a children's book, even when the subject matter was adult, and Precious Ramotswe is written like the characters of kids' adventure books. I wanted to love it, and I couldn't bring myself to do so.
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