The Voyage of the Lost Treader

So once there was this guy named C.S. Lewis, and he wrote this amazing series of novels about a magical land called Narnia. One of the most amazing of these seven stories is called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The framework of the story is a sea voyage, but the themes are deeper themes of personal development and . . .

. . . the new movie based on this book touches on some of them, and they get in most of the key episodic elements, but I kind of feel like they missed the overall point. Also, somebody in Walden Media is clearly a Lost fan. I don't really think mini green Smoke Monsters were exactly what Lewis had in mind. Somehow. I dunno. There was also something highly reminiscent of a hatch moment, some "Others," eerie whispering voices, and some sort of nameless evil that had to be overcome by a more or less arbitrary action which, in the end, didn't seem to answer any questions or have much to do with anything.

Also, not related to Lost, the undragoning of Eustace was pretty disappointing . . . although not as disappointing as I was afraid it was going to be.

I think if you don't know the story, it was probably a decent movie as far as entertainment goes. But I just threw in a spoiler so . . . maybe not. Heh.

LOST Gets in on the Act

So I just watched last night's episode of LOST. Evidently Jacob is a Pelagian and the Man in Black is an Augustinian? But Jacob is the good guy (with his heresy) and the Man in Black is the villain. Oh how very trendy of them.

Just think. If I weren't taking a church history class, I might have been able to enjoy that last episode . . .

The Mother of All Tartars

What in the world is cream of tartar anyway? In spite of actually having used it in a recipe that came from the Living History Museum where I used to work, I have a very very difficult time not imagining it as the dried and powdered form of the stuff they scrape off your teeth at the dentist's. Tartar. You know. How did the stuff get its name, anyway? Does it have anything to do with either cream or tartar?

Is cream of tartar what makes tartar sauce, tartar sauce? Why isn't that called "cream of tartar" instead? It's creamier. And how did all this stuff get the word "tartar" applied to it in the first place? Isn't "Tartar" an ethnic group? Not to instigate a racial slur, but do Tartars have exceptionally bad teeth? (I would think if that's how pre-plaque tooth-scum got its name, and we were going with notorious racial stereotypes . . . well, let's just say I can think of another people group whose name we could use instead.) Did the Tartars invent cream of tartar and tartar sauce?

Furthermore, where in the world did the phrase "the mother of all . . . whatevers" come from? Usually it is applied to some enormous, impressive example of something, but I would think that phrase should mean the first example of something. I, for example, am some inches taller than my mother, and not very much thinner than she.

That last musing came from watching a commercial last night in the middle of Lost, where some truck or something was "the mother of all . . . " trucks? Maybe? I don't know. As to why I was thinking about cream of tartar on my commute this morning? The answer to that question is, conveniently, exactly the same as the answer to all the other questions I've asked in this post: I have no idea.