Observations & Cereal

[keiramarcos]

One

I think November could be the suckiest month ever. The weather is weird, the only holiday it has going for it is Thanksgiving and you don't even get presents or candy. Though my mother did promise to make me a carrot cake (best thing ever to come out of her oven). Additionally, if you're in the US -- you have to deal with Daylight Savings Time which totally fucks up my already stupid sleeping schedule.

Two

The only thing worse than having the never-ending flu for three weeks is to get a fucking head cold shortly after recovering from the goddamned flu. Having a cold while suffering from PMS makes me a little more crazy than normal.

Three

My "sim" on Sims Social on Facebook has the survival instincts of a lemming.

Four

3D movies make me sick but IMMORTALS was to quote my padawan "Freaking Badass!" -- As the favorite aunt, is it my job to correct is foul language? I'd feel like such a hypocrite if I did because I curse like a foul-tempered trucker from New Jersey. In other news regarding my padawan, he confessed to never having read "Call of the Wild" or "White Fang" while we were in the used bookstore so loaded him up with those two and Lord of the Flies. I cannot wait for his reaction to Lord of the Flies. He's already finished "The Hobbit" "Fellowship of the Ring" and "Two Towers" this year -- outside of his required school reading so I'm not going to push him for a fast turn around on those. His only real question so far about LOTR was more like a sardonic half-question/half-observation : "Why didn't they take that big eagle to the volcano? Also, why didn't they put it in some kind of protective box or bag so no one would get 'tainted' by the Ring?"

Right. I have no answers to these questions. He was much worse when he was reading Harry Potter because he quite seriously asked me if there was no child protective services in Great Britain because he couldn't understand how Harry Potter grew up in worse off circumstances than Oliver Twist in a so-called 'modern society'. 

Five 

Regarding my husband. I do adore the man. Really. But Thursday evening, in a period of forty-five minutes in the grocery store he managed to aggravate me so much that by the time we reached the cereal aisle I was wondering if I couldn't just leave him on the side of the road on the way home. Finally, I turned to him and basically hiss at him like a snake and say:: "Would you shut up? Seriously, you just made me have a full blown homicidal fantasy right here in the middle of the cereal aisle!"

In other news, I've posted a new section of Emotional Clockwork on Naked Nano.

Comments

[cold-shuga.livejournal.com]

i had to seriously stop and think on the LOTR questions. my answer would have been "it would have been a short book". my niece didn't like The Hobbit because she thought it was not kind to portray all dwarves as being stereotypically dwarfish. I tried to point out that that "they aren't real" and "it is a story". but kids these days are so friggin literal and intelligent! not at all full of dumbness like i was.

(they really could totally have just asked the eagles to fly them to the volcano couldn't they? damn.)

ps. i like november cause next comes december...which i really like.

[djaddict.livejournal.com]

OMG I hated "Lord of the Flies" when I had to read it in school. Ick. He will probably love it though. lol

#5. ROTFLMFAO!!

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Sebastian Sheppard can't swear until he enlists or has his first degree and he lives with some of the foulest mouths on the planet. Yes, I know he's a fictional character but the limit makes sense even for real life Padawans. Freedom to cuss can stunt his verbal creativity.

[keiramarcos]

Well,

He does have a rather extensive cursing vocabulary. Though he's already reading at a post high school level so I'm not so worried about that front.

I'm mostly just concerned about appearances. For instance, if we are out in public and some stranger hears him say: "What the buggering fuck is that?"

Not reprimanding him makes ME look bad to people I don't even know.

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Also, it sounds as if the Padawan has seen Lord of the Rings: How It Should Have Ended:

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

LOL, that was so cool. That is how it should have ended

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

I wondered for days how Gandalf could talk the Eagles into flying over and erupting volcano to rescue two Hobbits, but never had the idea of flying them over all stealthy-like before Sauron even knew to look in that direction.

LotR etc

[neeliemom.livejournal.com]

Well, what you have to remember about Tolkein is that what he loved wasn't the writing of the story, it was creating the language, the myths, the whole world of Middle Earth. He loved the 'back-story' as much if not more than the 'main plot'. He was also part of a group of writers that met regularly (C.S. Lewis was among them) to bounce ideas off each other and read snippets of their work to each other.
Please, please, anyone out there, do not think you know the story if you haven't read the books but only seen the movies.

I think Sebastion's rule would work for you padawan. It would get you off the hook with his mom without making you a hypocrite. Congrats on getting him to read!

Also- your husband is lucky it was the cereal aisle. I shudder to think what might have happened if you were in the canned goods!

Re: LotR etc

[keiramarcos]

I haven't read the books in about 15 years myself. It is interesting so see his response to different things.

I can't wait until he reads Lord of the Flies -- LMAO.

[melonbutterfly.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I'm all with the PMS at the moment too. I haven't had cramps these bad in six months, and I'm craving salty licorice but I can't find it anywhere but the German amazon - which is awesome, I thought, only to find out they're not shipping to the UK. Neither the UK nor the US amazon have the salty licorice I want. To top it off, the library finally has the book I had to get waitlisted for (The particular sadness of lemon cake), but I can't go pick it up because my cramps have me permanently bent in half and I wouldn't survive the walk there. They're going to give it to someone else tomorrow. Two days ago at the cinema I cried because the automat wouldn't accept my card so I couldn't by tickets, and then I cried again because the only sweets I was offered were Maltesers with coffee and I don't like coffee. Then I don't cry when in the film, the guy's mother dies, which was sad and dramatic and normally I would at least have teared up.
But at least I don't have a cold, I guess? I hope you aren't craving weird sweets that are unavailable, and that you don't cry over ridiculous things. Especially not in public.

[celia311.livejournal.com]

Because girls have to stick together when it comes to PMS... PM me if you want, I might have a solution to your salty licorice problem.

[keiramarcos]

I once burst into tears in the middle of Wal-Mart because they didn't have a pair of little house slippers in my size.

My husband just went to the front, bought me a GIANT snicker bar and brought it back to shoes.

[chris-king-2005.livejournal.com]

*grin*

Now that's a man with impressive survival instincts!

[melonbutterfly.livejournal.com]

That was a pretty smart thing to do. ;) In lieu of the licorice, I've been eating Ben&Jerry's like there's no tomorrow.

[otrame.livejournal.com]

I always remember Heinlein's dictum:

PMS is that period in a woman's monthly cycle when she behaves the way men behave all the time.

[rivkaesque.livejournal.com]

SO with you on the sleep schedule thing. My body seems to think I need to be awake at 5:00 am.

[jademac2442.livejournal.com]

I likewise have the PMS. Is that transferable over the internet? I hope you get to feeling better soon. You seem to have had a hell of a run of bad luck health-wise,lately. As far as the padawan is concerned, ask him if he would have wanted to read a book where they took the eagles the whole way, or whether it would have been interesting if they put the ring in a black box. He's got a good sense of irony but a bad sense of interesting plot development. But still you would think that with the elves and Istari being immortal, they could have come up with something better than "let's walk there, and you carry it."

Incidentally, did you know that the reason the words elves and dwarves as plural spellings is because Tolkien didn't like the Germanic sound of Elfs and Dwarfs, which is how both words had been respectively pluralized before his writing became popular.

Cereal often makes me homicidal. I have fantasies involving Count Chocula that would not be out of place at a crime scene. And don't get me started on the Coco Puffs.

Good luck with the rest of it, honey.

[jademac2442.livejournal.com]

PS....just spent my first night in Seoul, and I can access your website. So hooray for that. One worry off my mind.

[keiramarcos]

It's not the irony - it's intolerance. He doesn't mind a well turned plot device but he likes a writer to be SMART about it. If there is magic--then use magic. If there is magic, have defined rules. Don't have acceptable behavior for one character if it's not acceptable behavior for all characters. His main problem with some books is author vanity though he doesn't recognize it as such. He doesn't appreciate drama for the sake of drama -- like the existence of that giant eagle was to save Gandolf right? Then the dramatic ending of Return of the King. If the eagles coudn't have made that trip into Mordor (sp?) they shouldn't have been used in the final scene. The fact that they were negates the YEAR(or more) time the Fellowship traveled together before splitting up.

I don't even want to get into his rants about Harry Potter. He wrote a fifteen page essay on the books last year for his end of the extra credit project. If I'd written those books I might have cried because he's right smack in the middle of her target group and he called "bullshit" about forty times in the two books alone.

[jademac2442.livejournal.com]

Wow. I would have given a lot to be there for that. :)

This is also why I re-read

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

Not just for the smiles, but for the comments (and comments on comments.)

he called "bullshit" about forty times in the two books alone.

The definition of "Unforgiveable" did get quite...elastic... in the final books.

Also, shouldn't a book series with a target audience of school children have a "stay in school" subtext, or am I being too old-fashioned?

[tamstercmt.livejournal.com]

I tried to read LOTR but got almost halfway through it and walked away. I just couldn't get into it. My son comes up with questions like that all the time. He does it to annoy me. He's 21, so I tell him to shut the hell up and go with it. When he was the padawan's age I thought the questions showed he was thinking, which he was, and we would have long drawn out discussions. As he got older he noticed I would just look at him with a WTF? expression. It was fun to rile me up. And his questions became more idiotic so there you go.

November and March are the worst months of the year. November can't make up it's mind whether or not it will just stay cold. The 40 degree rainy days are hell on my joints. And we won't even talk about the freakin snow storm in October!

I don't have the PMS thing going on anymore. I'm 51 and my periods have been wonky for over a year. Did you know if you get a blood transfusion it can trigger a massive period? It was embarrassing as all hell when I had my knee replaced and this happened. Mostly because they had to help me to the bathroom and the aid at night was a guy. The pad companies love menopausal women because we wear full pads all the time. You have to be prepared.

I feel so much better now that I got to bitch. Nothing like a good bitchfest on a Sunday morning!

[anneruane.livejournal.com]

I adore your Padawan. I hope the Spawn grows up to be just like him. So far we have hope - he randomly breaks into rousing renditions of the Imperial March.

I'm with you on the sleeping thing. NaNo has eroded my relationship with my bed and improved the relationship with my coffee pot.

[auntbijou.livejournal.com]

Heh... just remind the Padawan to watch his language in front of Grandma, his teachers, his parents (I say this nominally, because I have no idea how much you enjoy irritating them), and he should be fine otherwise.

As for his wondering about LOTR...

[txrabbit.livejournal.com]

I think November could be the suckiest month ever. The weather is weird, the only holiday it has going for it is Thanksgiving and you don't even get presents or candy. Additionally, if you're in the US -- you have to deal with Daylight Savings Time which totally fucks up my already stupid sleeping schedule.

I believe that you have an insight right into my brain. My father and I have decided to stage a sit in at the capital (here in Austin) to protest Daylight Saving Time simply because it is the stupidest thing ever. Now as motivated as my father and I are, we'll never actually stage our sit in, but it was a good thought. My husband pointed out that we could move to Arizona to avoid this most inconvenient of issues, but I'd have to leave Texas, and that just doesn't work for me. Oh well...

And when I read your first paragraph to my 12 year old daughter, she laughed, agreed that it sounded just like me, then waved her hand at my computer screen and said, "Language, person!!" before wandering off to terrorize the cat. Thanks for the smile!

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

1. November is rather horrid, isn't it? On the other hand, the Halloween candy is up for sale at a good discount, so that is a saving grace right there.

2. PMS is proof that God is fucked up. Not male because I cannot see any man putting himself in line for that & not female because I can't see a woman sentencing the rest of us to it. So....

3. :: giggle ::

4. Really? I wanna go see that. Do you recommend the 3D or the standard movie?

5. Your husband is one of the bravest men I know. Not necessarily the smartest to keep pissing you off, but the braves.

Love the new bit. Very cool

~L

I wonder..

[lazypr.livejournal.com]

Is it that your life is so much more interesting than mine (uh Duh!) or I just never remember enough detail to actually write down and make my life sound interesting (very likely). It's probably both...oh well.

I feel your PMS pain and offer a virtual Godiva chocolate bar. I myself spent $$ on junk food this afternoon but have yet to graduate to chocolate. I'm sure it will happen within the next 2 days.

I must say...I'm seriously loving your Emotional Clockwork! Its a very nice piece McShep yum.

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

Being sick sucks especially in the weird ass weather! "HUGS"

[lianefontaine.livejournal.com]

Well, on the Eagles subject, I always thought they were able to intervene at the end because the Ring was destroyed and so were the Nazguls (as long as they existed, I don't think it would have been any more fun for Frodo to have them on his eagle tail rather than behind him on horses, since they were quite able to fly). I guess saving Gandalf was something useful for the "good side", but not big enough to worry Sauron and warrant a Nazgul intervention. And I don't know if you can call them a plot device since they features in the Silmarillion too... I tought a plot device was supposed to have a shorter life?

On a different note, if you Padawan kept a copy of his Harry Potter essay, it seems it would be a great read.

On Eagles

[justalurkr.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite critical interpretation of LOTR is that it's all a big metaphor on WWII (which hadn't actually happened when Tolkien start plotting and writing it, according to a critical response) and the Eagles represent the Americans riding into Europe at the last possible heartbeat and taking credit for saving the day.

[sunryder.livejournal.com]

I used to hate the eagle part with every fiber of my bitter being, and then I took a class on Tolkien in college, and now the eagles are one of my favorite pieces. Though I suppose whether it's enjoyable or still annoying depends on whether or not you like allegory.

For the eagles to make sense beyond a deus ex machina you have to back track to The Silmarillion. In that creation myth Tolkien talks about Melkor and Manwe, the two eldest of Illuvatar's (the LOTR version of God) children. Melkor is the big bad (who Sauron works for), and Manwe is his counterpart. The point to this ramble is that the eagles are Manwe's special creature, the ones he feels the most kinship with and who do his bidding.

The eagles can't just swoop in and carry everyone to Mount Doom because they follow Manwe's command, and for Manwe to send them would be like God stepping in and solving the problem himself. The continued existence of the various rings of power is basically the fault of the peoples of Middle Earth, and it's their problem to clean up. It was explained to me that waiting to send the eagles follows the concept of only after all we can do does God step in and help us go further.

(Like I said, whether or not that makes it better sort of depends on your opinion on allegory, and of the principle in general. I liked it because it made it seem to me like less of giant plot hole and that Tolkien didn't just write himself into a corner. And apologies for coming way late to the reply party. Cursed internet connection.)