You know in the Lord of the Rings movie, when Elrond's people were leaving Rivendell in droves?

Right.

Would you say, while looking at the emptied Rivendell, that...

"Elves have left the building"?

Topic: Personal

The good-luck bamboo in my office shriveled up & died. Should I be concerned?

Topic: Opinion
Dudes, WTF?

"BAN THE SLAUGHTER OF HORSES FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
Your help is urgently needed to prevent the continued slaughter of horses!" ----ASPCA advocacy call

Now I love animals, I generally support the ASPCA, but this is a tad...inconsistent bordering on hypocrisy, non? There is nothing anywhere on the ASPCA advocacy site about saving cows or chickens or clams from slaughter, although we eat them also. As I read further on the page, I encountered this passage:

"Americans don't eat horsemeat so it may be a shocking revelation to many people that thousands of horses are slaughtered every year to please the palates of the French, the Belgians and the Japanese." A-HA! Clearly we must save our special, darling, American animals from these aberrant foreigners, who will eat anything.

This suddenly reminds me of the stink run up by that French actress has-been...now what's her name again? a couple of years ago bashing the Koreans for eating dogs: "on November 28, 2001, French actress-turned-activist Bridget Bardot implored South Korea to stop their practice of eating dogs. According to Reuters, she said, "Korea needs to listen to what foreigners say about the eating of dog meat as it harms Korea's image... Though Koreans do not eat their pet dogs, eating dog meat is part of Korean culture." She argues, "Dogs are humans' friends, not animals for food, helping the blind walk, so eating dog meat is like eating humans.""

Okaaaaaaaayyyyy. Clearly the Koreans are inferior and cruel for not aligning their legitimate cultural practices to the newly minted,[yet to Ms Bardot] superior Western way of life.


Why can't these misguided souls just keep their self-satisfied, hypocritical, biased and essentially racist bourgeois morality to themselves instead of constantly trying to stuff it down other culture's throats like so much narcissist, solipsistic foie gras? So what if the Belgians and Japanese eat horseflesh and the Koreans eat dogs? I don't see anyone working up a froth trying to save the clams from cruel consumption in America's clam chowder restaurants.

Topic: Opinion
Stephen King National Book Awards Acceptance Speech

V. good speech. Esp. bit about bridging popular fiction and literary fiction,[NB: i.e. Harry Potter/Terry Pratchett v. Angela's Ashes/House of Sand & Fog, etc.] Delicious jab at snotty critics who want to "get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with [their] own culture".

I used to think that something is wrong with me, because I like pop. fiction but not lit. fiction, vis. am I an inferior reader? Alas, no more. I like fun, I like adventure, I like satisfying endings. I don't want dissection of pain and lost longing and I don't want to spend time on other people's either. If that makes me shallow, then so be it.

Topic: Personal
Love being married to R. Love it, love it. Besides his taking care of money, laundry, dishes, and the car, there are a thousand little things that makes me love this state of being. Example: when we're both in bed, about to drop off to sleep, he'll reach a hand over under the covers and put it on me somewhere - on my leg, over my back, whatever - and fall asleep like that, as though he wants to make sure I'm there even when he's falling from the edge of sleep.

So sweet and just v.v. lovely.

Now Playing: Back for Mor...dor
Topic: Review
Love it, love it, love it. See this trilogy! It will have you begging for mor...dor. The moment Eowyn slays the Witch King was supremely satisfying for me, even though I have read the books.

We can't wait for the Extended DVD boxed-set-to-end-all-boxed-sets of the entire Trilogy to come out!

Here is Slate's Reviewhttp://slate.msn.com//id/2092700/

To Mordor and Back
Peter Jackson's wondrous Return of the King.
By David Edelstein
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003, at 11:16 AM PT

There's a sequence an hour into Peter Jackson's The Return of the King (New Line), the final film of his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that renders any narrative confusions, any objections to the lack of fidelity to J.R.R. Tolkien's original, any lingering doubts about the scale of this accomplishment, magnificently irrelevant. <>

This is the best of the three Rings movies--more than that, it makes the others look even better. You can finally see the arc of the trilogy: not just J.R.R. Tolkien's, with its blend of Norse and Christian myth, but Peter Jackson's. <> Jackson brings an intensity to the battle of good and evil that makes the stiff, well-mannered drones of George Lucas' Star Wars epics look like stick figures in a bad, Japanese-made Saturday-morning cartoon.

<>Sam wants to pitch Gollum over the rocks, but Frodo is inclined toward Christian charity, which makes him a different kind of hero than the usual sword-and-sorcery he-man. But this is a different sort of epic--one in which tens of thousands of humans die to destroy what in essence is a weapon of mass destruction. It's a holy war in the name of peace, suffused with melancholy regret, and fervid in its conviction that the very pursuit of absolute power corrupts absolutely.<> The sense of evil is palpable, and giving one's life to defeat it glorious. This is a movie in which war is so righteous and the inability to wage it so damnable that men come back from the dead to fight the good fight--their last chance to redeem themselves and move on to the "far green country" that Gandalf extols. "Can we win?" asks someone of Th?oden. "No, we cannot," says the king. "But we will meet them in battle nonetheless."
<>

Quibbles, piddles, drops in a bucket as big as an ocean. The Return of the King is maybe not a war film in the class of Eisenstein or Kurosawa or Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1965) or the opening of Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998). But it might be the cinema's most astonishing holy war film. The Lord of the Rings took seven years and an army of gifted artists to execute, and the striving of its makers is in every splendid frame. It's more than a movie--it's a gift.

Posted by conniechai at 1:47 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 14 January 2004 11:22 AM PST

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The Christmas Gift Ledger
Topic: Personal
Christmas has come and gone...here are my current year's rakings:

from grandparents, $75 in cash. Fantabulous! Money is always great.

from R's parents, Elizabeth Arden Green Tea perfume. I was impressed - I had the hardest time finding this scent in the department store counters I went to, I must have been trying the wrong stores, not only did my MIL find the perfume but matching lotion and shower gel. I had initially thought this must only be available in the Asian market, as I bought my current (nearly out) bottle of scent on a China Airlines flight from Taipei to Sydney...but it must have entered the US market in the meantime.

also from in-laws, a vacuum bot! I named him Frank. Vacuuming will never be the same again!

I had asked for an Emily the Strange hooded Kitty sweatshirt But for some reason the stores in the malls only carry the XL-XXXL sizes for girls. Obviously, not going to work for me. So, MIL gave me $100 - I suppose so I can go buy it myself? Also fantabulous.

R's aunt gave me a neat little gift box filled with food-flavored body care products - gingerbread flavored masque, sugar-cookie flavored lip balm, and cinnamon-bun flavored bodywash, all from Philosophy and in a little cardboard gingerbread house. Quelle adorable! Delicious too - two of my favorite themes blended into one - food and bodycare products. Not that I'm complaining, because I really do use these products - love lotions etc, can't get enough - but even people who don't know about my fondness for bodycare products buy me bodycare, esp. lotions and creams. Do I look scaly?

from my loving and romantic engineer husband - a new windshield! He has also promised me new tires for Valentine's Day.

R made out with several new video games, thank god, as I am rapidly approaching insanity from hearing the soundtrack from the same video games over and over again emanating from his PS2. Another boxed set of James Bond DVDs, and a Best Buy gift card.

We gave the following presents:

FIL: Horseshoe set, Harley-Davidson shirt (it's great when someone has a known hobby - it makes gift purchases so much easier).

MIL: High-performance running shoes. She had asked for walking shoes, but walking shoes seem so flimsy compared with the solid construction of running shoes. So, she got running shoes. Fortunate for shopping, that we have the same shoe size, eh? Also added a pair of cashmere blend gloves and matching muffler.

BIL: Tennis racquet and gas card. A most welcome present for he who drive a gas-guzzling truck. Although to be fair, it did come in handy when we moved.

Grandpa K: a stained-glass sign that says "Billiards" for his new pool room. Yes, I know billiards and pool are not the same game, but it's close enough for me.

NN & PP: GC to a local restaurant. After 60 years I can imagine NN is tired of cooking. Plus, a little good luck bamboo for their new abode.

Topic: Fun
A young man was sitting in class when the professor asked him if he knew what the Roe vs. Wade decision was. He sat quietly, pondering this profound question. Finally, after giving it a lot of thought, he sighed and said, "I think this was the decision George Washington made prior to crossing the Delaware."

Topic: Fun
What is organic cooking anyways? Organic = containing carbon. Isn't all cooking then, organic cooking? I mean, the only inorganic cooking I can think of is when I boil salt water.

Hmmm...deep thoughts in the kitchen.

Topic: Opinion
Obesity as a Disease?

I don't think so. Except in extreme cases where the sufferer has a genetic or medical condition that causes them to gain weight uncontrollably - a thyroid abnomality, for example - Unlike cancer or even the flu, most obesity is self-inflicted. Don't want to be so overweight that your health is in danger? Don't sue the fast-food restaurants, try this - eat less, exercise more.

Although people who can't help it - those with genetic or medical conditions over which they have no control - should be able to get medical treatment, I'm not for this condition to be classified as a 'disease' in a fell swoop - if any person who brought the condition on themselves through lack of self control can force the insurance companies to pay for expensive surgery, then what's the motivation to have a healthier lifestyle? And why should the other policy holders who do not do their bodies the disservice of an unhealthy life-eating-style be punished for the bad choices of those who do? Most people know that if they eat too much they will get fat. You reap what you sow!