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I saw Kurt Vonnegut novena candles in a shop yesterday. I almost bought one, but they were $12.99, which is WRONG. Novena candles are supposed to be 99¢.
Now I need to start making my own.
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A candle shaped like Kurt Vonnegut, or a little diorama like this, with a statue of the man and an excerpt from 'Breakfast of Champions' or somesuch?
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You should totally tweet this s+$%!
A candle shaped like Kurt Vonnegut, or a little diorama like this, with a statue of the man and an excerpt from 'Breakfast of Champions' or somesuch?
Novena candles typically look like this and are used in nine-day Catholic devotions.
They usually cost around a dollar because they're mass-produced with the lowest-quality paraffin candle wax and cheap dyes, and the glass gets very hot.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A candle shaped like Kurt Vonnegut, or a little diorama like this, with a statue of the man and an excerpt from 'Breakfast of Champions' or somesuch?Novena candles typically look like this and are used in nine-day Catholic devotions.
They usually cost around a dollar because they're mass-produced with the lowest-quality paraffin candle wax and cheap dyes, and the glass gets very hot.
Why can't I retweet that!
What the smurf is happening!!
If this is what Twitter is like, I'm glad I'm not on it ;)
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SAD! We have the BEST candles!
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And it seemed to me
You lived your life
Like a Kurt Vonnegut Novena Candle
In the cosmic solar wind.
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If this is what Twitter is like, I'm glad I'm not on it ;)
Wow. That was charming. Are you related to the Vagrant Erudite?
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My cousin called me this evening.
It was a lengthy conversation, and for various errors and inconveniences that he takes far more seriously than I do, he has decided that he "owes" me "at least one bottle of wine, if not two".
Unfortunately, he calls at the moment I'm trying to get my children from the dinner table to the bathtub and, ultimately to bed, so I'm a bit distracted and the children are taking full advantage of it.
I'm yelling at my son, "I AM GOING TO PUT YOU IN A STEW AND EAT YOU."
There is silence at the other end of the line.
"So a chianti then, and perhaps some nice fava beans to go with it?"
I just watched an episode of King of the Hill where Peggy Hill had a book of musings she was transcribing to electronic form. This may be a lot like that.
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I did the thing I swore I was never going to do and let my daughter watch a film before she'd read the book. Only halfway through, though, because occasionally my alignment slips a bit.
The film was the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring, and to my credit, I hit the pause button and said, "now, it doesn't really happen this way; in the BOOK..." about fifty times.
She has rewarded me by making me a drawing of Gandalf, Saruman with the Palantir, and the Eye of Sauron between them.
Also, she takes every reasonable opportunity she can find to quote, "Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this mission... quest... thing."
And yesterday she referred to Sutro Tower as the Eye of Sauron.
Now I get to tell her we don't watch the second disc until we've read both The Hobbit and the book of Fellowship.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I did the thing I swore I was never going to do and let my daughter watch a film before she'd read the book. Only halfway through, though, because occasionally my alignment slips a bit.
The film was the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring, and to my credit, I hit the pause button and said, "now, it doesn't really happen this way; in the BOOK..." about fifty times.
She has rewarded me by making me a drawing of Gandalf, Saruman with the Palantir, and the Eye of Sauron between them.
Also, she takes every reasonable opportunity she can find to quote, "Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this mission... quest... thing."
And yesterday she referred to Sutro Tower as the Eye of Sauron.
Now I get to tell her we don't watch the second disc until we've read both The Hobbit and the book of Fellowship.
that's one smart kid.
Please do not show her the hobbit movie.
I did the thing I swore I was never going to do and let my daughter watch a film before she'd read the book. Only halfway through, though, because occasionally my alignment slips a bit.
The film was the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring, and to my credit, I hit the pause button and said, "now, it doesn't really happen this way; in the BOOK..." about fifty times.
She has rewarded me by making me a drawing of Gandalf, Saruman with the Palantir, and the Eye of Sauron between them.
Also, she takes every reasonable opportunity she can find to quote, "Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this mission... quest... thing."
And yesterday she referred to Sutro Tower as the Eye of Sauron.
Now I get to tell her we don't watch the second disc until we've read both The Hobbit and the book of Fellowship.
that's one smart kid.
Please do not show her the hobbit movie.
I refuse to accept that series exists and will never be seeing it myself, so, yeah.
Don't get me started.Peter Jackson is an unprincipled whore.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I did the thing I swore I was never going to do and let my daughter watch a film before she'd read the book. Only halfway through, though, because occasionally my alignment slips a bit.
The film was the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring, and to my credit, I hit the pause button and said, "now, it doesn't really happen this way; in the BOOK..." about fifty times.
She has rewarded me by making me a drawing of Gandalf, Saruman with the Palantir, and the Eye of Sauron between them.
Also, she takes every reasonable opportunity she can find to quote, "Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this mission... quest... thing."
And yesterday she referred to Sutro Tower as the Eye of Sauron.
Now I get to tell her we don't watch the second disc until we've read both The Hobbit and the book of Fellowship.
that's one smart kid.
Please do not show her the hobbit movie.
I refuse to accept that series exists and will never be seeing it myself, so, yeah.
Don't get me started.
Peter Jackson is an unprincipled whore.
please do not insult unprincipled whores in such a fashion.
please do not insult unprincipled whores in such a fashion.I did the thing I swore I was never going to do and let my daughter watch a film before she'd read the book. Only halfway through, though, because occasionally my alignment slips a bit.
The film was the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring, and to my credit, I hit the pause button and said, "now, it doesn't really happen this way; in the BOOK..." about fifty times.
She has rewarded me by making me a drawing of Gandalf, Saruman with the Palantir, and the Eye of Sauron between them.
Also, she takes every reasonable opportunity she can find to quote, "Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this mission... quest... thing."
And yesterday she referred to Sutro Tower as the Eye of Sauron.
Now I get to tell her we don't watch the second disc until we've read both The Hobbit and the book of Fellowship.
that's one smart kid.
Please do not show her the hobbit movie.
I refuse to accept that series exists and will never be seeing it myself, so, yeah.
Don't get me started.
Peter Jackson is an unprincipled whore.
You're right, man. My bad.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The film was the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring, and to my credit, I hit the pause button and said, "now, it doesn't really happen this way; in the BOOK..." about fifty times.
why
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Here is, in chronological order, my complaint with Peter Jackson.
To begin with, I was a fan of his long before LOTR, when NO ONE had heard of a movie called "Heavenly Creatures".
I defended him to Tolkien purists during the LOTR days, EVEN AFTER the Arwen/Glorfindel switcheroo in the first film, even after all the plot and timeline and character changes, I forgave him because there was enough he did that I really liked. Even though he messed up the Ents. Even though Liv Tyler said, in Special Features interview, "Ummm, I think my best relationship on set was with Wardrobe."
And I was actually looking forward to seeing what he would do with The Hobbit, and especially with Beorn.
Until I saw the first set of promo photos and poster. The one with all the dwarven faces. And my first thought was, "Seriously? That was the best you could do, Petey? With all of the excellent bulb-nosed English character actors available, *this* is what you do for a band of dwarves? Did all their mothers get slipped Roofies at an Elven frat party or something?"
And then came the promotional Denny's menu, with Gandalf's Gobble Melt, Radagast's Red Velvet Pancake Puppies, The Lone-Lands Campfire Cookie Milkshake, and "The Ring" Burger. Which was topped with not ONE onion ring, but three. Evidently it was an Elven cheeseburger. Mmmmmmm... this Ring of Adamant sure is crunchy!
Which actually came as a bit of a relief, because I'd always been secretly afraid that the elves were into kale-and-spirulina smoothies, or sprouted quinoa and acai bowls.
And that was BEFORE I found out about the invented characters, the love triangle, the turning of the dwarves into such hapless buffoons...
I just hope all that money bought the man a blanket big enough to cover his shame.
And, no, I'm not over it. I am still hardily stuck on "Anger" and refuse to move on to "Bargaining" and "Acceptance".
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Here is, in chronological order, my complaint with Peter Jackson.
To begin with, I was a fan of his long before LOTR, when NO ONE had heard of a movie called "Heavenly Creatures".I defended him to Tolkien purists during the LOTR days, EVEN AFTER the Arwen/Glorfindel switcheroo in the first film, even after all the plot and timeline and character changes, I forgave him because there was enough he did that I really liked. Even though he messed up the Ents. Even though Liv Tyler said, in Special Features interview, "Ummm, I think my best relationship on set was with Wardrobe."
And I was actually looking forward to seeing what he would do with The Hobbit, and especially with Beorn.
Until I saw the first set of promo photos and poster. The one with all the dwarven faces. And my first thought was, "Seriously? That was the best you could do, Petey? With all of the excellent bulb-nosed English character actors available, *this* is what you do for a band of dwarves? Did all their mothers get slipped Roofies at an Elven frat party or something?"And then came the promotional Denny's menu, with Gandalf's Gobble Melt, Radagast's Red Velvet Pancake Puppies, The Lone-Lands Campfire Cookie Milkshake, and "The Ring" Burger. Which was topped with not ONE onion ring, but three. Evidently it was an Elven cheeseburger. Mmmmmmm... this Ring of Adamant sure is crunchy!
Which actually came as a bit of a relief, because I'd always been secretly afraid that the elves were into kale-and-spirulina smoothies, or sprouted quinoa and acai bowls.
And that was BEFORE I found out about the invented characters, the love triangle, the turning of the dwarves into such hapless buffoons...
I just hope all that money bought the man a blanket big enough to cover his shame.
And, no, I'm not over it. I am still hardily stuck on "Anger" and refuse to move on to "Bargaining" and "Acceptance".
I died reading this. I literally died. I thought I had forgotten about the Dennys stuff. The one ring burger. Ugh.
It did make me wonder about our (ameri-euro) standards of beauty. I think what you would have limed as dwarves would have looked like gnomes to me, but still, those were some GORGEOUS dwarves. Would some ugly dudes have gone over better? I don't know. But we are living in a world where wolverine has gone from a short squat ugly dude to a tall, rippling adonis. Whats more is that people dont seem to remember him in any way other than as gorgeous.
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No, I remember when Wolverine was basically Dan Hedaya with less gut and superpowers.
The token squat hairy guy in our group of random nerds in college was Wolverine because of course he was.
When the X-Men film franchise came along, I have to admit to being torn between scandalized, full of revulsion (because my brain is inconveniently visual, and being attracted to the character I'd always associated with C.S. was annoying as all hell)... and then I finally gave up and decided to go with it, because the dude was hot.
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My association for Wolverine is and will always be the one from the Saturday Morning Cartoon. Hugh Jackman is a distant second.
As for LOTR, I can say with almost full certainty that I have never been enamored of anything enough to get that upset with an adaptation.
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Just one thing... The dwarves in the Hobbit WERE hapless buffoons. That is their defining trait. If they had stayed at home and let Bilbo and Gandalf deal with everything, it would have been FAR easier. Especially the elf king... and the spiders... and Lake town... ummm... all of it actually. I would say at least the first two movies (all I bothered to go see) made them out to be far too competent. You know, like ninja barrel Bombur and all.
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Those beards were something else, though, and I think the Northern Irish accents worked well. Makes a change from the default Generic Scottish, anyway.
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Just one thing... The dwarves in the Hobbit WERE hapless buffoons. That is their defining trait. If they had stayed at home and let Bilbo and Gandalf deal with everything, it would have been FAR easier. Especially the elf king... and the spiders... and Lake town... ummm... all of it actually. I would say at least the first two movies (all I bothered to go see) made them out to be far too competent. You know, like ninja barrel Bombur and all.
i dunno about buffoons, but they were greedy as hell. I dont remember the desire for vengeance being much of an impetuous to go into a dragons lair and get gold.
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Last night, I drove to the other side of the Bay to have drinks with an old friend who recently moved from Shanghai to Paris.
One interesting takeaway from the conversation is that I now know what it takes to get booted off the BDSM/Poly local internet forum in Shanghai.
It takes posting bondage photos of your pet iguana, because a pet cannot consent.
I would like to stress that my friend was not the one with the iguana.
Last night, I drove to the other side of the Bay to have drinks with an old friend who recently moved from Shanghai to Paris.
One interesting takeaway from the conversation is that I now know what it takes to get booted off the BDSM/Poly local internet forum in Shanghai.
It takes posting bondage photos of your pet iguana, because a pet cannot consent.
I would like to stress that my friend was not the one with the iguana.
sounds about right. We are in a consent based age, for good and for ill.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Last night, I drove to the other side of the Bay to have drinks with an old friend who recently moved from Shanghai to Paris.
One interesting takeaway from the conversation is that I now know what it takes to get booted off the BDSM/Poly local internet forum in Shanghai.
It takes posting bondage photos of your pet iguana, because a pet cannot consent.
I would like to stress that my friend was not the one with the iguana.
That does sound rather cruel.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Last night my son introduced his new character into the game, midway through the second book of Legacy of Fire.
He's an elf Bard/Cleric (Cayden Cailean).
The party took a group of slaves they'd rescued from the gnolls back up to the entrance to meet with the *first* group of slaves they'd encountered, and there was this guy, just playing his guitar softly and singing to soothe and calm them.
This is how my almost-five-year-old played the encounter.
Me (NPCing Valeros): "Did you climb over the mountains by yourself?"
Bard: "No, I just walked. Sometimes I even had my hands behind my back."
Me: "So, you have a name?"
Bard: (shrug) "I'm Mister Magic Man. You can just call me magic."
...
Later on, as we're trying to stealth through the dungeon to sneak up on the bad guys, comes the monologue as Magic tries to befriend Valeros...
Bard: "I speak many languages that you don't speak. You know what? I speak squirrel. I have a squirrel companion. His name is Fuzzy. Sometimes he likes to stand on the roof and pee off the gutters onto the heads of bad guys. Isn't that funny, Val?"
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Today at the all-faculty meeting, the boss gave us each a box of Trader Joe's "Extraordinary Bark".
It's a slab of chocolate covered with crumbled bits of peanut butter cups, pretzels, caramel corn, oreos, nuts, chocolate drizzle, etc.
And then the boss went on a twelve-minute monologue about how the bark is a metaphor for our faculty, and as we savored the treat in the days to come, she wanted us each to reflect about which bit we were.
And because I'm just a snarky b!+&# at heart, all I could think was,
"You know that inevitable little piece that's impossibly hard and sharp and always gets stuck under your gum or behind a crown where you cannot seem to free it, even with dental floss, for the next day and a half? That's my bit."
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Random Ways my Brain Tries to F@#% With Me, Vol. 489.6:
Spontaneously offering new lyrics to the song "Me Ole Bamboo" from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at odd moments in my day...
"You can share some smack with a kangaroo..."
"You can drink 'till you cry with a Boy Named Sue..."
Bad brain. No biscuit.
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But wait! There's more!
"Sit in the snow 'til your arse turns blue..."
"Hang with Londo, share a dish of Spoo..."
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'Fix your lips together with Sovereign Glue'
'Try to kill a vampire with a self-tapping screw'
'Breed a French bulldog with an elemental grue'
'Smear your other half with some cold beef stew'
'Run around naked in the gardens at Kew'
'Wash your genitalia in warm Irn-Bru'
Sorry.
"...Damnit, Limey, I *like* Irn-Bru,
So find a different verse for me ole bamboo!"
This is oddly reminiscent of that "Livin' on a Prayer" trend going around the kids last year.
"...Damnit, Limey, I *like* Irn-Bru,
So find a different verse for me ole bamboo!"
Sorry, but I might 'ave bad news for you..."...Damnit, Limey, I *like* Irn-Bru,
So find a different verse for me ole bamboo!"
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My sister texted me a photo of our 95-year-old grandmother holding my nine-day-old niece, both of them sound asleep.
I texted back to ask which one was drooling more.
My sister says it's a toss-up.
We are bad people.
Eh tweeting is for the birds.
Meanwhile I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy the baby a Wu-Tang Clan onesie. Because Wu-Tang is for the children.
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My husband made the mistake of reading the children Terry Pratchett's "The Wee Free Men". Now my son has decided he's a Nac Mac Feegle and keeps shouting "Crivens!", to which my daughter responds, "Gie ye sich a kickin'!"
At least there aren't any sheep around here for them to steal...
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Confessions of a Great Big Nerd, Chapter 846:
The collies wouldn't stop barking and I was fed up, so I shouted, "Hush, hush, durbatuluk! Hush, hush, gimbatul! Hush, hush, thrakatuluk!"
Now I have to figure out which dog is which.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Confessions of a Great Big Nerd, Chapter 846:
The collies wouldn't stop barking and I was fed up, so I shouted, "Hush, hush, durbatuluk! Hush, hush, gimbatul! Hush, hush, thrakatuluk!"
Now I have to figure out which dog is which.
{holding a smouldering, sparking PK reader and a Twinkie} Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of nerdokinetic energy in the Wahoo, Nebraska area. The post above would be a Twinkie… thirty-five feet long weighing approximately six-hundred pounds.”
{eats Twinkie}
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This afternoon, two of my kindergarteners decided to use the word "but" for their phonetic word handwriting practice, then illustrated their work with drawings of naked butts pooping, and then, worried that they had done something bad, decided to "hide" it by crumpling it up and throwing the pages under a table.
So I very sternly un-crumpled and perused the papers, asked them if it was their work, and when they admitted it, corrected their spelling and walked away.
It was funnier that way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Confessions of a Great Big Nerd, Chapter 846:
The collies wouldn't stop barking and I was fed up, so I shouted, "Hush, hush, durbatuluk! Hush, hush, gimbatul! Hush, hush, thrakatuluk!"
Now I have to figure out which dog is which.
..what?
..what?Confessions of a Great Big Nerd, Chapter 846:
The collies wouldn't stop barking and I was fed up, so I shouted, "Hush, hush, durbatuluk! Hush, hush, gimbatul! Hush, hush, thrakatuluk!"
Now I have to figure out which dog is which.
It's a Lord of the Rings joke. It's a play on the "one ring..." poem.
Not many people actually find my sense of humor funny. I accept that.
Oh no, you are very funny, I was just confused. I am not an LOTR head...
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There are things I find myself saying, as a parent and as a teacher, that really shouldn't need to be said.
For instance, yesterday one of my students went home early with a fever.
Today she is scheduled to fly to China for two weeks with her family.
After she left, one of her friends noticed she was missing, and asked,
"Where's Nettie?"
"She went home sick, honey; her Mama picked her up."
"Oh, no! Is she going to die?"
"No, she's not going to die; she's just going to China."
"Mrs. LM, you're weird."
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The other one I found myself needing to say this week was,
"You know, I'm putting it into my end-of-life directives: you are forbidden to make soup from my corpse."
(My husband is obsessed with making soup from the leftover bones and pickings of... whatever. And he's not particularly good at it. Maybe I wouldn't have said it if he were a better cook.)
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Perhaps other Neil Gaiman fans will understand what I mean when I say that this evening I was driving home through the rain wearing a black leather moto jacket, listening to a Best of Queen mix on the MP3 player in my car, and wondering why my car wasn't magically being transformed into a Bentley.
And then, as I listened for the high notes that just weren't there, I realized that the problem was that the song I was listening to was an Adam Lambert cover of a Queen song, not the original, and ergo insufficiently magical.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Gaiman is so SHORT! I still can't believe how short he is.