Tom Bombadil, The Prancing Pony and Why I Hate Hippies

(Happy Post Turkey Day everyone! Since I have to get my drivers license renewed and as a result will be looking up appointments at the DMV, here is a classic column from February 2009)

Okay, I’m going to be literary today and talk about the Lord of the Rings books. First, I am going to be shocking. I’ve never read them all. Thank the GODS for the movies or I never would have tackled them at all.

Allow me to explain. When I was in Senior Elementary, I tried to read these books since they were so popular with the now pseudo waning hippie population. I could read The Hobbit. No problem. Bilbo Baggins, Gollum, his precious, got it. It wasn’t the best thing ever in my opinion but I could read it. Next I tried Dune. I couldn’t get through it and gave up. Then I tried reading the Fellowship of the Rings and gave up. It was a difficult read and I read everything I could. Steinbeck, Shakespeare, I use to get reprimanded non-stop by teachers for “reading too much”. They will say I was reading under my desk instead of working on the assignment but (a) the assignment was stupid and boring and (b) I finished it ½ hour ago and (c) if I have to listen to Bobby Bob read aloud soooooooooooooo slooooooooowwwww for another minute I am going to kill myself.

So the years go on. I am older now and the Dune movie comes out, I see it and give Dune another shot. I am hooked. I think “You know, this would make a great movie.” Dune is the most amazing thing I have ever read. It is my bible. I have three copies of the original that are lined, highlighted and dog eared. I use bits in rituals. I use quotes in secular and religious writing. I could go on but that’s not what this blog is about. I use this as an example of a more difficult writing style that I grew into so after the Peter Jackson movies, I figured I would give the trilogy another go.

I bought a huge compilation volume of LOTR with everything in it and started on the Hobbit again. As before, no problem. I get to Fellowship and everything was fine until…. Tom Bombadil. Was Tolkien stoned? What is with the happy dancing hippies and the pages and pages of inane poetry and the boring, soul sucking drag on the story?! I want the action! I want to know what the Fellowship is doing and are the Riders going to catch them or how gay exactly ARE the Hobbits and he is dragging the story down with this?! I decide the solution is just to “skim” so when this comes up, I just skip over it until the story gets going again. I guess Tolkien didn’t have an editor or the editor was on mushrooms or something. However I did get through Fellowship. Then it was on to the Two Towers and I just died. Died in a bored pool of ennui just having my soul sucked out by flash backs and forwards and disconnected plot lines and slogging pages of exposition as vast as the Plains of Desolation. It almost made me wish I was back in the Prancing Pony with Tom Bombadil and his hippie song and dance show. Almost. I gave up, threw in the towel, tossed it in the Goodwill bin and picked up a good Steve Berry novel (who is amazing BTW) and tried to get the taste out of my mouth.

Now die hard Tolkien fans will tell me that Two Towers is flawed but just to suck it up and Return of the King is sooooo much better. You know, I think with an editor that was unimpaired by natural Hobbit hallucinogens, those three books have enough material for two. Yup, two books and those would be great books. I know, I know – Tolkien is a God, these books are classics, I’m a commie, I know but even Gods need a good editor once in awhile. As a God you may think you are infallible until your sun goes supernova while your back was turned and all you get an opportunity to say is “O Sh…”

Life Lessons I Learned From Watching Barbarella

* When traveling in space, always line your ship with fur.
* When exploring a new planet, always make sure your silver sequin cape matches your sequined bikini.
* Creepy twin children should be thrown into a volcano at birth before they either hook up with Mothra or discover flesh-eating dolls.
* Always let hairy men carry you around in their strong, manly arms.
* In order to repay hairy men for giving you a lift, you should have sex with them on their fur covered bed. This may make your ride longer than you intended.
* A giant skunk pelt can make fabulous couture.
* If you ever meet an Angel and he saves your life, you need to have sex with him immediately. It will bring back his ability to fly and then he can take you where ever you need to go.
* Birds are evil. parakeets will eat you if given half a chance.
* When rebels save you from the killer parakeets, you need to immediately have sex with them.
* If you’re going to suck on a strange pipe, make sure it is “Essence of Man”.
* If some perv tries to kill you with an orgasmo Organ, your only defense is to out frack the organ.
* Remember, the hot, scary, evil lesbian who wants to do you,m isn’t so scary after all, even if she has the power to bring on an evil apocalypse.

I thought the 60’s were suppose to be about “women’s lib” as well as “free love”, though in this campy farce there is no lib to be found. I am torn between disliking this film for its demeaning to women message and wanting a sequined bikini. Great. Now I hate myself. I think a latte is in order while I re-examine these lessons to live by.

I GOT THE LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK

In honor of Pt. 1 of The Deathly Hallows coming out today, here is a vintage blog from July 20, 2007.
(NOTE: this is just a humorous send up on the Potter craze and has no bearing on the real book or its plot. In fact, I will rip the testicles off anyone who spoils the book for me and as a result I wont be on-line after 7pm tonight until Monday pm.)

I got a copy of the book from a back alley in Chinatown. A man wearing a baseball cap, a long coat and carrying a rabbit lured me into a dark alley, smelling of canola oil, duck fat and week old noodles. I only paid 34,294,098 yen or rubles or something mysterious and foreign for it. I think that amounted to about $10.77 in US dollars.

So I figured I would give you the highlights before you go to your Potter party tonight.

DRACO MALFOY was blamed for killing Dumbledore in the last book even though Snape did it. It was part of Dumbledore’s great plan. We never find out what that plan exactly was as you will see later, it really doesn’t matter. Draco dumps Pansy Parkinson and ends up in a hot, torrid, drama-filled, homosexual relationship with HARRY POTTER. They run off to Fire Island and start a small antique business.

RON & HERMIONE get married. She nags him relentlessly until he is forced to run off in the middle of the night and join a house elf commune in Surrey. He has taken up cooking, cleaning and not wearing clothes.

PERCY WEASLEY finally steps up to fight the dark side but because he is such a HUGE git, he gets killed in combat by his own troops. They celebrate with tea & bickies.

TONKS & LUPIN ummmm… well she was too young for him anyway. He dies in battle and she dies in a tragic butter beer incident from depression. She really was too young for him.

SNAPE was always misunderstood, has been working for the good side all this time and was only doing what Dumbledore told him to do. However being sick & tired of everyone always giving him shit, he moves to America and hooks up with me in this little cafe after George Lucas and I had a spat… O yeah, sorry… He started drinking mass quantities, bumped off LUCIUS MALFOY with a well placed potion and ran off with NARCISSA.

Albus Dumbledore’s brother ALFREDO (or whatever he name is) comes back to save the day with Fawkes, a blender and a small weasel.

GINNIE WEASLEY runs off with NEVILLE after being dumped by HARRY. Neville learns how to dance and has a HUGE ….. personality. They live happily ever after.

SIRIUS BLACK & ALBUS DUMBLEDORE are still dead.

Oh yeah, and LORD VOLDEMORT dies. Alfredos weasel… ummmmm… does him in.

Oh and what do those mysterious initials mean? Nothing. They were just a red herring to keep you away from the truly shocking ending of Malfoy and Harry running off together.

Never Threaten People With Plastic Pleasure Devices

Especially cops. Today’s Whack-A-Doodle Wednesday story comes to us from Chicago, where the Chicagonow website reports and

“Carolee Bildsten didn’t pay her bill at Joe’s Crab Shack, so police were called. After telling police that her money was in her apartment, a short walk away, she was escorted to her apartment. Instead of coming out with the money, “she removed a ‘clear, rigid, feminine pleasure device” from her dresser, held it over her head, and approached the officer in a threatening manner.'” The officer knocked the dildo out of her hand and arrested her. This kind of slimy, snaky criminal needs to slide right on down to county.”

OK, let me get this straight, This woman thought it was a good idea to (a) eat food and not pay for it, (b) lie to the police and (c) try to attack a cop with a vibrator. Wow, that must have been some great party or drugs or crab because this would have never crossed my mind in a million years.

You have to be a special flavor of desperate not only to stiff Joe’s Crab Shack but to approach a police officer with a sex toy held in a “threatening manner.” How do you even do that? Do you turn it on first? Was the cop threatened by the fact that it was buzzing or that it was held aloft like a strange spear or was he threatened because it resembled a penis? This got me thinking. Is this a regular type of attack that police officers have to deal with?

According to the Herald Sun in Australia, “A man has attacked a police officer with a dildo at the Bathurst 1000 motor racing event while another man has been caught showing porn. And both have been thrown out of the the major annual racing event, police say. A 22-year-old Moss Vale man was arrested shortly after 10pm (AEDT) yesterday after launching himself at a male police officer sitting inside a police car, hitting him on the head with a sex toy. The officer was not hurt, but the man has been charged with assaulting police. ”

I hate to think with all the crap cops have to deal with every day, they would now have to deal with this. Honestly, not only is the whole situation creepy but it’s unhygienic as well.

NaNoWriMo – What Is It And Can I Catch It?

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a growing global phenomanon. The premise? Write 50,000 words in 30 days. Plain and simple, though not as simple as some people may think.

Last year was my first year participating. In fact I had never even heard of NaNoWriMo until right before it started. A few of my writer friends were talking, it sounded like code and it sounded cool. I admit I was annoyed that I wasn’t given a decoder ring before so I tackled them and beat them about the head with a herring until they gave up the NaNo goods.

Last year I wrote “The Squirrel Stole My Thong And Other Reasons I’m Still Single.”. I wrote over 60,000 words and I “won”.

What exactly does this mean? It means I have a rough draft of a book. It means accomplishment. It means I didn’t waste my time watching re-runs of Oprah. Participating in NaNoWriMo forced me to put something together in a small space of time that I normally wouldn’t have. It gave me the joy of working with friends with similar interests and cheering each other on, whether everyone made their word counts or not. It gave me a first draft of the book. I’m still not done. I have about forty pages left to polish on the final draft before I send it to beta readers.

There is the rub. It seems this year when I started NaNo, I was exposed to a darker side of this great program. It was “the snark”. People would post “witty sayings” on those faux motivational posters like “Anyone can be a writer, if you set the bar low enough” or “The challenge of an arbitrary target and deadline without the burden of any expectation of quality”. Really. I could tell these people to bite me or to take their microscopic penises and go back to their sterile and joyless lives but I’m a lady so I’ll just say “Bless their hearts!”

Honestly, I fail to see the value of people who want to piss in my Cherrios. What harm does it do for hundreds of thousands of people to actually focus on literacy and writing for a month? I can hear it now. “Publishers get flooded by shit on December 1st because people just send their NaNo books in thinking they are finished.” True. Some people do. Some people don’t understand that the real job of writing is in the re-writing. But that is part of the job when you are a publisher and there is a place for those projects. It’s called a slush pile. If people who just pass off dreck never get published, who’s hurt by that? Then again you could be Stephanie whatsherwhoseits… you know, Sparkly Vampire Writer, who writes dreck and does get published. See? Miricles happen, dreams do come true so who am I or anyone to judge?

NaNo also puts on a Young Writers Program and quite honestly, I can think of many worse things young people could be doing besides writing. Let’s see, they could be breaking into your cars, your homes, doing crack, having babies in bathroom stalls and sticking them in a trash can. You know, the usual, so I think getting them excited about writing about the things that interest them is a good thing.

Personally I hope you catch the NaNo bug. It really is a great deal of fun, gives you a sense of accomplishment and keeps you off the streets. Don’t listen to your parents when they tell you to keep your day job or get a real job. We all know there are no more jobs out there. You might as well make your own or at least do something for you and not for your parents. Remember, they never liked anyone you dated anyway.

This Wednesday from Noon – 2pm, I will be writing in the window of the Office of Letters and Light (Headquarters to NaNoWriMo) next door to the Sweet Adeline Bakeshop in Berkeley. I will be sitting there, wearing my Mickey Mouse ears, with Princess Aurora on the window, hopped up on chai and writing away. Come by and mock me unless you are legal counsel from Disney and in that case I’m at the Starbucks in Piedmont. (No interior mocking, exterior only – this is still a place of business) I will be somewhere in the 30,000+ word territory on my new project “Deirdre Does Disney: An Irreverent Look At The House Of Mouse”

Come on by, get involved and remember NaNoWriMo is spreading and if you aren’t careful, you will catch it. Sooner or later, we all get a little geek on ourselves.

Carnival Cruise Crippled, No Surfing For Cruisers! The Horror!

On Monday night, an engine fire crippled the Carnival cruise ship, Splendor, off the coast of Mexico. No one was injured. The ship finally limped into port in San Diego four days later, towed by tug boats. Now I’m sure it was certainly not the Mexican Riviera vacation these people paid for but was it a horror show?

Let’s look at the facts. The ship does have auxiliary power. Toilets and water were restored Monday night and remained operational throughout the trip. What was the problem? There was no air conditioning but that hardly matters in the Pacific in mid-November. No hot food service. Fine, that’s a pain but you can survive just fine without hot meals. No hot water. Again, it’s a pain but you do have water. Sure, it’s cold showers but you can shower, you can drink, you’re not going to die. You can deal with no hot water for a few days. The telephones and internet were knocked out. DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN!!!!!! THE HORROR! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITHOUT FACEBOOK?!! You want to know real horror? Real horror would have been if there was no plumbing! No food and no water at all! Now that would have been a horror show.

No internet or phone? Really people? There are some resorts that bill this as a perk and people pay a great deal of money for it. Granted, some food options were out since they needed heat to prepare but that leaves a ton of other options. Fruit, veggies, pate, sushi, cereal, ice cream, pie, sandwiches, beef tartar, hummus, cheese, the options are endless.

I know there was only enough food to last a set amount of time but people, it’s a CRUISE SHIP! Have you ever been on a cruise ship? I have. They have a shit ton of food! There is breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, tea, snack, ice cream social, dinner, midnight buffet. I think three moderate meals a day to stretch the food is PLENTY! Hell, you roll off a cruise ship with five extra pounds at least if you graze throughout the day.

A quote from the San Francisco Chronicle says “Passengers have been drinking cold water and waiting in line to eat sandwiches and other cold food since the Splendor lost power on Monday during a Mexican Riviera cruise out of Long Beach.” To me that is hardly worthy of more than “We’re sorry, here is your money back. Now how wants to play bocce ball?” Did you know the Coast Guard dropped food? That’s fine but do you know what they dropped? Canned Crab, Croissants, Pop Tarts and Spam.

Think about that for a minute. What a combination. Now ask yourself, if there was another disaster – let’s say fifty guys were stranded on an oil rig – would they be dropping tinned crab, Pop Tarts and croissants? CROISSANTS? REALLY? I’m sure they would drop the Spam, it’s a military stand-by.

Aside from getting food, which is an issue but face it, they weren’t that far from home, the biggest complaint was the lack of internet. People, what would you do if the grid fried tomorrow and you were booted back to the Golden Age of Cruising or at least the nasty 80’s? Stop being pussies! You can live a few days without being plugged into the net. In fact, you might actually have to TALK to people. Carry on a conversation. Read a book. Enjoy the ocean. Talk to other people. Oh, the horror.

You want to know what would have been worse? Unloading you in Mexico and trying to get your asses across the border without being kidnapped by drug lords. THAT would have been worse. There was talk about getting busses to transport people if they had to dock in Ensenada, They were trying to figure out how much of a military presence they would need to secure the safety of the passengers, whether they could get US military to assist and get co-operation in border crossing. Okay, dealing with that would have been a nightmare. Sitting on a luxury ship, eating tinned crab on a croissant, reading a book and watching the ocean? I can think of worse ways to spend a few couple of days.

Lock Your Doors! Animals Are Criminals!

So today for Whack-A-Doodle Wednesday, I thought I would tackle a serious social issue, the criminal actions of our pets. I can hear it now, pets aren’t criminals! Only human beings think like that. I’m not so sure. What put me down this path? Well, one of the ladies in my writing group mentioned that her Corgi steals food. Now I knew a Corgi when I was young. His name was Sam and he was a fantastic dog. Scary smart, just brilliant but I never heard of any food issues he may have had. I thought perhaps this was an isolated incident. I mean this lady does have a parrot as well and maybe the bird is just making the dog look bad. It happens.

So in the search for truth, I head to the Font of All Things True, the internet. Stop laughing. I did a Google search on “food stealing Corgis” and got 1,450,000 hits. Damn. I guess there are over a million larcenous Corgis out there, at least! I decided to do some research on the subject.

Susan Strickland from Golden Gate Corgis writes “Yes, Corgis are always hungry. You could never feed them enough to curb their unstoppable desire for more food. I can relate to their problem, but unlike people, dogs can’t open the refrigerator, raid the cupboards, run down to McDonald’s, or make up their own meals. So it should be relatively easy to put a Corgi on a diet that will keep him at a perfect weight.

Unfortunately, many people who have Corgis as pets seem to be taken in by the pleading looks, and plaintive complaints of starvation coming from their very dramatic and manipulative little dogs. Corgis are experts at getting what they want. Their expressive faces, and artful begging, can make you feel terribly guilty for not giving them just a tiny bit more.”

For the rest of her article: http://www.goldengatecorgis.org/articles/ss-feeding.htm

I’ve had first hand experience with those pleading looks. Those dogs can charm the pants off a nun, if nuns wore pants. Maybe there is some truth to this story, though I didn’t want to let go of the picture of “parrot as the evil mastermind”. Hey I didn’t even think dogs and parrots could get along but here is another Corgi parrot household that proves me wrong: http://sansanparrots.com/wp/?p=498

Just to prove my point, here is a video of a variety of animals caught in the act of larceny so I guess it isn’t just Corgis stealing food. Note that the most daring heist at the end was pulled off by, yes…. a squirrel.

The moral of this story. If you have pets, keep an eye on your food. You never know what’s happening when you’re at work. I would invest in a nannycam if I were you.

Halloween: The Rise and Fall of Stupid

(I wrote this on Monday, was positive that I scheduled it to publish but I guess not. So here it is for Friday, just understand it was written Monday. I am a total dork.)

I wanted to write a whole fabulous blog on Friday about Halloween and then write a witty blog today for the election tomorrow. What do you get? Less than that. Why? Today starts NaNoWriMo. What is that? I’ll blog about it later, suffice it to say I will be spending the majority of this month writing my new book, working title: Deirdre Does Disney: An Irreverent Look At The House Of Mouse. As a result the blogs will be shorter and I will have some “vintage blogs” to give me more writing time.

Also my schedule is all whanked up. I have two ideas I wanted to write about. The first is the idiot trend away from trick or treating due to moron parents who want to wrap their kids in bubble wrap for no reason and the second is idiot, slutty costumes. I’m just going to tackle one today and I’ve picked…

Yes, we have all seen the female slut party that Halloween has turned into. There are micro mini dress versions of Bo Beep, Hermione Granger, Nurse, Snow White, Cinderella, Meter Maid, French Maid, American Maid. You name it and chances are, there is a slutty, crack whore version of that costume. Granted, they are usually worn by girls 16-28, weighing about 90 pounds but that doesn’t stop some large gals from getting in on the micro mini Hogwarts craze as well. To me they are all equally bad. Whatever happened to clever? To scary? To clothes in general? I mean, this isn’t Mardi Gras. THAT is the holiday for getting drunk, naked and stupid though New Orleans residents will also argue that point as well.

But having a slutty costume isn’t limited to the girls (though they do tend to lead the pack). Boys can be sluts too! Hence the picture of Mr. Pizza. Please, don’t open that box because I really don’t want to see that sausage pizza. Oh the jokes abound! Pepperoni is too spicy for me to eat personally. If it doesn’t come in 10 minutes its free. Is cold limp pizza still good pizza? Don’t get me started. I’m pounding coffee today and I’m not a coffee drinker. It’s making me crazy and manic. I don’t know how you scary people do this every day.

So should we go back to old school Halloween costumes and leave the vienna sausage/spandex parade for the French Quarter or should we declare a separate “Get Your Slut On” holiday? I’m sure if there was money to be had (there is) and Hallmark can get behind it (why not), we can make it happen.

Christine O’Donnell – Unwitting Minion of Satan or A Mouse Who Got Promoted?

So today for Whack-A-Doodle Wednesday let us fall to our knees and pray.

“Dear Lord/Lady/Head of Cabbage of my Choice, let us give thanks that yesterday in the tiny State of Delaware sanity prevailed and Christine O’Donnell was defeated by a margin of 18% over her opponent. Let us also mourn that the margin of defeat was only 18% and what the HELL were the rest of you thinking?! Let us thank Chris Coons for going to Washington to do one of the shittiest jobs there is (trying to run a country in spite of itself) while Miss O’Donnell can “win” a hailstorm of free publicity, a book deal, fat fees for personal appearances and perhaps if she is really lucky, her own reality show! She is a “star” and he is a public servant. You tell me who got the raw end of that deal? But we applaud Chris because if he wasn’t willing to sacrifice himself on the altar of “what is right rather than what is easy” we would be one step closer to Armageddon right now. Thank you and Amen”

Why the outpouring a contradictory gratitude? Have you heard about little Miss Flat Earth? No? Have you been living in a hole? If you thought Caribou Barbie was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.

This is the woman who elicited laughter from a room of Widener Law Students by asking, “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” For my readers who haven’t had their coffee yet, I present the First Amendment in its entirety.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Allow me to elucidate. There are countries where a particular religious belief is the law of that country. A specific religious view, whether Catholic, Protestant or Muslim, is the law of that country. All people living in that country are taught those beliefs in State run schools and institutions. Some countries have severe penalties for not following the dictates of that specific countries religious beliefs. Our countries very first law states there shall be NO laws governing any specific religion. This means no ones religion will be the governments religion nor shall the government keep you from exercising any religious belief system you choose. It is a matter of individual choice and liberty not a matter of government mandate.

Any school or institution that operates with government funds must keep religious bias out of their curriculum. If anyone chooses to exercise their right to the free exercise of religion as far as schooling, they can. It is called a private school. It is paid for with private funds donated and raised by like-minded people. You can not teach faith-based doctrine in a government-funded school or institution. Period. If you want to teach the story of Adam & Eve and the Garden of Eden as fact then I should be able to teach the story of the All-Goddess Eurynome (who is herself void) who copulates with the void (as the serpent Ophion) and begets all things or the Egyptian god Ptah who creates the world from his own voice. The Constitution guarantees people the right to worship as they wish and not to take sides in regards to faith and belief.

Miss O’Donnell says evolution is a theory. So is gravity. It doesn’t mean it’s not a fact.

OK, so that was scary and sad. Scary and sad that there are millions of people out there who actually believe that. It makes me sad when so many people think ignorance is intelligent and scared that these people, if given a chance, would tie me to a stick and set me on fire. But where is the Whack-A-Doodle? Here it is – Miss O’Donnell also believes Pinky and the Brain is real.

No, honestly – here is her quote:

“They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.”

Enough said. She has no comprehension that using endometrial stem cells injected into the brains of mice is NOT creating mice “with fully functioning human brains”. If there were such a thing, we could give her one. Obviously the brain she has is either defective or non-functional. Honestly at this point even a regular mouse brain would be a step up for her.

OK children, I have writing to do, post-election malaise to deal with and there is the Giants Victory Parade in San Francisco today that needs some attention. Granted, baseball was never my thing but it’s always good when the home team wins especially when their pitcher looks like my friend Tappy from the World Famous Poxy Boggards. Check out their website: http://www.poxyboggards.com/?page_id=93 and Good On You Giants!