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Powered by LifeType1/20 - Jonathan, as usual, singing while he plays and works. This time it was, "Come, Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadil. Come, Tom Bombadil..."
1/22 - When boys have a tea party: Noah, Faith and I were playing with Faith's tea set. Noah said he couldn't eat his soup because the bad guys had poisoned it. It was such a deadly poison we couldn't even touch it and I had him call 911 to send a squad out to take it away. I never remember anything like this happening at other tea parties...
1/24 - A poem that Jonathan made up spontaneously. "Growl like a lion; growl like a bear; growl like a little little, little little pear!"
1/24 - Faith started the night sleeping with the boys in front of the fire. Then she came back to our bed at 5am.
1/27 - I was in Target with Faith and this lady (who interrupted her cell phone conversation to talk to Faith) asked her how old she was. Faith's reply, "eight."
1/29 - Faith had a pretty bad cold. In the car at some point she said to me, "Mommy, my eye fall down." Her eyes were watering from the cold and the cold.
Faith knows most or all of the basic colors, including green, blue, red, yellow, pink, purple, white.
2/1 - Jonathan singing again, "People think I"m crazy, my wife thinks I'm a chump - I love that word! - 'cause I do my Christmas shopping at the dump!"
2/2 - Coleman Richard Bloss Daley was born! This is the third boy cousin for my children. The labor was very very long and hard and ended in a c-section. We were discussing this at dinner, and then later Noah came up to me very concerned. "How do they cut the baby out, and how do they put Aunt Cinnamon back together?" I explained about surgery and scalpels and stitches and that they do it very carefully. He seemed much relieved by my explanation, but immediately asked me how they do it without hurting her so I got to explain about anesthesia as well.
2/2 - My first more-than-a-trim haircut in eighteen years! I donated about 13" to Locks of Love (minimum is 10" but I knew my ends were in pretty bad shape so wanted to make sure they had enough to work with.) It ended up a bit shorter than I was expecting because of having to even it up, but I really like it! I've left it down most of the time since then and it doesn't get in the way! (I can change a trash bag without getting my hair in it.) I think it's shorter than Jon wanted it as well, but last night he said, "It's cute."
It's very cute, and I don't agree with Jonathan: you look just as much "like you."
What does he know about Tom Bombadil?
Oh, and by the way...you are HUGE. :)
Jon got out the unabridged audio book of The Fellowship of the Ring for our car trip. Unfortunately we had to return it before finishing all 16 CDs, but it's requested from the library again so we can finish.
HUGE == normal for me. (:
Oh, I'm SO glad the kids are hearing the (unabridged) book instead of watching the movie! As I wrote, watching the movie again recently, instead of changing my negative opinion as I had hoped, only confirmed it. But having watched it recently made me certain Tom Bombadil was one of the (many) important parts left out.
Huge is absolutely normal for you, but it still catches me off guard. :)
Jon just went to a LOTR party in which they watched all three extended version movies. He came back convinced that our family is not going to watch them as a whole for many more years. There are too many graphic scenes that are inappropriate for young eyes and minds. (There are even scenes in the Swamp of the Dead that I closed my eyes for.)
But listening to it has been quite enjoyable. And you (and your kids) are limited by your own imagination and not those of Hollywood designers.
I wonder if Jon noticed what I did, but didn't write about in my review. Based on the first movie alone, since the others aren't fresh in my mind, I would say that evil is hard and pointed, or slimy and gross, but not particularly evil. You get no indication that (quoting off the top of my head here), "the dark power that made them [orcs and other evil creatures] cannot create; it can only debase and deform." No idea that they are fallen creatures of that world, rather than something totally alien. No idea that Gollum was once a hobbit, or at least a hobbit-like creature.
In the books, the orcs are indeed physically ugly, but not alien, and they show their evil nature in speech and action. Real speech, not grunts and screams. They are crude and cruel, with the same vices one can encounter among humans today. That didn't come across to me in the movie at all.
It also felt rather dualist to me -- a feeling that good and evil were powers of the same order, with no clear idea why good should be considered "better."
Gollum's is told completely in one the movies (maybe only in the extended version). Actually, it might leave off the part of him murdering his friend, but the rest is complete.
I'd say evil is portrayed pretty evil-y in the movies. The orcs do have various conversations in English though the battle field chants are in orc language or something. I specifically recall one orc suggesting that they eat Pippin and Merry, but the boss says they must be returned unharmed. They then discuss whether just eating their legs would count, since the master will clearly only want to talk to them, "they won't be needing their legs". That conversation ends with a fight and the orcs eating the losers, so I'd say there is a pretty distinction between good and evil, and unless one thinks that Peter Jackson is recommending cannibalism, he is probably saying the evil power is bad, not just like good powers, but different.
i guess I'm not sure what you mean by "alien", the story is full of creatures that I've never seen in this world.
Smeagol does murder his friend in the movie, that I remember.
I understood Sursumcorda to mean that the orcs and Uruk-hai felt alien to the world of Middle Earth the way they were portrayed in the movie, like the movie had a PREDATORS VS MIDDLE EARTH look and feel.
My reaction was based almost solely on the first movie, and not the extended version. I've seen the other two, but too long ago to say much with certainty about details. The version I saw definitely implies that Gollum was always the creature he became.
I don't know for sure if Stephan understood me or not, since I have no idea what PREDATORS VS MIDDLE EARTH refers to. :) But I do mean that they were alien to Middle Earth in the sense that they appear not to be part of the "created order." I miss the sense of fallenness, of good creation gone bad, the realization that Evil has no power to create, only to warp and maim and twist.
I probably should see the other movies again before making an overall judgement. But that's a lot of time to spend being bored just to be able to make a point. :(
yeah - i was second guessing myself after I said that. I don't remember seeing it this time - i was out of the room for 30 minutes or so, probably. but i remember seeing a scene with a hobbit hand grabbing it off of the river floor, and the story continued, and didn't have anything about there being two hobbits.
But I have pretty vivid image of thescene with two hobbits. I do create pretty vivid "movie" images when reading, so sometimes i can't remember if it was a book or movie, but I'm confused...
There was definitely a scene in which Smeagol (not yet ugly) murders another hobbit (or similar creature) to steal the ring. I can't remember which movie it was in, though; probably the last one, which has the most character development for Smeagol/Gollum.
In the movie "Predators" the predator is an alien race that visits the earth every fifty years to hunt humans for sport. (Apparently they only come alone, and this one predator makes the mistake of picking Arnie as his prey.) Later there was a "Predators 2" and then a "PREDATORS VS. ALIENS," and although I never saw the latter and it stunk by all accounts, the title stuck and came to mind at this occasion due to the ugly otherworldly intruders from the first two movies.