I Need A Laugh

*sigh* It was another grumpy day at school. Actually, it started off happy and ended up grumpy. It started off well in calculus (you know something's weird when that is possibly my favorite class this semester. Actually, the fact that we are a very small group - there's only nine of us! Nine Nazgul! - probably helps since we - mostly - know each others names and can commiserate). Instead of having our normal lecture, we went to Research Day to check out the various exhibitions done by faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.

Which was very convenient, as our assignment in human geography was to go to Research Day and write about two of the exhibits we saw there. So I sat in the library and did that. Very good.

Then it went downhill from there. *headbang*

...Hmm. I don't seem to have any grumpy gifs, other than the one of Scar going, "I am surrounded by idiots." Which is probably a good thing. So, instead, I think I'll post some happy gifs and then some funny stuff I've found on the Internet and hopefully get myself in a better mood.

Here is Andy Serkis (a.k.a., Gollum), apparently dancing happily through a field of flowers near Matamata, New Zealand (or, at least, that looks very much like the location of Hobbiton to me...). I'm not really sure what he's doing here, but this definitely qualifies as a happy gif. Also, Andy Serkis needs more love. He's been snubbed by the awards people so many times on his role as Gollum; maybe one day he'll make it big as a director and will be able to win awards there.

Why this gif? I like Fili. He's the responsible older brother. I can relate to that. He also has better blond braids than Legolas. (Whaaat? Elves are so last year!)

I just like Fili, okay? Even if he does have a brief blond moment (i.e., "If there's a key, there must be a door," although I think that could actually be a valid deduction, since the presence of the door was previously unknown).

And this gif makes me smile. It's adorable.

So on this blog it goes!

I'll have you know I looked a very long time for it. There's another gif of Fili I've been looking for, too. I'm just lucky I found the Dwarf boot camp gifs I've been looking for a very long time. Everywhere I saw them, they were just pictures. I didn't want the pictures. I WANTED THE GIFS! And so I finally found them. Here they are, in all their glory:

How can you not love this gif?

(For your information, that is Richard Armitage/Thorin on the left, Mark Hadlow/Dori in the center, and Graham McTavish/Dwalin on the right. No, I don't know who the dude int he back is. He bears a passing resemblance to John Howe, one of the concept artists, with his glasses, beard, and hair, but I HIGHLY doubt that it is him.)

This is a link to John Howe's website. He does wonderful art. Go check it out.

And, as for the other gif:

This gif doesn't show the beginning of the clip, but Graham basically jump-tackled Richard like a football player. It's nice to see that the trust and loyalty between Thorin and Dwalin (they are almost always together in fights, and when they're stuck in Rivendell they trash-talk about it to each other... watch that part again and tell me that's not what they're doing!) extends to behind the scenes as well.

Plus, I just love the hit-their-boots-together thing the actors do. It's hilarious.

As an added bonus, I have to share something that Amy shared with me. I honestly cannot give any description of this video; it is too funny for any attempt at a witty explanation.

There. I think I'm in a better mood now.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

I've Been On Pinterest Again...

So, you know what that means... MORE PICTURES!!!

Granted... I only read Eragon and Eldest and mostly I just now like sporking the Alagaesia Cycle/whatever it's officially called, because Paolini made it way too easy. And Harry Potter isn't my most favorite series of all time, I've never read the Hunger Games, and LOTR is superior to Narnia in every way.

But you get the point.

Actually, Narnia may be the only series where I will admit that the movies are, on the whole, better than the books. Like Tolkien, I find Lewis's mishmash of mythologies and critters in Narnia a bit puzzling (*whistles innocently, as my own fantasy universe contains centaurs, elves, dwarves, nixes, kobolds, dragons, oaves, and aliens who look like chickens and drive spaceships*). I also find Lewis's writing really dry and frankly boring in places; Perelandra is a philosophical masterpiece, however, and Out of the Silent Planet contains the only genuinely funny moment in any of his writing.

I really think that stories can be geared to children while remaining readable by adults, which I have found is very much the case with The Hobbit. (And, yes, I consider TH:AUJ better than the book in some respects, but I think that if Tolkien had completed his re-write of The Hobbit I might not be saying this.) However, to me The Chronicles of Narnia never seemed like they could draw in adults as well as children. Hmm.

My favorite of the books might actually be The Magician's Nephew. I've always loved the part where the animals think Uncle Andew is a tree and plant him, and where the plants keep growing at a prodigious rate. (The gold and silver saplings were just amazing.) However, the end of The Last Battle genuinely made me tear up, so, yeah... Well-done death scenes tend to do that to me.

What was it we were reading for literature the other day... something by Flaubert, I think. "The Faithful Heart"? Anyway, it was about a French serving-woman named Felicite who is (probably) happy despite her miserable existence and who is devoted to her parrot. After it dies she starts thinking how the Holy Spirit could be more appropriately depicted as a parrot, since parrots are more intelligent than doves and so forth. When she dies, she sees something like a parrot descending out of the clouds to her.

My first reaction, I will admit without a shade of reluctance, was to tear up. I thought it was quite beautiful. It was once I got to class and sat down and heard the rest discussing it that I realized how ridiculous it actually was (my mom laughed outright when I told her about it), and so now I'm ambivalent about it. I think it's a sort of A Form You Are Comfortable With, but it veers into Narm territory. (The proper literary term for Narm would probably be bathos.) Narm Charm for me, however, at least at first.

How did I get onto parrots? o.O I had better just post my next picture...

I have this problem. I totally have this problem. I'm double stacking books again and all my Rick Riordan books (Percy Jackson, Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus) are lined up on top of another.

Problem is, I don't know where I'd put another bookshelf...

I've tended to call this "new book syndrome", but, yeah, "book hangover" works too and I have totally experienced it... on numerous occasions... Symptoms include: headache from staying up to 1:00 AM in order to finish said book, as well as from lying under the covers awake for the next hour giggling to oneself and rehearsing all of one's favorite parts in one's mind. Also: decreased productivity throughout the next day as one is still mentally rehashing the book.

Nerd problems.

True. Except I don't know that I've ever passed out of the "young enough for fairly tales" stage. I'd rather read fantasy than pretty much any other genre (other than historical fiction, I suppose), hands down.

I'm with G. K. Chesterton. If a man can't be free to believe in fairies, what's left for him...

I would totally do this. I might even actually throw a dictionary. For good measure, I might toss a thesaurus after it. (Yes, I have a thesaurus. It is ancient. It also has words in it that aren't even IN MY DICTIONARY, for goodness's sakes. - And I mean the good dictionary downstairs, not just the pathetic one I keep in my room that doesn't even have "psychosomatic" in it. - Yes, I actually know what that word means.)

I mean, I'm so bad that I can be reading the paper and when I randomly call out, "Grammatical error," or, "Spelling error," no one in my family even blinks. I'm so bad that IN ONE OF MY STORIES a character is a total Grammar Nazi and does the same thing that I do. XD I have really found that bits of myself lodge themselves in my various characters and well Sierel just seems to have taken the Grammar Nazi part of me to heart.

Weird. I used to also hate that character and now I love him.

But I have promised not to ramble about my stories on this blog, so on we go to the next picture!

HAHAHAHAHAHA... The  funny thing is that the last one is so totally true! I will become the Master of Solitaire!

I also love Nerts.

(Nerts is basically multiplayer solitaire. Yes, a contradiction in terms, I know. Several members of my family came over yesterday for Easter and we had a nice game of Nerts on the kitchen table. It got very fierce at times, since we are a competitive bunch. We had to turn the ceiling fan on because it was getting hot in the room. I did pretty well though... I never scored below twenty, so, yeah... I will become the Master of Nerts!)

Because I'm just nerdy this way... Hahahahaha...

Oh, and I'd like to share this one also, because I think we can all find it very relevant when we are on our computers and intend to get useful, constructive things done and somehow find ourselves not doing useful constructive things... and instead looking up silly pictures on Pinterest, for instance...

 

And so, while we're on the subject of Gollum, and since I have some troll tendencies in my personality (I need to find a picture with the caption, "TROOOOOOOLL! TROLL IN THE DUNGEON!" quite desperately), I have something to share with you all, something which, if it gives you your new nightmare, I shall feel that it has done its job:

Oh, and bonus points if you also automatically get that song stuck in your head. XD *smiles evilly* I am such a troll.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse