I Am...

I am...

(1) ...a person who stops at all stop signs.

(2) ...a person who prefers to drive the speed limit.

(3) ...a person who cannot lie.

(4) ...a person who stops to say, "Hi, how are you?" to the cleaning lady.

(5) ...a person who says, "Good morning," and "Thank you," to the bus driver.

(6) ...a person who says, "Please."

(7) ...a person who will not interrupt you when you pull out your cellphone and start texting while 'talking' to me.

(8) ...a person who is either on time or early.

(9) ...a person who hates to skip class.

(10) ...a person who never uses swear words.

I see nothing wrong with this. Why are these traits dying out in society? Is the dearth of common politeness due to the increasing globalization and secularization of the world, or the increasing busy-ness and laziness of people? Or are there causes I cannot yet think of?

Even so, it makes me mourn.

I began reflecting on this matter the other day as I was coming out of a building on campus. It was ten till the hour, so a flood of students were going out the main door of the building along with me. I noticed the cleaning lady standing off to the side, holding the Windex and cloth she would shortly use to clean off the glass doors. She was waiting for all the students to go by. I had seen her several times before and spoken briefly to her, although I still do not know her name.

Everyone else was walking right past her as if she did not exist. Granted, many were talking to their friends or on their phones, but others just ignored her. It was as if they could not see her. They could not even smile and say, "Hi." So I made a point of stopping and saying, "Hello, how are you?"

I always say, "Thank you," to the cashiers. These workers are people like us, deserving of a little basic courtesy.

Why is the courtesy always gone?

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

More Fun Stuff

Because I like posting this stuff, and I am posting it currently to mentally prepare myself for the literature blog post I need to do. I never post on that blog when I'm supposed to. I just post stuff when stuff comes to mind, and since it comes to mind more than the number of times required to post (and we were never told to post about everything), I think it all works out in the end.

So, in order to get mentally prepared, we shall, without further ado, present:

Sorry, Amy, but I thought that was hysterical. Particularly the puzzled looks of everyone in the background. John's just like, "Really, Sherlock?"

Hahahaha. And this one was done by PeckishOwl on DeviantArt. S/he has done lost of pictures with TH:AUJ, including funny captions and crossovers like this one. So go check it out, with no further delay; the picture should link back to it.

...And I am having problems with Internet Explorer also. Yes, I use IE. It's default. And I usually don't have too many problems with it. Usually...

So, unfortunately, I have to stop here. :(

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

Me Fooling Around

So, the other Sunday we were out on the lawn playing croquet. Croquet is a wonderful game, too, if you've got the balls for it.

I must admit, it was this person's Pinterest page (www.pinterest.com/swordwhale/) that led to my discovering of that site, which swallows your time as a black hole swallows light. And so I branched out and discovered Hobbit things and LOTR things and anti-Twilight things. Yay.

Anyway, so the other Sunday we were out playing croquet. We played two games. The first game I arrived late to yet somehow still won. I do not know how that happened. Possibly I have learned how to hit the balls better. Dunno. The second game dad came out and beat us all soundly. WITH EASE.

So we were standing around with the mallets waiting for each other to finish up so we could take our turns ourselves. And the temptation to misuse those mallets is enormous, as Calvin once said.

(I couldn't find the one of him actually saying that, however. Sad face.)

We, however, tend to call the mallets 'bammers', since they, well, bam the balls around. At least, that's the sound they make. So my brother and I were having fun running around and saying, "He wields the bammer - bright as daylight!"

And then I corrupted it to say: "He wields the gravity hammer - bright as daylight!"

And this resulted:

I'm not even sorry. XP

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

Aragorn Addition

I agree with this sentiment. I would have problems finding a boyfriend, because my expectations would have been set by The Lord of the Rings.

Disney had nothing to do with it.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

Aragorn Tribute

Aragorn used to be one of my favorite characters from The Lord of the Rings, and I still admire him greatly, particularly in the book, where he does not show the same weaknesses he does in the movie. (Granted, those same weaknesses make him appear more human.) I especially admire his lines in Chapter 2 The Riders of Rohan of Book Three (a.k.a., the first part of The Two Towers), where he talks about, "Good and evil have not changed from yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and another among Dwarves. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in his own home as in the Golden Wood."

Yes, I did these pictures myself. It was fun playing around with the fonts and trying to get the words to fit. The rhyme was made by Bilbo for Aragorn once he learned of the Dunadan's true heritage, and it is simply epic.

All that is gold does not glitter;

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither:

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken;

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken;

The crowneless again shall be king.

 





 

In Pace Christi,

 

Elyse

HALLELUJAH! BILBO WINS!!!

Yay! Bilbo won the MTV Best Hero award! I even saw it in the paper this morning. I find it really hilarious that The Avengers won several of the other awards, but that all its characters (the Hulk, Iron Man, etc.) completely flopped in the best hero department.

Seriously, look at the stats. If the Hulk, Iron Man, Catwoman, or Batman topped 50,000 votes anywhere I would be surprised.

Snow White got 1,532,571 votes. That's over 1.5 million.

Bilbo got 1,637,179 votes. That's overy 1.6 million.

Ooh, did you hear that, lads? We beat her by over 100,000 votes!

My faith in the world and in humanity has been restored. I cannot tell you how happy I was last night when I got the news. It may or may not have prompted a happy dance on my part.

Now I will (hopefully) be happy for the rest of the day.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

I Know, I'm Breaking My Own Rule

This was the cryptoquote in the paper today:

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his picture.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Now, I know I have reminded myself upon numerous occasions not to drone on and on about the stories I write on this blog, and I have never even considered my pictures since I have never scanned them in to a computer, except for this one. (I did it for a presentation on medieval armor. Said presentation did not go so well - not because of the picture - but I will avoid PowerPoint whenever possible from now on.

Why am I posting it? Dunno. It's not as if this is one of my most wonderful pictures or anything. It's just a semi-random guy in armor, with a spear (which ran off the page) and a sword. Not even a helmet of his own, poor dude.

I mean, I could explain who he is and what is his purpose in the story he is in, but that would make no sense to anyone... Well, I can say that his name is Delathon, because that was on the page. I also wrote his name in the runes I devised for my story. They're called the Talvana, and I admit that they were inspired by Tolkien's Cirth. Because anything I can do well, Tolkien did better. It's just a fact of life.

However, I just felt it was appropriate to stick this picture on this post. Because the cryptoquote really resonanted with me. I have often felt that my characters reflect different facts of me (one got my eating habits, another got my facial tics, another got my Grammar Nazi ways, another got my tendency to go on rants...).

Let's just hope that it's not like Sauron and the One Ring. If my stories are lost, I don't want to explode. Granted, I would be extremely sad as I have worked for years and years on them now. I probably couldn't ever fully recapture them.

But I hope I wouldn't explode. That would be bad.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Thank YOU, Amy, for posting this video on your blog! It was simply priceless! Now I have no choice but to blog it myself so I can watch it AGAIN and cackle like a madwoman over my laptop.

AHAHAHAHAHA. That makes four times I've watched it in a row!

In Pace Christi,

Elyse :)

#VOTEBILBO

Look, I don't have a Twitter account. But there is currently a war going on amongst the Twitter people for the MTV movie awards for "Best Hero". Iron Man, Batman, the Hulk, and Catwoman were all left in the dust long ago; it is down to a duel between Bilbo and Snow White from Snow White and the Huntsman.

In other words, it's nerds vs. Twihards.

We Ringers are summoning everyone we know to join us in the quest to defeat the fans of Kristen Stewart. We choose you, bronies, Sherlockians, Whovians, Game of Thrones peeps! Gondor calls for aid! Will you answer?
The wonderful Emil Johansson at LOTRProject.com has build a webpage to track the race between Bilbo and K Stew. They are literally neck and neck, and already up to 850,000 votes each.

I don't have a Twitter account, but, if any of you do, please, please, please #VoteBilbo! Multiple times!

Currently, Bilbo is getting only 105 votes per minute, while Snow White is getting 190. This cannot be borne!

I BID YOU STAND, MEN OF THE WEST!!!

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Random Things

Apparently, the stuff I find on Pinterest and subsequently post is fairly popular. *bows* Thank you, my lovelies!

Here is more!

Heh, heh, heh, Thranduil is all like, "Excuse me? Did you say something?" For bonus points, he's not even riding a moose. He's riding an Irish Elk. Go google it or something; it was a real animal but went extinct a long time ago.

For even more bonus points, in the Extinct Animals expansion pack of Zoo Tycoon 2, you can get a bone dig pit for the kids to dig up bones in. They then take them to the education center and assemble the bones into a skeleton. You then get to keep the skeleton as a statue in your zoo somewhere. One of the skeletons you can assemble in this way is an Irish Elk. The first time I did this, I had to take a picture of it and label it: "Thranduil's Deer". Zoo Tycon for the win!

Seriously. If you go to the Appendix of The Lord of the Rings, you can see just how many generations it we between Aragorn and Isildur. We're talking 3000 years of Middle-earth history here, peoples.

I'm fairly sure Boromir would have fallen asleep by the time Legolas got through all those names...

May I just take a moment to say how much I love Sean Bean's expression in the second frame? Hahahaha, it is so appropriate for this! I like the embarrassed look he is giving the rest of the Council in the last frame, too.

I love that line. LOTR memes are the best memes.

Mercifully, I don't feel like this a lot. In fact, I don't feel like this very much at all, praised be, but feeling like this is my nightmare. *obsessively checks to make sure my geography assignment is printed out for tomorrow* Whew! It's there. Thank goodness.

One of these days I should really learn how to make gifs. I also have grand plans of one day, after all three of the Hobbit movies are out on Extended Edition DVD's, of teaching myself how to edit a fanvideo. Whenever I hear the song, "Be Not Afraid," I think it fits the situations of Tolkien's characters so very well. So maybe one day I'll compile a video.

But it is not this day!

In Pace Christi,

Elyse