Always do what you are afraid to do.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Jul 31
Ghostly Gettysburg
I had an occasion to visit Gettysburg Pennsylvania this weekend for a little R&R.
As expected, the area is rich in history and amazing stories: tragic and heroic.
But I was also amazed how swamped the area is with ghost stories.
The first hint came when it was posted on Facebook that we were going to Gettysburg for a long weekend. Many people commented that we should be sure to check out –such-and-such– ghost tour, or haunted –whatever-.
And then on arrival, we saw at nearly equal parts, paranormal bunk to actual history in what was being hocked in the stores of downtown Gettysburg.
I begin to realize that people had made the association of ghosts to Gettysburg due to all of the violent deaths that had occurred in the area some 151 years earlier.
As for me: I love a good ghost story. I love fantasy and all manner of fiction. However, I don’t like fiction sold as reality. Of the lot of paranormal pitches that I saw, perhaps the worst was a ‘psychic medium’ because parasitic ‘psychics’ pray on the memories and lives of the credulous.
But beyond that offense to morality, I found the real history compelling enough without having to pretend that some poor solider, who was blown apart in his prime, was stuck for all of eternity roaming the same tract of land.
Images from downtown Gettysburg:
Fear believes, courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays. Courage stands erect and thanks. Fear is barbarism. Courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion. Courage is science.
– Robert Ingersoll
Jul 14
June 2014 – Quote of the Month
Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later… that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.
~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Jun 24
Mow With Attitude
Shopping at the local Farm and Tractor store, I found myself eyeballing a zero turn tractor. (Such is my life these days.)
My eye was caught by the ‘Elite’ ‘Bad Boy’ lawn mower.
Looking closer I came to the tractor’s control panel…
“Mow With Attitude”. Everyday I’m reminded that we live in a surreal world.
Jun 15
May 2014 – Quote of the Month
Overheard at a gravesite: “And they all said ’I’m sorry for your loss,’ as if you were someone who could ever be taken from me.
– Robert Brault,
May 30
Beware the Pond
May 22
Thirteen Years
Started in 2001, this is yet another anniversary of Glen Green Dot Com as measured by orbits around the good old sun. If nothing else, I get points for perseverance.
May 10
April 2014 – Quote of the Month
The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.
― William Wordsworth
May 10
March 2014 – Quote of the Month
“I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Apr 26
Free Hugs
My friend, Margret shared this image with me, saying, “I immediately thought of you”; to which I replied, “I’m sad to report that for some sick reason, I’m glad that this made you immediately think of me!“
Margret responded, “Glen Green: the reluctant psychopath.”
Glen Green: the reluctant psychopath – I think that would make for an excellent website tagline!
Mar 20
A Hard and Bitter Winter
… But today is the start of Spring and may it bloom all the greener.
In this hour, I do not believe that any darkness will endure.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Mar 20
February 2014 – Quote of the Month
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
Feb 27
Not Your Mother’s Chicken Soup
Not just ordinary cock soup, this is spicy cock soup (authentic from Jamaica of course!)
Feb 02
January 2014 – Quote of the Month
I want to grow old without facelifts… I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I’ve made. Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.
– Marilyn Monroe
Jan 28
The Desolation of Peter Jackson
The Shadow of the Past
As part of my considerable Lord of the Rings collection, I have the Minds Eye audio adaptation of the books. In the first few chapters of the collection, the rendition includes Elves speaking. – Speaking with pitched Keebler Elves voices.
At that moment, an aficionado of the book can instantly tell that the creators didn’t comprehend the work at even a basic level.
And so, when the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I was afraid. – Not so much about variations and edits (which were inevitable in the translation from Epic book to movie); but in director missing the nature of the story.
Therefore I was relieved when the movies turned out to be good. – Flawed, but overall: quite good.
There is much more I could say about them. – In fact, I’m sure I could write a dissertation; but the gist is: the movies showed a relatively contained (if limited) variation of the story that, although short in depth and breath and greatly blunted in subtext, left the movie goer having seen an entertaining and engaging movie.
One could tell that Peter Jackson felt properly constrained by the source material, and benefited greatly by that constraint. Tolkien is a more masterful artist, story teller and world creator than Peter Jackson and, although reinterpretation was necessary, Jackson benefited from heeding the source material as far as he did.
A Knife in the Dark
I first suspected that trouble was afoot when I learned of Peter Jackson’s planed to turn the (roughly) 300 page ‘Fairy book Story‘ into a three 2.5 (+) hour movies.
Clearly Jackson and (associated producers) thought that following the Epic 11 hours (+) LotR movies with the small prequel tale would be anticlimactic. They thought wrong.
The first of the three movies, ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ (2012) was an ill paced movie, punctuated with hyperbolic action scenes including sequences such as the overwrought stone giant battle and the preposterous scratch-free falling in the Goblin Caves. The film was further injured with dumb-downed dialog. But at least, in the final tally, the movie was interspersed with occasional moments that appealed to the sentiment I had for the world of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Middle Earth.
Although passable, by generosity of heart, ‘the Unexpected Journey’ left me in no hurry to rush to the theater when the sequel, ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ was released this December. (2013)
I finally saw the movie last week, and the term, ‘Jumping the Shark’, comes to mind but perhaps updated to, ‘Jumping the Dwarfs in barrels, balancing on one leg, pivoting, while shooting goblins on a raging river’ may be more accurate, if less pithy. (See the movie and you’ll get the reference.)
Some may accuse me of being too diehard of a Tolkien fan to allow for variation from the book. But, objectively, that isn’t the case as evidenced by my appreciation for the LotR movies which varied in many, many places.
No, my objection to this latest Hobbit sequel (‘Smaug’ for short) is based on my love of movies and story telling in general.
Where the ‘Unexpected Journey’ is ill paced and suffers from a couple of long dragging sections, Jackson tries to turn the action up to ’11’ on ‘Smaug’. – Story telling be dammed.
To put a fine point on it: the book is a deeply rooted, endearing monomythic tale about a sheltered Hobbit who finds himself swept into a larger world of wonder and adventure. The movie, ‘Smaug’, is an overwrought, bombastic, emotionally uninvolving, video game draped in green-screen CG set-pieces and sprinkled with toilet and penis humor.
The only redeeming features of the movie are found in the artistic rendering and voicing of Smaug (by geek fan favorite Benedict Cumberbatch).
But if there was any wonder to be found in the depiction of Smaug, the dragon, it was lost in the ill conceived plot variations and redonkulous, suspension of disbelief defiling action sequence that follows his introduction.
At this point, I’m out of time and not rant. A shame: since the internet is short on rants. (/Sarcasm)
In short: I think Peter Jackson suffered from George Lucas Syndrome which arises on the back of a wildly successful artistic endeavor and leaves the victim suffering from symptoms of ‘Yes-Men-isim’ and the belief that more is always better and CG backgrounds are acceptable substitutes for story telling and character arc. The syndrome also blinds the victim to merits found in the original material.
Sigh.
I guess this ruins any chance of being invited to Peter Jackson’s house for dinner. Shame. He seems like a nice enough, well intentioned guy.
It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality … In such stories when the sudden “turn” comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories
Jan 19
December 2013 – Quote of the Month
Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
– Maya Angelou
Dec 28
The Price is Wrong
Quick! How much does this tape cost?
I saw this at Five Below. The Blue ‘3’ blends into the black background even more in person. I have to wonder how many shoppers got to the checkout line only to be pissed off that the price was four times higher than they thought.
Is this just bad design or an active attempt to be deceptive?
Dec 28
Novembor 2013 – Quote of the Month
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
– Robert Louis Stevensons
Nov 30
Florid Fido Feculence
I’ll confess that I’ve never had much of a scatological funny bone but I do have a keen sense of the surreal.
Shopping at Target during the Halloween season I came across glow-in-the dark plastic poo in the $1 dollar bin that greets visitors on entry into the store.
I marvel at the following:
- Note the yellow pile in the photo – it has a shape different than the others, with a different blister pack. That means that there isn’t just one kind of glow in the dark dog poop – there are multiple types.
- What do the factory workers in China think of the U.S.?
- Fake canine crapola is one thing, but florescent colored glowing dog droppings doesn’t even make sense as a prank! It’s not like it is going to fool anybody for a second, unless you expect Rover is eating irradiated puppy chow.
If we’re to have an apocalypse, I don’t think it will be marked by the coming of plagues and famine. I think the seventh seal will be phosphorescent pooch piles.
Nov 14
October 2013 – Quote of the Month
I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement [Libertarians] in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.
– Christopher Hitchens
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