(to The Tune Of Mary Had A Little Lamb): Mary Had A Little Lamb

everything should cost one dollar, ten dollars, or one hundred dollars. a drinky drink is one dollar. a t shirt is ten dollars. rent is one hundred. i might be convinced to allow one thousand dollars for some very big purchases like a house. i get it, you're running a business. i'm not unreasonable.

the Guardian

Associated Press barred from Oval Office for not using ‘Gulf of America’

Agency says its reporter wasn’t allowed into event in effort to ‘punish’ style guide on upholding use of Gulf of Mexico

He's got the instincts of a vindictive child.

One of the things that’s really struck me while rereading the Lord of the Rings–knowing much more about Tolkien than I did the last time I read it–is how individual a story it is.

We tend to think of it as a genre story now, I think–because it’s so good, and so unprecedented, that Tolkien accidentally inspired a whole new fantasy culture, which is kind of hilarious. Wanting to “write like Tolkien,” I think, is generally seen as “writing an Epic Fantasy Universe with invented races and geography and history and languages, world-saving quests and dragons and kings.” But… But…

Here’s the thing. I don’t think those elements are at all what make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so good. Because I’m realizing, as I did not realize when I was a kid, that Tolkien didn’t use those elements because they’re somehow inherently better than other things. He used them purely because they were what he liked and what he knew.

The Shire exists because he was an Englishman who partially grew up in, and loved, the British countryside, and Hobbits are born out of his very English, very traditionalist values. Tom Bombadil was one of his kids’ toys that he had already invented stories about and then incorporated into Middle-Earth. He wrote about elves and dwarves because he knew elves and dwarves from the old literature/mythology that he’d made his career. The Rohirrim are an expression of the ancient cultures he studied. There are a half-dozen invented languages in Middle-Earth because he was a linguist. The themes of war and loss and corruption were important to him, and were things he knew intimately, because of the point in history during which he lived; and all the morality of the stories, the grace and humility and hope-in-despair, was an expression of his Catholic faith. 

J. R. R. Tolkien created an incredible, beautiful, unparalleled world not specifically by writing about elves and dwarves and linguistics, but by embracing all of his strengths and loves and all the things he best understood, and writing about them with all of his skill and talent. The fact that those things happened to be elves and dwarves and linguistics is what makes Middle-Earth Middle-Earth; but it is not what makes Middle-Earth good.

What makes it good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written… And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.

So… I think, if we really want to write like Tolkien (as I do), we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or… We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.

happy international womens day! remember that there are palestenian women in need of feminine hygiene products! you can donate here, and the cheapest tier is 5$!

if you can't donate, reblog! doing something is better than doing nothing! remember to keep talking, keep calling and keep donating! from the river to the sea, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!! 🇵🇸

im into some fucked up shit. raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. brown paper packages tied of with strings. i could go on but you couldnt even handle it

wing 🪽

print!

Since watering means giving something water but milking means extracting milk from something that must means that water's default is to give but milk's default is to take. So water must be inherently kind while milk is cruel

do you have an "about" page with relevant information about yourself (eg pronouns, a name you go by, etc)? only i like your blog but always feel strange about following blogs with no face so to speak

I’ve answered this before so we’re going to do this bullet points style

-If there are categories of people you don’t want to follow please assume I belong to all of them

-If you need my demographic info before you can decide if you agree with my opinion or not please disagree with my opinions

-Please assume I am up to no good - this is a good thing to assume with any blog on here - even blogs with faces may be no-faces in disguise

-All of the information you want has been posted here at one time or another if you want to know but I like having that threshold of difficulty in place - if you want to get your creep on I want you to have to work for it

-I am hoping the irony of your having sent this ask anonymously is not lost on you

And, for all bloggers everywhere, a quick reminder: you don’t owe anybody jack shit!

I’m watching The Big Bang Theory in its natural setting—playing in the background of a hot spiral room—and I can say within that specific context, it is a very charming show. Like the saltine crackers of media.