make....it....st o p
Today's forecast: partly hurricaney. With more on the way.

I watched the Two Towers again for the first time in a long while, and was struck by the crisp elegance of Faramir's Gondorian accent. I read somewhere that the Gondor accent was based loosely on the Yorkshire accent, with long o's and e's ("mehyn" instead of "men", "Bohrohmir", etc.). The effect is very plummy and smooth. You know you're in the presence of a literate culture, a civilization of scholars and poets.

Now, if the filmmakers had defied logic, common sense, and tradition, and gone the American route - who knows? Maybe they would have given the Gondorians a Boston accent, as follows:

"A chance foah Fahrameah, captin of Gondoahh, to show his quality. Wicked pissah!"

"Battahlions of ohcs are crahssing the rivahh..."

Or perhaps an upper Midwest accent:

"Yer bodygaird, eh?"

OK, I just realized I have no point here.

Talk amongst yourselves.

make!it!stop!
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: Peruvian nose fiddle


Behold. A Faramir Topps card.

Stare at it. Feel the urge to collect, surging through the veins of your forehead.

You want it. You need it. You will do anything to possess it.

The last time I felt the urge to collect anything, I was 10 years old and trying to amass a complete set of "Star Wars" cards. Every kid in the school was ga-ga for them. Recess was a huge trading bazaar; instead of playing kickball and foursquare like normal kids, we huddled under the jungle gym exchanging duplicates and bartering for missing cards. Exchange rates fluctuated wildly: three R2D2s might get you a Han Solo at lunchtime, but only a pair of Tusken Raiders by the time the bell rang.

Every last cent I could scrape together went towards buying Star Wars cards. Each new pack was eagerly opened and thumbed through, looking for certain cards, chewing the revolting cardboard gum, and lowering the eventual resale value of my parents' house by plastering Jawa stickers all over my bedroom door.

After weeks and weeks of dedicated collecting, I had acquired every single card, except for #63. (The card number is still burned into my brain. I can see it with my waking eyes.) #63, a picture of Luke Skywalker, was particuarly coveted by the girls in our class, and thus hard to come by.

With the end in sight, my buying frenzy increased. Feverishly I raked leaves, babysat, walked dogs, washed windows, sold pitchers of lemonade along the river to thirsty canoers, scanned the sidewalks for dropped pennies and nickels. Pack after pack of Star Wars cards was purchased, ripped open, and thrown down in disgust, refusing to yield up the coveted #63.

One day, my older sister and I stopped into the local candy store on the way home from school. On a whim, she bought a pack. You guessed it: #63 was the first card in the pack.

I made the classic mistake of falling to my knees and begging for the card. Had I kept my cool and feigned disinterest, she probably would have given it to me outright. As it was, the asking price immediately shot up well into two figures. I had to mortgage sleeping rights to the dog, TV channel selection privileges, dish duties for a month, and all my future Halloween candy, as well as sing the "My Older Sister Is The Greatest" song right there in front of the store.

After two solid hours of torment, she relented, and let me have the card. It was only a small square of cardboard, but oh, the satisfaction. The sense of completion. The blisters, the aching back, the complete loss of dignity: all worth it. I had set a goal, and accomplished it. I spread all the cards out on my bedroom floor and just looked at them. Nothing missing. A whole entire set, assembled with my own sweat and toil and tears.

Two weeks later, Topps announced that they were coming out with Series Two Star Wars cards.

There is probably a deep moral lesson in all of this, but it eludes me.

PFAz
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: tag
Lonely....I'm Princess Lonely...Just checking in to see if my picture came up and it didnt so the heck with it...let me try something else...

Princopesso o de Fazzina
Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: The Big Red One
Okay, where did this picture come from:



Why do these get missed? Or where are they all these years that suddenly they pop up? Is there a hidden stash of photos of David somewhere? Just curious...

DJ jazzy make_iT_stop
Mood:  hug me
Now Playing: the national anthem of the Planet Cute
Listening to the commentary on "The Bank", where they discuss using a stunt double to jump into the water behind the moving boat, makes me realize how difficult and dangerous an occupation acting can be. Just look at the requirements of some of David's past roles: attacked by savage dogs, dragged behind a horse, drenched with oil and set on fire, getting beaten up by Joseph Fiennes in 110-degree heat. Not exactly a walk in the park. You have to admire people who can ignore hazardous conditions and turn in a consistent, utterly believable performance.

My workday seems so boring and pedestrian by comparison. The biggest threats to my health are paper cuts and coffee scalds. The closest I've ever come to getting hurt on the job was last summer, when I broke my ribs at the company picnic while tubing behind the VP's motorboat. (He was deliberately trying to buck me off, and succeeded.) A few years ago, I came within a hair's breadth of getting arrested/severely assaulted while doing a routine site survey, but that's a different story. Let's just say I accidentally found some barrels of toxic waste that the town would have preferred to keep secret.

I'm antsy about the upcoming U.S. election too, PFaz. This is probably the most significant presidential contest since FDR/Wendell Wilkie in '36, if not Reconstruction. It's hard to believe there's any undecided voters left in the country.

P Diddy Fazzzz
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: Theme song to Koala Brothers, mate
I'm hungry but also irritated. Why must Wire Images torture usssss? Why must the pictures by thumbnail size so that we must squint. We just want to gaze on the beauty, we just want to see the brown suit. Why cant they give it to us bigger, even with a water mark. They torture ussss. Tricksyy false Wire Imagesssss. WE just want to look, we dont want to sell or anything, I mean geez oh pete.

On a side note, I cant wait until the election is over.

make-it-stop
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Boxcar Slim And The Plastic Bleach Jug Experience
Heh heh...looks like you're "still Sharp(e)", PFaz.

Good point about remembering to bring your gigantic T-shirt along when staying over with strangers who might try to seduce you. Richard looks more like an Extra Medium to me. :)

I've been watching the final Futurama series on DVD (which bills itself as "Hee Haw, with lasers!"). BEST.SHOW.EVER. I keep having to rewind because I'm laughing too hard to hear the dialogue. Fry, with his red coiff and gee-whiz earnestness, could easily pass for a teenage David. How can you not love a show where, instead of Half & Half, people put Third & Third & Third in their coffee? Fox should never have cancelled it.

Pfazzzz
Mood:  sharp
Now Playing: Dulcimer polka
We've learned so much from Richard and Co. What about:

1. Never daydream and iron at the same time.

2. Walk very slowly when accompanying the elderly.

3. Men should always tell the "fart" jokes.

4. When sleeping in a strange house, always wear your XXXXXXXL t-shirt.

5. Louis Jordan played some extremely cool music.

6. Chickens are wonderful...

make_it_stop
Mood:  loud
Now Playing: Zither Hits of 1978
What kind of a mood is "loud"?

As PFaz aptly points out below, "A Little Bit of Soul" contains many, many nuggets of life-altering wisdom. Rabbis could spend centuries debating the ethics of keeping chickens in cages, and performing Richard Shorkinghorn midrash (I think that's the word for it, when you sit around and argue scripture).

Here's some stuff I learned from "Little Bit Of Soul":

1. The urge to eat onion rings off your fingers in private is normal and universal.

2. Try to arrange for murders to take place in the bathroom. Cleanup is a little easier on tile.

3. Don't drink an entire bottle of cognac in one sitting. (Two sittings should do it.)

4. Stephen Hawking is hilarious.

5. Careful when rolling around in cow pastures.

6. When playing Charades, stand there and make a squinty face so your teammates will know exactly what you're acting out.

PFaz
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Waltzing Matilda the witch
How about...

Little Bit of Soul...

1. All you need to do to be the economy big wig for a country is to say that the sacrifices of the last 18 months have paid off. That and keep an index card with you at all times that has scribbles and little houses drawn on it.

2. Chickens can roam freely about your house and furniture without messing...(not true)

3. Nice guys dont always finish last.

4 Even as a nerdy geek with hornrim glasses and crooked teeth, David Wenham is incredibly sweet and adorable.

5. Love happens in the strangest places.

6. Tennis outfits are indeed proper for satanic rituals.

7. Kate with an Australian accent sounds like "Kite"