The stupidcallafragilisticexpeallidumbass stupidity hammer

John C. Wright watched the second Hobbit movie, “this craptastic jerktrocious smegbladder of a film“:

To be quite honest, the actress Evangeline Lilly is not only quite attractive, she handles both the demands of the acting and a physical stunts very well. Indeed, I am afraid I have a bit of a crush on her, with her long lustrous hair, her finely chiseled cheekbones, her kissing-soft feminine lips, her soft curves aching with the promise of luscious loveplay … Oh, wait a minute. I am think I am looking at Orlando Bloom. Er, never mind. Sorry, Miss Lilly.

… But I am glad that Ishmael and Queequeg will appear in the sequel.

(For the record: I found Jackson’s version of The Fellowship of the Ring barely tolerable and was disgusted with the rest of his Ring cycle. You’d have to pay me to watch him trash The Hobbit, and pay me well.)

Afterthought: Lousy though they are, Jackson’s movies did make DM of the Rings possible.

*****

Lydia McGrew:

My more economically savvy readers may think that all of this is so obvious as not to need to be said, but listen around next time you hear some far less savvy young people talk about what people “should have” and what people “need” and what things “should cost.” You might get a surprise. Nobody has, apparently, ever explained to these people that neither money nor pharmaceuticals nor fully-trained doctors grow on trees. It’s just an astonishing thing, but the fairies don’t distribute goods and services.

I thought immediately of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, in which the fairies sometimes do distribute goods and services. This may be related to the fact that the English-language title of the show is “Humanity Has Declined.”

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From Parma Tyelpelassiva

Recognize this?

Man naeg mathal, ae maethor veren,
Erui reniol ar nimp?
I thâr pellen uin ael
Ar ú-linnar in aew.

Actually, you do know the poem of which this is the first stanza, though probably not in this translation.

There’s more poetry here, and much else about Tolkien’s languages, including downloadable courses. ((It’s oddly refreshing to see such an old-fashioned website.)) Here’s an overview of the Elvish languages.

Welcome to Mordor

Here’s where this was shot. As far as I can tell, this is for real, though the people probably look closer to the hot stuff than they actually are because telephoto lenses compress distances.

The New Zealand mountains Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe were Peter Jackson’s stand-ins for Mt. Doom, but the video above is closer to my mental image of Tolkien’s volcano. (Tolkien is said to have modeled Mordor on the perpetually erupting Stromboli.)