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One of my favorite places in the world is in West Virginia (it's called "Beartown State Park"). Congrats, Marita Ann. What lake in West Virginia?
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It's called Hulls Lake, and it's in/near Terra Alta. The "resort" is called Alpine Lake. They have a lot of cabins there for rent, as well as a lodge. It's a really beautiful place. My fiancé grew up in Morgantown, and when my grandparents immigrated from the Netherlands, they came to Huntington. They had learned how to speak British English, but in West Virginia they couldn't understand a word anyone was saying!
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We lived in South Charleston, just over the hill from the Kanawha River, for a couple of years about 30 years ago. I really liked it there, but we weren't there long enough to see very much of it.
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Kindergarten through college, I attended nine schools. None of the kids from kindergarten attended my second elementary school, one of the kids from my second elemenary attended my first middle school, one (or two?) of the kids from my year of "homeschooling" attended my first high school, and none of the kids from my first high school attended my second high school. I'm generally more comfortable around strangers than around people I've known for a while.
Actually what I remember best about each school these days are what books I found in the libraries. K-thru-5 school, Heinlein and Asimov's fiction. 5-thru-8, Asimov's non-fiction. High school, Tolkien, Kenneth Grahame, C. S. Lewis, and Mervyn Peake. College, P. G. Wodehouse and Stephen King. (The majority of stuff that I enjoyed and which influenced me, I found elsewhere, like bookstores and magazines.)
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You might deduce from the above that I changed schools mid-way through fifth grade. The story of this would thrill you and chill you...that is, it would, if I were a better writer.
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Come to think of it, I found Tolkien through buying The Hobbit at a book fair at high school, not in the library.
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Robert reminds me of something that I did that a few other of my writer friends found blasphemis. In an attempt to get my wife to part with of a few of her precious things (that litter our house) I agreed to part with something that was very important to me. My sci-fi/fantasy paperback collection. I put aside ten books that I couldn't part with than sold the rest, about 200, for $25. Man the guy that bought them was happy. I didn't think I would miss them but man do I wish I would have held onto a few more. Especially those Niven short story anthologies.
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited August 20, 2009).]
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I discovered The Lord of the Rings in middle school. That was at the time when the movies were coming out. I can't remember if I saw the first movie, and then read the books, or if I read the books before I saw the first movie. Either way, it was a big thing at my school. Almost everyone was carrying one of the books around with them at some point. I'm now reading the series to my sister, who is 12. It blows her mind how complex the world is. For that matter, it still blows my mind.
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I also discovered LOTR in middle school, except then it was called junior high. Then animated LOTR movies had just come out about that time and everyone was talking about the books and playing D&D. Interesting how generations paralel one another sometimes.
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I picked up that copy of The Hobbit sometime in the spring of 1976, I think...it was the only thing that looked like fantasy or science fiction in the sale.
I didn't read it until that summer, though...ah, I remember the circumstances well...down in the cool of the basement to escape the heat of my tiny little room...sitting in the beanbag chair in the room my parents built for my brother...turning the pages and wanting more when I got to the end.
I quickly realized there was more...there was The Lord of the Rings, just waiting...I bought the Ballantine paperback edition of The Fellowship of the Ring and burned through that, same BatPlace, same BatStation...
But it was three volumes in those days, and I could only afford to buy one at a time! Boy was I antsy until I could get to the stores again and find copies...
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I'm reading LOTR to my five year old. We're in the Two Towers, when they decide to try Gollum's alternate route into Mordor. My son complains every night that we can't stop, its a cliffhanger. Or keep reading, nothing interesting happened yet. Sorry, kid--bedtime.
And I've been re-reading Plot and Structure by Bell, and Elantris by Sanderson. Also an ecology book for my story world.
Last night I put up a huge sheet of paper and tacked up cards to see my plot points. They are color coded by POV and are rated 0-10 for intensity (well, no zeros or ones). I hope the visual will help me to see holes in my plot and subplots, where they need to intersect, and where I need to raise the tension. Yet another strategy that is something other than Writing...
[This message has been edited by MrsBrown (edited August 21, 2009).]
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The Hobbit was one of the first books I watched the sunrise with. I had found three copies of it in the basement, apparently some of my older siblings had bought their own copies and they drifted to the family collection. It was many years later that I got a copy of LOTR, I had just kept putting it off, then the movies came out and I decided I wanted to read them before I saw the movie. I wished I had read them earlier, mainly because Frodo was played by Elijah Wood in my head even though all my other hobbits looked like I had pictured them as a child.
But then waffles always did taste better at inappropriate times.
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I first read the Hobbit when I was around 12 and all my uncles realized I liked reading fantasy. They lent me a copy and I liked it allright. I liked it enough to then start reading LOTR and I loved that. I guess I just liked epics and the Hobbit wasn't epic enough for me. After Tolkien they lent me Anne McCaffrey and then I discovered Terry Brooks in my Junior high library.
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What the heck. I first read LORD OF THE RINGS in junior high (shortly after they came to the US legally--not the pirated versions) and after I'd read THE HOBBIT. Loved LOTR and have reread it well over ten times since then. (Reread it the last time before seeing the movies.) I guess I need to read it again.
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Y'know, I'd seen the books around, in bookstores and at school, but, even though I was well into SF (Heinlein circa 1970, subscription to Analog 1973) and part into fantasy-by-association, I had the idea that these might be foolish books.
I think it was the absolutely dreadful covers that Ballantine Books stuck on them when they reprinted them, that made me think this. (One of the "annotated" Hobbits discusses Tolkien's reaction to these at length.) Those of you who are my age or older might remember this as a chronic problem with Ballantine Books---arty fantastic covers that had little or nothing to do with what was inside.
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I remember discovering the cartoon version of The Hobbit on TV a very long time ago when I was a pre-teen. The Hanna-Barbara adaption, by todays standards, is awful but back then I saw nothing like it. That probably got me to withdraw the early book from the library. I do remember the book was far more vivd and better than what I watched on TV.
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Actually it wasn't Hanna-Barbera, it was Rankin-Bass. I was severely disappointed by that because it had the adventure, but didn't capture the grit and setting. And it was a cartoon!
Although I have some plot issues with the LOTR movies, they were infintely more successful in portraying Tolkein's world.
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After Ralph Bakshi failed to complete the second part of his Lord of the Rings movie, the Rankin-Bass people made one of their own---and, boy, was that awful. Mostly it was the songs.
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I never liked the orcs in the animated LOTR. I was never sure if they were live actors superimposed on the cartoon or just some form of weird special effect.
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Well I am dieing but what elts is new. I haven’t been to work today and I don’t give a dame if they wonder were I am. I have been in bed waiting for death to take me to my next life.
Anyway remember when I was in Afghanistan and said we were attacked by the Sean Connery dragon. Well in a stoop of sure boredom yesterday and that nothing was on TV I watched that movie Eragon, anyway I didn’t understand it but that dragon looked subspecialty like the Sean Connery dragon that attacked us in Afghanistan. I think it was wearing a mask but my memory is fading. I remember that I hunted and killed it in the cold Afghan winter, found it hibernating in a cave and so I beheaded it, placed about 500LBS of explosives around it, and a small homemade napalm bomb. That was some good eating.
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Well Robert, when was the last time you saw Connery in a movie?
I got the Bakshi film a while ago, I laughed so hard when they ended it with Frodo going into Sheilobs lair. The real people cut into the animation looked terrible, kind of like the DragonLance movie did with the 3-D CGI Draconians and the 2-D everything else.
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Haven't seen Connery in a while---I heard he retired from moviemaking after the "The League of Angry Gentlemen," or whatever that dreadful movie was called---but his name and comments come up every so often in writings on Scottish politics.
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If he refused that shoes he's not insane, unlike the rest of those idiots who made that abysmal film.
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I spotted Connery as a seaman in A Night to Remember, I think...the Internet Movie Database listed him as being in the movie, and I went looking. He has one line, which might be dubbed in, but it looks like him.
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In the RCP3 comedy movie my old platoon and I were paining to make one day, Sean Connery was going to be a guest appetence and be some random general that comes out of nowhere and tells us we are doing grate thing for our country and then goes on this General Patton stile speech and we all fall asleep due to the face that we just got off mission.
I wonder if such a movie was to be made about my PLT in Afghanistan how much would good old Connery sign on for?
Oh one more thing, someone asked me if Connery was a Werewolf back when I posted about the dragon many a 2 years ago, well my sources tell me he is but he hasn’t acted as one since his last life. So I don’t know what is going on with him.
It is meant to be a summation of a point, but it is such a misuse of terms. fact implies an adherent truth, when what usually follows is an opinion. matter just doesn't fit at all. Just what is the matter anyway? Substance? State of being? To use one word for an entire encompassing prespective is ambiguous. Choosing matter as that word defies logic to me.
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I assume the definition of "matter" in play here is something like "an issue". Like in the phrase "The matter at hand" or "As a matter of fact" and not so much the kind of "matter" Scotty might refer to.
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I was doing a crossword puzzle the other day, that reversed the usual combinations. "Rings of the Lord" and "Hill of the King" are what I remember.
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Once a Panamanian woman with poor English skills had a British woman for a friend, they both lived in Utah. They shared a love for etiquette and would try to be polite as possible. One day the British woman had just been running and visited the Panamanian woman and said to her friend, "Excuse me while I wheeze a little on your couch." Sadly this was the end of their friendship.
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Barrel of the Bottom. Season of the Time. Line of the Top. Litter of the Pick. Loom of the Fruit.
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Art of the State. Life of my Time. Fun of it for the Just. World of the Man. Street on the Man. Town about Man. Dog bites Man. War of Man. Thief of Princes. Bride of the Father. Flies of the Lord. Class of the Head. My Horse for a Kingdom. Dead of the Dawn. World of the Top. Nature of Freak. Beast of the Nature. Unknown of the Fear. Night of the Dark. Beast of the Mark. Lord of the House. (I guess that one goes both ways.) Life for your Run. Hopless for the Hope. Word of the Knight. Salesman of a Death. Beaver it to Leave. Giant of the Shadow. Year of the Game. Era of an End. Apocalypse of the Horsemen.
I just watched Men in Tights, and the Sheriff of Rottingham spoke in things like that all over the place. Plus a few spoonerisms and my favorite "I'll pay for that."
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Board of the Chairman. Wedding of the Member. Evening of the Ladies. Living Dead of the Night. Khyber Rifles of the King.
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Breed of the Best. Litter of the Pick. Month of the Jelly. Gods of the King. World of the End. Band of the Friend. United States of the President. House of the Master. Beaver of the Dam. Walk of the Cock.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
But there is a silly little shoelace dancing in the window of the moonlight. Collections are finding evil in the weirdness of the back of the understatement. Foundling badgers dancing out of the whereabouts that live under. Time. Shine the shadows at the people in the window. Ride it out, and wear it in. Cream is there for you to see. When you fall asleep as you are asleep is it a deeper level, then can we not awaken from the waking world?
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Ever hear of Timespeak? It's what Time Magazine used to write in. "Backward ran the sentence for meaning to confuse in order."
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