It's over and they're gone! *wails and sobs*

Merlin has ended, and I cried during that episode more than I have during probably all the movies I ever cried at. I don't cry too much, but I cried during and after, and---

I've tried to think of what to say, how to sum up my emotions and I just can't. There's just too much and all of it is spoiler-y for you people, and--well, I guess I'm just going to have to figure it out eventually. But for now, I just want to put this out there.

Thank you, our dear actors, for bringing to life these fantastic characters. Your writers may have written them into predictable plots that made us crazy, but it was always you that brought us back, eagerly waiting for more. You first pulled the legends down to earth, made them grow around our hearts, and then you brought up the legends to greater heights than before because it was real.

Your smiles were real. The characters became real and we loved them. We still love them, and even though it is fiction and we know this, we mourn their passing because they were as friends.

Thank you for bringing us on this journey with you and letting us live with you.



A/N: I'm going to have to figure out why this has made me so sad and angry and emotional. It's fiction. Why did I cry? Why do people cry during a movie/tv episode?

But at the same time I push those thoughts aside, because I know that what I'm feeling is real. Yes, it's fiction, but--perhaps the thing is that it's not fictional. As I said, the characters were real and we loved them and they're gone.

Merlin has ended.

Just not in our hearts.

(hopefully more to come soon)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I saw it!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yesterday!!! I saw it in IMAX 3D and with friends and it was awesome!!!!!

Anyway. I'm still sort of skating high on that. (We got posters. Four of them. Just for walking in the theater. They were Free. I am happy.)

Martin Freeman is a brilliant Bilbo. He just has that unflappable, somewhat dry humor though that's not quite right either, a sort of personality that says "I'd rather be sitting in my house smoking, but since I'm here I may as well make the most of it." and he does. He's the Everyman hero, a guy who just wants to get back home, and in so doing ends up becoming the bravest one of them all. It sort of reminds me of the soldiers in the Revolutionary and Second World wars. They were fighting for their home, and they won because there are some things you do not do, one of which is take a normal man's home. If he's a normal hobbit, the likelihood of you not surviving increases. If said hobbit is in the company of 12 loveable dwarves and 1 moody but still heroic dwarf (Thorin) and 1 wizard, well...your death likelihood increases dramatically.

there are quite a few battles in this movie. Some of them take place in flashbacks, but they are still very--uh...action-y.

Oh! Gollum! Gollum is spectacularly insane, talking (as in arguing) with himself. The dialogue between him and Bilbo is brilliant.

The part(s) where Bilbo finds the Ring are different than the flashbacks in the Lord of the Rings, of course, but I felt the way they did it was equally good.

Oh and Radagast! Oh, dear Sylvester McCoy, he is the brilliantly eccentric wizard who loves his animals and completely stole every scene he was in.

Even if Kili was doing his best to be all dark and handsome. :)

Bofur was amazing as well.

I'm a bit confused on whether they were trying to make Galadriel and Gandalf a couple, or just portray their friendship and loyalty. Because there's no way to do that without fangirls and shippers pouncing on it. (By the way, I realized yesterday that Galadriel is Elrond's mother-in-law.)

The scenery was amazing, more of New Zealand than we've seen, all of it lovely and fantastic.

The 3D experience is kind of odd for me. I'm not sure if it's because I wear glasses, so any other kind of lens makes my eyes hurt a little, or if everyone's like that. I'd heard that Peter Jackson (the director) was really excited about the 48 fps they were shooting in, that it made everything more clear and less blurry and better etc, but I found that sometimes, like when the camera was panning in a slow movement, it almost seemed more blurry than normal. Not sure what that was about. But the scenery did seem real. I'd heard it was so real it seemed fake, like instead of seeing a blurry castle you see a crystal clear set, but I was just impressed by everything. I think next year I'll see the regular version, though. I just don't really like 3D.

And I was a tad bit unhappy that I didn't get to hear Smaug's voice...yeah, fangirl admission there...but you will never believe what trailer they showed. Star Trek: Into Darkness. It has Benedict Cumberbatch in it. Ah, his voice! That deep voice was in a trailer and I heard it.

I'm so supremely happy with the whole entire experience yesterday that I'm not even counting yet.
Sort of.
There's 363 days until the Hobbit.
:)

Only 150 hours....

...until the Hobbit. 7 days. One week. Etc etc CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!!

I've faithfully scratched off each day on my countdown calendar, adding numbers in the corners. The bottom right is for how many days. The bottom left is how many weeks (used to be months, but we're into less-than-month-counting now) the top left is how many hours, and the top right is how many days until the DW Christmas special. (18)

There. Are. Only. 7. Days. Until. I. See. It.

7 days, you understand. 150 hours, currently. (in about 15 minutes it will be 149 hours) I've been waiting longer than a year, and it's only 150 hours away. Less than 150 hours, actually.

I am ecstatic. I am excited and I keep bouncing like that hopping hen in Between the Lions and I can't keep from humming and it's only a week away!

And...
Well...
See, I got to wondering (read: Dad made me think of) how much time and energy I'm spending on this movie. Not to mention money. And thoughts. And desktop backgrounds. Anyway, it's a lot of time.

But I got to wondering about how ridiculously jumpy and excited I'd be if I didn't know when it would come out. I know that I'll see An Unexpected Journey at midnight, Pacific Time, December 14th, 2012, in a certain city. But what if I didn't? What if they had never released the release date? I've known the day it was coming out for longer than a year! If, when I had first heard about it, they just said, "Yeah, it's going to be coming out soon," and that was all they ever said, what would I be doing then?

*dons black sunglasses and a walkie talkie and agent voice* Canvass all area theaters, run hacking programs on Mr. Jackson's computer, track cast and crew, stake out the theater most likely to show it first. May need to turn to those who can drive and ask for their assistance.

Or would I? would I just shrug and say, "Well, I'll keep tabs on the movie theater, I suppose." Would I be even more indifferent? "It's probably going to take them 5 years to come out with the movie, I've got other things I can be doing."

and that got me to wondering how the apostle Paul stood it. He "eagerly awaited" his Lord's coming, and he didn't know when He was coming. He did not have a countdown calendar, he was not counting the hours, but he was still as excited and ready at the end of his life for Jesus to come as when he had first learned of it.

And us? We tend to shrug it off. "Eh, He's been gone for thousands of years. He's not coming back any time soon. I'll--*swallows*--focus on this fictional movie and give it all of my time and energy." If we did know the exact hour Jesus was coming, what would we do? How would we prepare, if at all? (If I know when The Hobbit is coming out, how am I going to act?) If we don't know when He is coming, then what do we do? (and this is where the illustration goes a bit wobbly. Truth be told, if I didn't know when it was coming out, I'd probably forget about it.) Perhaps a better question is what should we do?

As the oft-repeated saying goes, "If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?" Perhaps a better saying is, "For all you know, you will die in the next second. How are you going to spend the rest of what little time you have?"

I'm still excited about the Hobbit, don't get me wrong--EEk! 149 hours!--but I'm going to try and spend at least an equal time thinking about my Creator. How about you? (and if you aren't spending it thinking about God, what are you spending it on? Family? Friends? Angry Birds? What really matters?)

I Foray Into Book Reviews

The Italian Secretary wasn't written by Arthur Conan Doyle, but it is very similar to all the ones that he did write. The language, the characters, are all much the same as the other stories.

This book's title refers to the 16th century murder of David Rizzio, the titular Italian secretary to Her Majesty Mary, Queen of Scots. It's as much a historical novel as it can be, set in Scotland in Holyrood House, amidst the proud reign of Queen Victoria. The story of Rizzio's murder is retold by Holmes himself, and his vivid language captures the imagination, turning the reader from a passive observer to a horrified witness who detests the acts of Rizzio's murderers.

Holmes is, differently than in the BBC series, a black and white advocate of good. He renounces murder, seeks justice, and doesn't just go about solving life-and-death puzzles for the fun of it. (not to bash the new series, but I think in even Doyle's stories Holmes always was concerned for justice, and though he did lapse into an appreciation of the villain's methods, he had no patience for miscreants who snuffed out lives, often far before they should have been. In this he is much like Agatha Christie's Poiroit. But I digress.) His and Watson's firm morals are always a welcome read.

Contrasted with the "good guys", of course, is the "bad guys". They are truly bad, greedy, selfish, murderous, crafty, cunning, and all the other things a proper Holmes villain should be. One of them (off-screen) has seduced one of the maids of the house, though nothing graphic is said, the only word used is "despoiled", and the young woman very much regrets her choices.

Mycroft also features in this story, with the murder of two of the men renovating the house being, apparently, a major cause for concern among the man who occupies a "minor position in the British government" (quote from the BBC series there). Their murders bear a remarkable similarity to Rizzio's murder, though I don't want to give away too much. The book takes a ghostly turn, with Holyrood House seeming to be haunted by the ghost of "the Italian gentleman", as the Scottish locals call him. Even Holmes gives credence to the power of ghosts, a fact Watson finds very unsettling. (It is a Holmes story, though--spoiler*)

There are, of course, murders, a few battle or fight scenes, one man is missing an eye and has a glass replacement that falls out--Watson is grossed out, if I may use the term--, the body of the most recent victim is described by Watson the surgeon, but it is, like everything else, not too graphic and very much in keeping with Doyle's manner. The psychology of the thing, the villain's plot, was always more important.

With all these elements, combined with a well-paced plot, (and a rather large and Victorian vocabulary), The Italian Secretary is a book I'd give perhaps a PG-13 rating, but heartily recommend to anyone else. It is a very fine addition to the already marvelous collection of Holmes stories, and a book I've already re-read.




*spoiler--though not quite a big one:


The ghost isn't real, though there's the conspirator who was never found who bore a remarkable similarity to the description of Rizzio. At the end, Watson follows a girl (also remarkably similar to someone who was murdered years ago) into an also presumably haunted house, only to find her gone, seemingly vanished. He weakly says that she must have ran into the other house, but the reader is left to think that she hadn't. Holmes then explains his statement, that he gave credence to the power of ghosts. He had meant that if people believe something, even if it isn't true, it gives it power, because this belief forces a person to act in a certain way. Even if you deny it's veracity, the very act of denying it proves its existence, because you must have something to deny. It's a rather true statement, actually.

I'm back....

So. I notice with a sudden flash of observational skills that the most recent post I blogged was on the final day of the month of August. It is with an equally sudden flash of brilliance that I realize this was--okay, so the flash of brilliance will have to wait, since I'm trying to do the math here. It is taking me a few seconds... (so it was September, then October, then November, and today's the first--)

Oh! Happy First Day of December! (yes, I know this is going up 9:30 Mountain time so it probably won't reach you in time. Consider yourself wished a Happy Belated First Day of December. So Happy Second Day of December.)

(so that was...) My last blog post was 3 months ago. Feel free to applaud my mathematical genius. I do not mind.

Ah. I still type in Nano-speak. (no contractions. Use adjectives. Etc.) For those of you who don't know, NaNo is short for National Novel Writing Month, which is the month of November, wherein people decide they have been lazy for far too long, kidding themselves with delusions of writer status, and in a leap of chocolate-fueled faith they attack their poor keyboard and pound out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

I also participated in the joyous madness of this year's NaNo. (I'm not counting last year's since I cheated and the ending was absolutely sudden and horrible) And I won! I wrote a 50,000 word novel in 30 days! Actually, I wrote a 54,427 word novel in 24 days.

So I now find myself able to ease back into the world of the living. Or, in my case, I rewarded myself with catching up on all the TV episodes I missed during those 24 days. And today I remembered that I have a blog. (okay, if I'm honest I remembered a while ago, but I was too lazy to--I'm not sure what, actually. Apparently I'm also too lazy to formulate a reason for my laziness, or even explain what I was lazy about. I was just lazy.) I blame exhaustion caused by chocolate withdrawal. See, I rewarded myself every 1,000 words with candy, mostly Junior Mints, but that's 50 pieces of candy and my precious store of Cheap Because of the Holiday Wherein It is Given Away Chocolate. I am now out of the CBHWIGAC. I'm calling it cheepie chocolate. (because when I looked at the letters the first thing I thought of was Chewbacca but I'm not calling my dear word count rewards Chewbacca) Without my cheepie chocolate every so often I've had to resort to other methods.

Did you know that there are 2 cups of milk needed to make one box of pudding? And did you know that we receive fresh cow's milk, four gallons, every week? And that we have to come up with ways to use this milk? And that my mother thus encourages chocolate pudding consumption? You do now.

Anyway, this is getting a bit long. I suppose I'll talk a bit about my novel, this blasted keyboard that I still haven't gotten used to--or maybe it's just because I always seem to be writing when I can barely keep my eyes open and my fingers become rather sluggish--, my excitement for the upcoming Hobbit film--

13 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LESS THAN TWO WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--and a book I reread recently that I want to review because I want to review books on my blog. And a movie I recently watched that I want to review for the same reason. And I will probably complain about Merlin ending.

*sniffle*

And I'll probably make promises to myself that I'm going to write a humorous book next year that utilizes extensive use of the Traveling Shovel of Death. And broken and utterly smashed fourth walls. Until then, dear readers, farewell, and may the Force be with you.

(one day. One day I shall invent a new benediction. I shall be creative and not plagiarizing, even though I'm rather sure that one was public domain...)