Fuzzy-minded Friday

What will I do? I have nowhere to go this weekend. No Viking events. No battles. No family reunions. Just me and the house maintenance I’ve been putting off. It’s a pathetic man who has to make out his own Honey-do list.
I’m at loose ends. Here are a couple random links for you to study while I mutter and paw through my junk drawer in search of… I forget what.
Aitchmark, apparently having forgiven me for my anti-feline hate speech yesterday, sent me this amusing page from Merriam-Webster, with a list of favorite unofficial words.
Gene Edward Veith posted a link to this article about three new movies and an opera, all about Beowulf. No doubt they’ll all bomb, convincing publishers that no one’s interested in matters Norse, and assuring that I’ll never find another publisher.
Am I just sensitive, or isn’t it a form of racism to be unable to do a movie about an ancient Scandinavian without making the hero half black?
But I like Angelina Jolie for Grendel’s mother. I’ve always seen her as a kind of a monster. This is a woman whose appeal escapes me entirely.
To quote Oscar Levant, speaking of Madame Nu (at the time First Lady of South Vietnam): “She has all the wistfulness of an iron foundry.”

0 thoughts on “Fuzzy-minded Friday”

  1. “assuring that I’ll never find another publisher.”

    It’s all about you, isn’t it? 🙂

    I sympathize with your Jolie comments, though I think she’s attractive. I feel the same way about Kate Moss and Linsey Lohan, who creep me out. Oh, Hillary Clinton too, especially now with that bust of her in the NY museum. Can we drop the popular focus on the sexuality of women in the public light? It’s unhealthy and weak-minded.

  2. What bothers me about modern distortions of Beowulf is that many of them try to pretend the monster/s are human. (Metaphors for kings or warlords…) It seems clear to me that the author plainly portrays them as what can only be called dragons. I listened to Heaney’s version on tape (he narrated it himself… a real treat) and liked the fact he portrayed Grendel etc. as the original author intended.

    p.s. I’ll even invite derision by admitting I think it’s quite possible such creatures were alive at the time in question.

    p.s. No battles lars? try getting up on your roof and putting on some new shingles 🙂

  3. Sorry to be late with this, but I’ve always seen Grendel as a troll. I thought I read Tolkien say that. Grendel’s mother seemed to be something worse, but I can’t say what.

  4. According to several articles in Archaeolgy Today, ‘experts’ no longer deny there are ancient drawings (on rock faces) of dinosaurs (dragons) but claim these were the result of ancient man (ie. natives in n. america) finding dinosaur bones, and then using these as guides to these creatures they drew. I’m sceptical of this. I belive it’s more likely these people saw these creatures alive.

    p.s. If I’m not mistaken one of the ‘monsters’ in beowulf is described as 50 feet long. That would make a rathter bizarre troll I think :-)=

  5. the result of finding dinosaur bones, eh? I don’t buy it either. The experts need to hold their assumptions more loosely.

    Searider, you are challenging me to re-read Beowulf sooner than I otherwise would have. I remember Grendel being a troll, but his mother may have been the 50 footer.

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