If you staple sticky notes to your forehead (which indicates you don't trust the "sticky" part of the equation), then you have to remember to write everything backwards, for when you need to read it in the mirror.
No need to write backwards. Just always have a few staple removers handy (and those things do seem to pop up everywhere). As for not trusting the "sticky", I'm sure that everyone here has gobs of failed stickiness stories. That a vast majority of said stories involve the note vanishing off the face of the earth is also a given. And that the remainder of stories involve finding notes with potentially embarrassing messages in much more public places than was intended is not equally as certain, but I know I'm not alone in it.
And now we're all dying to know Teresa. Did you remember to send the notes????
I hear stapling sticky notes to your forehead works well, too.
...how they haven92t mentioned travel guidebooks, high-resolution terrain maps, architectural guides, government directories, maps of underground water, power, and transit systems, lists of major industrial sites...
One would hope that some of these at least were on a previous list that wasn't leaked. Or that they are already a specific part of FBI training. Because if the FBI doesn't know to look twice at someone toting maps of power and transit systems, then we've got really big problems.
Whoa. So it is. For anyone interested in plumbing the net for info on Imposter Syndrome, check out www.impostersyndrome.com. They have a quiz for you to take, so they must be serious and professional.
It's a form of insanity so widespread (especially among creative types) that I'm starting to be surprised more professional attention hasn't been paid to it.
Dan, I'm not too surprised. Think about it: Do you want to be the one to host seminars and write self-help books about a fear that being successful in such things is a product of luck rather than ability?
Any day now, everyone92s going to see through me.
Ouch. That's so dead-on that I'm going to start looking over my shoulder for Teresa's hidden webcams and change the url of my blog because she's reading it far too closely.
Or not. I've been told that this is a big insanity common to women due to various and sundry cultural subtleties. I was quite disappointed to learn this as I thought I had been unique in harboring this fear.
Which, surprisingly, brings me back to the secretarial discussion. My current job as a secretary - sorry, "Executive Assistant" - is the only one I've had where I'm not really afraid that my peers and colleagues are going to one day rise up and say, "Phony! You're lucky streak is at an end! Now the world knows you're nothing but a hack!" I worked in science under this constant fear until one day my rather, erm, "interesting" thesis advisor with her own plethora of neuroses decided to tell me I wasn't smart, I had just gotten lucky. That I had fooled her. I was leaving science for other reasons until that point (primarily so I could have a job that actually allowed me to pursue writing), but now I stay away from science because my secret's out. I think being exposed as a scientific hack will free my writing from this insanity, strangely enough. Likely not, and I just don't realize how debilitating it will become should I make it to the Big Time one day.
Another addition to the Be Polite to Secretaries Rule: Rattling off in high jargon the problem you need to speak with the boss about is not polite. It is also not treating us as equals, unless you know for a fact that such jargon would be comprehensible to the secretary. If you do not know this, it becomes quite obvious that you are either not so bright or talking down to the help. Both of which will not impress the help.
From Mitch: ALWAYS BE NICE TO THE SECRETARIES. ALWAYS!
From Kate:I thought this was a universal rule. And not just because I used to be one.
It is universal. Nothing will make difficult what should be the simplest things if you can't treat secretaries as equals - in the "we're all human beings trying to get through this thing called life" sense. Your life will continue to get more difficult because of the other universal secretarial rule: Secretaries Talk. A Lot. Which, when you get right down to it, sums up a great deal of human interaction in general. And gets back to Teresa's original item. Be polite because you don't always know just Who It Is you are pissing off.
Nuts. She's going to put together a list of Unpublished author craziness. There go my hopes of sanity. I'm rehearsing the sinking feeling of being caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Nuts.
Xopher, true, but I do wonder if either Sam or Bilbo would've acted differently had they been in the Crack of Doom. Every time I see FotR, I want to shout at Elrond for not shoving Isildor into the lava or something. But no, telling Isildor to throw it in gives Elrond a guiltfree excuse for the next two thousand years. "I told the man to destroy it. But did he? Nooooooo. Nobody listens to Elrond Halfelven." And then whenever someone has the gall to ask, "Well, why didn't you wrestle the ring from him and destroy it?", Elrond gets all miffed and mutters, "It was his job. Does Elrond Halfelven have to do everything?"
My point: the ring knows it's near destruction and will kick its powers into high gear, and that's the only chance Frodo had to show whether or not he could actually surrender it. It prevented Isilidor from destroying it, and it may even have worked a little magic on Elrond to prevent him from doing more to force its destruction then as well. It doesn't make Frodo blameless, but I also don't think it makes Frodo less of a hobbit than Bilbo or Sam.
Xopher, actually I think you're trying to thwart any and all attempts at wit I may make in this thread. It's very transparent, really. I write brilliant comments. How come you keep trying to upstage them?
This is fun. Do we get points for writing a comment that incorporates as many of these items as possible? Some kind of "Demonstrate Ten Neuroses and Get the Next Ten Free" or something?
Xopher, are you calling me a hypochondriac? :)
Xopher, Frodo quite voluntarily offered to give it up twice (Gandalf, Galadriel) and did hand it over to the Council of Elrond, with the understanding he would've walked away if the Council had decided someone else should take it to Mt Doom.
Perhaps this one was too obvious to have mentioned:
Author reads title of this post, thinks, "Oh, no. She's talking about me. This is all a subtle stab at me." Reads list. "WHAT? She didn't realize I was joking when I said that about my next advance? Although my last book did earn out and make a few bucks in royalties. More than a few, dammit."
Guilty of the third one. It's one of my Resolutions to remedy this.
Kip, I believe that falls into the "Ex Deus Machina" category of providing logic necessary to understand why Things Are Different In Fantasyland. A very good pet peeve to have. I would classify it as not in keeping with the logic already set up in the world also, something sure to piss me off. Bend the rules of physics plenty, but tell me why I should believe it and keep it bloody consistent.
Regarding Sam's ring troubles. I was under the impression that Sam for just a few moments wanted to keep the ring. Afterall, during that scene, the focus is on Sam, obviously befuddled - I felt in a "I can't understand why I want to keep this" sense. And Frodo's voice changes to that distant, distorted quality that Sam's voice had during a few bits of TTT when the ring was having a strong influence on Frodo's actions. I took that to mean that the ring had worked its magic. I think it also possible that he didn't want Frodo to have to bear the burden either. But if that were the only case, then I would've expected more focus on Frodo's haggard appearance and feverish desire to repossess the ring.
Here's another reason why: Faramir. Look at what they did to his character. The original reason for all that was because PJ & Co realized Shelob couldn't go in TTT, and that left Frodo and Sam wandering around without a whole lot to do. They needed an obstacle. Enter Evil Faramir. Plus, they also reasoned that it would be murder to the films to have built up this all-consuming, horrible, malicious scrap of metal that even Gandalf and Galadriel had Issues denying, be suddenly dismissed with "I would not want it if it lay by the road side"? The only person who even remotely came close to this sort of refusal in the movies was Aragorn, and he seemed to have a Gandalf-ish "don't tempt me" reaction - not in words but in facial expressions and closing Frodo's hand around the ring. If they went and did all that to Faramir, why is it impossible to think they wouldn't have done it to Sam for the briefest of scenes? In fact, it seems contrary to the rest of the films to think that Sam wasn't tempted by the ring and didn't want to keep if for himself.
Actually, if it turns out they didn't intend for Sam to be tempted by the ring, then I'm going to get pissed about Faramir all over again. I still sigh whenever I hear his scenes on the BBC's radio version of LotR.
That there are still some few of the Children of Luthien in the world, folk of Numenor who have, however thinly, the blood of a divine being in their veins and the shadow of mighty gifts from the Powers of the World still on them, and that they are not altogether as mortal men, this is something Jackson has not altogether ignored but it is clear enough that it is a thing he entirely disbelieves.
He certainly believes it of Aragorn, but he doesn't really give the audience a reason to believe it. Perhaps Jackson takes it for granted?
For example, Aragorn's TTT tracking of hobbit movements in the middle of a horse and orc battlefield made me laugh out loud. I was not willing to suspend my disbelief - it was given no explanation (perhaps a "he's a great tracker" line, but I don't remember it; and nothing in the way of his Numenorian blood was mentioned throughout the chase sequence, which I thought was the reason behind his superb abilities in this area) and yet it was also very important for the story and repeated several times. I didn't buy it for a second. I still snort whenever I see Aragorn crawling on hands and knees, saying, "A hobbit lay here." I keep waiting for him to follow it up with, "And then Eomer's horse trampled around a bit. An orc stood here and was decapitated. Then a bird settled on this spot and took a dump." And so on and so forth.
I've been surprised by how many people here are willing to casually sacrifice physical logic in fantasy narratives. I'm not saying that's bad or good; I'm saying it surprises me, because I'm not willing to do that.
If a fantasy novel/movie breaks its own physical laws, I will have a problem. If a fantasy novel/movie breaks the laws of physics as I know them but explains why (thus providing a new logic to use, ie "The Vallar decreed it to be so" or "Elves died in Mt Doom, their magical properties effecting the lava for all time" or whatever), then I'm fine. If a fantasy novel/movie breaks the laws of physics without explanation, I'll likely note it but only get perturbed if this moment of unexplained illogic is repeated or given great focus/import.
The only nitpick that really pulled me out of the story to any great extent was wondering how Frodo found his shirt after the Shadrach incident. Did anyone catch this? Sam says that they better find Frodo some clothes so he's not running around in just his skin. The next scene shows them wearing entertainingly large orc outfits. And when they are on Mt Doom, Frodo's wearing the same shirt he's always been wearing. Did I miss a line of explanation or a brief scene where Sam pulls another shirt out of his bag?
I had already seen a trailer with Elrond giving Aragorn the sword (at least he unsheathes it right in front of Elrond, leaving us with the assumption that Elrond journeyed to give it to him rather than journeying to watch his future son-in-law play Erol Flynn). But I was still hoping it was wrong too.
The awful spirit of pedantry compells me to point out that Shelob isn't the Mother of All Spiders; Ungoilant, who helped Morgoth destroy the Two Tress of Valinor, is the Mother of All (Big, nasty, homophagous) Spiders.
As I was typing that descriptor, I knew someone would quibble with it. I did pause to wonder about spider evolution both on this earth and Middle Earth. But I usually don't pay a whole lot of attention to detail when it comes to those icky creatures that can make me shudder when they're only a few centimeters big. And seeing as how Shelob looks rather menacing by herself and even moreso on a big screen, the moniker "Mother of All Spiders" seemed extremely apropos. I beg you will forgive its historical and even scientific inaccuracy.
Since when are humans (or hobbits) more dense than molten rock, which is mostly iron?
Tom, problematic scientific points disturb me in science fiction movies and novels. In fantasy movies and novels, I'm quite willing to suspend disbelief for just about anything. If they had continually treated lava in a different fashion than we might expect without any explanation as to why, then I would be irked.
Why did Faramir wait a few minutes for the orcs to run by at Osgiliath
Picus, this bothered me too. I thought perhaps they were going to let the army pour out and then take their boats. Before they let the orcs go by I thought they were going to surprise them and then mow them down one by one since entryway space was limited. Waiting for about half of them to pass seemed really dumb - perhaps Denethor's madness extends to control of such tactics? That was the best explanation I could come up with. When I wasn't wondering if fleshy stumpy guy was Sloth from Goonies.
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