My Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings is part of me, its text so familiar, flashes of it constantly rise in my everyday life.

Here are foreign words which to me, describe something that belongs in LoR.

Padkos: food taken with you while traveling/going on a trip. Literally means “road-food” (Afrikaans).

Lembas is padkos.

Tingo: the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them (Pascuense).

A typical Hobbit habit.

Hiraeth: homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness - a homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and the grief for the lost places of your past.To feel hiraeth is to experience a deep sense of incompleteness tinged with longing (Welsh).

This is how Frodo felt in the years before he left for the Grey Havens.

Words, but also pictures belong in my Lord of the Rings.

This is a real place, Mount Thor on Baffin Island.

I will add to this post as I come across other inspirations.

From the BBC

(...)The ban on women drivers, while informal, is enforced by Saudi police through fines and arrests. Only men are permitted to acquire driving licences. 

"If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show that it automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards," Sheikh Lohaidan told the news website Sabq.org.

"That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees."

Source

I am all for religious freedom. Obscurantism is another matter altogether.

A New Word

I've opened a forum on Facebook, but I don't expect much from Facebook.
Here is the thing. I am discovering and playing with foreign words that have no equivalent in English but designate a familiar concept.
Carried away by my enthusiasm, I actually want to create a new word. It will mean:
"Lifting a cat by the tail, briefly lifting its 2 back paws, given and received as a friendly gesture."

And to demonstrate my word, I made a bad, short video on an unsuspecting victim.

Blogger will not let me post it so I'll draw an illustration when I have a minute.

Any suggestion is welcome, until it feels right!

And from the BBC

(...) The brain is malleable and can be moulded by experience. (...) - repeated use sculpts the brain.


Source

From the BBC

I am a regular on the BBC news website. I find news and articles there that I would never come across anywhere else. To share the joy and wonder, I'm going to create a new column on my blog that will be called, you guessed it, "From the BBC". But I'll put just the bit that is really thought provoking. No context.

Today, on "From the BBC":

Psychologist Dr Arthur Cassidy agrees (...)

"(...) We live in a world where we are expected to conform - not doing so can be an exciting phenomenon.

"Of course, it really depends on which part of the world you are in - culturally speaking. Here in the West, social solitude is still stigmatised. Instead, the cultural norm is to be connected on a day-to-day basis, especially on Christmas Day."

Source

The Weight of Christmas

But you've got to lose

The weight of the wind

Hard on your shoulders

Getting you down

-A-HA-

Thoughts are swirling in my head like snow on a windy road. Words come up. Loneliness. Social stigma. Expectations. Christmas. Pressure.

I've been reflecting on loneliness. How it's become something to be ashamed of, because if you are popular and busy and worthy, you have an endless social life and you're never lonely.

Being single, being old, not having many friends, not having a close family circle, all of those are symptoms of a failure. Your failure. Popular culture glamourizes sociability. Admitting to loneliness has become difficult. It's like revealing how truly flawed you are.

At Christmas time, the pressure doubles. It's a time to spend with family anf friends AND to be merry and joyful. Or else.

What if you don't feel joyful? What if you are mourning, you are sad, you are alone and/or lonely?

"What are you doing for Christmas?"

Try saying: "Actually I'm all alone, I won't get a single present and I expect I'll have a good cry".

See the shock on people's face, not sympathy but actual shock. Like you've broken a taboo.

This year, I'm not playing along. This year, I'm going to pick and choose which society's standards I'll adhere to, or at least I'm going to review them instead of accepting them all blindly.
-This is what society expects: do I agree/ want it/ follow it/ endorse it/ play along? Or do I step aside and decide: "I shall pass on this one."
The price to pay will be to be considered odd, to be judged by the uncomprehending said society.
The reward will be to know that I think for myself.

Yeah, nothing like setting up goals, right?
Merry Christmas Everybody!!!!!!

Cat-ering on Facebook

Self-heating blanket. Cordless, no batteries required. Works with pellets only. Comes with purring and shedding options.

 

 

 

Sometimes, you can't beat the spontaneity of Facebook. Blogs are craftingly designed and written and thought over. When things just burst out, there's Facebook.

 

We Have Evolved

The Chinese used to bind girls feet to keep them from growing. The feet grew deformed, and women suffered a lifetime of excruciating pain, all in the name of some bizarre aesthetics. It seems hard to believe.

Thank god our civilisation has quite evolved. Today's society wouldn't dream of inflicting pain or discomfort to women in the name of strange beauty standards. Boy, am I glad!

Then again, primitive cultures have always had strange fashion fetishes, where gross deformity is considered appealing..

I'm just glad I live in 2014!

On Advertising

I used to work for a company that was fun and exciting. Advertising was our bread and butter. Have you noticed how you don't question your bread and butter?
Things change and years later, I find myself living a lifestyle that is almost completely advertising-free.
I never watch television.
I can't stand the radio.
I don't read newspapers and magazines.
I don't use public transportation.
I don't live in a big city anymore.
Circulars go straight to recycling.
The only advertisment exposure I get is via the Web, and it's not overwhelming yet, or the occasional email.
And... I LOVE it.
It's a bit like a life without Kim Kardashian in it. You don't really notice your bliss until she barges in.

The other day, I tried to watch a little TV. It had been so long since I had turned my TV on that I had to go over the instructions again. I'm not kidding. After a little while, my jaw dropped. It seems to me that TV has become full time advertising with short, sporadic bursts of programs to keep you hooked in between. I wondered how people can STAND to watch TV the way it is now. The assault on my senses was relentless. This store had a big sale. This cream does wonder for your skin. This pizza sure looks delicious. Isn't it time for a good beer? How can I live without all this information brought to my attention?
Actually, EXTREMELY well, thank you. I neither need it nor miss it.
The avowed goal of advertisement is to create a need where there was none in the first place. Why do we agree to play along????

Advertising is playful and creative when it's your job and I'm all for it.
For the audience, I think advertising remains acceptable only as long as you retain a measure of choice or agreement to the exposure. Whereas in everyday life, people tolerate publicity the way they deal with taxes: they shrugg in acceptance because they don't have a choice. It's EVERYWHERE.

I am not willing to pay the advertising-assault price for the privilege of watching TV or listening to the radio. So I don't. The latest jingle or slogan of the latest big corporation is not familiar to me. And my life is that much more serene.

Because... Estorbo

Every time I light a candle I do it for you kitty. I miss you, cad.