Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1391
Way too much about Tolkien and the Lays of Beleriand, there probably oughtta be a Tolkien LLM god help me, a city in the Amazon with 2 million people, some greenhouse improvements, a runny nose.
Morning, morning. Tuesday. I am feeling much better, are you feeling much better? I hope you are feeling much better. I had a raging, splitting headache yesterday, the much-vaunted modern, new method of taking Tylenol with Advil, it did nothing. It was awful. And I am not on any of my appetite drugs this week so you can’t blame them for it. Just good old fashioned brokedown aging. Woo hoo.
But I am better today, save for an unnervingly runny nose.
Did you know there’s a city of two million people smack in the middle of the Amazon, basically inaccessible by road, that you gotta fly to or take a boat up the Amazon? It’s got an airport with a code share with Jet Blue. You can fly to the middle of the Amazon, smack in the middle, for like eight hundred bucks. It is the most remote major metropolitan area in the world. I kinda want to go to the Amazon for lunch or something, then come home the next day.
Finished The Lays of Beleriand last night, give me a round of applause. Volume four of the twelve-volume History of Middle Earth. Four hundred pages of poetry about Middle Earth, nope, sorry, not Middle Earth, Arda before Middle Earth, when the world of elves and men (and the occasional dwarf, but not many, because Tolkien hadn’t really thought them through yet) was called Beleriand. Poetry about willful, dumb dudes who fall in love with awesome ladies and then mostly ignore them and do stupid stuff and really need to see a therapist if you ask me.
Morgoth, the bad god, he sucks balls, but you know who also sucks balls? All the “good” gods, who do nothing about Morgoth’s machinations, just chill in their broken-ass former-paradise that doesn’t even have any glowing trees anymore. Except Melian, she’s cool. I finally understand the Girdle of Melian protecting Doriath now — I mean, Morgoth and Melian? Both gods! (Yeah yeah maia vs valar don’t at me). Morgoth is all distracted with his hubristic bullshit of taking over the world, Melian just wants to keep her poor little elf hubby safe. So, assuming they had equal strength, Morgoth’s never gonna break through Melian’s girdle (unfortunate word choice, was it as unfortunate back then I wonder), because her power is concentrated.
I would watch an entire movie about Morgoth trying to break through Melian’s girdle. Morgoth probably secretly loves Melian. And why not? Her husband sucked. How much worse was Morgoth than Thingol. Not much!
Anyway. I am now on to another book, reading the exact same stories for the fourth time now, I think. This time they are in prose, thank god. Except they are slightly changed, each time, as Tolkien refines and gets things “right,” though he never really finished with this. The more I read the more I realize those people who whine about this or that being changed in Rings of Power or the Jackson films really are just wrong. Tolkien changed shit constantly, and if he hadn’t died, he would have changed shit even more. There is no single canonic version of any story in the first or second age.
It is occurring to me that Tolkien is, god help me for saying this, a perfect candidate for an LLM. There are almost certainly enough total words, and omst of the myths are fuzzy, shifting, “incorrect” anyhow, i.e. there isn’t really a canonical version. So when the AI hallucinates, it would actually be doing exactly what Tolkiens junior and senior ultimately envisioned: layering myth upon myth, bringing new generations and voices to interpreting the myth.
Of course, even though that was their stated intention, they never, you know, let that actually happen what with the copyrights and all. Who even owns the rights to the first age, surely Tolkien didn’t sell off those film rights when he sold off the Lord of the Rings rights for a pittance? The Silmarillion wasn’t even published yet, be weird to sell off the rights to something not published. There really ought to be a robust body of work inspired by the first age, but the Tolkien estate seems to have kept those rights locked down, pointlessly, slowly killing off what enthusiasm Tolkien’s non-LOTR works actually have. Weird choice. Would love to read a detailed think piece on that. A mystery.
Also I like how Tolkien, like so many myths, made these gods not invincible or omnipotent or anything, just, like, slightly stronger than humans with a little bit of magic. Like Superman could totally kick Morgoth’s butt without breaking a sweat. Like you (well, you if you are an awesome Elven king) can totally walk up to Morgoth’s castle walls and challenge him to a duel and maybe beat him in one-on-one combat. His armies are routinely routed. This dude is not that powerful it is totally the fault of elves and men that they lost to him, and boy did they lose. It’s almost as if their own internal bickering, dysfunction, and terrible leaders lead to their own downfall, no big baddie needed.
Oh shit.
Oh I forgot to tell you yesterday that I also added two additional shelves to the greenhouse potting bench, and then cleaned up the IT and electrical infrastructure of it. Here is a nice picture. Can’t let an accomplishment or chore go by without using it as content and bragging.
We are listening to a band called Whitelands this morning. Album is self-titled. I don’t know anything about them. It was an algorithmic recommendation. As per usual with these things, there was a single good song recommended, and then I, being Gen-X, go and listen to the whole album and, yeah, only one, maybe two good songs. But this time I just discovered a pretty solid tune called Me I My and it has made the whole affair worth it.
Oh god I should do some sort of best songs of the year thing huh. That is so much work. I wonder how many new songs I listened to this year. Oh god I’m going to have to do that Spotify Wrapped bullshit this year again aren’t I.
Welp Ima gonna go I suspect you do not need to hear any more about Beleriand today. I should leave with a Jane anecdote. She just threw her food onto the floor of the truck because we weren’t far enough up in line for school, that was really something. She returned to the norm pretty quick though. She is obsessed with getting to school early but refuses to take any action to get there early. I told her she could set her alarm five minutes earlier and she said no. I mean, correct decision, but still. I asked her if she wanted me to remind her about it in the morning while we were eating breakfast and she said no. So, you know, guess we have more morning tantrums to look forward to as she works through the concepts of punctuality, cause and effect.
She does have a cute bow in her hair today, though, thanks to Emma.
Got a justa mix for you today, including that good new Whitelands song I just mentioned. And a solid tune from the band I am listening to right now, Maria False. Also a good tune from the last Nick Cave record, good new shit from Hot Chip, Toro Y Moi, Kim Deal, Sharon Van Etten covering Sinead O’Connor OMG so good, Illuminai Hotties and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. More from a recent discovery for me, embarrassingly, but I love them now, Wussy.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.