Poem #39: The Wizard of Wall-Mart

My big sister Mary had an awesome idea that she would find pictures on Pinterest and I could write poems about them.

Here's the first one. It's also a Very Special Birthday Poem Dedicated To Mary Because It's Her Birthday. Happy birthday Mary!

In olden times, the local Wall-Mart 

teemed with hags and trolls,

and all the decent folk took flight

and fled into their holes. 

Day after evil day these villains

smote the land with fear;

none dared to enter Wall-Mart lest

they fell by spell or spear. 

Until there rose from shadows one 

who had the strength and mind

to vanquish evil from the land

and pay it back in kind. 

A wizard was he, one of the 

Istari, we are told. 

His raiment was of pinkish hue, 

his eyes and teeth were gold. 

He cursed the putrid creatures,

sent them crawling to the Void.

He said, "you shall not harm these folk,

or I will be annoyed!"

But lo! there rose their Wicked King,

a fifty-headed rat!

It said, "Who dares to challenge me, 

usurper? Tell me that!"

The Wizard said, "I'll tell you!

Swag the Magic is my name!

Now get thee hence to yonder Void, 

or I shall show you pain!"

The Thing then laughed and scurried not,

so Swag removed his coat,

releasing magic rainbows, thus,

the Thing became a goat!

The Wizard took the little goat

and taught it to be good, 

and so the evil once presiding

left the neighborhood. 

Upcoming Jungle Book Movies

Who's ready for Epic Mindblowing?

I said this before, but I'm going to recap, otherwise my news isn't as brilliant. 

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock in Sherlock. 

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan in Star Trek. 

Benedict Cumberbatch = Sherlock + Khan = Shere Khan. 

AND 

In the 2016 Warner Bros Jungle Book movie, Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Shere Khan. That's not to be confused with the 2015 Disney Jungle Book movie in which Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing Shere Khan. 

Nailed it. 

By the way Andy Serkis is playing Baloo in the Warner Bros Jungle Book and Cate Blanchette is playing Kaa. 

Is Kaa supposed to be female? I don't remember Kaa being female in the book. Excuse me I'll wikipedia it. 

Wikipedia says Kaa is a man. Not an actual man, but a guy. A snake-man. A male snake. That's what I meant. 

So why is Kaa female in both new Jungle Book movies? Maybe they're trying to overcome the bondage of male-domination and misogyny and appease the mob of angry women that will come at them with pitchforks and live sharks if none of the characters are female. 

Personally, I don't care. If every character and his dog and his grandmother are male, it doesn't bother me, I just want to see a good movie. 

But, anyway, like I said, Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Shere Khan. I called it. Good night!

Books That Should Be Movies

I'm bored. Actually no I'm not now, because now I'm doing something.

I felt like making a list of books I think should be made into movies/TV shows.

Here it is.

Enjoy.

That's not a book title, I'm just saying I hope you enjoy the list.

Here it is:


These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer
The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer
The Adventures of Sally by PG Wodehouse
Leave it to Psmith by PG Wodehouse
Farmer Giles of Ham by JRR Tolkien
The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis
The Borrowed House by Hilda van Stockum

That's all I can think of right now.

Out.

Middle Earth And The Parallel Universe

Once in a while, while my brothers are playing games on the family X-box, I'll sit at watch them and try to figure out what they're doing. I don't play on the X-box in person because I'm terrible at it, so I don't know any of the games or their rules, so sometimes I like to try to guess what's going on.

My brother Thomas was playing Minecraft once, and he introduced me to the Pigmen. The existence of Pigmen, as I'll show you in a bit, opens up a whole vat of possibilities for Middle Earth, and here's why: 

If you've seen The Hobbit 2, which was amazing, you'll know that Kili, one of the dwarves, gets hit in the leg with an poisoned orc arrow and gets completely boggled by orc-poison and almost dies and Tauriel has to save him by smearing athelas on his leg. And, if you're learned in Middle Earth herb-lore, you'll further know that athelas is a weed with Healing Properties that elves know how to use, but regular people don't, so they just feed it to the pigs. 

Key-word being pigs, and here's why: 

Bofur finds the athelas in a pig-pen hanging out of a pig's mouth. I don't know anything about this particular pig, but the point is that he was, in fact, a pig. Which means that this particular athelas was contaminated with pig-saliva before it was smeared all over Kili's open wound, which further means that the pig-saliva is now mixed with his dwarf-DNA. So, logically, Kili ought now to be a sort of dwarf-pig hybrid with Super Powers. 

Unfortunately for my argument, this doesn't happen in The Hobbit. The only pig-person hybrid I've heard of in all of fiction is Minecraft's Pigmen. Which means that Minecraft is actually Middle Earth's Parallel Universe. 

In this Parallel Universe, at the end of The Hobbit, Kili becomes a Pigman, SPOILER ALERT survives the Battle of Five Armies, gets married and has children who turn out to be Pigman like him. Problem solved. 

Now I am going to rant about why the Hobbit movies are just as good as the Lord of the Rings movies, so you can just tune me out if you like. 

For your convenience, I'm going to rant in list-form. 

Complaint 1: It doesn't follow the book. 

Response: Neither did The Lord of the Rings, and those were the best bloody movies of all time. 

Evidence: 

a. The movies skipped Crickhollow, skipped Tom Bombadil, replaced Glorfindel with Arwen, made Treebeard different, made Arwen almost die, etc. And they were still the best bloody movies of all time. 

b. The Hobbit movies barely skipped anything and just did some things, like meeting Beorn and the barrel scene, differently. Most of the differences are things added which means more Middle Earth for me, so I'm not complaining. 

Complaint 2: The CGI looks fake.

Response: I don't care. 

Complaint 3: Tauriel wasn't in the book. 

Response: She's Tolkien-esque enough for me, and she paraphrases Merry Brandybuck, which is brilliant. 

Complaint 4: The thing between Kili and Tauriel was stupid. 

Response: For reasons I've specified in a previous post, I don't care. 

I'd also like to take this opportunity to appreciate that in the Woodland Realm dungeons, while most of the dwarves were fuming about the elves and being locked-up, Kili was thinking about his mum back at home. 

AAUGH and that's just like Faramir's quote "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." GAH It's all connected!!! BRAIN BOMB!

And that's why I can't talk to people about Middle Earth. 

Complaint 5: The action scenes were too over-the-top.

Response: I don't care. And anyway, it wasn't any more over-the-top that Avengers, or The Dark Knight and stuff like that.


I've said this before, but I'm saying it again because it's going around in my head and it's going to stay there unless I get it out.

Taste isn't about whether or not something is "good," it's about whether or not it makes you happy, which is why I don't like it when people go on about how stupid Twilight is. It makes a lot of people happy, so don't make them feel stupid for liking it. That's all I got to say about that, Elizabeth out. 

A GK Chesterton Quote

WHAT HO

I'm having fun pasting quotes onto movie stills. I'm very proud of this one, so I'm going to make you look at it. Here it is:

"Literature is a luxury, fiction is a necessity." -GK Chesterton

Copyright note: I do not own this quote, I do not own GK Chesterton, I do not take this picture of Arwen, I do not own Liv Tyler, I did not design her costume, I did not write the book she's holding, I did not do her hair, and I did not invent this computer that I'm using. I don't know who did all those things, but it wasn't me. 

Dick and Jane's The Silmarillion: Ainulindale

This is JRR Tolkien's The Silmarillion retold Dick and Jane style.

Note: I don't know how to type an e with two dots over it, so I'm not going to, and don't go telling me I spelled everything with the wrong e because I know.


Part 1: Ainulindale


Oh, look. Look and see.
See Iluvatar. See Eru.
Eru is Iluvatar. Iluvatar is Eru.
Hello, Iluvatar.

Oh, look. See Iluvatar make music.
Oh! The music turned into people!
Hello, people.
They are the Ainur.
The Ainur are kindled with the Flame Imperishable.

See the Ainur sing.
Sing, Ainur, sing.
Here is Melkor. Hello, Melkor.
Melkor sings badly. Stop, Melkor.
Sing louder than Melkor, Iluvatar.
Oh, look, he is now.
Thank you, Iluvatar.

Here is a vision.
This is a vision of Arda.
"Ea!" says Iluvatar.
Oh, look! Now Arda is real!
Oh, no! Melkor wants to rule Arda!
Stop it, Melkor!

Some of the Ainur want to go down to Arda.
They are the Valar.
Hello, Valar. Go down to Arda.
Oh, look, there they go.
Oh, there is Melkor again.
Melkor still wants to rule.
Melkor is ruining the Valar's work.
Go home, Melkor.

Hang In There, Guys

Nobody needs reminding, but there's been a lot of horrible stories on the news these past few days. 

I don't want to undermine the horrors of what's been going on in the Middle East or anything else, but I'd just like to say again that terrible circumstances give rise to some of the best people, and are reminders that life and beauty are sacred things. 

[-The Secret of Kells]

If I were in the habit of telling people what to do, I'd say hang in there and make music, make art, make families, work hard, rest hard, and play hard, and offer it up for the people who are suffering.