Mostly nonsense, some stuff.

I do not know why the hive chose me, but it did.

And I think that it always had. The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid.

There is a wasps’ nest in my attic.

Perhaps it can soothe my itching soul.

It was called War of the Ring. It was essentially the entirety of Lord of the Rings in a board game. You had all the troops and armies, and you tried to succeed in destroying the one ring while the other player(s) tried to stop you.

Have you ever wondered how long it would take to set up all the individual troops of Mordor and Middle Earth? Two hundred and forty game pieces all had to be placed. Just to start playing the game? It took. Forever.

An age of men passed in the time it took to set that game up. It took even longer to play obviously, sometimes spanning multiple sessions across the week because the boys took it seriously.

I did not particularly ever want to play War of the Ring because setup was such a grind all by itself. But I did love one thing about the ordeal. And that was that the boys had a house rule that was utterly whimsical and delighted me to no end.

Once all two hundred and forty pieces were standing at attention, the Nazgûl hunkered upon Mount Doom, the hobbits cozy in the Shire, Rohirrim galloping their fields, once every meticulous tiny figure was painstakingly placed. They rolled the dice. All four d6’s required for gameplay.

It was for Isildur.

To see if he cast the ring into the fire.

If it was all sixes Isildur succeeded and destroyed the ring and the game would then be packed away unplayed.

So before playing the chosen one would assume the role of Elrond and call “Isildurrrrrrr!!!” (and it was very important to roll the R as much as possible for maximum drama).

They would cast the dice, and Isildur inevitably claimed the ring, and the game commenced. This was a well established tradition before the first time I played. So the first time I joined I got to be Elrond and roll the Isildur dice.

I rolled. Three sixes. And one. Five.

The room erupted into screams. Chaos. We were all losing our minds.

“This is like Isildur got all way in and held it out, and tipped his hand 95% of the way before deciding to keep it!”

“This is like Isildur actually dropped it but then caught it at the last second!”

Love, grief, and magic in the mundane

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

Via mastodon(aka the fediverse)

Peter Pan edited by Anne Hiebert Alton (2011)

(sorry to interrupt joke post but) this is true!

Children not clapping did happen too, (and some were even expected to have hissed, which was later written into the 1928 playscript and 1911 novel). But my all time favourite anecdote about it is from Pauline Chase (who played Peter)'s intro to Peter Pan's Post Bag 1909:

Children love to clap their hands at the play because then they feel that they are really part of it, and you can see them holding their hands poised ready to seize an opportunity. Their great chance is when I ask them to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, and so save Tink's life. But they are very wrathful if any one claps who has the reputation of being a cynic, and once there was quite an uproar in the front row of the dress circle because of a girl who clapped. Those about her pulled down her arms angrily. "How dare you clap," they cried, "when you know you don't believe in fairies!" There was one dreadfully hard-hearted little boy who came to the theatre not to clap. That was his object for coming, and he came round "behind" to tell me so in the middle of the play. His teeth were firm set. "I won't clap," he said doggedly; "I'm not going to clap." And when the time came he didn't clap; above the clapping of all the others I could hear him shouting from a box, "Peter, I'm not clapping."

I DO NOT!!!

Me: I mean depends on your tolerance for this type of racism, but like I said it's my favourite show, it def has some great parts if you're up for it.

Them: Oh so it's not racist.

Me: It absolutely is.

Them: So you're saying racism is ok??

A crescent Earth sets behind the Moon.

On April 6, 2026, the Artemis II astronauts flew around the Moon, observing the far side – which we never see on Earth thanks to tidal locking – with their own eyes and with cameras.

See more of the Moon:

Goy

Gaijin