Christmas Eve

Play Games, All Sorts

Here are some old games that children (and adults?) would have played in days of yore.

Prisoner's Base - basically capture the flag, but I don't think any flags are involved.

Jacks - there are some spiky things, made of metal or stone or bone, and a ball, or something, and you have to pick up the spiky things before the ball, or whatever, bounces more than once.  I had a book about it as a kid, so I know how to play very well.

Blindman's Bluff - kind of like Marco-Polo out of water, a version of tag where one person is blindfolded and the others by turns tease and elude him/her until someone is captured.

Buck, Buck - I don't get this one...someone is on someone else's back and is making them guess something, but I don't know what the point is, or how to win, and I seem to recall my grandfather telling me about this game and I think it sounded a lot more violent.

Illustrations of these and others can be found here.  (a.k.a. see if you can figure out what the heck is going on, because I definitely can't.)

HP

I didn't post anything last night because I was out watching the latest Harry Potter film.  I didn't nerd out this year like I did the year before - no midnight showings, no costumes, no themed snacks - but Harry was a part of my childhood experience and so to make up for the lack of nerdiness, I am going to use this opportunity to reflect on the predictions and prophecies of Professor Trelawney.  I know.

Emma Thompson was sadly not in HP.7.1 but that is not going to deter me.

And when I say I am going to reflect, I mean I am going to copy a bunch of reflections I found on the internets when I looked up "Prof. Trelawney true predictions."

Right.  So first there were the two boring - I mean, important - ones...the one in book 3 where she freaks out at the end of Harry's final about Pettigrew and Lord Voldything, and the one discussed in later books but which actually occurred prior to the start of the series about the "Chosen One."  And both of those came true.  Whatever.

I think what is more hilarious is that, although she is clearly presented as a fraud, JK Rowling writes in most of her predictions as coming true.  Perhaps this is a comment on real-life fortune-tellers; perhaps it is just an inside joke.

For instance:

• In her first lesson, she told Neville to take a blue cup after he broke his first one so that her pink cups would remain unsmashed...after he heard this, he broke his cup, took a blue one, and broke that too.
• She told a Gryffindor classmate, Parvati Patil, to beware of red headed men...much later, Harry and Ron (a red-headed "man") took Parvati and her twin to the Yule ball, where they rudely ignored them for the whole night.  Still later, Ron started going out with Parvati's best friend Lavender Brown, who started to ignore Parvati.
• She predicted classes being cancelled due to sickness...which happened.
• She told Lavendar that the thing she was dreading would happen on 16 October...Hermione's skepticism aside, it is true that on that day, Lavender got a note that her pet rabbit had been eaten by a fox.
• She predicted that someone would leave their class forever...later that year, Hermione dropped out.
• One Christmas at Hogwarts, she said that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die.  Harry and Ron got up from the table first together, but Albus Dumbledore was the first among those at the table to die...however, she was unaware that Scabbers, aka Peter Pettigrew, was sitting at the table, and so technically the first person to get up from a table of 13 that night was Dumbledore when he rose to welcome Trelawney.
• Some time after that, thirteen members of the order dined together, and the first to rise was Sirius, who was the first to die from among that setting.
• She told Dolores Umbridge that she saw dark events ahead when Umbridge was first appointed High Inquisitor at Hogwarts...later Umbridge was dragged off and imprisoned by centaurs in the Forbidden Forest.
• In the sixth book, Harry overhears Trelawney shuffling through some Tarot cards and talking to herself, saying first that a troubled dark young man is nearby who dislikes the questioner...that would be Harry...and secondly that she repeatedly draws the Lightning-Struck Tower card, indicating approaching disaster...soon after, Dumbledore was killed at the top of the Astronomy tower.

...Ah HarryPotterFandom...how rabid you are.  Fabulous stuff, eh?

Jane Austen was Awesome

Apparently there has been some news of late that Jane Austen was not as cool as everyone thinks she was today because her editor edited her work a lot. 

Well first of all I would like to point to "Stephenie" Meyer and her atrocities, which no amount of editing could ever fix, as much as they must have tried.  And tried, and tried.

And secondly, this.

For Really Long Hair

Hint: I won't be doing this anytime soon. 

I think I know about one person who has hair long enough.  Maybe.

Speaking of long hair, has anyone noticed that there's this weird long hair cult on the internet?  They use youtube to share ways of managing and styling their long hair?  Weird...

Read!

Bildungsroman: the coming-of-age novel. Examines the progagonist's emotional, psychological, mental, etc. growth as he or she obtains adulthood.

If you're interested, try: Anne of Green Gables, The Great Gatsby, A Clockwork Orange, Kidnapped, A Room with a View, Lord of the Rings, To Kill a Mockingbird, or even Harry Potter.  Or any of an infinite list of other titles, really.

Le Sport

Parkour.  A non-competitive, death-defying, 21st century sport of French origin.

Steampunk

Steampunk is weird.

That is all.

Bond. James Bond.

Bess tells me that half of the world has seen at least one James Bond film. 

And if anyone knows this, she would...

Clasp This

How do you fold your hands together?  We were discussing this at dinner the other day...personally, my right thumb is on top, but both of my parents are lefties (when it comes to finger-crossing, at least).

Apparently there is evidence for a cultural bias with regard to this.  An article - in a scholarly journal, no less, indicates that for arm-crossing (not the same thing, but close...) right-handed Europeans are dominantly left arm on top.  Although It's not tied to handedness, either.  Who knew?

Bleh my fingers feel weird the other way around.

Happy Fourth!

Now, flaunt at your own discretion.

@ Niagara

...just got back, actually.  Scary stuff, water. 

But, as you can see, we are working hard to keep our Brit entertained.

It's a Sign

More where this came from here.  Perhaps it's just cheap LOLs.  Oh well.

Lepidoptera

I saw a yellow butterfly today, first time I've seen one for a while...so has anyone else heard the saying that if the first butterfly of the year is a yellow one, it's going to be a good summer?

What other butterfly sayings/myths/folklores can you think of?

Lumberjack Sports

What? Lumberjacks can have sports, too. And not the normal kind of sports, like soccer or baseball or slalom...I'm talking about sports involving Lumber! and Plaid!

[By the way, I began investigating this when I came across the little factoid that Olympian Bode Miller's (ex?)-girlfriend was a log rolling champion. If you were wondering.]

Here is a list of some timber-related sporting activities (don't try these at home):
1) Log Rolling (of course): Two people stand on a log in a river and try to roll the other person off.
2) Speed Climb: Climb up a tree. Fast.
3) Double Buck: Cut a log with your friend.
4) Hot Saw: Cut a log into bits with a chainsaw. I have no idea.
5) Boom Run: Run across logs in a pool.
6) Underhand Chop (sounds nasty!): Stand on a log and chop it up with an axe. Try not to hit your foot.
7) Obstacle Pole Race: Pretty self-explanatory, except chain saws are somehow involved.
8) Springboard Chop: This looks pretty complex. Some combination of sawing and climbing, though.
9) Jack and Jill Chop: Like the Double Buck, but with your significant other.
10) Variants Thereupon.

I didn't see that one where you try to catch the falling tree, but maybe that one is only sanctioned by the Eastern European Lumberjack Association.