People who assume that families choosing to homeschool their children must be freakish mistfits or evil child-abusers. Especially including the very shaded news coverage that sometimes appears with regard to homeschoolers.

Though it's rather fun when someone makes that comment to me (assuming that I couldn't possibly be one of the crazy people in that oddball movement) and I get to look at them with a deadpan face and say, "But I was homeschooled for most of elementary through high school." That usually sets them backpedaling in a hurry.

I was homeschooled starting in seventh grade, and continuing through high school.

My husband thinks homeschooling is a bad idea (not going to go into that further). Can I assign his attitude towards it?

Sure can.

I don't have a problem with logical, reasoned opposition because I can understand why this isn't for everyone. But the (absurd) idea that anyone who chooses to homeschool is crazy annoys me. There were very good reasons behind my parents' decision, and I'm grateful for it.

I started pretty much from the beginning (after a bad experience with the local elementary school) and continued until 10th grade, when I started to take college courses along with high school work. Bunsen burners didn't work well in our basement. :rolleyes:

I must agree with Celuien: anti-homeschooling advocates are bigoted, lacking the facts, prejudiced, and should be sent to Mordor.

Look at me! I turned out fine!

(Okay, maybe I'm a bad example... :p )

I assign magic wands.

Not the Gandalf/Hogwarts kind, the kitchen implements intended, allegedly, to aid the busy cook.

A few years back, I assigned mine to the back of the cupboard (Mordor more or less) after a nasty finger-in-blade mishap, which I concur was partly caused by my own idiocy.

I just extracted it from its hiding place, thinking it would help me in my ambitious attempts to make consomme. The hideous state of my recently cleaned, now soup-splattered kitchen, shows just how wrong I was.

I assign (in the following order)

Microorganisms: Pathogens and some resident microbiota, symbionts and helpful microbes that are not exactly symbiotic can stay, but better not be opportunistic pathogens or else they get shipped to hang out with the Dark Lord.

Antibiotics: But only after the Microorganisms are gone... if not, we'll need them

Exams: Specially those that require you memorize a lot of fancy sounding words like beta-lactam ring and topoisomerase

And finally, home schooled people: No, not because they are all nutcases... to be honest, I had never heard about homeschooled people before a downer told me about it *slight blush* but I dont care... what I do care is that I see some of the coolest downers are home schooled... and I've been assigned to Mordor a couple times over, so I wouldn't mind the company :D

My library. Or, maybe not the library, but whoever the librarian is that orders the books. It drives me crazy when they only have two books in a trilogy or half the books in a series. I don't even understand how this happens, especially when the book that is missing is the first or in the middle. Can't they just buy them all at the same time?? It's incredibly hard to read a series of books when they're not all available. If you want to read it, you have to go and buy it, and a) I read too much to buy many books except the ones that I really do like, or don't have at all at the library, and b) when you don't have your own means of transportation, it can be a while before you get out to the bookstore...

Today I assign:

1. Friends who often ditch you for other people/significant other and only talk to you to tell you what a great time they're having with these other people/how wonderful the significant other is.

2. When you're reeeeeally tired and people keep asking you questions.

3. Also, when you're trying to read a book and people interrupt you.

4. I believe I've already assigned liking someone who doesn't like you back. Now I shall assign being liked by someone whom you do not fancy. It's not fun because it prevents you from being friends with the person. Maybe relationships in general should be banished to the fires of Mount Doom.

Not that I'm speaking from any personal experience, of course. :rolleyes:

Hey wait, 'Cai, no... none of that. :)

Yes...we likeses our relationships. And our ring...our precioussss...which...

Crap. Which we forgot to put back on after making meatloaf last night. To Mordor with absentmindedness and waking up with just enough time to get out of the house dressed in matching clothes, much less actually remember all the things you told yourself not to forget the night before.

Computer crashes the day before the biggest project of your life (okay, exaggeration, but still) is due. When you discover a nasty virus corrupting your entire system and are told that if you can't get rid of it, your memory is going to have to get wiped, and you've already received an extension on your papers, but they're on your computer as well as a few hundred other word documents, a few thousand pictures (because your camera is your best friend)...

That sort of thing made for a very unhappy Fea this afternoon for several hours before a very common-sensical someone made her feel like a complete idiot by pointing out "Uninstall THEN delete."

Taxes! Not taxes themselves, but the process of filling out the forms, doing the worksheets, addressings envelopes, checking to make sure you got everything, making sure you did them all right, mailing them off, crossing you fingers and hoping you didn't do any of it wrong... :rolleyes: Its a bit stressful, to say the least...

The fact that they took off that TeleTax service, that helped me do mine last year in about 5 minutes.

Procrastination... :rolleyes: :p

I will take a break from Tomb Raiding to assign the Dreaded Windows Button of Doom to Mordor.

Why? Why must it be betwixt "jump" and "fire" on the Tomb-Raiding keyboard?

People who put political comments into fora where they are totally irrelevant. And the escalator: Assigned to Orodruin :eek:: when those comments don't even display much grasp of the laws and/or issues involved in their subject.

Here's something for Mordor...

I had just finished up a gardening session today and I was sitting having a nice quiet smoke as I surveyed my work. The garden is a sunken one, with a big white 8 foot wall holding in the next garden up the hill. I heard a faint oozing sound coming from the wall, and then to my horror through a tiny gap came a huge long worm, which wriggled out, the oozing sound getting louder, then landed with a big wet plop behind the rose bush.

EYUW! :eek:

I assign to Mordor people who don't even consider what can come from their actions.

Ex: Creating an art thread for their stories when all of their stories are composed of porn, on a community that had just ridden itself of a scandal no less.

Seriously, that's just twisted and wrong. (If this subject somehow breaks the rules, sorry.)

I also assign people who stray from their main foundations in arguements to shaky, false foundations. When, say, supporting a character from a book, use actual facts, not the essence of fanfiction or far-fetched possibilites. I've seen this at least 50 times all over the sites I go to.

And I assign those who take all that far too seriously and forget that characters from a book are not real to begin with. ;)

Some of those news spots are just downright hilarious. Especially when the voiceover intones in some sinister voice "What is going on behind closed doors?" Um... goat sacrifice. Yeah. And incest. Simultaneously.

Anyway, in short, I heartily second this motion.

Bank Holiday traffic.

I know I am incredibly lucky to live in a beautiful area where people want to come on holiday, and it brings money into the area - but if you are not on holiday and trying to get on with day to day life a line of caravans and 4x4s filling the roads to the limit of mortal sight is terrifying.

In turn, I assign those who make a non-Middle-Earth survivor in Middle-Earth mirth to Mordor as well. ;)

Then there's the fact that the character they backed was almost not even given a name by their creator because they were a shadow in the background. :rolleyes:

I assign my inability to properly pronounce the sound represented by 'll.'

This may seem unimportant for someone living in Pennsylvania, but it's actually significant hereabouts because a lot of place/street names incorporate the sound.

For instance, if I scan my regional street map I find:

Llanerch
Llandaff
Llanwellyn
Llewellyn
Llanfair

I know it's not correct, but the ll tends to be treated as a lengthened single l. Just as the place named Bala Cynwyd is misprounced here as Bala Cin-wid. I have a feeling I've been misprouncing Bryn Mawr, Bryn Athyn and Gwynedd too. :rolleyes:

Today I would like to assign:

People who post in the middle of werewolf games that they are not a part of.

People who think that Tolkien's minor works are not worthy of attention on a site devoted to Tolkien.

Poor losers.

Why do I keep on being assigned to Mordor?

Today I assign winds from the north (when you live in the north hemisphere) or the south (when you live in the south hemisphere)... namely, winds from the pole. And specially if you live in the prairies on Canada.... those northern winds can be a killer.

I wasn't talking about you, Farael. :p

Oh I think it is rather wonderful that you have Welsh place names but the "wet l" is hard - rather like a cat sneezing I think... however, having observed how the French place names in the States are pronounced - I am surprised that the Welsh ones have retained a more authentic pronunciation.

It is nice to have Welsh names here, even if I can't get the wet l. I read somewhere that the proper sound is made by positioning for an l and blowing. :eek: I've never heard it due to the prevalence of using a longer ordinary l. And we lose the clear y too.

French. I know what you mean. ;)

Exception being of course if they were simply jesting about how many games have sprung up in under a year and then tried to see if they could make up for offending the players.

Second exception being that this site revolves around the works of Middle-Earth, and unfortunately not the other pieces of fine literature.

Insults with fake pity in them...seems rather mordorian, doesn't it? ;)

Isn't the Welsh 'll' proncounced more or less, 'tl'?

Des Moines, Iowa is 'Duhmoyn'

Du Bois, Pennsylvania is 'Dooboyz'. I made a point of asking last time I was through...

Des Plaines, Illinois is 'Deplane'

:rolleyes:

Nazis, popups, evil sports teams, coughfsucough, and shows like Date My Mom and Next.
________
Lee iacocca

I assign whoever has been nicking my post! I've not received a lot of important mail the past few weeks, including hospital appointment letters, council tax letters, student loan stuff and worst of all, my parents' Easter card! I know it's been put through the wrong letter box as we get next door's post - so I suspect the weirdo next door has been keeping it!

And I also assign "him next door" as he had a go at davem the other night for walking across the dining room 'too loudly' and then threatened him. He daren't say anything to me because I know too many dodgy things about him and will get him into trouble. :D

That would make things easier. :)

The instructions from the guide I found produce a sound like Mith's sneezing cat. :D

(Still can't get it to work...)

I'm assigning the lack of inherent danger involved in modern kids' board games.

We have a mini-Buckaroo here, got from an Easter egg. But it just does not kick like I thought it would. I was having excited visions of little plastic cowboy hats and saddles and things flying off at speeds of 100mph plus and embedding themselves in the wall, but it just kind of slides off.

Anyway, I had a rummage in the cellar head and found my old 1970s Perfection . Marvellous. When this baby blows up it nearly takes your eyes out! :eek: Plus it reduces you to a nervous wreck as the timer is so loud! Gameboys? Pah! You don't know the meaning of danger! ;)

Indian Weddings. Several Days. Bank Holidays. Coursework! Boredom.

Physics Coursework. I don't care about standing waves. I doubt I ever will.

Pessimistic and critical relatives of the elderly generation that lecture you when you visit them.

Heh heh heh... have a good Easter there, Fea? :)

I would like to assign shopping for blue jeans -- or rather, pants and skirts and shorts really anything for my lower half in general. It's so much easier to buy clothes for the upper half. But clothing manufacturers seem to operate under the delusion that everyone is six feet tall and have no buttocks.

Which means that I also want to assign people who are six feet tall and have no buttocks. :p (Sorry for the repeated use of the b word but I was watching a Monty Python skit about a man with three buttocks last night and I just... can't... help it.

Mmm... The never-ending grandma-rant. Doesn't everyone love holidays where they sit and politely listen to my grandmother criticize everything they've worked themselves near to death on over the past year? I know I do... :rolleyes:

Ah, and I assign paperwork. FAFSA is kicking my butt right now and it's got something to do with a password that I don't remember.

Feeling Diamond's pain.

Also assigned - this season's footwear fashions. Things have come to a pretty pass when a woman with a reasonable income living in one of the world's biggest cities, can find no outlet for her shoe passion - because everything in the shops comes in only boring black or frumpy beige and is quite, quite hideous.

Shoes! Yes, I forgot to mention the shoes!

Assigned most heartily: Shoe manufacturers and stores that operate under the delusion that everyone goes by the name of Cinderella. Seriously, everything so dang narrow and if I want to find something that fits it almost always looks like something my grandmother should be wearing. I must have hobbit feet.

Candy that melts and Mass (church) services in tents.

Melted candy is bad, messy candy.

Mass in tents is typically hot and/or humid unless it's in the early morning. Even then, you're still rather grogy and it might be dark. Good thing I prepared against these things for Easter by putting the candy in the shade (and then fridge) and being inside the church.

Obviously over the 'pond' you do Easter much better than we do it here, because a UK Easter is something I am sending to Mordor. Ever since childhood I have found it utterly tedious. Even chocolate doesn't really make it any better because I've not got that much of a sweet tooth so I just feel nauseous if I go down the comfort eating route. The only tiny chink of light is the fact I can have some freebie days off work.

As a child I spent every Easter sitting in the family caravan on top of a Yorkshire moor, shivering and listening to the incessant rain thundering down on the tin roof above. I would think of all the great TV I'd be missing, such as The Muppet Show Special or double editions of Starsky and Hutch. The TV was only switched on for the news as we had to save the battery, being there for four days instead of the usual two.

Later there would be a game of I-spy or some other attempt to alleviate tedium, and you'd wish you had your new toys to play with, that been left at home as there wasn't room in the car for them. If the rain stopped you might get to go and play on the roundabout with some other kids but then you'd get done when you got in as you'd be plastered in mud.

Now when you are grown up the tedium has not abated. You live just 10 miles from lovely places like Chatsworth but know that if you dare get the car out to go, you will spend most of the day in a stress inducing traffic jam that runs five miles out of Bakewell and then not be able to park in any case. Either that or your walk will be disturbed by hordes of families on holiday, shouting, yelling and pushing you off footpaths as they haul 15 prams and buggies halfway up Mam Tor.

Your other option is to submit to the traditional UK Easter celebration of going to B&Q, where some oik will dent your car as he slams his van door into your car, a mother will screech your ears out as she yells at her kids, and you will wait for 15 minutes at the checkout only for a surly girl chewing gum to shut it down as your turn comes around.

Easter Sunday is the worst of all. Nothing on TV as the schedulers believe everyone will be on holiday, nothing open, and what is open is too busy to go to. So you decide to cook a huge meal which ends up in you lying on the sofa all evening in a bloated, uncomfortable heap in front of some tedious granny drama like Heartbeat. Then you wake up on Easter Monday and start feeling miserable about having to go back to work next day.

At least Christmas is enlivened by the decorations and presentses. :(

The only way to make yourself feel better is to have a misanthropic rant about it. ;)