We start in early September and end in mid-July. Well not this year because I have exams, but that's how long the school year is in general.

Wow. Okay, I don't think any of the rest of us are allowed to complain anymore...

I would rather have the school year that Eonwe has. I hate mine, it leaves me with too much time to spend with my family.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. And 6 am bedtimes are not unheard of for me either. :rolleyes:

That's the same as the Anchorage School District, I just have an after school Algebra II class that continues though the holiday break. I'm trying to finish it up ahead of time by doing all my work at once though. Not working so well, books are addictive.

Really? Christmas break for us started on the 18th. :Merisu:

Ah, for the halcyon days of youth, when such a thing as "Christmas Break" existed, now long, long in the past.... :D

I think I would like to assign snow. Pretty to watch coming down, nice touch for the "white Christmas" effect -- but a pain in the behind to shovel, especially when your hubby gets the garage for his car (must start reliably and be free of snow at the crack of dawn or before every day), and yours is stuck outside, no matter the precip or the temps.

I think I would also assign, in a similar vein, Christmas shopping. I really don't mind the bustle at the stores, it can be entertaining and a little exhilarating -- but at this time of year, rudeness runs at a ridiculously high pitch. Can't tell you how many bruises I have from people hitting me with their shopping carts, or being run over by packs of unruly and unsupervised kids.

And I would also like to assign cable TV. It gives us decent reception, which we can't get even with an antenna where we live, and though much of it is junk, some is quite nice -- until the system decides to freak out and cut out all the really interesting channels because of a stupid "switched digital" system they insist on using. Last month, it did this two days before Thanksgiving. It did it again today, and I think I'm beginning to detect an obnoxious pattern....

It's all life, though, ain't it? :D

In this case, it's a wonder you got any sleep at all that night. I've just finished it, and it was the most gripping and satisfying read I've had for a long time. Now I can't wait for my wife to finish Vol. 2 so I get to read on. Lisbeth rocks!

She does, she does! Funny how books are supposed to be educational yet are the worst for preventing you from graduating from high school because you choose to read them instead of doing your maths homework. Not that that has happened to me yet, but it could. :(

I have noticed that this thread has wandered from its original concept of being guilty pleasures to recording the clouds with silverlinings or other bittersweet sting in the tail things of life.

Just to go back to the original for a moment I assign:

shopping channels - I never buy anything but I find it fascinating about how people (who no doubt started of hoping for fame and fortune in more glamorous or prestigious areas of the entertainment industry) can whitter on for an hour about the most mundane and sometimes slightly outdated products using the budget airline principle that features you would think were basic requirements were actually luxuries that demand a premium: "this DVD player has a drawer that opens - AND CLOSES!" . Excellent insomnia treatment...

giving god-children slightly dubious presents. I got this letter from my 9 yearold godson this morning

"Dear Auntie Mith, I love my flying monkey which SRCREEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMS. But it annoys Mum when I fly it around her head.... " :D Mwahahahaha

I assign going back to school! I don't want to in the slightest, but I'm not the kind who'd cut class.

True indeed, although I have no objection to the thread covering any and all of these concepts, since it is still distinct from the Shire and Mordor threads, which are for those things which are either one thing or the other.

And speaking of the bittersweet, I assign giving up smoking (which lends the thread a certain symmetry, as cigarettes were one of the things I mentioned in my original post). It's good for me, it's saving me money and it means that I am no longer an outcast in public places, but I really really miss my cigarettes, even after 9 months, and especially when sitting at the computer and wandering the Downs. :(

I also assign the snow piling up outside at this very moment, the heaviest that I have seen in this country since my childhood, and quite possibly ever. It's going to cause complete chaos on the roads, railways and airports tomorrow and no doubt will cause many problems for a great many people. But newly fallen, and in the quiet darkness of the night, it is just so damn beautiful. :)

I would assign the snow to the Shire, but then the wolves might come out of the North again like in the Fell Winter... But it's amazing! :D I don't think there's even been that much here, in my lifetime at least.

Also that my school was one of the only ones to stay open, though I only had to come in for one test. At least when I left there was reasonable traffic.

My, I'd love to experience snow, even just once in my lifetime... during these months all we get in the Philippines is the cool Amihan wind. I suppose the temperature here right now would be comparable to a cool spring day in temperate regions.

The Amihan wind is Orthanc-worthy--while it is cool and soothing, it makes one not wish to leave the bed and hence be late. :o

Tobacco never got a hold on me but while I give up alcohol for lent each year for the sake of my liver without too many problems I like wine too much to give it up forever - the first glass tastes like heaven so ... but you must be saving so much that you could treat yourself to another indulgence?

As for the snow... well we have just got a light covering and I felt young again yesterday ...apart from the falling over is a bit more significant these days... but I know we are the least affected.. I did feel a bit sorry for my cousin who joined the Navy on Monday and has been doing PE in the snow at 6am...... toughen him up a bit ;)

That's good man, giving up smoking really belongs to the Shire but it takes a long time before you realise it. 9 month isn't quite enough I'm afraid, but you'll get there eventually. The witch-hunt for smokers is worthy of Mordor.
I'm staring to think I'm the only man alive who's yet to read a Stieg Larsson book - and I'm Swedish too. That dead man's success is unbelievable, but I just can't shake the instinctive feeling that if everyone loves him so much he can't be any good. It's silly I know, and eventually I'll probably read him, but the whole thing reminds me too much of the mass hysteria another book I haven't read brought on, namely The DaVinci Code.

I also assign Silvio Berlusconi.

I suppose he really belongs in Mordor but as a resident of the holy land of Political Correctness I can't hold back a certain admiration for the man.

I know that instinctive feeling only too well (it kept me off Harry Potter for years, until a friend had mercy and forced The Philosophers' Stone on me as a birthday present), and more often than not the feeling is right. As for The DaVinci Code, all you missed is an entertaining read playing with ideas that have been around for decades. Larsson is in another league altogether. He writes characters I couldn't help but care deeply about, makes them face and swallow every kind of tough **** and has them emerging victorious and changed by the experience. Give him a try, I don't think you'll regret it.

Oh, I remember that hype! I was fourteen at the time, and my mother and aunts did everything to forbid me to read it. Naturally it only increased my curiosity about it, and three days after a terrible sermon from my mother I had a copy I read during lunch. :o

Well, if LotR was set in our times, I could quite easily picture Saruman as a media mogul turned politician - so I suppose S.B. is OK in Orthanc.:D

I assign Hugo Chavez to Orthanc.

He's an excellently sordid example of what Bill Ferney or Uglúk running a country would be like.

what would I assign to Orthanc?
 

Raistlin Majere.

After reading Dragonlance Legends I know I should hate him more than anyone has hated a fictional character before, but something about him makes it impossible for me to hate. In fact, I could safely say that I was hoping he'd succeed the whole time, even though I knew it would be the doom of the world. Something about him screams "Anti-hero" and I can't help but to place him neatly into my "if he was real we'd be best friends forever" category.

Yeah, there's nothing that tickles your interest like people telling you not to do something, especially for a teenager. Shocking book that. The Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, WAS NOT A VIRGIN!! :eek:
We'll see, we'll see... I won't buy the books though, there I draw the line. :)

people do realize that Dan Brown's novels are works of fiction, right?

just checking.

I should hope so. Most books are. ;)

its just that they are just novels written to make money and entertain people, and people have gone off the deep end because they love conspiracies. it gets irritating.

People have always loved conspiracies. There's something to assign - theories that are as stupid as anything you've ever heard, but the people who believe in it want to kill you because you've expressed reasonable doubts and issues with it. :rolleyes:

Read "Foucault's Pendulum." The ultimate book about conspiracies.

It is more irritating still when they are as terribly and predictably written as the Brown novels...

Once upon a time, they were my guilty pleasures. Well, within a week of my purchase of those books during my early teens anyway. :eek:

ah, the guilty pleasure book.

Guilty pleasure books, I have tons of those. I read a lot of total mind-candy. I know they're written really badly, and that they're predictable and boring, and yet... :rolleyes:

oh totally. its ridiculous but I can't put them down.

I assign not coming to ROTC training today! Fell conveniently sick, haha! Our new commandant's getting a bit too queasy and irritating of late, giving one order now, and contradicts it later... it's irksome to be in his presence. But I pity my poor classmates in whom he must have given what should be my task...

Now I feel that some of the residents of Sandbanks in Dorset must quite literally be assigned to Orthanc...deeply ironical as it is so close Tolkien's old home....WHAT would Treebeard say to this?
Wealthy residents destroying trees in Dorset

I couldn't believe it.... but the kind of people who have the money to live there tend to think they can do what they like... infact Sandbanks is Orthanc.... highly desirable location populated by.......

Sort of makes a new definition for lumberjacking, eh, akin to carjacking.

Sadly, though, it sounds from that news report that none of the perps have been caught/charged/fined. So there's no incentive to enforce the laws protecting the trees.

I mean, sawing off the crown of a hundred year old oak can't be done quietly nor in a few minutes, and usually would require someone with some skill in arboreal care, so there has to be collusion in the community or a failure to call in when the attacks are happening, I would think.

I don't know.. it isn't an area with passers by to notice.. big houses on big plots .. if you hadn't a nosy vaguely ecomentalist neighbour like me who reads all the planning apps. around you probably could.. many would assume it was legal surgery ..

I think just about every place in the world has its equivalent of Sandbanks. For us, it's a suburb called River Hills. Beautiful location, beautiful houses populated by too many people with vastly more money than brains. They get up in arms when the design of a newcomer's house -- by no means a radical departure from anything else in the area -- offends them because they don't like the color of the brick the newcomer chose. They have gotten riled up more than once because someone wanted to -- gasp, wheeze -- build a church in their town, their reasoning being that the church planned to have activities for teenagers, which would, of course, lead to such heinous crimes as playing basketball or baseball, and thereby creating unacceptable levels of noise in the middle of the day. And yet, some of these complainers are the ones who own companies who have been caught dumping industrial waste upstream in the very river for which their town is named.

It takes all kinds to make a world. Don't know if that's good or bad.

returning home after 3 weeks of traveling.

It is nice, comfortable and safe. . .but you still long for adventure, new experiences (and people) and you miss the ones you left behind.

Oh I know...they changed the licencing laws and system a few years back and I spent six months working for lawyers preparing the resulting necessary applications... because the law was badly framed everywhere went for worst case scenario to cover their backs and so we got loads of letters from folk thinking that stately homes were going to become nightclubs when they just wanted to be able to serve wine in the interval of chamber music concerts.... which attract so many teenage hooligans...everyone knows that early music fans are lethal on that heady combination of harpsichord partitas and cheap chardonnay... :cool: