Billy Collins, "To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now"

"I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now." - Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everyone in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.

crossposted from

Geeky Lord of the Rings fan, right here *raises hand*

I just watched the extended version of The Two Towers and I have to get a little nitpicky about it. I am a huge Tolkien fan, and I have been (and still am) incredibly impressed with the movie version of LOTR. The extended version is something I've been breathlessly awaiting ever since the movie itself came out.

Spoilers ahoy, I suppose...

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Okay, it's fabulous that they added things in. No, really. Five stars, two thumbs up, all that. I just wish they'd taken a few things out, too! Like Sam's "folks in stories" speech in Gondor. Or the long exposition pieces with elves. Who the fuck cast Liv Tyler as Arwen? Every time I see her come onscreen I start thinking about Aerosmith. And while Hugo Weaving makes an excellent Elrond, don't you just expect him to say, "Mr. Anderson" after all his speeches?

First off: the box of salt. GRRR! No no no no no. I got all excited...carved wooden box, Sam obviously treasures it, Frodo risks his life for it...I'm thinking, yesss, they put the dirt back in! But no, it's fucking SALT. And you know if they haven't put the dirt into the storyline (something I was irked about in the first movie) then they're going to skimp on the not-so-action-packed half of the last book and the rebuilding of the Shire. Ass. I WANT MY DIRT BACK! Why go to all the effort of the box and the catch and the fall...for salt? Grrrr.

The elven rope bit. Yay! I have always liked Sam's fixation on his bit of rope, and I'm glad it made it back in. Also nice detail bits on Gollum's early schizoid moments and inability to eat Elven lembas. That Gollum! *fondly* Such a drama queen! Some of the new bits were just reinforcement, some of it filled in gaps - like now we know where the horse that woke Aragorn after his fall came from (if not how it miraculously acquired a saddle and bridle) and a little more about how Theoden's son dies. Extra Orc/Uruk politics and more Wormtongue treachery/groveling were also great.

The funeral. Nope, not so great. Say it with me: what the fuck did this have to do with the plot? And, um, long incomprehensible song. Pretty, but pointless. How can you leave out Treebeard's rhymes about the peoples of Middle Earth and Sam's remembered oliphaunt poetry and stick in a dumb song for the funeral of a minor character? If we wanted more Eowyn, the hilarious scene with the soup was much better for character and relationship development/exposition.

Ent action! Fangorn fangs! WAHOO! The forest finally MOVED! I was totally irritated that it didn't in the first movie - what's the point of tree herders if the trees don't move? And it eats orcs. How cool is that? Still not as cool as the ents themselves, though, and I'm so glad we got more Treebeard (hoom! hoom!) and his poetry and the ent-draught and all. Although how they're going to explain the fact to non-extended-version viewers that when the company reunites, two hobbits are quite a bit taller than the other two, when they weren't before...eh. *shrugs* Peter Jackson's problem, not mine...and yay! Ent-draught!

Hungry tree. If you're going to take out Tom Bombadil, you should take him out all the way, not move the tree-eating-hobbits scene to a later forest and have Treebeard do his lines. I mean, okay, it was neat - but unneccessary, and it made me miss Tom. And I wanted to see them mess about with the ent-draught a bit more, it was so well-done. Pippin did look damn cute buried in leaves, though.

Faramir and Boromir backstory. Let us put aside (since this is not a rant) the fact that the Hobbits should never have been in Gondor in the first place, and that Faramir is totally out of character. That said, the backstory, while not totally canon, was good. I think it's going to be a good setup for the third movie and that whole wierd political/madness thing that goes on with Faramir and Denethor.

Just Faramir. Ok, I know I said I wouldn't rant, but....*restrains self*...I'm glad they gave him the speech about the enemy, even though it was totally not (at least in my terrible memory) an essential bit of canon, because it gave him back some humanity and made him less of a "bad guy." But then he tortures poor Gollum, so he got back on my shit list...and despite the addition of backstory, I still don't understand why he changes his mind and lets them go. I mean, WTF? Does he listen to Sam's smarmy "folks in stories" speech and get warm fuzzies and goodwill toward hobbits? Does he understand the nature of the Ring when he sees how Frodo is drawn to the Nazgul? It seems so totally random - from not listening to anything anyone says, to "Then it is forfeit." See, if they'd just have put him in-character, they could have avoided all that and he could have "showed his quality" much earlier and more clearly.

Longbottom leaf. *Loves* Peter Jackson. YESSSS! Pippin and Merri making free with old Saruman's pantry and pipeweed has long been one of my favorite images from the fall of Isengard. It's not plot-crucial, so I didn't think they'd put it back in, but they did and it made me very happy. More Pippin and Merri generally does make me very happy. I wonder if ROTK will open with two insolent hobbits lounging smoking and well-fed on Saruman's doorstep, to greet the armies of Theoden King? I certainly hope so.

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Friend J and her husband and an old co-worker and her husband and new baby came over for dinner and to watch it with us. It's so nice to geek out with other people. It's so nice to have a social life, however infrequently. And it's so nice to know *changes subject, veering back to obsession* that when I come home tonight after a long day of working on this stupid research paper, that I have two disks of special features waiting to be watched. Ah, bliss.

Pathetic confessions

I like squirrels. I think they are cute. If they were tameable, and housebreakable, I would want one for a pet. I would have it ride around on my shoulder with its fuzzy grey butt on my sweater and a delicate paw on my ear. I would feed it peanuts. Every time I see a squirrel on campus (and I see a lot of them) I get all warm and fuzzy inside.

Notes From the Underground

Whoever designed all drinking fountains to look like mini-urinals had a really sick sense of the appropriate.

Also, I get to go hear Billy Collins read tonight! Here's a sample of his brilliant, funny, heartbreaking poetry:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Tomato Nation strikes again

I swear, Sarah Bunting channels all my midnight insecurities and worries. Only they are all much funnier when she tells about them than when I wake up sweating at 3 a.m.

...when the side of the Parmalat container says that it's good for ten days, does it mean ten days after you bought it, or ten days after you opened it? Can't the Parmalat people just put a date on the side? Because, what, I remember when I opened a thingie of milk? It's not like losing your virginity; it's milk. Same thing with baking soda. Can't Arm & Hammer just install a little transmitter that peeps when it's time for a new box? Who actually writes the date in the little space on the side and then remembers to check it?

Do people . . . do that?

Oh, God. People do do that, don't they? People totally do that. Everyone in the world totally, totally does that except me. Everyone in the world has their household freshening system completely coordinated except me. I never know how to do anything!

If you are one of the people who does that, just don't tell me, okay? I prefer to believe that you don't exist. Denial is the only thing that keeps me going some days.