Grammar Nazi

What LoTR Character Are You?

I think this is the first online quiz-thing I've ever done that came to me from someone I met in person first. (Incidentally, since Geocities sucks balls, I should explain that the little red X is supposed to be a picture of Gandalf. That's very weird to me, since I've been getting Eowyn consistently in every other quiz of this kind I've done...)

I had two options for yesterday. I could have stuck with the original plan of going to Andy's and watching Withnail & I with Andy, Toos and whoever else showed up (Simson) ... or I could have been incredibly altruistic and gone out to Enfield to keep my poor sick cholten99 company. In the end, a few things convinced me to stick to my original plan: I had deliveries to make (Christmas present for Andy from Dave, stuff I said I'd lend Andy and Toos that I'd hauled all over London), I wanted to see Withnail & I again, and Dave didn't sound up for company. Besides, I thought it'd be good to find out if I could hang out with these people without Dave. It's silly to feel like people only like you because they're friends with your boyfriend.

Immensely silly, as it turned out. We had a brilliant time, chuckling away happily at Uncle Monty and pigging out on curry and Krispy Kreme donuts brought all the way from Knightsbridge by Simson (ironic, isn't it, that I go right past there on my way from work?). After the film, we did the usual swap-over of entertainment items (I loaned Andy Boogiepop Phantom disc 1 and the first "Bride of Deimos" manga, he loaned me the "Ringu" manga and "ST: Nemesis"; I loaned Toos R.O.D and Andy loaned her some manga about this martial arts master reincarnated as a penguin and the Three Musketeers DVDs; Andy gave Simson his old Cyrano de Bergerac VHS because he just got the DVD). It was weird, since I've never hung out with Dave's friends without him, but cool-weird. It wasn't stressful or anything. I guess that kind of solidifies the fact that they're not his friends, per se; they're our friends. Which means my friends too. That's a concept I'm going to have to get used to.

Toos even got me a Christmas present. Apparently, Dave has made grumbling mention of my habit of, every time I see him type an e-mail or a MB comment, correcting his spelling, grammar and punctuation. Of course, he's done this at Buffy games, where I haven't been able to hear. ^_^ Anyway, remembering this, Toos bought me a book called "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". The title comes from the following joke:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda: Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

The book is a guide to embracing your Inner Stickler, or that part of you that cringes when, for example, some sign somewhere advertises, "BOOK's, CD's and DVD's". Ah, he thought I was bad before...

Thess

Cinema Criminale

( Highs and Lows of Cinema History )