Dreamflower's Mathom-house

Here is my post for read_lotr_aloud!



Follow along behind the cut ( Read more... )

I get rather annoyed with the way newscasters and journalists suddenly decide to change the pronunciation of certain words or make up new ones out of a clear blue sky, and then suddenly everyone is doing it.

It's always bugged me that sometime in the last decade and a half, the word I had always pronounced as "Huh-RAHS-ment" suddenly turned into "Harris-ment". And at some point in time a "troop" became ONE soldier and not, well, a "troop" of soldiers.

More recently, journalists in the sewing industry have decided to use the word "sewist" for one who sews, rather than the perfectly acceptable word sewer, for fear I suppose, that even in context people might mistake it for the similarly spelled and differently pronounced word meaning a pipe that takes away waste. Personally I'd rather risk someone making the mistake. "Sewist" sounds awfully pretentious to me.

Today, in separate radio newscasts (we were running errands all day and listening to Public Radio) I heard a couple of words that made me blink.

In the first, I learned that a person who is of the ethnic group that I have always known as "Bosnian" is now called a "Bosniac". Say what? Since when? It sounds odd and makes me think of "maniac" and "Brainiac", neither of which have particularly positive connotations. Who decided to make this change? Why? What purpose does it serve? And how long before everyone else is saying "Bosniac"? Is a person from Florida sudden going to become a "Floridiac"? Or will Canadians become "Canadiacs"?

And then there was the discussion of politics. This group of pundits was discussing the upcoming debates and what the President and his opponent's strategy was going to be, and how it was going to go and they started talking about this being a "pre-mortem". Huh? They are going to dissect it BEFORE it's dead, er, happened? That has got to be one of the dumbest bits of politispeak (see I can adapt to some new words) I have ever heard of. You can hash something out all you want before it happens, but for goodness' sake! find a word for the process that makes SENSE! "Post-mortem" for going over something AFTER it happens makes a certain amount of metaphorical sense. But "mortem" does not mean "talk about something"; "mortem" refers to DEAD! *sheesh!!!*
Dumb. Just dumb.

I was inspired to fannish thoughts by today's devotional post from The Upper Room...
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piplover is having an unpleasant medical procedure today, and I posted a little double drabble in the comments of her post to cheer her up!

If you pop over to look at it, leave her a little something cheerful too!

Surfacing briefly from trying to get the winners' announcement post ready for the Tree & Flower Awards (finally got the counts tallied and now wresting with formatting) to post a couple of things I wanted to post about earlier but didn't get the chance.

Did anyone else see ABC newscaster Josh Elliot and Stephen Colbert being geeky about The Hobbit trailer on the red carpet before the Emmys the other night?

Listening to the BBC LotR production on my pillow speaker at bedtime is NOT conducive to sleep.

Politics are making me nuts. PLEASE let election day get here soon!

Doggies and kitties have very sharp teeth, even when they are only giving you love-nips.

I'm off to work--but first:




HOBBITS

How we love them!
Our small heroes:
Burglar, Ringbearers, Knights of Gondor and Rohan,
Banishing the dark with their bright spirits and brave hearts.
It doesn't bear
Thinking about a world without them,
So dear to our hearts!

Happy Birthday, Bilbo and Frodo! AND
Happy World Hobbit Day!

Thank you, Professor, for writing down these words: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

I've updated "Ancestress" over at troubledtribble:

"Ancestress"--Chapter Fifty-nine: Watched Over

And I updated "Eleventy-one Years: Too Short a Time" yesterday:

Chapter 14: Tidings: An Interlude at Many Paths to Tread
Chapter 14: Tidings: An Interlude at Stories of Arda
Chapter 14: Tidings: An Interlude at FF.net

The grim news of the Shire's plight spreads; aid is on the way, will it be in time? (I have upped the rating a notch, for angst.)

So, febobe's post about comfort food got me thinking about my own particular comfort foods, in particular when I am sick...( Read more... )

Just a bit of squee (behind the cut out of consideration for my friends who are not like-minded politically)...( Read more... )

On August 29, 2005, the same thing was happening on the Gulf Coast that is happening right now.

Right now, many of my same friends and relatives who suffered through Katrina are now experiencing Isaac. Right now, they must be recalling that horrible time.

As I do every year, here is a link to My Hurricane Katrina Diary, an account of my experience with the storm from the beginning until I was once more reconnected to the rest of the world.

Please keep all those who are going through all this once more in your thoughts and prayers!