that snorlax .gif reminded me of one of my favorite animals ever, an elephant seal called Homer who went on a months-long rampage of car-humping destruction in a new zealand town
some highlights of homer’s odyssey:
causing tons of property damage by attempting to fuck cars, boat trailers, trees, and trash cans (did i mention that he weighed two tons)
he was apparently particularly attracted to red cars
at one point, the population of Gisborne attempted to contain him by putting barriers on the boat ramp he’d been using to get on land
his response was to wait for a swell to move the barriers, get back on shore, cross the road, and fuck a power box, cutting off the electricity to a local restaurant and the coast guard building (and presumably tasering his own dick in the process)
accidentally offset some of the property-damage costs by bringing in busloads of japanese tourists who were at the time visiting a city a few miles over
(there was one claim that he also squished a person who got too close to him, but i can’t find anything backing this up)
he was later revealed to have been the same elephant seal who had previously terrorized the town of Christchurch, hundreds of miles away
in Christchurch, he was recorded climbing a two-meter wall, breaking into a mall, and humping more cars and trash cans
(this isn’t even the first time something like this has happened, as an elephant seal in Coromandel became a local celebrity in the 80s after coming ashore and trying to fuck cows; Humphrey was later immortalized with a fiberglass statue)
Gisborne’s local radio station created a (now-defunct) website for him called “Homer’s Home,” complete with a forum for people to track his amorous adventures and a page where kids could send him emails of support
a moment of silence for the guy in my lit class who responded to my professor saying “trigger warning” by shouting “TRIGGERED! I’M TRIGGERED!” and then said it 2 more times after nobody acknowledged him, each time a little quieter. he walked out of the class okay but there’s no telling what a self-own like that does to a man’s spirit
My favourite fact about Star Trek TOS is that, because automatic doors weren’t invented yet, the ‘automatic doors’ in TOS were really just some guy yanking a rope and pulley system to make them slide open. Problem was the person was far enough away that they couldn’t see when exactly the doors needed to be open, and relied on a signal from somebody just off set. The actors, however, had to act as if they were 100% confident the doors were going to open at the exact time and moment despite the fact that they occasionally did not which lead to multiple occasions in which the actors walked directly into the doors while they were opening.
What I would give for Tolkien to meet Peter Jackson and just be like “Oh hey lemme explain you a thing”
No, guys, this is fantastic because it actually happened. From a letter Tolkien wrote to a friend, complaining about a proposed movie adaptation:
Here I may say that I fail to see why the time-scheme should be deliberately contracted. It is already rather packed in the original, the main action occurring between Sept. 22 and March 25 of the following year. The many impossibilities and absurdities which further hurrying produces might, I suppose, be unobserved by an uncritical viewer; but I do not see why they should be unnecessarily introduced. Time must naturally be left vaguer in a picture than in a book; but I cannot see why definite time-statements, contrary to the book and to probability, should be made.
Seasons are carefully regarded in the original. They are pictorial, and should be, and easily could be, made the main means by which the artists indicate time-passage. The main action begins in autumn and passes through winter to a brilliant spring: this is basic to the purport and tone of the tale. The contraction of time and space in 2 destroys that. His arrangements would, for instance, land us in a snowstorm while summer was still in. The Lord of the Rings may be a ‘fairy-story’, but it takes place in the Northern hemisphere of this earth: miles are miles, days are days, and weather is weather.
Strider does not ‘Whip out a sword’ in the book. Naturally not: his sword was broken. (Its elvish light is another false anticipation of the reforged Anduril. Anticipation is one of Z’s chief faults.) Why then make him do so here, in a contest that was explicitly not fought with weapons?
Why has my account been entirely rewritten here, with disregard for the rest of the tale? I can see that there are certain difficulties in representing a dark scene; but they are not insuperable. A scene of gloom lit by a small red fire, with the Wraiths slowly approaching as darker shadows – until the moment when Frodo puts on the Ring, and the King steps forward revealed – would seem to me far more impressive than yet one more scene of screams and rather meaningless slashings.….
Rivendell was not ‘a shimmering forest’. This is an unhappy anticination of Lórien (which it in no way resembled). It could not be seen from Weathertop : it was 200 miles away and hidden in a ravine. I can see no pictorial or story-making gain in needlessly contracting the geography.
Time is again contracted and hurried, with the effect of reducing the importance of the Quest. Gandalf does not say they will leave as soon as they can pack! Two months elapse. There is no need to say anything with a time-purport. The lapse of time should be indicated, if by no more than the change to winter in the scenery and trees.
The Balrog never speaks or makes any vocal sound at all. Above all he does not laugh or sneer. …. Z may think that he knows more about Balrogs than I do, but he cannot expect me to agree with him.
A splendid sight. It is the home of Galadriel… an Elvenqueen.’ (She is not in fact one.) ‘Delicate spires and tiny minarets of Elven-color are cleverly woven into a beautiful[ly] designed castle.’ I think this deplorable in itself, and in places impertinent. Will Z please pay my text some respect, at least in descriptions that are obviously central to the general tone and style of the book! I will in no circumstances accept this treatment of Lórien, even if Z personally prefers ‘tiny’ fairies and the gimcrack of conventional modern fairy-tales.
Z has cut out the end of the book, including Saruman’s proper death. In that case I can see no good reason for making him die. Saruman would never have committed suicide: to cling to life to its basest dregs is the way of the son of person he had become. If Z wants Saruman tidied up (I cannot see why, where so many threads are left loose) Gandalf should say something to this effect: as Saruman collapses under the excommunication: ‘Since you will not come out and aid us, here in Orthanc you shall stay till you rot, Saruman. Let the Ents look to it!’
Pan III…. is totally unacceptable to me, as a whole and in detail. If it is meant as notes only for a section of something like the pictorial length of I and II, then in the filling out it must be brought into relation with the book, and its gross alterations of that corrected. If it is meant to represent only a kind of short finale, then all I can say is : The Lord of the Rings cannot be garbled like that.
I do earnestly hope that in the assignment of actual speeches to the characters they will be represented as I have presented them: in style and sentiment. I should resent perversion of the characters (and do resent it, so far as it appears in this sketch) even more than the spoiling of the plot and scenery.
– excerpts from Tolkien getting angry over “the film treatment” of Lord of the Rings, Letters, Letter 210, June 1958
