noooo, the preciouses!

Do you know how absolutely infuriating it is for people assume you've read a book before?

Now, to be fair, I only finished books 6 and 7 of Harry Potter because the last half of the last movie was finally in theatres. I can think of at least one friend coughAlexcough*, Warren**, who didn't realize I didn't know that Snape killed Dumbledore***. But to also be fair, that shit was spoiled for me at 8:05 the day that book 6 was released because some jackhole who'd hit the midnight release had sped-read the book and decided to talk to his friend across 3 checkstands in my place of business as I was about to purchase the damnable book, so I decided to shelve it for a few years in hopes I'd forget.

I didn't forget.

I'll never forget.

Remember remember the...Where was I? Oh. Yes.

Yeah, reading the Hobbit has kind of been exactly like that for me.

Again, I would like to present exhibit A: I was a fourth grade grammar nazi.

I would also like to present exhibit B: my coworkers suck.

Not all of them though, I mean, at least a small percentage, more like a decimal point really, understand that "I have a book and I'm looking at it" means "shut the fuck up and get out, you don't exist in my world right now". The rest of them though...

See, I've been trying to read this book on my breaks at work. Enter 9 out of every 10 coworkers trying to talk to me about their favorite scenes and how of course I'm the kind of nerd who'd be rereading it for the movie and golly it sure is taking me forever to read it I'm only like 1 page past where I was 2 days ago and what do I mean I haven't read it yet my childhood obviously sucked because I couldn't get through Tolkien's run-on sentences my parents must have been abusive religious nutjobs and what kind of glorified self-indulgent fake nerd am I proporting to be anywayOH MY GOD SHUT UP AND LET ME READ.

So yeah. Took me a while to get through chapters 2 and 3.

At which point, precisely, the library reclaimed it from me and now I'm freaking Gollum without the Precious and I wants to eats everyone's face.



*You still owe me that apology taco, Alex.
**We're square though Warren, you tried to pour enough alcohol into me that I almost forgot you'd even said it.
***If you didn't know that Snape lays the hurt on old man white beard, man up. The book's been out for almost 7 years and the movie's been out for, what, at least 5?, and anyways even I know this so shut up about spoilers because I'm like, the last person on the wagon of "hey, I've read that book!" for practically every book except John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders (which I'm currently reading now that the precious has been stolen away by those filthy, filthy librarians) so you're either illiterate--in which case, how do you even know what I've typed up there?--or you're the hobo king of the trolls so go find yourself a cave and bury yourself in it before the sun comes up.

For those that don't know, snark is how I show appreciation

Apparently my copy of The Hobbit wasn't coming from one library over like I assumed. It turns out it was coming through Middle Earth itself. That's the only reason it could have taken four days to get to me.

Well, I guess the book could have had to walk itself here, flapping its covers as it dashed from tree to tree, avoiding dogs and cars and other pedestrians--yes, other, in this scenario the book is a pedestrian too, don't question it--who'd stop and destroy it/not stop and destroy it/pick it up and return it to a library drop box and start its perilous journey through the wet world of Seattle back at the beginning...

On second thought, Middle Earth is the more viable and realistic option here.

But I have it! And it turns out it's not the same edition that my dreaded school years nemesis had shoved into my hands all those years ago. Because this one has pictures! Believe me, it'd have made it easier to slog though as a child.

And slog away I have.

Although, in a world post Harry Potter and where Stephanie Meyer has a day job and her day job is writing god awful books about stalkers and abusive relationships and cheebus help me I've read all of her freaking books but it was for science so don't you judge me...what? Sorry. Got a little side-tracked there.

Let's just say that I've read so many books in my lifetime; so many horrible stories with wonderful grammar, and so many wonderful stories written by writers with no concept of how to tell them; getting over Tolkien's over use of the semi-colon is easily overlooked.

Ish. It did take me three days to get fourteen pages.

And, may I just say, that Tolkien's a freaking cocktease.

I mean it.

I mean, let's ignore the fact that rather than just describe Bilbo, the dude laid down an generic, genderless description of every hobbit ever (and that in itself was an essay that my mind wandered through for repeated re-readings), and let's jump straight to Belladonna Took.

Seriously.  This random hobbit chick that gave birth to Bilbo was some awesome adventurer, and freaking Gandalf shows up looking for her or her ilk because "adventures,duh," and all we get is 3 sentences on how she stopped doing that when she married Bilbo's dad because you're too busy telling a story about her 50 year old man-child hobbit who still lives at home?

Way to cockblock my awesome female adventuring hobbit stories, Tolkien. Small, round in the belly chick with fuzzy feet that says "sod it all!" to tradition and etiquette and goes off adventuring? Yeah. That's my ideal self. Thanks for nothing.


In other news, I've seen musicals with fewer songs in their opening numbers than The Hobbit has in it's opening chapter.

stupid tuba

You know that song on the Dr. Demento album? The one where Leonard freaking Nimoy is singing about how badass Bilbo is? That song with the singular, most outstandingly fun tuba solo in the center of it?

Don't lie to me. We all know that tuba solo. That thing puts polka to shame.

That tuba solo is the whole reason Leonard Nimoy walked into the studio that day and banged on the tech room door until they let him in, and demanded right then and there that they boot the hippie they hired and let him sing it instead.

True story.
In my head.
You shut up thattubasoloisfreaking awesome.

Anyways, you know that song? The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, I think?

It's been running through my head since I put the book on hold 3 days ago. Which is as bad ass as it sounds because 1) Leonard Freaking Nimoy and 2) that tuba.

I just don't get it, though. This song is psyching me up for the book, when I'm really just expecting to hurl it across the room because grammar nazi hates unnecessary bookshelves.

I am seriously thinking I might have to buy a copy just so I can grade his grammar to get through it.

And yet, my holds hadn't come in at the library yet and I've had to read comics instead all day and ohmygodyouguys I'm really freaking bummed at this development.

Stupid tuba.

It starts

I've got a goddamned wrist injury.

It's work related. I'm a baker; my job kicks my ass and beats the shit out of me daily. And apparently I come from a family with weak wrists. You'd think I'd know this, considering that music nearly gave me carpal tunnel back in the early '00s, and I had to give it up.

But because it's an injury and my career is at stake, so I'm not allowed to do anything I love: no drawing, no video games, no writing, no working on my forsaken comic (technically I'm not even allowed to type more than a few minutes every few hours, huzzah for 126 WPM)...I've read a giant stack of graphic novels in the 10 days since this has started. Watched a lot of cartoons. And read more graphic novels and watched more cartoons and quite frankly I'm running out of shit to do.

So last night I decided on a whim just to go through my bucket-book-list and see what the library has. Still haven't read The Hobbit...there's a movie coming out this December, right? Of course there fucking is, I'm ecstatic for it--because now I can actually get past Tolkien's horrible grammar and know the story! Anyways, with the movie so close, there's no way the library has any copies. It's not like the book's been out a million years or anything. Oh wait, it has, what's this?

I'm logged onto the library website by now, and right there, third entry down, was the same cover art and print run of the book that I checked out in 1994.

There are 8 available copies, and only 7 holds.

What the hell.
Sure.
Why not.

So I put in a request for the book, and now the book’s showing to be "in transit". I’ll have it tomorrow if I can get my ass out of bed early enough. Friday at the latest.

So, I guess starting tomorrow I’m reading The Hobbit.

Despite my hairy feet, I've never been welcome in the Shire

So I have a confession to make.

I have never read The Hobbit.

No.
That’s not true.

I tried to read The Hobbit.

It was fourth grade, probably March-ish. Andrew, my nemisis of elementary school, had gone too far, I’d gone too far, and we’d wound up in “chats”.

I don’t know how else to put it. He’d pulled my hair and pinched my sides enough times that I’d railed off and clocked him, and we’d landed ourselves in what I can only call a mandatory, stuporvised conversation that happened once a week.

Anyways, Andrew thought the best olive branch he could offer was to call me a poor reader and make himself look better.

”The Hobbit is a 6th grade reading level and I can read it in less than 4 days,” he insisted, and I’d never been more incised by anything in my short life. How dare he! Sure, yeah, it’d taken me 3 weeks to get halfway through The Secret of Nihm, but good god, have you tried to read that thing? And then there’s the fact that I only read it while at school, in SSR, which was only something like 25 minutes long, and half the time I was too busy inhaling The Baby Sitter’s Club book that I’d bought for a dollar and a half at the Tin Can Mailman and he didn’t know that I was reading 2 or 3 books a night every night when I got home after doing my homework! How dare that little mongrel assume I’m below a 6th grade reading level!

I hated him with all the fury a 9 year old could harbor. I pretty much hated him all the way through school, which is kind of a shame because he really wasn’t a bad guy, just a jock stuck in a nerd’s body, back when a nerd was a bad thing to be. He was basically Bart in that one episode where he had the lazy eye and the screwy spine and his mom dressed him like Milhouse.

So anyways, since we were fourth graders in the 4-5th split class, making us nerdy little goody too shoes, it was really easy for us to get clearance to go to the library. I’m actually sure that it was probably the only time we’d ever had the same opinion about anything. We dashed into the library, into the corner behind the podium with the dictionary that had all the dirty words scratched out of it, and he grabbed the white book with the blue and green filigree around the edges off the cover, handed it to me proudly, and actually seemed genuinely overjoyed that he might have someone else in his life he could talk about it with.

Looking back, he probably had a pretty huge crush on me.

Anyways, that same day, I sat down at SSR and was pleasantly excited about reading it.

The book had me at the first sentence, I’d resisted the urge to read the last sentence (like grade schoolers do, you know, stupid tests to see if it’s going to be a good or a bad book?), and yay fantasy!

.
.
.

I made it maybe 4 pages.

Or maybe I made farther, but it was that a single sentence had run-on for 4 pages? Shit, it’s been nearly 20 years.

Whatever it was, I distinctly remember slogging through the descriptions of all the inane shit Bilbo had on his bookshelf, appalled at the run-on sentences because apparently I was a grammar nazi even at 9 years old, and what the fuck importance did any of this shit have to the story in the first place?! I didn’t even finish the sentence I’d been slogging through. I just opened my desk, flung the book into the recesses, grabbed The Secret of Nihm, and hated Andrew more for having horrible taste in books.