Bifur, Bombur, and Herschel

Following on the heels of yesterday's post, it seems that J.R.R. Tolkien drew some of his inspiration for the Dwarves of Middle Earth from a rather unlikely place-- the Jews.

The Dwarves, especially in The Hobbit, are depicted as having been scattered from their homeland, much as the Jews were.  The more martial aspects of their culture stem from Old Testament depictions of the fighting Israelites, and their skill with metallurgy comes both from the traditional Norse image of a dwarf and from a Medieval stereotype of Jews as "makers of beautiful and well-crafted things."  There are even supposedly parallels between Tolkien's descriptions of Dwarf music and that of medieval Jewry.

I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of this.

The source of this information, according to Wikipedia, is The History of the Hobbit, John Rateliff, Harper Collins, 2011; a combination of Tolkein's notes and drafts and Rateliff's commentary.  Google Books doesn't have the complete text, so I can't verify it, although everyone participating on the Wikipedia discussion page seems to accept it as truth.

To Live in Middle Earth

I discovered today that there's a subdivision in Middle Of Nowhere, PA (Tamiment, Lehman Township, PA) whose street names are pulled almost entirely from the Hobbit.  Hmm, there's a lovely house for sale on Oakenshield, too, about half way between Withywindle Way and Elrond Drive...

Chris Barrie

It turns out that Amazon Instant Video has basically all of Red Dwarf, including seasons and specials that I didn't even know existed.  So I've been happily devouring it all over again, and I noticed something that I was unaware of the first time around, when it came out in the late 1980s.

At the time, it was very clear that the audience was intended to identify with the character of Dave Lister, the "sole surviving human being," and the other characters were just foils for him to react to.  And that was fine.  I sympathized right along with the slacker slob, and hated his dead holographic bunk mate Arnold "Smeg-head" Rimmer (played by Chris Barrie), just as I was supposed to.  And now, from my changed perspective, that's still true, although it's clearer that the character of Lister is occasionally even more of a rat bastard than Rimmer, if perhaps not quite so superficially dislikable.

However-- I also can't help noting, on a more meta level, that Chris Barrie was/is a vastly superior actor.  For example, in several episodes, for a variety of reasons, Barrie was called upon to imitate or in some way play one of the other characters (mind swapping, memory alteration, damage to his holographic circuits, etc.).  And it was frequently brilliant.  He captured their physical mannerisms, their vocal inflections, often uncannily.  And in the episode where Rimmer and Lister swapped bodies, this was made rather starkly evident-- Craig Charles, the actor who played Lister, was just basically himself with Barrie's voice overdubbed, but Barrie really became Lister, in a manner becoming an actor on a (frankly) much better show.  Honestly, Red Dwarf is fun, but wow, was it also bad.

So here's to you, Chris Barrie, the unsung hero (at least as of season 4, I've still got a ways to go) of Red Dwarf.  He's done other things, including some supporting roles in big-ticket movies, and one long run as the star of a show I've never heard of (probably because it was only on BBC) called The Brittas Empire.

Amp!

Tried a can of Amp energy drink (it was on sale).

It tasted rather like Mountain Dew mixed with cough medicine.  I can't vouch for any energizing benefits, since I only managed a few sips before giving the whole thing up as a bad job.  Maybe the other flavors are better, but the basic can is pretty awful.

A quick Thanksgiving post

Turkeys, when you buy them in the store, tend to be about 5 months old and 15 to 20 pounds.  This will feed a family of 6 or so, depending on how much you like leftovers.  It is not, however, the natural adult age and weight of a turkey.

If you continue to feed and care for a bred turkey, it will continue to put on weight and size.  And if you keep going, a turkey will live for about 10 years, and eventually top 80 pounds-- the largest tom on record, according to the Guinness Book of Irrelevant World Records, was auctioned off for charity in 1989 at 86 pounds.  Actually, double-checking the link, I can't find anything about it on Guinness's actual website, but their interface is a little dubious, so it may be buried in there somewhere.

Strut Your Stuff

A friend mentioned the other day that her boyfriend's car was suffering from a broken strut (and another on the way out), and I said, "Oh, no, that's awful.  That's a pretty major repair."  And it is-- I mean, I've heard the Car Talk guys mention it in hushed tones a few times.  But then I thought (to myself, so I wouldn't look like a moron), well, I know that a strut is a structural component. It's a support, right?  It resists stress of some sort.  That's what a strut in general is, anyway.  But what exactly is an automotive strut?

To the Internet!  FOR JUSTICE!  Ahem.

One of the most common automotive struts is the MacPherson strut, which really does sound like a dance move of some sort, but oh well.  The MacPherson strut is indeed a supporting structure, but more specifically it's part of the suspension, to wit: those elements of the car that keep it more or less level as it bounces in and out of the inevitable potholes.  I don't want to even think about what the neighborhood around the office is going to look like at the end of the winter, especially since the recent storm probably bankrupted the city.  But I digress.  Again.

The Wikipedia article suffers from a lot of technical language, and seems to be written so that only people who already know the material can follow the text, but I'll try to give some of the high points.

The "main" part of the strut is attached to the center of the wheel and extends upward into a spring, which is connected in turn to the main body of the automobile.  It looks a little bit like the shocks on a mountain bike, for  fairly obvious reasons.  This element evens out the vertical motion of the wheel, making the ride smoother.  But that's only the vertical.  So the strut also has two horizontal components that link the wheel to the steering mechanism and provide additional stability.  This design offers a combination of ease of manufacture and low cost, at the expense of some ride quality and sophistication.

All of which means that my friend's boyfriend's car is probably wallowing around like a whale with a prosthetic leg.

Bugle Call

Bugles (the crispy corn snack of yesteryear) are fried in coconut oil, instead of the more common corn oil (as found in the more ubiquitous Fritos Brand The Original Corn Chip(TM).

No wonder they're so freakin delicious.  Mmm, Bugles.

OTOH, I've never actually seen "Sweet and Salty Bugles Chocolate Peanut Butter (patent pending)" in the stores.  They kind of frighten me.