What is Best in Life

The fantasy fiction community was rocked last month when previously unreleased sections of The Lord of the Rings were discovered. This “grail” of a literary find amounted to a lost chapter, “A Wind from the West” that had apparently been cut out of the original manuscript by censors. Years of suppression by the Tolkien estate followed, but the wait for this lost chapter is finally over!

The bulk of the writing takes place after Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and various other minor characters passed through the halls of the dead in order to rouse the undead army of soldiers who had broken an oath of fealty to Isildur long in the past. It would have been included between chapter 3, “The Muster of Rohan” and chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor” in The Return of the King for those of you that want to print this out and staple it into your copies of the book.

Following the lost chapter I have posted two smaller fragments that were also cut out due to continuity problems arising from the chapter’s removal. Notes as to their placement in the text precede the fragments.
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Like the musicals of the 30s and 40s, the Marx Brothers are a more recent acquired taste for me. Years ago I saw a movie called Brain Donors (a modern version of the Marx Brothers style) and could not have disliked it more (despite starring the always excellent John “da Jesus” Turturo as Groucho). At the time, I had never seen a Marx Brothers movie, and could only assume I wouldn’t like them from the negative reaction I had to Brain Donors.

Fast forward to a couple years ago, I finally check out Duck Soup mostly on the basis of countless Marx Brothers recommendations from Woody Allen (a true American auteur). As it turned out, the Marx Brothers were awesome. My own tastes in comedy are really with the silent era greats, so the decidedly more verbal Marx Brothers was a definite change of pace. Even now, I still can’t quite put my finger on it, but whatever it is; the Marx Brothers sure have it.
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I’ve been cooking for a while now and I’d say I can make some decent stuff. You get to take things and turn them into new (and in theory more delicious) things, so it is basically a creative process and that is always satisfying to me. Also, like many of my hobbies that I’m never really able to devote my full energy to, cooking is very much a learning process. So, here are just a few of the things I’ve learned about cooking in 2006 (yes a little late for year end lists…but hey, I just thought of this one!):
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Having never really read comics until about two years ago, I’m pretty new to all this comic book related stuff. Prior to jumping in headfirst, I only had a vague idea of who was who and what they were all about in comics. Batman? Dark and kicks ass…seems cool. Spiderman? Smartass and sweet powers…seems cool. Captain America? You gotta be kidding right? Flag thumping, lawful-good, moralizing “do-gooder”…LAME. But as I actually started reading his books I have come to realize that I couldn’t have been more wrong. So here are a few quick reasons why “Cap” is totally badass and/or sweet!
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At not quite 250 years old, America is a new country. As is the case with all new nations, this relative youth brings with it a lack of a unifying ideology for its inhabitants. If a group of people are to organize themselves into a common society separate from the other existing societies around them, they must first have a sense of cultural identity. There is no easier way to achieve this than developing a unique folklore and mythology.
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