What do you assign to Mordor?

[the guy who be short]

Originally Posted by Elempi

Oh, and I assign to Mordor the orc-ization of education.

I assign unfortunately having to acknowledge the downward spiral of education. My Maths teacher was talking about how, in his day, A level maths students did 7 modules instead of 6. Though the content was the same, there was more.

I suspect it is much the same in all subjects.


I will also specifically assign Anti-Semitism. Dear me, the idiots we have to cope with.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Jewelry Making? Is an actual class? Offered in high school? A vocational trade, is it? Or is it fluff? Just curious....

Oh, and I assign to Mordor the orc-ization of education.

Originally Posted by tgwbs

I assign unfortunately having to acknowledge the downward spiral of education. My Maths teacher was talking about how, in his day, A level maths students did 7 modules instead of 6. Though the content was the same, there was more.

I suspect it is much the same in all subjects.

You can all, quite literally, blame me.

Meh!

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by the guy who be short

I assign unfortunately having to acknowledge the downward spiral of education. My Maths teacher was talking about how, in his day, A level maths students did 7 modules instead of 6. Though the content was the same, there was more.

I suspect it is much the same in all subjects.


I will also specifically assign Anti-Semitism. Dear me, the idiots we have to cope with.

Alas it is... I cannot believe how little my god-daughter has to read for A-Level English.. and she gets to do Captain Correlli's mandolin not slog thorugh a Dickens .... I may disown her for not "getting" Jane Austen ....

I assign Aged Parents buying large domestic appliances without getting home delivery thus necessitating yours truly to extract said large appliance from a small fiat and get into house and having to refuse neighbours offer of help due to house looking as if it had been ransacked by burglars......

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Fire alarms and being asleep when they go off. Talk about disorientation.

[Mithalwen]

Boarding school fire alarms that go off when a, you are on sleep-in duty, b, have a fouryear old pre-prepper boarding for a few days because of a family emergency, c, have not had the forthought to wear PJs / sleep in clothes.

She may have looked like and elf child but even delicate fouryear olds are heavy when sleepy and you have to carry them a couple of hundred yards to the gymnasium, where you then have to try and maintain your modesty in nightshirt and knee-length bathrobe in front of a hundred adolescent boys *shudders at the memory*

[Kath]

Wet hair slowly dripping down the back of your clean pyjamas and in turn your nice warm back, because you're too lazy to go find a towel. Well, they're two flights up!

Oh and friends who couldn't be on time if they're life depended on it.

[shieldmaiden4xsword]

xanga malfunctioning. It's been doing that all morning. argh

[Lalwendë]

having had to break a fabulous spiral spider's web today in order to get to the dustbin. I have loads of Orb Weavers in my garden and there was a monster sized one (you could see her eyes) that had made a web right in the way, no way of ducking under it either. So i had to break the poor thing's web. What was amazing was that she'd rebuilt it in the next 2 hours!

I'm also assigning the way that a pint makes you really hot. Why? I've even got ice in it for goodness sake!

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

having had to break a fabulous spiral spider's web today in order to get to the dustbin. I have loads of Orb Weavers in my garden and there was a monster sized one (you could see her eyes) that had made a web right in the way, no way of ducking under it either. So i had to break the poor thing's web. What was amazing was that she'd rebuilt it in the next 2 hours!

I would assign that as well, but for totaly different reaons.

[Lalwendë]

Ah well, I do like spiders. Not least because they eat nasssty flies!

Something else for Mordor:

Monday morning. 6.15 am. I am on leave. So why do I wake up then? Especially when it would normally take a troupe of Uruks running through the house to rouse me for work? Why? Why?

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Monday morning. 6.15 am. I am on leave. So why do I wake up then? Especially when it would normally take a troupe of Uruks running through the house to rouse me for work? Why? Why?

It is a punnishment for destroying fabulouss spider web, I am sure. . .

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Lal

having had to break a fabulous spiral spider's web today in order to get to the dustbin. I have loads of Orb Weavers in my garden and there was a monster sized one (you could see her eyes) that had made a web right in the way, no way of ducking under it either. So i had to break the poor thing's web.

Which reminds me ...

I assign that awful tickly and rather creepy sensation that you get (or at least I get) when you walk into a strand of spider web at head height.

Every morning, I cut across some woodland near our house on my journey to the station. The place is alive with Orb Weaver spiders, some of them (like the specimen identified by Lal above) veritable monsters. So much so that I have taken to nicknaming the place Mirkwood.

In any event, at that time in the morning, most are trailing their webs in commencement of the web-building process and so the path through the wood is transected by numerous webby strands and, in some places, fully formed webs. Having walked into such strands on numerous occasions, I have taken to picking up a suitable stick at the start of the forest path and holding it in front of me until I reach the road on the other side.

Luckily, the path is not well-used. But were you to happen down it on a weekday morning, you would be confronted with the strange sight of a bespectacled gentleman, rather like a latter-day (although slightly taller) Bilbo, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase in one hand and waving a stick in front of him with the other ...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Luckily, the path is not well-used. But were you to happen down it on a weekday morning, you would be confronted with the strange sight of a bespectacled gentleman, rather like a latter-day (although slightly taller) Bilbo, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase in one hand and waving a stick in front of him with the other ...

This makes me think of the episode of The League Of Gentlemen where the three businessmen decide to take a short cut through the woods to their awayday in a hotel, and it all ends up a bit like Deliverance.

I can see another big Orb Weaver right now, hanging in a web strung across the front garden. And for arachnophobes, there is a monster sized house spider living under the bath, where he ran when I tried to catch him the other night (He because its the males who wander around the house).

[Child of the 7th Age]

LICE

"Nuff said.

[Macalaure]

I want to assign flyers to Mordor.

You can't park your car anywhere near the university without having one under your wiper at the end of the day. And of course you only see them when you're already sitting in the car!

I'd also like to assign the woolice that flood my flat this summer. No idea where they come from. I had to deal with an invasion of ladybugs some years ago. Nature's funny, sometimes.

And walking through spiderwebs deserves a co-assignment. Bah! *shudder*

[Farael]

Finally getting inspired enough to write a little for the RPG you have been meaning to get started for a couple months and never finding the inspiration only to be serously SERIOUSLY rattled by some creepy dude who has nothing better to do with his life than to text message and then call random people on their cellphones and say erm... unappropiate things. It's probably just bad luck he chose my number, but the thought that it might not be chance is REALLY driving me nuts.

I assign creeps to Mordor... but real creeps, not poorly understanded introverted people who have no social skills... I'm assigning people who have no better thing to do than to get "kicks" out of making other people feel uncomfortable and harrassed.

[Lalwendë]

I love electrical storms and we've just had a huge, sudden one, complete with fork lightning, sudden gales and torrential rain. I've been running from window to window to get a good view. But I'm not at all happy that my fillings are now all tingling and my mouth feels like I've been chewing silver foil - that goes to Mordor!

[ninja91]

You know what else goes to Mordor? Writing cramps and sores. And those darn fruitcups that explode in your face at lunch.

[Lhunardawen]

Originally Posted by Farael

Finally getting inspired enough to write a little for the RPG you have been meaning to get started for a couple months and never finding the inspiration only to be serously SERIOUSLY rattled by some creepy dude who has nothing better to do with his life than to text message and then call random people on their cellphones and say erm... unappropiate things. It's probably just bad luck he chose my number, but the thought that it might not be chance is REALLY driving me nuts.

I assign creeps to Mordor... but real creeps, not poorly understanded introverted people who have no social skills... I'm assigning people who have no better thing to do than to get "kicks" out of making other people feel uncomfortable and harrassed.

I can only nod my head with this.

Anyways, here's my advice for today: NEVER break your glasses. At least wait for the holidays before you do.

With that said, I assign breaking my glasses when the term still has a month to go. I'm so used to wearing them and just take them off right before sleeping (sometimes I even forget to), so walking around without them makes me feel like a zombie. A horribly myopic, astigmatic zombie. I even had to skip school today because it would be completely useless to be there without practically seeing a thing...

I also assign the whole process of having them replaced. How could it be that complicated? And finally, I assign finding out that my vision is not getting any clearer.

[piosenniel]

Doctors whose hand writing is so tiny and crabbéd that it's impossible to decipher what it is they want done . . .

~*~ Pio

[Kath]

Doing something to your arm, possibly sleeping on it while it was overextended, and having it ache continuously for about three days. Added to that, the strange looks you get when walking around carrying your arm because that's the only way it stops aching.

[Celuien]

Originally Posted by piosenniel

Doctors whose hand writing is so tiny and crabbéd that it's impossible to decipher what it is they want done . . .

Oh dear. I suppose that would also apply to students (whose notes were co-signed to activate) whose handwriting is equally bad. Back to Mordor I go, at least until 2008, when all of my reports will be typed.

I assign unfriendly competitors. Specifically those who attempt to sabotage your applications by attempting (unsuccessfully in this case, fortunately) to make you look bad in front of the program director, but this person's other forms of sabotage equally belong to Mordor.

[Macalaure]

Sitting under a tree while a pigeon sits directly above you.

I'll leave it to your imagination what happened...

[Anguirel]

This response from teachers to being handed work:

(Glance at length) "Too brief. Re-do."

Quantity not quality ahoy, and a good deal of extremely tedious re-notetaking...

[Volo]

Going to a museum to hear a guide telling you to cut your hair! The nerve! (Not that my hair is really popular anyway, that's the reason I keep it, being a rebel at something is some fun, if you can bear the laughter.)

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Anything that seemed 'like a good idea at the time'. I think I'm permanently put off of caramel lattes.

[Kath]

So called friends that don't even bother to turn up to a leaving party, and so upsetting another friend who is going to uni tomorrow and won't have had a chance to say a proper goodbye now.

[Taralphiel]

Finally waking from the dream of a lovely weekend to realise tomorrow is Monday. And that means 5 straight days of terrible work. And 5:30 AM starts.

I'm not a morning person. May I assign that to the Shire too? :P

- Tara

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Magic eyes, rolled 'r's, and a childhood and adolescence of repressed memories of my Spanish teacher trying to drill a weird Venezuelan rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and my eyes trying to hard to be unfocused.

[Lalwendë]

Richard Branson. He who runs our cross country rail services, or at least makes a big show of doing so while he prats around in hot air balloons, the bearded buffoon. The last four big journeys I've made have been on Virgin services. One caught fire from York, another was crammed going to York as some carriages were out of order due to stuck doors. Going down to Oxford the train was late into Brum, leaving us less than 10 minutes to run through New St station with heavy bags, up and down stairs to make the Oxfrod connection. Then last night the train was full even when it got to Oxford, and we faced a three and a half hour journey unable to get to the toilet or snack bar and constantly having to move cases as the luggage racks were crammed full. Everyone was most polite until we got to Sheffield when some fool decided he would rather me run my suitcase over a poor dog's paws than step back to allow us to pass.

None of this happens on the London trains, a decent service not run by that fool Branson.

I also assign the Stalinesque block of accommodation at Somerville College that was like Prisoner Cell Block H, complete with blood stained curtains, paper thin walls and one measly pillow per bed. I can't imagine the disappointment of the new undergraduate arriving expecting medieval splendour in the city of dreaming spires and finding they'd been put up in something straight from Benidorm. Obviously built to give public school Gels that comprehensive school 'experience'.

[Mithalwen]

Actually more like to make them feel at home ...remember if you have been to public school you are meant to find Prison a doddle......

[Anguirel]

Weird. St Anne's is the one actually dubbed Cell Block H by the undergraduates of my acquaintance...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Actually more like to make them feel at home ...remember if you have been to public school you are meant to find Prison a doddle......

Ah, so the roots of Jeffrey Archer's problems have been revealed!

I did find the concept of shared bathrooms a bit odd. It's something I have no trouble with on a temporary basis, due to childhoods on campsites, but the thought of it long term seems weird; maybe those of us who have been to boarding schools feel much more at home with the idea than us comprehensive kids used to our private toilets complete with luxury Andrex and stack of newpapers (for Dad)?

Originally Posted by Anguirel

Weird. St Anne's is the one actually dubbed Cell Block H by the undergraduates of my acquaintance...

I saw some vile 60s blocks at the back of Christ Church too, so be warned. I understand Magdalen has the nicest accommodation but also the most expensive. We stayed in the St Edmunds Hall annexe earlier in the week, which is a B&B in summer and this was very nice, and clean too (Isis House if anyone wants a travel tip for next summer).

[Kath]

Really, really, really bad timing.

And lack of wireless.

And showers that don't disconnect.

People who yell "Wasted!" at you because you knocked over a glass.

Regretting not spending that little bit more on an en-suite.

Useless hooks.

Being bullied into going out.

Yes folks, today I am being a grumpy misanthrope. I'd like non-Ftf contact only for the next few hours please.

[Naria]

Stuffy nose, sore throat, coughing, and the chills. Yup...that's right I have a cold and it's been getting worse as the day goes on. My children always get sick at the beginning of the school year and bring it home. Blasted virus!

[JennyHallu]

You have kids????

I thought you were younger...maybe my age.

So there's a consolation...you look really young in writing, babe.

[the guy who be short]

Accidentally pulling a leg off a daddy long legs whilst trying to remove it from the home. Weird how I can eat cruelly raised chickens without a second thought but that made me cringe.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

hmm I see that daddy longlegs like the danish stankelben, is a name for 3 different animanls. If it was a crane fly don't worry about it, they can loose their legs to avoid getting eaten by a bird.

I never buy chickens that have been treated poorly, but I kill daddy longlegs with little hesitation.

[Naria]

I thought you were younger...maybe my age.

So there's a consolation...you look really young in writing, babe.

Hey hey....I'm not all that old ya know! Okay okay...well maybe

And I'm not quite sure how to take the last comment there....hmmmm

[JennyHallu]

You can take it howe'er you please, dear Naria.

I assign the shed my dog is in. I brushed her yesterday and got enough fur to make another kitten, which might explain the kitten's fascination with said fur. It's enough hair that it looks like my fuzzy Gracie ought to be bald after brushing...but no, more hair, most of it loose.