oloriel | April wrap-up

Right-hand rear window of my car has been smashed in. It was an accident (stone hurled into window by power mower) and I have the name, number and insurance stuff of the guy who did it, but it's still frustrating. I need the car at the moment, and I don't really have the time to leave it at a garage for a whole day, and I feel really really uneasy about leaving the car parked in this street with the right-hand rear window replaced with a plastic bag and duct tape. (Although that's probably ridiculous; the last car anyone likely wants to steal is one with the antenna stolen and a window smashed and taped).
Got it repaired on Monday, which is rather helpful as I really wouldn't have wanted to drive to Veldenz on Friday with an old plastic bag instead of a window. >_>

Also finally got around to changing the tyres – I still had my winter tyres on the car (which was really useful considering how very cold this winter was [/sarcasm]) and never managed to motivate myself to change that. Well, now I did. Chose the first day of rain after five weeks of drought, too – go me!
Motherthing saw me and watched for a while and made admiring comments. Then she got all wistful and said "Remember how you wanted to be a princess when you were small?" Ickle me – sweaty, rainy and with oil-stains on her fingers – was tempted to say that Nerdanel was a princess, too. Did not because it would've taken too much explaining.

- - -

Birthday felt decidedly un-birthdayish due to celebration being postponed. Spent the day at my grandfather's celebration instead. It was about as unexciting as expected and took much longer. I swear next year I'll refuse to go there. Next year I'll invoke 25th anniversary rights whether I actually celebrate on that day or not.
I did get nice presents and lovely congratulations. It just didn't feel like a birthday. Oh well. Indifference towards one's birthday seems to be a thing that just comes once you're out of the rosy children's party age.

- - -

In the course of the renovation, we (or rather, Jörg; 'we' only removed the remains) began to take down the upstairs ceiling/ attic floor – the floorboards are mostly rotted, and the ceiling isn't altogether trustworthy either, so both are going to be replaced. Now you can look at the roof from the future bedroom which, due to the dust, dirt and debris, doesn't look much like a bedroom at the moment.
In between the ceiling framework and the floorboards we found:
one (1) bird skeleton, very nice and clean;
one (1) mummified rat, not so nice and clean but fascinating in a disturbing way;
and ~~a partridge in a pear tree~~ a box containing 101 photo negatives from (presumably) mostly the 1930s/40s.
They are what delayed this entry, as I intended to have them all scanned to show them. However even though I won't upload them all (many are redundant or too blurry) there's still a lot of them, so they get their own entry after all. For now you just get the general house picspam…

The barn… before the worst of the chaos sets in
… will it hold?
Last time you'll see the bedroom in this state.
Last time you'll the the attic in this state.
It hath begun!
Attempt at being artsy.
Light! Dust! Timberworms!
This is art. Try to look affected.
See, this is how they made ceilings (and walls, too) in the olden days.
… and this is how they did it in the 80s when they just wanted to get done.
We found a lot of those. One was still semi-inhabited.
Mummified rat, not for the overly faint of heart
Bird skeleton. Possibly not for the faint of heart either.
Beams from below
The mysterious box!
Lunchtime with twin egg.
just another brick out of the wall.
… with company.
There we go again
Yes, this is the means by which we had to bring all that debris to the shed.
Three-winged butterfly.
Isn't this a cunning contraption.
Luuuuuuke.
… where is he?
More debris
Frank the demolition man
Zerstörungswut I
You can never get enough dust and light effects!
Nor enough abandoned wasp-nests.
Volutabrum meum hortus conclusus est. Bonus points for anyone who gets the reference!
Oh yes, we also found an egg between the ceiling and the floor. However that got there.
Attic, (almost) all cleaned out
Zerstörungswut II

And while I'm picspamming, have some kittens, too.

My box.
My chair.
My Easter dinner.
Look, my eyes match her pullover!
No packing boxes without me, dammit!
Big. Black. Dog. - Looks trustworthy. Ignore me, I just came back from Renaissance Dancing. Náro is actually snuggling up against the dog and thus nearly invisible.
Light + colourful sofa = fuzzy outlines
Which is which?
Why are you up there?
Because I got high.

- - -

Review of Children of Húrin is going to be done, but, erm, not now.

For now, have the brief April reading list.

As I didn't do my litlist last month, I may as well add it here. I didn't read much in March at any rate; there was

juno_magic's original story manuscript, which I probably may not comment on yet, and The Lord of the Rings by a certain J.R.R. Tolkien, which I probably needn't comment on anymore. ;)

Sooo, April.

Richard Aczel, How to Write an Essay
A quite entertaining guidebook on, well, writing essays. Useful, too. It's just annoying that some people forget that it's guidelines rather than rules, that "it is dangerous to use 'obvious'" doesn't mean "it is absolutely forbidden to use 'obvious'", and that not everything that works nicely in the context of the book examples works for the essay topic you got. But that's not the book's fault but the readers'…
But! there's a rather silly mistake in one of the examples. I may type it up later when I found the book again. *shifty eyes*

William Shakespeare, Macbeth
This month seems to have been the month of the books in which people mess with fate and bring about their own doom by various means.
Such as greed, paranoia and evil spirits.

William Shakespeare, King Lear
Or pride and stupidity.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Or revenge and indecision.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin
Or all of the above really.

An interesting observation, though: When I read books, I usually really get into the story and accept its frame as real and the characters as entities with free will and responsibility. When bad things happen to a character, I normally don't go "Oh, [author X], you're evil!" but "Oh, [character X], you really had that coming" (or whatever applies to the situation).
Now when I read the three tragedies, I suddenly found myself blaming not the characters for their stupid behaviour and the bad things they brought upon themselves, but Shakespeare. It was all "Oh come on, did you HAVE to write it that way?". Especially in King Lear, there were parts when I was downright annoyed at the author, not at his creatures. Which you may find perfectly normal, but it's unusual for me.
And with The Children of Húrin (and the next book on the list, too, so it's NOT just my blinding Tolkien-love) it was all back to my normal mode. Everything was the characters' fault, not the author's. Lear's not an idiot, Shakespeare is evil; Tolkien and Flewelling aren't evil, Túrin and Seregil are just stupid.
I wonder why that is. Perhaps it has something to do with the writing mode. Or the many annotations that remind you of Shakespeare's exact intentions and motivations and sources and whatnot. The art no longer being able to hide the artifice, or something.
Whatever…

Lynn Flewelling, Das Licht in den Schatten
The story as such is good.
The book as I read it is horrible.
The blame lies with whatever idiot translated it into German. Said idiot apparently never heard of revision, or of consistency. Yes, "Dalna" sounds feminine due to the a-ending. It is understandable your first impulse is to translate "creator Dalna" as "Schöpferin Dalna" (the English word is, after all, ambiguous). If, however, Dalna turns out to be very much male only a few pages later, how hard can it be to turn back and cross out the "-in"?
Also, it would be ever so helpful if the translator could goddamn have typed names the same. Instead, they vary, often even within one single page. The thin gold thingies are "baps", then "babs", then "baps" again. The old cook switches between "Thyris", "Thryis" and "Tyris". The manservant is "Runcor" and later "Runcer". Hello?! PROOFREADING IS YOUR FRIEND.
Also, why the heck is it "Das Licht in den Schatten" (which means "Light in the Shadows")? The original title is "Luck in the Shadows". The characters use the turn of phrase "luck in the shadows" fairly frequently. In the German, whenever they do, it has been translated "das Glück in den Schatten". Yet the title has "Licht" instead of "Glück". Why? It makes no sense. And the list could go on. A lot of good storytelling and fairly decent world-building get shadowed by a sloppy translator.
Also – and this goes to the author – the trema in "Aurënfaie" is totally superfluous. Even supposing the author is following the Albanian use of the ë, i.e. marking the Schwa, there's little need for using it in a place where the e would be pronounced as a Schwa anyway in the English language of the original book. It'd be quite useful in the vowel cluster at the end – is it –faïe or –faië or what? But noooo, you have to choose the ONE vowel where there's little sense in using the trema. Yes, I know they look cool. Yes, I know Tolkien uses them. Tolkien, however, knows how and when to use them properly.
*coughs*
- yes, I enjoyed the book anyway. But yes, stuff like that actually annoys me a lot while reading because I cannot suppress them, and thus they tear me out of the story. Each single time. Just like misplaced commas do.
Alas, to be hypersensitive to the written word…

- - -
Brotherthing invited me to see Spider-man 3 because apparently (he's seen it already) "it's good for a horribly bad movie as long as you forget it's supposed to be a good movie". I am conflicted, but I'm afraid I won't go. Even though I haven't been to the cinema in 6 months. But I never got those two hours of my life back that I wasted on Spider-man 2; little point in making the same mistake again.
I guess I'll have to wait for At World's End to get to a cinema again. At least that should be worth it.

= = =
Und Übersetzen werde ich das jetzt wegen der Länge nicht. Schuldischung!