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May. 17th, 2008 07:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusso I'm reading Beowulf, and trying to puzzle out the Anglo-Saxon before I cheat and read the the translation on the opposite page.
I think the Old English word "snotor" -- meaning "clever, wise, or prudent" -- most appeals to my inner 12-year-old. I keep thinking that Snotor was that mutant rejected by all leagues and societies of superheroes and supervillains because his powers were too disgusting, and is now reduced to robbing banks.
Meanwhile, I've developed a lot of sympathy for Grendel. I mean, here's this guy who's had a pretty hard life -- I mean, if living in a lake isn't low income housing I don't know what is. And he lives with his mother, so he's either a) a kid, b) a slacker who's bounced back home, or c) looking after an elderly mother in her declining years. Either way he gets my sympathy.
So the Yuppie-Danes move in, build a fancy new building that likely drives up the property values and rents, and then proceed to party late into the night, every night so that Grendel Jr. and Mrs. Grendel can't sleep.
Their options for recourse are few. There won't be a police force to call about this sort of thing for a good thousand years, so Grendel climbs up the hill to have a word with the Danes. What happens next -- well, we only have the Danes' side of the story.
(I'm suspicious of the bias of any version where the author feels the need to often describe the villain as evil, and repeatedly traces a lineage for them back to Cain.)
And Mrs. Grendel's situation is even more understandable. Who wouldn't snap after the loss of a child?
ETA: Also, I added the Facebook app iRead, because it's one of the few apps that looks interesting. It allows me to see the books my friends with the same app are reading/have read. Right now it's displaying 1984, Brave New World, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and two different editions of Lord of the Flies. My friends are cheery bunch, aren't they?
I think the Old English word "snotor" -- meaning "clever, wise, or prudent" -- most appeals to my inner 12-year-old. I keep thinking that Snotor was that mutant rejected by all leagues and societies of superheroes and supervillains because his powers were too disgusting, and is now reduced to robbing banks.
Meanwhile, I've developed a lot of sympathy for Grendel. I mean, here's this guy who's had a pretty hard life -- I mean, if living in a lake isn't low income housing I don't know what is. And he lives with his mother, so he's either a) a kid, b) a slacker who's bounced back home, or c) looking after an elderly mother in her declining years. Either way he gets my sympathy.
So the Yuppie-Danes move in, build a fancy new building that likely drives up the property values and rents, and then proceed to party late into the night, every night so that Grendel Jr. and Mrs. Grendel can't sleep.
Their options for recourse are few. There won't be a police force to call about this sort of thing for a good thousand years, so Grendel climbs up the hill to have a word with the Danes. What happens next -- well, we only have the Danes' side of the story.
(I'm suspicious of the bias of any version where the author feels the need to often describe the villain as evil, and repeatedly traces a lineage for them back to Cain.)
And Mrs. Grendel's situation is even more understandable. Who wouldn't snap after the loss of a child?
ETA: Also, I added the Facebook app iRead, because it's one of the few apps that looks interesting. It allows me to see the books my friends with the same app are reading/have read. Right now it's displaying 1984, Brave New World, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and two different editions of Lord of the Flies. My friends are cheery bunch, aren't they?
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Date: 2008-05-17 01:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-19 10:32 am (UTC)