The Hobbit – Lee Duigon

‘Child Suspended from School for ‘Threat’ to Use Magic Ring’ (2015)

leeduigon(patty)November 10, 2022

I re-run this post every now and then because it drives home two major points:

1. Public education is beyond repair. Get out while you can.

2. Living in a Red State like Texas means nothing at all; the same wacko “educatorxs” control public schooling in all 50 states.

Child Suspended from School for ‘Threat’ to Use Magic Ring

How is it even possible to “threaten” anybody with a magic ring? Do “teachers” not understand that there is no such thing? This, by the way, was the Kermit Elementary School–named for Kermit the Frog?–in Texas. You don’t have to be in Massachusetts or California for your kids to be “educated” by idiots.

Why are your children still in public school? What kind of magic have they used on you?

‘Escape!’ (2012)

leeduigon(patty)December 21, 2021

Image result for images of map of the shire

The hobbit’s home turf

Why do we watch fantasy movies, or read fantasy novels? I mean, who wants to see the good guys win and the villains lose, problems get solved, dragons slain, bad guys run out of town, etc.?

Escape!

Wouldn’t you rather watch nooze? Or at least some Gritty Realistic Drama in which everybody dies?

Yes, we read fantasy for escape. We can’t really tunnel out of this POW camp of the 21st century, but at least we can imagine doing so. True, the imagination is a big box with a lot of bad items in it: all the trouble starts there. But every now and then we can imagine something better, by God’s grace.

And if nothing else, a well-done fantasy is a sanity break!

(I admit that there are few things as bad as a bad fantasy.)

Where can I buy a ticket for the Narnia Local?

‘Child Suspended from School for “Threat” to Use Magic Ring (2015)

leeduigon(patty)December 10, 2020

They thought it was real…

As we wonder how to save our country, we must not forget to keep asking “From what?” And the answer should include “public education.”

Bad enough our teachers’ unions are out-and-out communists. But look at some of the tricks they get up to in their classrooms: like suspending a child for “threatening” to use a magic ring he saw in a movie, The Hobbit.

Child Suspended from School for ‘Threat’ to Use Magic Ring

I have revisited this case today as a reminder that our problem runs a lot deeper than the politics. Think about it. Did the “school officials” actually believe this little boy had a magic ring, which he could use to make another child disappear? I wish I had one that’d make them disappear! What kind of, uh, “education” would these schnooks provide?

And what in the world can we be thinking of, subjecting millions of our children to such a travesty of education? And that’s when they’re not “teaching” gender-bending and what a no-good rotten country America is, etc.

It’s not just our sins that have brought us to this point, where we have to fear for the destruction of our republic. It’s our follies, too. And our so-called education system is the biggest folly of them all.

‘A Tale of Two Hobbits’ (2014)

leeduigon(patty)November 12, 2018

See the source image

The Invincible Female Warrior who’s not in the freakin’ book… and Tolkien never said his Elves have Mr. Spock ears.

Whenever I think about maybe someday, somebody making a Bell Mountain movie, a report like this makes me cringe and shiver.

https://leeduigon.com/2014/12/22/a-tale-of-two-hobbits/

I do understand the unavoidable necessity of making some changes when moving a story from the printed page to the big screen. But the changes made in these “Hobbit” movies, had J.R.R. Tolkien lived to see them, would have killed him dead.

Their very existence proves there’s no such thing as a vengeful ghost.

‘Child Suspended from School for Threat to Use Magic Ring’ (2015)

leeduigon(patty)March 24, 2018

I would just love to hear “educators” defend this nonsense! You have two choices. Either the teacher is spectacularly ignorant and simply doesn’t understand there’s no such thing as a magic ring that can make people disappear; or else the teacher and “school officials” just get their rocks off on the arbitrary exercise of power over children. Come on, teachers’ unions, tell us–which is it?

https://leeduigon.com/2015/02/03/child-suspended-from-school-for-threat-to-use-magic-ring/

Fantasy Novels That Didn’t Quite Make It

leeduigon(patty)July 16, 2015

Someone, I think it was Mickey Rooney, once said, “If I have seen farther than others, it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.”

But sometimes you can do all right standing on the shoulders of midgets, too.

Here are a few old fantasy novels you’ve never read and never heard of, but which have nevertheless inspired some very famous novels.

The Hamster, the Alchemist, and the Sock Drawer by G.M. Karz was almost certainly the inspiration for C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (starting with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe); but in Karz’ case, the various elements of the story never quite came together. There’s something unconvincing about a hamster that inspires awe, and a whole public school class of 12-year-olds accidentally entering another world while putting Limburger cheese in the headmaster’s sock drawer.

A Game of Throneberry, by Imhotep B. McGonegal, tries to re-interpret the 1962 New York Mets’ baseball season as Shakespeare’s plays about the Wars of the Roses. The Mets in 1962, their first season, lost their first twelve ballgames. Then along came Marve Throneberry and they got it together to win 40 games while only losing 120. But I dunno: presenting Marvelous Marve as a kind of modern-day Richard III, drowning poor Elio Chacon in a great big barrel of wine hidden behind the set of Kiner’s Korner–really, I can’t imagine what Mr. McGonegal thought he was doing. Inspiring today’s Game of Thrones franchise?

In The Slobbit, Prof, B.Y.O. Boose created a fantasy world centered around extremely slovenly little people called Slobbits. A Slobbit named Bulbo accompanies a group of leprechauns on their way to slay a dragon. It’s difficult because Bulbo is always losing things. Scholars believe this little-known tale prompted J.R.R. Tolkien to write The Hobbit. Could be, could be…

Last but not least, we have The Wizard of Pfudd by Priscilla Chumply, an obscure 19th century fantasy that introduced the whole idea of an entire nation being duped by a fraudulent wizard–although poor Miss Chumply undermined her own work by writing all the dialogue in garbled Classical Greek. Many modern masters of fantasy have been inspired by Pfudd, but none have ever admitted to it.