firehose

marielikestodraw:

Steve McQueen: my hidden shame

His new film 12 Years A Slave is an unflinching look at human brutality. But director Steve McQueen’s childhood contains a painful secret he has never confronted

|Read On The Guardian Website]

————

This is by far one of the most amazing, thoughtful, well written piece I’ve read about Steve McQueen. It’s like a window on the brilliant mind of the director, giving you a bit more informations on how to connect his movies with his own life story, without being invasive or inappropriate, and the journalist did a tremendous job at figuring out how to engage with him in a just the right way. Must read.

Seconded.

• We started with Guillotine (designer Paul Peterson, artists the late Quinton Hoover along with Mike Raabe, publisher Wizards of the Coast), which is a lighthearted favorite.  I don't remember who won, but it was a great way to start the gaming evening.
• Next was The Resistance: Avalon (designer Don Eskridge; artists Luis Francisco, George Patsouras, and Rafal Szyma; publisher Indie Boards and Cards), in which I was loyal to King Arthur.  Kathy continually accused me of being a minion of Mordred, but when our second quest failed, I knew that either she or Sheila was disloyal.  Then Glenn assigned a quest that didn't include himself, and right away I suspected him of disloyalty as well.  In the end, Jeff assigned Kathy and me to join him on a quest, and it came down to the question of trusting Kathy or Sheila (and of whether Kathy would trust me).  As it happened, Jeff chose wisely, and the knights of the round table completed our third quest to foil Mordred's schemes against King Arthur.  Resistance was the big hit of the evening - very tense and very fun.
• We had plenty of time before the midnight New Years celebration, so we opted for a longer game, Pacific Typhoon (designer Ben Knight, artists Rodger B. MacGowan and Mark Simonitch, publisher GMT Games).  I've always appreciated this game for its historical context, as well as the negotiation and counterplay that goes on.  But I think this session confirmed something for me that became evident the last time I played PT - that it is a little longer than it needs to be for what it is.  It took us two and a half hours to play this card game that would have been fulfilling in an hour or so.  In the absence of any grand strategy, the game just doesn't need to be as long as it is.  I have some ideas for shorter variants, but I think this one will stay on the shelf for a while before I pull it out again.
• After lifting our glasses to toast the new year at midnight, we decided on one more quick game, the hidden-identity micro-game Coup (designer Rikki Tahta, artists Luis Francisco and Jarek Nocoń, publisher Indie Boards and Cards).  Sheila, Glenn, and I had played this over a lunch break one day at work, and I was glad to get it to the table with a somewhat larger group.  We had so much fun with it that we played three rounds before we finally called it a night.

(c) Ravensburger.  Used by permission

Don’t watch the X-Files before going to bed.

On this, the 122nd anniversary of the birth of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the Miðgarðsmál blog would like to wish him a

• Mána ontalérë
• Aur onnas alwed
• Ênâd-nurt gêdul

and a

• Zeyborzi undumi bolneg

Glosses
Quenya
mána “blessed”
onta- “produce, create, beget, give birth to”
ontale “production, creation, genealogical descent” — hence (presumably) birth as well
ré “day” (of 24 hours)
ontale+ré = ontalére, preserving the original long final vowel of *ontālē (cf. yáviére, tuilére)

Sindarin
aur “day” (of 24 hours)
onnas “birth” — a conjectural noun form, from the slightly less conjectural onna-, equivalent to Quenya onta- (cf. edonna- “beget”)
alwed “fortunate, prosperous”

Neo-Khuzdul
ênâd “birth” from *aynād, from the root √YND “give birth to” (influenced in fact by both Quenya yondo and Semitic √WLD, √YLD).
nurt “24-hour day” — a word from archaic formation, from √NRT “turn”; probably referring, not to the turning of the earth on its axis, but to the apparent turning of the sun around the earth. This root has been in my notes for a while, and I can’t find which word it was originally intended to explain or remember its origin; it looks now like simply an anagram of “turn,” but I may have had something else in mind, possibly Indo-European *wert- . “Turning” itself would be anrât.
gêdul “joyful, happy,” from a noun gayad, gêd- (*gayd-). No doubt Latin gaudium had an influence here.

Orkish (The dialect used in the film of The Hobbit)
zeyborz “day,” literally “light-dark”; zey from more archaic *zil, and borz from Black Speech burz.
The suffix -i marks a noun or noun phrase that is modified by an adjective or another noun. Its origin is probably the same as the Elvish relative pronoun i or ya.
undum “birth” or “spawning” from a verb und- “procreate.” This again seems to show Elvish influence.
The Orcs do not really appreciate the concept of joy, as understood by most other creatures (a literal description of it in Orkish would amount to “madness”), much less blessedness. I was forced to use an approximation of the concept that would make sense to an Orc:
bolneg “free from pain,” from the Orkish root √bol- (cf. bolum “pain”) and the privative suffix -neg, marking an absence of something. The latter is reminiscent of Latin negare; this is a coincidence (as they say in Middle-earth). The actual source is Quendian *-enekā, from the root √nek- “deprive of.”

I’ve received an inquiry about the meaning of the runes on Kíli’s talisman stone. The words inscribed on it are innikh dê.

The first is the singular imperative of the verb nanakha “return, come back”, which has a triliteral root √n-n-kh which obviously has been formed from the biliteral root √n-kh “come,” which is in turn clearly related to Adûnaic nakh-. The pattern is iCCiC, as is generally the case with other imperatives.

Dê combines a preposition d(u) “to, toward” (whose real-world inspiration is the Gothic preposition du) with the 1st person singular pronominal suffix -ê.

The meaning of the phrase on the stone is therefore “return to me.” Its precise application in Kíli’s case is something I’m not privy to, and I expect that passionate film fans can guess it more easily than I can.

fuckyeahyoungavengers:

Young Avengers Volume 2 - interior art (more at the source)

ANIMATED: Apparently Evander Holyfield is REALLY FUNNY

midnight-in-gotham:

Hail to the king

fezman92:

mswyrr:

note: cartoon network cancelled this show because girls liked to watch it

Reblogging again even though I just did 15 min ago because it is so funny yet sad.

The current one, by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn is a must-read, they are killing it. Joe Kelly is the guy who re-invented Deadpool into the wacky funster he is now, and his stories are pretty much the gold standard. Mark Waid’s run was fun. My own run is in DEADPOOL CLASSICS #9, out last week.

I also like Fabian Nicieza’s run a lot. People loved Daniel Way’s run but I sadly haven’t read it. Good luck!