Chapter-by-Chapter: New Moon, Chapter 2

I'm sorry if bits of this blog post look a little strange. At the moment I'm trying to get my voice recognition software up and running in preparation for NaNoWriMo. I'm trying to go back and edit my mistakes; I'm getting a lot of practice at doing that! Apparently the more I practice, the better the computer will be at understanding me. I'm really getting the hang of the voice commands, so clearly I'm learning something, even if my computer isn't.

Anyway, let's get on with reading New Moon. This chapter is called Stitches.

What happens:

Carlisle patches up Bella's arm and has a discussion with her about religion and souls. We also learn a little about what happened the night he turned Edward. With Bella all put back together again she's able to go home, and as usual, Edward stays the night. But it seems like he might be preparing to go somewhere.

Thoughts as I read:

As the last chapter ended with Bella falling into a glass table, I'm fairly certain that the stitches in the chapter title are going to refer to those. There was an awful lot of glass in Chapter One so I'm guessing there's going to be an awful lot of stitches needed. The chapter is also about twenty pages long, so there'll almost certainly be some stuff with Edward being angry with Jasper (and himself, for putting Bella in danger, again). And Bella will probably use it as an excuse for Edward to turn her into a vampire, which he'll refuse to do. And this will cause grumpiness.

Carlisle takes charge of the situation and orders Emmett and Rosalie to haul Jasper away; Rosalie is obviously enjoying this, or at least is pleased that things have turned out the way she was expecting them to. Meanwhile everyone else tries to stem the bleeding and decide whether they can fix the damage here or if Bella needs to go to the hospital.

Bella doesn't want to go to the hospital because then she'll have to explain why her arm has been cut to ribbons, for the second time in however many months since she 'fell down some stairs and through a plate glass window'. Edward's being all intense and watching Bella, which I thought was because he was worried, but then Bella says something which makes me realise that's not why he's being all hard and intense:

"I can handle it," he insisted. But his jaw was rigid; his eyes burned with the intensity of the thirst he fought, so much worse for him than it was for the others.

I actually kind of like Bella for a moment when she basically tells Edward to get over himself. Carlisle takes her side as well and soon Edward is despatched in search of Jasper. It doesn't take long for Alice to follow him; clearly Bella just smells too good to resist. Carlisle must have nerves of steel!

Just as I'm wondering how Carlisle is able to resist temptation when everyone else has had to leave the room to save Bella from being ravished, Bella asks him how he's able to do it. Apparently it's just a matter of practice. Bella continues to make small talk with her doctor as he pulls numerous bits of glass out of her arm.

We do learn that Carlisle is able to smell what is wrong with people and so is able to use his skills to save people who might not have been able to be saved through normal medical procedures. I wonder what sort of things he is able to tell about people using his sense of smell. Considering Edward tasted the morphine at the end of the last book, I'd guess he could probably tell if someone had taken an overdose, perhaps if they had diabetes or leukaemia or sickle cell anaemia, stuff that would make a person's blood smell differently.

While I'm wondering this, Carlisle starts preparing to sew up Bella's arm. Surely she's still going to have to explain the bandage and stitches to her father, even if she's avoided a trip to the hospital! Bella's not thinking about this though, she's still pushing for information about why Carlisle works as a doctor if it takes so much effort to not nom on his patients.

This prompts a recap of Carlisle's history, whilst he burns all of the stuff with Bella's blood on it. So now the house is going to smell like a Bella barbecue, I'm not sure that's going to help matters particularly!

The conversation then takes a turn towards religion. Carlisle's questioning his faith and Bella's revealing that neither of her parents are religious either. I'm curious because I'd read that this series of books promote Mormon values pretty heavily. I was expecting this conversation to reveal Bella's beliefs. Perhaps that's actually something which Meyer's been subtle about. It'll be interesting reading on to find out.

Oh and now we're moving on to what Edward believes:

Carlisle guessed the direction of my thoughts again. "Edward's with me up to a point. God and heaven exist… and so does hell. But he doesn't believe there is an afterlife for our kind." Carlisle's voice was very soft; he stared out the big window over the sink, into the darkness. "You see, he thinks we've lost our souls."

This is all getting very deep for a book in the Twilight series.

Actually I'm starting to get a bit lost in this conversation. They're talking about souls and what that has to do with Edward being with Bella. Oh, I think Carlisle knows Bella wants to be turned but that doing that could endanger the soul that Edward may or may not have. I think.

The direction this conversation has taken makes me wonder just why Carlisle decided to turn these other people into vampires in the first place. Looks like he's read my mind because the next thing I know we're getting Edward!Backstory.

"Yes. Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth Masen. His father, Edward Senior, never regained consciousness in the hospital. He died in the first wave of the influenza. But Elizabeth was alert until almost the very end. Edward looks a great deal like her – she had that same strange bronze to her hair, and her eyes were exactly the same color green."

This is starting to get a little Harry Potter now.

Carlisle promised Elizabeth, as she lay on her deathbed, that he would save her son. And he got the impression that somehow she knew what he could do. So he did it. It basically involved hurting Edward the way he had been hurt, because although he'd decided he had to have a companion, he didn't actually know just how he was supposed to go about doing it. Oops.

Speaking of the devil vampire, Edward shows up, all ready to take Bella home again. Bella decides that she'd rather Carlisle take her home, she is still covered in blood after all. It's one thing wanting to be with someone forever, it's an entirely different thing to be left alone with that person when there's a chance they want to eat you.

She found me a shirt of Esme's that was close to the same color mine had been. Charlie wouldn't notice, I was sure. The long white bandage on my arm didn't look nearly as serious when I was no longer spattered in gore. Charlie was never surprised to see me bandaged.

Just like that the party is over and Bella's heading home and apologising for getting the paper cut that caused all of this trouble. This annoys Edward because if it wasn't for her being with him a paper cut would've been just that, a paper cut, not an invitation for his family to suck her blood. It just escalates from this point onwards, now Edward's suggesting that Bella would've been better off hooking up with Mike rather than him.

Which annoys Bella. Which just causes the argument to keep on going.

And despite this, Bella still asks Edward if he's going to spent the night with her.

"For my birthday," I pressed.
"You can't have it both ways – either you want people to ignore your birthday or you don't. One or the other."

He has a point.

Whatever issues he's having right now, Edward decides that he would much rather spend the night with Bella. So he promised to meet her upstairs. I hope he's going to let Carlisle and Esme know what he's doing otherwise they might think that he's chowed down on Bella on the way home or something!

Inside Charlie makes fatherly small talk with his daughter, asking how the party went. He does notice the bandage on her arm but doesn't seem overly concerned about just what happened to his incredibly accident prone daughter. If I was Charlie I'd be a little bit suspicious that on two occasions when my daughter was visiting this guy's family she ended up injured in some way.

Up in her room, Edward does the honours and starts unwrapping Bella's presents, presumably in order to make sure that she doesn't injure herself again and drive him into a feeding frenzy of his own. Inside the gift from Carlisle and Esme are two plane tickets to Jacksonville. Is that where one of the colleges is? Despite it being all sunny there, Edward is happy to go along with her and never leave the house. That sounds fun. Imagine how cranky he'll get when he has to spend all of his time cooped up indoors!

The other gift is from Edward. That good old standby, the compilation CD, featuring the music that he composed for her. Okay, that is kind of sweet. Unfortunately Bella's arm has started to hurt so Edward takes it upon himself to get her some pain relief:

"Charlie," I hissed. Charlie wasn't exactly aware that Edward frequently stayed over. In fact, he would have a stroke if that fact were brought to his attention. But I didn't feel too guilty for deceiving him. It wasn't as if we were up to anything he wouldn't want me to be up to. Edward and his rules…

Jeez, if you're going to sneak around and break your parents' rules, at least do something interesting and worthwhile.

It's okay anyway, Edward is able to get the Tylenol before the door even closed and then he very carefully puts Bella to bed. She asks for a goodnight kiss and the pair of horny teenagers suddenly start acting just like that. It's not clear whether Edward is being fuelled by lust or by the desire to eat her. They stop before it goes too far and Bella agrees to go to sleep.

Except she has a strange sort of sense that the kiss was like one before; one when Edward was saying goodbye to her for what might have been forever.

Ooh. I think this means he'll be going away soon. He's probably do it to be all noble like he's taking her away from danger, and she'll be all mopey and devastated because it's the end of the world. God this is going to be a long book!

NaNoWriMo: Guest Bloggers Wanted

Remember how last Christmas I invited a bunch of friends round to guest blog for me?

Well, I'd planned to do it again and then ran out of time to organise it, so I thought what have I got even less time to organise? Oh, I know, guest bloggers for NaNoWriMo!

So here we are.

Have you participated in National Novel Writing Month before? Did you win? Did you write ten thousand words, hit the dreaded Second Week Slump and spend the rest of the month eating ice cream and watching old Nickelodeon cartoons?

Have you never joined in the craziness before? Do you think this is going to be the easiest thing you've ever done? The hardest? Do you not have a clue and only just signed up after clicking the shiny link up there?

Do you think you've got valuable hints and tips to share? Know a surefire way to banish the inner editor? Do you hate NaNo and wish everyone would just shut up about it?

Great!

I need you!

I'm looking for some people to write guest blog posts for the month of November. You don't have to be a blogger to join in, if you don't have a blog or site for me to link to you on I can always link back to your NaNo page (you might get a few more buddies that way).

I'm imagining people writing Pep Talks, like the ones which are emailed out through the month, but you can share your positive or negative experiences of NaNo, tips and tricks, funny NaNo related stories. Hell, send along some of your funniest NaNoisms or an extract from your NaNovel! That'll be fun to read too.

If you're wanting to be featured on the blog, simply email me at clicksclan@gmail.com to let me know what you're planning to write (just so I can make sure I don't end up with six posts about how Word Crawls are amazing, they are, take it from me).

You should aim for your post to be between 400-800 words long and if you could include a short bio (who you are, where we can find you online, a picture if you feel like sharing) to include with your post. Let me know where I should link it to (blog, social media, NaNo site, something else) and include any other pictures you'd like me to use in the post.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Wordless Wednesday: Post

Book 8 of 2015: Strata by Terry Pratchett

Away back in January this year I decided to work through the remaining unread Terry Pratchett books that I have in my collection. I had started with The Dark Side of the Sun around a month beforehand and so tackled Strata towards the end of January.

Strata is a science fiction novel published way back in 1981 and is a kind of test run before he went all out with the concept of the Discworld. It follows the character of Kin, who helps build planets, as she is recruited to attempt to find a 'flat Earth'. So she travels across the galaxy with a motley collection of aliens in search of this mystery planet and the reason for its existence.

I do have to admit that I wouldn't class Terry Pratchett's sci-fi books among my favourites. I read The Carpet People many years ago and I really enjoyed that, but I just couldn't get on with The Dark Side of the Sun. Strata kind of bridges the gap between the two. I did prefer this one to The Dark Side of the Sun. It just felt more well-rounded and seemed easier to follow compared to the earlier novel.

That said, it did get a little trickier to keep up with during the second half. It wasn't a long read, but I felt like I was dragging my heels a little once I got past the middle. I feel like in the beginning Terry Pratchett was really good at setting up a story but then would end up with lots of tangled strands which he couldn't quite keep straight enough to give them all the same weight.

It's ironic that this is one of the things I love most of all about his later Discworld novels. He sets up all these strands and then gradually brings them all together to weave them into the end of the story. I think it's something which he took a while to perfect, but it's interesting to see that he was working on it right back in his earliest novels.

Strata is also full of little jokes and one-liners. It's just what I've come to expect from a Terry Pratchett novel. There are lots of little links to the Discworld books; the idea behind the Disc actually gets mentioned by the characters at one point! I caught a reference to a bar called The Broken Drum at one point as well.


Reading these early Pratchett books has shown me that he was playing around with the idea of Discworld for many years before it became the familiar place we've come to know and love today. I wish that I'd read these books many years before so that I could've asked him about them when I met him. I'd love to know more about when he came up with Discworld and whether he intended it to be a sci-fi story before it finally settled on the fantasy genre.

TV Series Review: Columbo

Several months ago Mr Click suggested that we start watching Columbo. We were on a bit of a detective jag having recently watched BBC's Sherlock and the American series Elementary so Columbo seemed like a sensible series to follow them up with. Plus it seemed long enough to take us through to the start of our Christmas viewing.

I know that I saw this every time I watch a programme that my husband has chosen, but I wasn't really all that keen to start with Columbo. I'd seen odd bits of odd episodes on TV in the past and I didn't think it was going to be that good.

As usual, I proved myself wrong and I did end up quite enjoying the series.

If you've never seen an episode of Columbo, it's slightly different to the usual format for a police procedural. Instead of a crime being discovered, reported and solved; the episode begins with the person who is committing the crime so we see how it's done and watch them try to cover their tracks. Then Columbo comes in and solves it all, proving it wasn't as perfect a crime as the bad guys thought it was.

I'll admit, I'm used to the common police procedural format, so this structure took a little getting used to. There are some episodes where Columbo doesn't show up for half and hour or more (most episodes run somewhere in the region of 90 minutes) which surprised me. After all, for a series called Columbo, you'd expect the title character to have the majority of the screen time, and that wasn't always the case.

The series spans thirty-five years from Columbo's first appearance to his last. Considering the longevity of the series, it's almost surprising that Peter Falk continued to play the character throughout the series (sadly the same cannot be said for the dog who was often seen as Columbo's companion).

What with it running for such a long time, it's really strange to see how Columbo goes from being so young in the early episodes, to so old in the later ones. It's especially strange when you consider that he continues wearing the same outfit for the duration.

Before we watched this, I had this idea in my mind of Columbo being this bumbling daft detective who kind of solves crimes by just kind of accidentally stumbling onto the solution. Obviously I was wrong.

Something you realise as you watch it, is that Columbo is pretty much playing an act the whole time he's investigating a case. He is a bit of a bumbling detective, but it's a show that enables him to get the suspects to lower their guard around him, so they give themselves away and allow him to expose them as the murder.

He picks up on teeny tiny clues that other people overlook and then keeps on pushing the person he suspects. Usually this leads to the suspect telling Columbo what they think happened, which means Columbo can tell they know more about the crime than they should. If you're a suspect in a crime and Columbo starts asking you how you think it was done, tell him you haven't got a clue and that's his job because seriously, if you talk, you'll just give yourself away.

Another easy way to figure out if someone's a murderer in an episode of Columbo is to check if they've been in it before. There are a few people who seem to crop up every five or six episodes and they're usually the ones who did it.

Ditto if you're a big name. William Shatner was in it twice and, most surprisingly to me so was Billy Connolly!

It was such a bizarre combo that I think it was easily my favourite episode. Billy Connolly always sounds like a favourite uncle to my ear, so having him be in an episode of Columbo and being not such a nice guy was a tough one for me to get my head around. It was such a strange mix for me, I couldn't help but like it.

The box set we have also includes a couple of episodes of the ill-fated Mrs Columbo. A series that ran for less than twenty episodes and went through about three different titles in that time. We watched the first one (thankfully only 45 minutes long) and then decided we couldn't put ourselves through that again and didn't bother with the second 'Mrs Columbo Bonus Episode'.

On the whole I did really enjoy this series, and I'm going to miss watching it in the coming weeks. We managed to time it pretty well because we knew we needed to finish the series by the beginning of November (when we start watching our Not-Quite Christmas films), so we've got a couple of weeks to get through. I think we were considering watching the first series of Outnumbered which is quite the change from Columbo.

And I think I've learnt my lesson now. When Mr Click suggests we watch a programme, I'm going to hold my tongue. Generally he's right and programmes aren't as bad as I think they are. Except Thriller, you were definitely wrong about that one, my dear husband!

Weekly Rundown: Not Mine

This week I had an appointment in Glasgow on Thursday. I'm always dubious about traveling at this time of year because the chances of the ferries being disrupted rise incredibly around this time of year. But the forecast was good; the weather was lovely.

Of course there's some slight disruption at the moment owing to the fact that the ferries are going to Gourock instead of Wemyss Bay while they do some work on the pier. It means that our trip to the mainland now takes an hour, rather than the usual 35 minutes. The plus side is that whereas there is only one train an hour from Wemyss Bay to Glasgow, there's three an hour from Gourock, so we can make back the extra travelling time on the train journey.

It was all going to be fine.

Until we saw the CalMac site on Wednesday. There was going to be disruption to the ferries on Thursday.

This caused a slight bit of panic and confusion. Especially when we saw that the Clyde was going to be closed to all traffic for a period on Thursday.

And why all these drastic measures?

They'd found an unexploded mine in the Clyde. It's somewhere in the region of seventy years old and given it's age they suspected that it may have been rather temperamental. So naturally precautions needed to be taken, including evacuating half of Gourock.

Luckily the first boats ran without any trouble. It was a good excuse to spend a little bit longer in Glasgow. I took advantage of not being able to get home to do a little more Christmas shopping. Obviously I can't say what I got here because it was for Mr Click and he reads this blog; you'll have to check back here towards the end of December to see what it was.

It was wonderfully wandering around Glasgow, not in a rush to get back, taking my time to look around shops that I wouldn't normally get to go into. We even visited Vodafone to get Mr Click a new SIM card since his phone hasn't been too good at talking to mine recently. We had Chinese for lunch and then casually made our way home afterwards.

There was a bit of a panic along the way. I checked the CalMac site on the way back, only to read that the train station was closed to all traffic. Luckily they changed their minds about that before we got in. But we still had a bit of a wait before the ferries were given the all clear to go.

It made for a pretty long day. You forget how much you rely on the ferries until something changes and it throws you out completely. On the whole, the extra time on the ferry isn't too bad, or at least, it wasn't the way when I had access to the free wifi so happily sat there checking the NaNo forums. On the way back it felt like ages because I was so tired and the wifi wasn't working for me.

As I had such a long day on Thursday, I'd planned to take it easy at the weekend with nothing more taxing than getting a haircut. Well, as so frequently happens, all did not go to plan.

It should be noted that I'm a pretty accident-prone person. I did, after all, manage to drive four and a half inches of wood into my thigh whilst teaching a class of Primary Fours maths; quite possibly the pinnacle of all accident-proneness. I can't deny that I often leave a wake of destruction in my path, not until a human version of a deep sea mine.

Well, as we were leaving the house for my haircut yesterday, I sat down on my beanbag to put my shoes on. Felt something tug behind me followed by a popping noise and a second later the front window's curtain and curtain rail landed on me. I'd inadvertently trapped the curtain behind the beanbag, which couldn't stand the pull so popped out of it's holder, the weight of which pulled the rest of it down.

My chair does not normally look like this.

Suffice to say, when I returned from my haircut, I quickly figured out how to get the whole shebang back together. It's as good as new, slightly less dusty even. My beanbag-slash-footrest is now banned from being left right in front of the window and all is right in the Click household again.


Until next time.

Film Review: The Return of the King, Part 5

Saturday means time for another instalment in our current film, The Return of the King. We're only a little way past the halfway point as well. I know I keep saying it, but this is a REALLY long film! I've decided to drag this film out to seven parts so we've got another two parts after this one, then it'll be time for the Hobbit films.

Last week Pippin sang a sad song for Denethor, Faramir took several arrows, Eowyn and Merry decided to go to war and things were generally miserable for everyone involved.

183. I'm no good at describing battles. There's lots of bad stuff happening. Things are being flung from both sides. Nazgul are flying overhead and grabbing soldiers while Pippin freaks out at the sound of the monsters.

184. One thing that's going against Gondor is that they've just got Men. Mordor has Orcs, Trolls and evil flying beasts. It's not really a fair fight!

185. Pippin's just sort of stumbled into Gandalf. Gandalf has to keep whacking Orcs to let Pippin get out of there safely. Gandalf is seriously badass.

186. Though it's lucky Pippin was there because the one Orc Gandalf didn't take out quick enough would've had his head if Pippin hadn't stabbed it.

187. All the same, Gandalf orders Pippin back to the Citadel, which is just as well because he's going to be needed there shortly.

188. Back at the gate to Minas Tirith, the Orcs are cracking out the heavy machinery. It's a giant battering ram shaped like a wolf which they're calling Grond.

189. But we have to wait to see what happens next because that's the end of this disc.

190. There's Peter Jackson on his boat again.

191. I love that there's just three of them standing up to a fleet of boats.

192. Oh, Orlando, shooting the director is not good for your career.

193. "This army!" Yeah, no one's going to mess with an army of the dead.

194. And back to Frodo. He really shouldn't have sent Sam away.

195. Gollum's all 'go on, go in, there's nothing bad in this dark, smelly, sticky tunnel, it's cool'.

196. This tunnel isn't really how I imagine it when I read the book, but I think it's probably closer to what a giant spider tunnel would look like.

197. If I was Frodo I'd be running in the opposite direction right now.

198. Aww, Frodo's all lost and alone now.

199. And he's just spotted all the dead things hanging from the ceiling. Probably not the sort of place you want to hang around in.

200. Meanwhile, Sam's taking a tumble down the staircase. It's a Shortcut to Lembas!

201. I get that he's angry, but why crush the food? You can eat that!

202. Where Frodo gets all tangled up in the spider web, that's what I look like when I walk through a cobweb.

203. After blundering around in the dark for ages, Frodo's just remembered Galadriel gave him a torch.

204. Now excuse me while I don't actually look at the screen for the next five minutes or so because there's a frigging GIANT SPIDER on the screen!

205. It's actually easier to watch this in the cinema than at home because you just look at a teeny tiny corner of the screen and ignore everything else going on. On a regular TV you can't help but see the whole screen at once.

206. Ugh! Frodo, she's behind you!

207. How is Gollum able to get through the tunnel without getting covered in cobwebs, but Frodo is covered?

208. Gollum's quick to put all the blame on the Ring for him trying to kill Frodo. That's like a child blaming a broken vase on their imaginary friend.

209. Oh, I forgot Frodo threw Gollum off the cliff there. I guess people who hadn't read the books would've been really surprised when he comes back at the end.

210. That's cool. Frodo falls over in Mordor and lands in Lothlórien.

211. What Galadriel is basically saying here is 'Frodo! Frodo! He's our man! If he can't do it, no one can!'

212. Horses on the screen, that means we're back to the Riders of Rohan.

213. Éowyn's pretty much prepared to go to her death. Poor Éowyn.

214. And now it's night time and Minas Tirith is still under attack.

215. Don't think those gates will hold much longer.

216. Denethor's completely flipped out now and is getting ready to bury Faramir.

217. But look, there's a flower on the White Tree! That means there's still some hope, right?

218. While Denethor's getting ready to end it all, Gandalf's taken over his job and is commanding the soldiers of Gondor.

219. I love that Gandalf tells the soldiers that 'whatever comes through that gate, you will stand your ground', then the gate opens and it looks like he's just had a wet trouser moment. I love Gandalf.

220. Ugh. Shelob's back again. *shudder*

221. Not watching the screen again.

222. Still not watching.

223. Still not watching.

224. And she got him.

225. At least after this next bit I don't have to worry about spiders again until the second Hobbit film.

226. Yay! It's Sam to the rescue. I love that he gets the heroic music as well.

227. Sorry, trying not to watch the screen again and there's not much I can say about growling spider and grunting hobbit noises.

228. I need to get me one of those lights to scare away spiders! That'd be really handy, especially this time of year when they keep appearing in my bathroom!

229. 'Don't leave me here alone. Don't go where I can't follow.' Heart broken.

230. Watch out, Sam. There's orcs about!

231. When the orc says 'What's this?' I can't help but imagine Arwen finishing up with 'a Ranger, caught off his guard?' Wrong film.

232. Back to Gondor where Pippin has realised what Denethor has planned for Faramir.

233. Denethor's well and truly lost it. And the Gondorian soldiers are so loyal to their Steward that they're not even arguing with him. You'd think they'd at least question the sanity of burning people alive.

234. Looks like the sun's just coming up now. That just means that the orcs can kill people in the city in daylight rather than the dark.

235. Now it's Gandalf to the rescue. If he can get past the Witch King of Angmar first.

236. Wow! His sword turns to fire. That's handy.

237. Gandalf really gets through staffs, doesn't he?

238. The Riders of Rohan really could not have timed that better.

239. I think Merry and Éowyn might be having second thoughts about their wisdom in joining the battle.

240. Théoden's gotten really into this now, hasn't he?

241. Random fact: lots of those riders are actually women dressed up as men. Well, in the aerial shot lots of them are neither, they're computer generated.

242. I love how the orcs suddenly realise that their arrows aren't stopping the charge. There's actual panic on their faces.

243. Denethor's giving himself and Faramir an oil shower. Sensible thing to do with all those lighted torches hanging around.

244. Aww, Pippin is so NOT a Fool of a Took in this scene. He's awesome.

245. And now Denethor realises that Faramir's not dead.

246. How does Denethor manage to get that far whilst on fire?

247. I'm no good at talking about battle scenes. The Rohirrim are fighting orcs and stuff. It's about what you'd expect.

248. Okay, I really like the Oliphaunts. I feel sorry for them because I don't think they're bad animals, they're just being used by bad people. It makes me sad to see them being hurt, even if they are computer generated.

249. I do feel sorry for the computer generated horses and people they're standing on too.

250. Oliphaunt dominoes. It's kind of like that scene in Dumbo.

251. Éowyn is pretty awesome here, she's pretty much single-handed takes out an Oliphaunt.

252. And then it nearly single-headedly takes her out too.

We'll leave things there for now.


Next week both Theoden and the Witch King meet their matches, Sam has to find Frodo and the remainder of the Fellowship prepare for their final battle.