Unqualified Offerings

At the time of the 2001 awards, this site had a few dozen readers and the Maryland Terrapins were getting blown out of the Orange Bowl. Things have changed for the better! This year’s format is as follows: New categories will be marked with an asterisk. Repeat categories will have last year’s winner in parentheses. [...]

About my item on Tolkien as British mythology, and why the Ring saga is so land-locked, Patrick Nielsen Hayden quickly wrote:

What do you mean, “where are all the boats”? In Tolkien’s mythology, sailing is how you get to Heaven, more or less. Sounds reasonably English to me.
Mariners are a Big Deal in Arda, [...]

Eric Mauro e-mails about Know-Nothings, neo-confederates and other disagreeable people:

I’ve been wondering about that as well, after the Lott affair. Lincoln would have got nowhere being a total abolitionist, but then again there were abolitionists at the time. This is a big problem with revisionism. If you believe in the essence of electoral politics, that [...]

Say this for the Bush Administration – it has sent a message to potentially hostile regimes that is admirable for its clarity if nothing else: Get nukes as fast as you can, one way or another. If you miss your deadline, like Iraq, you can be toppled with something close to impunity. If you act [...]

Bruce Rolston talks about Tolkien’s desire to create a mythology for England. Okay, they talk of nothing else on the bonus DVD disks too. Here’s my question . . .
Where are all the boats? What self-respecting island nation’s mythology is centered in a thoroughly landlocked tale?
(Is this one Seablogger can explain?)

A few goings-on . . .
Duckboyz? – The webfooted lad announces that he too will be taking in strays, like Asymmetrical Information and On the Third Hand before him.
Spleenville – Big ol’ thread on Tolkien and the merits of fantasy. Reading the chief antagonist of the thread may be hazardous to those who have [...]

to retiring Washington Redskin Darrell Green. There was a period in the mid-nineties when Mrs. Offering and I managed to get to about one game a year at the stadium. The best thing about being at the game rather than watching it on TV was the chance to watch Darrell Green work an entire play. [...]

Judging from this item, Charles Dodgson may not understand the “Being a hawk means never having to say you’re sorry” principle.
Surely, on the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld does.

Jesse Walker informs me, and it’s apparently confirmed, that Michael “Kavalier and Clay” Chabon is writing the script for Spiderman II. I should be embarrassed to admit how thrilling I find this news. Chabon’s unused proposal for the first X-Men movie can be accessed from this page of his website.
Jesse is whiling away the intervening [...]

The Peanuts Arcana Tarot Deck. Pretty amusing. (Link via (woolgathering).)