I'm pretty sure Tolkien's been dead for well over eight years.
Pretending to misunderstand metonymy is the lowest form of humor.
Bloody Fingers never fails to disappoint.
If you're going to do Tolkien, The Hobbit is probably most appropriate. Some Norse troll stories might be fun too.
I assume that there won't really be any stories told around the campfire, because it will be harder to see the constellations that are the only conceivable subjects of same there.
Tell the one about the cat who loved maiming baby bunnies, until it maimed one too many in the yard of a neighbor whose cat had itself been poisoned when he was a boy, and how this neighbor, who had bringing the injured baby bunnies to the park to die, then...
Never mind. It's just too scary a story for kids.
Wait, not everyone hikes while wearing headphones and listening to educational podcasts?
I assume the spelling "Tolkein" is intentional, somehow, because neb would not be one to make typos.
I think that to really perfect the image that 7 conjures up "educational" needs to be replaced by something starchier. "Upbuilding" isn't really right (partly because it won't have the same resonance for everyone), but something along those lines—sadly I'm afflicted by the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon here.
Something something campfire something down something flames.
9: my first draft had "improving."
I think some variation of The Monkee's Paw scared the bejeesus out of me around that age.
Neb's got a point that committing stories town pry for the purpose of retelling them is fairly cumbersome and labor-intensive. Under similar circumstances (which haven't come up much -- I didn't really tell stories to my own kids like this. I'm thinking of watching other people's kids mostly) I think I relied on stories I mostly knew already: Grimm's and that sir of thing, or faking my way through one of the Just-so stories.
"Giiive meee my goooolden arrrrm!"
Most of my camping stories involve people doing really dumb things with fire, mind-altering substances, and/or decorated vehicles. But lately I've been on the pick-up-the-pieces side of that, for better or worse.
My favorite was camping in Delaware, at an event called PDF. We had set up our traditional outdoor bar/lounge and were having our Red Night (wear something red, and the more elaborate the better) and a random naked guy walked in and pooped in the middle of what was supposed to be our dance floor, and then rather calmly walked away. One of my campmates did manage to offer him some toilet paper, which he ignored.
He came back and apologized I think two years later, which I found surprisingly respectful, given. But of course, he'd already been memorialized as "Shitting Man", and the person who did our signage had already made a lovely wooden "No Shitting" sign that is still displayed.
I suspect this is either grossly inappropriate or exactly right for an eight year-old. And something I miss about living on the East Coast.
JM should totally tell the kids the story in 18.
re: 8
I have been doing some work on the digitisation project for his archive [which is held by the place I work]. I have been corrected in the spelling of his name by the archivist in charge of his stuff an embarrassing number of times.
Just bring an ipad with Blair Witch Project loaded and show that in the tent before bed.
And something I miss about living on the East Coast.
I'm both squicked out and amused that I just cannot figure out what you miss. Someone shitting in the middle of your campfire party? Campfire parties? Inappropriate stories for 8 year olds?
Grimm brothers unexpurgated version. The suggestion in 17 is always good.
Since the kid hasn't yet been introduced to Tolkien, reciting The Silmarillion in elvish sounds about right.
When I was about that age, I found the Greek myths, some of the Celtic stuff [Finn MacCool, Cu Chulain, etc], and things of that type fascinating. I think I was reading them in some sort of slightly bowdlerised/abridged version.
||
ZARDOZ IS HERE
All are well.
Pic in the Flickr pool.
|>
Let me be the first to suggest congratulations.
Babylations. Conbabylations. Grab baby lotion!
25: Maybe just read aloud from the Lloyd Alexander books?
To the OP: Stories involving farting or belching are usually big hits.
Congratulations to all concerned! I wouldn't want to mess with that baby.
26: Babies, hooray!
To the OP: Just relate the basic plot of "Carnival of Souls" with a few embellishments.
Congratulations, Blume! Congratulations, Sifu!
Hello Zardoz!
Facebook suggested I get you a gift certificate to the Olive Garden to celebrate.
Hooray! Cobgratulations! Zardoz!
Fantastic news! Welcome, baby Zardoz! Healthy wishes, Blume and Sifu.
"Walking in and pooping in the middle of what was supposed to be our dance floor" should obviously be the canonical metaphor for threadjacking.
38: It's a whole new baby. You can't just go to TGIF and call it day. You've got to go all out.
Zardoz! Congratulations Blume and Sifu!
Also: Wait, not everyone hikes while wearing headphones and listening to educational podcasts?
[Raises hand]
I love nothing more than doing some relatively mindless task while listening to nonfiction audiobooks. Right now I'm listening to Justinian's Flea while building simple optical setups.
Yay!
To JM, maybe pick up one of the [Color] Fairy Books and mine it for ideas? Lots of disturbing inexplicable stuff there, like it being a bad idea to walk around a castle widdershins.
Congrats on the baby! To the OP, Arthurian legend might be good. There's an app called Star Walk that might serve as inspiration (and cheat sheet) for stories about the night sky.
7: My parents did the analog version of this. Walking about 20 feet ahead blocked much of the noise.
18 reminds me vaguely of this: drunken people sitting around a campfire, and one especially drunk, charismatic type gets on wondering what it would be like to fuck a melon. A cantaloupe is produced and a hole is cut. The melon gets passed around and lots of the people around the campfire discover what it is like to fuck a melon, or at least stick your dick in a melon near a campfire.
Later that night, they hear some rustling. Upon checking it out, they find one loner-type back behind a nearby tree, going at it with the poor cantaloupe. His story goes that he was just too embarrassed to try it around the campfire with the rest. But it looks all too much like he wants privacy to make love to his sweet, sweet melon.
Maybe not for an 8 year old, though.
Baby Zardoz! Hooray!
Thanks for all the suggestions, people.
46 fees like it should be a built-up to a really horrible pun. I was disappointed that it was just about some guy who wanted to fuck a melon.
Congratulations to Zardoz and parents!
The part of 46 I'm curious about is how the thought of an innocent melon was enough stimulus to get "lots of the people around the campfire" erect enough to have a go at it.
The melon was probably just a beard for homoeroticism, except for the one guy who was apparently into melons qua melons.
51: Awfully judgmental of a Monday morning, urple. Maybe you need to check your privilege.
49- And then he asked the melon, "Honey do you love me? But you know we can't elope."
51: Well, that's why I said "or at least just stick their dick in it." Or rustle around with a melon in front of your junk. I'm not really clear on the details, myself.
Hooray for Zardoz! She is adorable, though less huge, floating, and stony than her film career would lead you to expect.
OT: The mean age of the New Jersey Senate delegation just dropped by about 20 years.
59: Oh Christ. More time for Chris Christie to caper prance gambol skip lumber about the national stage.
60: Evolutionary psychology shows us that melons are going to be highly selective in choosing sex partners.
61: Exactly. I would tell you what my elderly mother calls that awful man, but it's not very nice.
Right on baby. It's beyond me to come up with a decent "the gun is good, the penis is evil" joke. Congrats.
My summer camp had a story about motorboat pirates who abducted a kid and held him for ransom, except it was true.
61, 63: I am smugly certain, in relation to Christie as I was in relation to Giuliani, that the cultivated hatred of urban-East Coast cultural markers among the Republican base means that he'll never go anywhere beyond NJ politics. Let him get all the bariatric surgery he wants, he's going nowhere in a presidential primary.
Zardoz! I've lost track -- was that the final eruption of the babysplosion, or is there anyone left on deck?
You know what album title I have always found embarrassingly horrible? "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness." The only good thing about it is when you google it to see if you're spelling Mellon Collie right, you get cute pictures of watermelons crossed with dogs. (For those who want to spice up their cantaloupe-fucking with bestiality, I guess.)
And here I pause to formally apologize to Sifu and Blume for the fact that this is the same thread as "Welcome, Zardoz!"
66 -- That Iowa-NH-SC-FL opening sequence would kill him, certainly.
67: I believe all the kernels in the Unfogged pan have now popped.
Congratulations, Zardoz! Now go forth ... and kill!
Congratulations to Blume and Sifu.
Welcome, Zardoz! You are lucky to be born at a time when the bike lobby is an all-powerful lobby.
67: I thought we were the last but I could be wrong.
To the OP, I like to tell non-fiction stories. Burgoyne's 1777 campaign is a good one, what with the superpower thinking its army will be greeted as liberators, the Germans thinking they could just go get horses from Vermonters, the business with Jane McCrea (which shows how superpowers are at the mercy of unexpected events that can be blown up through clever propaganda). The silver cannonballs into Ticonderoga part might be a little advanced, but then it's a good introduction to resistance politics.
The Nez Perce odyssey -- start with Lewis & Clark, then skip to 1877 -- is also pretty good. Not all stories have happy endings.
59 makes me angry at Lau/tenberg all over again. (Not angry at him for dying; angry at him for putting himself in a position where his dying, which was always inevitable, fucks over the country so much.) This is one reason why it was absolutely unacceptable for someone that old to run for reelection instead of stepping down--apparently an 84-year-old, as he then was, has an average of only 6 years of life left.
re: stories.
When I don't have story books to hand, I've been telling the baby the plots of movies. We did 'Die Hard' as his bed time story the other day. It's not as if he understands a word I say anyway, so it's amusing for me.
17: "Giiive meee my goooolden arrrrm!"
I've had success with that trope in the "Give me back my big toe" variation. And at some point hit him with "Owah Tagu Siam" somewhere along the way.
But in our family what worked best were the various kind of puzzlers of the "Then the lighthouse keeper shot himself" vein. (Speaking of which, I recommend the out-of-print game "Crack the Case" as a good source for scenarios. I don't think it really worked as a game they way they set it up, but it had clever scenarios and progressive hints.)
THERE'S ONLY ONE THING YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO GIVE BACK
Speaking of "Golden Arm," these stories are pretty great. I think I've linked to them before.
Congrats, Sifu, Blume, and Zardoz.
|| Maybe you can tell the story about how the theory of climate change was irrefutably disproved by the freezing over of hell, that followed Justice Scalia being correct in Maryland v. King.
This is a big deal, I think. IANYL, but its now (retroactive to the beginning of your life) a really bad idea to leave your DNA at any crime scene. |>
81: I'd also had a couple conversations along that line, taking your position. One of those went less well than the other; it turns out that certain ways of spinning that scenario are radically less effective when you're talking to your semi-retired septuagenarian father. Who knew?
Maybe you can tell the story about how the theory of climate change was irrefutably disproved by the freezing over of hell, that followed Justice Scalia being correct in Maryland v. King.
Scalia's always been willing to write opinions like that when he's safely in the minority. If he'd been the deciding vote, he'd have pulled a 180 and voted with the majority.
I hadn't been familiar with the decision so ended up reading the linked dissent. Good lord, is Scalia's writing always that damn arch?
88: Heh. Good point. Note that this is another of the many problems that the random-lot method of representative selection would ameliorate!
2: Pretending to misunderstand metonymy is the lowest form of humor.
While a peevish response to a good-natured jape is the highest form of discourse.
Congratulations Blume, Sifu (and Zardoz)!
Titties Babies hooray! Zardozulations.
So who says I was being peevish? I was calmly assessing 1.
Baby! Hooray!
Here endeth the babysplosion.
Congratulations B/ST/Z!
I have vivid memories of giving birth sometime last night, so I hope you didn't get a dream-baby switched in by mistake. That kind will keep you asleep for 18-20 hours a day; if you find yourselves experiencing the opposite pattern, your baby is probably real.
Congratulations to Blume, Tweety and Zardoz! BTW can I access the flickr pool pretty please?
Email me, and I'll send you an invite. Email is below my pseud.
Also, my father told me the plot of "Alien" when I was about eight. If you leave out all the rape imagery, it makes a fascinating lesson about parasites.
Also, neb: until told otherwise I'm going to assume that your story of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich hinges on the "Owah Tagu Siam" chant in 83.