How Can I Make That Choice?

Weekend Assignment #20: Tell us about your favorite entry of your own from the last 366 days (it's a leap year). Tell us why it still resonates for you. And "favorite" can mean anything you want it to mean: Most amusing, most heartbreaking, most affirmative of yourself, whatever. One good way to think of it is if you could show someone only one entry from your Journal, which one would it be?

Extra Credit: Show us your favorite picture from your Journal in the last year.

Hey, John!  I thought you promised this week's assignment would be easy!

Should I choose an entry that got the best response, or one that got mentioned elsewhere on AOL? Should I use one of the more controversial ones, or one about my dog?  Religious entry?  Political?  Socially responsible?  Nostalgic? Deeply personal? Funny?  Fictional? Aw, heck.  I've just looked at a bunch of them, and I like some of them a lot: the one about my Mom, the excerpt from King Jor's memoirs, travel stuff, monsoon stuff, even one about Manlius, NY. And favorite picture?  How do I choose between dog pictures, weather pictures, and professional art by Sherlock?  I could happily put a link to everything in this paragraph, but I supposed that would be cheating (and immodest).

Grumble, grumble.

Okay.  The one entry I had the most fun with was compiled from comments I wrote to another blog back in June. It consists of a bunch of Tolkien Pastiches. These are bits of The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings in the style of other writers.  Frodo and friends are rendered as poetry and song and sf classic, and as bits of kids' books.  See how many you can identify before reading the entry's comments. Here's an easy one:

 
 Once upon a time, a rather long time ago now, about last Saturday, Bilbo Baggins lived with his nephew in a hobbit-hole, under the name Bag End.

("What does 'under the name' mean?" asked Merry.

"It means that the hillside was called Bag End, and he lived under it," said Gandalf.)

"Pippin wasn't quite sure," said Merry.

"Now I am," squeaked a voice.

"Then I shall go on," said Gandalf.


Favorite picture? I kind of like the dog pictures (except for the eye reflection problem), the monsoon pictures, and the Sherlock art of Rani (above). But my favorite is one that no one noticed except Sara. It's of a handmade mug I bought in college, Photoshopped so that a Sherlock picture of Fabi/Fayubi is reflected in the beer (which was really diet soda). It's all to do with this drunken innkeeper who has visions of his other, happier life in another world. Having done this cool thing with Photoshop to no acclaim whatsoever, I'd just like to point it out again.

Karen