My summer read: Lord of the Ring. Right now into the middle of The Two Towers. I'd say it's the darker of the three, but you get to read about Eomer, the hot guy on a horse, so it is alright. It's a great book. It is essentially one book, not so much a trilogy as many had made it out to be. I find it extremely gripping, especially the description of the Elves, it's very nice.

Every time I read books, there are certain phrases that catch my eye. For 1984 it was "something, amusement" ... I don't remember what the previous word is, but I'll look it up. This time it's "wise fool", when Gandalf was talking about Saruman. Wise fool. So many people are just fools.

Which leads to one of my ultimate pet peeves: stupid people who try to be bad. For example, my brother. You want to skip class? Sure, just as long as no one finds out. Like it's hard to do? Come on, I skipped tons of times, and I have yet to suffer the consequences. Every single time, the school calls and says, "Steven was not in class today, blah blah blah." He'd come home and we'd question him, and his answer is invariably, "I was late, the teacher did not take my attendance, blah blah blah." Give me a break, fine if you want to be bad, as long as you put some thought into it. It's like the big scandal with President Chen's in-laws' accepting briberies, if you want money, fine, be smart about it. Don't be stupid about it and let people find out, just because you know that no prosecutor will be able prosecute you, at least not in Taiwan's current circumstances. (The way I see it, there is no such thing as true justice in Taiwan, prosecutors will probably cite insufficient evidence and let him off easy, even if all people of Taiwan are absolutely certain that he has taken the money).

It is so sad, that it has come to this. Somehow it corresponds with the storyline of Lord of the Ring. But not really, because Mordor is not some faroff land, it's within all of us.

I remember expressing similar sentiments regarding V for Vendetta. Something along the lines of, sure it seems scary, the society that is portrayed in the movie, but if you think about it, we are already living in it. Isn't that funny?

*Two minutes later: it was "tolerant amusement", when Julia was eyeing a clock, with numbers 1 to 12 on it. Apparently in 1984, time is told by the 24-hour system, ie. 1900 hour.