theo-cat's new harness

Theo-cat has been making occasional breaks in the direction of the back door, and yesterday he managed to actually get onto the porch outside, so I decided it was time to quit putting off buying him a harness. (I've tried three different kinds of collars, to no avail - he either gets them right off or gets them caught on his lower jaw) Went to the pet store today and bought him a pretty red harness, came home and put it on. Getting him into said harness was enough of an endeavour, but now he's running all over the house trying to attack his pet ID tag, rolling on his back trying to get the harness strap in his mouth, etc.

It's not pretty. He is a very undignified kitty at the moment. I'm hoping he'll calm down by tonight, or at least by tomorrow.

the horrors of lit. crit.

I have just been subjected to the worst piece of what might generously be called literary analysis that ever saw the sunlight of the printed page.

The title, "No Sex Please - We're Hobbits" seemed like it might be a promising ray of sunshine in what has so far turned out to be the most dismal damned collection of essays ever written on The Lord of the Rings. The collection (J. R. R. Tolkien: This Far Land, edited by Robert Giddings), was working so hard to disgust and horrify me that I was starting to despair of ever finding anything worthwhile in it, so I skipped to the back, to the one promising title in the table of contents. However, this article, written by a Brenda Partridge who was, at the time, a professor of English at some technical college in Bath, is horrifically BAD. As in, I've read better literary criticism in people's livejournals. Much better.

Her arguments, broken up neatly into sections, and omitting the first argument that Tolkien was a misogynist, which just kind of makes me go "well, dear, he was an Oxford don in the early part of this century. No, he didn't think too highly of women's intellects. Get the fuck over it."

( OMG Tolkien was so GAY! )

( Frodo and Sam are so GAY!!! )

( In which Sam and Shelob have metaphorical sex, and Crazy Lady casts Sam as the evil male oppressor. Or something. )

I'd say something about her interpretations of Eowyn, Goldberry, and Galadriel, but, honestly, they're so typical that I can't be bothered. Yeah, we get it, they're made into goddesses. No one with a brain could miss it. Yup, we understand that Eowyn's desires to go be a warrior are eventually explained by her unrequited passion for Aragorn, then sublimated into her marriage to Faramir. Fascinating. *Yawns* At leat the rest, though poorly-written and insane, was kind of amusing.