my iPod's being stupid. Grr.

Well, I'm at the computer. Listening to music. And it's not my iPod, it's iTunes, because my iPod is being really stupid. It's not charging. And it's frozen on the screen "Connected. Eject before disconnecting." And it still says it's 4:45 p.m. It's currently 8:32. And the computer says it doesn't recognize the USB. This is rather annoying. Oh, well.
Oh, yeah, by the way, all you readers (all...what? three of you?), anyway, you CAN comment on the stories if you want to. PLEASE! Yeas, Nays, what-the-heck-is-this-person-talking-abouts, this-is-completely-stupids, anything. It is all appreciated. And this is by invite only, so nobody's going to see it except those who can read it. Which, so far, isn't a lot. But whatever. The fact that people are paying attention is kind of cool.
And for once, I have minimal homework.
Except for reading "To Kill A Mockingbird."
And reading "Lord of the Rings."
And reading "Cry the Beloved Country."
The first two are pretty decent. Especially "To Kill a Mockingbird," which was a surprise. Required books for English class often end up being really boring. But TKAM is written from the perspective of an eight year old, and it actually SOUNDS like an eight year old, not like some twenty-eight year old trying to sound twenty years younger.
But "Cry the Beloved Country" is just weird. Okay, weird isn't the right word. A better word, or series of words, technically, would be "written like the author was sick when they were learning about quotation marks in fourth grade."
Honestly, whenever someone's talking he puts dashes. And he only does THAT when it's at the paragraph.
For example (this is seriously how he does it):
-Blah blah blah the girl said.
-Blah blah blah her friend said.
The girl glared at her friend. I said it first she said.

Honestly, that's how he does it. It's rather irritating.
And confusing.
But I guess I could get used to it.
I guess.

But there are several things I found out about Lord of the Rings from reading the first half:

1. The movie messed up the entire beginning. True, the beginning was very slow, but still. They could have kept the scene with the elves. I mean, seriously, it's driving me nuts how much of the first half they left out.
2. The Council of Elrond doesn't happen until halfway through. Seriously, it's divided into "book one" and "book two." The first chapter in Book Two is Many Meetings, and the next chapter is The Council of Elrond. In the version we have, this is on page 240 ish. Out of about 400. Wow. Just wow. Even I don't do that slow a startup.
3. Frodo has the MOST EPICALLY AWESOME song/poem thing in the Bar Scene at Bree which ISN'T in the movie, because in the movie, he's just like, "SHUT UP, MERRY AND PIPPIN!!!!" But in the book he's like, "SHUT UP, MERRY AND PIPPIN!!! They're not shutting up...um....TIME FOR ME TO DO A SONG AND DANCE NUMBER!!!!!!!!!! EVERYONE LOOK THIS WAY SO PIPPIN AND MERRY DON'T BLAB FOR THAT SPY GUY DOWN THE STREET TO HEAR!!"
4. Aragorn is officially THE awesomest character EVER. Gandalf even says that he was THE BEST Ranger. As in, THE BEST. As in, he can kick your sorry butt if he wanted to. And he could do it with executive priveliges and everything. Okay, not exactly. And Gandalf defenitely didn't say the bit about executive priveliges, either. I don't think you find out about Aragorn being king until the Council of Elrond. And I haven't actually read the Council of Elrond scene yet....
5. Aparrently, Legolas is supposed to be a priss. I don't know that yet, as I haven't read Council of Elrond yet....
6. And it's NOT Arwen who saves Frodo and runs him off to Rivendell. What ACTUALLY happens is.......I'm not saying. BUT all I will say is that Glorifindel (and I'm not sure whether I spelled that right) loans Frodo his horse. And Glorifindel exists only in the books. So to find out EXACTLY what happens to Frodo in the chapter entitled "Flight to the Ford," you must go off, check out a copy of "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" from your local library, turn to the chapter entitled "Flight to the Ford" and read through the first few pages of the chapter entitled "Merry Meetings" in order to find out EXACTLY what happened. Because I'm NOT going to tell you.

Okay I have an awesome idea!
I go and READ "The Council of Elrond" and I find out EXACTLY what happens in the Council of Elrond, and find out whether EXACTLY Legolas is a priss or not, and find out EXACTLY whether they mention Aragorn's being royal in the Council of Elrond or not. And then I tell you. But I think that part of the reason that Legolas has won the "miss prissy" award is because whenever they were doing fight scenes in the movies, Orlando Bloom's wig was always perfect, and everyone else's hair (which was actual hair, except for maybe Gimli) was all gross, especially Aragorn's. Because Aragorn is awesome.
So that's my job.
OKAY!!!