The Mallet of Loving Correction

For those of you who don't know, there's a very Helm's Deep-like battle sequence in "Kingdom of Heaven," also starring Orlando Bloom.

Dear sound effects people: The Wilhelm Scream is the Rickroll of your industry. Time to retire it.

Helm's Deep explosion: One of the top five explosions in film history. Discuss.

The Legolas Arrow Eye Stab never gets old. The shield surfing, however.

Now at the scene where elf is stunned that someone as pretty as he can die.

The Two Towers may have the most neck wounds of any film ever made.

I wonder what ents do when they come across a book. I imagine there's a lot of screaming.

The ents are marching, first to Isengard and then to a Phish concert.

I strongly believe Theoden could benefit from mood levelers.

Gimli is taking to that horn like it's the world's biggest hookah.

The horses of the Rohirrim: "You want us to gallop down WHAT?"

At the "Ents go Orc bowling" scene.

Burning ent putting himself out in the flood: Still cool.

Sam doing his Saint Crispin's day speech. Undercut by his 70s roadie haircut.

Gandalf now foreshadowing. Movie nearing the end.

Mordor's going about it all wrong, incidentally. Harness all that geothermal energy, sell it to the humans, LIVE LIKE KINGS.

Movie done. I wasn't intending to livetweet it incidentally. It's just that I'm ALL ALONE. With a computer. And cable TV.

And yes, Encore is showing Return of the King next. So if you're sick of the tweets, probably best to unsub for the night.

The very first time you ever see Smeagol he's impaling a living creature, so it's not as if what happens to him afterward is surprising.

The One Ring is bad for your teeth. Pa.s.s it on.

Sitcom proposal: Frodo and Sam are roommates, Gollum is their cranky landlord. Gandalf as the wacky neighbor with a cat.

First time I've noticed the ents in the background, still throwing rocks at Saruman's tower.

Merry and Pippin doing product placement for Green Dragon ale. I remember Middle Earth before it went corporate, man.

Gollum is the 1%.

You'd think they could pa.s.sword protect a palantir.

Merry and Pippin having a spat. They're adorable.

It must be tiring to be an elf and always have to walk in slow motion.

They are reforging the sword of the king. Which will be given to Connor McLeod. IN MY CROSSOVER FANFIC #AragronConnorSlashFTW Let's be honest and admit that Gandalf's people skills leave much to be desired.

I knew Osgilliath was doomed when the Starbucks closed up. All 16 of them #OrcsHateCoffee Minas Morgul glows like an XBox.

And yes, that would make the Eye of Sauron the Red Ring of Death.

Also, I don't care if they're evil, I want a Nazgul.

Say what you will about the Orcs, you don't get be one of their leaders just by having a nice head of hair #MeritocracyIsUgly Of all the Hobbits, it's not entirely surprising that Pippin is the one that starts fires.

I wonder what horrible thing you have to have done to be a.s.signed to Beacon Patrol.

This may be a bit of futconning, but I think Eomer would be even more awesome if he spoke like Leonard McCoy.

Gandalf, walking around with that Nazgul repellent in his staff, only thinks to use it once. #NotATacticalGenius We are now at the scene that suggests that Thanksgiving at the Steward's House is never not awkward.

If I were Sam, I would not be sleeping that close to a cliff edge with Gollum around.

We're at the emo-est parade ever. "You're all doomed. Here's some flowers."

It's nice that in Middle Earth you can become Steward of Gondor without ever learning to chew with your mouth closed.

Does anyone other than me notice the similarity of the falling necklace to the falling necklace in The Exorcist?

Aragorn will not be wanting to swing that sword around in a thunderstorm.

We're at the "Eowyn discovers that proximity does not trump a hot elf" scene.

Also, for those who asked: I am totally sober right now. Believe it.

The whole city of ghosts part here is a little too "Haunted Mansion" for me.

Given the sooty barrenness of Mordor, the support logistics of the orc army are being seriously glossed over here.

Once again: Gandalf-not a people person. #WhatDenathor-NeededWasAHug That Orc general is bada.s.s. Good looking, too, in a John Merrick sort of way.

If Gandalf would only use his Magneto powers, this whole battle would be over in, like, a minute and a half.

Frodo should have turned back at "The walls are sticky!" We should ALL turn back when the walls are sticky.

It's out of character for Sam not to have collected up the Lembas bread before he ran back up the mountain in a rage.


You know what would kill Shelob, don't you. A good hard whack with "A Dance With Dragons." #ALargeBookIsComing Frodo, Gollum and the rest are easier to understand if you think of this movie as Peter Jackson's remake of "Requiem for a Dream."

Here comes my favorite, most Peter Jackson-esque line: BRING WOOD AND OIL It says something about me that I have no problem with a 10 foot spider but I get annoyed that it has a stinger.

Elijah Wood spends a lot of time in these films expelling foamy spittle to signify pain. #ThatsActing Theoden's speech to the troops is pretty d.a.m.n fatalistic. "Everyone! We're going to die! Whoooo!"

These Orcs act like they've never seem stampeding horses before! Weren't they at Helm's Deep? Oh...right.

Denethor falling from a great height ON FIRE is why Peter Jackson was destined to make these films.

Here come the Oliphants. In the super-extended version, the riders of Rohirrim counter the Oliphants with T-Rexes. It's a true fact.

Wow, things are going terribly for the defenders of Minas Tirith. If only some sort of Deus Ex Machina would show up to save their bacon!

Oh look! A Deus Ex Machina in the form of an unbeatable ghost army! That's convenient.

Seriously, that flail? It's like a chandelier on a chain.

Eowyn is No Man! And somewhere Odysseus is considering a copyright infringement suit.

We'll not speak of Legolas' Oliphant Adventure.

We're at the "Eowyn and Theoden recite Luke and Vader's lines from Jedi" scene.

Hope the people of Minas Tirith like Oliphant barbeque.

Aaaaand now we're at the point where one goes "wow, this movie is still going?" no matter how much one is enjoying it.

Sam is dedicating his murders to friends and quipping as he stabs people in the back. How far he's come.

Also, Sam as ringbearer is like the tribute band singer who replaces a front man in the real band. He knows it won't last.

Mount Doom: The name's a little on the nose. You'd think someone would have suggested rebranding to "Mount Pleasant" by now.

Every time the Orcs march I start hearing the Flying Monkey March from Wizard of Oz in my head.

I *did* warn people I would be tweeting a lot tonight. Don't worry. It's just until this movie ends, seven hours from now.

Next, I'll livetweet Berlin Alexanderplatz!

It never actually ends, you know. One eventually just leaves to go pee.

You have to give Gollum credit for persistence. His can-do spirit is what America needs in these hard times. #Gollum2012 We're at the "Frodo's paid the florist and the caterer and everyone's at the chapel but he still can't commit" scene.

And then Gollum comes along to steal the bride. #ItsAllInTheSubtext I'll say it: Gollum and Frodo's slap fight? Embarra.s.sing for them both.

But of course there's Sam to swoop in for the rebound.

We're at the "Sauron's Tower clearly not built to code" scene.

Sam and Frodo have a bubble of conveniently non-superheated air around them. Which is a lucky thing!

We're at the "Sam's deathbed conversion to heteros.e.xuality" scene.

Aragorn is crowned king; spends the rest of his life settling taxation and usage rights issues. #KingBetterAsAConcept Elrond clearly still believes Arwen is marrying down #Elf-ElitismIsSickening At the "We've told Bilbo he's going with the elves, and at his age that's what the nurse's aides at the home will look like" scene.

Frodo smiles as he leaves because he knows he's stuck Sam with an open tab at the Green Dragon #ItWasAThingBetweenThem Aaaaaaand now I'm done tweeting the movies. Tell the people who unfollowed they can come back now.

Luck Nov

3.

2011.

I'm a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and sometimes it annoys me when people don't acknowledge that fact.

In most cases they mean well, because most discussions of luck around me come up in the context of my fiction career, when I note that I got lucky when Old Man's War, my first published novel, was not only plucked from online obscurity by Tor Books but then became one of the big science fiction books of its year. This precipitates comments suggesting it wasn't about luck at all, and that I shouldn't underestimate my own efforts/skills/timing or whatever. My response, aside from thanking these folks for their upvote, is point out that of all the writers currently practicing the craft, in the science fiction genre or out of it, I really am the last one who needs to be rea.s.sured of his skills and talent. I'm good at what I do, both in writing and in marketing myself. Trust me when I say I'm not running down my skills or abilities. Indeed it's because I am not notably neurotic about those things that I can say, with a full, clear and reasonably objective point of view, that aside from anything else in my life, I have been lucky. Extraordinarily so. It does nothing to minimize what I have done purposefully in my life to acknowledge that fact and to be grateful for it.

What is luck? At the end of the day, it's the good things that happen to you that you simply don't or can't control. Stepping away from a curb the second before a car you didn't see barrels right over where you just were. Finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk. Stepping into a restaurant for a bite to eat and seeing an old friend you lost contact with years ago just before she steps out the door. These are all some obvious examples of luck. It works the other way too; you can step toward a curb just as a car you didn't see plows into it and into you; then you are unlucky.

In either case the event is not something you consciously or purposefully controlled. You can argue left and right about how much "luck" has to do with any particular event: In the case of me getting lucky with Old Man's War, I still wrote the book, and I still had, for the time, a robust presence online which meant it had a better chance to be seen than perhaps another similar novel presented online would have. Both of these had a significant impact on my luck. Be that as it may, ultimately I had no control over Patrick Nielsen Hayden going to my site, reading the entire novel on his own time, and deciding to make an offer on the book outside of the usual submission channels. Had he not decided to do just one of those things (and particularly the last one), it's pretty obvious that my life would be a different one than I have now.

However, this is not even the best example of what an incredibly lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d I am. The best example is me meeting my wife. Many of you know that I met my wife in 1993 when I was doing a feature story for the newspaper I was working for at the time. The story was on a local DJ; I followed her around all day, including to a gig at bar, at which Krissy and her friends chose to show up, and at which she saw me dancing with someone else and decided to approach me later that evening. We then danced several times that night and then made arrangements to see each other again, and everything went from there. It's a nice story.

Here are some things to consider: 1. I was originally supposed to follow the DJ in question on an entirely different day, when she was supposed to do an evening gig at an entirely different bar in an entirely different city. If the story had gone as originally scheduled, I would not have met Krissy.

2. The bar we did meet in was in a city that neither Krissy nor I lived in; she and her friends went to that bar specifically because they liked the DJ. I don't think I had actually ever been in that city before that night. If it hadn't been for the specific DJ, doing that specific gig on that specific night, I wouldn't have been there, and I wouldn't have met Krissy.

3. Even if Krissy had decided to go to a bar in my town one night, I don't drink, and as a result, outside of science fiction conventions (which I did not go to at the time, nor did Krissy), I never go to bars. If I had not been doing this particular story, which occasioned me being in a bar for work, I wouldn't have met Krissy.

4. If I had decided that being on job meant I couldn't do any dancing, Krissy wouldn't have seen me on the dance floor and become interested in meeting me. And then I wouldn't have met her. Note, incidentally, that asking random women to dance is not what I usually did at the time; in fact, I'm pretty sure that night was the only time I'd ever done it.

5. Krissy tells me that she saw me because she was getting a drink at the bar and I happened to be dancing at that time. If I had decided to skip that particular song-or if the random woman I had asked to dance had decided not to dance with me-Krissy wouldn't have seen me, and given how crowded the bar was that night and the fact she was with friends and probably would have spent most of her time with them had she not seen me on the dance floor, it's entirely possible we would not have met.

6. If Krissy had made the a.s.sumption that the person I was dancing with was my girlfriend, she might not have approached me. And then we might not have met.

7. And so on.

If you add all this up, the odds of me having met my wife, given who I was, where I lived and what I usually did with my time, are so infinitesimally small as to be almost completely non-existent. Pretty much the only chance I would have ever had to meet her was that one time, that one night. You know, there's a word for meeting one's lifelong love on the single night in either of your lives that you would have ever had the chance to meet. It's called "luck."

When I want to drive myself hair-pullingly crazy, I think about all the ways it would have been so easy not to have met my wife. And then I call up my wife and tell her just how happy I am that she's in my life, and that I love her and that when she comes home I'm totally gonna rub her feet.

So when I tell you that in my life I have been blessed with an extraordinary amount of luck-more luck than one person should probably have, in fact-don't rush to a.s.sure me that luck has nothing to do with where I am in life today. I do appreciate the thought, to be sure. And I know you mean well. But I know the truth. I'm a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I'm thankful for it.

McKean's Inversion Aug