(no subject)

What the heck does Peter Jackson think he is playing at?: "Jackson knows his Tolkien mythos well enough to put an entire section of the appendix (about dwarf women) into Gimili's mouth -- but only as part of a build up to him taking a pratfall from a horse."

Søren Kierkegaard (note to self: learn how to represent the Danish letter 'thorn')thanks, Adam! is giving me a headache. "The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself" indeed. The upshot of The Sickness Unto Death appears to be that everyone is in despair (where 'despair' is defined as 'a lack of knowledge of self'), and only through God can we be freed from despair. Interesting diagnoses of despair of the finite (too much focus on material things, ergo no focus on the self) and the infinite (too much focus on Humanity as a whole, ergo no focus on the self), but I'm less impressed by despair of the possible (everything is possible, thus nothing is actualized, thus no focus on the self) and the necessary (a mechanistic worldview, ergo nothing has any effect on anything, ergo no focus on the self because what's the point?). The 'consciousness' aspects of despair look to me more interesting, though.

Yeah, I broke down and got a paid LJ account, to distinguish myself from the upwards of eight hundred free users bugging jproulx last time the free servers went down. Go me.