#john g. heller

[mariocki]

The Saint: Paper Chase (5.11, ITC, 1966)

"Have you the file?"

"We have outraged Mr. Redman's sense of fair play. How British you have become. The Marquess of Queensberry Rules, even in a fight to the death."

[filmjunky-99]

t h e k a r a t e k i d, 1984 🎬 dir. john g. avildsen

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Karate Kid (1984)

Before today, I had never seen The Karate Kid. I assumed the love directed towards it came from nostalgia and the film being released at the right time, in the right environment. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is a sweet, surprisingly deep crowd-pleaser with many memorable scenes to go with its iconic characters and great performances.

In 1984, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and his mother (Randee Heller) move from Newark to Los Angeles. After befriending Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue), Daniel is beaten by her jealous ex-boyfriend, a karate black belt named Johnny (Billy Zabka). Taking pity upon Daniel is Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita), who senses that Johnny and his gang’s bad behavior stems from their instruction at the Cobra Kai Karate club.

Like John G. Avildsen’s Rocky, The Karate Kid shows relatively little of its sport but makes you care for it more than you thought was possible by betting its chips on the characters. It’s impossible not to relate to Daniel. Bright and good-natured but filled with self-doubt thanks to his lower-class status and inability to stand up to the Cobra Kais, you desperately want things to work out for him. You want him to develop the karate skills necessary to defend himself. More importantly, you want Daniel to become confident enough for him and Ali to become an item. It helps that Ralph Macchio and Elisabeth Shue have terrific chemistry. Whenever something threatens to keep them apart - be it Ali’s snooty parents, Johnny, normal teenage drama or Daniel’s insecurities - your emotions swell.

If you weren’t already invested, you hate the Cobra Kais so much you keep watching, hoping they'll get their (hopefully violent) comeuppance. This is where Mr. Miyagi comes in. He could’ve easily been a stereotype or a one-dimensional supporting character; an excuse to get the plot going. Instead, he’s a fully realized person with a unique brand of humor and wisdom. It’s hard to choose if the film’s best scenes are the tender dates and heartfelt talks between Daniel and Ali, or the training sequences with Daniel and Miyagi. The latter contain big laughs, a touching father-son-like relationship and unexpected depth.

Behind Daniel and Johnny, we have two very different teachers. The second we walk into the Cobra Kai club, we see photos of John Kreese (Martin Kove) proudly showing off his military career and belting out his mantra that mercy is for the weak, that the point of karate is to brutally crush your opponent. He cares nothing for his students and has only contempt for kind Mr. Miyagi. By contrast, the humble Okinawan immigrant does not flaunt his martial arts skills or military career. He comes to offer his services to Daniel because he wants to teach the boy self-defense. To Miyagi, karate is an extension of everyday life. He teaches the sport by putting Daniel in real-life places and situations that incorporate the moves his pupil needs to practice. Karate is a naturally occurring process, whereas Kreese hammers the idea of violence into his students. The brutality he forces into their lives manifests as aggression and they become twisted; violent. The methods of instruction couldn’t be more different.

The Karate Kid has a lot to offer. The soundtrack is terrific. The story takes you through a full gamut of emotions - everything from heartbreaks to laugh-out-loud laughs, the joys of first love, the tears of joy from a perfect birthday gift and the exhilaration of a competition whose final match might as well symbolize the triumph of good over evil. The performances are uniformly strong. The screenplay is thoughtful. The characters are unforgettable. It’s no wonder if popularized karate in North America. This is no mere “right time, right place” movie. It has lasting power and will delight audiences for generations. (September 10, 2021)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[buzzdixonwriter]

Outta Da Ballpark

The term “masterpiece” gets bandied about a lot.

It’s come to mean the crème de la crème, the ne plus ultra of any creative soul, but the reality is it’s the benchmark that determines if you’re good enough to be considered a master.

In short, not the best, but better than anything you’ve done before.

In contemporary parlance, however, it means something universally recognized and acknowledged as the best of the best.

We can argue about how we define “best” but when we look at writers (and we’ll focus solely on novelists this time out), we can judge their output by their batting average.

In other words, how many times did they swing, and how many times did they score?

Like baseball, it’s possible to:

Swing and miss

Swing and hit but not get on base

Swing and hit a single / double / triple

Swing and hit a home run. 

We’re going to focus just on the home runs (i.e., their best known works, the ones readers around the world instantly recognize to this day when you mention the title) and only those published in their lifetime (more than a few had completed manuscripts in the hopper when they died). 

And I’m not interested in doubles or triples, as praiseworthy as they are.  Nope, only clear cut outta-da-ballpark hits here, nothing less

Jane Austen Lifetime at bats:  4 books One home run: Pride And Prejudice

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Lifetime at bats:  6 books One home run: Frankenstein

Nathaniel Hawthorne Lifetime at bats:  17 books One home run: The Scarlet Letter

Charles Dickens Lifetime at bats:  22 books Four home runs: A Christmas Carol Oliver Twist Great Expectations A Tale Of Two Cities

Herman Melville Lifetime at bats:  11 books One home run: Moby Dick

Alexandre Dumas Lifetime at bats:  48 books Two home runs: The Three Musketeers The Count Of Monte Cristo

Victor Hugo Lifetime at bats:  11 books Two home runs: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame Les Miserables

Jules Verne Lifetime at bats:  54 books Four home runs: Journey To The Center Of The Earth From The Earth To The Moon + 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Around The World In 80 Days

+  now typically published as one volume with its sequel All Around The Moon

Mark Twain Lifetime at bats:  41 books Two home runs: The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Booth Tarkington Lifetime at bats:  40 books Zero home runs

H.G. Wells Lifetime at bats:  51 books Three home runs: The Time Machine The War Of The Worlds The Invisible Man

Edgar Rice Burroughs Lifetime at bats:  71 books One home run: Tarzan Of The Apes

Ernest Hemingway Lifetime at bats:  9 books Three home runs: The Sun Also Rise A Farewell To Arms For Whom The Bell Tolls

John Steinbeck Lifetime at bats:  27 books Three home runs: Of Mice And Men The Grapes Of Wrath East Of Eden

Jack Kerouac Lifetime at bats:  14 books One home run: On The Road

Joseph Heller Lifetimes at bat:  6 books One home run: Catch-22

Ray Bradbury Lifetime at bats:  11 books + Two home runs: The Martian Chronicles Fahrenheit 451

+ counting only novels, not short story collections

For those asking “Where are Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan-Doyle and Ian Fleming and Harlan Ellison?” the answer is they either wrote mostly short stories and no novels of lasting consequence, or they wrote series fiction, not standalone works, and while everyone knows who their series’ characters are, most people would be hard pressed to name a single novel from those series unless they had been filmed as mega-hit movies (Hound Of The Baskervilles excepted).

Burroughs gets mentioned because Tarzan Of The Apes is a fairly well written for an artefact of its era.  He wrote several series of books, his pattern being to turn in two or three engrossing first volumes then, once on the hook for that $weet $weet $weet $equel $erie$ ca$h, started slumming out the follow-ups.  Burroughs could write well when he put his mind to it, and his best later fiction are those rare occasions when he chose to indulge in wickedly insightful self-parody.

And for those wondering “Hoodafuq is Booth Tarkington?” the answer is one of the most famous, important, and influential American writers of the early to mid-20th century, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and a popular dramatist as well as a novelist.  Several of his works were adapted into motion pictures, the most famous being The Magnificent Ambersons as directed by Orson Welles.  He’s on the list because despite his popularity and prestige in his lifetime, he and his works are virtually forgotten today.

There’s a reason for that, and one that ties in with why everybody else has at least one home run masterpiece to their credit:

“It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.” – Alan Moore

Before we proceed, let me state I deny no one their pleasure, I yuck no one else’s yum.*  There’s certainly a place and purpose for popular entertainment, and since I’m the guy who read Lester Dent’s Doc Savage novel The Sargasso Ogre at least 20 times during my 13th summer, I’d be a hypocrite to say you can’t enjoy your favorite forms of pop culture.

And art can be gleefully entertaining, it’s not confined to somber despair laden tragedy and tsuris. 

But art always possesses what Robert Hughes called “the shock of the new.”  It makes us see and experience things we’ve never seen nor experienced before.  Even when it’s a joyous celebration, it’s a celebration that’s fresh and insightful.  Even when it’s set in a previous era, or a well known contemporary setting, it catches us by surprise.

Tarkington, a masterful writer, specialized in nostalgia.  His works reject modernity not the way Burroughs gleefully rejected modernity with Tarzan, but rather turned his back on the present and condemned the future sight unseen.

Nothing he wrote surprises us.

It pleases us, and that’s nice and certainly worthy of praise…

…but it’s nothing we’re going to remember for long.

  © Buzz Dixon

  * Unless you enjoy harming children, animals, and innocent people, in which case f.u.

[swanno-arts]

"Six makes a Fix!" "Sixers make the Fixers!" "... we'll work on that."

Say hello to the severely understaffed bunches of Branch F - unguaranteed to assist the company's fixing/fixer needs!

The Time Traveller, or Time Traveller or Traveller if you're so in a rush, is designated Sinner 01-F AND the branch manager. No one's quite sure what their deal is with their T Corp getup, but they are a valuable asset when things go south and is quite the brilliant mind. Nobody knows their name, not even themself.

Winston Smith is designated Sinner 02-F, usually the one in charge of keeping records and documentations. Cautious and barely composed - he makes sure nobody tries to stab one another, to much failures.

Dorothy Parker is designated Sinner 03-F, mostly here to make things "lively" - which does involve copious amount of food and alcohol - with the fact that she's easily bored. As deadpan as she looks, she will ramble one's ears off on multiple occasions and judge anyone for... mostly everything and anything.

John Yossarian is designated Sinner 04-F, gets into all sorts of shenanigans and incomprehensible antics. Goes out his way to make excuses to not go on missions, failing almost every time. Acts as if everyone was out to kill him. (Probably true.)

Douglas Quail is designated Sinner 05-F, thankfully a rather normal one compared to everyone else. He's genuinely excited at the prospects of working for Limbus Company it almost seemed a bit strange. Her special interest is Mars and is not subtle over her obsession.

JS/07 M 378, JS or "Jayes" as the others call him, is designated Sinner 06-F, ironically. He's relatively new to the company. Nobody knows his actual name, or if he even had one - and frankly JS insisted it was never important. That aside, JS is obedient and hard-working to a fault. Rarely had he ever held his own opinions.

Did you guessed the literary sources correctly? I'm sure you did for some of them! :] In order:

The Time Machine - H. G. Wells

1984 - George Orwell

But The One on The Right - Dorothy Parker (Short story)

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

We Can Remember It for You Wholesale - Philip K. Dick (Short story)

The Unknown Citizen - W. H. Auden (Poem)

Their company outfit and full infos will come in due time :] For now, I'm really happy with these.

Credit to @/threadtheocracy for the ID template.

[bookquest2024]

100 Books to Read Before I Die: Quest Order

The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Under The Net by Iris Murdoch

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

A Passage to India by EM Forster

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

1984 by George Orwell

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Oscar And Lucinda by Peter Carey

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Ulysses by James Joyce

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Herzog by Saul Bellow

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

A Dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Little Women by Louisa M Alcott

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

Watchmen by Alan Moore

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Money by Martin Amis

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

[outerspace-iiinnerspace]

Incomplete list of depressing 20th century novels I read last year:

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)

On the Beach by Neil Shute (1957)

The Pawnbroker by Edward Lewis Wallant (1961)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison (1966)

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (1972)

The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner (1972)

Concrete Island by J. G. Ballard (1974)

Incomplete list of depressing 20th century novels I'm reading this year:

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928) (it's public domain this year yeaahhhhhh!!!!!)

[terrians]

My Earth 2 Fanfiction

I keep most of my stuff on anon so I thought this would be a neat way to compile what I've done.

seasons change and i decay - Devon Adair - 292 words - G-889 didn't seem to like her very much.

Princess - Devon Adair/Bess Martin (one-sided) - 263 words - Everyone assumed her dream had been about another man.

Pouring from an Empty Cup - Devon Adair/Julia Heller - 973 words - Julia works day and night to find a cure when the crew gets sick again. Devon thinks she should rest instead.

Stages - Devon Adair & Uly Adair, Devon Adair & Yale - 635 words - If it weren't for Yale, Devon would come home to an empty unit. He's there when Uly isn't, when Devon had permission to be a person who's hurting rather than a mother who's strong.

Wildflower - Bess Martin - 898 words - On the road to New Pacifica, Bess reflects on her life.

Come So Far - John Danziger & True Danziger - 1,380 words - Danziger never took care of himself right, and True never let him get away with it.

Desiccation - Bess Martin - 749 words - "Have you ever watched anyone trying to eat dirt? Trying to suck the moisture out of mud?"

Possessed - Julia Heller - 1,291 words - Danziger's actions while possessed bring back unpleasant memories for Julia.

[zebydeb]

Avid Reader is the memoir of Robert Gottlieb, who was a New York publishing bigwig in the second half of the twentieth century. Obviously he read huge numbers of new books as they were coming out. And then as now, so much stuff was published that a lot of good books were quickly forgotten after their moment in the sun.

I’ve been keeping a list of novels that Gottlieb enthuses about but I had never heard of (or the author is famous for one book and he’s raving about a different one). He has really wide-ranging tastes, so this list has a little bit of everything. Sometimes he doesn’t even mention the genre, just how good the book was.

It will probably take me years to get round to all these, if ever.

If anyone’s looking for a reading project, may I present to you: The Avid Reader incomplete list of neglected novels

Niccolo Tucci, Before My Time (autobiographical novel by a writer who left fascist Italy - praised by Dorothy Parker)

Sybille Bedford, A Legacy (about German aristocrats - Nancy Mitford loved this one)

Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything (young women juggling career and life in 50s New York, sounds a bit like a pre-women’s-lib Sex and the City)

Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Spinster (autobiographical novel by a New Zealand teacher trying to make school better for her Maori pupils)

Mordecai Richler, Barney’s Version

Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern

Jetta Carleton, The Moonflower Vine (an American farming family with a secret)

Robert Crichton, The Secret of Santa Vittoria (villagers try to outwit Nazis in WWII)

Chaim Potok, The Chosen (two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn)

Charles Portis, True Grit (source novel for the Western film)

John Cheever, Bullet Park (“dark and obscure”)

Lisa Alther, Kinflicks

Ross Macdonald (crime writer, no specific title was mentioned)

William Wharton, Birdy

Dorothy Dunnett, British writer of historical fiction, The Game of Kings (start of a series) or King Hereafter (standalone)

Joseph Heller, Something Happened

L G Buchheim, The Boat (translated from German, source novel for the film Das Boot)

Tom Tryon, The Other (psychological horror)

Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise

Evan Connell, Mr Bridge

[mirandamckenni1]

Liked on YouTube: We Need to Talk About Boomers || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJl83vNuDL4 || Okay Boomer! Okay Millennials! Let's talk about how older adults are a marginalised group, how ageism is a socially acceptable form of bigotry, and how the generation war narrative helps capitalists. And while we're at it, let's make a vegan Irish stew with Guinness, and let's talk to our Dads because they're cool. Support the channel on Patreon ►► https://ift.tt/UfXFsc8 References: Arcoverde, C., Deslandes, A., Rangel, A., Rangel, A., Pavão, R., Nigri, F., Engelhardt, E. & Laks, J. (2008). Role of physical activity on the maintenance of cognition and activities of daily living in elderly with Alzheimer's disease. Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria, 66(2B), 323-327. Babyak, M., Blumenthal, J.A., Herman, S., Khatri, P., Doraiswamy, M., Moore, K., Craighead, W.E., Baldewicz, T.T. & Krishnan, K.R. (2000). Exercise treatment for major depression: maintenance of therapeutic benefit at 10 months. Psychosomatic Medicine, 62(5), 633-638. Butler, R. N. (1969). Ageism: Another form of bigotry. The Gerontologist, 9(4), 243–246 Burton, E. and Mitchell, L. (2006). Inclusive urban design: Streets for life. Elsevier. Fisher, M. (2009). Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?. John Hunt Publishing. Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history?. The national interest, (16), 3-18. Greenberg, L., 1982. The implication of an ageing population for land-use planning. Geographical Perspectives on the Elderly, 401-425. Grusky DB, Mattingly M, Varner C, et al. (2019) Millennials in the United States. In Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (eds.) State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report. Pathways Magazine, 3–6. Hamilton, M., & Hamilton, C. (2006). Baby boomers and retirement. Dreams, fears, and anxieties. Sydney: The Australian Institute. Ipingbemi, O. (2010). Travel characteristics and mobility constraints of the elderly in Ibadan, Nigeria. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(2), 285-291. King, A., & Almack, K. (2019). Intersections of ageing, gender, sexualities: Multidisciplinary international perspectives. 17 Leigh-Hunt, N., Bagguley, D., Bash, K., Turner, V., Turnbull, S., Valtorta, N., & Caan, W. (2017). An overview of systematic reviews on the public health consequences of social isolation and loneliness. Public health, 152, 157-171 Li, Z., & Dalaker, J. (2019). Poverty among Americans aged 65 and older. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Lim, Y. J., & Lemanski, J. (2020). A generational war is launched with the birth of Ok Boomer in the digital age. The Journal of Society and Media, 4(1). Marottoli, R. A., De Leon, C. F. M., Glass, T. A., Williams, C. S., Cooney Jr, L. M., Berkman, L. F., & Tinetti, M. E. (1997). Driving cessation and increased depressive symptoms: Prospective evidence from the New Haven EPESE. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 45(2), 202-206. Mueller, J. C., & McCollum, J. (2021). A Sociological Analysis of “OK Boomer”. Critical Sociology, 08969205211025724. Nordbakke, S. (2013). Capabilities for mobility among urban older women: barriers, strategies and options. Journal of transport geography, 26, 166-174. Pinquart, M., & Sörensen, S. (2000). Influences of socioeconomic status, social network, and competence on subjective well-being in later life: a meta-analysis. Psychology and aging, 15(2), 187. Pope, S.K., Shue, V.M. & Beck, C. (2003). Will a healthy lifestyle help prevent Alzheimer's disease?. Annual Review of Public Health, 24(1), 111-132. Quoidbach, J., Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2013). The End of History Illusion. Science, 339(6115), 96–98. Röhr, S., Rodriguez, F. S., Siemensmeyer, R., Müller, F., Romero‐Ortuno, R., & Riedel‐Heller, S. G. (2022). How can urban environments support dementia risk reduction? A qualitative study. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 37(1). Troya, M. I., Babatunde, O., Polidano, K., Bartlam, B., McCloskey, E., Dikomitis, L., & Chew-Graham, C. A. (2019). Self-harm in older adults: systematic review. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 214(4), 186-200. Troya, M. I., Dikomitis, L., Babatunde, O. O., Bartlam, B., & Chew-Graham, C. A. (2019). Understanding self-harm in older adults: a qualitative study. EClinicalMedicine, 12, 52-61. World Health Organization (WHO). (2016) Mental Health and older adults. Media Centre Fact Sheets. World Health Organization. World Health Organization (WHO). (2021). Global report on ageism. Yasamy, M. T., Dua, T., Harper, M., & Saxena, S. (2013). Mental health of older adults, addressing a growing concern. Mental health and older people, 4-9. Yon, Y., Mikton, C. R., Gassoumis, Z. D., & Wilber, K. H. (2017). Elder abuse prevalence in community settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Global Health, 5(2), e147-e156. Yon, Y., Ramiro-Gonzalez, M., Mikton, C. R., Huber, M., & Sethi, D. (2019). The prevalence of elder abuse in institutional settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis. European journal of public health, 29(1), 58-67.

[filmjunky-99]

t h e k a r a t e k i d, 1984 🎬 dir. john g. avildsen

[mariocki]

The Saint: The Lawless Lady (2.20, ITC, 1964)

"Why don't you join us?"

"Who's he?"

"A friend."

"Oh?"

"Yes, some people have them."

[angelstills]

The Karate Kid (1984)

[unsaltedsinner]

The name of the alpine rose was Ingrid Pitt, but she was born Ingoushka Petrov in Warsaw. She and her family had been imprisoned in the Stutthof concentration camp during the war, so it’s not hard to understand that she found working on this movie somewhat uncomfortable, as she was constantly surrounded by men in German uniforms.

[theninjamouse]

It's been two years, how long is Ocean on Fire Now

Hi! It's me again. Maybe you'll remember when I compared the length of Ocean on Fire to the Candy Makers? Well, it's been over two years, so it's time to do that again.

As of typing this, you've reached a word count of 313,314. First of all, holy shit. Second of all, here's some context of how long that is.

A person could read the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Harry Potter books in less time than they could read Ocean on Fire.

The following books all have smaller word counts than Ocean on Fire.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee – 100,388 words

Gullivers Travels, Jonathan Swift – 107,349 words

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte – 107,945 words

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain – 109,571 words

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner – 56,695 words

Lord of the Flies, William Golding – 59,900 words

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Wolf – 63,422 words

Black Beauty, Anna Sewell – 59,635 words

The Colour Purple, Alice Walker – 66,556 words

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson – 66,950 words

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway – 67,707 words

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde – 78,462 words

Ulysses, James Joyce – 265,222 words

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens – 183,349 words

Moby Dick, Herman Melville – 206,052 words

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway – 174,106 words

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden – 186,418 words

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë – 183,858 words

Catch-22, Joseph Heller – 174,269 words

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen – 126,194 words

Atonement, Ian McEwan – 123,378 words

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky – 211,591 words

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck – 169,481 words

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 144,523 words

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger – 155,717 words

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury – 46,118 words

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury – 64,768 words

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley – 63,766 words

War of the Worlds, G. Well – 59,796 words

The Time Machine, G. Well – 32,149 words

Nineteen Eight-Four, George Orwell – 88,942 words

Dune, Frank Herbert – 187,240 words

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin – 94,240 words

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Phillip K. Dick – 79,360 words

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley – 74,800 words

If you want an equivalent thickness, combine all but one of the Chronicles of Narnia books, and you'd have a decent idea (the Chronicles of Narnia books would be about 8,000 words short)

Now what's the appropriate take away from this? Simple.

1) You're incredibly talented.

2) If you were to bind Oceans on Fire into a book, it would be an excellent blunt weapon.

Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk. I look forward to 2023 by then I assume you will have exceeded the word count of Les Mis.

The Ninja Response

HOLY- WHAT??

Ok, this is incredible work and seeing it all laid out like this?? This is an INSANE confidence boost, holy cow.

Also I would indeed like to bind OoF to make a blunt weapon, that's on my bucket list now thank you