Zala > Recent Status Updates

”But you’ve no idea of the agony of having your characters taken and made to say things that they never would have said, and do things that they never would have done. And if you protest, all they say is that it’s “good theatre”. […] Everyone says he’s very clever. If he’s so clever I don’t see why he doesn’t write a play of his own and leave my poor unfortunate Finn alone.”

”Eva Kane, the ‘other woman’ in the famous Craig Case.
Janice Courtland, the ‘tragic wife’ whose husband was a fiend in human form.
Little Lily Gamboll, tragic child product of our overcrowded age.
Vera Blake, unsuspecting wife of a killer.”

”There was significance there—a significance that had nearly escaped him because to him, as to most people, writing a letter was a common everyday occurrence.
But it was not so to Mrs McGinty. Writing a letter was to Mrs McGinty such an uncommon occurrence that she had to go out and buy a bottle of ink if she wanted to do so.”

”It always came back to that, Poirot thought, as he left the office. James Bentley made a bad impression on people. He took comfort in considering various murderers he had known whom most people had found full of charm.”

”Poirot got up again and shut the door. He said:
‘Decidedly, I suffer.’
A car drove up, the large dog leaped from the chair and raised its voice in a crescendo of barking. He jumped on a small table by the window and the table collapsed with a crash.”
lol

”‘Alas,’ murmured Poirot to his moustaches, ‘that one can only eat three times a day…’ […]
No, chocolate and croissants for breakfast, Déjeuner at twelve-thirty if possible but certainly not later than one o’clock, and finally the climax: Le Dîner!
These were the peak periods of Hercule Poirot’s day.”
lol same, love me some good food

”"We have had enough of the old men and the money-counters!"
same

”As Thorin carefully explained, Mr. Baggins was still officially their expert burglar and investigator. If he liked to risk a light, that was his affair. They would wait in the tunnel for his report. So they sat near the door and watched.”
lol these cowards

”They wondered if they were still lying there unharmed in the hall below: the spears that were made for the armies of the great King Bladorthin (long since dead), each had a thrice-forged head and their shafts were inlaid with cunning gold, but they were never delivered or paid for”
lol

they’re so silly going after the lights again and again lol

"We are producing an instrument of Love to be played in all ways," they said.
Many consider it odd that this statement provoked the worst outbreaks of violence against ecumenism. Twenty delegates were recalled by their congregations. One committed suicide by stealing a space frigate and diving it into the sun.

”Liet-Kynes had only to watch and nudge and spy upon the Harkonnens . . . until the day his planet was afflicted by a Hero.”

lol right, ofc can’t be a kwisatz haderach as a eunuch

”They were bigger than hornets. The drones were bigger than your thumb, a good deal, and the bands of yellow on their deep black bodies shone like fiery gold.”
oh nonono

”Gollum used to wear it at first, till it tired him; and then he kept it in a pouch next his skin, till it galled him; and now usually he hid it in a hole in the rock on his island, and was always going back to look at it. And still sometimes he put it on, when he could not bear to be parted from it any longer, or when he was very, very, hungry, and tired of fish.”
lol the ring regretting its choice fr

this time listening to the rob inglis audiobook - and sure, maybe the andy serkis one is more impressive with the character voices and the songs, but this version is so cozy, it’s like a grandfather telling you a bedtime story

”He looked beyond Feyd-Rautha then, attracted by a movement, seeing there a narrow, weaselish face he'd never before encountered - not in time or out of it. It was a face he felt he should know and the feeling carried with it a marker of fear.”

"I allowed myself to be captured," the child said. "I did not want to face my brother and have to tell him that his son had been killed."
"Only a handful of our men got away," the Emperor said. "Got away! You hear that?"

"Then you, my Lady, please . . . you kill me."
lol he really said so embarrassing, just kill me pls

“Then she felt the touch of the knife tip against her back. Chill awareness spread out from that knife tip. She knew in that instant that Gurney meant to kill her. Why? She could think of no reason, for he wasn't the kind to turn traitor.”
didn’t see this in any vision huh

"You've ridden the little ones bred for the seed and the Water of Life," Stilgar had said. "But what you'll summon for your test is a wild maker, an old man of the desert. You must have proper respect for such a one."
oh his sister is already 2 years old atp

”Jessica sensed a forced shift in the mutual awareness, saw another mote-presence with the inward eye. The other mote darted wildly here, there, circling. It radiated pure terror.”

"You must admit it'd be a way to develop a substantial work force on Arrakis - use the place as a prison planet."
"You anticipate an increase in prisoners?"
"There has been unrest," the Baron admitted. "I've had to squeeze rather severely, Fenring. After all, you know the price I paid that damnable Guild to transport our mutual force to Arrakis. That money has to come from somewhere."

”It's no coincidence that the Third Epidemiological Transition was followed by a slew of zombie tales: 28 Days Later, World War Z, I Am Legend, iZombie, The Last of Us, and, of course, The Walking Dead. No longer corpses reanimated by magic, these "Third Transition zombies" are human bodies that have been infected by a virus, or fungus, or bacteria.
And not just infected, but transformed into predators.”

"At least 30 new diseases have emerged in the last twenty years," the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out, at the beginning of 1996[…] The health of millions was threatened by diseases for which there were no vaccines, no cures, and few effective treatments. "We are standing on the brink of a global crisis in infectious diseases"

”Worldwide, childhood deaths plummeted by more than 90 percent. Antibiotics were wielded with lavish confidence. The patterns of life and death that had been part of human existence for millennia had suddenly shifted, and the shift was so extreme that it earned another label: the Great Mortality Transition, an unprecedented lengthening of lifespan in the first half of the twentieth century.”

’The virtual elimination of the infectious diseases. Some thirty years later, physician John D. Arras called this era the pax antibiotica: a relatively brief and calm period during which we were "well protected by antiseptic techniques and antibiotics," and so felt, more often than not, invincible.’

”Disposable culture may have been birthed out of germ theory and the fear of disease, but the users—and manufacturers—of these products saw them as a great triumph of modernity.
And so they remain. Disposable products (which is to say, nine billion metric tons of plastics since the 1950s, 91 percent of which ends up in landfills and the oceans) are part of our DNA now.”

”Don't put a cold in your pocket. This was the rallying cry for several decades: Don't spread disease by hanging on to something that could be easily thrown away. And Kleenex was just the vanguard. From the 1920s on, we tried to protect ourselves with dozens of items that could be used once and discarded.”

”And sleeping sickness (Encephalitis lethargica) dogged the flu's heels. Patients fell into somnolence, but were still aware of what was going on around them, and to some degree could even respond to commands.”