p.s. middle earth seems arguably more awesome than wizarding world. arguably.

it was mine and alex's six month anniversary last weekend, and so naturally we decided to celebrate by watching all three lord of the rings in one day. this activity gave way to many unexpected discoveries, including but not limited to the realization that my boyfriend is a hopeless LOTR nerd and can sporadically quote the characters as they speak (not actually that unexpected of a discovery). the most interesting thing i noticed, however, is the unsettling amount of parallels i found between LOTR and the harry potter series. so natuarally, i decided i needed to blog about it.

firstly, and possibly most prominent, is the likeness between harry and frodo. both are dark haired, male protagonists with slight accents who, throughout their respective series, become more isolated, angsty, and altogether obnoxious. harry is unique because he is the boy who lived, and frodo is unique because he possesses the ring. both things are related to something inherently evil, although the protagonists are perceived to be mostly good. through his scar, voldemort has a certain amount of control over harry, and through the ring, sauron has a certain amount of control over frodo. in harry potter VII, when harry wears the horcrux necklace, he becomes more irritable and lashes out at ron and hermione. when frodo wears the ring around his neck, he lashes out at sam. both go on quests because of the thing that makes them unique, and though neither can reasonably do the quests alone, on many occasions their angst surfaces and they try to convince their friends that they must.

sauron and voldemort are both dark forces, highly feared, who have long had much control over the inhabitants of the world within their stories. voldemort has a following of death eaters and sauron has his army of mordor.

merry and pippin are fred and george in many respects. both are pairs always seen together and rarely taken seriously, except for in moments of seemingly random bravery or friendship. in the beginning of LOTR I, merry and pippin sneak into gandalf's collection of pyrotechnics and set off a gaint firework that turns into a dragon and scares the townspeople, before it explodes, and is met with applause. in harry potter V, fred and george set off a giant firework that turns into a dragon and chases professor umbridge, before exploding, met by applause from the students.

merry and pippin also share ron's obsession with constant eating, but sam is more similar to ron's overall character. sam is the faithful best friend to frodo, just as ron is to harry, who insists on sticking by him even when he is being mean and stupid. (both stories also have heavy homoerotic subtext between the friends, at least in the movie adaptations). both ron and sam have moments of weakness in which they become jealous of their best friend's uniqueness, but of course, it all works out in the end in both cases.

also now that i write it out, both 'sam' and 'ron', and 'frodo' and 'harry' have the same number of letters in their name. CLEARLY INTENTIONAL.

although their intentions are entirely different, i found myself comparing gollum to dobby. both are inhuman creatures who follow after the protagonists, calling harry/frodo "master". of course, dobby has all the qualities of unbelievable cuteness and loyalty, while gollum is essentially a slimeball.

gandalf and dumbledore have similar wise and fatherly qualities towards frodo and harry, not to mention their simliar ages and look (gotta love those bushy white beards). both end up battling past friends/partners-in-sorcery: saruman v. gandalf and grindlewald v. dumbledore. both act as mentors to the protagonists in their stories, and both are skilled in aforementioned sorcery. both also suggested to be gay.

frodo's whole troop of loyal (there's lots of loyalty involved in LOTR..) protectors in the fellowship resemble harry's order of the phoenix, who take an increasingly bigger role in the final few novels.

aragorn is the shadowy, faithful protector over frodo and reminds me very much of harry's sirius.

the ending of the stories is much the same, as the leading male characters manage to finally eliminate the main source of evil in their respective worlds, receiving high honors, and you know, ensuring a new era of general awesome and happiness. i feel like considerably more leading and non leading characters die in the harry potter series, but LOTR has plenty of casualties. ultimately, the stories differ in some big ways - mainly, much of the harry potter series revolves around events that take place at hogwarts school, and the actual quest to destroy the horcruxes does not occur until the deathly hollows. within the first hour of the fellowship of the ring, however, the quest is underway, and this becomes the main theme of all LOTR stories.

also, harry potter has more magic. and less hobbits. though i believe there are some hobbits.

what's next for alex and my ridiculous movie marathon weekends? all six of the star wars, over the span of two days. standby for a report. i may have to blog about it.

career day with a body count.

i want to be a funeral director. i might as well get that out there right away. this isn't news to most people in my life because even though it's a recent goal, it's not an i've-never-seen-a-dead-body tourist of the death industry out of some weird gross factor thing. it's a career interest thing. and because i take a medical class a few days a week, the teacher there hooked me up with an interview at a funeral home in the area. that interview was yesterday.

this particular funeral home was conspicuous in that it was at least 50% chapel, and therefore looked more like a church than anything from the outside. the inside, however, looked like a hotel, with crystal light fixtures on the ceiling and butter-colored wall paper. it smelled almost like a doctor's office but somehow less sterile. more like somebody else's pillow, but it a comforting way.

the funeral director i was interviewing looked every bit like someone who one might expect to have a sweet southern accent and shop at costco. however, she did not have an accent, and in fact had gauges twice the size of mine. she was wearing a light blue buttoned shirt and a pinstriped suit. i feel like these details are important. the room my teacher and i sat in while we waited for her to come in had the feel of a waiting room, but i realized after a while that it was probably the place the staff meets with families. there was a large television in the room which played a silent loop of photos of various services, and tall shelves on either side which displayed different styles of urns. my medical teacher pronounces urn "you-ren", so there's that. some of the urns looked more like scented candles than anything, glass cylinders with sunsets or tropical flowers painted on them. there was even some glass blown beads hanging from metal fixtures in which you could see the ashes, trapped inside. i guess this is actually a whole business now.

i learned a lot about the business during the interview, such as things like green funerals (because i guess even your death can be environmentally friendly now) and rental caskets, which involves velcro and caskets with drawbridge-like sides used to slide a body into a big cardboard box for cremation. i guess this is popular with families who request both a viewing and then cremation, so they're able to have a nice casket but not waste it when the "loved one" is cremated. this was a term i saw a lot in the brochures i looked at in the waiting room, and i found it slightly unsettling. maybe it's the idea that when we die, we become nameless, just a "loved one" gone away. but i think i'd have less of an issue with a term like "the deceased". loved one seems like a denial of death, in some ways.

at one point in the interview, the funeral director is describing, on my request, the tools she uses while embalming. she starts explaining something called a trocar, which she struggles to describe, the first comparison she makes being "it looks kind of like a sword." this instrument, as it turns out, is used to pierce into the internal organs of the body, and suck out whatever might be left in them - the trocar doubles as a device for pumping whatever it pokes full of formaldehyde, a smell i had previously solely associated with tenth grade biology frog dissections. at this point in the conversation, she says, "i could show you the prep room, if you want." from then on, the conversation goes something like this -
me: "wait, really?"
her: "yeah, sure."
me: "thatwouldbesoawesomereally?"
her: "..yeah."
me: "like, right now?"
so we went to the prep room.

on the way there we go through the garage, which houses a white cadillac brand hearse, a car nicer than any owned in my family. the prep room is small and has similar laminated signs on the walls to what i've seen in my medical and chemistry classes. the funeral director begins to show me the equipment, and it turns out a trocar looks exactly like a sword.

she also shows me a selection of similarly brutal tools, if not knarly in look, in their uses. there are some curved scissors used to dig for arteries, scalpels for slicing the jugular, and a large machine which has attached tubes for filling veins with formaldehyde while they are at the same time drained of blood. the prep table has grooves leading to a drainage system, and in the room is a baby blue casket, closed, with a large, semi-transparent papery covering over its entirety.
 
the room is a disturbing mix of mad scientist and suburbia. there is, for example, a massive metal freezer door built in to the wall, looking something like a safe, covered in caution and hazard stickers. however, by the closet hangs an ironing board with a canvas cover depicting tiny sail boats and waves. the funeral director explains what she has to wear before beginning to embalm, an outfit which entails a disposable, sleeved apron - a sight i can only compare to some kind of paper snuggie - a pair of large rubber boots, elbow-length blue gloves, a hairnet, and a plastic face cover resembling something one might wear when welding.

i was only at the funeral home a couple of hours, but i absolutely did not ever want to leave. i talked to the woman about an assisting job, something on a volunteer basis, and she said she would pass the request on to her supervisors. when she was in school, she explained that she was able to help with services to a certain degree some week nights, but to spend more time around the profession i'd stock shelves or file paperwork. at the end, my teacher hugged me in the parking lot. the evening came to a close with my realization that although i might have my future career path figured out, i am still unable to navigate my way through my own city. i relied on my teacher's car to lead my own back to a street i recognized. it was a good day.