The End.

OK, you know the Ten Starting Lines meme that went around a few months ago? I thought it might be cool to see how many ending lines people can figure out, from books that are not totally obscure.

1. But they never learned what it was that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which had to do, for there was a gust of wind, and they were gone.
   
   
2. And it is there that they see the riselka, three men see a riselka, sitting on a rock beside the sunlit path, her long sea-green hair blowing back in the freshening breeze.
   
   
3. After today, he thought, the world will never be quite the same.
   
   
4. "This time, darling, we'll forgive you," Rosalind told her. "It is."
   
   
5. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.
   
   
6. There's a rumour going around that the beautiful girl arriving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.
   
   
7. He loved Big Brother.
   
   
8. And by his side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire - Master Colin!
   
   
9. What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.
   
   
10. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. Amen.
    
    
11. "Well, I'm back," he said.
    
    
12. "But we, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives."
    
    
13. "Anything to eat?" cried Charlie, laughing. "Oh you just wait and see!"
    
    
14. scar.

OK, so numbers 7 and 11 might be giveaways, but they're balanced out by the last one, which is not even a full sentence and ends a book that hasn't even been written yet ;)

singing and idiots and odds and ends

1
That was the longest dress rehearsal ever. And boy did we ever need it. We should've stayed later, but they had to close the church by ten so out we went.

The acoustics are awful. We can't hear each other, so we drag and drag and draaaag and get flatter and flatter and flaaaatter. Ugh. Hopefully the concert-nerves will give us a bit of pep for this Friday. The music is lovely, and some of our songs come out just gorgeous, so here's hoping the concert itself is a damn sight better than the rehearsal.

Oh and just as we were getting the most tired and cranky near the end, we had one of those wonderful Aaaww moments that appear almost as a gift. Loch Lomond started with a tenor solo, and then the men came in to do the first verse in three-part harmony, and their voices were so beautiful, and blended so well, and they nailed it so perfectly that they completely threw off the women and we kinda missed our cue. Oops.

2
This article, Weird is Relative - Esquire article on Creationism and Intelligent Design, linked to by umbo, had me ROFLMAO from about the third paragraph in. I hesitated about linking it here, because it talks about Idiot America, and what with not being American and all... well it's kind of tacky to go point and laugh at somebody else's country, you know?

Except that I can't really see the article as solely about America. Yeah, some of the stuff going on below the 49th parallel has a lot of us scratching our heads up here, but I firmly believe that a lot of that is caused by the fact that our homegrown idiots, just as numerous and idiotic as the American ones, are simply too busy digging their cars out of the snow half the year to mount the kind of political revolution of idiocy that seems to be carrying the day down there.

And actually, now that I think of it, I can't even say that with assurance. Because we had in Ontario a Conservative provincial government that swept in under the banner Common Sense Revolution and stayed for ten years, using their Common Sense to gut schools and hospitals and unions and welfare and libraries and museums and women's shelters and universities and colleges and all that other nonsensical stuff that your regular mouthbreather doesn't see the sense of, even when they're using them. So the whole Intelligent Design thing? I could totally see Canadians buying into it, given a few well-placed charismatic Idiot-leaders.

So yeah, notsomuch with the exclusive Americaness of idiocy, I don't think. Anyway. Go read the article. It's long, but filled with gems like

It is impolite to wonder why our parents sent us all to college, and why generations of immigrants sweated and bled so their children could be educated, if it wasn’t so that we would all one day feel confident enough to look at a museum filled with dinosaurs rigged to run six furlongs at Belmont and make the not unreasonable point that it is all batshit crazy and that anyone who believes this righteous hooey should be kept away from sharp objects and his own money.

and

A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold.

3
Oh and in the Ending Lines meme, here's the ones nobody's guessed yet:

1. And it is there that they see the riselka, three men see a riselka, sitting on a rock beside the sunlit path, her long sea-green hair blowing back in the freshening breeze.
   
   
2. After today, he thought, the world will never be quite the same.
   
   
3. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.
   
   
4. There's a rumour going around that the beautiful girl arriving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.
   
   
5. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. Amen.

I'll give some hints. One is non-fiction, one was made into a movie, one is a children's book that has inexplicably been banned several times, one is historical fiction, and one is fantasy.