Tom Emanuel

@realtomemanuel.bsky.social

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Because I need an accountability post to enforce my own choices: lights out on here until 20 July when my summer holidays begin. Catch you then. ✌🏻

More aventures in speech-to-text: MS Teams cannot decide how to spell Tolkien in its auto-transcripts. Talking? Toll keen? Token? Talcan? The poor software has no clue.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent Supreme Court?

Both kids love the Beatles and have gone through phases of wanting to hear nothing but 'Come Together' on repeat, but no amount of overplaying can dampen my adoration for that band. Unfortunately I now actively resent 'Take Me to Church', a song I once loved.

On the positive side, my toddler's enthusiasm for Taylor Swift has given me a new appreciation for her music I didn't have before. On the negative side, my three-year-old's obsession with Hozier has robbed me of the appreciation I once had.

Psyched to announce that I'll be presenting at Oxonmoot again this year! My paper is entitled "The Tale We’ve Fallen Into: Reading The Lord of the Rings, Writing Ourselves" and it's all about (part of) my PhD research. Can't wait to see my fellow Tolkienites in Oxford!

I submitted an article (one I'm pretty proud of actually) to a journal at 11:53pm last night, thereby beating my self-imposed deadline of 1 July by a full seven minutes! [weeps in academic]

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Since new dwarf art has gone and gotten people zesty, this seems to be an appropriate contribution.

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Museum spokesperson Anne Sheridan stated that British officials hoped the move would ultimately strengthen the country’s diplomatic ties with Zeus.

British Science Museum Forced To Return Fire Exhibit Originally Plundered From The Godswww.theonion.com LONDON—In an effort to correct the imperial power’s past wrongs, London’s Science Museum was reportedly forced Wednesday to return the fire exhibit originally plundered from the gods. “After extensive...

My eldest has been practicing his rhythm skills and boy there are few things cuter than a three-year-old wandering around the house lisping, "We will, we will rock you, bum-bum HA, bum-bum HA!"

Transcribing more interviews today and loving the speech-to-text feature's valiant attempts at Beren and Lúthien: Barren and Lucy, Baron and Lucien, and my personal favorite, Bear Inn and Lutheran.

#TolkienTrewsday "Scholarship" Today I'd like to pay tribute to Verlyn Flieger, whom I consider to be the finest Tolkien scholar in the world. If you want a deeper knowledge and appreciation for Tolkien's works, she has been the woman to beat for more than four decades.

More jokes that depend on familiarity with deep cuts like the 'Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion' from Morgoth's Ring, please and thank you.

Sauron the Economist - existentialcomics.com/comic/556

Going through a rough one at the momment with health issues and a death in the family. If you're that sort of person, prayers are gratefully accepted.

And with that I have completed all the interviews for my PhD project! Now the real work of wading through all this data and making something out it can begin. Still, one big step taken!

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A new free to read post on my substack: Just fairytales drfrancisyoung.substack.com/p/just-fairy...

Just fairy talesdrfrancisyoung.substack.com I recently came across a quotation from the late children’s author Rosemary Sutcliff which caught my attention, because it expressed what I think is a profound truth about traditional stories, as well...

I just received an invitation to write a really exciting chapter for a major upcoming Tolkien publication. I can't say more at the moment, but suffice it to say I'm psyched!

Nothing has brought home to me my total inability to complete a thought out loud quite like transcribing two dozen hourlong interviews. My sentences are like long German paragraphs, full of subordinate clauses and pronouns with unclear referents.

#TolkienTrewsday "Parents" From the day he was born I read LotR aloud to my eldest child. When we got to the end of the the book, I had somehow forgotten that Sam's "Well, I'm back" is spoken with baby Elanor on his lap. Have you ever heard the term "ugly crying?" Yeah, that.

I passed my Annual Progress Review, which is awesome because now I can focus on the 5 other deadlines I need to sock away before I can go on annual leave! #PhDLife

The climate of Scotland is doing its darndest to put an end to me. If it's not bucketing rain, it's sunny until 10pm.

For recording and transcribing my PhD research interviews I'm using a platform that has optional speech-to-text, and it's always fun to see what it makes of Tolkien's character-names. "Lego lots" was a fun one just now.

It's days like these I thank God for granting me the foresight to mute any and all permutations of the title of the Amazon Tolkien Show from my timeline.

[Brooklyn accent] Look, when me and 'uigi was coming up, we knew this guy named Tony, turns out she's Toni with an "i" now. What I'm sayin' is, if the ghost wants to be a girl ghost, I don't see why we gotta make a whole thing outta this

#TolkienTrewsday "Cultivation" George R.R. Martin leveled the friendly critique that Tolkien never gets into the details of what the "wise and good" government of King Elessar actually looks like. We know what an evil one looks like though: the slave empire of Mordor. 1/3

It says something about the rain in Scotland that I find myself longing for Portland, OR.

I have two conference papers to prep, a stack of essays to edit, a bunch of interviews to conduct and transcribe, and two small children to get outdoors during those rare spells when Scotland has something akin to sunshine. Time for a Bluesky break. See you in a few weeks, friends. ✌🏻

May 1 is International Labor Day, and appropriately it is also the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. The Holy Family are in solidarity with working people everywhere becase they, too, were working people. ✊🌹 (Art: Br. Simeon Davis)

#TolkienTuesday #TolkienTrewsday "Color" This week, I want to share very nearly my favorite passage in the length and breadth of The Lord of the Rings: Frodo's first encounter with Lothlórien on the hill of Cerin Amroth. It makes me cry.

The Kristi Noem story is horrendous, but there is something personally vindicating in it for me because now everyone else knows that the governor of my home state is a puppy-murdering monster.