Yonatan Zunger (zunger) wrote,
Yonatan Zunger
zunger

and...

Random bit of dialogue with one of my TA's during our grading session tonight:

Kathryn: "Your computer is named olorin? You are such a geek..."

Me: "Wait a moment. You know that reference, and you're calling me a geek?!"

Have I mentioned that I have really cool TA's?
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  • 5 comments

kaidevis

March 21 2003, 07:33:51 UTC 12 years ago

You know, she has a point. :-D

moof

March 21 2003, 11:48:51 UTC 12 years ago

I feel like I've lost geek cred somehow by not knowing what olorin is. :)

zunger

March 21 2003, 17:52:08 UTC 12 years ago


"The Grey Pilgrim?" said Frodo. "Had he a name?"
"Mithrandir we called him in elf-fashion," said Faramir, "and he was content. 'Many are my names in many countries,' he said. 'Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkun to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incanus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.'"


And that's a damned obscure reference, which is what made me all the more surprised that anyone at all got it. (There are a few more references to the name somewhere in the Silmarillion, but anyone who can quote that from memory is far more of a geek than I)

troglodyteking

March 21 2003, 21:00:12 UTC 12 years ago

I am ashamed I missed that. If it were Mithrandir, I would have gotten it. I had not remembered the other ones, though. (I am something of a Tolkien nut.)

zunger

March 22 2003, 11:35:22 UTC 12 years ago

I was astounded that anyone got it. The name comes up precisely once in the Lord of the Rings, and that only in passing.

But I figured that, as long as I'm living in the Utmost West (hey, only a few miles to the Pacific from here...) I may as well go with that for a name...