Funny but sad, banks are now foreclosing on “The Shire,” a housing development inspired by visions of hobbits who want to buy quirky thatched houses with modern conveniences. Dang, I would have liked to spend time in one of those houses (though maybe not if it meant moving my family out to Bend, Oregon.)
For example, the 3,200-square-foot Butterfly Cottage (says the Bend Bulletin) ,
overlooks an amphitheater, has 26-foot-high ceilings and interior finishes that include bamboo flooring, a Japanese soaking tub and granite countertops. The house has a “hobbit hole” in the backyard for storing garden supplies.
If Gandalf’s not liquid, maybe the Googles could buy this? It would make one heckuva great mega-yurt for group meetings!
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Where credit is due: I read about this in the latest edition of Dave Langford’s scifi fanzine Ansible. Bonus quote therefrom, from his long-ongoing saga of fun bits from bad writing:
Tripodal Stability Dept. ‘She crouched on a three-legged stool as if warming herself before the fire, but Will knew her chill would take more melting than that. He knelt down before her. The stool wobbled under her when he took her hands, the one leg shorter than the other that his father hadn’t mended in fifteen years gone past.’ (Elizabeth Bear, Ink and Steel, 2008)
2 responses so far ↓
1 TA // Sep 9, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Figures: fantasy-themed development with units priced in the high six figures hits the market in the fall of 2006, just as the Case Shiller indices roll over.
And then they say that nobody rings a bell at the top.
2 Betsy Devine // Sep 10, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I’d like to see some kind of class-action suit against best-selling gurus who urge folks to drop boring jobs to “live their dream.” This advice is a great moneymaker to the folks who sell it, while almost guaranteeing bankruptcy to folks who buy it. How many gourmet bistros, castle bed-and-breakfasts, niche ice-cream stores, or way-out-there housing options does anybody think our economy will support, and for how long? Thought experiment: Picture somebody who hunched in front of his computer churning out self-help books–what’s the chance he grew up dreaming about the life he’s living now, aside from its financial rewards?