Hey, all, need to pick the hive-mind.

I'm making (heh, heh) my students write a compare/contrast essay, selecting an epic hero or a modern superhero to whom to contrast/compare Beowulf to.

I want to give my student a good starting-off list of hero/ines to brainstorm from. They can select who they want, but some of them might need a little inspiration.

So far, I have:

Odysseus Gilgamesh Luke Skywalker Frodo Neo (The Matrix) Blade Batman Superman Spiderman Wonder Woman King Arthur Xena Frodo Aragorn Harry Potter Hercules Aeneas Percy Jackson Simba (The Lion King) Dean or Sam Winchester

The hero/ines need to hit most of the characteristics for epic heros:

1. Represent their culture's ideal of what qualities a hero needs to possess.

2. Have superhuman qualities (strength, skill, powers, determination, etc)

3. Have some kind of divine/supernatural parentage or history.

4. Be on some type quest for something -- an extrinsic quest, or an intrinsic quest.

5. Oppose larger-than-life or superhuman/supernatural villans.

6. The story contains elements of the divine or supernatural.

Any additions you can make would be great, especially ones from pop culture than 16-18 year old African-American kids would be familiar with.

• Buffy's not on the list, because I am using her as my example to model all of the steps of the writing process. :)

(x-post with Bitches)

Any additions you can make would be great, especially ones from pop culture than 16-18 year old African-American kids would be familiar with.

John Stewart, Green Lantern.

The women's final was on ESPN2 at midnight, sumi. That's the recording I'm watching. The men's final will be the same.

Patton Oswalt was very right about The Mechanic. I might be out of touch, but that was dark for an American action movie. Also, shit, so fucking hot. I'm almost worried.

In trailer news, they've finally put Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel in the same movie. Now get Statham and Hardy together, stat.

John Stewart from TDS?

Ooh, Green Lantern! Excellent.

Major accomplishments of the day - showered, hair done, makeup applied, and outside clothes on the body.

CJ is at the dojo helping out with today's belt testing. Which, I think, means working the front of the dojo - answering phones and helping anyone who has questions.

Outside goals for the day - get CJ's hair cut, go to the gaming store and see if anything calls our name, and maybe a movie.

Inside goals for the weekend - clean up the place. All of a sudden the clutter is driving me crazy.

I caught A Cat peeing on clean laundry this morning. He seemed rather proud of himself, worse yet.

I love that assignment, Erin. My junior year in high school is when we read Beowulf, and there was some trouble with hiring our English teacher so we had a series of subs for the first month or two of school and each one would come in and start us off reading Beowulf. Me being the good girl I was, I actually read it 4-5 times. If only any of them had asked us to write a paper like that, it would have been so much more worthwhile.

I think I'm as far as I can get with my taxes with the documents I have so far - got the W-2 today, so that helped a lot. Now waiting on the 1099 or whatever for stock sales. Definitely not going to try to estimate that from my records. Mixture or options and stock sold, taxes withheld on some but maybe not all, way too many opportunities for me to make a mistake

Next up: getting dressed and doing some of these Outside Things that seem to be so popular. Apple Store, Barnes and Noble, maybe Container Store though that is perilous. Possibly a quick trip to the new coffee roastery that should finally be actually open today.

-t, is your local Container Store the one in Walnut Creek?

I am very eager to do my taxes, and I need the IRS to get on the updates so that I can. I'm going to buy another car and will have a better idea of budget once taxes are done.

I, too, am eager to do my taxes...but I'm still waiting on one more form (from my mortgage company! Kind of an important one!). This will also be the first year my taxes are really complicated (mortgage! homebuyer tax credit! home office deduction!) and am wondering if I should find a professional...

meara, yeah, I usally use a deluxe version of Turbo Tax but I might go to a pro if I can't deal. #HardBeingAGrownUp