Me: I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Ben: How did he know they were legs
Ben: if they were trunkless?
Me: Egyptian restoration project.
Ben: Two vast and legless, stoneless legs of stone.
Ben: Fuck you, Shelley.
Me: Did you finish that book yet?
Ben: I have read more chapters.
Ben: It turns out they were chapters I had read before.
Ben: But we had never discussed them so it didn't count.
Me: Wot hobben?
Ben: Uh fuckin old lady fought some weasels.
Ben: And pregnant bitch wrote unconvincingly in her diary.
Ben: Those two chapters were like eight chapters long.
Ben: So I am actually ahead of schedule.
Me: Whoo sounds like things are finally picking up.
Ben: Yes.
Ben: It is no longer surprising when Stephen King invents a shitty female character.
Ben: Like, just fucking hate the old lady.
Me: Because she fought off the weasels?
Ben: Yes, I wish she had died.
Ben: Eaten by weasels.
Ben: Would have been a much better story.
Ben: The light of mankind, the center of salvation, left as a weasel-eaten corpse on a rural Nebraskan road.
Ben: *truck pulls up with survivors inside*
Ben: "Fucking shit."
Me: But the weasels were sent by the Walkin Dude.
Ben: How?
Ben: The Walkin Dude doesn't even know where she is.
Me: Because they're creatures of evil so he can control them.
Ben: Wasn't until she fought off the weasels that she felt his eyeball turn towards her and acknowledge her.
Ben: Fortunately, we know that she will die soonish.
Me: Oh whatever.
Me: How will she die?
Me: Because she's 108?
Ben: No, because God says so.
Me: Fucking God.
Ben: Fucking God.
Me: Goddammit, Stephen King.
Ben: Why isn't that the name of this blog?
Ben: Anyway I'm enjoying myself despite the bad female characters.
Ben: Mostly because I am hopeful that the premise of the book can lead to a satisfying conclusion.
Me: What is the premise of the book?
Ben: Disease wipes out humanity.
Me: But there is magic.
Ben: Also God.
Ben: Unfortunately, yes.
Ben: And the corn.
Me: Is that fat kid still fat?
Ben: So fat.
Me: Aw shit.
Ben: Progress is being made, though.
Ben: Really just want to get back to the search for the Dartower.
Me: What % remains of this tome?
Ben: Probably less than half.
Ben: So just forty thousand pages.
Me: You have already been reading it for six months.
Me: More than half the time since you began this project has been spent on this book.
Ben: As Stephen King's most popular book ever, don't you think it is worthy of this amount of introspection?
Ben: Would you be complaining this much if I had spent this long on EYE OF DAGRON instead?
Me: Truly that was the greatest of King's works.
