How about Tennessee Williams’ version of LotR? Or, what if Martin Scorsese directed LotR?
I’ve never seen a thread with so many debut posts…the whole last 2 pages are newbies! With 800 replies, and over 155,000 views, isn’t is time to save the poor hampsters and kill this one off?
Since the above is not sufficient parody, here’s the JRR Salinger version of the cliffhanger at the end of Two Towers:
It was cold as a witch’s tit in Mordor that night as I sat there watching Frodo and that fat bastard Samwise sleep. We’d just eaten some rabbits, or Frodo and I watched Sam eat them. I’m a very light eater. I really am. That’s why I’m so damn skinny. I generally just eat raw fish, which isn’t much, but has a lot of vitamins. That’s why I look young for my age, actually.
Anyway, I was just sitting there watching the two hobbits sleep, trying to think of a way to get my goddam ring back from Frodo. I really wanted to punch him in his crazy nose and say, “Give me back my goddam ring, ya bastard!” but I couldn’t. The truth is, I’m yellow. I try not to show it, but I am. For instance, when I was in that riddle contest with Bilbo, and he asked me what was in his pockets, I should’ve just said, “How 'bout handing over my Precious, ya goddam dirty crooked bastard!” But then he would’ve said, his phony, hobbitty voice all innocent and all, “What Precious?” And what I probably should’ve done was just wring his moron neck for him, but I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have the guts to do it. Instead, I would’ve just stood there and tried to look tough until he put the Precious on and disappeared. I know I’m yellow. I really am. I’m not kidding myself.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about while I watched old Frodo and Sam sleep. I sort of think I need a little vacation. After that whole crazy thing in Mordor with Sauron, my nerves were shot. They really were. I decided right then that I would leave and try to find my friend Shelob, see if she wanted to have a drink with me or something. Old Shelob. What a gal. She’s a funny girl, that Shelob. I wouldn’t describe her as strictly beautiful, but she knocked me out. I think it was the way she kept all her cocoons in the back of the cave. That kills me.
Anyway, that’s what I decided I’d do. I took a last look down at the goddam hobbits. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. Then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, “Ssssssssssssleeep tight, ya moronsssssssss!” I’ll bet I woke up every orc bastard in the whole goddam Mordor. Then I got the hell out of there. Some stupid troll left some human bones all over the rocks, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.
That was abosolutely GENIUS! I LOVE it! Oh my.
Would you mind if I most humbly added a number of my own rendition from the musical of the same name? Here’s Eowyn’s Solo:
You Can’t Get a Man With a Sword (hmm…)
Oh my faaaathers were kings and sturdy warriors they say,
That’s why I have “some skill with a blade”…
I could go ouuuut in the grass and kick orc-ass all the day,
But tell me what progress I’ve maaade…
I’m quick with a dagger,
Towards villains, rogues, and blackgaurds,
I could beat
Any slave or lord—
But my score with a feller
Is lower than a cellar,
Oh, ya can’t get a man with a sword…
I’m cool, brave, and daring
To see a uruk glaring,
And a couple of them I’ve gored—
But a look from dear Strider
Can make me run and hider,
Oh, ya can’t get a man with a sword!
With a swooooord, with a swooooord,
Oh, ya can’t get a man with a sword!
When I’m out and sparring–
Some badguy’s features marring–
Then I’m never a moment bored,
But I get all forlooorn,
When I’m with Aragooorn,
Oh, ya can’t get a man with a sword!
If his acquaintance’s worth makin’,
He’ll probably be taken
By some elf bound for Valinor…
But such love’s bound to go on,
So much for girls from Rohan!
And you can’t make him yield
In the field with your shield,
Oh, you caaaan’t get a maaaan with a sword!!
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SUBJECT: drumz in the d33p
Drums, drums in the deep!
They are coming. We cannot hold the door.
They are coming.
We cannot get out.
We cannot get ou
421 Timed out, closing transmission channel.
e e cummings:
(code tag necessary to keep the proper spacing, just ignore it)
t g n
h i frodo and gollum fought on the edge of the c r a c k s of DOOM
e r
gollum fell
d
o
w
n
and the ring (and frodo's fin) fell with him
g
e
r
william carlos wiliiams:
so much depends
upon
a small half-
ling
carrying a
ring
to the dark lord’s
land.
Management: The Ring MUST be destroyed.
Sysadmin: How do you want me to destroy the Ring?
Management: It must be dropped into the fires whence it was forged. Can you do it?
Sysadmin: Yes, but…
Management: Spare me the details, talk to the Project Officer.
Project Officer (unfolding plan): The Ring is currently in the possession of the Ringbearer, in The Shire, here. We need it dropped in Orodruin, here.
Sysadmin (glances at plan): That’s easy, give me the Eagle King, I’ll have him pick up the Ringbearer in the Shire, fly across Middle Earth, and drop Frodo straight into the fires of Mount Doom.
Project Officer: You can’t do that!
Sysadmin: But it’s the most elegant solution with the least overhead and minimal downtime.
Project Officer: Well, Marketing feel it would be a better epic struggle of Good vs. Evil if you did it as some sort of land-based quest.
Sysadmin (rolls eyes, thinks for a moment): OK then, give me an army of dwarves, they’ll tunnel under Mount Doom, diverting its lava flow right up to the mines of Moria. Then Frodo can have an Elvish escort to the Misty Mountains, meet the lava half way, and drop the Ring in.
Project Officer: Mmmm, no. Budget won’t allow such an extravagant solution. We’re not made of money you know.
Sysadmin (thinks for a longer moment): OK, I can do it with just an army of Elves, but it’ll be a close call.
Project Officer: Sorry, but that’s out of the question. HR need us to represent all the races of Middle-Earth in the solution or it will conflict with our Equal Employment policy.
Sysadmin (thinks for a l-o-n-g, sullen, moment): RIGHT! Give me a dwarf, an elf, a wizard, two men and four hobbits. But first I’ll have to re-route the Fellowship via the mines of Moria, as there’s too much traffic in the gap of Rohan. Also, the firewall at Mordor means we’ll need a consultant to hack another way in - and he’ll probably turn out to be flaky. And it’ll take until half way through the Fourth Age to do it.
Project Officer: That’s too long! It has to be done by the end of the Third Age!
Sysadmin (smoke pouring out of ears): WHAT! OK, but we’ll have to do it on practically no sleep, run hundreds of leagues barefoot without rest, eating nothing but lembas to keep awake. By the time the Fellowship get anywhere near Mordor, Sauron’s army will have hacked into Gondor, and most of Fangorn will have crashed to the ground. And there’ll be a massive bottlenecks at Helm’s Deep because there’s not enough resources to handle the increased load. You can also expect the Shire to be scoured but then that’s probably outside your terms of reference.
Project Officer: But can it be done?
Sysadmin: Yes, but…
Project Officer: Right then! Excellent! You could have just told me that at the start instead of being so difficult about it…
I had tried every sin possible to me - pride, greed, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth. I was still honked off that I couldn’t do the adultery bit, but no go.
My boyfriend put me in touch with a pair of guys he met at a Hobbiton parade some time back. Frodo and Sam were cute and quite sweet in their devotion to each other. They said that they were planning on sneaking into a place where at least three of these sins were happenning all the time, every time. They would take me in the back way. Joy. I get to add sneaking.
I was pleased with this idea until I met the other member of their party. Smeagol was just as tiny as Frodo and Sam, but he had fish breath.
Skipping toward Mordor, by Dan Savage
We were Slashdotted Avalonian!
Somebody posted this thread on slashdot.org and the new super hamsters felt the kriptonite power of the /. !
So, inspired by this:
The slashdot effect: LotR’s version:
After the ring was picked from the embers at Frodo’s house:
Gandalf: Do you see anything!
Frodo: Nothing, I see nothing, wait! There are markings!
Gandalf: It is what I feared: it is the language both feared by troll and geek alike: “one link to rile them all, One link to fark them and in the DOS like mess bust them!
Short answer: no
Oh, c’mon, you have to take this just a bit farther…
[Gandalf] I was working the day watch out of Robbery. I got a call from Division that a strange creature wanted to report a theft.
Sir, can you tell me what was taken?
[Gollum] Preciousssss! He took my precioussss!
[Gandalf] Can you describe the item more exactly?
[Gollum] My birthday present, it was! Such a lovely golden ring it was, yessss! My precioussss!
[Gandalf] Thank you. Do you have any idea who might have taken it?
[Gollum] Nassty hobbit Baggins, yesss! He stole our preciousss! No good tricksy thief! We hates him! We hates him!
[Gandalf] Just the facts, sir.
Don’t kill it off yet.
I haven’t done my Zelazny,
Trolly hasn’t posted his Shakespeare,
I haven’t even reread Musashi yet,
and nobody’s done the story in Haiku!
Nor have I seen a Heinlein treatment, or a Zane Grey/Louis Lamour.
Ah, go ahead and close it.
I’ll steal it and put it on my site.
This is an affectionate and non-derogatory tribute to ‘Engrish’.
See Engrish.com for more…
You are of course familiar with Tolkein’s original verse:
Three Rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for the Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
HERE IT IS IN ENGRISH:
I will ring my Elf friend with three heads. The sky is blue!
Bless my stone Dwarves. His seven lings are happy with luck.
These nine men have warm rings.
The Lord sits on his dark Ring. I have a beautiful tiger.
Let’s go to Mordor together!
My Ring rules me, find my Ring! Bind my ring.
Put in your finger in my Ring! You will disappear in darkness.
Let’s go to Mordor together!
Shall I compare thee to an elven smile?
Thou art more precious, and more radiant,
Dark winds have stirred The Shire’s trees this past while,
And elven smiles may shortly be too scant.
All-times, full bright, the eye of Sauron burns,
And never does his black complexion wax,
Now every precious one, to compost turns,
Through orcish blade, or Uraquayian axe.
But thy eternal beauty does not fade,
Nor thy corrupting hunger to consume;
Full faded is my will to leave this glade,
Yet carried shallt thou be to meet thy Doom.
For whilst thou live’st, and mortals think them free,
So lasts thy spell, that they submit to thee.
________ per W Shakespeare
I know somebody already posted a fine Dr. Dre version of LotR, but I had to post the one I wrote too… can’t help it. 
If it was up to me
You Nazgul’d stop comin’ up to me
With your swords out lookin’ up to me
Like you want something from me
When last the ring was out you wasn’t chasin’ me
But now that I got this little magic ring
All the evil wanna come to me like it was some disease
But you ain’t gettin’ nothing from me cuz I’m from the holes of
[H-h-hobbiton! Hobbiton!]
I told ‘em all,
All them little hobbits – who you think helped stow them all?
Now you wanna keep it secret keep it safe like I ain’t hid the thing?
What you think I sold the ring? Cuz I hate the bling?
Now all I wear is elven mail all day and a sword named Sting?
What? Cuz I been on a quest with a dwarf and an elf trying to hide this damn Samwise fling?
I ain’t having that.
This is the millenium of the THIRD age
And I ain’t gonna write page after page
So give me one more orc of rage and f**k Gollum you can lock his cage.
So where’s them Uruk-Hai at?
It’s like Mordor in this habitat
But all you Moria rats know that I had spied the eye when you wuz blowin’ candles for that Bilbo’s brat.
Nowadays every Nazgul wantsta talk
Like they got something to say
But nothing comes out when they move their lips
Just a bunch of jibberish
And motherf***ers act like they forgot about Frodo.
- Daryl - http://www.darylbeattie.com
After reading through all this I had to join to make a request. A couple years ago I struggled through Swann’s Way by Proust and I would oh so love to see a version done in his style.
Thanks to everyone that has posted so far, some of these posts had me in tears.
Ents - By Joyce Kilmer (Trees)
I think that I shall never see
A ring as lovely as an Ent.
An Ent whose hungry mouth is prest
against Middle-earth’s sweet flowing breast;
An ent that looks at Mordor all day,
and lifts her leafy arms to pray;
An Ent that may in summer wear
A nest of Goblins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom hobbits have lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
To destroy a ring, Hobbits are sent,
But only fire can hurt an Ent.
NJ CoolBreeze
P.S. Joyce Kilmer was born in NJ! w00t!
[Rolling Stones’ ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’]
[voiceover] PESCI: See, Sauron’s got it all worked out. He gives nine rings to the dwarves, seven rings for the men… he even got the elves to take three rings, you know, try ‘em out for a while. Gifts. Yeah, right. Everybody thinks they’ve got this new power, but it all just leads back to Sauron, so anyone who accepts, he’s got ‘em by the balls. He’s basically the boss of Middle Earth at this point. There’s a few guys who aren’t with anyone, you know, some elves and men, who go to war on him, but what the fuck are they supposed to do? On Sauron’s turf in Mordor, against all those orcs, and their own bosses aren’t backing ‘em. So Sauron’s all set to whack ‘em, it’s not even a fight, and this one lieutenant, Isildur, makes the luckiest fuckin’ shot you ever saw, and gets the Ring off of Sauron. Sauron goes on the lam, end of story, or so it seemed at the time. I’m getting ahead of myself. This ring is the key to the enterprise… Sauron runs the whole ring racket with it. So Elrond, the elves’ capo, tells him throw it into the fires of Mount Doom where they made it, but Isildur gets it into his head he’s going to be the boss of Middle Earth. Well, it don’t work that way. He only thinks he’s going to be boss. The Ring’s still loyal to Sauron, and it’s tellin’ Isildur any fuckin’ thing he wants to hear. So Isildur runs off with the Ring, they find his body in a fuckin’ stream, and the Ring’s gone. Vanished. Nobody hears a peep about it for three thousand years. Then, can you believe it? The last person in the world you’d have guessed, it gets picked up by this Hobbit guy from outta the Shire, Bilbo Baggins, who just wants to sit in his den and smoke his pipe. He’s running around Middle Earth with Sauron’s one Ring of power and nobody knows what it is, not even Gandalf, this wizard’s got him hoofin’ around the woods with a bunch of dwarves, he’s supposed to be so fuckin’ smart, but even he doesn’t recognize the Ring until Bilbo’s a senior citizen. Naturally Gandalf doesn’t want to carry it back to Mordor himself, so weasel that he is, he cons Bilbo’s nephew Frodo into carrying it. Nice kid. Obviously he’d be the one to take it. But it’s always the nice guys who take the biggest fall.
Because it must be done…
Qebmey Joh
Sum J.R.R. K’tolkien
Pak Ca’
‘Ay’ Los
Hurg Daq leF
Qibli’, ‘ej wovmohwi’li’ mac nom, Cah MevmeH ram. Cahli’ku’ doy’. Hudli’ So’ maswoV, ‘ej susli’ biR.
[ul]
[li]Sometimes, if you really really need one, an eagle will give you a ride. But you shouldn’t abuse the privelege.[/li][li]If the mountain doesn’t want you to cross, don’t bother trying.[/li][li]A little soil from Lothlorien goes a long way[/li][li]Nine minus one is eight[/li][li]Mithril is good[/li][li]Orcs are bad[/li][li]When someone is late, it’s not always his fault[/li][li]A broken sword can be reforged[/li][li]People don’t always appreciate the way you choose to honor their birthday[/li][li]If you put a helmet on a woman of Rohan, she looks like a man[/li][li]Spider venom doesn’t always kill; sometimes it just paralyzes[/li][/ul]