The chorus to that hit song “Sauron’s First Night in Town” by Ben Fold’s Five.
We thought he was gone, but he’s come back again
Last week it was funny, but now the joke’s wearing thin
Cause everyone knows now that every night now could be Sauron’s first night in town…
apologies to one and all for multiple posts. System melting down I fear…windows…'nuff said?
Well, this isn’t very good, but seeing as how no one’s done Diana Gabaldon justice yet, I thought I’d give it a try. Apologies…
Editorial note: in this version, Frodo is a time-traveler who has unexpectedly arrived in Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age, bearing a mysterious ring that is somehow responsible for his transportation. Oh, yes, and everyone but Frodo speaks with a Scottish accent…
We rode up on a gentle slope, passing a few abandoned crofters cottages, and drew up outside the inn. The buildings looked exceedingly strange to me; I stared up at the three-storied inn and felt my heart sink. How would I manage to fit in here? How could I keep the ring secret, in a place like this? After the day’s events, I was frankly rather shell-shocked, and ready to find safety and a warm bed as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure this particular inn would provide either.
“We…we aren’t going to stay here for the night?” I spoke up timidly.
The three kilted hobbits turned to look at me, expressions of half-bewilderment, half-exasperation on their faces.
“Aye, and wha’s wrong wi’ it?” said Meriadoc MacKenzie. “I expect it’ll be good enough for ye.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then thought better of it. I was beholden to these three hobbits; they had rescued me from the Black Riders, who would have done God knows what with me. Better to just make the best of things, as difficult as that might seem, looking at our intended accomodations…
…After freshening up as best I could, I made my way downstairs to the common room with the other hobbits. The crowd was large and mixed; the squat and easygoing innkeeper was conversing in the corner with two dwarves and some rather strange-looking men, while other figures – kilted men, hobbits, and several undistinguishable personages – minded their own business throughout the room.
As soon as we entered, a chorus of welcome sprang up from several locals; evidently, they knew my companions intimately. I was shortly introduced to a number of different individuals, none of whose names I caught – they were all Mc-something-or-other. The locals were friendly and inquisitive, and they especially wanted to know what I, a so-called “Sassanach,” was doing in the Breelands. Remembering my late uncle’s occupation, I replied that I was writing a history and was interested in learning more about hobbits outside the Shire. Breelanders, as I was quickly learning, loved nothing more than to talk about themselves and their family histories. Eventually, though, I managed to convince them that I wasn’t quite ready to write my “book,” and they slowly drifted back into their normal conversations, leaving me alone. My companions were more interested, it seemed, in sampling the ale and catching up on clan news.
Suddenly, I noticed a strange-looking man sitting in the shadows near the wall; he was staring in my direction intently. A chill ran down my spine; was this one of my pursuers of earlier in the day? He certainly seemed as suspicious as they had been, and while somehow less menacing, I was still reluctant to meet his gaze. As the innkeeper passed by our table, I stopped him.
“Pardon, but who is that man sitting over there?”
Looking at me strangely for a moment – he was reacting to my uncommon accent, I realized – the innkeeper replied, “Och, I dinna rightly know. He’s a wanderer – Rangers, we call them. He hasna been here for a wee long while. I dinna know his given name, but we Breelanders call him Strider….”
The Hobbit Ring Song
I have something in my pocket,
It belongs upon my hand.
I keep it very close to me,
When strolling 'bout the land.
I’m sure you couldn’t guess it,
If you guessed a long, long while.
So I’ll take it out, and put it on.
Who needs a Cheshire smile?
In honor of WWE RAW’s tenth anniversary…
JR:Welcome,everybody,to RAW!I’m Jim Ross,and with me at ringside is Jerry “The King” Lawler…King,tonight’s main event is a war in every sense of the word…
KING:You said it,JR!The last time Frodo Baggins and Gollum were in the same ring,they almost tore the arena apart!I’m still trying to get the bloodstains out of my jacket!
JR:And with Sauron back in the locker room,you can count on a lot of double-crossing and double-dealing to be going on tonight…
Catch of the Ring-22 by Joseph Heller (much borrowed)
It was love at first sight.
The first time Frodo saw the ring, he fell madly in love with it.
Frodo had been left the ring by his Uncle Bilbo who was just short of crazy. The Hobbits of Hobbiton couldn’t quite figure it out. If he had been crazy, they would have known what to do. If he had been not-crazy, they could ignore him. But this being just short of crazy all the time confused them.
…
“Take the Ring, Gandalf. I don’t want to carry it,” pleaded Frodo.
The wizard Gandalf was Frodo’s friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, my boy,” said the wizard.
“Well why not? I’m obviously not fit to carry it,” Frodo insisted. Strider walked by, glanced to his left, then his right, then jumped through a window behind a bush. Frodo shook his head and turned his attention back to Gandalf. “Elrond keeps making the journey longer. When we first got here to Rivendell, he said I’d have to carry it as far as the Woods of Lothlorien. Now I’m supposed to carry it to Mordor and all the way up Mount Doom!”
“You’re wasting your time,” Gandalf was forced to tell him.
“Can’t you take it away from someone’s who’s crazy?”
“Oh, sure. I have to. The ring can’t be in the hands of someone who’s crazy.”
“Well, then. Take it away from me. I’m crazy. Ask Sam. He’ll tell you I’m crazy. I’ll go get him and he can tell you.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“Yes, I am. Ask any of the others. They’ll tell you how crazy I am.”
“All of them are crazy.”
“Then why don’t you keep them from going to Mordor?”
“Because they didn’t ask,” replied Gandalf.
“So all they’d have to do to not go on this mission to Mordor is ask?”
“Right.”
“So why don’t they ask?”
“Because they’re all crazy.”
“So if someone asks to be grounded because they’re crazy, you ground them?”
“Not exactly.”
“You mean there’s a catch?”
“Sure there’s a catch,” said Gandalf. “Catch of the Ring-22. Anyone who doesn’t want to go to Mordor isn’t really crazy.”
Mr. Smeagol Changes Rings by Christopher Isherwood
(This is the first page out of Christopher Isherwood’s Mr. Norris Changes Trains, practically unchanged)
My first impression was that the stranger’s eyes were of an unusually light blue. They met mine for several blank seconds, vacant, unmistakably scared. Startled and innocently naughty, they had reminded me of an incident I couldn’t quite place; something which had happened a long time ago, to do with the pilfering of Gandalf’s fireworks by a young hobbit. They were the eyes of a young hobbiton elvish pupil surprised in the act of breaking the rules. Not that I had caught him, apparently, at anything except his own divided thoughts: perhaps he imagined that I had some power to read them. At any rate, he seemed not to have heard or seem me come upon him at the edge of the stream from my vantage point on a stone, though I was not wearing the one ring, for he started violently at the sound of my voice; so violently, indeed , that his nervous recoil hit me like repercussion. Instinctively I took a pace backwards.
It was exactly as though we had collided with each other bodily in the street. We were both confused, both ready to be apologetic. Smiling, anxious to reassure him, I repeated my question:
'I wonder sir, if you could lead me to Mordor?'
Even now, he didn’t answer at once. He appeared to be engaged in some sort of rapid mental calcualtion, while his fingers, nervously active, sketched a number of flurried gestures around his torso, though he wore no waistcoat. For all they conveyed, he might equally have been going to undress out of imaginary clothing, to draw a blade, or merely to make sure that I hadn’t stolen a secretive object of value. Then the moment of agitation passed from his gaze like a little cloud, leaving a clear blue sky. At last he had understood what it was that I wanted:
'Yesss, yesss certainly preciousss.'
As he spoke he deftly crossed his arms and rubbed neck and shoulder with the opposite hand somewhat delicately, with a calming finger-tap, coughed, and suddenly smiled. His smile had great charm. It disclosed the ugliest teeth I had ever seen. They were like broken rocks.
'Certainly,' he repeated. 'Smeagol likes kind hobbitses'
A patriotic fervor grips the Shire after the enemies reponsible for the “Great Scourging” are repulsed…
…And I’m proud to be a Shireling for at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forgot the one who bore the ring of destiny.
And I’ll gladly stand up and raise my glass to those who seized the day.
'Cause there ain’t no doubt that I love the Shire.
Shirefolk are here to stay!
wava, I’m afraid for that last one, you must die.
I take off my metaphorical hat to everyone on this thread - especially the ones who did the Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, and Aristotelian versions…
Does anyone else feel the need for a Kim Stanley Robinson version? Someone must be able to do better than this:
After a couple hours of silent walking Frodo thought to change the subject, or at least enlarge it, and he said, “Strider, how long do you think we will have to stay hidden?”
“Don’t call me Strider! I’m not Strider. Strider is out there in the back of the hills, roaming alone already and doing what he wants, the bastard. Me, my name is Aragorn, you call me Aragorn, understand?”
“OK,” Frodo said, afraid.
“As for how long we will have to stay hiding, I think it may be forever.”
Treebeard would have to be Sax:
He stared at them; his eyes were not powerful enough unaided to show him all he wanted to see, but they did reveal the decidedly non-Orclike faces and curiously furry extremities. His memory included epic poems listing Middle-Earth’s species containing similar descriptions, but he couldn’t find the species that resembled this one in every detail. “Hrrrum, it could be nondescript,” he said to himself. “Wouldn’t that be something? It really makes you wonder if the mutation rate near the castle is higher than the standard rates. We should work up experiments to determine that.”
And of course, the gathering at Rivendell would be 100 pages long, and feature intense political debate ultimately leading up to a vision of a democratic future and a bunch of crazy, impassioned speeches; and Mordor would be a bunch of transnational companies… And the whole book would be cast as the thoughts of various of its characters…
Wow, thanks. I wasn’t sure anybody had even read it. Welcome to the boards.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Arden Ranger *
**wava, I’m afraid for that last one, you must die.
I know. I was working on a version of “La Marseilles” en francais because of the international cachet this thread has acquired. But it kept coming out like…
“Victoire sur les adversaires de la Shire.
Nous crachons en votre direction generale…”
“[Victory over the enemies of the Shire.
We spit in your general direction…”
I couldn’t decide if it was more faithful to the original to make “your” singular or plural. Ah well, 25 years of misuse and disuse, and I lack the French to make it authentic.
I am amazed, humbled, and snorting coffee through my nose over some of the posting here. Brilliant!
LOTR according to Erich Fried (a favourite German poet of mine)
Ein Versuch
Ich habe versucht
während ich den Ring vernichten muss
an das Vernichten zu denken
und den Ring nicht zu tragen
Und bin jetzt verdammt
weil der Versuch
vom Anfang an verdammt war
and in English (although it loses a bit in the translation…)
The Effort
I made the effort
while I had to destroy the ring
to think on the destroying
and not to wear the ring
And I now am condemned
because the effort
was condemned from the beginning
I´d be interested to know if anyone out there has ever even heard of Erich Fried…
ADAPTATION by Charlie Kaufman and Smeagol Kaufman
Adapted from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
INT. KAUFMAN’S APARTMENT
SUBTITLE: Hollywood, California, sometime during the Fourth Age
(KAUFMAN paces the floor.)
KAUFMAN: I am old. I am fat. I am ugly.
EXT. NEW ZEALAND ROAD
SUBTITLE: New Zealand, one year earlier.
(A white van drives down a narrow road winding through the New Zealand countryside.)
INT. WHITE VAN
TOLKIEN (V.O.): In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. Men dressed up as talking animals may achieve buffoonery or mimicry, but they do not achieve Fantasy.
(PETER JACKSON drives, with two FLUNKIES in the back. Next to him on the car seat is a cassette case marked A TOLKIEN READER.)
EXT. RUAPEHU, NEW ZEALAND
(Close in on the white van as it comes to a stop. As Jackson and the flunkies exit the car and begin taking notes, we pull back to reveal the majestic volcano Ruapehu in the distance.)
INT. L.A. RESTAURANT
SUBTITLE: Hollywood, California, one year later.
(Kaufman sits at a table eating lunch with Jackson)
KAUFMAN (V.O.): I’m old. I’m bald. I’m repulsive.
JACKSON: … and we loved that script about John Malkovich.
KAUFMAN: (nervously) Thank you.
JACKSON: So we were wondering, what are your thoughts on a Lord of the Rings script?
KAUFMAN: (sweating profusely) First, I think it’s a fantastic book.
JACKSON: Bilbo’s a great character, isn’t he?
KAUFMAN: Tolkien makes his imaginary world so fascinating. Plus all that material on the passing of the Elves, the fall of Numenor, pipeweed. Great, sprawling fantasy stuff. I’d want to be true to that.
(pause)
JACKSON: What does that mean?
KAUFMAN: Oh, well, I’m not exactly sure myself. I just don’t want to compromise it by making it a Hollywood product. You know, cramming in a token love story, or big splashy battles done with computers, or giving every guy in the movie a contrived character arc. You know, movie sh**.
(pause)
JACKSON: We’re thinking of casting Liv Tyler as Arwen.
INT. KAUFMAN’S APARTMENT
(Kaufman paces the floor, talking into his mini-recorder. As he speaks, we see a montage of the images he’s talking about.)
KAUFMAN: Okay, the movie starts. Darkness. Silence. Then the Ainur begin to sing. Then Melkor starts singing something different, and the music changes, and then Iluvatar shows them what their song has become, and the World is created. Then the Valar come to the World, and they struggle with Melkor, and then the elves come, and men, and hobbits, and the ages pass! Then we cut to Bilbo, sitting at home writing his book about hobbits, and the story begins! It’s perfect! It’s everything!
(He stops and thinks about what he’s just said for a minute.)
KAUFMAN: I am fat. I am old. I am repulsive.
(SMEAGOL bursts into the room.)
SMEAGOL: Brother must come with Smeagol to the seminar next time! The white wizard is so wise in the ways of screenwriting. So wise and so funny, with such a voice! Brother would like him, yes. The wizard says we must be original, but within our genre. Smeagol’s genre is the epic fantasy blockbuster, isn’t it my precious? . . . .
The Cosmopolitan version:
Find Your Perfect Man!
Having trouble figuring out whether you should be with a Halfling or an Easterling? Take our latest quiz and see if you should dump your current Numenorean for a new hottie!
It’s your eleventy-first birthday. Do you celebrate by:
A) Throwing a party for the whole town (disappearing in a puff of smoke optional)
B) Roaming the wilds of Eriador protecting the innocent, even though they’ll never know or be grateful for your sacrifice
C) Throwing a party for the whole town, then killing them all
Your idea of a perfect date is:
A) A twelve-course meal at a local hole-in-the-ground
B) Hiking along a mountain trail surrounded by primeval forests
C) Torturing the innocent
Your favorite food is:
A) Bacon, eggs, and mushrooms fried in butter, with tea and seedcake–for a light snack
B) Lembas and wild herbs, by the light of the full moon
C) Human souls
Your favorite hobbby is:
A) Smoking pipe-weed
B) Composing Elvish poetry
C) Extending the dominion of your dark master over all of Middle-Earth
Now count up your answers and find out where you should be looking for your ideal guy:
Mostly "A"s:
Your perfect man is a round mound of lovable fun with hairy feet. You and your happy hobbit enjoy good living and snuggling at home. You are compatible with Harfoots and Stoors, but watch out for those Fallowhides, especially those Tooks!
Mostly "B"s:
You like your men rough and tough, but with a softer, generous side. You and your Ranger love should enjoy plenty of outdoor activities–just remember to make him shower once in a while!
Mostly "C"s:
You like your men tall, dark, and evil. Yeah, maybe your hunka hunka burning Nazgul is a little insubstantial, but he makes up for it with his charm and winning personality. Plus those dark robes just scream “kinky” in the sack!
Chris_Y, that was wonderful! 
Here’s Fellowship of the Ring as if it were written by a particularly dim-witted college student on an exam (sadly, some of the real ones I’ve seen were not much better…)
In the olden days, the wrings of power were made and one of these wrings was made by the Black Duke Sharon. Being a forgetful person, he lost it, and was defeeted.
The Won Ring fell into a river that had some water in it. One day, a freaky little guy named Column was swimming in the river and he found the Won Ring. He liked how it looked, sew he put it on, and he became incested with it. Eventually, he liked it sew much that he called it “my preshuss.”
After a rilly long time, a hobo named Bill Bow found the wring when he was telling Column a joke. He liked the wring a lot too. He took it back with him to his home, which was named Baggins. Bill Bow lived in a place called the Squire.
When Bill Bow was really old, he got sew small that he disappeared (like a lot of old people). He gave his wring to his son Fredo, who was Italian. Fredo didn’t rilly want it, but he took it anyway. Then a magician named Randolph told him it was actually Sharon’s wring and that he wanted it back. Sharon was a very bad person. He wanted the wring sew he could disappear to and do all sorts of bad stuff when nobody could see him.
Fredo was scared, but Randolph told him he had better go give the wring back right now. Fredo took his maid with him, I think the maid’s name was Samantha or something. Fredo was actually rilly in love with his maid, just like in that movie with J-Lo. Along the way, they met some other hobos, named Mary and Pippi.
The hobos met a lot of people on their trip. One of these people was a hippie named Tom Bombadeer. He helped them get away from the Barrel Wrights. They also met a man named Walker (he was a Texas Ranger) in a bar. He helped them get away from the Black Writers. Finally, they got to the place called River Dell. Here, they met a lot of elvis.
The head elvis, named Enron, called a meeting to figure out what to do with the Won ring. Some people wanted to use it to make everybody disappear, but other people said no, that it had to be killed. Everybody argued a lot, and there was a lot of talking and not much else happened. Finally, they all decided that Fredo should thro the wring into a great big whole. He said ok.
A bunch of people went with Fredo on a fellow ship. There was Gim Lee, who was a midget from China, Leg O’Las, an elvis from Ireland, the other hobos, Bore O’Meer, another man from Ireland, and also Walker, who was rilly the king or something. Oh, and Randolph went along too.
They all went into a rilly big cave named Maria, where they had to fight with dorks and gobblings. Then a big monster named Bal Rog came, and Randolph tried to use his magic tricks to get him to go away, but Bal Rog slipped and fell into the abbess, and he pulled Randolph into the abbess too. Everyone was rilly sad.
After they stopped crying, they went to a place called Dorian, where they met more elvis, including the queen elvis, whose name was Glad Reel. She was kind of a strange person, because she spent all the time looking into a bowl of water.
They walked some more, and saw some rilly big statutes. Then a bunch more dorks came, and they had to fight them off. Bore O’Meer tried to steel Fredo’s wring because he was so scared of the dorks that he wanted to disappear, but Fredo told him no, and he disappeared himself. The dorks killed Bore O’Meer, which was rilly sad because even tho he tried to steel the wring, he was a good guy. Finally, Fredo and his maid went off together to thro the wring in the big whole. The other hobos were kidnapped by the dorks, and Walker, Gim Lee, and Leg O’Las decided to follow them.
Since you asked…
“Betrayal - Goddess, sing the betrayal of Saruman the White,
murderous, doomed, that cost Rohan countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Sauron was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Mithrander, wizard of Gray and treacherous Saruman.”
With extreme apologies to Robert Fagles, from whose translation of the Illiad I have doctored the above.
Mocroidh, I laughed so hard I almost choked. I knew this was a parody, though, and not a “real” college paper when you used you spelled the synonym for “also” “t-o” instead of “t-o-o.”
I’m suprised that your fixional college student didn’t include a duscusion of the poetrie in Fellow Ship of the Ring. “Tokeen made up a lot of poems and songs for the Hobits and Elfs. he wasnt a verry good Poet, tho, because some of them don’t rime. He made up his own languages to. He was the only one who could speak Elf and Tokeen is dead now so no one knows what the Elfs really sounded like.”
Thanks for a great laugh!!!
Kathleen
LOTR meets Pinky and The Brain…
(with Saruman as The Brain and Grima Wormtongue as Pinky)
Grima: “So, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?”
Saruman: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky. TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD…”
Grima (blandly): “Oh, all right. Brain… So, I guess having that King Theodin guy under our complete control will come in handy then, eh?”
Saruman (not sure he’s heard him right): “Who?”
Grima: “King Theodin.” points
Saruman: “He’s under our control, you say, Pinky?” evil smile
Grima: “Well, I think so, Brain. While you were sleeping, I used some of that dusty stuff you were using on those cute female Orcs last week…”
Saruman (quickly): “We don’t need to talk about THAT, Pinky.”
Grima: “Oh. well, all right then, Brain…anyway, I had him get me some cheese, and he did it. So I think he’s under our control.”
Saruman (rubs his hands together): “Excellent, Pinky! If we control Rohan, we control the horses. Nothing will stop us!”
Grima: “Oh, well, except for the Fellowship of the Ring.”
Saruman (wearily, tired of finding out he doesn’t know what Pinky’s talking about): “The who?”
Grima: “No, Brain, The Who were an English rock group. The Fellowship of the Ring.”
Saruman (getting frustrated): “I KNOW who The Who were, Pinky.”
Grima: “Oh…then why’d you ask, Brain?”
Saruman (getting an idea): “Pinky, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Grima: “I think so, Brain, but I’ve tried and TRIED to get Eowyn to like me and she’s just not biting.”
Saruman: “No, Pinky. If we can get King Theodin to convince the Fellowship of the Ring that he’s on THEIR side, when really we control him…we can gain control of the Fellowship, AND THEN WE CAN TAKE OVER THE WORLD!”
Grima: “Oh, okay, Brain… Except for Mordor.”
Saruman: “No, Pinky, with the Ring, we would even control Mordor! No one could stop us!”
Grima: “If you say so, Brain. Personally, I think this is going to be just like the time you went on Jeopardy, but ok”