Okay. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would to write and post mine.
Want to see it?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=3023863#post3023863
Maybe we could make a special forum for all LOTR parody threads and have one forum to rule them all.
Ba Boom
Thank-you folks I’ll be here all night. 
I’ve never read that LOTR thread. or the Python-LOTR thread. Only a Trek-LOTR thread would i read.
hey, that’s a good idea…
Yes yes yes–that’s all very fascinating and what-not but it begs the question of why the Dark Lord (or ‘Big D’ as I like to call him) would want to be invisible while he was kicking mucho elven ass! Wouldn’t it be much cooler if the elves were standing around talking about the usual elvish crap like how much tea they sipped that morning, how the sun brings the highlights out in their hair, how mah-velous they all look in their sparkly armor and then–BAM!!–suddenly they’re getting the ever-living shit beaten out of them and they can’t even see what’s doing it?! Dude, that would ROCK!!!111!! Man, if I was Big D that’s how I would kick ass, none of this meandering around in my horny (err–maked that horned) armor acting stupid; I’d sneak up on those namby-pamby do-gooders and give them the worst wet willy of their life!
And what would happen if a Ringwraith put on the Ring–would that make his cloak invisible but him visible? If I was a Ringwraith I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be visible being all old and ugly like that. Fucking old bastards–can’t even ride their horses right. If I was Big D I’d have my Ringwraiths be naked Swedish women. At least then if they got their asses kicked you could, like, spank them or something to punish them. What the hell are you going to do if an old guy fucks up–yell at him? Yea right, old geezer’d probably have a freakin’ heart attack and then you’d have to go corrupt more humans which would be a royal pain in the ass. Yea, Swedes is the way to go I’m thinking. Surprised Tolkien didn’t think of that.
That old bastard.
<note-take this response with a large dose of 
please>
Tars Tarkas, if you like Star Trek, you might like these:
http://www.teemings.com/extras/lotr/g/generoddenberry.html
and
Heh, Wabbit… All this reiterated talk of invisibly kicking “wimpy” elves puts me in mind of Sid, the maladjusted kid next door in Toy Story. Well, I know you’re only being funny, and I don’t mind it, but your questions can be answered within the framework of Tolkien’s lavishly-detailed world, so I’ll have a stab:
No-one who put the One Ring on had a choice over whether or not to become invisible. They were either weak enough that it could set about dragging them into the wraith-world at once - which the invisibility was only a side-effect of - or they weren’t. There must have been occasions when Gandalf who wore Narya the Great, the Ring of Fire, one of the Three, could have seriously done with turning invisible; but he didn’t.
Elves of Noldorian lineage, and this included Galadriel, Elrond, and Glorfindel (missing from the film; in the book, it is he, not Arwen, who meets up with Strider and the hobbits during their flight to Rivendell), are attuned enough to the spirit world of the Wraiths that they can see them quite clearly. So even if the Ring could have turned Sauron invisible, such Elves could have seen him; and the Last Alliance, seen in the opening sequences of FotR, included most of the remaining Noldor left in Middle-Earth under Gil-galad, their last High King.
Tom Bombadil could easily see Frodo when he wore the Ring. It’s interesting to speculate whether Gandalf could have. There are no occasions in LOTR when this gets put to the test, and I don’t remember Bilbo ever putting on the Ring in Gandalf’s presence in “The Hobbit” - though even if he had, we’d have had to remember that not everything in TH is necessarily consistent with LOTR, or needs to be.
As to “wimpy” again, Noldor in pursuit of Morgoth toughed it out all the way across the Arctic ice when they couldn’t get ships (see The Silmarillion), they went through orc armies like a hot sword through runny butter, and it took several Balrogs to take down Fëanor.
Presumably the Nazgûl could have been invisible if they had chosen to leave off their robes. (I’m guessing it’s the difference between putting clothes on after you’ve turned into a Wraith, and just turning invisible along with everything you wear when you put a Ring on.) However, cool as invisibility might seem on first reflection, I’ll run with the idea that it really fucks up your sense of identity after the first few hundred years, especially once it’s sunk in that you can’t become visible again even if you want to - so you’ll cling to anything you can to give yourself something that your brain can think of as “you”.
Gee, Malacandra, did you not catch the gist of my OP? :rolleyes: