August 27, 2001

Well, the day-job has still been pounding on me pretty hard (hence the dearth of entry updates), but I did find a nice retreat from the pain.

I re-read "The Lord of The Rings" for the first time since Junior High.

Oh, sure, I've poked around in it once or twice a year looking for references, or reading some of the passages I liked best, but I REALLY needed a full re-read before Peter Jackson's movie hits the screen, and forever changes the way my mental pictures work.

Hopefully that will be the only loss when the movie comes out. I've been poking around the LOTR Website and looking at the videos there. Hoo BOY! They are doing something entirely new, and really taking some care with this. This is not Hollywood... this is some new creature entirely -- something I hope survives to entertain us with other tales in the new millenium.

Then again, maybe mine is just a foolish, boyish hope for the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream.

Anyway, in re-reading the book, I found that I still love it. The ending was much happier than I remember it the first time, but that's because as a teenager I couldn't see anything happy about the Grey Havens and Frodo taking off across the sea with the elves. And mostly I think that's because I wanted MORE Tolkien, and there really wasn't any. The Silmarillion is just not the same.

And on another topic altogether, lemme give a big shout out to all the folk who arrived here from Memepool. And some plasma-powered thanks are in store for the author of that GREAT plug, which sent some 5,000 unique IP addresses my way.

By the way, I'm sorry the forums have been down. They should be back up shortly (if they aren't back up already). In the meantime, you might pop into #schlock_mercenary over at Nightstar (irc.nightstar.net, ports 6665-6669, and if you need help getting set up, don't come to me. I'm a N00b at this IRC thing myself). The talk there has been cool.