Taking Guy's advice, I just checked out Amy's blog, Frewrious Spew [which explains why nothing came up last week when, working on 'overheard intelligence', I tried to surreptitiously sneak a peek at snoo_snoo]. Apart from everything else, she has a link in one of her posts to the greatest Lord Of The Rings site ever [and I know this even though it is the only Lord Of The Rings site I have ever visited]. The site presents 'fictional' secret diaries of all the Lord Of The Rings characters, in which much of the action turns on everyone being a "pervy hobbit-fancier". It is soooo great! It takes the perspective that the characters are all perving on and bitching about one another, and makes it plain that maintaining their looks is much more of a concern for the Fellowship et al than is saving the world from the Dark Lord Sauron [who isn't so bad really. Elrond just never forgave him for being honest about purple really not being his colour]. I cacked myself big time. The very existence of this site also provides great evidence for me to use when I argue that I'm not totally crazy for thinking that there is something very gay going on in Lord Of The Rings. None of my immediate or extended family members will listen to my theories, but they'll have to be won over by these diaries. I mean, they are actual documents of the characters' secret thoughts! Ahem. It was really rather scary that I immediately understood every single LOTR reference [sourced from book and film and various Appendices] contained therein. Am perhaps much bigger LOTR dork than had allowed self to think. Oh god! Listen to me! I'm actually using the abbreviation "LOTR"! [And, have unnaccountably switched to Bridget Jones-speak]. There is evil here that does not sleep. Anyway, favourite line from hobbit-fancier secret diaries is "Sam will kill him if he tries anything", which always follows a remark about how somebody has the major hots for Frodo. I like it, even though I don't agree with it. I have always maintained that Frodo is way more into Sam than Sam is into him, with Sam being the one who actually believes all that "purely platonic man-bond" claptrap that has been put about. But it really works better the "pervy hobbit-fancier" way [where Frodo is the primary object of affection for most characters] because it allows for Frodo to constantly mistake all the groping that's coming his way for "the corrupting power of the one ring" turning his fellow travellers into grasping thieves. Hee hee. And I am just going to die if no-one else has any idea of what I am talking about and why it is funny. Because I am not a LOTR dork, okay? I just know some stuff. It's completely random. Well, sure, so I am named out of the books, and I have read them twice, and I have lost count of the number of times I've seen both films so far, but do the words 'Aragorn' and 'hot' mean anything to you?! That could happen to anybody. And yeah, so what if I have already got my aunty in Bendigo to book Boxing Day tickets so that I can see the final instalment with my little cousins on the very first day of its release? Huh? It's a real treat for them! These things do just happen, you know? It's only when you pile them all up together like this that they begin to look pretty bad and indicative of something. I will freely admit to being a member of my own family, but I am most definitely not a LOTR dork. And besides, I have real and conscientious misgivings about LOTR and its racism and use of 'dark continent' tropes to deny empathy for the Orc, Goblin and Uruk-Hai populations. I mean, Orcs and such may fight in hordes, but they each have an interiority too, you know, and are probably not cannibals either. That's all just self-serving Western lies and hogwash. So there! I bet you never heard a real LOTR dork say something like that! This kind of 'revisionist' analysis of the text in an attempt to make a wider point about prejudice in society generally is strictly the domain of normal, disinterested people who are in no way LOTR dorks. Okay? So, anyways, good on Amy for dishing up such bloggity goodness.