Unstructured Path to Rivendell

Perhaps Frodo and Sam would have had an easier trip if they had had Google Maps.

The Outing of Gandalf

NEW YORK — Hobbit author J.R.R. Tolkien served up a bombshell Friday evening during a reading at Carnegie Hall, telling a crowd of fans from throughout the United States that Gandalf, the wise Wizard who is Bilbo's mentor and sometimes companion, is Jewish.

"I always saw Gandalf as Jewish," Tolkien said in answer to a fan's question about whether the wizard had ever found Christ.

The crowd of about 2,000 hardcore Hobbit fans, who had won tickets through a nationwide drawing, exploded in screams and applause at the news. Tolkien, moments later joked, "Oh my God, the fan fiction now!"

Reaction to the announcement has been mixed. Jewish advocacy groups have celebrated the announcement.

"Oh course he's Jewish," exclaimed Seth Rabinowitz, head of the Jewish fan club Middle-Israel, "Just think about it. He's a wise old man who is extremely learned and who is both spiritual and deeply moral. Clearly, Gandalf is intended to be a rabbi."

Others have expressed the opinion that this revelation seems to be arbitrary and that it detracts from the book.

"I don't care that Tolkien wants him to be a Jew, but is it necessary to make this public? What does it add to the book," asked Marie Donovan, a mother of four. "Now whenever I read the book to my kids the whole story is going to be tainted by this unnecessary detail. Was it really necessary for Tolkien to use Gandalf to make some sort of social statement?"

Conservative groups, who have been leery of the fantastic elements of the book from the start, stated that this was proof that the books had a subversive political agenda. When asked about the controversy, Adolf Rummer, head of the Family for Families Council, exclaimed, "[Gandalf] spends his time with physical degenerates while looking for gold: what a surprise that he's Jewish! I think that Christian parents have a right to shield their children from this sort of propaganda and that it's immensely irresponsible for Tolkien to use his work to advance a Jewish agenda."

Tolkien has expressed surprise and dismay at the reaction to the revelation. "It has certainly never been news to me that a brave and brilliant man could be Jewish," he was quoted as saying. He insists that, since Gandalf is his creation, he is the one who will have the final word on all matters concerning the grey wizard, including his religious orientation.

DM of the Rings

Back in the days when I was an active roleplayer, every so often one of us would have the brilliant (brilliant, I say!) idea of keeping a journal of our games so that we could then write up our adventures and, presto!, have an instant fantasy story.

It turns out that this never worked out well in practice. As fun as the games were, translating them into fiction never quite panned out. Years later I realized that the problem wasn't that our campaigns were lame, it was that the media were too different.

Even though fantasy role playing borrows from the same settings as fantasy fiction, the types of narratives they generate are very different from one another.

The DM of the Rings is a humorous, yet perceptive, examination of this phenomenon in the form of a web comic that asks what would the Lord of the Rings have been like if they had been done as a fantasy RPG campaign. It is often achingly funny while, at the same time, serving as a good study of roleplaying as well as storytelling.

Be sure to read the author's comments at the bottom of the strips.

Unstructured Elven

A long while back, Elijah Wood was doing an interview on the Daily Show to promote The Fellowship of the Ring. During the interview, he mentioned that he, and the other nine members of the fellowship cast, had all gone out and gotten tattoos of the numeral nine... in elvish. At the time I thought that was just a little bit strange but, in retrospect, I should have realized that there is a reasonably significant demand for Elvish tattoos.

Of course, if one is intent on demonstrating that they are way more geeky than those stupid Klingon poseurs, you can't just run out and get a bunch of random gibberish stamped on your tramp. On no, you must do it properly!

A good place to start would be to find out what your Evlish name is (in my case, that would be Suiadan), but that's only the first step. Once you have your name, you need to know how to write it in Elvish script, bearing in mind that there are several dialects of Elvish as well as numerous calligraphic scripts that you can choose from. (If this intimidates you, you could always cheat with a bit of software.)

This may seem like a lot of effort but if you are a True Tolkien Geek, this will absolutely and permanently establish your Elf Cred. Who knows, you might even meet someone who shares your passion which would mean that you'd eventually need to send out Elvish wedding invitations.

Off-site Essay: The Power of the Ring

This who have been reading this site may have deduce a particular fact about the author of the site:

1. The author is an unabashed geek
   
2. The author is fascinated by religion
   

In addition to this, anyone reading for any stretch of time will have realized that the author is an atheist. Unfortunately, this second realization may have prompted you to jump to any number of conclusions which are, in all liklihood, erroneous.

One thing that people instantly assume upon discovering my atheism is that I must, by definition, have an inherant hostility towards religion. To be sure, there are a number of things about religion that I can't agree with (most particularly the theistic conjecture that is central to a majority of religious beliefs) and there is a lot that I find objectionable in particular religions. Never the less, I actually do not have an inherit hositility towards religion, on the whole, and, in fact, consider it a valuable (if distorted) mirror of the human psyche.

Given this, my choice for this week's off-site essay nicely combines my geekiness as well as my fascination with religious subjects. It's a sermon by a Unitarian Universalist preacher. The topic of the sermon is The Lord of the Rings.

The semon is in PDF format so you will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to read it.