Does history have to be rewritten? Decide after you have read these eye-opening pre-publication excerpts:
August 2, 3018 TA:
This place sucks. From the top window I see only slag and ashes. How much I've preferred our old block in Mirkwood Towers! At least there was some green outdoors.It was my wife, of course, who wanted to move here. Mirkwood was too much frequented by travelling salesmen, she said. Besides, the last one stole a map and a key from the library. What do I care? That bloody key didn't fit a single known door in Middle-earth, anyway.
I think what she really disliked about our previous estate was the proximity of Eddie the Bullfrog's, just across the Great River in Moria. True, I have been more often there than at home. But where else would I go to have fun?
Mount Boom is smelling like a thousand years' egg again. I wonder what the cook is preparing for lunch.
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| Mount Boom is smelling like a thousand year's egg again. |
September 4:
The Dark Tower is buzzing. A ring has been found and my wife says it might be that One Ring to Bind Me that I've lost in the sink long ago when I was washing dishes (as she had ordered me to, mind you). I would not care, but this very Ring had been a trifle that she fancies. She demanded a few Nazgûls to retrieve it before someone was going to offer it at Sotheby's. I agreed to give her two, but as always she has had the stronger arguments. In the end she took all nine plus my best thoroughbreds. The Orcs call me the Black Eye again.September 30:
I hate getting such news. Black Riders frequenting inns, engaging in fistfights, making our expenses soar – yes, I DID tell my wife, „Keep them away from the Prancing Pony“! Never good to expose Nazgûls to beverages. Without proper guidance you can be certain that the Witch-king will set his cloak aflame at any woodfire available. And that's exactly what he did.October 20:
Why do female Maiar never listen to what male Maiar are saying? For millenia I have been telling my wive, „Keep Nazgûls away from running water!“ (Of course I said so, or else she would have them sweeping the floors all day.) Now they are of course "my" Nazgûls who blindly carry out any orders given. She just refuses to acknowledge that steering them into the Ford was a user error.November 12:
I kindly suggested a weekend at the seaside of Núrn, but no way. Having only my fun in mind, she said, while there was still so much dirt and dust to clean in Lugburz till New Year. I suggested that the Orcs might just paint our walls white, then the light-grey ash from Mount Boom would be less visible. Her answer gave me headaches like the Iron Crown was resting on my brow. No wonder that the Orcs, with their sensible feeling for prominent anatomical features, call her The Mouth.November 14:
The Nazgûls have returned home, all of them: undressed, invisible, but soaked to the extent that they leave wet footprints all over the parquetry. My wife keeps the Orcs wiping the floors after them and says we will have to find other stallions for our wraiths. Well, give them some bats, give them some dinosaurs, anything except my pigeons.January 15:
There was a raid in Moria. Eddie the Bullfrog has been accused of harassments and sent into the Void. What a pity: as a free holder he was unsurpassed.This is no more like it was in the Good Elder Days when you could find a proper night-club at any road of Utumno. Now there is only one left, run somewhere in Rhún by those two blue-clad fellows from overseas. I'll have to ask Sharkû for the address. He has been a regular customer there before he set up his business in Orthanc.
March 5:
Picky is gone! Didn't I say to Khâmul, "Stay away from Rohan, they serve roasted pigeon there"? Picky has always been my darling, it has won the Gundabad-Lugburz air-race three times. Now some bloody moron took it down with an arrow and cooked it! When Khâmul came back (and he was all over wet another time, for he swam the Anduin and keeps complaining behind me that we should restore that darn bridge down in Osgiliath at last) he said there must have been a rather big Elf warrior on the loose. Hasn't he the wits for a less silly excuse?March 6:
A little fellow dialed on Sharkû's palantir in the middle of the night. When I had crawled out of bed and picked up, he asked me who I was. I said, "I am The Eye." He understood "YMCA" and wanted to order a bedroom.March 10:
A bleak, dawnless day today. The cook has burnt my breakfast and set the kitchen aflame. Fire-guards from Harad and Khand all over the place. The reeks must have been visible even from Minas Tirith, I presume.March 15:
My wife is all the time going around in full armour. Says this was most fashionable in Paris or some other place in the West this year. She must have seen that on palantir: In Rohan the fillies are prone to such nonsense lately. At least the Orcs think she looks better that way. Especially when she lowers the vizor.March 17:
Wasted my day on palantir again. RTV Dûshgoi broadcasted just gore and bloodshed as usual. (I asked Gorbag whether that was really necessary. He replied we were only serving our audience's demands.) Minas Tirith has completely gone off-line and displays a fanzy loop-image that looks like old Denethor had dropped his device into a bakery stove and himself together with it. And the Orthanc stone has been taken over by queer counter-revolutionaries who spread nothing but monarchistic propaganda all day. I much preferred Sharkû's Orc&Man porn.March 23:
Those travelling salesmen of today aren't afraid of any "Beware of the Orc" sign any more. Now they are even ringing at the Black Gate and try to sell a millenial subscription to the "White Crown", another of these paparazzi mags apparently that keep chatting about the little affairs of Lady Arwen and Prince Eldarion with his flappy ears and Galadriel the Queen whom everyone feels to have been around for many an age and still refusing to step down.My wife wants to ride there and send them their way. I asked why I would not go instead. She replied that she did not want me to make a fool out of myself again like last time, when that Elven lass with the undying Valinorean dog rang at the gate of Tol-in-Gaurhoth.
Why did she remind me? I still feel his undying Valinorean fleas itching on my skin.
March 25:
I'm deserting! Over, out, I'm going home! Of all my schemes and stratagems my mind shook free when Khamûl sent his prisoner over. I mean that one whose fault it was that my Ring dropped into Mount Boom - sneaked upon that other little fellow and kicked his ass when he was standing at the edge of Sammath Naur and accused him of having the Precious stolen from the family inheritance. But then she was taken here... Great Melkor, what a mischievous device she clubbed my skull with, pursuing me even down the drawbridge and on across the Plain of Gorgoroth. Never have I seen nor felt a weapon more dreadful, fiercer than both scimitar or whip, less bearable than Hamborcers or other weapons of mass-destruction, I am powerful enough to withstand any other foe, whether Elf-Prince or Wizard, Tax-Collector or Númenorean High-King, even my own wife at times. But who could hope to defend against THIS fiend?Behold, ye Lords of Darkness and the dungeons of Utumno, and beware of the wielder of the Umbrella of Westernesse! Remember me doom and keep your scalps away from LOBELIA SACKVILLE-BAGGINS!
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