feeling listless

Rings Busy enjoying Sunday, so I'll give you this single treat. It's a discussion at Straight Dope containing versions of The Rings if they had been written by writers other than Tolkein. Some of them are scary:

"On this particular evening, something changed hands quietly in the back of a hobbit-hole in the Shire many miles from the dark realm of Mordor. A small, metallic something. Something which could be accurately described as a circular loop of shining metal.

The land of Middle Earth was almost oblivious to the change of ownership, which was wonderful for the two parties concerned. The trade went unnoticed among the citizens of Rivendell, it escaped the Nazgul completely, and even the dark lord himself continued straight on with his day without noticing. This was a pity for him, because it was exactly the thing he had been searching for all these years.

-- from The Mostly Harmless Ring of Power, by Douglas Adams

I'll only post that one ... but I urge you to go and have a look at the level of ingenuity at play here ...