Completely Unverifiable Facts about The Lord of the Rings

  1. The plot is actually a veiled allegory for Tolkein's growing hatred for the wedding ring that his wife Edith had bought him. The ring was a hideous two tone number.  Starting in 1946, twenty years into their marriage, he began to ask her if they might be able to replace the ring. Edith was quite sentimental and remained unmoved by his appeals. The ring became something of an obsession for Tolkein, much to the detriment of his marriage. According to her diary Edith would sometimes turn over at night to see Tolkein holding it in his hand and examining it closely. When she finally relented and they went to a jeweler, Tolkien couldn't bring himself to part with the ring. He said it had, in his words, "become precious to him."

  2. The character of Saruman was originally named Clewis, but Tolkein’s good friend and fellow Inkling C.S. Lewis took offense. Tolkein renamed the character Clive until Lewis pointed out that, that was in fact his own first name. Tolkein changed the name to Slewis. When Lewis again took offense, Tolkein said, “fine. He’s evil like Sauron is evil. He’s a man - like a man version of Sauron. I’ll call him Saruman. Happy?” Until his death, Tolkein would privately refer to Lewis as Saruman. Charles Williams noted that whenever Lewis would come late to an Inkling meeting, Tolkein would mutter, “the White Wizard approaches.”

  3. It is rumored that Gimli’s thoughts on the scarcity of dwarf women stemmed from Tolkein’s frustrations with the shortage of women in the Inklings. Upon arriving at the Eagle and Child Tolkein would often say, “it smells like dude in here.”

  4. In what is thought to be an homage to Melville’s whale chapters in Moby Dick, the original manuscript of The Two Towers originally included pages upon pages devoted to aspects of elf hygiene. The Inklings prevailed upon Tolkein to cut this material. One wonders if the Ring series would have been as successful if Tolkein had refused their advice and published the series under its original title Elvin Bicuspids.

  5. Tolkein planned on publishing The Fellowship of the Ring under the pseudonym Owen Barfield until, as he walked to the publishers, he realized that Owen Barfield was, in fact, the name of one of his close friends.

  6. If the Tolkein’s had a fifth child, either he or she would have been named Shelob. Tolkein felt free to use the name in the series because by the publication of The Two Towers in 1954, it had become apparent that the Tolkeins would not be having any more children

  7. The comic relief provided by Gimli came about quite by accident. Before their meetings at The Eagle and Child, Warren Lewis would often do humorous but mean spirited impersonations of fellow Inkling Lord David Cecil. By the time Cecil arrived at the pub, the rest of the group would almost be in tears at Lewis’ biting mimicry. Tolkein would loudly say, “and then Gimli,” and continue with a story made up on the spot in order to spare Cecil’s feelings. As the Ring series progressed Tolkein would at times provoke Lewis into impersonating Cecil because he had found he was unable to think of any Gimli-stories, as he called them, without this dynamic. He began to call Lewis his muse and would force Lewis into wearing Cecil’s hats and using Cecil’s brand of aftershave. Tolkein confided to his wife that he couldn’t have finished The Return of the King without this strange practice. The dedication to this final book in the series was originally, “To my Lord David Cecils” but Lewis’ brother, the more notable CS Lewis, prevailed upon Tolkein to leave it out. Tolkein’s diary revealed that Tolkein continued to call Lewis late into the night even until 1973 asking, “is Lord Cecil in?”

  8. The character of Gollum may have been based, in part, on Tolkein’s tailor Philip Bombegaard who often boasted of, “murdering a man by a riverside for not buying him a birthday present.”

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lest there be any confusion and the names of any of the Inklings besmirched, the above is completely fictitious.

LaCroix

Anywhere between one-half and two-thirds of my net income is currently tied up in LaCroix.  If you haven't enjoyed a LaCroix today, I urge you stop reading and do so.

LaCroix is essenced sparkling water.  I have no idea how that differs from flavored sparkling water, but I can tell you how the difference feels.  It feels like the difference between an Apple computer and a PC.  This essence tastes the way an obscure but understood literary allusion feels to the mind.  This essence tastes the way the residue of a good dream feels as you drift back to sleep to recapture it.

I began drinking LaCroix because carbonation delights me but I don't want the sugar of regular pop nor the artificial sweeteners of diet.  It does seem to be healthier as this rather erratic article makes clear.  I do not plan to stop drinking LaCroix until I die and then I hope to be buried in a tomb surrounded by refrigerated cases of it the way that Pharaohs were buried with food and conopic jars.

I have noticed that the last two ounces of a LaCroix tends to be less carbonated than the last two ounces of a can of pop.  As a result, I let my children enjoy these two ounces.  I think this is for the best because these last two ounces are a bit watered down and I don't want their taste buds to peak too early.

I have partaken of the following flavors/essences:

Coconut - this tastes like a piña colada and getting caught in the rain.

Lemon - I remember this tastes exactly the way I thought it would, which was a strange experience.

Lime - this was the first LaCroix I drank.  It is a gateway LaCroix.

Mango - this taste is reminiscent of the more wholesome aspects of a Jimmy Buffett concert.

Pear/Peach - this tastes like nothing similar to the way perfect room temperature feels like nothing on your skin.

Berry - I had high hopes for this one, but I think it may simply be Pear/Peach in a different can.

Passionfruit - this is a very solid entry.  If LaCroix were a baseball team, Passionfruit would bat third.

Grapefruit - this is the apex of essenced taste.  If you are getting married and looking for a drink to mark your first toast, you have just found it.  I'm afraid to buy this again lest I tire of the taste and then everything else will become dust and ashes.

(full disclosure - the About Me section of this website is subsidized by LaCroix, lime flavor).

SpeedRunning

Recently, I have recently been watching clips of NES speedrunning when I want to kill a few minutes.  Speedrunning is the attempt to beat a video game, or level of a video game, in the shortest time possible.  Forget warps and shortcuts, speedrunning is about dissecting a game frame by frame in search of glitches.  From what I can tell, the speedrun record for Super Mario Bros. is 4:56.462, which beats the speed run linked above by 283 milliseconds.  The top 44 speedrun records for Super Mario Bros are all held by Americans.

Speedrunning is the sort of thing I imagined myself one day doing when I was eleven years old.  A boy can only play Punch-out! so many times with considering how he compares with other players.  After watching speed runs, I recognize that I am frighteningly outclassed.

I cannot fathom the number of hours that lurk beneath such a speedrun.  I find myself wondering how such preparation can be a redemptive use of time.  I then find myself wondering if me writing about speedrunning is a redemptive use of time.  I now find myself wondering if you reading my ramblings on speedrunning is a redemptive use of time.  Right now you are reading about someone else watching someone else's speedrun.  At this moment you are further removed from anything substantive than this guy who calls himself Oatsngoats.  Let that sink in.  There is no quiddity in any of this.

Speedrunning highlights a matter I have long struggled to resolve to my satisfaction - how much time and resources can a Christian give to a hobby within the parameters of Ephesians 5:15-16, "Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity (redeeming the time -KJV), because the days are evil."

Scripture, especially Psalms and Ecclesiastes, is clear that this earth is meant for our enjoyment. There is much to enjoy.  I can see enjoying a waterfall hike as redeeming the time.  I find it harder to see how endlessly searching for glitches in Metroid can qualify as redeeming the time.   I can see how a glitch-search could qualify as relaxing and helpfully distracting and there is a place for that, but how much of that can you do and still redeem the time?

Any thoughts would be helpful.  I'm not only thinking about speedrunning, of course.  I'm interested in any thoughts about the proper place of hobbies and whether or not certain hobbies are more justifiable than others.