From: gls@windmill.ATT.COM (The Remote Control for your Palantir)
 Organization: Save the Orcs Foundation
 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien

Lots of questions this time!  Let's see what we've got:

Q. The bad guy who comes out of the fortress at the end to talk to the
   good guys says "I am the mouth of Sauron." Tolkien says the guy didn't
   even remember his own name any more.  But he must have originally had 
   a name, besides "Mouth" I mean, right?  Any ideas?

A. Yes, he did have another name.  It was "Mickey."

Q. There's a lot of sexual imagery in the Shelob scene.  Some people
   just don't get it, though.  I don't know.

A. We can check this by turning to one of Tolkien's original sources,
   the _Shelobu Zabar Dzo Zho Ziggurat_ (Shelob's Life and Miserable
   Mates).  The relevant passage, freely translated, runs like this:

          "What a big sword you have!" cried Shelob, clicking her
        mandibles in anticipation. "Why, it's even bigger than
        Sauron's was!"

          "It's just an old sword," Sam replied, cudgeling his brains
        for another topic of conversation.

          "Well, I think it's *very* attractive!" Shelob squealed.
        "You wouldn't have any ideas about ... *sticking* it into
        my body, would you?"

          Sam stood petrified as Shelob maneuvered her bloated bulk
        over his head. "Yep, I mean nope, you got that right, all
        right, all right," he spluttered.  Ignoring his feeble protests,
        like a freight elevator on its way to the basement, Shelob
        slowly lowered herself onto Sam's upraised sword ...

   Tolkien returns to the original narrative just after this, where
   it describes the stench flowing from the "wound."  Personally, I
   think he was perfectly right to omit these sleazy exchanges from
   _Lord of the Rings,_ which is, after all, a children's story.

Q. According to Frodo it was a hobbit who first thought of sticking
   tobacco into pipes and smoking it.  What did people do with tobacco
   before that?

A. We can only conjecture, but the following fragment from _Return to
   Valley of the Trolls II_ may be significant:

        ... looked mournfully at Gollum for a moment. "Gimme back
        the chaw," he said, "and you take the plug." ...

Q. Where did orcs *really* come from, anyway?

A. A sketchy history of the orcs, in handwriting something like
   Tolkien's, was recently found on a paper napkin discovered in
   the official Tolkien archives in Liverpool, and will soon be
   issued as a $39.95 trade hardcover.  According to this account,
   the orcs, before Sauron organized them into a stupid, lazy
   fighting force, were a stupid, lazy band of bums, wearing
   leather jackets and getting into all kinds of trouble.  They
   were doomed to wander all over Middle-Earth after an unspecified
   catastrophe destroyed the ancestral homeland of the Orcs, known as
   Orklahoma.


That's all for now!  Pleasant dreams ...