Everybody's Free (To Wear The One Ring)
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, the One Ring would be it. The long-term benefits of the One Ring have been proved by evil and greedy mortals, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own miserable experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your One Ring. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your One Ring until you've faded. But trust me, in 500 years, you'll look at flashbacks of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous in CG you really looked. You are not as skinny, bug-eyed and ugly as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to defeat a company of Uruk-hai by blowing a horn. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the Hobbit kind that blindside you beside your deep, dark subterranean lake on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Challenge Balrogs on narrow bridges spanning wide bottomless chasms.
Don't be reckless with precariously positioned dwarf skeletons. Don't put up with Hobbits who are.
Go on quests to destroy the Dark Lord's property in his own back yard.
Don't waste your time plotting to steal a Ring of Power. Sometimes you're good, sometimes you're evil. The journey is long and, in the end, you only die and Arwen gets a larger merchandising deal than you do.
Remember birthday presents you receive. Forget the insults from your annoying matriarchal grandmother. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your uncle's old mithril coat. Throw away your good sense and go off to Mordor virtually alone and unarmed.
Sing useless bits of Elvish song and poetry which, when omitted, might save you 300 pages and a few hundred miles.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting Hobbits I know didn't know at 50 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 3000-year-old Elves I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when you're a 10 000-year-old Maia trudging through waist-deep snow up a mountain pass.
Maybe you'll become king, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce that Elf bitch at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate your damn fine looking Viggo Mortensen self too much, or berate your bloodline either. Your choices are half chance, well, actually they're less than that considering you just let Frodo go off to Mordor alone with a Ring of Power. But then so are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other jealous Elves may think of it. It's the greatest instrument Orlando Bloom will ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but in an inn filled with nasty strangers who want to sell you out to the Enemy.
Read the directions which boldly display the Elvish password, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read Elrond's beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your Istari. You never know when they'll suddenly switch sides and genetically engineer an Orc army of mass destruction. Be nice to your stupid git of a cousin. He's the best link to your past and the person most likely to get you killed by a cave troll and an army of Moria Orcs in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but a dull-witted submissive gardner you should hold on to. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the closer to Mordor you get, the more you need the Hobbit you knew when you were young.
Live in Mordor once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in the Shire once, but leave before it makes you soft. Undertake urgent quests which take six months to complete because you insisted on taking the Deluxe tour.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Dark Lords will rise. Stewards will be crabby and insane. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, Dark Lords were reasonable, Stewards were noble and rebellious sword-toting Elven-princesses respected their elders.
Respect your Eldar.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have an eccentric, wealthy uncle. Maybe you have a Fellowship. But you never know when either may be corrupted by a Ring of Power.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 500 it will look like Gollum's.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with scary Elf queens who supply it. Advice is a form of Elvish wisdom. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past, present and future from a weird drinking-fountain, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and saying insensitive things like: "To bear a Ring of Power is to be alone", when really what you need is a hug and some morale support.
But trust me on the One Ring.
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Don't know who originally wrote it, but I thought it was rather amusing! ^_^
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