Harvard Lampoon - Bored of the Rings

BORED OF THE RINGS

A PARODY OF J. R. R. TOLKIENS THE LORD OF THE RINGS

By Henry N. Beard

and Douglas C. Kenney

of

The Harvard Lampoon

Do you like what you doth see... ? said the voluptuous elf-maiden as she provocatively parted the folds of her robe to reveal the rounded, shadowy glories within. Fritos throat was dry, though his head reeled with desire and ale

She slipped off the flimsy garment and strode toward the fascinated boggie unashamed of her nakedness. She ran a perfect hand along his hairy toes, and he helplessly watched them curl with the fierce insistent wanting of her.

Let me make thee more comfortable, she whispered hoarsely, fiddling with the clasps of his jerkin, loosening his sword belt with a laugh. Touch me, oh touch me, she crooned.

Fritos hand, as though of its own will, reached out and traced the delicate swelling of her elf-breast, while the other slowly crept around her tiny, flawless waist, crushing her to his barrel chest.

Toes, I love hairy toes, she moaned, forcing him down on the silvered carpet. Her tiny, pink toes caressed the luxuriant fur of his instep while Fritos nose sought out the warmth of her precious elf-navel.

But Im so small and hairy, and... and youre so beautiful, Frito whimpered, slipping clumsily out of his crossed garters.

The elf-maiden said nothing, but only sighed deep in her throat and held him more firmly to her faunlike body. There is one thing you must do for me first, she whispered into one tufted ear.

Anything, sobbed Frito, growing frantic with his need. Anything!

She closed her eyes and then opened them to the ceiling. The Ring, she said. I must have your Ring.

Fritos whole body tensed. Oh no, he cried, not that! Anything but... that.

I must have it, she said both tenderly and fiercely. I must have the Ring!

Fritos eyes blurred with tears and confusion. I cant, he said. I mustnt!

But he knew resolve was no longer strong in him. Slowly, the elf-maidens had inched toward the chain in his vest pocket, closer and closer it came to the Ring Frito had guarded so faithfully...

Contents

FOREWORD

PROLOGUECONCERNING BOGGIES

I Its My Party and Ill Snub Who I Want To

II Threes Company, Fours a Bore

III Indigestion at the Sign of the Goode Eats

IV Finders Keepers, Finders Weepers

V Some Monsters

VI The Riders of Roi-Tan

VII Serutan Spelled Backward Is Mud

VIII Schlobs Lair and Other Mountain Resorts

IX Minas Troney in the Soup

X Be It Ever So Horrid

FOREWORD

Though we cannot with complete candor state, as does Professor T., that the tale grew in the telling, we can allow that this tale (or rather the necessity of hawking it at a bean a copy) grew in direct proportion to the ominous dwindling of our bank accounts at the Harvard Trust in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This loss of turgor in our already emaciated portfolio was not, in itself, cause for alarm (or alarum as Professor T. might aptly put it), but the resultant threats and cuffed ears received at the hands of creditors were. Thinking long on this, we retired to the reading lounge of our club to meditate on this vicissitude.

The following autumn found us still in our leather chairs, plagued with bedsores and appreciably thinner, but still without a puppy biscuit for the lupine pest lolling around the front door. It was as this point that our palsied hands came to rest on a dog-eared nineteenth printing of kindly old Prof. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. Dollar signs in our guileless eyes, we quickly ascertained that it was still selling like you-know-whats. Armed to the bicuspids with thesauri and reprints of international libel laws, we locked ourselves in the Lampoon squash court with enough Fritos and Dr. Pepper to choke a horse. (Eventually the production of this turkey actually required the choking of a small horse, but thats another story entirely.)

Spring found us with decayed teeth and several pounds of foolscap covered with inky, illegible scrawls. A quick rereading proved it to be a surprisingly brilliant satire on Tolkiens linguistic and mythic structures, filled with little takeoffs on his use of Norse tales and wicked phoneme fricatives. A cursory assessment of the manuscripts sales appeal, however, convinced us that dollarwise the thing would be better employed as tinder for the library fireplace. The next day, handicapped by near-fatal hangovers and the loss of all our bodily hair (but thats another story), we sat down at two supercharged, fuel-injected, 345-hp Smith-Coronas and knocked off the opus youre about to read before tiffin. (And we take tiffin pretty durn early in these parts, buckaroo.) The result, as you are about to see for yourself, was a book as readable as Linear A and of about the same literary value as an autographed gatefold of St. Simon Stylites.

As for any inner meanings or message, as Professor T. said in his foreword, there is none herein except that which you may read into it yourself. (Hint: What is missing from this famous quotation? A _____ and his _____ soon are _____. You have three minutes. Ready, set, go!)

Bored of the Rings has been issued in this form as a parody. This is very important. It is an attempt to satirize the other books, not simply to be mistaken for them. Thus, we must strongly remind you that this is not the real thing! So if youre about to purchase this copy thinking its about the Lord of the Rings, then youd better put it right back into that big pile of remainders where you found it. Oh, but youve already read this far, so that must mean thatthat youve already bought... oh dear... oh my... (Tote up another one on the register, Jocko. Ching!)

Lastly, we hope that those of you who have read Prof. Tolkiens remarkable trilogy already will not be offended by our little spoof of it. All fooling aside, we consider ourselves honored to be able to make fun of such an impressive, truly masterful work of genius and imagination. After all, that is the most important service a book can render, the rendering of enjoyment, in this case, enjoyment through laughter. And dont trouble yourself too much if you dont laugh at what you are about to read, for if you perk up your pink little ears, you may hear the silvery tinkling of merriment in the air, far, far away....

Its us, buster. Ching!

PROLOGUECONCERNING BOGGIES

This book is predominately concerned with making money, and from its pages a reader may learn much about the character and the literary integrity of the authors. Of boggies, however, he will discover next to nothing, since anyone in the possession of a mere moiety of his marbles will readily concede that such creatures could exist only in the minds of children of the sort whose childhoods are spent in wicker baskets, and who grow up to be muggers, dog thieves, and insurance salesmen. Nonetheless, judging from the sales of Prof. Tolkiens interesting books, this is a rather sizable group, sporting the kind of scorchmarks on their pockets that only the spontaneous combustion of heavy wads of crumpled money can produce. For such readers we have collected here a few bits of racial slander concerning boggies, culled by placing Prof. Tolkiens books on the floor in a neat pile and going over them countless times in a series of skips and short hops. For them we also include a brief description of the soon-to-be-published-if-this-incredible-dog-sells account of Dildo Buggers earlier adventures, called by him Travels with Gollum in Search of Lower Middle Earth, but wisely renamed by the publisher Valley of the Trolls.

Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have decreased rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market. Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral squalor. They dont like machines more complicated than a garrote, a blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the Big Folk or Biggers, as they call us. As a rule they now avoid us, except on rare occasions when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter. They are a little people, smaller than dwarves, who consider them puny, sly, and inscrutable and often refer to them as the boggie peril. They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them. As for the boggies of the Sty, with whom we are chiefly concerned, they are unusually drab, dressing in shiny gray suits with narrow lapels, alpine hats, and string ties. They wear no shoes, and they walk on a pair of hairy blunt instruments which can only be called feet because of the position they occupy at the end of their legs. Their faces have a pimply malevolence that suggests a deep-seated fondness for making obscene telephone calls, and when they smile, there is something in the way they wag their foot-long tongues that makes Komodo dragons gulp with disbelief. They have long, clever fingers of the sort one normally associates with hands that spend a good deal of time around the necks of small, furry animals and in other peoples pockets, and they are very skillful at producing intricate and useful things, like loaded dice and booby traps. They love to eat and drink, play mumbledy-peg with dimwitted quadrupeds, and tell off-color dwarf jokes. They give dull parties and cheap presents, and they enjoy the same general regard and esteem as a dead otter.