>
> Mike
>
> =====
> Stupid Orcs. Stupid Ring. Stupid Quest.....
>

Just back from my 11th trip through Middle Earth: the Orcs aren't
really stupid per se, rather slaves of evil. Gandalf pitied them,
though he slew them mightily. The Ring is inanimate, or was, until it
became inflammable, but it wasn't insensible except in its magnetic
attraction to a certain Hand. The Quest, now, the Quest was certainly
stupid. Noble stupidity; a parable for the writers' own time and an
apt similie for certain struggles in this age; staggering in its
inherent beauty and incomprehensible in the imagining, but granted;
stupid. Thank Goodness it ended with a traitor's fatal mistake.

Sorry Mike, couldn't resist...Jay