A different point of view...

by: D. Van Skiver

In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. Hobbits are short people, similar to, but smaller than dwarves, who love peace and quiet and good-tilled earth and never go off on adventures or buy any music that isn't safe or any art that doesn't have pictures of ducks in it. They're content with their simple, boring lives in a land called The Shire, where there are no traffic lights and nothing of serious consequence ever happens. In fact, hobbits are very similar to those nosy old women in small, middle-class towns who are completely oblivious to the fact that there are homosexuals, other religions, and non-whites out there in the real world.

This particular hobbit's name was Bilbo Baggins, and he was named after a Leonard Nimoy song. One day he was visited by a Wizard named Gandalf Magneto and thirteen dwarves (no relation to Dopey or Sneezy), who fast-talked him into accompanying them to a faraway mountain to rid them of a dragon who they claimed had stolen their home and their treasure. Along the way, the dwarves and the hobbit had many small adventures, including a nearly fatal encounter with some incredibly stupid trolls and some equally stupid giant talking spiders.

One night while crossing some mountains, they decided to do some breaking and entering into what they swore they had no idea was the back door to the goblin kingdom, and to for some inexplicable reason, the goblins weren't happy about it at all. While trying to outrun the goblins, Bilbo slipped and fell into a crevice and met a charming little fellow named Gollum, who, rather than demand to know why Bilbo had invaded his home, proved himself a very good host by sitting down and playing games with him. Little did poor Gollum know that Bilbo, always the keen theif, had stolen his most prized possession, a golden ring that makes you invisible. After the exchange of a few riddles, in which Bilbo blatantly cheated, he used Gollum's ring to sneak away, leaving his host alone in the dark with no protection against the goblins that would surely kill him if they ever found him there. For, you see, our friend Gollum was a squatter who had set up his meager home in the basement of the goblins' caves, after being driven away from his home for being different and ugly. Coincidentally, Gollum's family were also hobbits.

Bilbo met back up with his friends and, after setting fire to the goblins' dogs, they traveled through Mirkwood forest, where they trespassed yet again, this time on the home of the wood elves, who are pretty good at flipping shields upside-down and riding them down stairs like skateboards. The elves detained the dwarves, but not Gandalf Magneto, who had mysteriously abandoned his friends just before things got really dangerous, and not Bilbo, who used his stolen ring to escape. After that, instead of rescuing his friends, Bilbo spent a month wearing his stolen ring and hanging out in the elves' houses, eating their food, drinking their beer and wine, and probably scaring the piss out of them every time he made a sound. Eventually, he liberated the dwarves and packed them into barrels like they weren't living fucking creatures with souls, and then he rode the barrels like a raft down the river in what was just about the most degrading and undignified rescue in the history of action/adventure rescues.

They came at last to the lonely mountain, where Bilbo once again commited home invasion, this time stealing a jewel from atop a mountain of treasure that he could not prove the dwarves had ever owned, except by the word of the dwarves who had tricked him into travelling with them in the first place, and who had a lot to gain by driving this dragon out of his home... namely, his home and his treasure.

The dragon was justifiably pissed about this little theft, and took it out on the men of a small village just beside the mountain, called Dale, who he probably trusted to be good neighbors and watch his back as he would certainly have watched theirs. The men of Dale brutally murdered the dragon, and the dwarves, who had really not had to do much of anything through this entire adventure except walk and listen to Gandalf Magneto's boring stories about the old days and how these kids today don't appreciate anything, just stepped in and claimed the mountain hall and its treasure as their own.

This pissed off the men of Dale, who, as the dragon slayers, had slightly more legal claim to his horde, and it also pissed off the wood elves, who insisted that they be compensated for their barrels and for the public embarassment of being outsmarted by a puny fucking hobbit. Adding to the hostilities was the arrival of the goblins, who are just generally grumpy and pissed off all the time anyway, but who in this case had every right to be mad at the dwarves and wizard who had broken into their home, refused to answer for themselves, and killed several goblins out of sheer spite while escaping before setting fire to their pets. Before it was all said and done, a bunch of talking eagles had shown up out of the blue and the bloodbath that ensued was known as "The Battle Of Five Armies". When it was over, the goblins were all dead and the dwarves made peace with the men and elves.

Bilbo went home, stopping to visit one of those hermit-type men with a really hairy back on the way, you know the type... they live in a house they built themselves, they mistrust everyone, they have a big, bushy beard, they collect weapons, they read Soldier Of Fortune magazine, and they're likely to snap at any second and become completely irrational.

When he got home, Bilbo discovered that his neighbors, being the untrustworthy hobbits that they are, were ransacking his house and selling off his belongings. He chased them away and lived happily ever after, until he got old and decided to run off to live with elves and get his innocent and unknowing nephew involved in what only turned out to be world war fucking three, while he sat around writing poetry and talking about old times. But that's another story..