Ohyeah. I guess I should have finished that thought. Sorry. The paragraph in question:

"His thought turned to the Ring, but there was no comfort there, only dread and danger. No sooner had he come in sight of Mount Doom, burning far away, than he was aware of a change in his burden. As it drew near the great furnaces where, in the deeps of time, it had been shaped and forged, the Ring's power grew, and it became more fell, untameable save by some mighty will. As Sam stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, a vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor. He felt that he had from now on only two choices: to forbear the Ring, though it would torment him; or to claim it, and challenge the Power that sat in its dark hold beyond the valley of shadows. Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He only had to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be."

This is Not the Book for You, apparently.

Though I did notice something when I transcribed it that I hadn't been aware of while I was merely reading it: commas. Lots of commas. (Cue seemingly endless racks of punctuation marks whooshing into an otherwise empty void.)

Woah. That's actually pretty good, for a tossed-off gag. Props.

Oh, there was skimming. There was definitely skimming.

You punk ass kids, I read The Silmarillion. Yeah, all of it.

I dunno, I kind of got the impression that Gollum's proto-hobbit nature was key to his relative banality under the ring's influence. It seems like the ring's great evil is the stoking of ambition, so the characters with the least ambition — hobbits — are the least affected by it.

Where I wrote "ambition" feel free to substitute "greed" or "lust for material things or power," 'cause I think either of those fit as well.

Blade Runner bores me to freaking TEARS. I love the production design, but I just don't get at all what people love about the movie.

And even going into a viewing KNOWING that there's a debate about whether Harrison Ford is a replicant or not, I don't see anything in the movie itself that hints one way or the other.