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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by UsesProzac.

James... who?

^vote for "smoked you like a ham"

jesus did he prep for that or is he really THE JRR fan of all time

I don't know if he prepped for it or not, but he is a HUGE Tolkien fan, and its not out of the realm of possibility that he knew it off the cuff. Seems likely that it was real, given Franco's response.

iirc he is a scholar of JRR. He read a lot of it after the accident that killed his father and brothers and it helped him cope.

I should read my 25 year old copy of the Silmarillion someday...

One page at a time.

It's fucking terrible. It's just obvious that you're reading a history of a place that never existed. Why not read some real history and at least know something useful?

Captures my thoughts on Tolkien in general.

Are you kidding me?
Real life doesn't even have Elves, Dwarves, Wizards & Magical Beasties.
(or spaceships, or new worlds, aliens, or dragons and so on)
Real life history is about as dry as hay.

For me - I have little energy to spend in memorizing the ongoing mistakes of human history.

You're thinking, "But knowing our history lets us learn from our mistakes - It's so important"
Me: I will never have any influence, nor do I want to have, on the direction humanity will take. Some people make policy, laws, go to war, sign treaties, make deals etc. Those are the people that should benefit from human historical facts. I'm just a guy who doesn't want any part of it. So loosing myself in fiction works just fine for me - It's a lot more interesting to explore in one's mind the creative possibilities of something than to just regurgitate the facts that actually happened.

He's the fan of all time. He bested the Tolkien expert Peter Jackson hired for the LOTR trilogy. Jackson said, "I have never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life."
http://www.accesshollywood.com/peter-jackson-stephen-colbert-is-the-biggest-tolkien-geek-ive-ever-met_article_71855

Oh man, you must be so much fun at parties...

I bet Guitar Hero really blows your mind..

People read fiction to escape reality.

Colbert always impresses me. The guy is for reals.

The Rings books are some of the most amazing fiction ever. That's to say, they are rich analogies for real day-to-day life. The story of a truly alien universe can be found at the end of a microscope where no creatures have anything we can identify as pride or rage or homes or property. Good fantasy, OTOH, mirrors real life in moving ways.

Memorizing all that crap and thinking it's worth something, however, I don't get.

Because real history just makes living in the present even more depressing. You see everything that happened in the past just happening over again and nobody tries to stop it.

I just finished the SIlmarillion and that question was a soft ball for a master like Colbert. Of course the elves know her as "Elbereth, kindler of the stars."

Pretty much the problem with how people are taught history. Regular people working together change history. Not famous people like Martin Luther King or LBJ. It's the people working behind the scenes.

Another misunderstanding of history. You probably believe that Iraq was like Vietnam or something.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Sift of the week!

people working behind the scenes? that's cool. name two of them.

That's sort of my point. These people were working in their own cities, organizing other people, having meetings and rallies. Organizing events for Martin Luther King to come speak at. Or getting protests together to put pressure on politicians. They're specific to each city in which they were working.

My point is, everyone can make a difference in their own sphere of influence to effect huge change. We're not taught that in History class, because why would they teach us how we can challenge power?

And you're missing my point.
I don't want to make difference in any political realm.

Only want to Make love and Make art.
That pretty much does it for me. The rest is someone else's job.
Hell, if it wasn't for the family I have to support, I wouldn't even want to make money.

*dead

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