November 2, 3018
: I wonder if those robot things, Ments or whatever they're called, could be persuaded to join our cause. Speaking of robots, I only wish I'd had a better grasp of the technology used by the baritone lion back when I was making the Trolls. The way they malfunction during the day is extremely inconvenient. Who knew that Kryptonite would do that? Fortunately, my scientists say they're close to finding a solution.
I wouldn't trust Aruman even if my counsellor, Deeanna Troll, hadn't told me that he was hiding somethng.
[A fragment from an undated entry, which must, on internal evidence, date from this time:]
The war's still going pretty will. Spoóky slew Morti and Ferdi, and liberated several of Gondor's Haradric sweatshop employees. I have sent him a gift of chocolate liqueur as a reward.
It has always somewhat troybled me that my political career shd have been so much more successful that my academic career, even if (or because?) I regard my political career as the extension, or rather the actualization of my academic career; the forging of the Ring was the actualization of the potentia (the energisma of the dynamis, so to speak) included in my dissertation on the balrogics of metabeing.
A large part of the problem was that Ollie (back when he was a foreman, we used to pun his name in Quenya and call him Ollie Formen, or Ollie North), never learnt how to spell very well; but another difficulty was that my interest in theory sometimes prevented me from grasping the literal meaning of a word. Thus, when I read the sign on Olllie's office door, "Mining and Metalurgy," I not unnaturally took "mining" to mean "mine-ing, the appropriation of the Other, making it mine," and "metalurgy" (Sic) as referring to lurgy about lurgy or some new and peculiarly advanced form of theory (cf. "metalanguage," etc.). This misunderstanding has dogged my academic career ever since, even when I published my brilliant exposition of Melkor's thangorodristic critique of Dha-Manwe's bombadillology.
I find myself enjoying Deeanna Troll's company almost too much lately, to the extent that I wonder whether my fdelity to Shelob is being tested. I've never had such a steamy, hot, lustful amour in my life as that with Shelob (well, possibly Trollopiel and Miniwethil), and I strongly believe in being faithful for at least two months.
I don't want to end up like Saurtre …
[Clearly this portion of the diary has suffered severe damage, presumably at the hands of the Gondorian rewriters of history.
Mike Mehl queries:
Does this affect the "contract" Morti and Ferdi took out on Huey, Dewey, and Louie? The Beagle Boys would really like to know how they are going to be paid.This is a topic hotly debated among Gondorologists. Fortunately, the old line (that Morti and Ferdi and H, D, L were just a bunch of friendly innocents who would never get involved in organized crime) is universally discredited, but there is still no consensus as to the precise mechanisms of Gondor's crime rackets. See Hieronymus Schnipp, /Morti a Murderer?: Gondorian History Re-dialecticized/.]
November 17
I visited the liberated sweatshop today; it's really a proud moment. To see all those once oppressed people laughing and weeping for joy, as they tossed effigies of Isildur and Anarchion into the bonfire, warmed my heart. I haven't felt so pleased since Melkor tsarked Ollie.
Ollie and I had problems from the beginning. Although Ollie was clearly very intelligent (he did make the Dwarves, after all, thiough he rather messed up with the females), his manners were rather crude and coarse, and his lectures somewhat difficult to follow, as he would mutter them sotto voce while hopping on one foot and gaping at explicit photos of Havanna, also called Youwanna, the vamp of Valinor. I spent most of my time studying thangorodrics with Melkor. He appreciated my theoretical approach much better than the almost mindlessly pragmatist Ollie. I stuck with Ollie anyway, in the hopes that I might worm Youwanna away from the slob. Speaking of worming ... it's a good thing I sent Deanna out to spy, for more reasons than one.
According to her report, the company at Rivendell are spending an unconscionably long time goofing off. I know the bordelli at Rivendell are pretty fine, but let's get a move on, people!
November 23
I put the queastion of genetic mutation to the Balrog Assembly, but the prognostics are not good. The right-wing Balrogs object to my proposal because it's too high-tech, the left-wing Balrogs because it's exploitative. We don't /have/ exploitation in Mordor, I tried to explain, but to little avail. The silver lining is that the few suvriving wingless Balrogs have taken in enthusiastic interest in jet propulsion. I'm concerned about othering, possibly even de-selfing, the Balrogs.
I think Melokr is giving me the strength to resist Deeanna Troll. After all, she doesn't have webs like Shelob's, which add a lot to the erotic experience.
[There follows a reference in code to a palantír session with Denethor or Disneythor or whatever. By an interesting coincidence, I will be unable to decypher this code until the relevant e-t. chapters have been posted.]
Well, my request to have Melkor and Youwanna as my readers was denied. Instead, I got Nienna and Tolkas (as well as Ollie, who I knew I was stuck with). Nienna was OK, although a leetle too existentialist (that was more up Saurtre's alley). But Tolkas???? What kind of an insult was that? I had to dumb down my topic from "Meta(lurgical) Min(e)ing: The (Un)disappropriation of Eäs" to "Smart Miners: Foolish Choices." That was the beginning of the end.
November 18
I've been thinkijng og carrying out genetic improvements on Balrogs that would render them more efficient, something along the lines of jet propulsion. Horses are a bit passé, no? Why shouldn't my Nazdaq have the best? There are, however, two problems. The first is getting the right-wing Balrogs to agree with the left-wing Balrogs. The second is that my other attempts at genetic re-engineering weren't entirely successful: neither the wingless Balrogs nor the fat jolly Balrogs in red suits were an unmixed success. Of course, neither of them had pink fluffy slippers. That could make all the difference.
We're reorganizing the liberated sweatshop as a workers' co-operative. I need to find out more about Hui, Dui and Lui's role in all this. What we've uncovered about GOndorian seatshop practices and their links to organized crime is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure.
The really annoying thing about Ollie was that he expected me to do actual mining. Puuuh-LEEZE! I'm a doctoral candidate, not a wage- slave, I valiantly attempted to explain. And then, when it became time to write the proposal, I was amzed that they wouldn't let Melkor on the committee. I thought he would have provided a fresh, new perspective, but NO! They didn't care for independent thought in Valinor.
Time for my wogah with Shelob. I've got to stop having these Deeanna Troll fantasies ...
[See A[[endix A]
November 28
In only about a week, I'll have been fatihful to Shelob for two months. It was hot; the webs are cool, but 1.her jealous fits are getting a bit annoying; 2.She refused to explain how those pink fluffy slippers got into her lair; 3.Deeanna Troll tells me that she's hiding something.
Well, I've amnaged to win over the right-wing Balrogs by promising to ban Saurtre's Balroging and Nothingness. I've allowed it up to now (he was my brother, after all), but I've often wondered why that thesis was accepted when my brilliant exposition of "Smart Miners: Foolish Choices" was rejected. I took that idiotic topic and critiqued it with a brilliance worthy of Eldarrida, only more so. But my committee was too damn hidebound. Pretending not to know what I meant by, "The interstices of the subject may be more -- if not significant -- at least more thangorodric than the subject itself, viewed in(ter)- jectionally." Even Tolkas should have been able to grasp that. Of course, the fact that I'd been caught in flagrante with Youwanna didn't help. It was worth it. I'd never done it before, except for the occasional Playmaia Balroguette, and that didn't really count.
transcribed by Menelvagor the Enervator
Sauron's diary - December 1-14
