So Justin asks me the other day if I know anything about the new J.R.R. Tolkien book The Children of Húrin and I say that, yes, I do know about it. It's a repackaged and republished version of various texts that Christopher Tolkien has already published under his father's name once before and that there really isn't anything new in the book.
Conversation continues about Lord of the Rings until Wahima brings up Tom Bombadil. "He doesn't make any sense in the books" someone says and I explain that Tolkien liked having this anomalous character in the giant book, writing it off as something to which he knows the answer, but no one else needs to know. I explain the theory (to which I subscribe) that Tom Bombadil is actually Aulë, one of the Valar.
And then I realize what a fucking geek I am. Why do I know so much about this?
It's like my friend Jai and "Star Trek". Derek and I love to laugh at how much she knows about The Next Generation, so we start talking about the show (we know hardly anything about it) incorrectly, knowing she won't be able to continue without correcting all our errors and explaining all the intricacies of plot and "Star Trek" lore that she knows. It's hilarious every time because she just can't help sounding like a nerd. She utters undeniably funny sentences like "No, she's actually 500 years old; that's why when the borg army came she knew what they were even though no one else understood that the planet was going to implode." You get the drift.
This is what I sounded like on Friday night. Wahima asks about "that brown wizard" to which I responded "Oh you mean Radagast the Brown. Yeah, he's actually part of an order of, well, they're sort of like angels, I guess, called the Istari (or is it Istári?). There are actually five of them: Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and two other blue wizards. They were sent by Manwë during the Third Age." I seriously couldn't help myself. What is there to do with asinine trivia except repeat it to people who don't care about it?
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