h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lord of the Rings

Posted Dec 27, 2002

The lord of the rings is a very long book that uses many of the same words several times. The word "the" appears well in excess of 233 times, which is coincidentally the processor speed of my mother's first pentium computer. The lord of the rings manages to use the word "Gimli" which had previously not been used in any book known to mankind. It also fortuitously came across the word "Legolas" which has become so popular that it is now the name of a character in a trilogy of feature films, set in New Zealand in what appears to be early colonial times.

The book is a sort of long riddle which asks the question "Who is the lord of the rings?" from pages 1 to 143; though that can only be known by reducing all the letters of those pages to numerals, and then compressing them with a shareware compression utility, like PKZip or WinRAR, or just by giving them a good squeeze. The end of the book is the revelation that, in fact, you are the lord of the rings, and that you can be anything you want to be if you just set your mind to it. Owing to this fact, the book has become the second most widely read book of the 20th century.

The most widely read book of the 20th century was called the Bible, and it contains alot of interesting scraps, like recipes, and patterns for a particularly smart frock for mucking about or general housework. While the Lord of the Rings declares the most positive message known, that being that, in fact, you are the lord of the rings and can be anything you want to be if you just set your mind to it, the bible has a slightly more most positive message known, that being that, in fact, while the first 2000 pages are very gloomy, there is a nice bit on a hill and a good description of a 4-player equestrian event to distract us when things get particularly nasty at the end of it all.

DDP

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Latest reply: Dec 27, 2002