HOBBITS BANE

The reason why Gandalf smokes a long churchwarden pipe is two-fold: he's too darn vain to wear his reading specs except when he absolutely needs them, and he doesn't want to set his beard on fire. Entirely unlike him, my beard is neatly almost obsessively trimmed short, because I am more fastidious than him, and reading specs are my constant companion. Not only because of printed matter. There might be a coffee cup or fork on its way to my mouth. Or, hypothetically, a pipe. Either lit, or not yet. I like to see what I'm setting fire to.

Another point of difference: my stick is not absurdly long. Unlike Gandalf, I do not need to keep hobbitses in line. Nasty verminous hobbitses. We hates them.

Actually, we don't have hobbits here. We've got bums, streetpeople, and fentanyl freaks bent over in the zombie pose forming perfect toadstool shapes that one could very well leapfrog over if one was so inclined. Inadvisable. They'd topple over and take you to court.

Maybe those are the hobbits.

There were three very strange people who walked by as I was smoking my pipe while waiting in Chinatown tonight. Less than half a dozen neighborhood residents. Some stoners, and a score of tourists. And a man wearing a scungy wool coverlet and naught else.

I could have clobbered nasty hobbitses, had there been any.
That's always a possible use of the stick.
Hobbit control.

It ended up being an early evening. The karaoke place was filled with screeching orcs, and the place to which we usually bail out had a new person behind the counter who informed us that she was closing in ten minutes the very second we walked in. And I note that Tat Yee had already left. Another bar was filled with squiffed marketing types, and the last possibility was closed tonight. There is a fifth bar which we haven't visited, but it's relatively new and looks like it has designer cocktails for yuppies. Carefully curated.

So after we left the burger place, there was nothing.
Perhaps the hobbitses are taking over.
We disapproves of them!



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