THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET

If you are easily irritated by trivial comment on inherently inane subjects (and why shouldn't you be?), please stop reading now.

For all the rest of us who have by this time spent a calculable fraction of our time on earth staring at LOTRO's two loading screens, wondering what exactly those weirdly contorted, half-mineral, half-animate shapes writhing along the edge of the staircase leading into (presumably) Mordor could possibly be, I may have an answer. The figure on the right of the staircase in the first screen (above, left) is a US Marine in up-to-date desert camouflage holding an automatic rifle and hoping to sneak into Mordor. The figure on the right of the staircase in the second screen (above, right) is much harder to interpret, but I think I've cracked it: it's an elf with unusually large and pointed ears wearing a crown and clutching, for some reason, a metal crutch. Unlike the US Marine, he is intent on departing the approach to Mordor in as dignified a way as possible under the circumstances.

Don't ask me for the meaning of these two figures. I feel I've done my bit; let others devote themselves to the task of explication.