Disclaimer
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.
I’ve been putting in some tweaks to the page layout, as you may have noticed, and, while I was at it, the appearance of one too many animated ads for the Fighting Uruk-Hai of Arizona in my sidebar finally inspired me to revise and expand my ad disclaimer. As you can see, if you scan over to the right, it now reads: Views inscribed in the Rad Geek People’s Daily are mine, and may not be those of sponsors. Google ads are served algorithmically, without individual review, so contrariwise, an ad’s appearance does not imply my endorsement of the sponsor.
To be fair, the Adsense management interface does have a provision for screening out future appearances of particular ads, after-the-fact, if you catch one that you don’t want them to appear on your page. On the other hand, I should hope that most of my readership is not about to vote for Gothmog. And if I let the ads appear, then, should anyone happen to click on a McCain ad, that means a little more money is taken away from the McCain 2008 Presidential campaign, and given to me instead. Which seems like a particularly sweet sort of revenge.
Yes, yes. I know that, if you go by the depiction in the Peter Jackson movie, Gothmog is not one of the Uruk-Hai, but rather an Orc of Minas Morgul. I’m taking some liberties. If you don’t like it, take me to Nerd Court.
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I’d take you to Nerd Court (or more appropriately Geek Court) but because of the layout: with Firefox’s bookmark toolbar open, the center column is too skinny (for my taste).
I thought Gothmog was the name of a balrog in the First Age, not an orc at all.
Does Geek Court have a url?
Aster,
The original Gothmog was lord of the Balrogs; he was one of Morgoth’s most terrible servants, Marshal of the hosts of Angband, and the commander in all of the great battles with the Noldorin. (Sauron, for his part, mainly operated as a necromancer, rather than as a captain of physical forces in battle.) Gothmog slew Fëanor in the Battle Under the Stars, slew Fingon and captured H?@c3;ba;rin at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, and finally led the sack of Gondolin, where he was slain by (and slew) Ecthelion of the Fountain in single combat in the square of the King.
In the Third Age, Gothmog (the one I’m referring to) was the name of the second-in-command of the armies of Minas Morgul (under the Witch-King) at the battle of Pelennor Fields. He’s only mentioned briefly by name and not described in the book of The Return of the King. In Peter Jackson’s movie, he gets a fair amount of screen time, and is depicted as a Morgul-Orc (pictured here), who I think happens to bear an uncanny resemblance in both appearance and manner to John McCain.
I think that the proper URI for bringing this particular case before Nerd Court would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gothmog_%28Third_Age%29.
Yes, yes, touché. I humbly acknowledge that Radgeek has more proficiency slots in Tolkien lore than Aster. Do you win a biscuit or something?
BTW, I liked this picture better:
http://www.tednasmith.com/silmarillion/TN-Fingon_and_Gothmog-Web.jpg