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You really want an "I <3 the sons of Feanor" shirt.
Yikes! I... would be a little more specific at least. The sons of Feanor, as a whole, were mass murderers.
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when you walk about the house muttering Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
NO!
Tokien was given a wine cup with the inscription. He was astonished and displeased. He used it as an ash tray.
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You have an Encyclopedia of Tolkien
It had better be a good one. Who wrote it pray?
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A great essay I read last night is this
http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/C/Janet.B.C ... tening.htm If you have the time, read it. It's very good.
I did not read it in detail, but there were many good things I saw.
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You are mad that Tom Bombadil was cut out of the FOTR.
I am not. I think it was one of their wisest decisions. I do not assume, when a movie "cuts" something out that it is because they think it is unimportant. I think it is impossible for the people who made so many mistakes to make anything that would come close to doing credit to the part about Old Tom, Iarwain.
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You cannot stand Arwen in the movies. The books are a much better portrayal of her, in your opinion.
*coughs *Arwen was not portrayed in the movies.
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...if whenever you go down stairs you try to move without your head bobbing like Galadriel does.
I think I try to do that, but I do it to be silent, rather than to keep my head from bobbing, and I was not inspired by that shot in the film, though I did notice it.
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...when Tolkien's books are pretty much the only books you'll read several times over, and never get tired of them.
Not so. I am fair in my fandom. I believe it would please Tolkien better (who also liked books). I can and have read Watership Down many times.
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When you want to build a hobbit hole under all your favorite hills.
My older brother built a sort of hobbit hole by covering a valley between two sort of hills with boards. Unfortunately it was a dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell (but not necessarily nasty), and there was also nothing to sit down on or to eat.
Formula for enjoying the films called Lord of the Rings:
Pretend some action adventure writer was inspired by childhood memories of reading The Lord of the Rings to write an action adventure story of the same name, and the motion picture was based entirely on that. It is pretty near the truth, which makes it easy, and it gets you out of the perspective where you are shocked or disappointed when the movie is different then Tolkien's book.
Notice I said "the films called..." It is better to pretend that they were not based on the book by J. R. R. Tolkien.
When the movie makers say they were trying to follow the books, if you have watched the things about the making of the movie in the extended edition (my family has watched part of it), then you will see that they are sincerely "following the book," that is, in the amount of work they put into the movie, and the cultural artistic detail they had, in which they did a very good job.
The things that bothered me most (before I got the "knack" of watching them) was still certainly not the lack of Bombadil. Nor Glorfindel. It would have been far better to have Elrohir rather than Arwen take Glorfindels place, since Elrohir was given such a prominent place later in the movie which he did not have in the book. Arwens entry was spoiled by her being put in that part. It irrevocably labels her as the usual superwoman, which taints her part throughout the rest of the movie. Thinking of it as a book they wrote themselves: they did get at least try to wipe away some of that reproach with their own strange story of her and Aragorn.
What bothered me most was:
the removal of the scouring of the Shire (it was the main point of the story, which was foreseen from the outset),
the ridiculous portrayal of the ents (fine, though, even interesting, if you follow the formula I mentioned),
Galadriel forgetting to breath on the water of the Mirror,
the cutting out of the Dunadain and the bringing of the host of the Dead to Pellenor,
the cutting out of the drums in the deep,
the ruining of the
Gray Havens,
and of course the removal and violation of all the principals of subtlety and suspense, replacing it with continuous violent shock tactics; the flattening of the story.
The books greatest artistic asset is the powerful subtlety, the intensity of its suspense, which was deliberately avoided in the movie, in order to appeal to cheap thrill. The books have great conflicts, and where these are sometimes portrayed well in the movie. For instance the nazgul attacking Theoden, Aragorn running into Mordor, and the fight between Gandalf and Saruman.
There are other things, but those are the ones that I am remembering right now.
Why did a story worthy of more than Alfred Hitchcock get Peter Jackson?
But the work they did on making the movie good quality, and giving the books at least a twisted kind of respect, does at least make the movie worth watching (and when you watch it, it pays to enjoy it, hence the formula I developed).
Has anyone else noticed that Tolkien himself looks better by far than all the actors for the movie put together?
Of the actors, the actors for Aragorn and Sam are of the few that have note worthy depth.
(and this was before Inception was even plotted 
The weird part was no one cared except Sam. He was really annoyed that we got caught "again". I have know idea where that came from. 
How can I not die over that?
