I preached at the Gathering tonight- it went okay. Actually the whole service was pretty great, though I don't mean to insinuate by that that I was great. But everything else was. Anyways, I only bring it up because I used the following story in the sermon, which was a weird dream I had that I think is worth preserving:

The Murderous Axe of Morgoth

In this dream I get to be Aragorn. And Aragorn is in a very large, enclosed chamber similar to Moria. Sauron is present, more as a felt presence, but gigantic. So is a sorceress, for some reason. Sauron is controlling a very large, enchanted weapon, the Murderous Axe of Morgoth. It's huge, bigger than a bus, and he's trying to bash me with it. So I'm ducking and dodging, and he embeds the blade into the stone walkway. So then the sorceress sends this whirling spear thing at me, which flies everywhere, caroming here and there. At one point it scours the entire length of the Mudrerous Axe of Morgoth, rendering its enchantment useless. The sorceress is furious at me for this, and grabs me in her evil clawlike hand and yells, "You ruined the Murderous Axe of Morgoth!"
And I was like, "Well, you're trying to kill me so I'm not really sorry."
Then the scene changes, and i'm in a sterile church or school basement, white tiles, flourescent lights, and there are some cubicle dividers I can hide behind, because orcs are coming in. I shoot my bow and arrows at them, though my arrows are really just twigs and shouldn't do any damage at all. Luckily for me, Legolas shows up (in the form of this Jamaican guy I used to work with) and helps me out.
The scene changes again and this time I'm Frodo, and I've got the Ring, and it sucks cause I have to find a way to get it past Sauron and into Mordor to cast it into the fire. Luckily, I get a brilliant idea- I pretend Sauron is my Dad and get him committed to an Old Folks' Home. Does that ever piss him off! There he is, confined to a wheel chair in this carehome, the nurses and orderlies all around him. Everything they give him bursts into flame. He's just seething, he's so mad. Now with him out of the way like that, I am free to go to Mount Doom and do my thing. Except, it gets out that Sauron is my Dad (supposedly) and a live action Nelson Muntz comes and beats me up because of it. That's pretty much how the dream ends, with a feeling of profound sorrow that the very people I was trying to save were beating me up and hating me. And I couldn't tell them the truth, cause then they would have to let Sauron out.

Anyways, I'm sure Tolkien would probably spin in his grave if he saw that. Or else be grateful that he had lived a long and satisfying life and got to leave before he had to put up with all the crazies telling him how they had figured out a way that he could rewrite LOTR to make it way better -"It's about a talking pie that goes back in time for some reason . . ."
"Oh yeah, and you need to mention poo more often."