What original content may actually exist in the Flying Moose of Nargothrond website, including the Tolkien Sarcasm Page and its twisted contents, is copyright © 1996, 2000, 2001 and 2008 by O. Sharp. This does not, however, include or pretend to include all that stuff which is copyrighted already by other copyright owners, most notably the Tolkien Estate.
All quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien's works are copyrighted by the Tolkien Estate. The painting of Isengard shown at the beginning of Saruman's Diary is copyright © 1989 by Alan Lee. The stills from the Ralph Bakshi review are copyright © 1978 by whoever the hell was responsible for financing that lemon, except for the Knight of Ni, who is copyright © 1974 by the National Film Trustee Company Limited. None of these images were used with any permission whatsoever, except for those convenient "fair use" provisions in the copyright law:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 [of the copyright law], the fair use of a copyrighted work [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."In short: I may be displaying the images, but I don't own them.
The images used in the Bullwinkle pages, and the cartoon depicted in the Snidely Whiplash page, are all copyright © 1987 by Jay Ward Productions, and also © 1990 by Filmtel International... at least, if I'm reading the fine print correctly (the copyright notice they display onscreen is small, and not terribly easy to read). The images used in the He-Man pages are copyright © 1983 by Filmation Associates (who were owned by Group W Cable at the time, and have since been bought by some ludicrous French cosmetic company). The exceptions are the photograph (copyright © 1987 by Mattel) and newspaper article (copyright © 1984 by the Seattle Times) used to illustrate the battle over He-Man's marketing methods. As well, the articles from 1890s editions of the New York Times referenced in the article Old News are copyright 1896 and 1897 by that long-lived institution; a far more recent article by London's Sunday Times regarding Cate Blanchett is copyright © 2000 by that august publication. All these are likewise being reproduced under the terms of the copyright law's "fair use" provisions, with my heartfelt respect and thanks to the owners.
The Lord of the Rings Movie, representing about as much of a stretch of "fair use" as anyone might dare to attempt, poses a curious matter as far as copyright goes. The concept, editing and execution of the movie, together with and the video and audio created expressly for it, are copyright © 2001 by yours truly. However, the video clips and music borrowed from other sources are all copyright in their various years by their various owners, and used here with great appreciation and thanks. The list of those copyrighted sources is rather long, and so is given on its own web-page of movie credits. But be cautious; if you haven't watched the movie yet, the credits page is full of spoilers.
Some of the text in these pages has been graciously contributed by other authors. The various chapters of the Tolkien E-Text Project, The Lord Of The... whatever, are copyright © 2000, 2001 and 2002 by their various authors, and are displayed here with their permission and our thanks. Numerous other rec.arts.books.tolkien posters have also given me permission to reprint or summarize their posts, most notably in the Tolkien Crackpot Theories section. The copyright to all these texts are, of course, still held by their respective authors, and they too have my heartfelt respect and thanks. Adam Goodheart's article describing Edison's concrete houses, which originally appeared online at Discovery.com, is copyright © 1996 by Adam Goodheart, and is reproduced here with his kind permission and still more of our thanks.
(Due to the harvesting of e-mail addresses from the web by spambots, I have felt the need to tweak contributors' e-mail addresses into a somewhat less-readable form throughout the website. This tweaking should be fairly obvious when it occurs, and hopefully will help protect my friends and colleagues from some amount of spam.)
The two scripts enclosed in the "He-Man" section are copyright © 1985 by yours truly. Similarly, the scripts for The Narvik Concession and Mr. Potato Head: Defender Of The Geologic Ecosystem are both copyright © 1986, and The Blue Horror copyright © 1980, also by yours truly. Page 481 of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary of 1977, referenced by Mr. Potato Head, is copyright © 1977 by G. & C. Merriam Company.
All text and images in the Melkor-Bradley "web-site", and the accompanying Abercrombie & Fink "web-site", are copyright © 1997 by O. Sharp, with appropriate thanks and/or apologies to the good people at Milton-Bradley and Parker Brothers. If representatives of those two firms are actually interested in seeing the real-life versions of these games, they should drop me a line.
Many of these pages, including the venerable Tolkien Sarcasm Page, were first hosted on the web-servers at www.speakeasy.org between 1996 and 2001. As a result, there may be thousands of search engines and link-pages out there which are still pointing to the defunct Speakeasy site instead of this shiny beautiful new Flying Moose of Nargothrond site. C'est la vie.
Hmmmm... have I missed anything?
The clever and erudite Tolkien Sarcasm Page has
recently been blessed with receiving the (now-extinct) Aiwendel Award for its
noteworthy accomplishments in the field of Tolkien scholarship. It has
also, perhaps more appropriately, been awarded the honor of being named the
Geek Site Of The
Day for 26 November 1996 (though their current site mysteriously
chooses to list it under December).
The Open Directory Project has also awarded the Tolkien Sarcasm Page its Cool Site Award, declaring the site to be "sharp, classy and sidesplitting". Surprisingly, I didn't have to give them any bribe whatsoever to obtain this quote.
As well, the page describing What It's Like To Be A
Stagehand has been chosen by the International
Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees as its Site Of The Month for
September of 1997. I thought this such a high and
wonderful accolade that I married the site's webmaster.
(Well, okay, there was a little more to it than that.)
The Synopsis of the Lord of the Rings was paid the high compliment of being quoted by London's illustrious and respected Sunday Times for an article on Cate Blanchett's role in Peter Jackson's film. The ensuing references to Queen Beruthiel caused some degree of consternation amongst Tolkien fans when the article first appeared, and (I presume) in the Times' editorial offices as well; but it was still a nice honor.
Curiously, an effort was made to award one of my pages - they never actually said which page; perhaps it was my Error 404: File Not Found page - the Weekly Waldo Watch/Where's Waldo On The Web Award. The idea of lots of web-browsing young tykes stampeding through my web-pages looking for "Waldo", however, seemed to me to be both inappropriate and somewhat nauseating, and so it was that I chose to decline their generous and obviously-well-thought-out offer.
Where's Waldo On The Web has since gone out of business. Pity. I was just getting ready to put together a page for them called Waldo Fights Cthulhu And Dies Horribly.
Flying Moose of Nargothrond's privacy policy is as follows: We will not share any information we collect about you with any outside concern. In fact, we won't even collect any information about you to begin with. As a matter of fact, we don't even really want to know. It's none of our business anyway. So you're a dentist in Nevada? You're a lumberjack in British Columbia who emigrated from France and reads authentic Renaissance-era porn? The last three web-pages you viewed were an online sandwich store, a YouTube video about midgets and the Perry Bible Fellowship? Fine. Whatever. It's not really something that concerns us. What the hell do you expect us to do with the information, anyway?
If you voluntarily send information to us via e-mail or the Melkor-Bradley order-form or whatever, we will certainly reserve the right to look at the information you send and have a good laugh.
The information about Middle-earth presented herein should not be considered canonical or authoritative in any way, except for actual bona-fide references given to Tolkien's works. If you quote any of the Tolkien articles given here as authoritative sources, most notably the Tolkien E-Text, Saruman's Diary or the Synopsis of the Lord of the Rings, you do so at the risk of great personal and academic embarassment (as the London Sunday Times has had occasion to discover).
All attempts to make purchases from the Melkor-Bradley web-site are performed at your own risk.
Financial support for Flying Moose of Nargothrond is provided entirely by its webmaster, and these pages carry no paid advertising of any kind. Indeed, Flying Moose of Nargothrond looks somewhat askance upon other sites who insist upon selling their own readers to a corporate entity to make a buck. Yes, I know this is an antiquated view and not terribly in keeping with these modern times. But I'm simply not greedy enough to sell your eyes for the advertising revenue, however lucrative it may be.
I'm generally not stingy with bandwidth, but I do have to pay for it. Some people, unfortunately, think it's a neat idea to link my images directly into their own webpages instead of hosting photos of their own, leaving them with pretty websites for which I pay most of the bill. Because of this Flying Moose of Nargothrond now subscribes to McGillheny's Context-Sensitive Images to cut back on the hotlinking. If you hotlink to my images, therefore, do not be surprised if you become the butt of several of Argus McGillheny's jokes.
Because we've heard from a number of people who insist upon thinking they've come up with a really good and original idea, I shall remind you all that each individual chapter of the E-Text of The Lord Of The... whatever is individualy copyrighted by its contributor. Furthermore the work as a whole is based in homage to J.R.R. Tolkien's work The Lord of the Rings, which is also a copyrighted work. With that in mind, if you've just come up with this Really Great Idea that you ought to produce copies of The Lord Of The... whatever and start selling them, you may either start asking for permission from every single contributor and the Tolkien Estate or you can come up with a more sensible pursuit for your time. (If you're really that keen on publishing something, write your own book. It'll probably make better reading anyway.)
In general, legally speaking, it would probably be best if you didn't look at any of these web-pages at all. No warranties, express or implied, have been made for this product's usage or fitness for any specific task. Purchaser agrees to all terms given on the lease when they open the sealed disk-envelope. Children under the age of four should not be allowed to inhale this product. Do not place contents over your head or else baldness may result. This product is not designed to endure sudden changes in humidity. Do not stick your fingers in the gears or grab the sawblade while it is still moving. Eye shielding should be worn at all times. Keep this product refrigerated. Do not exceed recommended dosage. For external use only.
Yes, I believe that ought to cover everything.