AUTHOR'S NOTES: Whitey Bolger is a notorious Boston mobster who's been on the run since forever. If you don't know who he is, a Google search will quickly relieve you of your ignorance. That is what we're making fun of with Fatty here. I mean, Fatty Bolger. Whitey Bolger. How could we resist?

THE LORD OF THE RINGTONES – THE E-COMMUNITY OF THE RINGTONE – CHAPTER ELEVEN – A COMCAST CABLE BOX IN THE DARK

Our dear hobbits were drifting off to sleep at the Holiday Inn Express. The Overtheriver-Andthroughthewoods family reunion continued to rage on downstairs. But an excruciatingly spooky feeling had fallen over Buckland like a bad Scooby-Doo movie.

Fatty Bolger poked his head out of his jail cell (which just happened to be conveniently located next to the Holiday Inn Express). After being on the run for a very long time, the Buckland PD had finally caught him, and Fatty was in jail. He had been cooped up for quite some time and was most likely beginning to hallucinate. How else would one describe the horrifying black figure going through the gate and approaching Fatty's window?

"Open in the name of Mordor!" The figure hissed.

Fatty didn't move.

An alarm went off. Fatty couldn't tell its source. A voice cried out:

AWAKE! FEAR AND FIRE AND FOES, OH MY! FEAR AND FIRE AND FOES, OH MY!

Fatty didn't know what to do. Why was this person looking for him? Fatty was already in jail. What could this wacko want?

"Help!" Fatty called to the guard. "Help me! I need the phone! I need to call my brother!"

The guard looked over his glasses at Fatty. "Your brother?"

"Yes! Bill Bolger, President of U-Buckland!" Fatty said anxiously. Surely Bill would have some answers. Little did he know, Big Brother Bill was bankrupt.

The guard shook his head and went back to reading The Buckland Times. He's finally lost it, the guard thought.


It was early in the morning when Frodo woke up. He woke suddenly and felt very uneasy. However, when he saw that all was right with the world, he went back to sleep.

Later, Frodo woke up again. He heard engines revving, tires squealing, and horns honking. Everyone was awake, and Speeder ushered them out of the room their cardboard cutouts occupied. When they saw what had happened, all four companions gasped.

The cutouts were slashed (that is to say, chopped into tiny little pieces, not forced into non-canonical homosexual relationships) and the pieces strewn all over the room. All hobbits were glad they'd taken their newfound compadre's advice.

"Icky!" Frodo gasped.

"That's beyond creepy," Pippin shuddered.

"Come along," Speeder hurried them out of the room. "We must make like a baby and head out. Quick! Hurry back to the room and gather your things!"

All four quickly did as they were told. When they were done, they ran to their Lemon. "Hey! It's stripped!" Sam cried.

"Who'd want to strip a car like this?" Pippin asked incredulously.

"I…uh…wouldn't know…" Merry stammered.

"To my Ranger!" Speeder declared heroically.

"I thought you were a Ranger!" Sam said indignantly.

"I am," Speeder confirmed. "And so is my truck."

"Now that's just sick," Frodo panted.

"I don't get it." Pippin commented. But keeping up with Speeder was challenging, so the hobbits set a rather torrid pace.

They reached the Ford Ranger and might have gotten an earlier start if not for Merry and Frodo fighting over shotgun. "Hey!" Pippin protested when Merry tried to get in. "I want shotgun!"

"No way!" Frodo interjected. "Ringbearer gets shotgun!"

"Give me one good reason!" Merry challenged.

"I'll give you five good reasons!" Frodo shouted back. He counted them off on his fingers. "One, two, three, four, five!"

"Those are good reasons," Merry deadpanned.

"Get out!" Speeder tossed Merry out of the seat and Frodo jumped in.

Sam, Pippin, and Merry tussled for various positions in the backseat for a few minutes. When all were settled, Speeder started the car.

"Speeder?" Pippin asked.

"Yes, Pippin?"

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"PIPPIN!" Everyone yelled.

And then a bit of long, boring driving transpired. Much to Pippin's anguish, there was not a single bathroom stop.


"What is this place?" Pippin asked as Speeder drove up a long, windy mountain road.

"Weatherchannel dot com-top." Speeder parked the car. "We will spend the night here."

"What is it?" Merry insisted.

"It used to be weatherchannel dot com's official weather rock," Speeder explained.

"Weather rock?" Merry asked.

"Yes, weather rock. If it's wet, it's raining; if it's warm, it's sunny; you get the idea," Speeder continued. "It's abandoned now, but the name remains."

This understood, they began to set up camp. Sam and Frodo lit a fire and prepared dinner. For Speeder it was quite enough, but the hobbits found that it wasn't nearly satisfactory.

"We don't have enough food!" Merry complained. "We'll never make it to Rivendell."

"Yes, we will," Speeder said evenly. "There is food in the wild. I got a merit badge in hunting, but that will be time-consuming and dangerous. Do try to make the food last as long as possible."

As the night wore on, it got colder. Speeder began to tell the hobbits stories to keep them from creeping out. He knew a lot of history, tales of good and evil. The hobbits were quite enchanted. They never heard of anything outside the Shire.

"Tell us of Gil-Galad," Merry spoke up.

Sam gasped. "Yes! We want to hear of the Elves!"

"Aren't they the ones that speak Elvisian?" Pippin pondered before being thwacked in the back of the head by two of his companions.

But Speeder shook his head. "I do not believe we should speak of that here; not while servants of the Enemy are present. When we get to Rivendell, I will tell you the story."

"Look!" Pippin pointed to the sky, completely oblivious to the fact that someone else was trying to speak. "That star is awfully bright."

The four others followed his gaze. "I don't think that's a star, Pip," Merry stated.

"It's a UFO!" Sam shrieked.

Speeder held up a hand. "It's just the moon."

"What are those, then?" Pippin pointed at the three black shapes silhouetted against the moon.

"Black Drivers!" Speeder hollered. "Stay close to the fire with your faces outward!"

The Drivers advanced. They slid to a halt in front of the hobbits and climbed out of their Vipers. The four waited for piercing screams or other such ickiness, but nothing came.

One of the Tonewraiths stepped forward. "Hi!" it said, rather jovially. "This is my PDA. His name is Trevor. He's a Treo. Trevor the Treo. Would you like to meet him?" He moved forward again.

Such sickness of mind our hobbits had never before seen. "AaAaAaA!" they screamed.

A second stepped forward. And this is my phone. Her name is Vicky the Verizon. She is very friendly. Aren't you, Vicky?"

The name of the phone was Vicky! Vicky the Verizon! And it actually called the phone Vicky! It was too much to bear. "AaAaAaAaA!"

The third Tonewraith cornered Frodo. "Do you suppose that you could come and connect Candy, my comically cool Comcast Cable Box?" it smirked, holding out a large, gray cable box.

It was too much to bear. Frodo was beyond making any noise, he was so terrified. The Ringtone rang, and without thinking, he flipped up the lid and pressed the telephone to his ear.

Everything looked like the negative of a photograph. The three Tonewraiths advanced on him. The one with Candy the Comcast Cable Box lunged forward and held it right in Frodo's face.

I have to get out of here! Desperately, Frodo took the Ringtone away from his ear and closed it.