so, i was going for my 4am walkies, and my brain decided to shitpost in order to drag tolkien. (full disclosure: i have only watched the LotR movies, and have never bothered finishing any of his books, so i’m not exactly speaking from a place of great knowledge, which is why i’m putting it out here in case someone more informed can answer. (STEPHEN COLBERT IS ESPECIALLY INVITED TO JOIN THE CONVERSATION, JSYK))

to wit:

at the beginning of the first movie, we see Bilbo at his “one hundred and eleventy-first birthday,” right? 

so, hold on a second.  “eleventy” is, in internet parlance, the jokey pronounciation of three ones (111) in a mock-outraged keysmash of exclamation points (”OMG!!111!!eleventy!”… so one-hundred-and-eleventy is… 1,111? 211?

bilbo’s a thousand fucking years old?  but wait, it gets weirder.

if hobbits, for whatever reason, use base eleven instead of base 10, one hundred (b11) is 121 (11x11) in b10, which means he’s more like 1350 years old.

okay, wait, hobbits are small, and they recognize pints, so maybe they use base 8, where 100 (b8) is only 64 (b10), which means Bilbo is “only” …. 705 years old.

so, the fact that the one ring grants longevity is given in canon, but this then opens up the question of how the fuck smeagol/gollum has survived for between six hundred and fifty and 1300 years since losing it.

(also, i saw two cute but shy tuxedo cats, one a young adult, and one a kitten, while i was taking a stroll.)