From: mr@sandman.net   
      
   So Gollum hides in a dark pool under the lonely mountain for about five   
   hundred years, killing off goblins and eating fish.   
      
   After this time period, Sauron starts to return to Middle Earth and calls   
   for the ring, which "decides" to leave Gollum. Gollum loses the ring in one   
   of the tunnels, with the only concievable reason for being picked up by a   
   goblin, the only other creatures around.   
      
   The reason I'm thinking about this is because Gandalf says that Bilbo was   
   meant to find the ring. While there is no way to know if Gandlaf could even   
   know this to be true, it seems far more likely that Bilbo was NOT meant to   
   find the ring. Indeed, Bilbo finding the ring worked against the ring's   
   "wishes" in that it was unable to subvert Bilbo to any greater degree and   
   Bilbo took the ring further away from Mordor.   
      
   And in the beginning of the movies, the Galadriel narration says the exact   
   opposite - "Then something happened that the ring did not intend" when   
   Bilbo finds it. I've always felt that this was in stark contrast to   
   Gandalfs position (also in the movies), but I'm starting to see why this is   
   the more likely scenario.   
      
      
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   Sandman[.net]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)