AP sage

I am now officially ready for ANYTHING they throw at me in their blasted little passages, even if it's some incomprehensible blurb from Obasan. Please God don't let it be so.

So, I'm looking at some really lovely free/vacation expanses. YES! it's about time. I'm gonna read my plays that just came in! Racine, Moliere, Wilde, Middleton, Shaw, and, if they ever turn up at zhe local branch, Jonson and De Vega.

Life will be good.

Biology is another matter.

Poor fellow!

Oh, Tartuffe is a wonderful play, I must say. But enough of anapests. Yesterday I did an unfathomable amount of reading, which, while I do read frequently, was quite novel in its magnitude. The only drawback is I don't have time to watch movies. It seems whenever I have spare time, I want to read :S. But as I was saying earlier to someone who probably won't read this so I feel no obligation to mention their name, the ryme scheme was a little much, it would've been better in blank verse.

Part Last (yes, it does have an end).

Nishan knew that if he stayed standing he might soon be killed, so he immediately threw his body flat on the ground, and crawled under the thick torrent of altered fruit. His uncomfortably terrestrial journey was long and tortuous, but soon he was clear of the ireful avenue. He then adopted a less reptilian posture, and, realizing he was late, ran towards the palace gates. On arriving in front of the gates, a wide chasm in the ground instantly opened before him. Had he not abruptly stopped, he would have fallen down into the rift, in which there seemed to be no bottom. Fearing the emperor’s displeasure in his absence, Nishan hurriedly took hold of a wooden plank, and laid it across the small abyss. He dashed over it, through the grounds, and into the palace. As soon as he went in, there was a sudden eclipse of the sun. The sky turned a shade of purple and the stars were visible. The stars were very visible in fact, and they all looked abnormally bright. Nishan came out of the palace, and on seeing the sky, ran back in to fetch a sheet of papyrus and a quill pen. He decoded from the largest: “Fool! You have upset the essential factor of predictability in the course of time! This has set off a joint supernova and we shall all explode within seconds!”
To this Nishan yelled, “We’re free!” and the stars exploded.

Part 7

“Thank you, good Tiridates.” replied Nishan. “I deeply regret disturbing you so suddenly, but lately there have been strange goings on, such that I may not now speak of. I shall presently inform you of everything.”
The next morning Nishan arose intending to walk to the palace as he usually did. That morning, however, soon proved to be divorced from regular occurrences. As he stepped out of the door, a man of great girth, leading a number of intimidating dogs, approached him. The fat man seemed to be in a towering rage, and accosted Nishan: “Sir! You have stolen every one of my noble hounds’ individual chew toys! I cannot imagine how or why you did it, but as I have personally known all who live on this street for most of my life, I am certain it was you! Naturally I am extremely angry with you, but I am a hunter who believes in the sanctity of life, and therefore will permit you to run before my hounds overtake and dismember you.”
When the fat hunter finished his sadistic declaration, Nishan calmly ran as fast as he could and climbed into a sufficiently lofty olive tree. The slobbering canines gathered below him, growling and barking with as much ferocity as if they had never been more furious at their prey. After a few minutes of fearfully strangling the tree, Nishan observed Tiridates emerge from his house and walk over to the cantankerous fat man. Tiridates berated the generously proportioned hunter until he sulkily withdrew his dogs. Nishan then descended from the tree and renewed his effort to reach the palace. Sadly, while he was walking down one of the main avenues, another misfortune befell him. On either side of the street were multitudes of fruit shops packed side-by-side. Unexpectedly, men appeared behind every shop front, carrying armfuls of fruit. Then, without warning, they started to fling the fruit at each other as hard as they could. While they were engaged in this, those on the left harassed those on the right, and vice versa, with fervent exclamations, such as: “We have poisoned our fruits! You all shall die!” from the left, and “Hah! We have concealed razor blades in our fruits! You shall die first!” from the right.

Part 6

Nishan was rather startled at this, and queried: “What have I done to displease you?”
“Every prophecy is set, defined, and non-negotiable. You flouted these rules today when you condoned the emperor’s resolution to stay in bed. Thus he never stepped upon one of his frogs and the prophecy was not fulfilled! The falling of that pillar was no accident, Nishan. You are to be eliminated because of this.” Replied the heavens.
When he had finished decoding this last remark, Nishan was seized with a powerful fear, and decided never to converse with the stars again. He ran down the stairs from the roof into his room, packed his things, and left the house. Then he wandered the streets confusedly for a few minutes, until he determined to stay the night at the house of his friend Tiridates. After a short walk he arrived in front of his friend’s door and knocked six times. In one or two minutes he heard a faint scuffling noise, then a few very audible bumps, and finally an explosive yell, which issued forth with the severity of a gunshot. The door slowly opened to reveal a wild-eyed man who had apparently been sleeping. White stubble stuck out rebelliously from his chin at unimaginable angles, and what remained of his hair was carelessly strewn about in a decidedly disordered manner.
It did not take him long to recognize Nishan, and he promptly exclaimed: “Nishan, my good friend! Had I known you were to come here I should not have fallen asleep! As it is, you are welcome to my home at any time, though if I had received word of your coming, I might have prepared to accommodate you.”

Part 5

After the emperor had clarified this monosyllabically, the court’s trivial machinations peacefully resumed. Nishan was happy to prophesy only that which would please the king. One day however, when he asked the stars to tell him what would befall the emperor, there were no pleasant predictions. So he hastily selected a prophecy that he deemed less distressing than the others, and set off to give the ruler his daily horoscope. On arriving at the emperor’s chambers, Nishan was embarrassed to find that the emperor had no clothes. The monarch was slightly frivolous, but a kind man all the same, so he bade Nishan sit down and disregard his appearance. Nishan did so, and proceeded to relate, as gently as he could, the “dark” prophesy, saying: “Majesty, I consulted my astrological arts this morning, and found there were no prophesies that might be acceptable to your… selective tastes. This is my prediction: about a hundred sacred tree frogs escaped from the royal menagerie last night. When you go forth from your rooms today, you will presently step on one of them and squash it to death.”
“Well, I don’t have to do that. I’ll just stay in bed!” said the emperor. Nishan had no qualms with this, so he advised the ruler to do as he wished.
The remainder of the day passed smoothly, until around six o’clock. The old soothsayer was walking out through the palace gates, when one of the great stone pillars that held them up collapsed onto its side, nearly crushing him. Nishan picked himself up and dazedly made his way back to his home. When night fell, he went up to the top of his roof, as he always did, to speak to the stars. He observed that they were shining brighter than usual, and the first sentence he decoded surprised him considerably: “Old man, you have disobeyed us!”

Part 4

Nishan heartily thanked the carter and they soon arrived at the city walls. After this Nishan was easily able to talk his way past the sentries, and get into the palace. Without further deliberation, he strode purposefully into the throne room where the emperor was holding court, and shouted: “It is I, Nishan, the one you exiled so long ago! I have come to demand that I be reinstated in my position as royal clairvoyant owing to an unprecedented increase in my foretelling abilities!”
Nishan bellowed this statement so loudly that the entire court could hear him. They could not, however, understand his proclamation because diction had gone out of fashion so that everyone spoke in simple sentences and read Hemingway.
The emperor then told everyone to leave him and Nishan alone. They did so, and when the room was free of jabbering courtiers, he spoke to the old man: “Why are you here? I made you go away ‘cause you told of bad things and I didn’t like that. Now you’re back and you think I’ll let you stay? You’re crazy.”
“Your supreme eminence, I am resolved on predicting only beneficial transpirations regarding yourself, and will not deviate from this voluntarily chosen method unless it is your will that I do so.” replied Nishan.
“Ok.” said the emperor, “If you don’t say that bad stuff will happen, you can stay.”

Part 3

The old man read the entire communication and collapsed onto a log-stool in a mild state of shock. When this passed, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted into the air: “Why me?”
He then looked to the brightest star in the sky and decoded: “Because you are alone.”
After his first encounter with the stars, Nishan learned many things from them every night. This knowledge he gathered was so secret that no man had ever even dreamt of it, nor has any since. In the space of a few weeks he amassed such a quantity of knowledge that he desired to reenter the world in spite of his banishment. So, after packing his meager remaining possessions into a red-and-white spotted bag slung over a stick, he made his way down the precipitous slope that surrounded his house. When he arrived at the side of a road bordering the hill, he observed a dumpy little man driving two donkeys ahead of his cart. He hailed the carter, saying: “Hello there, O carter! I am unfortunately stricken with a broken hip. Would you be kind enough to transport me into the capital?”
The carter was a little taken aback by this, as he had not expected to see an insane-looking old man jump out from behind the bushes. Then, to answer the old man’s request, he said: “My wife once told me that those who have broken hips are unable to walk, but as I am going to the capital anyway, I’ll take you as far as the outer walls.”

part 2

One evening Nishan, who had always relied greatly on astrology for his predictions, decided to fashion a telescope out of available materials. Following numerous dismal failures, he finally managed to hollow out a log and equip it with the necessary devices. He immediately set to work studying the heavens. While he was thus engaged, an idea came to him. “I wonder,” he thought aloud “if there is any significance behind the twinkling of these stars.” And since he had no other obligations, he began to try and see if the intermittent flashes of the celestial spheres could be interpreted through various codes. After going through a plethora of cryptographic contrivances, he finally chanced upon Morse code. When he had completely filled one of the pieces of flattened bark that he used for writing, he started deciphering the sporadic flares, and abruptly stopped. He had only interpreted two flashes, but was completely astounded that he could understand them. The “word” was composed of only two letters: “W” and “E” respectively. Thinking that that it might be a simple coincidence, he quickly decoded the next few dots and dashes. There was only one comprehensible order of the following letters: following “W-E” were “S-E-E-Y-O” and “U.” Hastily fumbling with his pen he excitedly interpreted the rest of the message, which read:
“We see you, and we know of every detail of your life in advance. We know also the lives past, present, and future of all organisms that inhabit your small planet. We will not answer any queries as to how or why this is so, but we have chosen you as the solitary life form to whom we will reveal ourselves. You may ask anything you wish relating to time’s fixed events.”

New story! Woohoo!

Oh yeah. You're gonna loooove this one. Before we begin, however, I'd like to state that Fiona once ate too many carrots and turned orange. That is all.

The Man Who Spoke to the Stars.


Very recently, in the high, sleepy hills of a distant land, there lived a wise old man who had been exiled from the king’s court because of his disastrous prophesies for the kingdom. This man was called Nishan the Seer. He had lived in the same little hut on top of the most precarious hill since he had been thrown out of the royal palace and the capital. When first arriving on the hill, Nishan, very distressed, had torn his clothes and hair in frustration, lamenting: “Why was I cursed with this ability to foretell the Future? It has brought me nothing but ruin!”
After a few weeks of this self-pity, he started to become accustomed to his new environment. He built his house, found out which trees bore the best fruit, learned the locations of the berry bushes the bears visited (studiously avoiding them), and ascertained where the largest schools of fish swam in the river. In this way, he passed many of his days in a state of near contentment.

Tennis...

Yarr... just got back from that mindless pasttime. It's got to be the most elitist sport out there. The scoring system alone was created specifically to exclude the peasants. Poor peasants.

There are a couple of us who've been taking lessons for absolutely ever. This one other guy in th'aforementioned group, Dylan, was playing with a less-experienced, extremely attractive young girl today. He's something of a patrician, or at least he acts like it, and she dresses like a little floosy. Because of this, they reminded me of a stout old corporate boss and his gorgeous young girlfriend (though she's probably older than he). But I'm just a little envious, so my opinion is undoubtedly biased.

You know, I didn't think I'd choose sides before, but now I believe I'd throw my lot in with the Musketeers and try to save Charles from the scurrelous puritans. They're just too right-wing.

some books... they're surprisingly colorful for scientific literature 

Fie upon that dastardly Robert Mugabe!

What an asshole, I mean, his people are starving and he tells the aid orginizations NOT to give them food. I really can't conceive what could make him do something like that, I guess he just doesn't give a damn, kinda like a fellow who can't talk and lives on Pennsylvania Ave.

And another thing, what is the Christian right's problem? If you're worried about alleged gay promiscuity, why don't you flippin' let them get married??? It's all very depressing: people who are eager to hate and comdemn can be so easily used by immoral politicians.

Bah! it makes me sick, and apparently the Pope as well. Hope he's ok either way.

Getting back to me, my existence of late has been absolutely saturated with Shakespeare. Finished Hamlet, started As You Like It (I'm reading that one out loud, and using Cary Grant's voice for Oliver), got discouraged midway through Troilus and Cressida, and watched many many film versions, specifically: Zefferelli's and Olivier's Hamlets, some weird modern Macbeth with Greta Scacchi as Lady M., and that's it for now, but I'm told more are coming.