The 12th Night

         I have recently been thinking about a play that my friends and I had put on several years back. As the title would seem to imply it was the 12th night. Well traditionally Shakespeare was acted only by men. Well since it was just my friends and myself it was Shakespeare acted only by girls. Oh and as for using his words, we sortof did ad lib, but we followed the plot. Well, we followed the plot as often as we saw fit. We just followed the Hollywood tradition of basing something very loosely on something else.
         I got to be Sir Toby. I was a wonderful Sir Toby. One of my friends didn't think so, because I cut out the one "Romance scene" I had to do.  There wasn't even a romance scene for  Sir Toby in the original play! That would be slightly awkward.
         Actually the biggest miscast was my younger sister as Sebastian and the oldest girl there as Viola. Separately they would have done fine, but it was just the wrong combination, of everyone there they looked the most different. Any other combination would have been better.  Viola and I would have looked alright together as identical twins the same with her two younger sisters. I think Olivia would have been a very good Sebastion. Especially since it was difficult to lose the sword fight to my little sister since she was scared of the metal skewers we were fighting with. Olivia was than much better at sword fighting.
         I wish I really knew how to use a sword. There is no practical purpose in it. Although there is no practical use of football. What can you say ? I learned to tackle people playing football (what you had to play football to learn that).
        None of us got the characters right, probably. I mean we were all under the age of 17 and only two of us had probably read Shakespeare's plays. Still I remember that play fondly.

I am working on something

       really weird. Actually I am working on a novel, with some cooperation with my younger sister. It's something like a SciFi/Fantasy story. My sister took it upon herself to design the clothes for the world. Maybe she will post some if it.
         It is fortunately for me a very simple story. There is only one overarching story lines, unlike the seven or so that I was trying to work out in my last one. I am going to come back to more complicated one, when I have a little more experience. The experience is composed of what I will hopefully finish by the end of this year.
        I do not want to give  away to much, it needs to be a wonderful surprise (Fine than just a surprise). The story is turning out a little longer than I had originally intended, somewhere like a hundred pages, which would probably translate to being about two hundred pages in book format or so. It may be closer to two hundred pages, not in book format, but we will see. 
        I know most people know of many people who are writing there own book. What makes my book better than there's... Wellll...Because it is mine of course! (what you expect me to have a reason?) oh, and I don't write about sparkly Vampyres (which is definitely a big plus).
           In reality I think that the book will at least will be interesting and colourful. It can not be worse than the trash already out there (well maybe if I tried).  And it will be just a little bit Anglo-Saxony (Yes there will be sharp swords involved). What else is there to ask for? I may even write a battle scene (since I've been in so many of them).

Shaesphere and Dickens, German?

          No, he wasn't but apparently during WWII, the Germans claimed that he was. They must have claimed that every good author was German  In two different movies that I watched this was the case. They were of course British Propaganda movies.
          Well there was a Sherlock Holmes moving The Secret Weapon, with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. In the first scene that takes place in a German restaurant, Holmes is an agent for England, who is pretending to be an agent for Germany, disguised as a bookseller. As the German agent bookseller he pretends to try to sell his two German bosses a collection of Dickens. He was selling the Bismark Papers (Pickwick papers?) written by Charles Dickens "an old German writer". I had to re-watch that part make sure I heard correctly. Later, in the movie Holmes mentions that Dickens was a English writer, so it was not like the people in the movie did not know who Dickens was.

            The reference in the next one was "Pimpernel Smith. It was a 'modern' remake of the Scarlet Pimpernel.  The German villain was explaining that Shakespeare was actually a German, it was proven by someone or another. Then the undercover professor after expressing surprise at that said "still you must admit that the English translations are most remarkable". Yes, he was being a little cheeky. 
       

Two turtle doves

         It's the second day of Christmas. No school work. I have hours a day to write and read and draw and clean.And there was more 'and's' in that sentence than ever should be legal (Hey I'm my own grammar police).  life is never completely perfect. It would be no fun, than.
         Write now I am working on the "Club of Queer Trades" one of the stories in my volume of G.K. Chesterton, that I (ecstatically)  received yesterday.  Basically the premise of the story is that there is a club full of people who have trades that have never been made before.
          For example, the first member is the man who 'sells' adventures. The second is of the man who 'sells' wit. Now you have to read the rest to find out about the other members in this club. I'd recommend it although I proffered "Ball and the Cross" personally.

       P.S. For those of you who are wondering, I am a somewhat lax grammar police.

Sorry for not updating

          I have for the last week, more or less, been visiting a friend so I have not been able to put up any new posts. I need to find another book to read, but I am going to be so busy with writing my own book (novel?) and do other more practical things that I may have very little time for reading. However, I have been recently been thinking about an all but forgotten medium.
           Storytelling. Oral Storytelling.  Yes, I know it came before the 60's. But people have been doing it for thousands of years. And now in America it is almost obsolete.  It seems a pity to get rid of something that forms such a basic human tradition. I love books (you really couldn't tell?). But there is something more personal, more real, in the telling of a tale. Usually because it follows a stream of consciousness.  In the case of my stories sometimes the ending surprises me.\
             I have the fortune of having many younger brothers who are willing guinea pigs for my stories. Oddly enough they enjoy most are the ones that I tell them where the main character is an insane version of myself and some how or another they end in the story. In one case we were shooting marshmallows from a marshmallow gun. Of course the marshmallows were soaked in gasoline and lit when we fired them. What else would any normal person do?
         Ohhh! today's Christmas. I should have instead written about something christmassy. Like the Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or maybe the first and second chapter of Luke. Oh well I still have more Christmas season left to write in.
          

Well I was talking to my brother, Chewie Louie

              Somebody in my family accused me a little while ago of being random. I am not random, I'll have her know.  Why are my fingers blue? Anyway, I wanted to write about The Nightmare Before Christmas. But I will have to do that another time, since my little brothers are clamouring to get on the computer
           "Get off we want to go on the computer"
            "No you can't. Your too heavy. Oii! stop hitting me!"
             "But it's my turn!"
            "You don't have a turn when I'm on the computer."
            "But I thought you were to heavy to be on the computer."
             "Oi! Don't call me fat, Chewie Louie."
            "I'm going to tell mummy"
            "Go ahead and while your at it get me some more blueberries, they are in the freezer."
            "Ohh, is that why your lips are blue?"
            "No, it's because someone forgot where he put the thermostat last."
             "But the thermostat isn't even removable."
             "Which makes it all the more pathetic."
      Well I leave you with that thought, or lack thereof. And hopefully I shall not be deaf because of thier wailing.
       

Ha..ha..ha

          I am done with finals! And I am still alive! Well, maybe I'd better check my pulse.
          I have a strange sense of euphoria at the moment. I'm sure it will pass, as does everything. Now I can write.  Well, I have just recently learned that Christmas is rapidly approaching. Oddly enough it is falling on the 25th this year. I seem to remember it doing likewise, sometime before. I don't know maybe last year.
         I have found recently about old time radio productions. Like something they listened to before the television was invented. I enjoy the Suspense stories, and it makes it even better that many if not most of them are on Librivox, which is perhaps the only site I enjoy as much as my blog. But there was some very interesting even clever ideas that they presented in the shows. Naturally they had their boring shows like the Westerns and a good deal of the comedies. I, in most cases find that the comedies where to depressing. No I am serious. I can trace a great deal of our problems back through the mentality presented in such shows. Although, I did find that "Our Miss Brooks" was enjoyable and not to depressing. But there is still nothing so good to elevate one's spirit as a good horror, mystery or suspense show. At the very least, you can rejoice in the fact that you do not have as many problems as the main character. Wait is that why some people read my blog?!?

Well I should be studying....

      I've decided that writing in my blog about what I am studying, is studying. The Battle of Maldon. As is true for most Anglo-Saxon poems there is no known author. The only two known authors of poetry are Keniwulf and Deor. And neither wrote it. Well anyway it is about Brydnoth, and his fight against the Vikings. He perhaps did one of the most idiotic (but honourable?) things that one could have done. He and his army were sort of protecting an outlet from the Vikings. Maybe from there they could have successfully repelled the viking hoard, or at the least they could have made it more difficult to get killed.
                  These Vikings after demanding payment from the Mercians to leave them in peace. They were obviously refused. Then they asked to be allowed passage through, they would not attack.
                  AND HE BLOOM'IN LET THEM THROUGH!
                 Obviously for such stupidity he had to die, so halfway through the poem he was dead. He died in the battle field with the Vikings. He died a very honourable and noble death of course. But one of his men turned traitor after his death and fled the battle field on Brynoth's horse. This caused others to retreat and the few men who were left to recklessly throw themselves at the enemy in a glorious but somewhat fatal charge.
              To be fair I enjoyed the battle descriptions completely. I am slightly worried that I have become perhaps a little to taken with this society. I just have to enjoy the way they seem to think.
       

Sorry for not posting in a long time. I am finding that finals are fairly time consuming. Hopefully I shall be able to blog a little more by this friday, no promises however.

Well let's see

             My younger sister is going through a Jane Austen phase. She's sortof dragging me along with it. I enjoy her books and many of the movies based of her books. But it always strikes me as interesting that her books  are not very romantic (What do you really think that I'd enjoy them otherwise?). It is a domestic novel that portrays marriage as an almost social contract. Which it is to a certain extent.
           I'm not saying that the characters are not in love with thier future spouse. But there was a certain practical element to the stories. Edward and Elinor wait till they have enough money to live on till they get married. Not  a great deal of money, at least by thier standards, but enough to get by. Jane Austen seems to think that one must have respect for the marriage partner and between the tw have enough money to live off of. However she seems scornful of woman who just marry for money. An example of that would be Charolette (In Pride and Prejudice), and more notoriously Lucy Steel (In Sense and Sensibility). She also does not seem to believe in just plain out love at first sight. She has many men who marry thier wifes for thier beauty and good humor, and as a result become bitter and unhappy because their wifes are silly and foolish. Mr Bennet, of course, (From Pride and Prejudice) and this man from sense and sensibility whose name I can not remember. Also in Emma, Mr Knightly, proclaims that men of sense do not want silly wives, after Emma had proclaimed that all men cared for really was beauty and good humor in thier wives.
           I have read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was pretty awful. The idea was interesting, but the book was dumb and boring. It made uneccsesary and crude jokes, because the author could not think of anything else to amuse his readers with. It was not well written, and it was ridicoulous in an extremly boring way. The actual book of Pride and Prejudice was much funnier than that and it was not even meant to be a comedy like the other.