for what it’s worth:

If you don’t already get it, then it wouldn’t be funny, even if I explained it. Sorry.

After some experimentation with the old Super 8 camera, and some watching of films etc, I think it would be quite fun to make an actual film with an actual plot. Since I can’t write stories to save myself, I should probably adapt a story. Probably one in the public domain. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe is rather a good story, with no dialogue (perfect for silent film!) and not terribly many special effects to worry about.

Read more about it at the wiki: ockle.org/wiki/index.php?ThePitAndThePendulum

All 37 plays of Shakespeare are read — third past the post, but still well within the time limit. At one point this month I had entertained the idea of following up the Shakespeare Challenge with the Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, A Lover’s Complaint, The Passionate Pilgrim and The Phoenix and Turtle; but to be honest I’m all Shakespeared out. Perhaps later on in the holidays… For now I think I’ll tell WordPress that “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” is READ… and get back to my Lonely Planet.

1 Henry VI, Part II READ!
2 Henry VI, Part III READ!
3 Henry VI, Part I READ!
4 Richard III READ!
5 Comedy of Errors READ!
6 Titus Andronicus READ!
7 Taming of the Shrew READ!
8 Two Gentlemen of Verona READ!
9 Love’s Labour’s Lost READ!
10 Romeo and Juliet READ!
11 Richard II READ!
12 A Midsummer Night’s Dream READ!
13 King John READ!
14 The Merchant of Venice READ!
15 Henry IV, Part I READ!
16 Henry IV, Part II READ!
17 Much Ado About Nothing READ!
18 Henry V READ!
19 Julius Caesar READ!
20 As You Like It READ!
21 Twelfth Night READ!
22 Hamlet READ!
23 The Merry Wives of Windsor READ!
24 Troilus and Cressida READ!
25 All’s Well That Ends Well READ!
26 Measure for Measure READ!
27 Othello READ!
28 King Lear READ!
29 Macbeth READ!
30 Antony and Cleopatra READ!
31 Coriolanus READ!
32 Timon of Athens READ!
33 Pericles READ!
34 Cymbeline
35 The Winter’s Tale
36 The Tempest
37 Henry VIII

Four plays and four days to go.

Have finished As You Like It, am about to start on Twelfth Night. Meanwhile, have found the following in a school edition of That Scottish Play:

William Shakespeare: Macbeth

by Mary Holtby

This is the life of Mac the Knife
whose fate was foretold by witches:
They said he’d be King, so he and his wife
worked out the possible hitches.
When good King Dunc in sleep was sunc,
they thrust him through with a dagger,
And although poor Mac was blue with funk
he carried it off with a swagger.
The King was dead, the princes fled,
and the kingdom Mac’s for the taking,
But Banq’s for the chop since the witches said
his sons were kings in the making.
The thugs are slow off the mark, and so
they half-complete their mission,
But enough to make Mac’s party go
when he sees Banq’s apparition;
This bloodstained ghost upsets the host
but makes him even keener
To put his enemies on toast,
and take them to the cleaner.
The witches bluff him with some stuff
which is truthful yet deceiving;
His target is now the tough Macduff,
who’s off to England, leaving
his wife and chicks to cross the Styx,
fit tidings to incite him
To end the tyrant’s testy tricks,
so he joins the prince to fight him.
Meanwhile the Knife observes his wife
parade, out-out-damn-spotting –
Curses the shadow-play of life,
such pointless parts allotting.
Now branches hood his foes — not good
for Mac, who, white as linen
Recalls what’s said of Birnam Wood
advancing to Dunsinane.
Still he won’t run — no woman’s son
slays this predestinarian…
Macduff explains he isn’t one
(a posthumous Caesarian);
His sword goes smack through poor old Mac –
alas for realm and riches!
It’s better to endure their lack
than put your trust in witches.

(crossposted to LJ because you’re probably interested there too!)

Henry VI, Part II - check.
Henry VI, Part III - check.
Henry VI, Part I - check.
Richard III - check.
Comedy of Errors - check.
Titus Andronicus - check.
Taming of the Shrew - check.
Two Gentlemen of Verona - check.
Love’s Labour’s Lost - check.

Dead ahead: Romeo and Juliet. Hooray! The first play thus far that I have previously read. There are a few more of those coming up in the next week or so.

excerpt four

X followed a trail that led to a dead end. Some creature had skilfully covered most traces, but xe knew that there had been woodlanders here. The camouflagers had not been entirely successful in covering everything; there was still scent and the odd broken twig. Xe scratched about in the undergrowth, trying to reveal further clues.

“Lost something?”

Xe was startled by the voice. Xe whirled round, attempting to discover its owner. All xe saw was the silent woodland. Quite suddenly there was another fox standing alongside xim.

excerpt five

On the afternoon following xer brother’s birth, Y stood silently at the window of xer bedroom. Xe was crying, the tears following one another down xer flushed cheeks as xe stared through a smarting film at Gormenghast Mountain. Mrs Slagg, unable to comprehend, made abortive efforts to console xim. This time there had been no mutual hugging and weeping, and Mrs Slagg’s eyes were filled with a querulous, defeated expression. She clasped her little wrinkled hands together.

“What is it, then, my caution dear? What is it, my own ugliness? Tell me! Tell me at once! Tell your old Nannie about your little sorrows. Oh, my poor heart! you must tell me all about it. Come, inkling, come.”

But Y might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only xer tears moved.

inspired by mesongles’ can of worms: http://www.livejournal.com/users/mesongles/77205.html

Read the following excerpts carefully. Do not google them or do any other research, just read. Then, comment on this post telling me what gender each of the characters has. If you don’t know, say so. (some names changed to protect the integrity of the experiment. I’m also using “xe” as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun :-P)

excerpt one

Not until one summer evening when, passing for a shadow, I heard through the open doors of the black foreman’s cottage a conversation which convinced me that X and I slept in real danger. The slaves knew now we were not ordinary mortals. In hushed tones, the maids told of how, through a crack in the door, they had seen us dine on empty plates with empty silver, lifting empty glasses to our lips, laughing, our faces bleached and ghostly in the candellight, the blind man a helpless fool in our power. Through keyholes they had seen X’s coffin, and once he had beaten them mercilessly for dawdling by the gallery windows of his room. “There is no bed in there”, they confided one to the other with nodding heads. “Xe sleeps in the coffin, I know it”. They were convinced, on the best of grounds, of what we were. And as for me, they’d seen me evening after evening emerge from the oratory, which was now little more than a shapeless mass of brick and vine, layered with flowering wisteria in the spring, wile roses in summer, moss gleaming on the old unpainted shutters which had never been opened, spiders spinning in the stone arches. Of course, I’d pretended to visit it in memory of Paul, but it was clear by their speech they no longer believed such lies.

excerpt two

Frankly, that last bit was something of a surprise. I’d honestly thought xe was already dead when I left xem lying there. Misadventure, the coroner said. I couldn’t agree more. More proof, if any is needed, that you can’t help bad luck. THe cause of the fire was attributed to a radiator accidentally left burning all night in the administration area. Speculation that arson was involved was dismissed by both the company and the police as groundless. The insurance was paid out in full.

Y left an estate worth the best part of two million dollars, including a Broadbeach condominium, an Adelaide motel and part shares in a macadamia nut plantation. It just goes to show what hard work, a bit of thrift, and a remarkable fifteen-year-long winning streak on the horses can achieve.

excerpt three

The difficulties and shortcomings of TCPdump were also noticed by Z of the Ohio State University. Z wrote a program called Review that is specifically a postprocessing analysis tool for sifting through gigaheaps of TCPdumpdata (that’s a lot of data!). As with TCPdump, Review is freely available. (The full sources and documentation for Review and its associated log gathering tools are available upon request. Requests should be made by mail to security@——- The current version is a collection of programs written in C and Perl.) For further information, see Z’s white paper at ——

(all excerpts selected at random from my bookshelf.)

Earlier on I manually tried a flip-the-genders on one of my earlier posts.

Due to the wonders of the Internet, someone else has now automated this process…

http://www.regender.com

hehe

It irks me that I have left some gender-inequality lying around this blog. So let’s take my ANZAC day post and flip genders - as an experiment. I want to see if it still works - not as “what I as a guy expect as a girl” but as “what i as a guy imagine i would want if i were a girl”. Sounds fun? Let’s go.

Being a 19th century gentlewoman(*) in 21st century Australia is not about Class. Upper Class is about being born into privilege, inheriting money, connections, perhaps a job from parents rather than earning it themselves. Ich. Martin has not much respect for this kind of “success”. Lower Class is about whingeing about the Upper Class (that is, people who have X but don’t deserve X or haven’t earnt X), without doing anything about it yourself. Martin has not much respect for this kind of “misfortune”.

(*) probably a better term than “lady”.

[so far, so good.]

Being a “gentlemwoan” is about style. It’s about dressing up to go to the theatre. It’s about standing up and offering an elderly passenger your seat on the tram. It’s about holding the door for the person behind you.

[too easy!]

It’s about looking into someone’s eyes and smiling when you shake their hand, and saying “pleased to meet you”. It’s about being genuine and honest when talking to people, and not just following the Toorak Socialite pattern of conversation: “Well, I haven’t seen you since we were at Timbertop together. How are you doing with yourself? That’s wonderful! Well, I have to run back to Trinity to organise the ball. We must meet again!”. (yeah, right.)

It’s about respect for yourself; respect for others; respect for traditions (even when you’re trashing them). It’s about dressing up by wearing a top hat or furs, not by flashing a boob on national television. It’s about splurging occasionally on a designer skirt or shoes. It’s about looking good not out of vanity, but out of respect for yourself. It’s about caring for yourself with good food and exercise, not with a fashionable gym membership, a tanning salong and a Brazilian wax. (ouch.)

It’s about going to an expensive restaurant every so often. It’s about drinking expensive drinks in moderation, rather than the cheapest beer they’ve got, by the keg. (Although a $350 drink with gold leaf garnish is pushing even my budget.)

It’s about knowing what’s proper. It’s about wearing a hat and gloves when you go out sometimes. It’s about having a sense of humour; and being able to laugh at yourself. It’s about being generous; realising that building an enormous Victorian mansion with a ballroom effectively obliges you to host balls.

It’s about realising that a “ball” is not a university event at a nightclub with free Kahlua, but an occasion to dress up, meet people, hold conversations, and dance. That means there needs to be enough quiet and not-too-dark space to actually hold conversations. There needs to be enough light to admire what people are wearing.

It’s about taking compliments humbly, but not self-deprecatingly. It’s about giving more compliments than you receive, and giving them honestly. It’s about noticing a gentleman’s new hair, tie, or shoes, and commenting on it. (Everybody loves being complimented on their appearance. Even if they say they don’t.)

It’s about the combination of style and substance. All style and no substance makes Frank Abnagale Jr - any bank in the country will cash a piece of paper you’ve embossed with the words “this is a cheque… no really!”, but you’ll still feel unsatisfied. All substance and no style and you might as well blend in with the rest of the homogeneous crowds in Melbourne - walk around for a day in spray-on hipster jeans, rubber thongs and fake blonde hair to see what i mean. But the combination of both is what makes a 21st century gentlewoman. It’s what we mean by “gallantry”; “chivalry”; “gentlemanly conduct”. That’s what I’m talking about.

[see? that wasn't too painful now, was it?]