Shakespeare and Richard II...

I always associate this passage from Shakespeare with Percy Bysshe Shelley, because I first came across it in his biography - he liked to recite it. And so do I.

Did you wonder when or if I'd get to Shakespeare? I've made no secret that he's one of my favourite writers, though in fact I love him more as a dramatist than as a poet. Yes, the distinction is arbitrary. I love reading biographies of Shakespeare, or books about him; I love seeing him appear in fiction, in fanfic, and in (for example) Neil Gaiman comic books.

Happy birthday, William. In honour of the day, here's a link to We Haven't Got There Yet by Harry Turtledove.

from Richard III: Act III, scene ii by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

Happy birthday ...

To acampbell:



Wishing you the happiest of birthdays and a year that gets better and better.

FIC: Torchwood (drabble) - Snooping

Title: Snooping
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Challenge: tw100, challenge: vintage
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Cross-posted to my lj, and to tw100.

( Snooping )

Life on the Other Side..

Just finished reading Life on the Other Side by Sylvia Browne. About the afterlife.

Now, I've read all sorts of New Age books, and books of theology and religion, and mythology, and fantasy, and so on. I find all these things interesting. I keep an open mind as best I can: my father was a scientist and my mother was a Spiritualist, and both were Christian, and I see the value of each philosophy. I do not believe that my experience and observation are an ultimate truth. But in this particular case.... If I were Christian, I think that book would have turned me into an atheist on the spot.

Her depiction of the afterlife was quite like the traditional Catholic view: that most souls go to a happy, eternal, industrious place, while those who are alienated from God go 'through another door' and carry on till they get their lives sorted out. So why did this fairly traditional pattern squick me this time? Why did I find her description of expressionless but beatific angels so creepy? Why did I groan to learn that her afterlife, which contains neither time nor space, has a constant temperature of 78 degrees? Why did I think her afterlife a sort of middle-class American version of the medieval ideal of the Heavenly City, with its white towers, big rooms, and labour-free accomplishment? Why did I think "I'd rather die than go there" and then double-take: Oops, no, gotta die to go there.

No thanks. How do I opt out?

There were a few good bits: like the story of a man whose landlord wanted to evict him because it was a no-pets apartment and he kept hearing the man's totem panther, a spirit beast the tenant didn't even know about. Or the five-year-old-girl who could astrally project - so after she was put to bed, she non-corporeally and invisibly followed her father around the house, carrying a perfectly visible blue balloon.

Wandering back to my personal world-views now.... I like them so much better.

Supernatural...

Tonight I watched Supernatural episode 4x14, "Sex and Violence", with maaseru and explodedteabag. It was a good episode, though I felt the absence of Castiel.

Then we watched Supernatural 1x01, the pilot. I'd once seen the first five minutes of it, before turning it off on the grounds it was horror. I must be braver now.

Well: the reward for courage was a delightful surprise. Sarah Shahi was in it. The beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous Sarah Shahi. How was it no one had ever told me about that?