Full Day

Finished my Classic Civ. exam without too much ado. It was pretty easy, though I definitely struck out on the government section. What can you do.

After that, I went downtown to attend the Tartuffe reading, but not before purchasing volume two of Sandman. More on that tomorrow, when I actually read and retain what's in it.

It was great to see so many people who I'd enjoyed working with before but wasn't able to keep in touch with at the reading. It's so hard to find people passionate about drama who aren't totally obnoxious, but this group is consistently mature and amazing. I look forward to working with them. It was also a thrill to get the RHYMING TRANSLATION once and for all. I can't stop reading it. It's almost as amazing as Sandman.

However, none of these things were quite as exciting as when I arrived and was informed that I now had dual roles. Rather than just playing the Officer, I have been bequeathed the role of M. Loyal. This is great because the actions of M. Loyal are immediately undone by the Officer, not three pages afterward. Best dual casting ever.

When I came home, I checked my e-mail and found a link to this website, which fully announces Shakespeare's Globe's plan to make a multi-lingual multi-cultural Shakespeare fest to coincide with the London Olympics. They plan to do the entirety of Shakespeare's canon, but in all different languages with all different theatre companies. This is brill, totally brill. I'm saving up to get to London as of today.

Lord of the Rings is doing as well as I could expect. I finished chapter two. What happened in a nutshell:

• Years pass, Frodo is well-preserved and eccentric as Bilbo. Presumably the latter is genetic, and the former is the influence of the Ring.
• Gandalf returns after a long absence to inform Frodo that the Ring is evil and should be destroyed immediately. Frodo wonders why Gandalf never comes on a social call.
• Destroying the Ring necessitates that Frodo leave the Shire. He is not pleased, until he is reminded, none-too-gently, that not destroying the Ring means that the Shire will likely be enslaved by the Dark Powers... in a roundabout way.
• To everyone's surprise, Frodo decides to leave, when it is revealed that his gardener Sam Gamgee has been eavesdropping on the entire conversation. The gardener becomes the third of their party. He is inordinately pleased about this.

Characters Introduced:

• Sam Gamgee- Frodo's gardener, who obviously has a bit more tolerance for adventure and eccentricity than other Hobbits.
• Gollum- Mentioned at great length by Gandalf. We learn of how the Ring corrupted him, and the whole sad story of his life.
• Saruman- Again, mentioned by Gandalf. A wizard of great power whose pride grows with his knowledge. Dangerous.

This chapter clipped along nicely. I don't understand why the book is so big, when action is set so quickly. I imagine most of the book's bulk will be due to Tolkien's long idyllic descriptions of people walking...

Vintage German Apple Cake and Biscotti

Today is a day off for me, as I don't have exams. So I decided to do some baking after sleeping in for an egregious amount of time. My first stop was the apple cake from the Girl's Own Paper, which worked ridiculously well. Here it is in its finished form:

The Girl's Own Aepfel-Kuchen

I have made biscotti once before. It's easy to make, but rather labour-intensive. You end up popping these biscuits in the oven three times to make sure that they're nice and crispy. The last time I made them was with white chocolate and almonds, and they were sooo good. This batch is made with almonds, cranberries, and milk chocolate. They promise to be just as good, and also just as badly sliced.

Biscotti rhymes with yummy... in my head, at least.

In other news, I'm readying for an exam tomorrow, and then for the Tartuffe meeting, which I'm terribly excited for still.

Sandman Volume One, otherwise called Preludes and Nocturnes, was magnificent. My favourite parts were the cameo from Martian Manhunter (!), Death's first appearance, Dave McKean's trippy and intricate covers, and certainly the chapter set in Hell [with the Thin White Duke-esque Lucifer], though now that I think about it Neil Gaiman's mastery of mythology and prose should definitely constitute a favourite part too. The writing was great and the art was great too, something I rarely see in comic books. I'm conspiring to get my mitts on the next volume, and soon.

I watched Superman: Doomsday, which is possibly the greatest direct-to-video feature film ever. Scratch that- it's possibly the greatest Superman movie ever, breathing life into a character that can too easily become cardboard or caricatured, capturing the Lois Lane/Clark Kent dynamic perfectly, and making Lex Luthor someone to fear. It tackles a really difficult story from the comics and makes it unexpected somehow (as though we didn't know Superman would come back from the dead). This praise, by the way, is coming from a hardcore Batman fan.

I hope Zack Snyder, the director of the next Superman live-action movie, has seen Doomsday...

Buy it, Zack Snyder. Watch it till your eyes roll out of your sockets. Please don't make another Sucker Punch...

Also filling out forms for university courses. Exciting stuff... D:

Haven't Updated in a Long Time

Thought I would first impart some exciting news; Yesterday I attended high school for the very last time. After exams I will go to graduation and this entire chapter of my life will be done. As a gift to myself, I bought a lot of books. Of these were a couple of books that appear to be a part of a series or a mandate or something; they're both 'Brief Histories' of Steam and Robin Hood, respectively. Looks like a lot of fun, and they were both cheap. They're probably the fast food of history books. :D

Hello, me writing more steampunk than is healthy

I also got the first volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, something I'd been promising myself to read for a long time. It is quite simply amazing. The stories are integrated with the DC Universe without the DC Universe completely subsuming the central idea of the series. And it's only the beginning, though the end is in sight. It's so nice to have a comic book series I can get some serious mileage out of without marrying it (I'm looking at you, Wallflower, Transmetropolitan...).

Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Genius

I was looking through the compendium of the Girl's Own Paper, a magazine directed at girls and 'typical' girls' activities that ran from the late 1800s to 1956. My compendium is from the year 1906. I did not notice previously, but there are a great deal of old recipes in there. Particularly alluring is an article on 'Sweetmeats from the Continent' written by a 'German Hausfrau'. I'm definitely trying out the Apple Cake.

The Girl's Own Annual, alongside other reading material.

What I'm listening to obsessively is the soundtrack to Danny Boyle's phenomenal stage production of Frankenstein, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller. The music was by the prog-rock group called Underworld:

Still waiting for the DVD release that pleaseNTNationaltheatrei'llmovetolondonifyoureleasethisoneshow still isn't in the cards. D:

In other news, Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as the voice of Smaug the dragon in The Hobbit! Hurray, his VOICE.