Update and Nigel Burch (And My Faulkner Theory)

Have you ever read anything by William Faulkner? Neither have I. Yet I have decided that he is nothing but a rip-off on Shakespeare. You know the type-- The ones who rip off GOOD authors and sell said rip-offs to the ignorant masses who have neither read the good authors nor care to read them.

"But sir," says the imaginary You. "Surely Faulkner IS one of the good authors."

"But sir," says another You. "I have studied Faulkner in college."

And to You(s) I say: Poor children. You have become part of the lie that is Faulkner.

But never fear. I am here to expose this lie to the World!

Faulkner's most famous work is the book The Sound and the Fury. This is an obvious take from Shakespeare's MacBeth:

Life is but a walking shadow
A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Then there is another work of Faulkner's, called The Hamlet. And guess what? It's set in a small Mississippi town. Sound familiar? eh? Sound anything like a similarly titled work of Shakespeare's set in a small European Kingdom?

And then of course, there's this, which I hardly need to point out:

William Shakespeare
William Faulkner

SAME FIRST NAME!

But (and this is the real clincher) if you write those names again, and rearrange the letters in one of them slightly, you get:

William Shakespeare
William ---ake-----r-
William SHAKESPEARE!

That's right, if you rearrange the letters in Faulkner's name, take out an F, u, l, and n, and add a h, two s's, p, a, and two e's, you get WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!

I believe I have proven my case.
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In other news: Nigel Burch sent me an e-mail!

A while ago I posted about how I really liked/couldn't stop listening to the song by Nigel Burch and his Flea Pit Orchestra, "I Used To Be Mad". It's a great song, by a great skiffle/barroom ballad/Irish/rock group. Well, the other day the man himself sent me an email mentioning it and stuff. It bloody well made my day!

See also: www.myspace.com/nigelburch

(I wonder what it says about me that I am more excited about getting an e-mail from Nigel Burch (no offense to Nigel) than I would be about getting one from, say... some American rock band. ;-))

(I also wonder what it says about me that I can't think of ANY popular American rock groups off the top of my head.)

(Footnote for those interested: I DO NOT go on Myspace regularly, because it annoys me, among other reasons. However I go on ONCE IN A WHILE to listen to certain songs by certain bands.)
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The other day we went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caeser by American Players Theatre, one of the best Shakespeare troups in the country. Paul and Andrew were there, as was Jeremy, which was fun. It was cold and raining the whole time, but the play was great anyway. (They perform in this really cool amphitheatre set high on a hill in the middle of some woods. Outdoors, in case that wasn't clear.) With about twenty-five minutes to go in the last act, the rain really started to pour down. A girl came on stage with a loudspeaker to announce that we should all adjourn to the lobby. We waited under what shelter there was, until another announcement came to announce that we would all move down the hill into a big white tent, where the play would finish. I ducked under an umbrella with Jeremy and some of his family, and we did the penguin-walk partway down the hill. Finally Jeremy and I were kind of like, "Screw it," and ducked from under the umbrella and ran for it, weaving through the crowd and jumping puddles (kind of reminded me of another sprint through cold rain I took once, though this was not so extreme as that one ;-)). When we got to the tent a whole ton of the Public-schoolers had left, but us die-hards (i.e. the homeschoolers) stayed to the bitter end. Quite fun, actually.

Yesterday we went to Bethesda, a HUGE rummage sale (charity benefit for a WELS group, actually). They basically take over the county fairgrounds, and have garage-sale-ish stuff in EVER BLOODY BUILDING! We were there because my mom is an antique dealer and she gets alot of stuff to resell there, and she needed, erm, muscle, to haul stuff around.

They had a really cool book section; I got King Solomon's Mines , an old pulp fantasy book (classic) that has actually been hard to find. I also got the Complete Short Stories and Poems of Poe, and an old Conan book with a cool poster of Conan slaughtering a group of supernatural monsters; and some other stuff.
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So yeah, just thought I'd take a break from the Feast posts for a (SHORT) while to give an update and get rid of some inane ideas. I haven't been doing too much else worthy of note lately. School started and while I was sad to see summer end, but I guess it had to sometime.

I haven't been writing much, I should probably do something with one of my stories. But I've been reading alot.

So bye bye Laura, no one else could ever take your place
So bye bye Laura, your beauty will never fade
--Laura, Flogging Molly

btw, Flogging Molly's new CD/DVD set is out, it's awesome, especially the documentary, I HIGHLY RECCOMEND IT!



Well, that's all I've got for now. :-D

'Cuz me I used to be mentally ill,

Slainte!
Ethan
(Exit, pursued by a bear)