And the lit major in Kip tries to shoot Brown dead.

[kippurbird]

Bobo and the police bust into the house. He's fooled into believing that there's someone upstairs by the intercom system. I'm not really sure how that one works. Because apparently they're really in a car. He's a bit slow on the uptake wondering "Where the hell do I hear a car?" \~/ Could it be... I don't know... maybe.. outside? In the garage? Or somewhere else where you keep a car... like the parlor? Bobo runs out to the barn and sees that a car is missing. Teabag has a lot of fancy cars. Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Porsche 356... and a mystery car. \~/

Probably one of those clown cars.

No, sorry. It's a Range Rover, Java Black Pearl, four-wheel drive, standard transmission, with high-strength polypropylene lamps, rear light cluster fittings, and the steering wheel on the right. Beyond the fact that I suddenly want to know where Captain Jack Sparrow is, the previous bit of information was utterly unnecessary. \~/

... for some reason they brought Silas along with them. *headdesk*

Why the hell would they bring Silas with them, even if he's trussed up? Isn't that kinda like asking for trouble? I mean he's already killed four people that they know about. And they stuff him in the trunk. Wouldn't it be better to let the police deal with him? You know, get him out of the way so he couldn't ... um... escape? Or something? I'm just saying... \~/ \~/\~/

Apparently, according to Teabag, Silas is Langdon's ticket to freedom... because... um... he knows about Opus Dei... and must be in cahoots with the police... and um... they need to interrogate him. \~/ Right. There's nothing I can do to make that work. Nothing.

Now that we've gotten through that shaky bit of logic they're going to fly off to England by a private jet. It apparently cost Teabag a queen's ransom so ... he named it Elizabeth. \~/
Rather convenient that. The plane that Teabag has. This is what we call plot device. Have your main characters caught and nothing for them to do now? Send them on a plane to flee the police! Want to get pass airport security? Have a special arrangement with a private airfield that lets you come and go with no questions. Yup. Convenient.

And then... Langdon has another epiphany. We don't know what... for what... or what it is... of course. \~/

The epiphany is that Robert's editor sent a copy of his book to Sauniere and that's how Sauniere knew about Langdon. Um.... whoopie? \~/ And really, that's the only point of the chapter.

They take Silas on the plane with them. Again. Why? \~/

There's more blather about what are they going to do with the grail and how the grail finds you for a reason and once you're on the path for the grail there's no turning back. Blah. \~/

Back with the police the Banker changes his story and says that Langdon and Sophie stole something and Fache learns that Teabag has a private plane that just took off.

On the plane they take a look at the script that was found under the potato on the box. There's some blathering about how it might be Semitic... Rashi Script or a Sephardic transliteration. Looking at what is written (it comes with a pretty picture) I can easily say that it's not any form of Hebrew and it looks nothing like Rashi Script (which is just a cursive Hebrew font). If anything it looks like Sidarian. \~/

It turns out that it is, instead, English written backwards. Like Da Vinci used to write. \~/

We get another riddling clue.

An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll
And helps us keep her scatter'd family whole
a headstone praised by templars is the key
and atbash will reveal the truth to thee.

Then we get the biggest cock and bull stretching of conspiracy theory shit that I've seen so far. And that's saying something considering the Disney bits.

First there's Langdon's ruminations on Iambic Pentameter:

Langdon had come across this meter often over the years while researching secret societies across Europe, including just last year in the Vatican Secret Archives. For centuries, iambic pentameter had been a preferred poetic meter of outspoken literati across the globe, from the ancient Greek writer Archilochus to Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Voltaire - bold souls who chose to write their social commentaries in a meter that many of the day believed had mystical properties. The roots of iambic pentameter were deeply pagan.

Iambs. Two syllables with opposite emphasis. Stressed and unstressed. Yin yang. A balanced pair. Arranged in strings of five. Pentameter. Five for the pentacle of Venus and the Sacred feminine

\~/, \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/ \~/

Iambic pentameter is used because it's easy and it flows well on the ears. It's sort of like 3/4 time which mimics the heart beat as my mom told me. buh Dum bum.

Anyway, that's not the real kicker. This is:

The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the Church, had considered English the only European pure language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish, and Italian, which were rooted in Latin -the tongue of the Vatican - English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to learn it

I shall counter that with this quote:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-James Nicoll

And then drink some more. \~/ \~/\~/ \~/ \~/ \~/

Damn... there goes another bottle...

They then try to figure out what the poem means, focusing on Atbash. Which is the Atbash cipher. Which is based on the Hebrew alaphbet where you take the first letter Aleph and substitute with the last letter Tav or in English, A replaces Z and so on and so forth. \~/


And that is the great secret which will break the code of that poem and lead them invariably to the next clue.

This is turning out to be like some sort of scavenger hunt not a novel.

Drinks: 27

Comments

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Let me add to your drinks!

I've yet to see a stick transmission in a Range Rover. Unless it's really old or possibly a cheap version (I found like two on google, but they're about a decade old), but even then. If he's got something as fancy as that, it's an automatic transmission. So all that description for a car that doesn't exist.

The other thing google found is that all passenger cars in the US (And I'd assume that it'd be done in other countries) require an emergency trunk release specifically for that very reason. However, this became law in 2002, and the book was written about or before that time. So I'll let this one slide.

Oh, and Iambic Pentameter probably is another mistake. Da Vinci was 1452-1519. It wasn't until 1585 that Shakespeare acted, let alone 1590 when he was known as a writer. True, this pattern existed in the 1300s so it's possible, but unlikely. But apparently Quantitative Metre, not the Accentual-Syllabic Verse Iambic belongs to, that was big in ancient Greece and Rome. So no Iambs for Davinci.

[-youngblood-.livejournal.com]

Iambic pentameter was popular for English writers in the late 14th century during the alliterative revival. The only example I can think of off the top of my head is Chaucer, but he was writing in Middle English, which is highly Germanic, so I have no idea what Brown is talking about when he says English is a "pure language."

[-youngblood-.livejournal.com]

Bah, I forgot to add my point there. Iambic pentameter was popular for English writers in the late 14th century, so Leonardo is nowhere near that place or time. Unless he was a fan of Chaucer...?

Oh wait, I forgot they were all in a secret society together. Even though Chaucer would have died several decades before Da Vinci was born.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

D'oh. I didn't look up Chaucer. Still, even giving him a lot of benefit of the doubts, it's still all wrong in too many ways.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

You know, my liver doesn't need this. >

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it's time to switch back to tea. Better yet, different rules cause different drinks. That way, you can be wired from caffeine AND drunk!

[reverie-shadow.livejournal.com]

Oshi this piece of crap just made me empty my bottle in less than ten minutes. What the fuck that's never happened before.

I feel pretty.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Imagine how I feel. =D

[reverie-shadow.livejournal.com]

Do you feel witty?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

And GAY!

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

If you want a language seperate from Latin choose Russian! Apparently some members of the Russian Orthodox Church felt that Latin was the language of Satan. Beside Russian is much harder to understand than a language created so Norman mercenaries could pick up Anglo-Saxon bargirls (also a Nicolls quote IIRC).

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Or Hebrew or Persian or... Arabic, any of the Native American languages, Greek... etc...

[lunajadebaggins.livejournal.com]

Well, he did say European. If he didn't, it'd be too obvious that he's talking out of his ass...

Sigh... when you want there to be clever word puzzles made in ancient times, and you don't know any language but English, what can you do?

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

Or Icelandic! Russia has a fair number of French (thus Latin-descended) loanwords, and quite a few technical terms borrowed from Latin and Greek as well. Icelandic is one of the least Latin-influenced IE languages. Finnish or Hungarian would make good choices, too, if you want to stick with "European" languages ...

Seriously, English is probably the most Latin-influenced non-Romance language there is!

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

Here I thought the movie was dreadful for theories but in comparison to the book it looks sane. The English thing is beyond strange. Saying that iambic pentameter is part of this because it's used a lot is great, can I add my own bit to the theory and say that the colour blue is always part of the secret code thingie?

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

I'll drink to that! It's easy to make this up: Blue was the pagan symbol of the goddess and of potatoes. Because the goddess was in the sky, and potatoes, being in the earth are connected to the goddess.

We should just add whatever conspiracy theories we want to the book. Or even suspect that there might be a plot in the book, despite all the evidence. We could call it The "The Da Vinci Code" Code.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

The movie at least kept out the really bizzare theories.

[macanfitheach.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing that you're Stateside where the booze is cheap - if you were reading Dan Brown up here in Canada, you'd be bankrupt by this point... [LOL]

Cheers,

Ted

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yup.

[-youngblood-.livejournal.com]

I like how Brown tries to lump everyone who ever did anything cool into the Priory. Da Vinci, Chaucer, Shakespeare-- they produced magnificent pieces of art, thus they were highly intelligent, thus they must have been in the Priory becausetheprioryaretheonlypeoplethatknowthetruthomg!

I wonder how Brown's theories about the members of the Priory hold up to theories of the so-called "members'" sexuality? There are theories that Da Vinci was gay (and was a lover to his own apprentice, I might add) and there is quite a bit of evidence that Shakespeare was at least bisexual (many scholars believe that several of his sonnets were written to a man). So I wonder if they would agree about the all-important balance between the masculine and the feminine? I mean, if they liked dudes, why would they devote their time to fighting for female sexuality? Would they even have believed that the universal balance (or whatever we're calling it now) existed between man and woman?

P.S. 27 drinks. I recommend putting the hospital on speed dial in case you need your stomach pumped. I hope you're taking drinks of white wine spritzer.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Brown seems to be doing the Conspiracy Theory Mixer where he just throws in everything and tries to blend it together into a comprehensible whole. Unfortunately he failed miserably.

The "Purity" of English

[kellicat.livejournal.com]

The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the Church, had considered English the only European pure language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish, and Italian, which were rooted in Latin -the tongue of the Vatican - English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to learn it

This quote made me laugh so much I almost got a stitch on my side. 60% of English vocabulary comes from Latin (I got that figure from my Latin textbook). Therefore, this quote is a piece of crap that never should have been published.

Re: The "Purity" of English

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

This entire book is a piece of crap that never should have been published... but now we're just complaining about the details.

[kunenk.livejournal.com]

You know, if English was such a 'pure' language back in the day, I would've thought it would've got better press.

Iambs. Two syllables with opposite emphasis.
Or, on the other hand, you can totally ruin the word by pronouncing it 'yambs'! Or read it as 'lambs'. Which then brings to mind lamb chops, and the thought that trying to read stuff into 'Little Bo Peep' would be more fun.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*sniggers*

[andy-longwood.livejournal.com]

. . . My lingustic anthropology professor told me that English is a fucked up bastard creole based mostly on German. >=|

Go to college, Dan Brown.

[lunajadebaggins.livejournal.com]

English is a Germanic language, which means it's grammar is closer to German than to Latin. But as far as vocabulary, which is more prevalent is questionable.

As was said above, English has more Latin influence than any non-Romance language. Certainly other Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Flemish, and the Scandinavian languages) have less.

My personal opinion? Brown has no idea that English is a Germanic language--he thinks it's derived from the same roots as the Romance languages, but less "corrupted". Either that, or he wants the Nazis to be part of the Vatican conspiracy, and therefore GERMAN IS BAD. And he's probably not even aware of the other branches of the Indo-European language family (Slavic, Baltic, Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Iranian, Indoaryan) and of non-Indo-European languages in Europe, such as Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian.

If he wanted pagan influences, he'd have chosen Greek or one of the Celtic languages.

Whatever English is, it isn't pure...