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

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