Word of Nathan

I was listening to some music to wind my day down and I heard something in the song “Evil and Harm” by Younger Brother (Simon Posford) which attracted my interest; there was a sound clip which sounded sorta like this, spoken in a voice reminiscent of James Earl Jones:

“I assure you, that with the help of God, I will make war on you in every place, and in every way that I can. And I will subject you to the yoke and obedience of the church. And I will take your peasants and your women and your children and I will make them slaves. And I will do you all the evils and harms which I can.”

It frankly sounds super-cool, spoken out in the ambience of that song, so I did some research. Turns out that it’s from an interesting little document written in 1510 by one Palacios Rubios, a jurist of the Council of Castille. It was apparently to be read upon encountering native populations, to tell them that any bad things happening to them were their own fault for not acknowledging the Pope and the Spanish rulers as their rightful lords. There doesn’t seem to be any concern for whether or not the native population was capable of understanding the document or the Spanish language.

A couple of versions of the Requerimiento can be found on the net here and here.

Now, I think I’m off to draft my own document which I shall present to passers-by on the street, informing them that the Great Invisible Unicorn, ruler of the dominion of Luna, hath granted me lordship over their lives. They are henceforth required to yield tribute of food, money, and nubile females at my demand, otherwise any negative things which befall them at my hands thereafter result from their failure to understand this document and their association with the anti-Christ. Time to get writing…

I was looking at the news online earlier and I ran across a story about 9 Egyptian mummies being discovered recently.

It seems pretty rude to dig up 2,500-year-old corpses, so I mentioned this to a buddy of mine. I mean, 2,500 years ago Egyptians wrapped up some bodies and threw them underground just so we can dig them up again?

No way. So, I told my friend that I’d rather be left alone once I was dead. But - he rightfully pointed out that sometimes archaeologists are looking for cultural relics, not really intending to disturb the rest of the dead.

Screw that! The rest of the conversation is as follows:

JFD: I want to be buried
JFD: with an anti-tank mine wired to my body
JFD: anybody digging up that shit
JFD: will be in for a big surprise.
Shawn: LOL
Shawn: aren’t those things fucking huge?
JFD: yes:-)
JFD: That’s the point.
Shawn: lol
Shawn: yeah but there is still a slim chance
Shawn: that you’d either just kill a random fuck
Shawn: digging for minerals or some shit
Shawn: OR
Shawn: they could defuse it
Shawn: and then anally probe your corpse
JFD: okay
JFD: then bury me
JFD: with a landmine in my anus
JFD: so when they probe that shit
JFD: hehehehehhe

If you like Star Wars, you must see this.

Star Wars Gangsta Flash

Check it out. Definitely made me laugh.:-)

I will shamelessly admit that I purchased Nelly Furtado’s Whoa Nelly! a few years ago, mostly on the strength of the “Party’s Just Begun” song that was also included on the soundtrack to Brokedown Palace (I never saw the movie, but the soundtrack rocks!).

Recently on the radio, I’ve been hearing this really irritating country-tinged song, so I finally made myself listen to figure out who I hated so badly. After spending 5 minutes deciphering whiny, nasal lyrics drowned by whiny, nasal violins, I managed to puzzle out the words “powerless” and “things you do” - Google did the rest. To my disappointment, it was Nelly Furtado.

So, Nelly Furtado, “Powerless” is crap* - if that’s the typical tone of your new album, there’s no way in hell I’d even bother to download it.

(* “Crap” describes my personal opinion. Objectively it’s just a song, but to my ears it’s painful. YMMV.)

Okay, it’s an hour later than I really intended to have it posted.

BUT!

It’s up. Alice can be officially considered my first novel. It finished up at roughly 51,849 words, which is something like 205 pages of doublespaced Courier 12pt. That makes it a small novel.;-)

It’s also a first - the story idea came to me over a year ago and I wrote the first two thousand words and stopped. For some reason at the end of October I felt compelled to write, and wrote feverishly through November 17; I spent the next two weeks editing. The semi-finished product you see now.

The state of the story is basically a “second draft” - I’ve completed basic editing, grammar, and spellchecking, as well as cleaning up any obvious plot holes I came across. That said, I’m so close to the damn thing that I will require some time and then I’ll go back and make one more edit for the true “final.”

The story - well, check it out for yourself. It’s loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but you might say that is very loosely. The story has a bit of a fantasy feel overall, so would probably fall into that genre.

Feel free to let me know what you think. You can email comments directly to alice@natesimpson.com - all praise/feedback/flaming welcome (spammers, I will see you burn in hell).

Enjoy!