Cryptology

Seems like it's been a while since my last post. I apologize, but most of my writing time has been taken up by my playwriting class. The first play I wrote for that class received full marks from my professor, but I don't think it's all that great, so I will never post it here. My second play is a solo show filled with monolouges, I pretty much bullshitted the entire thing, so I will never post that one either. My most recent work, however, has not been turned in, nor graded yet. It's not even in its final draft yet. However, it's shaping up to be rather interesting and refined, so there seems to be a very good chance that I will post it.

In the meantime, however, I feel like I must post something to occupy your time. I always found the idea of cryptology to be very interesting. Finding patterns in seemingly random placements of letters, numbers, and symbols and turning that into a comprehensive sentence, all seems fun to me. In honor of that, and in honor of being bored, I've created a little code of my own. In my opinion, it's very well done and will be very hard for anybody to crack. But if you think you can crack it, by all means, be my guest. If you find, however, that my code gets the best of you, then don't be surprised. Go ahead and try it though.

I'll give you a few sentences, if you can get any of them, please let me know.

1.) .E,LZ,KYR,JT,DzXV,RzW,CI,Cz,!LQC,Yz,IDE,MR

2.) !M,QI,Yz,XKLN,HzLzCD,RxG,?23,34,24,56,46z,45,69,.ZEBF,Dz,VLX,!JH,M,FDC,XUz,GB

3.) .GEBI,QUHzK,Dz,JVxXY!EMRO?36,68,34,69,46z,67,24,89z,90,56,13!XDF,VzH,GB,TxMTNJz?67,34,13,45,90,91,35,70,58z,69!MH,GND,VQRVz

4.) ?46,90,45,57,0z,35,24,12x!PKFDE,GNVz,ZLzCIzEz,JzMzQFx?68,34,57,13,47,34,89z,89,24.WX,AT,CI,VQzY,RzHzWz,KPxQx!GNQJz,ZMzK,XLz,DFVzC.CI,AHzEG,VxYF,DzX,EzSxZ!XNKJPE,HLzG,LDC,MGzMz?58,78,56,68,13,47,34,46z,23z,57x,45,91,58z,24,78z,89,69,57!PMVD?79,90,68,69!GNCDVz.KENYIHzX

If you can figure out any of those then I'll be awfully impressed and I'll have to go back to the drawing board with how to improve this code.

Good luck and stop reading.

- Rian

When You Gonna Ring It?

I don't buy CDs, but if I did, then THIS ONE is definitely one that I would buy.

There's a certain quality about the White Stripes that you have to love. Many other (damn near all) groups have a certain type of music they make and that they'll continue to make until everybody gets bored with them. This is fine, a lot of great music comes out this way. The White Stripes, however, don't seem to want to fall into a genre. Their earlier stuff is not music that I like because it's a little reminicent of hard rock or heavy metal. This new CD is fun. There's something on there for everybody, and in my case, there's many somethings on there I like.

You should definitely go out and buy this CD...I won't be, but Lord knows that one of us should be paying for this music.

Here are the songs I would pick out of this CD to own for free (if only there was a way...)
- My Doorbeel
- The Denial Twist
- I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet)
- Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)
- Little Ghost

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In other news...there are Muslims burning Danish embassies because they're angry of a cartoon that appeared in a Danish newspaper back in September. Apparently the comic has a representation of Mohammud in it, which is a big no-no in the Muslim world. I feel compelled to use the word 'fopah' but only because I've never used it before.

I personally haven't seen this comic because every news program (even the fake ones like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report) refuse to show it. This is probably due to the fact that the stations would get ridiculous amounts of mail but they are also probably fearing for their very lives.

This is the point I want to touch on. As sacred as an image of Mohammud is to you Muslims, I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't want you to riot, burn, and murder just because some...uh..infadel (?) decided to draw a picture of his face that probably isn't accurate in the first place. I'm Christian and last time I checked, Christians and Muslims had the same God (the God of Noah, Moses, and Abraham) and I'm pretty sure he's against the extreme action that many Muslims have taken to show their anger.

Now, I realize that these extremists aren't representative of Muslims everywhere, but they seem to be rather plentiful in the middle east. It's really something that I don't understand. You don't see large communities of AK-47 wielding Baptists and you don't see Jews strapping bombs to themselves and blowing craters in the streets of Isreal. So what is it that makes Muslims want to kill everybody that doesn't agree with them? Are we not reading the same "Old Testament"?

The worst that would happen from a caricature of Jesus using the Lord's name in vain is a bunch of people writing harsh letters to the newspaper and the artist...and probably Pat Robertson saying the man should be exiled or hanged...and then apologizing about it later. The last thing I'd expect it some Lutheran fundementalist burning the guy's house down and killing his cat.

Can't we all just get along? No, no we cannot. Can't we all just tolerate? Maybe someday.

Stop reading.

- Rian

HM King Ryan

Recently I discovered that there's a very good chance that my lineage is that of royalty. It is not only possible, but completely probable, that I'm a descendant of His Majesty King Edward III of Engalnd.

While this sounds amazing that a simple man like myself has royal blood flowing through his veins, I should probably tell you that you probably do too. In fact, there are at the very least millions of people in America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France that are descendant of King Edward III. You might be thinking to yourself that you understand now, but you truly don't. When it comes to the monarchs of France, various African countries, or what have you, the same isn't true. There are far from millions of people on different continents walking around with French royal blood. There's a very certain distinction between the old rulers of England and France.

So this paragraph will be a quick history lesson. When it comes to most royal families it was required that they marry either within the family (icky) or, more commonly, with other people who have royal blood. This created a very direct line of descendants and such a direct line more than likely thinned out or even died throughout the centuries. When it comes to such specific marriage selection, the options are limited.

The English did not act in this way however. Even since the middle ages, the English monarchs were able to marry whomever they chose. This considerably opens up the dating field. So it was not uncommon for Princesses or Princes, who would never obtain the throne unless many of their family died before them, to go out and marry the blacksmith's daughter or that cute boy who fishes down by the river. As such, you have many people born with royal blood into a not-so-royal lifestyle.

Personally, my most direct line of relatives hail from Ireland. I'm also Polish, German, and Belgian, but that's neither here nor there. So it's quite plausible that somewhere along the line somebody with royal blood married an Irish man who turned out to be my great great great great great great great great great great great great great (you get the idea...I hope) grandparent. This royal blood could've come from anybody. It doesn't necissarily have to be a Prince or Princess. It could be the King's nephew's son's cousin's daughter's cousin's father's son. Just some obscure relative who's probably nine hundreth in line to the throne, but still, technically, royal.

Since I can never prove that I'm distantly related King Edward III, I'm going to have to assert my royalty in another way. I've come up with a plan that sadly will have to involve many unfortuante accidents to some very aristocratic Brits. Before I start, however, I want to make it clear that this is all a joke. I don't condone the killing of royalty or anybody for that matter. Nor do I ever plan to kill anybody.

Alright...so here we go:

First, I have to travel to England because that's where the first target is. She is Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice of York. She is the daughter of His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. Prince Andrew is the son of the ruling Queen Elizabeth II.

Princess Beatrice is currently seventeen years old, two years younger than me, but it's not like I'm travelling over there any time soon.

So what I do first is I marry her. I'm an older guy and American, what more could an English girl want?

She's 5th in line to the throne, so now I'm perfectly placed. And so now that the joyous wedding and wild honeymoon has come to a close, the dirty work has to start.

I want to make it clear that following people don't necessarily have to die to be taken out of line to the throne. If there's one thing I learned through Wikipedia it's that it was common practice to blind a royal if you didn't want them to become King. So apparently you can't lead the country if you're blind. So for the following people, they can either be killed or blinded.

First to take care of is the ruling head, Queen Elizabeth II. This shouldn't be too hard as she's rather old. You shouldn't even have to do much, just hide behind something and jump out at her as she walks by. She's sure to have a heart attack.

Next is Queen Elizabeth's husband, Prince Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh. He's not technically in line to the throne, but he'll probably have precedence over me. He's pretty old too and apparently he's pretty much a smart ass. So it should be easy to make it look like he got into an argument with somebody and it ended badly for him. Maybe the person he argued with got so pissed that he got strangled or maybe the person just gouged his eyes out.

Now there's really no turning back because this will make Prince Charles of Wales the new King and nobody really wants that (back to reality, I'm sure he'll make a great King and it probably won't be too long until we see that happen). He can be killed or blinded in any creative way you see fit just make sure to take out his new wife Camila with him...just because.

Next is Charles' famous children, Prince William of Wales and Prince Harry of Wales. They are second and third in line to the throne respectively, only behind their father. It'd probably be best to get them both around the same time because you really wouldn't want either to serve as King for any amount of time. It turns out that Prince William may soon be leaving to serve in Iraq, so that just might be one less person to take care of.

Next is Princess Beatrice's father, who as I mentioned before is Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. As the second oldest son of Elizabeth and Phillip, he is fourth in line to the throne behind his brother and two nephews. By this time people will start to get suspicous that all these monarchs are getting killed and security will not doubt be tight around the new King Andrew. Lucky for me, I'll be his son-in-law, so it won't be that hard for me to get close to him. Yet, first, to make sure nobody suspects me, I'll inflict a gunshot wound on myself to make it look like they tried to kill me next, but failed.

After Andrew is dead or blinded then our beautiful wife Beatrice is now the Queen of England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and many many others. By this time she'll be so distraught that it should be easy to get her to name me as a co-ruler. This part is essential because, technically, I'm not in line to the throne. If she died before I was made co-ruler, then the throne would probably pass to her sister, Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie of York.

After Princess Beatrice makes that crucial decision, then TADA, I'm the new King of the Commonwealth of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and also the ruling monarch of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.

Hmm...King Ryan...kinda has a ring to it doesn't it? No? Well you're opinion doesn't matter.

Now that we've reached the end I want to stress the above is all a JOKE. I have never and will never condone the killing of ANYONE, least of all the royal family of England. Murder is the worst thing that a human being can do and blinding somebody follows as a close second.

All of this just came of my research of the old English kings and I somehow drifted into the current royal family. When I noticed that HRH Princess Beatrice of York was near my age, and actually kind of good looking, the whole thing started to snowball.

Stop reading.

- Rian