today i basically went for the econs test and then came home. vaish and i just left after it... we were considering just going to the library to sleep until history was over, but it was fully occupied. they should consider putting extra tables there. such a useless library. so we ponned the rest of the day. after that walked to jelita and bought a book called the veiled kingdom - i'd been eying the book for a while, finally just decided to share it with vaish. she's going to read it first, maybe i'll just buy it off her when i'm feeling financially better off. anyway it's about the bin laden family, from a swiss/persian woman who was married to one of them. very interesting. odd, how non-fiction's suddenly become so interesting. although autobiographical books always were. most of them, anyway.

came home, hung around and cleared up my magazine collection, read a bit of harper's before getting bored. it must be a sign of my fading intellect that i can't even read a fashion magazine fully through in one go without getting bored. or maybe a sign that i'm finally developing more profound interests, like reading the templar revelation. the whole art/religious history thing is fascinating. i want to take an art tour of europe. or maybe just frace. either way i'll have to find sometime when i have a LOT of time to devote to such a tour. i'm considering the break after As. that would be so cool. like, enough time to explore the louvre fully, and the v&a fully and all the museums and galleries. and to prevent boredom, shopping in between galleries/museums. i love museums. the interesting ones, of course like the v&a and the metropolitan. but it's so annoying when you don't have enough time to see everything. i shall put this on my list of Things To Do Before I'm Thirty. (inspired by all the 13 going on 30-related lists in all the mags, of course.)

oh as soon as i set foot inside my door, incidentally, i get an sms from mrs perry to go see her asap. she always manages to summon me when i'm not at school. called her, told her i was ill and therefore came home early, and sent kelly to see her. ugh no wonder she sees more of kelly than of me. what must she think. fixed that, then kel was supposed to come over and pass me the j2 exco photograph and she brought shoojee along and we had a nice little discussion of the da vinci code/religion/the hidden messages in leonardo da vinci's works. oh did you know that calling it the 'da vinci code' belies the fact that dan brown's not really an expert on art history, because art historians call him leonardo, never da vinci. da vinci means "of vinci" - vinci's a place. so calling him da vinvi is like calling joan of arc "of arc" or "de arc". cool, no?

but anyway the stuff dan brown reveals is mostly true, or has some basis in proper research, although it's pretty obvious dan brown himself didn't do most of the research on the subject. it's a thriller, after all. he probably read a lot of books like the templar revelation and then picked out some of the main theories/facts and put them in his book. so i suppose i've become a little condescending towards it after reading the templar revelation, but for all that the da vinci code was an enjoyable and easy read, and i admire it for what it is, which is a very good thriller on the john grisham/robert ludlum scales. very very exciting, and impossible to put down. nikki's passing me the previous book - angels and demons - on monday. i can't wait! ohh too many books, too little time. as i told vaish today, i acquire books way faster than i can read them. so i have quite a large surplus. but i'm working on it.

oh the da vinci code -is- going to be made into a movie. i was just telling shoojee that it would make a cool movie. quite inevitable, though. the bestseller lists are breeding grounds for expensive movie rights. oh the catholic answers website has quite an annoying page about the da vinci code, and it's so patronisingly saying that the entire thing is made up.

" is a thriller story involving secret societies, conspiracies, the Catholic Church, and the fictional "truth" about Jesus Christ. "
"Although a work of fiction, the book claims to be meticulously researched, and it goes to great lengths to convey the impression that it is based on fact. It even has a "fact" page at the front of the book underscoring the claim of factuality for particular ideas within the book. As a result, many readers-both Catholic and non-Catholic-are taking the book's ideas seriously."

i know reading some of the catholic apologist sites/books would be good to get a more balanced view of the thing, but this particular site atleast seems really defensive about the whole thing. and in any case, i would be more inclined to believe the 'heretic' books, because i don't think people like these have any motive to make up stories about christianity being fake. i mean, you don't do this sort of thing just for kicks even though leonardo da vinci might have. and whatever it is, the interesting part is that there were serious intellectuals over hundreds of years who have believe in something so fundamentally opposed to something so basic to our civilisation today, and that they've hidden their secrets in paintings and buildings and so on over the years, and that there are still people who believe in and work on these things secretly. the freemasons still exist i think, and the priory of sion. maybe even the knights templar. our tour guide in london told us that the knights templar got outlawed because they made too much money and the aristocrats got jealous, but really, that's probably not totally it at all.

oh can someone tell me the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament?

now to take a nap, then finish rolly's essay. i've been dragging it too long.