Studies Say THIS is Why Reading is Fundamental

Ms. Gemmae: Alright kids, hope you had a good lunch in the cafeteria. I hear that the lunch ladies were serving mashed chicken and broccoli jam sandwiches on pickled rye toast today. With a side of deep-fried lettuce and glasses of baked water? Sounds both nutritious and delicious!

And I hope you were successful with burning off excess energy at recess with games of Five Square, Calvinball, Sinless Stone-Casting and the like? Excellent! Well, as you know, since this is Wednesday afternoon, it’s time for our weekly book presentations! Who will go first? Esuriit?

Esuriit: My book today is Elements, by the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid, the father of Euclidean Geometry, and the guy Euclid Street is named after, the street that no matter where you live, you can buy a dimebag at 2 am (after midnight) from a sketchy black car with smoke pouring out the windows. 

I found this book to be both interesting and insightful and the fact that I can read Greek at the tender age of 10, made comprehension quite easy. Euclidian Geometry is the study of the circumference of the hole inside a donut vis-à-vis the circumference of a donut in its entirety. It was mastery of this field of math that allowed our hungry forefathers to create steam- and water-powered donuts, thereby staving off the Great Flour Famine of 187 A.D. (Absent Donut).

If you’re into math, or baked goods, I suggest checking this book out. The section on frostings alone will boggle your mind.

Ms. Gemmae: Thank you Esuriit, that was very insightful. Now Meditati, you’re up!

Meditati: Hey everybody. My book this week is a collection of poems from the venerable Asian poet Su Xiaoxiao. Su Xiaoxiao was a famous poet and courtesan in the Southern Qi Dynasty. She lived 479-501 A.D. (Always Denim). She originally hailed from Qiantang City, later renamed Hangzhou once it became the capital of the Zhejiang Province. Other famous poets from this city include Bai Juyi and Su Shi*, though they came centuries later.

So, “Little Su” (her street name) was known for the images of beauty and love that her poetry evoked. She felt that it was her duty to spread the idea of seeing beauty in the world around us, if only we can imagine it. In fact, before she died at 19 from a terminal disease, she saw her illness as a gift, since it allowed her to leave her mark on Chinese history and culture.

She was also a ninja. The end.

Ms. Gemmae: Alright Meditati, thank you for that. I enjoyed the twist at the end there. Didn’t see that coming.

Well, it looks like we’re almost out of time. Damn these 15-minute long class periods! But what can I say? You kids gotta get back to work down into the goulash mines, you know the paprika reserves a quite diminished.

So, last up for today is Timor. Timor, show us what you got.

Timor: Greetings fellow pupils of Miss Gemmae’s fifth grade class. I am pleased to present my book for your naïve indulgence. For I hold no ordinary volume in my hands, but one of the rarest, most potent texts ever transcribed by man: The Magnum Necronomicon.

The Necronomicon was written in 725 A.D. (Anti Deity) by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, a Yemenite who worshiped the Outer and Elder Gods Yog-Sothoth and Cthulu. Originally titled Al Azif, (roughly translated as “The Sounds of the Insects at Night, Bringing Evil”, or “Terror by Night”) Alhazred wrote the horrifying grimoire after a sojourn to the ruins of Babylon, in the Nameless Quarter of Arabia. Therein, he discovered the “Nameless City Below” where he was given the words, invocations, enchantments, spells, incantations, portends, symbols and more of the eldritch languages used within the mythos of Mlandoth, Mril Torion and Azathoth, otherwise known as The Domain of the Dreamlands. A place beyond of madness and human comprehension.

The book was renamed The Necronomicon in 950, which is Greek and has several meanings, including “The Book of the Law of the Dead” “The Book of the Words of the Dead” and “A Book to Categorize the Dead.” Of course, due to its occult nature, the book and its worshipers have been banned, cast-out, tortured, burned and destroyed by countless pseudo-religions, would-be-gods, egotistical “holy men” and so-called kings and lords. And yet the mythos endures. Those who practice these unholy rites and rituals in the dark, under the nocturnal blessings of the Yellow King can never truly be vanquished.

Today, you undeserving younglings are blessed, for I have the original inscription of The Necronomicon. Written in Alhazred’s own blood, mixed with ichor from the various demons who whispered these malicious words into his demented head, and bound in the putrid, stinking flesh of a hundred unwilling sacrificial martyrs. This very tome has caused more wars, plagues and violence in the name of evil than any Brett Ratner movie.

And now I will recite a passage, to summon a vile entity.

Ms. Gemmae: Timor, that’s quite an imagination you have, but I think it’s about time to wrap things…

Timor: Silence, you pathetic excuse for a scholar. I begin:

Optha, on’knvyn swuthir d’jhzix flef
slmooith tlaxin dwiq!
ibc’blin lttzim, zaren vrin’soq hrota
ich bin ein Berliner!

Congratulations, you are all now jelly donuts. You’re welcome.

Esuriit: Yes!

*Not a joke, dude’s name was Su Shi and he was a renowned poet and governor of the province around 1089 A.D. (Apple Dumpling). Irony: He was allergic to fish.