Today's Stichomancy for Oliver Stone

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

For reply the giant motioned them to follow him, and set off up the beach in the direction from which they had recently come.

"I think it the better part of discretion to follow him," said Mr. Philander.

"Tut, tut, Mr. Philander," returned the professor. "A short time since you were advancing a most logical argument in substantiation of your theory that camp lay directly south of us. I was skeptical, but you finally convinced me; so now I am positive that toward the south we must travel to reach our friends. Therefore I shall continue south."

"But, Professor Porter, this man may know better than either

Tarzan of the Apes

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain:

a man back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now. Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas:

and bailiffs' clerks, who are rated at three francs. They do not often see Rhine carp or Channel sturgeon."

"But do not the five-franc gentlemen sometimes leave some scraps?"

"Oh! my lord, do not believe I am so stingy as that; I delight the heart of some poor little tradesman or clerk by sending him a wing of a red partridge, a slice of venison, or a slice of a truffled pasty, dishes which he never tasted except in his dreams; these are the leavings of the twenty-four franc prisoners; and as he eats and drinks, at dessert he cries `Long live the King,' and blesses the

Ten Years Later

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:

nothing else BUT mud -- mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two or three inches deep in ALL the places. The hogs loafed and grunted around everywheres. You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi! SO boy! sick him, Tige!" and away the sow would go,

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn