Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen!

The West Wing Litmus Test

In order to check off any item on my to-do list, that item must first pass a Litmus test: is it more interesting than a good beverage and an old episode of The West Wing? If so, it gets done, promptly (items like "buy new shoes" and "plan a dinner party"). And if not, than that item remains on the list until my brain is so full of liberal witticisms and dimly lit melodrama that there nothing else for me to do but work (items like "write a paper" and "clean my apartment" often get left until the eleventh hour, literally).

Today, the bubble burst, and I was reminded--woefully--that The West Wing is just a television show, and my education should not be neglected simply because I wish Jed Bartlett were really my President.

I was playing the third season DVD on my laptop and put on the episode, "Stirred," in which Bartlett makes an interesting point about Bond's famous Martini; "Shaken, not stirred," produces a very weak drink, since shaking causes the ice to chip and melt faster. Meanwhile, Donna, the assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff, campaigns to have an old high school English teacher recognized by the President in a proclamation.

At the end of the episode, Bartlett gets on the phone with Mrs. Molly Morello, the teacher of note, and exchanges some cutesy remarks. The President, an overeducated private school know-it-all, asks her if she taught Beowulf in the original Middle English or let her students use a translation. When she replies that she used a translation, Bartlett sighs: "We'll call that the Bond version."

I could have hurled my laptop across the room. Beowulf is a poem written in Old English, such an early form of English that it resembles German--more specifically, Anglo-Saxon--more than it does today's spoken English. Unless you've mastered Anglo-Saxon (and it doubtful President Bartlett has, since it's mentioned he speaks four languages, and English and Latin are already two of those), you're going to need the translation. Middle English*, on the other hand, is usually very easy to read and understand aloud if you have been paying any sort of attention in English class, and teachers who let college-level students read the modern-day translations are just wimps. Now that's stirred.

After a quick Google, I discovered that Bartlett's error was caught immediately by fans of the show (who are probably all overeducated and erudite). Aaron Sorkin, West Wing producer, is reputed to have replied, "Ic agan nic answaru."

This roughly--roughly--translates to "I have no answer," or "No comment." Cute.

So, with a sigh, I abandon my West Wing Litmus test and get down to the work at hand. The paper I write tonight is on early Arthurian legends and the Chivalric tradition in Victorian-era poetry, and I should get to it. You never know when this kind of thing will be useful.

"Even if you learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?" (Clarence Darrow)

*It should be noted that not all dialects of Middle English are as easily understood as, say, Chaucer's vernacular in The Cantebury Tales. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, is more easily read in the modern translations, being as the author was most likely (according to J.R.R. Tolkien and other scholars) from the West Midlands.

I'm just sayin'.

Eureka!

I think this might explain why I keep dating the same person over and over again.

(from www.xkcd.com)

The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever.*

"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while natures cures the disease." Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

My extreme and bizarre allergies, none of which are fatal (or, at least, not yet), render my immune system worse than useless. Through exercise and healthy eating I maintain a robust defense against viral infections and bacteria--a healthy defense which then goes on to attack things like apples and nuts and assorted greenfood, letting the usual fall cold season bash in its knees with a baseball bat while my white cells attack my environment.

This autumn is no exception. I have been battling a cold for nigh on a month now, and despite the Vitamin C, the olive leaf, the orange juice, the multi-vitamin, and the Kambucha, I am still sickly. What to do?

Emergen-C Cocktail, that's what.

Or, more specifically, Emergen-C Sangria. Nothing better after a long day spent blowing your nose, popping Benadryls, and calling AAA because your car has, once again, left an important bit of it behind in the road. I have Hippocrates to lean on for support, at least:

"Walking is man's best medicine." Hippocrates (460 BC - 377 BC)

Next-to-best-medicine is the recipe that follows. Try to buy the real pink lemonade Emergen-C brand packets, since 50% of the proceeds go to Breast Cancer research. In the event that you can't, any citrusy Vitamin-C powder will do... I guess.

Emergen-C Sangria

1 glass cheap red
wine (or good red wine, for that matter)
1 packet pink lemonade Emergen-C
ice
splash of pulpy orange juice

Mix these things together, let it fizz, and enjoy the resulting alcohol + vitamin buzz.

*Plutarch (46 AD - 120 AD)

whether there will be weather

"...for after all, it's more important to know whether there will be
weather than what the weather will be."
- The Whether Man, The Phantom Tollbooth

It's the first week in October and it's 80 degrees out in sunny Providence, RI.
When I was a kid, October was cold. Bah, humbug.

So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel...

I reviewed Jean M. Auel's series Earth's Children series in honor of 2007's Banned Books Week. Surely you know that series, the one that begins with the critically acclaimed Clan of the Cave Bear and ends with readers hanging themselves? Said review is now up on http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/.

I'm privately jumping up and down, even though this isn't too much of a literary accomplishment. Being 500 words and all. And since I just freakin' e-mailed it to Sarah at Smart Bitches, it's not like I had to go get an agent.

But still, ya know, check it out. Unless you are related to me and/or do not wish to hear about the smutty reading habits of Katie as a Young Teen, or were so scarred by reading Valley of Horses years ago that revisiting it may cause a smut-lit equivalent of a 'Nam flashback. Okay?