Catullus

My public school system had a short hiatus in which Latin was not taught, and I regret it bitterly, mainly because I can at best grasp at the poems of Catullus in the original.  Gaius Valerius Catullus has a reputation as the Naughty Roman poet, though he is equally poignant and lyric (“Ave, atque vale“).  [...]

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The Limerick Memorial, Sunday, May 31, 2009

You cannot separate limericks from crudity. My late and ex, firmly of the pre-silicon generation, added a riff by compounding technology with scatology.  He was both repelled and fascinated by the things that people could do with electronics and acutely sensitive to the way that connectivity allowed people to do better, faster and oftener a [...]

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The Christmas Conspiracy

In another week, give or take, I will be looking for money under sofa cushions and in the bottoms of banking accounts (this is not quite like pulling it out of your ass, but almost), and it is all the fault of the Christmas Conspiracy.
This is my theory about the US tax code as it [...]

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Quicker Than Boiled Asparagus

The Emperor Augustus was, reputedly, a man addicted to quaint sayings, and I believe Tacitus cites the expression “quicker than boiled asparagus.” Asparagus, of course, requires nothing more than to be lightly blanched or steamed; you sort of wave it at the heat source. Best vegetable on the planet.
I had a cat who doted on [...]

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T-Shirt Friday. Glaad You’re Here (May 29,2009)

I don’t wear this shirt to mess with people’s heads but sometimes it does. A lady real estate assessor once eyeballed me nervously throughout a visit to my house, and I only realized afterward that I was wearing the 1995 Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation T-Shirt, a pleasant memento of a past life of [...]

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The Perilous Power Toilet of Weymouth, Dorset

What happened was, the year I asked my (first) ex and (later) late husband for a divorce, there was this British guy, as there often is, I mean, in these situations of dissolution and rebound you frequently find someone who is at best marginally available, but fairly exotic and represents a whole new life or [...]

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Travelogia

My Albino Ex has just returned from his first trip to the sceptred island of Britain. A shutterbug, he no doubt snapped googolpixels worth of images while on this sojourn, which bracketed London with a hiking tour of the Lake District. Here is the only picture he has sent me so far.

(For the record, this [...]

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Noise

I work most “holiday weekends,” because it’s a good way to keep my head down, especially this one.
For anyone who’s forgotten or isn’t a US resident, Memorial Day was instituted to honor the dead of the American Civil War. Now, especially since the passage of the Long Weekends and Retail Sales Event Act, whereby all [...]

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The Limerick Memorial, Sunday, May 24, 2009: Military Band Interlude

Along with limericks, my late and ex was a fervent devotee of  good military marches. During the Korean War he wanted to be a signalman, and while stationed at Fort Monmouth NJ he would march off to signal school every day while the post band played. “Colonel Bogey” was a favorite. You all know it: [...]

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Flanders and Swann

Does anyone here remember them? When I was a sprout, someone gave my father, the hornplayer, an LP of At the Drop of Another Hat, whereon Michael Flanders – grand, prophetically bearded in his wheelchair — performs the patter lyric of all time to the Rondo of Mozart’s Third Horn Concerto. I fell in love [...]

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