This Is Who I Am

There's an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Lisa is afraid that she's losing her intelligence (SPOILER ALERT: Turns out she's fine.), and at one point, in despair, she decides to just give up and join the other stupid members of the family, Homer and Bart, as they sit on the couch, cheering as they watch a TV show about buildings being destroyed. Lisa complaines because it's not supper time yet and she's hungry, and Homer reveals that he and Bart have that covered, pulling up a sofa cushion to reveal some melted candy and crushed cookies. Her horror at the thought of eating melted candy and crushed cookies makes her change her mind and not give up without solving the case of her seemingly-dwindling intellect.

The thing is, I don't mind if candy is melted or if cookies are crushed. To me, they're still pretty much the same.

Moreover -- it never even occurred to me, before I saw that episode of "The Simpsons," that someone could be horrified by the thought of eating melted candy or crushed cookies. But Lisa was horrified by it, and apparently the makers of the show assumed that some or most of their viewers would be similarly horrified.

So. For a long time, I was somewhat horrified by the thought of other people being horrified by me because they saw me eating melted candy or a crushed cookie. But now I'm coming out and telling you, telling the world, that that's exactly who I am. As a matter of fact, I'm having a piece of a crushed cookie right now, and it's delicious! (It's a piece of a chocolate-chip-and-M&M cookie from Bob Evans. They crush it.) (Figuratively. What I'm saying is that they make a very good chocolate-chip-and-M&M cookie.)

If you can't be friends with me or look me in the eye ever again, well, that's that. That's how it is. And I might not never have noticed about you not looking me in the eye anyway, because I'm autistic and I make eye contact much less frequently than most people do.

PS: I rarely find crumbs of food under my sofa cushions and when I do I don't eat them. And if you do things like that, I judge you, am horrified by you and shun you. Not really, but ewwwwww.

[PPS, April 10, 2020: I've thought about it a lot in the meantime, and now I agree with Lisa Simpson that it DOES matter quite a bit if cookies are crushed or candy bars are melted. We live, and sometimes we learn.]

The Most Awesome Thing, Ever

The most impressive thing anyone has ever said or written? Some might say it's Homer's Odyssey, or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or the Bible, or the screenplay of Pulp Fiction, or JR by William Gaddis.

And those are all nice. But the very best is contained within an episode of "The Simpsons," "Walking Big & Tall," which first aired a little over a year ago. It is a list of things which Homer tells his friends they may no longer call him, after he's joined a support group for heavy people.

Without further ado:

"Chubby, chunky, blobbo, slobbo, Fat Bastard, Michelin Man, Stay Puft, Chumbawumba, It is Balloon!, Papa Grande, Augustus Gloop, beached whale, big boned, Wisconsin Skinny, butterball, dump truck, jelly belly, pudgy wudgy, lard ass, blubberino, Buddha belly, Hurry eat Tubman, one ton soup, Blob Saget, Chub hub, Calvin Cool whip, Manfred Mannboobs, 21 Lump Street, Walking 'Before' Picture, fatso, Harvey Milk Chocolate, Obese Want Cannoli, Mahatma Gumbo, Salvador Deli, Elmer Pantry, KFC and the Sponge Cake Band, Snackie Oneassis, The Foody Blues, Hoagie Carmichael and wide load."

I believe this lives up to Mel Brooks' "If you're gonna go the the bell, ring it" principle.

My 2 favorite items on the list are "It is Balloon!" and "Wisconsin Skinny." With regard to the latter: in contrast to "The Simpsons'" usual method of creating catch phrases years ahead of time, like Homer yelling "I'm king of the world!" years before James Cameron made that terrible movie, a company named Wisconsin Skinny which makes lame overpriced T-shirts for skinny hipster doofi existed for years before "The Simpsons" gave it its well-deserved mockery. ("Doofi" is plural for "doofus.")

I'm Sorry, Lisa Simpson, But Latin Is Not The Language Of Plutarch

It's the language of the Lapis Niger, the Twelve Tables, Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, Terence, Lucilius, Caesar, Lucretius, Catullus, Sallust, Vergil, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Phaedrus the fable-teller, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Curtius Rufus, The Plinys, Elder and Younger, Persius, Lucan, Silius, Quintilian, Martial, Statius, Tacitus, Caecilius Secundus, Suetonius, Apuleius, Gellius, Hyginus, Symmachus, Macrobius, Claudian, Ausonius, the Augustian Histories, Ammianus, Corippus, Isidore of Seville, Boethius, Gregory of Tours, Gregory the Great, Columbanus, Bede, Alcuin, Einhard, Nithard, Johannes Scotus, Ekkehard, the Ruodlieb, the anonymous Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitorum, Raymond of Aguilers, Henry of Huntington, John of Salsbury, William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Walter Map, William of Tyre, the anonymous Expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, Saxo Grammaticus, the Magna Carta, Albert the Great, the anonymous Vita Merlini, the Carmina Burana, Siger of Brabant, Matthew Paris, Roger Bacon, William of Occam, Nicholas of Cusa, Walter Bower, Alberti, Valla, Pius II, Poliziano, a very popular translation of Columbus' letter to Isabelle describing his first voyage, More, Bembo and Spinoza and one of the primary languages of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Elizabeth I of England, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Milton, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer (who compared a person with no knowledge of Latin to someone stumbling around in a fog) and Nietzsche, to name only a few. I intentionally left a few very prominent names off of that list, so prominent that their omission will surely outrage a few fellow Latinists, because I have my own ideas about who is grotesquely overrated and who is not. And surely a few more names simply slipped my mind.

But, Lisa, Plutarch wrote in Greek. I wouldn't even bother to mention it so many years later except that I have always greatly admired how learned you are and how seriously you take scholarship.