Richard The Turd

Sayeth the Venerable Grouch: The latest braindeath, er, brainwave of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley -- marking Shakespeare's 445th birthday (April 23) by proclaiming 'Talk Like Shakespeare Day’—has caused much hilarity around the globe. ‘Prithee’ ‘silken dalliance’ and the myriad other keys to a higher culture so obviously sit ill with such a relentlessly self-centered political machine. It was not always so. In “The Oregon Trail,” Francis Parkman, almost too ill to sit on his failing horse in a trek across endless burning plains to an unknown destination, when boiled dog was a banquet, records how one day, when he raised himself painfully into the saddle, the thought that occurred to him was “Et haec etiam fortasse meminisse juvabit.”

(Ed: As most of our astute readers--both of you--will know, that's Latin for "Perhaps it may please you hereafter to recall these trials.")