Trust me--I'm a doctor ...

... although I must admit I'm not a physician per se. I was washing my hands in the men's room today, as is my wont (which ought to mean, but doesn't mean, that I wont wash my hands in the men's room).

Oh, Apostrophe! We cannot contract without thee.

Anyhow, when I wash my hands I like to pretend that I'm Trapper John ... M.D., that is--not Hawkeye's cooler sidekick, but the competent surgeon whose sidekick was George Alonzo "Gonzo" Gates in a show I never once watched willingly. Which is to say, I wash my hands. With soap. Including the wrists. Often up to the elbow, as if I'm preparing to deliver a breached calf. Though I guess that would make me Trapper John, D.V.M.

...


I'm trying to work my way around to a BVM quip, but holy cow, I can't get there from here(tic).

So I'm in the can, washing my hands religiously, not the holy water dip but really cleaning them, because other people touch stuff I touch, and other people are often disgusting, when I see the sign on the mirror telling me to Fight the Flu by washing my hands. Because if you use soap long enough, you kill the bacteria.

Now I'm not a physician. Per se. But I'm pretty sure that with the flu we're talking about a virus, not a bacterium. I guess I should keep my mouth shut, though, and let people be scared into washing their hands, because after all, they go around touching the same stuff I touch. And I don't like it.

But I do like this:

Blanketly II: Electric Boogaloo

Because I've been getting some hits from Google searches on "blanketly," I decided to check it out, and I found this link.

Allow me to declare my opposition to an "open dictionary" if it's going to imply validation of a nonword like "blanketly" and THEN call it a verb. Like most words ending in -ly, it's an adverb. Or it would be if it were a word at all. Which it isn't.

What contumely.

Relatable

I hate it when perfectly nice people say irritating things. They might talk about the "drinkability" of some piss beer. They might say "and et cetera." Or they might describe things to which one might relate as "relatable."

When I'm sitting in a meeting of people (often not from the academic side of the house) who talk about this situation or that textbook as being "relatable," I just want to say, "Oh, it's relatable? Then go ahead and RELATE IT."

Look: the Iliad and the Odyssey are "relatable" in that they are stories that one might relate. "The Three Little Pigs" is relatable ... not because one might identify with this or that little piggy, but because one might relate, or recount, a children's story. First Year Seminar is not relatable. A Practical Introduction to Literary Study is not relatable. (Shameless, I know, but at least there's no hyperlink.)

My cousin, in contrast, is not relatable, relative though she be. E equals emmereffin' emcee squared isn't relatable, though it is related to relativity. Get it?

Folks, the boulder that is the English language is rolling down the hill, and all we can do is throw ourselves in front of it to slow its inevitable downward momentum. Come all you sissified Sisypheans: can you relate?

Penultimate night

I love the word "penultimate," because people misuse it, thinking that it means "more ultimate than ultimate." I really love the word "antepenultimate," just because I think it's weird that we need a word for "the one before the one before the last one." It's a hopeful word, and a word with a lot of syllables.

So ... today was spent in meetings, which was actually kind of relaxing after hiking all the f--- over Petra yesterday. Thing is, you can't stop. Everywhere you look, it's "Holy crap! Can you believe that? Can you believe that something like that actually exists?" And then, when you start thinking about the technology that went into it, it's really pretty unimaginable.

Also unimaginable is that up until pretty recently, people still lived in those caves ... and in fact, it looked to me like a lot of the vendors lived in there even now. Or at least they stay there a lot.

I'll post some pictures when I can, for those who are interested. In the meantime, this.

The highlights of the day for me were two: first, a conversation with a guy selling jewelry who told us a lot about the economy of the place, and claimed to have been raised in the ancient city. About that, I don't know. But he proved the gems were real and not plastic by holding them over a lighter flame, which I thought was pretty cool. When I looked at one item, he said, "Don't buy that; it's a fake."

Then, much later, when we were climbing the mountain path to an unspeakably spectacular view, a young woman called to me to come behind her table to look up because it was safer (I was backing up while looking up the mountain, and she thought I was going to step too far back, I guess). This was the only traditionally dressed woman to talk to me, and she did it without any self-consciousness at all, even though her mom was glaring. She asked me if I had kids, and I told her about them, and it turned out she's right between them in age: seventeen. This might explain her more outgoing attitude, as opposed to the older women, whose sales pitch is limited to "One dinar! One dinar!"

On my way back down she sold me a couple of necklaces made out of camel bone. She said, "Good, you came back. I've been waiting--it's time to go home. It's a long walk with my baby." Like an idiot I looked around for the baby, but he/she hasn't been born yet. If I'm being romantic, I'm thinking that kid is going to have an amazing life, living close to the land in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. If I'm being cynical, I'm wondering what opportunities the kid will have for education, etc.

If I'm being honest, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'll tell you this, though ... these people have some amazing eyes. I felt like Muad'Dib or something. Especially when Sting attacked me in his jock strap. Wait, that wasn't me.