Desire and Expectation Rolled Into One
Hello. It’s been a long arduous but successful day at Butler Library. I learned more Latin in the last 36 hours than in the previous 4 weeks. Ain’t silence a beautiful thing whilst memorizing conjugation and declension systems? There will be more memorizing tomorrow.
Now that Michael Jackson’s death is overshadowing the news (or lack of news) coming out of Iran, I’d like to think that his spirit beamed over to visit some clerics and other religious trouble makers. Nobody else seems to be helping those poor people bleeding in the streets. Remember, two weeks after Hunter died, the Colorado Supreme court overturned the conviction of Lisl Auman, the girl Hunter had been working for four years to free. Michael Jackson having a positive impact on Iran’s people…well, that’s what we call Hope.
The definition for “Hope” is one my favorites in The Demon’s Dictionary. It was created by Civil War veteran, Ambrose Bierce. Although I adore sweet cocktails, sentimentality, humor and slang, the intended audience for The Devil’s Dictionary is “enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humour, and clean English to slang…”
Here are some of my selected favorites:
Hope: Desire and expectation rolled into one.
Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
Famous: Conspicuously miserable.
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.
Court Fool: The Plaintiff.
Litigation: A machine that you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Habit: A shackle for the free.
Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
Riot: A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
Erudition: Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Language: The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.
Hospitality: the virtue that induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food or lodging.
Ghost: The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
Achievement: The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
Zeal: A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
Yep, indeed. Don’t ask me which is my favorite. The rest are in the book and I’m giggling with them all. On that note — good night. I’m off to bed, to get a good seat at the library in the early am.
Your erudite-y friend, full of hope and zeal,
Anita Thompson
