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demongin.org - Lo, take yow here a trepett!

Lo, take yow here a trepett!

I reflect in brevis on recent defeats.


Wednesday, 2005-01-19 | Careerism, Classic Gin, Lists, NPC Encounters

Recently I found two things greatly humbling. They were:

  1. Being beaten horribly at Scrabble by a scientist and a man who speaks English as his second (why not as his third? fourth?) language, among others. When I say that I was beaten 'horribly' I mean to say that the leading scorer pulled in over 150 points and I skulked away with a little over 80.

    The guy who didn't speak English managed a solid 110-120 or so.
  2. Spending two hours in English 617b, i.e. spending two hours downtown in the presence of a handful of the nation's most qualified scholars of the English language--I've seldom heard heard such sophisticated and articulate pedantry. Truly, I had entered the lion's den and found myself wanting for courage.
Concerning my recent failures, Monty Python's wild lampoon of Arthuriana hits the right notes in (more or less) the right order:
Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!