7:12 PM: It's the flu, all right.

Got some Gatorade and some Vitamin C, having finally located the number for the local grocery that delivers. (It was in a sheaf of flyers I'd looked through at least three times earlier; clearly, I'm not firing at all thrusters right now.) Have a fever, and am coughing and hacking and probably would've vomited this morning if I'd eaten anything since the previous afternoon. (Instead, just got to experience "dry heaves" first hand.)

My prior experience indicates that it'll probably take about a week for it to run its course. I can't tell you how ecstatic I am about that.

Anyway. My concentration span isn't very high just now, and I wanna go back to lying down, so I'm gonna leave it at this.

4:19 PM: Bleah.

Late last night, I started coughing. And, because I am prone to outbreaks of self-conscious paranoia, I hoped my neighbors couldn't hear it, because they'd probably think I was sick or something.

For whatever reason, the thought that perhaps I was sick or something failed to cross my mind. Until I got up this morning, and my throat hurt, and I was still coughing. Just now, I'm most inclined to go with the "hope it goes away by itself" plan, but this is complicated somewhat by the fact that I have class tonight, and if I do have something and it's contagious, I don't especially want to infect everybody else.

[a couple hours pass]

Okay, I've called the university health services department, finding that they could see me on Monday if I'm so inclined. Otherwise, they advise that the flu's going around, and, you know, not much to be done about that except to drink lots of fluids and have some vitamin C. I don't feel fluish -- I had the flu in eighth grade and two years after high school, and it was memorable enough on both occasions that I can pinpoint the years in question -- but that's probably all-around good advice anyway.

And I grudgingly called my professor. I wanted to be in class. I wanted to share my final column revision; I wanted to read the revised versions of my classmates' columns; and, you know, I liked my classmates and wanted to see 'em another time before the end of the semester scattered us. But, for one thing, I'm not certain I'm up to it. I'd thought I was, but then I went downstairs for my mail, came back up, and was definitely woozier than usual. (And now I can add "mild headache" to the list of symptoms.) For another, if I do have something serious, I don't want to pass it along to the rest of the class. So I've just e-mailed him the final column, and that'll be that.

Needless to say, I'm giving karaoke a miss this week.

11:39 PM: Lessons learned today:

• My boots are a bit more effective than I'd thought they were.
  I got the boots at Payless on October 30th, at the same time I got the women's boots I wore the following night. (They had a "buy one pair, get another half off" sale.) It turns out that while some boots are designed to allow one to tromp through the snow, others aren't. These are so-so. The soles are effective enough, but you don't really want to step in any puddles. That said, they're better in that situation than my sneakers are, which I found out when I reverted to my sneakers today.
• If there's something you want to talk to your counselor apart, do try to stay on topic.
  You've only got an hour -- a half-hour, if you show up late again -- and if you spend most of that time on tangents, you'll have only yourself to blame afterward.
• A Milky Way Midnight bar is not really lunch.
  Even if it's raining and you just want to get indoors and stay indoors, and you don't want to detour to the pizza shop before going to work, and you happen to have a chocolate bar in your coat pocket anyway... you do need the real food. Go. Eat.
• Wendy's spicy chicken sandwiches rock.
  Okay, I already knew this one, which is why I ended up stopping in there on the way home. If I ever do go back to keeping kosher, I think I'm going to miss Wendy's most of all.

11:47 PM: Holidailies Triolet II

I have ideas for entries here
But only when I'm not online.
When walking home, on evenings clear
I have ideas for entries here.
But when I write, they disappear,
Or shrivel up upon the vine.
I have ideas for entries here
But only when I'm not online.

(Last year's triolet here. See? It's not just a copout, it's a tradition!)

1. [My] ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (75%)
3. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (75%)
4. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (72%)
5. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (60%)
6. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (60%)
7. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (58%)
8. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (54%)
9. Libertarian Candidate (51%)
10. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (47%)
11. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (45%)
12. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (35%)
13. Bush, President George W. - Republican (12%)
14. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (11%)

10:25 PM: Done!

I wrote about 2,500 words today. Granted, they weren't terribly good words, but they composed the bulk of my Column Writing term paper, which is now, for better or for worse, done, done, done. I am relieved. I am also tapped out for now. Expect a better entry tomorrow. (And this sentence puts me over the 50-word Holidailies minimum. I know, I know. I'll try to do better down the line. Somewhat to my own surprise, I've been pretty good until now...)

11:53 PM: A Quick Commercial Observation

Am I the only one disturbed by the current Wendy's commercial with the Looney Tunes characters? Let's see if I have this straight: the product being hawked is the Wild Mountain sandwich, which comes in two forms: beef and chicken, each topped with bacon. And among the characters enthusiastic about this are Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. Porky might be ordering the non-bacon versions; the commercial doesn't build an airtight case against him. Daffy, on the other hand, has explicitly just eaten the spicy chicken version. Daffy, need I remind you, is a bird. And neither pigs nor ducks are notorious for cannibalism...

Yeah, I know, they're anthropomorphic cartoon characters, but still.

9:14 PM: Passing the Bar

(Warning: this entry contains spoilers for the latest episode of The Simpsons. That said, they were also in the promos advertising the episode.)

Now, see, don't get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that the Simpsons chose to include a Jewish character in the first place. But if you're going to have one, and you're going to use Jewish law in the plot, is it too much to ask that you get the basic facts right?

In tonight's episode, we find out that Krusty is not, in fact, Jewish. As he puts it, he'd thought he was a self-hating Jew, but he was just a plain old anti-Semite. The reason? Krusty never had a Bar Mitzvah. It's explained that a Bar Mitzvah is the most important event in a Jewish boy's life, that, without one, he can't become a Jewish man. Hence, Krusty's a goy. This is a central plot point.

It's also complete poppycock.

A Bar Mitzvah ceremony's significance is social, not religious. Children aren't held accountable for their actions; adults are. The line between the two is the onset of puberty, which is assumed to be at 13 for boys and 12 for girls. (Standard disclaimer: that's a simplification of the relevant laws.) A 13-year-old boy is thus a "Bar Mitzvah," and a 12-year-old girl is a "Bas Mitzvah," each of which means, roughly, "one obligated in the commandments." Sure, people like celebrating that change in status, publicly accepting one's responsibilities, but it happens with or without the party. And one's status as a Jew isn't affected in the least by the ceremony.

There was no reason why this episode couldn't have worked just as well while getting the theological facts right. All they needed to do was take out the scene in which Krusty is told that he's not Jewish, and replace it with one in which, wandering through the Old Neighborhood, he realizes that he's lost touch with his roots and kinda misses them. Passing by a shul with a Bar Mitzvah ceremony in progress, he realizes that he never even had one. Cut to commercial. The rest would pretty much stand as written: Krusty decides to learn more about his faith, marking his newfound commitment with the ceremony he never had as a child.

Whether it's worse to have an episode with an egregious error that could easily be fixed, or an episode with an egregious error that couldn't be -- like the episode of The Nanny centering on the entirely mythical rule that people with tattoos can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery -- is something I can't make up my mind about. At any rate, both make me very, very annoyed with the writers and fact-checkers. Or with whoever decided not to bother with fact-checkers.

1. Blizzard::Storm
   
2. J::K
   
3. Control::Freak
   
4. Blood::Donor
   
5. Mysterious::Stranger
   
6. Annoying::Fuckwit
   
7. Throat::Deep
   
8. Condom::Dam
   
9. Search::Party
   
10. Heartfelt::Apology