That was more a summary than a prophecy.

Here are three things that happened in 49 AD:

• Emperor Claudius marries his niece Agrippina the younger (approximate date).
• Engagement of Nero and Octavia, daughter of Claudius.
• Agrippina charges Octavia's first fiancé, Julius Silanus, of incest. He is brought before the Senate and sentenced to death.

WTF?

Also, for P-C, 49 is the atomic number of indium.

DUDE! You went to an IVY! with lots of super intellectual types. that's intellectual by proximity. DUH!

Fucking fuck.

And, you went to high school with Matt Damon!!

And HE went to Harvard!

I guess Natter 48 Contiguous States of Denial was prophetic, though.

Also, for P-C, 49 is the atomic number of indium.

Nice!

If Gus is really dead, he's laughing at all that. If he's really alive, he's laughing at all that, and kicking himself for not being able to chime in.

I wonder if Gus would like the really, really awful thread title that came into my head. It's so bad I will whitefont it: Natter 49: Gus Who's Not Coming to Dinner.

Got to say, one of the highlights of all this was some poking around in archive threads and recalling some of our late great titles (Natter 25: Half the Ways to Leave Your Lover).

Also, Cindy, from one of those old threads - this summer there was a "squirbit" sighted in my dad's back yard by my sis and the upstairs neighbors that caused much speculation about what was actually in the river that his yard backs on. I laughed my ass off when I came across a several years' old post where you'd encounted the same thing (unidentifiable mammal looking like a cross between a squirrel and a rabbit) and come up with exactly the same name for it.

I've been meaning to read Crying of... for a long time now. Maybe the thread title would actually push me there. I have no other brilliant ideas.

Natter 49: A Centered Octagonal Number and a Somer Pseudoprime Based on 8.

OK, I'll be the parade-pisser and vote against a Bureaucrazying Natter reference. This whatthefuckever doesn't reflect on my natter.

(BTW, I'm not really pissy. Er, or annoyed or anything. Just my vote. I was up and over but for the huhnnn factor by late Jan 1. More or less. Less enough to refrain from comment. Until now. Can I add another caveat? I think I'm done.)

And HE went to Harvard!

Perzactly! Genius by association!

The person who told us Gus was dead is also the person who said "He had a name; it was Guy Straley". The two statements are inextricably linked.

If (absit omen!) Vee came to (avert!) tell us that something had happened to Connie, she wouldn't say "Her name was Suela Clabby". She would either say "The person you knew as Consuela is gone" or "Consuela, whose real name was Mme. de X...., is gone." There would be no point in hanging up one pseudonym only to announce another.

We all have to come to our own conclusions, obviously. Mine is that the same witness gave us the two facts we've been reasoning from: that Gus is dead and that Gus is/was Guy Straley. When we correlate those facts with the stories Gus told us, we wind up with contradictions. And those contradictions may be all we ever get. As everybody says, Schrodinger's Buffista.

[edit: Shutting up now. Promise. Look! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace!]