so you could reply, "The dog turned left," in French and get credit for it, even if the question was, "How did Eponine die?"

Well, maybe the dog cut in front of her.

Snerk.

Poor Mr. Judd. He died of a brain tumor a couple years after I graduated.

I figured if i messed that up, it'd be obvious I didn't read it in Spanish, but I couldn't think of any other examples.

I'm terrible at names in all circumstances, both in person and in books in English. I've written a number of essay questions full of sentences like "Then Johnson's sister and her husband met with her friend from college and her other friend with red hair..."

I wrote my AP English exam essay on Nicholas Nickleby, and couldn't remember the name of Wackford Squeers. I wrote a whole essay about "the schoolmaster" and how Nicholas beat his butt in righteous fashion, blah blah social activismcakes, and could not come up with the name.

The name is WACKFORD SQUEERS. It isn't like I was trying to remember if it was Bob Rodriguez or Bob Gonzalez, you know?

Heh. I think that's basically what I ended up doing, Ginger...being like "the mother in the story blah blah blah" rather than using her name.

What's odd is realizing I could do all this stuff in high school that I can't do now--read complex Spanish stories, do calculus and chemistry, get up to catch a 6:40 bus every morning...

Y'all are either a lot younger than me or have a lot better memories. I couldn't tell you what my AP exam was about to save my life. I took AP Brit Lit and AP World Lit. The exam must have been about books. That's as good as I can tell you.

"Alas A Blog" passes on this link [link] to story about a Surrey town where the local council is hiring sharpshooters to reduce the pigeon population. The point of the link is not the story, but the comments thread which appears to have been taken over by dadaists.

Where do posts on theremin-playing cats go? Because here another theremin-playing cat video: [link]

Wow, I just watched last night's Frontline, in which the reporter examines the health-care systems of Japan, the UK, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland, in order to evaluate how wealthy developed nations administer universal health-care.

It was quite enlightening, and even hopeful. And yet I suspect we'll never ever get such a system here. The insurance and pharmaceutical and medical lobbies are too big.

A fact they quoted in the report: 700,000 Americans a year go bankrupt because of health-care bills. W.T.F.

good luck tomorrow, Kat.