Speaking of ancient Greek, this semester I sat in on a class in Greek tragedy. The class comprised me and one actually registered student. We were originally supposed to to do philosophy rather than tragedy, but the one actually registered student said she didn’t like philosophy, so we read Sophocles’ Antigone.

Antigone is really fucking hard.

Really. The syntax is tortuous and the vocabulary is beyond obscure. But we stumbled through, though I suspect the one actually registered student cheated far less often than I by looking at the translation.

But none of this has anything to do with this post. Recall, please, that earlier in the year we got our dog A. a friend, E. Well, E., like many very young puppies, discovered that chewing up paper was the most fun thing ever in the entire world. Given the number of trees’ worth of paper I tend to leave on the floor, you can imagine how much fun she was having. Finally I wised up and put all the paper on shelves, thereby ensuring that it would never be found again, but not before E. had stumbled upon my copy of Antigone. I had two copies, actually; this one was different from the official class edition, and I used it mostly because it had a lot of commentary that didn’t overlap with the official class edition’s commentary.

But the next day, I brought both editions into class, fair bursting with excitement, because for the first time in my life I got to say that the dog had eaten my homework.

I meant to post yesterday [I actually started writing this a few weeks ago, on a day after an un-posted day; an explanation will come in time]. I spent most of the day, however, in a haze of bliss, because I began it by solving one of the most vexing, intractable linguistic problems facing current speakers of English.

I figured out what to do with “hoi polloi.”

A brief rundown to remind us of the problem:

The phrase “hoi polloi,” meaning essentially “the masses,” came into 19th-century English from ancient Greek, in which it means literally “the many (people),” usually though not always in a derogatory sense. (This in itself is interesting, given that the borrowing was almost certainly inspired by Pericles’ Funeral Oration, in which he used the words in high praise for the citizens of Athens in days marked not just by the Pelopponesian War but also by an outbreak of the plague, which eventually laid Pericles low too.) The difficulty in English comes because “hoi” is the Greek word for “the” in “the many.” People who wish to use the phrase are faced with two equally unsatisfactory options: say “the hoi polloi” (as in “we went outside to join the hoi polloi”) and be thought by some people to be saying “the the many,” or say “hoi polloi” (as in “we went outside to join hoi polloi”) and be thought by some people to be an insufferable snob. I myself end up doing what I always do with words and phrases the pronunciation of which is (correctly or incorrectly) disputed (“forte” as a noun, for example), which is simply to use different words (“strong point”).

There are reasonable arguments on either side. Members of the anti-the contingent point out that nobody says, “I was looking for the le mot juste” (French for “the right word). Members of the pro-the contingent counter that nobody says, “Put the vase in alcove” (in the Arabic word for “the vault,” “al” is “the”).

[A note to the reader: I wrote the above two weeks ago. I stopped where I stopped, mid-discussion, because I knew I had a great deal more to write, and my energy was flagging; I’d just pick it up again, I figured, a few days later. Now that it is a few days later, however, I have absolutely no idea what more I could possibly have had to discuss, so I’ll just cut to the chase.]

Obviously, we just have to treat “hoi polloi” as one word in English: hoipolloi. Then it becomes much closer, structurally, to things like “alchemy” than to things like “le mot juste,” and “the” feels much less incorrect.

So now that that’s decided, I just need to figure out how to convince the hoipolloi to go along with it.

In the category of “sentences you could never have convinced me in a million years I would write”:

I loved the new Adam Sandler movie.

Sigh.

I have posted the finalists for the Gay-Off. If you vote, you may very well win a tin of the best brownies I have ever made.

Voting continues through 11:59 p.m. next Sunday, June 29 (the day of the gay pride parade in New York).

May the gayest person ever win.

In case anybody is in a mood to be amused. (Solve for some value of “amused.”)

No fucking WAY:

President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”. He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”. He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

(Thanks to him for the link.)

I can’t decide whether my favorite is #3, #5, or #8.

I wish I had figured out something else for #9, because now it strikes me as kind of gross, but what’s done is done.

I spent Saturday morning having the following conversation over and over and over again.

(FAUSTUS dials phone. HE listens to the phone ring. The person on the other end of the line picks up.)

FAUSTUS: Hey, [Name of Friend], it’s Faustus . . . Well, I’m calling to thank you so much for coming to my book release party last Friday, but I’m also calling to ask how you are . . . There was kind of a little health thing at the party. You don’t happen to have a fever and a stiff neck or a rash, do you? . . . Oh, I’m very glad to hear that, because unfortunately somebody who was at the party fell ill on Thursday with bacterial meningitis and died yesterday . . . Now the way bacterial meningitis works, it’s virtually certain that she was infected after the day of the party. And even if she had been infected already, it’s virtually certain that you weren’t exposed; you would basically have had to make out with her . . . Right. If it hasn’t shown up by now you’re probably fine. But since there’s a theoretical chance, though it’s infinitesimal, that you were exposed, I wanted to call and tell you that, you know, if you do find yourself feeling feverish and notice a purple rash or a stiff neck, in the next few days, you know, it might not be a bad idea to go to the doctor . . . Yeah, in fact there is—they just give you penicillin or some other thing with a name I can’t remember . . . Oh, I appreciate that; it wasn’t actually anybody I knew–it was a friend another guest had brought with her . . . Yes, they were good friends, unfortunately . . . You know, I would love to stay on the phone, but I have a bunch more of these phone calls to make, so can I call you back later and we’ll talk about that? Great. I’ll talk to you soon. Sure, no problem. Okay. Bye.

(FAUSTUS presses “end” on the phone and dials the next number.)

I imagine that, distressing as this news must have been for my interlocutors to hear, they probably received it better when communicated this way than when communicated in the style of my first conversation about the issue, which went something like this:

FAUSTUS: Hi, [Name of Friend], it’s Faustus.
FRIEND: Hi, Faustus, how are you?
FAUSTUS: I’m fine, but I need to tell you that somebody who was at the party came down with bacterial meningitis and died yesterday.
FRIEND: …
FAUSTUS: …
FRIEND: I thought you were calling to ask whether we should see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull today.
FAUSTUS: Ooh, what time?

Okay, I’m perturbed. Because so far exactly four people have submitted entries for the Gay-Off. Obviously the deadline isn’t for weeks and weeks, but I am choosing to interpret the dearth of declared competitors as an indication that either a) nobody knows about the Gay-Off because nobody clicked on the competition link in the last entry, in which case you should click the link above to learn more, or b) nobody cares about the Gay-Off, in which case I should go stick my head in the oven.

Actually, just in case you have had your hands severed since you started reading this post, I’ll post the Gay-Off information here, so that you needn’t click on a link.

SWISH: MY QUEST TO BECOME THE GAYEST PERSON EVER

In the introduction to Swish I explain that my quest to become the gayest person ever did not turn out to be an unqualified success—which means that the position of the Gayest Person Ever is still open. If you’re interested in competing, e-mail me a brief explanation (up to 100 words) of why you should be crowned this year’s Gayest Person Ever. Note, please, that in order to enter you do not have to be gay or even, I suppose, a person. The Gayest Person Ever describes an existential state, irrespective of plumbing and flavor.

The last day to send in entries is Tuesday, June 10. On Friday the 13th, I’ll post the top five entries (as determined by an independent panel of judges) on my website, and from then through the end of Gay Pride (Sunday, June 29) you can vote for your favorite.

At the moment I’m planning prizes as follows: the Grand Prize is an inscribed copy of Swish, an inscribed copy of my first book, Gay Haiku, a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written for the winner, and, depending on geographic location, a tin of homemade brownies made with loving care by me. Second prize is an inscribed copy of Gay Haiku, a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written for the winner, and a tin of brownies slightly inferior to the tin the Grand Prize winner gets. Third prize is a Swish T-shirt, a gay haiku written for the winner, and a tin of brownies slightly inferior to the tin the Second Prize winner gets. However, the actual prizes may be different from this, like if I eat the brownies or something.

Good luck, and may the Gayest Person Ever win!

P.S.: If you live in Los Angeles, Long Beach, or San Francisco and want to hear me read from Swish or to force somebody else to hear me read from Swish, you can do so this week. Just go here and scroll to the bottom of the page to find out when and where.