There but for the grace of education...

Well I've just had my first experience grading papers in bulk, and it wasn't pretty. Never in my life (well, not since 6th grade at least) have I so appreciated my English teachers (especially Mrs. Sublette, who taught me how to turn my jumbles of words into persuasive papers). Some of my favorite highlights or lowlights, depending on how you look at them (completely unedited):

"...and [Romulus] granted the women certain rights that their husbands held, such as citizenship and bearing children." And women say men don't know the pain of labor.

"Although many people believe the empire grew overnight..." Hmm, methinks someone misheard the phrase 'Rome wasn't built in a day.'

"Romulus performs the rights of Hercules..." That'd be the right to kick ass.

"The Plebs decided to succeed..." That's the spirit, Plebs! (For my non-classical friends, the Plebs actually decided to secede.)

"All the men became untied..." Pull yourselves together, men! (I know, this one's an easy typo, but it just sounded so funny)

The best quote selection ever: "They got into an argument that led to 'bloodshed' (Livy p. 10)"

From the Mad-Libs version of Roman history (insert adjective here!):
"Brutus then vows to overturn Luscious Tarquinius Superbus..." Tarquin's delicious.
"Spurious Lucretius her father arrived..." What a phony that Lucretius is.

Current events made an unexpected appearance: "It is believed that the ancient holes and depressions on the Palestine hill are the foundations from Romulus' hut."

...as did pop culture: "[The story of Romulus] reminds me of the movie Scarface..."

In the gratuitous quotation marks category: "Rome couldn't 'handle' the violence..."

And finally, probably my personal favorite: "However, their pleas fell onto death ears." Too good to be true!

Oh, and one more, this time from the "There are just so many things wrong with this sentence" category (grammarians, look away!): "Rhea was a priestess and priestess' were exceptional woman born of a noble family and have a vow of virginity and chastity."

Eat your heart out, Richard Lederer.

Also for a chuckle, check out this website which someone actually cited for this paper. Nowhere else have I seen a Geocities-worthy layout, a Jimi Hendrix quote, and an offer to purchase an "Impeach Bush" t-shirt on a single page. As if Wikipedia weren't bad enough! Fortunately for everyone involved, this wasn't a research paper, they just had to use the assigned reading.

While I'm posting links, two more: First,the best headline that I can remember seeing in a good long while. Second, well, this. An apocalypse is coming to cleanse the world of our species, I just know it.

Song of the night is Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of "Superstition" (although the Stevie Wonder original is pretty killer too!). See them rock it together here, which is pretty cool.