YEAST, STUDENTS AND OTHER SEMI-SENTINENTS

I've been under the weather lately. It's a weird one, no temperature, lots of coughing and sneezing along with a heavy lassitude that's made it hard for me to even think about typing. But a man's got to do what...so...
In the strange world of the SCA what people do for fun might not have anything to do with anything else in their life. For those who don't know the Society For Creative Anachorims are those people who dress up as medievalists and create the Middle Ages the way they should have been-no disease, no poverty, no dirt. SCA co-founder Poul Anderson's "High Crusade" cover featured a group of knights marching into a spaceship in full armor including swords. Unless they're Lt. Sulu, what exactly are they going to do with those things? Use them for spits if they run out?
Luiji Kapaj and I haver been arguing over the biological classification of yeast. It's a plant, says I. It's an animal, both he and others of the Silver Horde maintain. I checked Wikipedia, and asked members of the Godddard Center and am pleased to find I'm right. That'll make up for the rake I gulped, mistaking the clear liquid Lou handed me for a glass of water. Rake, it seems, is distilled alcohol, and the three fingers I gulped might have been eighty proof. My eyes shot open and spun around, I gasped for water, and wondered why everybody at the table was looking at me. You SIP rake, v-v-e-e-r-r-y slowly. Now I know.
Lou's a master brewer. Well, actually he's a fighter. One thing he's not is a drinker. Yet his mead's (honey wine) are prized around the realm, and I've tried Raspberry, Strawberry, Lemon and others. His son Puppi's' is just as good, and I've tried a chocolate cordial that's the equal of any regular brewing house.If he ever wanted to change specialties...
Columbia had its Bachnacel this past Saturday. All that really means is that the kids do during the day what they usually wait until the evening to do. Kids were walking around all covered in paint and totally plastered at nine AM.Some tried to get into one of the restaurants and were to9ld they couldn't come in all paint covered, and only a few complained. I channeled me inner Jim Morrison for this one: Pagan ritual adorns the day
a flourish of trumpets, flash of color behind the dunes
Painted bodies dance the avenue, eying their opposites,
Tonight there will be great matings
And the robberies go on. Secret service agents do to Colombian hookers what they do to us all the time, and the papers freak. Meanwhile the Espada's manage to rack up $126,000 in overtime and the head of the GSA gets put on leave and still manages to keep his $175,000 salary. Too all those bank robbers and corner stick up men, you set your sights too low!