Crossed signals and unclear signs

An intern for U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison wrote this as a break-up letter to his then-girlfriend. Unfortunately, someone - either Tripplehorn (the intern) himself, unintentionally, or the girlfriend - forwarded the message to recipients for whom it was not intended... who forwarded the message to friends... who forwarded the message to their friends...

As a result, Tripplehorn was, according to the Washington Post, dismissed from his internship. (Weirdly, Tripplehorn denies this.)

Reading the letter, though, I have to wonder: was he dismissed because he wrote what amounts to an abusive and foul-mouthed letter from work, or because the letter brought to his supervisors' attention that he's functionally illiterate?

I've been tracking down more and more resources on the 19th-century world over the last day or three, to the point where last night I had a dream about being in Victorian England, which is a sign to me that I'm immersing myself properly in the subject. I'm acutely disappointed by the book I took with me to bed last night, though (I don't remember the title off the top of my head - it's Europe Rules The World, or something equally silly - but it's the seventh in its series, and covers world history from 1848-1914), which across the span of five pages espoused not one but two utterly fallacious etymological theories. (The one I remember - as you'll recall, I was reading this as I fell asleep - was the etymology of "posh" as "port out, starboard home", theoretically the site of the best cabins on the England-India passenger steamers. The problem with this theory is that there's no evidence backing it whatsoever. It turns out that "posh" is a word in Romany meaning "half"; it arrived in English slang in phrases like "posh-houri", meaning half-pence, and soon became a generic substitute for "money" - from which the obvious connection can be made to "luxurious".)

Anyway.

This next paragraph is potentially more than some people want to read about, so I'm going to ( cut it away. )

Enough of that.

Thoughts on a summer day

I went to the library yesterday, not only to return a book I'd finished but to check out the World History section.

I couldn't find the World History section. I could find specialized history - Europe, Asia, United States, etc. - but not generic world history.

So I went to the reference desk and asked the librarian, "I can find the local history sections, for Europe, Asia, et cetera" - I probably actually said 'et cetera', that's how much of a dork I am - "but I can't find general world history. Can you help me?"

"Okay, do you have any specific period in mind?"

"I'm looking for information on the 19th century in particular."

"Okay, and did you want European history, Asian history...?"

"Um."

It apparently took her utterly by surprise that I wouldn't want the history of a specific place.

(General world history, by the way, is in the 909 prefix, if you're going by Dewey decimals.)

I was planning on staying at work until 6 today. Then I remembered that today is going to be the only day that I'm going to be able to get some important work done (it has to be done by this Saturday, and I haven't been/won't be able to do it because it requires two people). So maybe 4. Or 2. We'll see. If I leave at 2, I'll still have 4 hours of work to make up next week, but I'll also have my evening free tonight and I'll be guaranteed to get the work done.