The Ides of March, Brutus Day, True Confessions Day, Buzzard's Day, Everything You Think Is Wrong Day, Dumbstruck Day, March 15th

The Ides of March

The Ides of March, as a date, was not meant be remembered for always and forever synonymously with death. But when Shakespeare penned the lines: "Beware the Ides of March!" The words became mythic in our literary memory. (We love you Shakespeare!)

To put this in perspective, if something very bad happened to you at work on the first Monday in April. Then if Dave Barry picked up the story, and wrote about it and in his writing process decided that the very bad thing wasn't foreboding enough, so in his embellishment wrote that before the horrible thing happened you walked down the street and a fortune teller popped out at you and said "Beware the first Monday in April!" And he also said the people near and dear to you started having bad dreams about the first Monday in April. But, you went to work anyway! Wow, we all would be Bewaring the First Monday in April now because of Dave Barry.

Now, I want to spit in the eye of my sophomore English teacher who was a bad English teacher, who had a crush on Paul Newman, and was the only teacher in my entire scholastic career to send me to the principal's office. (But, that's not why I want to spit in her eye.) I want to spit in her eye (today) because she told the class incorrectly that Ides meant middle.

Ha! Ides doesn't mean middle. To understand what the Ides of March is, we will need a little history lesson. And, afterwards we will be eternally grateful that we do not go by the Roman calendar anymore.

The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:
* Kalends [which means "to proclaim"](1st day of the month)
* Nones ["Nones" (nine) was intended to express the inclusive number of elapsed days between first quarter and full moons](the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th in the other months)
* Ides [which means "divider" from the Etruscan verb "iduare" meaning "to divide"](the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th in the other months)

The remaining, unnamed days of the month were identified by counting backwards from the Kalends, Nones, or the Ides. For example, March 3 would be V Nones —5 days before the Nones (the Roman method of counting days was inclusive; in other words, the Nones would be counted as one of the 5 days).

Days in March: March 1: Kalends; March 2: VI Nones; March 3: V Nones; March 4: IV Nones; March 5: III Nones; March 6: Pridie Nones (Latin for "on the day before"); March 7: Nones; March 15: Ides (Infoplease.com)

Anyway, back to the story according to Shakespeare, Julius Caeser minimized the importance of the soothsayers warning about the Ides of March, and his wife's foreboding dreams. And then he went to work because another man called him a chicken for even considering listening to his wife. (What a surprise, a man that didn't listen to women, and succums to machismo.) So he died. He is dead. No more Caesar. Killed by his friends and co-workers. His final words: Et Tu Brute? (I think, I'm too tired now to to look it up. I told Edgy that I was going to bed three hours ago. But Master Fob distracted me with his Gizoogle post. So, if you want to read my blog and have it read as if you are watching a Flavor of Love Episode, read it here. ) (Sorry, but if the phrase M****f****** offends you, don't read it.)

There are some other celebrations today, and we can creatively connect them to the Ides of March

Brutus Day
True Confessions Day
Buzzard's Day
Everything You Think Is Wrong Day
Dumbstruck Day