Alas, poor Yorik...

The Common Fool, or Ridikulus maximus as she is known in scientific circles, is most readily identified by a proclivity for rushing in.

So widely noted is this behaviour that years after Alexander Pope alerted us to its presence in "An Essay on Criticism," it was further immortalized by a tolerably cute but pervasively banal romantic comedy starring Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek.

With all this rushing in and out (because obviously one can't rush in without first being out, and once one is in, one would have to rush out in order to rush in again, thereby qualify the behavior as habitual and worthy of being attached to works of cinematic excellence as delineated above) one can easily conclude that fools, in general, are a rather dizzy lot.

The resultant disorientation goes a long way toward explaining the other, lesser-known behaviors of the Fool.

Such as staying out drinking past 3am--at a party she swore she'd leave by 1am--the night before an 8 hour class that begins at 10am.

Indeed.

I am well aware, of course, that I am 27 28 years old, and really ought to know better... but the fact remains that I was perhaps still a bit drunk when I arrived--remarkably punctually--for class this morning, clutching the 2 bottles of Vitamin water that it nearly took an act of god to procure because apparently nothing is open at 9am on a Sunday, even in New York Freakin' City.

In my defense, the festivities in question were a joint birthday party for myself, A, and our friend K--and therefore I had every excuse to behave in a manner far worse than that in which I actually did. And as I made it through the whole of today's class only slightly the worse for wear (and doing my best impression of Kathleen Turner thanks to the exorbitant number of cigarettes I inhaled amidst the preceding debauchery), really I think I can be excused for this particular transgression.

But the photos of me being spanked by an equally intoxicated and even more snappily dressed A?

Those I blame entirely on the Newcastle.