Beware the Ides of May

Today is March 15, the so-called "Ides of March" that a soothsayer warned Julius Caesar about (for good reason, because it was when he would get shafted by his best friends). I remember a student asking me once, "If there are ‘Ides’ of March, are there ‘Ides’ of other months? What does ‘Ides’ mean, anyway?"

It was a good question – any question that stumps me has to be a good one – and I promised to find the answer to it, but never did. So when I realized that this date was coming up, I went on-line to find the answer, and sure enough it was right there at www.infoplease.com, put together by the formidably named and hitherto obscure Borgna Brunner.

"As far as Caesar knew," Brunner writes, "the Ides were just another day. The soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar, ‘Beware the Ides of March,’ has forever imbued that date with a sense of foreboding. But in Roman times the expression ‘Ides of March’ did not necessarily evoke a dark mood – it was simply the standard way of saying ‘March 15.’ Surely such a fanciful expression must signify something more than merely another day of the year? Not so. Even in Shakespeare’s time, 16 centuries later, audiences attending his play Julius Caesar wouldn’t have blinked twice upon hearing the date called the Ides.

"The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, which is said to have been devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. Whether it was Romulus or not, the inventor of this calendar had a penchant for complexity. The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:

• Kalends (first day of the month)

• Nones (the seventh day in March, May, July, and October; the fifth in the other months)

• Ides (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)....

"So, the Ides of March is just one of a dozen Ides that occur every month of the year. Kalends, the word from which calendar is derived, is another exotic-sounding term with a mundane meaning. Kalendrium means account book in Latin: Kalend, the first of the month, was in Roman times as it is now, the date on which bills are due."

Hmmm, in that case, I think I’ll take Ides over Kalends anytime. Now here’s my next question, Borgna Brunner: What’s a Borgna?

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While we’re on words, here’s another one, folks: A "tautology," defined by my onboard dictionary as "a redundant repetition of a meaning in a sentence or idea using different words" and "a proposition of statement that, in itself, is logically true." It’s the kind of statement that makes you sit up and say, "Eh natural! What did you expect?"

It’s also a word that’s been on my mind a lot these days – in this incipient summer, the sizzling climax of which (sometime around the Ides of May) I have already begun to dread. In this season of talk – let’s make that this season of cheap talk – I find myself working doubly hard to figure out what the words I’m hearing really mean, especially words like "sincerity," which suddenly seems to be the only thing we want in a president, as if we’d just discovered it yesterday. (How someone who gets paid to play other people in movies can therefore be definitively established to be "sincere" escapes me.)

Sometimes I have to wonder if I heard something right. When I wrote a political piece in another publication a couple of months ago expressing serious doubts about the fitness of a certain figure to become president, I received a pained and pungent response from a reader accusing me of being "judgmental." I nearly choked on my breakfast hotdog (with rice) when I read that, and couldn’t help firing back a reply: "Of course I’m being judgmental!" I fairly screamed. "What’s an election for, but to make summary judgments – right or wrong – about people?" That’s Tautology No. 1, which might be expressed in the statement "Voting is judgmental."

Tautology No. 2 is something we routinely hear from the receiving end of a nasty exposé, by way of a shrill denial: "These charges are politically motivated!" Duhhh… what else would they be? Spiritually motivated? Musically motivated? Entomologically motivated? Philosophically motivated? You’re in politics, guys – live with it, and tell us something better than "This is a demolition job!" and "I refuse to dignify these accusations with a reply!" For once, dignify us voters with an intelligent and honest response.

But what takes the cake for me in the Tautology Department is a line I’m sure you’ve come across more than once these past few weeks. Or were you on Demerol (or worse) when a certain spokesman of a certain candidate excused the latter’s refusal to join a presidential debate by claiming that "Debates are divisive"? What was that again? "Debates are divisive."

I must be missing something, but aren’t debates supposed to be just that? I never heard of a debate devoted to the proposition that "Let’s all agree!" Debates are designed to show up differences between candidates and the way they think (or don’t), so we can make up our own minds and figuratively divide the house.

But I’m talking like I take these things seriously, much too seriously, when perhaps the right response is simply to laugh ourselves silly – then fall on our knees and pray like madmen for divine salvation from all these jokes and jokers we keep inflicting on ourselves. Somebody pass the Demerol – and beware the Ides of May!

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I was frankly surprised by the amount of positive mail I received for the two techie pieces I served up these past two weeks, knowing how tech talk turns some readers off. (Sorry about that – beside politics, technology seems mindless and naïve frolic. I’m going back to more literary fare next week, promise, and you won’t hear any more about the Mac until, well, maybe the next Macworld in July.)

But even technophobes can have fun if you take these testimonials not as commercial endorsements (there’s no Apple Philippines to speak of, so we get nothing, not even T-shirts, for these unsolicited praises) but as an anthropological case study of a certain tribe afflicted by a certain highly communicable disease.

I thought I was the compleat Mac junkie until I got this letter from Dr. Paul Francia, a neurosurgeon in Iloilo (now who says these places are the boonies?) who apparently has even more Apple-branded digital doohickeys than I do, and actually uses them productively! If I ever need brain surgery – some people seem to think so, if I hadn’t had a lobotomy, yet – I know who I’m going to run to. This is what Paul had to say:

"Greetings from Iloilo! I read your article in the Lifestyle section of the Philippine Star the other day about the Apple iPod, and I agree that the iPod (as well as other Apple products) is a well-designed, fun, and beautiful product. I am a recent ‘switcher’ to the Mac and proud to belong to the five percent of the world’s non-PC users. After using PCs for a long time, I finally got tired of Mr. Gates’ products (and their quirks) and decided to switch from the ‘dark side’ to the ‘cool aqua’ world of Mr. Jobs. The only regret I have is that I should have given in to the urge to make the switch a long time ago.

"I am a neurosurgeon here in Iloilo and also an educator like you (teaching in two medical schools and physical therapy subjects also). I use my 17-inch PowerBook for my lectures and it never fails to get ooohs and aaahs every time I take it out of my case and start my presentations. I have also trashed my PowerPoint program in favor of Apple’s Keynote presentation program, which runs circles around the ‘standard’ PowerPoint slides.

"Aside from academic use, I also find the PowerBook excellent for managing my digital photos as well as video editing. I had been frustrated working with video with my Pentium 4 PC until I switched to the Mac, which runs efficiently and smoothly in handling this work. I videotape my operations (as well as my wife’s who is an eye surgeon, and of course home movies of my kids) and edit them, transfer them to DVD. Recently, I have graduated from iMovie to Final Cut Express for video editing and it is really amazing! I don’t have the iPod mini but I do have the 40 Gb iPod, which seamlessly syncs with my calendar and address book, and also works as a hard drive. I connect my iPod to my car’s aux jack and use the car’s speaker to listen to my music files as well as play my kid’s music to entertain them (I found out that my kids Alex, 4, and David, 2 years old, love retro music).

"I also bring my iPod to the operating room and plug it to a portable speaker and play music during my brain operations which could last from two hours to 12 hours or more. I used to bring stacks of CDs and a CD player to the OR, but now I just bring the iPod and I have a whole CD store in my pocket ready for playing. I have also installed an Airport Extreme base station to complete my wireless ‘empire’ around my house, so I can still use my PowerBook by the pool or in the garden. I installed an iSight camera recently; however, I haven’t used it yet to videochat since I have no chat buddies yet.

"My eldest son Alex, who started using a PC at three years old, is also fascinated by the Mac and I just hope he does not ask for his own Mac computer for his next birthday. I hope I did not take too much of your time but I just want to share this ‘enlightenment’ with you. I have escaped through the ‘windows’ of Mr. Gates’ home but I have found a new ‘aqua world’ of Steve Jobs and this prodigal son will not go back!"

Amen, Brother Paul, hallelujah!

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Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.