I was limping for a week, you caught the flu

Because it is impossible to discuss Catullus without Catullus 16. If you watch The Daily Show, this is the poem whose first line was translated on-air last year as "I will sodomize you and face-fuck you." While not terribly poetic, that's perfectly accurate so far as the sexual acts and subject-object positions described by pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo are concerned—the poem being a riposte to Catullus' critics who charge that anyone who writes that much about kissing has got to be a total pussy in bed—which is why almost no one has ever produced a good translation of this poem.

The rest of this post otherwise known as the list of attempts I compiled for schreibergasse in March and inflicted on strange_selkie a few nights ago, because why should they be the only ones to suffer? The earliest is eighteenth-century, the last about ten years ago. On the bright side, at least one of them consistently makes me laugh out loud.

( Seriously, if you're drinking anything, I might put it down now. )

Now off to watch Spice and Wolf (2008) with Viking Zen, where I'd be really surprised if any of this is relevant at all.