Middlemarch On

I've spent the majority of this week in an uncomfortable Scan Design chair (the kind that makes your butt feels like hardened ice crystals of carbonation after an hour of continual noisy readjustment) reading Middlemarch, menstruating, and staring at this picture on the back cover of my book, which makes me wonder every twenty pages if George Eliot's transgendered pseudonym is really not just an ironic fabrication by a modern world that refuses to admit: "Yes, this ugly woman truly was a man." I looked up the 1994 miniseries to see if it was worth ditching the torture chair, and I unhappily happenchanced across this disgusting fan website about Rufus Sewell, the slightly wall-eyed Brit who plays Will Ladislaw. But if that's not pathetic enough, I decided to compile the sum total of things I've learned reading this Victorian behemoth:

1. I cannot pronounce Bildungsroman after many tries. I remain unsympathetic towards the plight of George W.


2. I wonder if I will ever be able to appropriately use the word "energumen."


3. The phrase "at sixes and sevens," does not make British English more endearing. Nor is "British English" as "tautologous" as John Bull might think.


4. I need to curtail my no strings attached sessions with Wikipedia, because I end up finding articles like this that test the strength of my gag reflex.


5. There are human limitations to coffee consumption.