These words were written by a man named Umberto Eco.  (Not these words.  These words were written by me.  I mean the words above these words; the ones located between the quotation marks.)  He is probably best known for writing a novel whose title is The Name of the Rose which was made into a famous movie starring Sean Connery and that dude from Heathers who thinks he's Jack Nicholson.  You know who I mean.  He was in that movie where he had a baboon heart.  Ron Perlman was in that movie too.  Not the one about the baboon heart.  I mean The Name of the Rose.  He was also in that last Alien movie.  Ron Perlman, I mean.  The one with Wynona Rider (who was also in Heathers but not The Name of the Rose).
    These words were not written for that novel nor were they spoken in any of these movies.  They were written for another novel which Umberto Eco wrote whose title is Foucault's Pendulum.  They are spoken by a character named Garamond which, by complete and utter coincidence, is the name of the font the webmasters of the Triple Digit Media Concern used on their website.  Garamond is both a fabulous font and a fabulous character from a fabulous novel.  Read it.

    When I was in high school band, every day, either Mr Slothower (our instructor) or Michael Saddoris (teacher's pet extraordinaire) or Jimmy Corelis (idiot at large) or whomever was acting as Drum Major at the time if it was marching band season would write the names of the songs on the blackboard at the front of the room.  This was done so that we would all have our music ready to go in the proper order for that day's rehearsal.

    (Christian Slater!  That's that dude's name!  He was in The Name of the Rose.  He was in Star Trek VI too.  Sulu told him to piss off or something.  That was awesome.)

    One year, we played a song called Light Cavalry.  And every day that we were to play that song, Light Calvary would be written on the blackboard at the front of the room.  And every day that Light Calvary was written on the blackboard at the front of the room, I would go up and correct it to read Light Cavalry.  It happened so often that it became a sort of ritual.  No matter who wrote the song titles it was always wrong and I always fixed it.  At this point in my life, I was still planning on becoming an Astronomy major but the English major in me was alive and well.

    Speaking of which... To the dictionary!

    Cavalry (kav'el rç) n., pl. -ries [Fr cavalerie <It cavalleria < cavaliere: see CAVALIER] combat troops mounted originally on horses but now often riding in motorized armoured vehicles
     vs.
    Calvary (kal've rç) [LL(Ec) Calvaria < L, skull: used to translate Gr kranion, skull (see CRANIUM) & by the Evangelists to translate Aram gûlgûtha, Golgotha] Bible the place near Jerusalem where the crucifixion of Jesus took place: Luke 23:33, Matthew 27:33
-- n., pl. -ries (c-)  1 an outdoor representation of the crucifixion of Jesus  2 any experience involving intense pain or anguish

    Big difference, mates.  Big difference.  Now, as a gamer geek, I knew that cavalry was connected to cavalier.  (I do own Unearthed Arcana after all.)  As a linguist, I knew that the French word for horse is cheval.  The connections were blindingly apparant to me.  This was a song about a bunch of military guys riding horses.  It was a march for Christ's sake!  Actually, it wasn't.  I mean, it was a march but not for Christ's sake.  It wasn't about the crucifixion of Jesus at all.  I tried to explain this to my bandmates but they wouldn't listen.

    I read the dictionary.  Is that odd?  I'll just pick it up, open at random and start reading - not so much for the definitions but for the etymologies.  (That's all that funny italic stuff before it tells you what the word means.)  Language is magick and I've always wanted to master its spells.  (There's a pun in that sentence if you look hard enough.  Grant Morrison would be proud.)

    What's the point?  The point is that Garamond was right.  "Genius is pain" to quote a comedian doing a bad John Lennon impression on a National Lampoon album.  (I think it was John Lennon.  I've never been a Beatles fan.  Grant Morrison would be horrified.)  It was hard to sit there with my clarinet on my lap knowing that I was smarter than everybody else in the room.  My calvary, my anguish rode over me like a thundering herd of horses: like a cavalry.
    I'm like a modern day Right Said Fred.  "I'm too sexy for this classroom.  Too sexy for this classroom.  No way I'm conjugating."  Only instead of sexy I'm fucking brilliant.  To that end, I have decided to start writing down the brilliant things I think up and post them here.  Here, I shall unleash upon the unsuspecting Philistines both my calvary and cavalry of genius.