If this is Wednesday blah blah blah

As I prepare myself to read the N3 episodes for the first time since I originally tossed them off, I provide one simple and complete epistle from April of 1999. It follows a bunch that were very much of their times. This one, while hardly timeless, is still, at least, relatively understandable. 

We almost didn’t make it this week. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over the recent news that Neanderthals were breeding with Cro-Magnons. “The whole history of humanity is apparently based on people doing it with other genera,” he bemoaned (and this from a man who thought he was crossing some sort of line by dating an Episcopalian). “Actually, they were only doing it with a different species, not a different genus,” High corrected him. “It’s not exactly like the Cro-Magnons were out chasing mud turtles. Although,” she added, taking a page from the Mite’s book of self-induced misery, “this does wreak havoc on the Eve Hypothesis. So much for the mitochondrial DNA evidence.”

Mitochondrial DNA? Everything I know about DNA I learned by judging one and a half LD rounds of Human Genetic Engineering at the New England Districts tournament. “I did a paper last year on Out of Africa,” Low chimed in, angrily pushing Unix the Cocker Nostrumutt off her lap. “Which I said was a crock, and I got a C from one of your mitochondrial fanatics, and it turns out I was right all along!” At which point general confusion reigned throughout the hut, with people tossing vicious epithets left and right, accusing all and sundry of mind-boggling levels of chromosomic immorality while never once pronouncing the ‘th’ sound like normal people (Neander-tall, they kept saying, and I kept wondering when we all became German, since the last time I looked at least half of us were French), and I was the only one left with even the slightest interest in keeping those episodes running like the clockwork they ought to be.

Things are going to be hell around here when finals start in two weeks.

You know, the more I read old Nostrum stuff, the more incomprehensible it appears to be. I don't know which is harder to understand: that I wrote this gibberish, or that people actually read it. Or that I'm actually reprocessing it in multiple venues. Good grief!