Public school education focuses on long-dead poets and trigonometry but de-emphasizes things that are actually useful, like how to cheat on your taxes or identify a narc. This is why I know so much about William Shakespeare, literary icon and total hack.

Today is the Bard’s 445th birthday and the 393rd anniversary of his death. (It’s bad to die on your birthday, because people only give you one present.) Chicago’s Mayor Daley declared it “Talk Like Shakespeare Day,” which is a troubling sign for the economy, because Shakespeare couldn’t have offered much of a bribe.

It’s a major pain to talk like the guy because he wrote using “iambic pentameter,” which means “unnecessary apostrophes.” Let’s say you have to go to the bathroom. You can’t just say, “I have to go to the bathroom,” because that statement is surrounded by quotation marks. No, you’d have to say, “Verily, m’ bladd’r ars’t ‘bout t’ ‘xplode; O, won’t thou help’st me t’ thine t’e’r’l’e’t?” Of course, by the time you finish the sentence, it’s too late. Read the rest of this entry »