It seems that I'm not the only one who uses free websites for all my Latin translation needs

You'll understand later why I brought that up.

It's been a great week for news items that I should take seriously but I just can't.

I was particularly tickled by a sign outside my local newsagent will the day's headline from The Age, which proclaimed, in wonderfully large letters, "NIXON DUPED BY MR FIXIT".

Just for a moment, I thought that someone had discovered that Gigglewick's husband was involved in Watergate, but on closer reading it became obvious that this was as reference to Victoria's Chief Commissioner of Police and her thus far unsuccessful attempts to set up an anti-corruption section which is not entirely corrupt.

I will skip lightly over my own views of police corruption in this state. The point is I can't take this thing seriously, when the headlines produce a mental picture of our Chief Commissioner foolishly taking a clock to be repaired by a fox in a basball cap who accidentally causes it to sound like a bicycle bell instead of going cuckoo.

Hmmm, one too many viewings of Richard Scarry's "The Talking Bread" there, I suspect.


Meanwhile, since I know how you all love ancient language quizes, vero possumus means:


(a) We really are pretending to be dead


(b) We are a group of vigilantes hired by an insurance company


(c) Verily, Every Republican Organising Political Operations Should Surely Use More Unclear Slogans


(d) Yes we can

I really, really wish it wasn't (d), but it is.

I know that the decision that Americans will make concerning their next president is important. Citizens of Iraq, for example, would no doubt be somewhat disappointed that one of the current candidates didn't get significantly further a couple of elections back. But when the presumptive Democratic nominee, who leads the other guy by up to 15 points according to some recent polls, appears at an official event with a faux presidential seal saying vero possumus stuck to the front of the podium, it really it a little bit difficult to take this whole thing seriously.

Barack Obama seems to be a reasonably bright guy and I like his policies. However, he has been accused of being an elitist, partly because of his poor ten pin bowling skills and his disinclination to eat a Philadelphian cheesesteak, and partly because Hillary Clinton said so enough times that people seemed to forget that it wasn't actually true.

Well, when you're up against a straight talking war hero, what better way to shake that elitist tag once and for all than to translate your own campaign slogan into Latin.

The seal, complete with slogan, made just one appearance, but surely it was clear to all involved that this was one too many. At the risk of actually agreeing with a Republican about something other than not wantingo stand too close to George W Bush, the McCain campaign summed it up pretty well when they described the seal as "laughable, ridiculous, preposterous and revealing all at the same time".

Or, as they say in the classics:

Serio dude. Vos went stolidus