Throw me the ball! Ouch! Not that hard!

It was years ago I was reading something about Juvenal (I not only did not flunk Latin, I never took it *holds head in shame*). And this writer went on and on about how the word "satire" (the form for which ol' Juvvie was famouser than famous) may have come from a Latin word with two possible meanings: a word that meant either "a bowl of mixed fruit" or (by association) "a medley."

I have no idea whether any of that is accurate: you'd need to ask a true Latin scholar. But the notion stuck with me because of this: "satire" is a literary form where you throw out all the structured rhetorical categories, all the neatly clipped logic and the carefully considered ambiguities or ironies of the other classic forms.

And when you do that, you start making jokes. It's natural.

So, when we turn our thoughts to roguery (in the sense of "playful mischief"), it's only natural that we experiment.

But even then, we still have to think things through first.

More, next time.