1. I am very pleased that Colin Firth won an Oscar for The King's Speech. I would like it to have been a back-to-back win with last year's A Single Man, but I don't think this one was an apology; I don't mind that David Seidler won for Best Original Screenplay, either. I really was expecting David Fincher and The Social Network to walk off with the other two. How awesome is it that Shaun Tan and Trent Reznor have Oscars now?

2. I spent most of yesterday at the MIT Ivy+ Fine Spirits Showcase; I got in at a discount, thanks to Yale. Most of the spirits being showcased were whisky, meaning I now have some ability to distinguish between the numerous different varieties—I would previously have been able to tell you that I thought my tastes ran to peatsmoke and expensive, and now I know I haven't a chance of affording what I really like. That includes the Napoleon Armagnac, which I am told next time I should try with prunes. Absinthe actually tastes subtler and more complex when louched with sugar; it's a colder, thinner, more singleminded drink without. I would have bought a bottle of the Glenfarclas 1974 if it hadn't cost three hundred dollars. (I insist, however, on someday obtaining some Octamore Orpheus. I couldn't get the man at the table to tell me the rationale for the name—whether it's supposed to take you to hell or tear your head off, or whether it merely causes you to invent hexameters and pederasty—but it was my second or third favorite whisky there.) I hadn't even known about cachaça. And at no point do I seem to have lost the ability to converse in complete sentences on coherent topics, which is important, because quite a lot of what was nice about the day was the conversation. Also the singing, which started on the way from the showcase to dinner and kept intermittently on until we left the restaurant; trading songs, or merely being reminded to them. We got applause from the bar a couple of times. I've been invited to a seder. I can't remember the last time I spent an entire day simply hanging around and talking with people who knew their way equally around Welsh verbs and nigunim. And I've got an absinthe spoon.

3. The third thing is still supposed to be Cardillac, but I'm going to sleep. With the exception of a very puzzling epilogue, basically, I liked it. It's worth catching the last performance on Tuesday if you have any interest in gold masks, rough sex, or ritual murder. I'm not sure why the Inquisition keeps happening to operas I see with sharhaun and fleurdelis28, though.