[conspire] Seasonal observance

[Rick Moen]

Happy Lupercalia!

To better uphold tradition on this day of feasting and purification, you
should arrange for your priests to sacrifice a male goat and a dog, hold
the obvious sacrificial feast, and cut the victims' skin into thongs,
and, then you should, naked or near naked, run counterclockwise around
Palatine Hill as Plutarch describes:

  Many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down
  through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they
  meet with shaggy thongs.  And many women of rank also purposely get in
  their way, and like children at school present their hands to be
  struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery,
  and the barren to pregnancy.

See?  Think of the children.