Ruination & Despair

Those of you in the Washington area will, I am certain, be eager to learn that we are sending a flunky to sell our fine cards at the Second Annual Holiday Bazaar of the Sewall-Belmont House & Museum on the corner of Constitution Avenue and 2nd Street, NE, this Thursday, December 3, 2009, from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. We encourage you to seize this golden opportunity to do your holiday shopping in an attractive historic setting! Additional inducements reportedly include music, free gift wrap, seasonal refreshments, and wine tasting. Admission is free to members of the Museum or the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, and a mere $5.00 to common riff-raff like the rest of us.

The Sewall-Belmont House & Museum is a pleasant stroll from the metro stops at either Union Station or Capitol South. It is located within the security perimeter of the U.S. Capitol, so attendees are requested to leave any dangerous weapons at home.

Observing the lackeys in our state-of-the-art-fulfilment-facility-in-the-depths-of-the-cellar as they toil dutifully away to fill your retail orders, the deep thinkers here at Archelaus have conceived a new way to save you money, while simultaneously reducing our impact on the environment. Most of our fine cards are available in attractive plastic boxes of eight, but presumably not all of you actually want attractive plastic boxes to throw away. Therefore, we are creating a new purchasing option, the unboxed set of eight, which will cost you twenty cents less and reduce ever so slightly the number of attractive plastic boxes being used as landfill worldwide.

Naturally, if you actually do want plastic boxes, whether to store your unused Archelaus cards or to dress them up for gift-giving, you still have the option of buying boxed sets. You just don’t have the boxes foisted upon you whether you want them or not.

Next Valentine’s Day, or any other time you want to assure that special someone of the depth of your regard, why not give our latest checkbox card, “Taste in carrion”?

Okay, so it features vultures. These noble birds perform a valuable ecological service, and deserve a better reputation. Besides, who is to say that such sadly misunderstood scavengers do not lead impressively vibrant romantic and sexual lives?

At any rate, they appear to have better luck in that department than card designers do.

“There have been rains of milk, blood, flesh, iron, sponges, wool, and baked bricks.”

  —  Pliny the Elder, Natural History (circa A.D. 78)

(If you think you have nothing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, consider the infrequency of recent reports of any of the above.)

We had hoped to release this highly pertinent cartoon by Frederick G. Cooper (1883-1962) as a postcard, but unfortunately the reduction from full-page to postcard-size resulted in an unacceptable loss of print quality (click on the image for a better view). The original appeared in Life on November 30, 1911.

As I noted in my previous post on plant names, fruit and vegetable names constitute their own subcategory, which I will consider now, together with names relating to other kinds of food and drink. Notwithstanding the well-publicized decision by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow to name her baby Apple in 2004, food names are generally rare. Somewhat unexpectedly the chief exceptions — indeed the oldest and the most popular names in this category — are related to olives. (Continue reading . . .)

Pushing north from La Crosse, Archelaus has reached Superior, Wisconsin, across the St. Louis River from Duluth, Minnesota. Red Mug Espresso, an independent coffeehouse, gallery, and music venue, has been infiltrated and will shortly place Archelaus cards on sale. This powerful flanking movement is deemed to pose a grave threat to Minnesota, and calls for the governor to declare a state of emergency continue to be reported from St. Paul.

“The world itself is but a large prison out of which some daily are led to execution.”

  —  Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552-1618), returning to prison after trial.