Ruination & Despair

There was an old hen
    And she had a wooden leg,
And every damned morning
    She laid another egg;
She was the best damned chicken
    On the whole damned farm —
And another little drink
    Wouldn’t do us no harm.

Last week Archelaus’s entire staff attended an orgiastic corporate retreat in Dayton, Ohio, all details of which must be suppressed to avoid criminal prosecution. While taking a break from the festivities, however, Customer Service Minion #3 snapped this quick photo of an Egyptian mongoose at the Dayton Art Institue. Crafted from bronze, the creature dates to somewhere between 663 and 525 B.C., and bears a strong family resemblence to our own much-beloved specimen from approximately A.D. 1580.

Check out this exciting offer from an advertisement found on a Slovak website.

The ingredient list for Original Slim Jims includes “mechanically separated chicken.” Now, that sounds tasty!

In 1934 the small Russian fascist movement based in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo declared Joseph Stalin to be a “concubine of American capitalists and Jews.”

Source: John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945 (New York, 1978), 58, citing a Japanese consular report.

When a garulous barber asked him how he would like his hair cut, King Archelaus of Macedonia (reigned 413-399 B.C.) replied: “In silence.”

Source: Plutarch, Morals, vol. 15: On Talkativeness.

“Two boys arrived yesterday with a pebble they said was the head of a dog until I pointed out that it was really a typewriter.”

  —  Pablo Picasso

“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.)

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 . . .)

“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.

Having written about fabric names, bird names, and animal names, I think it is time to move on to plant names. I will leave the large subgroup of flower names to a later post, likewise the fruits and vegetables. (Continue reading . . .)

Having discussed bird names in my last post, I feel I now have little choice but to account for names taken from the rest of the animal kingdom, as well. After all, if we can’t name our children after rodents, insects, or snakes, what claim do we have to be living in a free society? (Continue reading . . .)