Today has been another slow day. The post was late, again. The Yamaguchis have returned and I attempted a sojourn to the country and was repeatedly foiled by train schedules and antagonistic cab drivers. What I don’t understand is how such a person can live a fulfilling life at all. I am repeatedly surprised anything gets done.
On a lighter Bathynomus note, there is a rather popular image from the website icanhascheezburger featuring several Bathynomi. The caption reads “prehistoric Trilobites struggle with modern packaging” or some such. I gather this is the inspiration for the music video I linked to earlier. The truth, as this handy site and others have aptly pointed out, is that the Bathynomi are not Trilobites, but descendants. Trilobites 2.0, for the technologically savvy. Though the caption would not have nearly the comic effect, I reckon, and the cheese website does not seem particularly concerned with correct facts or grammar.
I cannot stand by such grotesque manglings of the English language. Though I confess I am a great fan of “Jabberwocky,” the poem by Lewis Carroll that invents words still not adequately defined:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
However modern the poem was upon its publication, I am not nearly as startled in my admittedly conservative sensibilities by it as I am by hyper-modern (or postmodern as some people seem intent on calling it) poetry of any kind. “Jabberwocky” is a lovely play with words and English without throwing it to the wind. However, I cannot say the same of others. Gertrude Stein is one of my great enemies. And though we have never met, I am far too young, I am sure we would have clashed horribly.
The writer in me demands I quote the poem in full, but I will not allow it to take up so much space, so if you cannot read it in the small font displayed here, you may look it up elsewhere, though I discourage it.
A Piano
If the speed is open, if the color is careless, if the selection of a strong scent is not awkward, if the button holder is held by all the waving color and there is no color, not any color. If there is no dirt in a pin and there can be none, if there is not then the place is the same as up standing.
This is no dark custom and it even is not acted in any such a way that a restraint is not spread. That is spread, it shuts and it lifts and awkwardly not awkwardly the centre is in standing.
What a jumble of words! What disrespect for the conventions of the English language! What a tragedy, a pox. I cannot begin to understand it: the whole thing is a deep sludge of mud and vile water. A bit histrionic of me, perhaps. I have been reading about the trial of Joan of Arc, and impassioned speech seems to the mode of the day.