Now, the storal of the mory is this: If you ever go to a bancy fall and want to have a pransom hince lall in fove with you, don’t forget to slop your dripper!
[Ronnie Barker]
“When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been an anticlimax.”
[with thanks to Amber Noel; O’Connor quote from Conversations with Flannery O’Connor, Rosemary M. Magee, p. 38]
I’m reading Chaucer for my class on Christianity and Tragedy. A wonderful person, inspired by this response to Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” has written this poem, which is hilarious particularly if you’ve read any Chaucer [for a sample, see here: in which the drunk miller from the Canterbury tales interrupts the monk to tell a raunchy story].
XIII Wayes of Regardinge a Litel Woolen Hatte
a poeme by Galfridus Chaucer
I
Amonge XX busye customes deskes
The onlye thinge nat movinge
Was my litel woolen hatte
II
Ich was of three myndes
Lyke a haberdassheres stalle
On the which do hange III litel woolen hattes
III
My woolen hatte flewe off yn the wynde,
Alack! That hatte was ful wel expensif.
IV
A gentil and a churl
Are one.
A gentil and a churl and a litel woolen hatte
Are one.
V
Ich ne knowe nat which to prefer,
The beautee of sentence
Or the beautee of solaas,
The litel woolen hatte being put on
Or just aftir.
VI
Isekeles did fille the greate wyndow
Wyth glas rough and ungentil.
The shadwe of the woolen hatte
Dyd crosse yt, hider and thider.
The hattes wearer
Traced yn the frost
A vers aboute a kankedort.
VII
O thin men of the Guildhall
Wherfor thynke ye upon golden hattes?
Marken ye nat how the litel woolen hatte
Suited ys ful wel
For a cold daye?
VIII
Ich knowe of noble romaunces
And fayre, delitable vers yn heigh style,
Yet eke wel Ich knowe
That the litel woolen hatte ys woven up
Yn what Ich knowe.
IX
Whanne the litel woolen hatte was loste,
Yt marked the beginninge
Of anothir chidinge by Philippa.
X
At the sighte of litel woolen hattes
On the heades of tale-telling pilgrims
Even John Gower
Wolde crye out sharplye.
XI
He walkid alle arounde London
Yn uncomfortable shoon
Oones, a great thirste took hym
Yn that he mistook
The shadwe of hys woolen hatte
For a barrel of ale.
XII
The river ys movinge
Let nat the hatte falle off of the syde of the ferryboate.
XIII
Yt was Aprille alle afternoon
And ther felle soote shoures
To percen the droghte.
The woolen hatte
Sat upon myn heade.
This is the answer to question 23 in the survey (the darkest got most votes). See the rest of them here.
[With thanks to Russell Johnson who showed it to me.]
The first track on Christopher Tin’s double Grammy-winning album is lovely: “Baba Yetu,” the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili, sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir. And it made history as the only video game theme song ever to win a Grammy. But as far as my listening goes to date, the whole album deserved its Grammy.
[Thanks to my mom for pointing “Baba Yetu” out to me; she found it on The Anchoress.]
My three favorite things about this, other than general greatness:
1. The little red ghost in the Lengthy Prologue line.
2. The unlabeled lawnmowing man.
3. The fact that there are two unicorns in the park, but they don’t seem to have found one another — and one of them is falling in badly-written love with a hornless horse.
[With thanks to Steve Froehlich for sending it to me.]
With love to my actual father, here a photo of my favorite fictional father, Atticus Finch, with his daughter Scout. (Well, technically the photo is of Gregory Peck and Mary Badham playing Atticus and Scout in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.)
[Thanks to The Regulator Bookshop for posting this, and Celia Wolff for pointing it out to me.]
Edweard Muybridge is famous for his photographic studies of motion. I knew him for the horse photos (you can find an animation made from his stills by clicking on the highlight in the horse’s eye in the box along the top of the page above, or on the home page), but it was only this evening that I discovered his series of crows (and dancers, and cockatoos, and loin-clothed horseback riders…). Love the crows.
[me]: [offers dollar amount for car]
[used-car salesman]: Oh, the lot attendant couldn’t buy it for that. The CEO couldn’t buy it for that. [Pause.] You know, I should tell you, when I was back in the manager’s office talking to them, I found out that they spent more on it than they should have, since we bought it from the head mechanic’s parents… so actually, and I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you this, but we’re in it for more than that.
[my dad] [straight-faced, with what sounds like genuine compassion]: You know, we feel for you all at the dealership. [Pause.] That’s a shame you spent more on it than you should have.
