I'm only reading this review because Meade texted me the link. My response:
I'm only blogging this because, having ended up in "Jabberwocky," I took the occasion to check my memory — do I still have it memorized? — and wanted to ask those of you have memorized it, if you have found that there is one word that is the stubborn last holdout. For me, the word is "whiffling." If you're not like me, and it's not "whiffling," then I bet it's "uffish."
But if you're ever trapped in a cabin in the woods and a monstrous man is trying to kill you, look around — try to find something vorpal.
Posts
20 comments:
I've always been partial to "the fruminous Bandersnatch". fruminous
Although I might occasionally (and sarcastically) shout "Callooh! Callay!" when my wife informs me a certain person is coming to visit.
I'm guessing the horror creeps in where the Cabin in the Woods with intermittent Wi-Fi and a dead landline is in a state with restrictive gun control?
Sorry, I was away from my desk, hunting a Snicker-snack.
"I've always been partial to "the fruminous Bandersnatch". fruminous"
You mean "frumious" is the word you keep getting wrong, keep getting the "i" o ut of place, I take it. I've found "frumious" medium hard, in the group with "galumphing" and "vorpal," but not memory-resistant, like "whiffling" and "uffish."
You've got an extra "n" too. You must be letting "luminous" influence you.
Two asp really candies lithe eat oaves
Teach ironed gym baloney wave
Wool mim sewer tabouric roves
Anthem ohm rafts shout grave.
Be wordy job awoke mice awn
Teach Austin biding closet kedge
Voyeur teach up jobber tension
Tough rheumious panders nudge.
Eat duckies forepaw sardine hen
Lung dime domains unvoice ought
Swore aesthete tea biding humdrum dream
Ant study wile untaught.
Endorsing office thawed east too
Teach aver walk with Aesop blame
Game whipple untruly told she wouldn’t
Purple tacit game.
Oo! Onto wand doing truant true
Tabour full plate wince knickers knack
Hay lifted debt unwitty said
Hay winkle unfang beck.
Unhasty slimey job awoke
Gummed tummy warms maybe much buoy
Overawed juice steak Aleut galley
Each shorted honest Joey.
Two asp really candies lithe eat oaves
Teach ironed gym baloney wave
Wool mim sewer tabouric roves
Anthem ohm rafts shout grave.
can't make it to the "out grabe" line.. I'm embarrassed, i can't remember Who/what are outgrabe
But, i DON'T think i've read that poem since my traumatic brain injury
(you're right, inga; brain damage is a burden)
If only more young women were aware of President McKinley's wise advice: "Remember The Mien!"
She went into the woods without bear spray or a firearm. Now she’s got to improvise.
A broomstick, duct tape, and a nice sharp paring knife can be turned into a spear. And there should be longer, sharp knives in a kitchen drawer. She’s probably not strong enough to handle a full size axe, but if she can find a hatchet …
Snicker snack!
I am still keen on Douglas Hofstadter's investigation into translations of "Jabberwocky" into other languages. "Slithy toves" becomes "les toves lubricilles," I think, in French. But the trick of translation is getting both the meaning and the feel right. "Lubricilles" just hasn't the feel of "slithy."
I like Larry Niven's introduction of bandersnatchi into his universe. There, they are massive, more-than-brontosaurus-sized white things with a cluster of sense organs at the front. Also, intelligent and literate, despite consisting of a single cell.
Does anyone actually know whether "wabe" really is the name of the shorn area of grass round a sundial? Or did Carroll just "make it so"?
rhhardin: I have no words! Thanks. I haven't had such fun since I discovered Orff's "O Fortuna" (from Carmina Burana) in the form of "Oh, four tuna." Or maybe it was a book of nursery rhymes rendered in German: "Diestel pick" (the prick of a thistle) is compared to a lot of things, for example. Only halfway through do you realize that it's "This Little Pig." Or this that Richard Taruskin once passed to me at a colloquium about Beethoven's Ninth:
Freud has got your Telefunken
Out in his solarium
Mairzy doats and dozy doats
And liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?
Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats
and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?
Michelle Dulak Thomson, google "Tweeze denied beef-worker isthmus" ah here's a copy
In general it's after Howard Chace "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" for which also google.
Ladle gulls shut nut stopper torque wet strainers.
"'Whiffling'?" I thought. "Isn't it 'whuffling'?" But no, I guess it's "whiffling." So that's the word. I also misremember "borogoves" as "borogroves" and "manxome" as "manxsome," although the last doesn't affect my pronunciation.
Re: gilbar:
But, i DON'T think i've read that poem since my traumatic brain injury
I hadn't read it again until just now myself, but it was in my little mental library of poems I recited to myself after I had a stroke last year, in order to practice/recover my enunciation. Not top of the list though, on account of the risk it might make me sound like I had aphasia.
Dammit, people, I just got back from a francophone island in the Caribbean and I feel as if this is all I've been hearing
My French isn't good enough to mark the delineations between words!
First read of this was, "Dr. Ash's old world affects tits and curlers...."
Frankly, after that I don't want to know what his new world is about - I'd be fine in a world of tits and curlers, thanks.
In a case like that you probably shouldn't be making allusions to "Jabberwocky"and be searching for a real weapon. If you're a woman alone in a cabin deep in the woods how come you didn't pack a gun? A decent size folding knife? nunchucs? Where's your dog?
Post a Comment