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Sunday, December 5, 2004 |
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For those steadfastly uncynical (see preceding entry), or in a good mood, at least: Last night while I was making supper (emu stew... don't ask) I popped Royal Wedding into the DVD player and ignored it from the kitchen, two rooms away from the TV, because it really is a God-awful film, but every Astaire number is a 10, and the Alan Jay Lerner lyrics are all knockouts, and I had to run in and watch this dance number to the song "I Left My Hat in Haiti," on a technicolor stage-set that verges on psychedelic nightmare, and he dances with a vicious little marmoset on his arm, and I'm probably mangling the lyrics, but the weird Latin-ish rhythm is in my head this morning:
I left my hat It goes on to rhyme "adore her" with "fedora." You get the picture. ***
To anyone looking for yesterday's "Hill" poem: after taking my early drafts for a trial run on this page, I shunt my poems over to my poems category for more work, adding my own comments in the process. |
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Among my dictionaries a new favorite--a great heavy battered old thing, the Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles, revised and edited by C. T. Onions. It's more fun to open at random than any volume of holy scripture, and every bit as profitable. Today I learn that "mammet," from "Mohammed," means a false god, idol, or puppet. To "glout" is to look sullen. "Findhorn" is a kind of smoked haddock. A "urinator" is a diver (from Latin urinari to dive). Originally a stripe from a whip, "jerk" becomes a lash of sarcasm, a short, sharp, witty speech. "Sir, use your jerks and quillets at the bar." ("Quillet": a verbal nuance; a subtle distinction.)
And then "pantechnicon"--"Orig., the name for a bazaar of all kinds of artistic work; now, a large warehouse for storing furniture." In a word: the history of Western civilization. (For those who tend toward the cynical today.) |
