When Is A Pie - Not?

If You Are Familiar With -
T. H. White's "Once And Future King", which was traduced and bowdlerised into Disney's "The Sword In The Stone", which rather made Conrad feel like ensuring the sword ended up in Walt - but I digress* - then you would be familiar with the expression "cap a pie".  This is nothing to do with headwear or food wrapped in an edible pastry casing, but rather a corruption of the French meaning "head to foot".  It refers to knights encased in armour from head to foot.

Thus

     Which, of course, has nothing to do with what follows**.
     Magpies!  Known in Latin as "Pica" (lending itself well to a pun like "Picapocket"), these birds are notoriously sharp-witted, larcenous and prone to stealing shiny things that happen to be lying around without a sentry posted; hence the imprecation "You thieving magpie!"

Pica.  NO "choo".

     Conrad sees these feathered filchers at the bus-stop of a morning and wondered where the name came from.  After all, a pie?
     Well, that was the whole of their name to begin with, "Pie", Old English for "Point" in reference to their beak or tail or both.
     Here an aside. 

"Pointy birds.

O Pointy Pointy.

Anoint my head.

Anoiny Nointy.***"

     I'm sure you see the claw flaw here.
     "What about the 'Mag-' part of 'Magpie', Conrad?"
     Well, due to their extremely high iron content, you can use an electromagnetic induction system to accelerate a Pica up to killing velocity and use them as rail-gun ammunition -
     - no, wait a minute, I'm confusing them with aerodynamic nickel-tungsten ballistic bolts.  Silly me.  Easily done, mind.
     What I meant was that the 'Mag-' part comes as a contraction of 'Margaret', which itself was used from the 16th century onward as a general term for women.  The Pie's raucous chatter, you see, was deemed to be exactly the same as that of a gaggle of women.
     So now you know.

Very apt!

Oddly enough I don't think any aircraft have been named after the Magpie, possibly because it doesn't have any blood and thunder connotations, although it would be apt for a Photographic Reconnaissance Unit plane, don't you think?

Enough of birds!

So That's What It Was
For many a long year Conrad has idly hummed a Default Tune, never bothering what it was nor where it came from.
     Well, now he knows, thanks to a topical Youtube presentation of "89 Tunes You Don't Know The Name Of" but hum as your Default Tune.  Mine turns out to be "The Star Spangled Banner", which is a bit of a surprise, as it is about as South Canadian as it's possible to get, as SC as <thinks> Jack Daniels and blueberry muffins.  

Not mixed together, as that would be ghastly, although one of Conrad's nasty practices of times gone by was dipping stale cake in white cider to soften it up -
     But I digress**.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty7OpbaNzjU

     There's a link to a nice instrumental version.  Warning:  may cause rampant isolationism or interventionism, depending on what meds you're taking.
     Of course we Brits can claim to be the inspiration behind TSSB, as, one day, some redcoats were drinking beer and playing with matches outside the Whitehouse -
     What could possibly go wrong ...

Look!  Lots of South Canadian flags!

A Clerihew Or Deux
Whom to insult today?  Aha, our traditional foe, the M83's!  Er - well, our traditional foe before the First Unpleasantness, after which both we Brits and the M83's have had to accept that we're close acquaintances.  Which is kind of like being friends without wanting to admit it.
      Anyway, let the slander begin!

The Duc De Richelieu

Never flew.

Because he lived before the invention of planes,

And motor cars, and trains.

     This chap crops up in "The Three Musketeers" as, frankly, a bit of a baddy.  Art?

Trying to look all pious and shizzle

Charles De Gaulle

Was very tall.

On occasion of having long legs

Which came from a lifetime eating eggs.

Francois Rabelais

Wrote lots of plays.

Some of these were very rude.

Modesty, he eschewed.

Rabelais in his funky black hat.  Quite emo, Frank, quite emo.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Was good with a dart.

He was less skilled at tennis;

His racket was to be a menace.

     Well there you go, not terribly critical really, except knowing the M83's they'll be up in arms about insulting De Gaulle.



*  I do this a lot.  It's why people love me.
**  I do this a lot.  It's why people hate me.
***  From "The Man With 2 Brains"

 - although I count 4 ...