There Is A Technical Definition
Which, rather boringly, refers in a very narrow sense to chemical compounds used to kill off our feathered friends, such as that classic fall-back for family members looking to inherit a bit quicker than nature intended; strychnine. There are others, which are merely strings of numbers and letters, utterly without poetry or romance. Art!
For Lo! today the blog is going to seize upon that morbid nursery rhyme "Who Killed Cock Robin?"
No, Art, you idiot!
<sounds of Tazers - giant industrial Tazers - being used>
Yes, we are going to approach it with all the serious-mindedness with which we do Little Musical Critiques, which is to say until we have squeezed every last drop of humour from it's desiccated corpse.
Let the critique begin -
"Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the sparrow,
with my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin."
Right, I think that's it, case closed Your Honour. We have a confession. The defendant was plainly jealous of the decedent's crimson plumage and lay in wait to slay him. Plead guilty, Sparrow, and we can plea-bargain the sentence down to fifteen years. Or we can go to trial and you risk getting Old Sparky.
"Who saw him die?
I, said the fly,
With my little eye,
I saw him die."
So many lenses! So much eye! So much witness!
Excellent! An impartial eye-witness. You're looking a bit pasty and wastey, Sparrow. We're going to get sworn testimony from Mister Fly. Do we have any corroborating witnesses?
"Who caught his blood?
I, said the Fish,
With my little dish,
I caught his blood."
OHkay, I move to strike that from the court record Your Honour, as Fish is obviously off his box, and probably dangerous as well. Bailiff, please escort Fish out and don't let him back in.
"And don't let him loiter around the corridor, either."
I think we shall cause a pause at this point, mostly because if we continued then this whole post would be about WKCR, and I wanted to adduce "Iron" as an avicide, because what were those arrowheads made from, hmmm*?
Motley! Let's go hunting birds in the trees with our bows and arrows! Remember that you have to stand directly underneath them when you loose!
More Seething Righteous Rancour
Goodness gracious yes, I have to confess, my ire has so much fire it could immolate a byre!
You can tell where this is leading, can't you? Yes, Your Humble Scribe has a positive plethora of perceived prosodical permutations to protest about. Codeword solutions again, I'm afraid, and these are two days old - there are newer, fresher etymological offences to come.
ANYWAY let us begin the trawl of the terror troll.
"ODYSSEYS": Hmmmm well there are two well-known versions of this, the original wanderlust, that original "Odyssey" from 800 BC and then that Johnny-come-lately of 1969 "2001: A Space Odyssey" BUT THAT IS NO EXCUSE FOR USING THE PLURAL!
First to mention Simpson will be nuked. Promise.
"IMPETIGO": For your information, a skin disease.
WHAT ARE WE ALL DERMATOLOGISTS NOW?
I was stuck on this one before completion, wondering if it was an Italian recipe or not. Well, no, not unless it's a recipe for something akin to pork crackling.
"DIASTOLE": No, nothing to do with furs or boas. Conrad recognised the word because he needs to know his way around human anatomy, in order to sound convincing when or if UNIT come a-nosying. It refers to the heart's relaxation, what you might call the 'in-stroke', allowing all that bright red go-juice to fill it, prefatory to the systole or 'out-stroke' where blood gets sent whizzing all over the body in -
WHAT ARE WE ALL BLOODY CARDIOLOGISTS NOW**!
Dice stole. Close enough.
I promise I could carry on and fill the rest of this blog with enough woe that it would, indeed, render the porpentine fretful (a phrase lifted from P. G. Plum Wodehouse) - but in the interests of mercy I shall forebear.
The Haul
Rather unexpectedly, my Amazon purchase turned up this afternoon, when the delivery information had it arriving on Saturday. Art!
Very few people know of this work's existence, let alone own a copy. It was commissioned in 1929 by the Indian Government, whom then ran into serious opposition from the India Office, and no, I've got no idea what the difference is. This meant publication was limited to five hundred issues, and it's doubtful that any of these survive. If your grandfather happened to work in the Raj's administrative and historical branches, dig through his bequeathment; if one of the originals turns up you can probably pay off your mortgage with it.
ANYWAY here we see a near-pristine edition from 1987, and RESULT! there are several coloured maps in the end pocket, an inclusion Conrad was not aware of. You can see one of them opened above; it doesn't seem to have been ever opened before. In case you were curious, it's a map of various routes that parties of Teutons undertook in the country whilst it hadn't joined one side or the other.
Back To The Bounteous BBC
The font of all that's fit to be writ.
Here an aside. You will doubtless find stern internet critics of the BBC, who lambast it as a bastion - 'lambastion'? perhaps? - of the "Main-Stream Media". And yes, they always uses quote marks like that. The thing is, the BBC wields a staff of professional journalists who have usually gone through higher education, before beginning life in humble media positions and eventually getting into the Beeb. Their front-line staff put their lives on the line in desperate situations across the globe; you cannot accuse Kate Adie of sitting on her comfortably accoutred behind in an hotel, watching things in the dim distance with binoculars. Art!
Kate's response to an incoming artillery barrage
These critics, on the other hand, tend to be brave internet warriors living in their parent's basement, wearing nothing but a tinfoil hat, pasty white thanks to studiously avoiding the sun, and embracing conspiranoid loonwaffle nonsense with naive gullibility. Also expecting millions of pounds imminently thanks to this Nigerian prince they know ...
Skewering aside, the BBC has a page up featuring contributions from people with the theme "Under The Stars" and it makes a wonderful counterpoint to their APOTY theme. Art!
This is: Linda Cook: "Milky Way and a beach log at Manzanita in Oregon."
That, gentle readers, is our home galaxy sideways on, and the whole composition greatly resembles one of Bruce Pennington's atmospheric artworks.
I think that's us done. Done done done!
* Yes, you can argue "Steel" but iron definitely came first.
** Not a swear. We are talking about blood, after all.
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