#hashtag nicheposts

[elucubrare]

i read this anecdote about mongooses a long time ago & it's never left my brain

The owner of a small zoo lost two prize animals in a fire. To order another pair, he wrote a letter to a zoological supply company: "Dear Sirs: Please send me two mongooses." That didn't sound quite right, so he began again: "Dear Sirs: Please send me two mongeese." Still not sure of his plurals, he made this third attempt: "Dear Sirs: Please send me a mongoose, and, while you're at it, please send me another mongoose." ~Richard Lederer, Writer's Digest, June 1991

every so often i start referencing it & then realize most people will have no idea what i'm talking about

[elucubrare]

oh this is a post for no one, but there must have been at least one person who was willing to die on the hill that Agathon (a tragedian Callimachus made fun of for being notoriously bad) was fine, actually, the way i'm willing to die on the hill that Bulwer Lytton is fine, actually, and occasionally rises to the height of the Sublime

[elucubrare]

call me the Sampo the way i'm constantly churning out salt

[elucubrare]

listening to de tocqueville's democracy in america has to approximate the experience of a persian reading xenephon's cyropaedia

[elucubrare]

pastoral is always a little funny (ok, Theocritus, please continue to show me your cottagecore moodboard) but my favorites are in 16th-19th century media where an incredibly driven dude sings an aria about how he wishes he could be a shepherd as though he wouldn't die if he wasn't allowed to start a new scheme every five minutes

[elucubrare]

feeling like the Tailor of Gloucester here except instead of cherry-red worsted it's limited edition sock yarn from a year and a half ago that isn't even on ebay

[elucubrare]

someone asked me a couple of days ago about what my favorite parts of the languages i spoke were and 1) sorry i haven't answered

2) now i don't think i can because my brain got stuck on describing it like leporello describing the way don giovanni is into girls in the catalogue aria

[elucubrare]

posts for no one:

a mashup of "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" and "Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain"