By Way of Explanation
Neddie Jingo guest-blogs while Bobby's Off Making a Living
Bobby checks his look before another gig with Soulfinger
While Bobby is off touring with his little band of indolent musical Negroes, he's asked me to pop in here and clear up an outstanding bit of business.
Pungent and salient in his prose, Bobby occasionally employs terminology and jargon that may float, uncomprehended, over the head of the casual reader, leaving that reader befoozled and bambuggled.
One rather mystifying designation Bobby often serves up is the historically resonant yet today little comprehended term polesmoker.
It is to be hoped that with some patient coaching and didactical skill, we might elucidate a trifle of Lightfootiana for the Two or Three Gathered....
The systematic persecution of the people of Eastern Europe began considerably earlier than most historians would suggest. While the depredations of the Hunnish invasions of the Dark Ages are well known to history, it is less well known that even the ancient Cretans -- a people notoriously prone to cannibalism -- harbored a fondness for the ample, well-marbled flesh of the primitive peoples to their north. Cretan cookery leaned heavily on the slow cooking of meats over persistent fires, and to this practice were subjected prisoners captured in forays that ranged as far afield as modern Krakow. One scrap of the mysterious Liner B script, found on a Cretan privy wall, is thought to make reference to the practice: It is alternately interpreted as the bold political satire, "King Minos is a butt-pirate" or the (for our purposes more interesting) "King Minos smokes Poles." Linguistic scholarship has yet to go down on one side or the other.
Imperial Rome, its evermore decadent search for delicacies leading to larks' tongues and spiced Nubian slave-nipples being sold as delicacies at sporting events in the Colosseum, leaves us many references to the smoking of exotic imported meats, including human flesh brought at great expense from Germania. Livy refers to the custom in typically laconic fashion: "The multitudes feast upon the flesh of the goat and the pig; while Senators Invasor Gentrificatus and Buttox Steatopygus delight in the mutually proffered smoked Pole." Little is known of these Senators, but it is still possible today to see, in the Colosseum, the rooms where the smoking of Poles took place -- known as fumatoria -- usually, for some strange reason, connected to the mens' bathing rooms.
The smoking and consumption of imported human flesh from east of Berlin was well known in Elizabethan times, and was indeed so distressingly popular that Queen Elizabeth herself was moved to inveigh against it in her Christmas address in 1598. This appears to have moved William Shakespeare to allude to the scolding in The Rape of Lucrece:
So I hope that this little historical elucidation has been of some value to you as you interpret Bobby's commentary on current events. Next week, if Bobby will have me back, I'd like to regale you with a rather ribald anecdote involving Sir Francis Drake, an amorous Spanish grandee in Valparaiso, and a tub of mangosteens, as I explain the origin of the Lightfootian term, Felcheteer. Foreshadowing: Bucanero --> Buccaneer; Felchetero --> Felcheteer.
Bobby checks his look before another gig with Soulfinger
While Bobby is off touring with his little band of indolent musical Negroes, he's asked me to pop in here and clear up an outstanding bit of business.
Pungent and salient in his prose, Bobby occasionally employs terminology and jargon that may float, uncomprehended, over the head of the casual reader, leaving that reader befoozled and bambuggled.
One rather mystifying designation Bobby often serves up is the historically resonant yet today little comprehended term polesmoker.
It is to be hoped that with some patient coaching and didactical skill, we might elucidate a trifle of Lightfootiana for the Two or Three Gathered....
The systematic persecution of the people of Eastern Europe began considerably earlier than most historians would suggest. While the depredations of the Hunnish invasions of the Dark Ages are well known to history, it is less well known that even the ancient Cretans -- a people notoriously prone to cannibalism -- harbored a fondness for the ample, well-marbled flesh of the primitive peoples to their north. Cretan cookery leaned heavily on the slow cooking of meats over persistent fires, and to this practice were subjected prisoners captured in forays that ranged as far afield as modern Krakow. One scrap of the mysterious Liner B script, found on a Cretan privy wall, is thought to make reference to the practice: It is alternately interpreted as the bold political satire, "King Minos is a butt-pirate" or the (for our purposes more interesting) "King Minos smokes Poles." Linguistic scholarship has yet to go down on one side or the other.
Imperial Rome, its evermore decadent search for delicacies leading to larks' tongues and spiced Nubian slave-nipples being sold as delicacies at sporting events in the Colosseum, leaves us many references to the smoking of exotic imported meats, including human flesh brought at great expense from Germania. Livy refers to the custom in typically laconic fashion: "The multitudes feast upon the flesh of the goat and the pig; while Senators Invasor Gentrificatus and Buttox Steatopygus delight in the mutually proffered smoked Pole." Little is known of these Senators, but it is still possible today to see, in the Colosseum, the rooms where the smoking of Poles took place -- known as fumatoria -- usually, for some strange reason, connected to the mens' bathing rooms.
The smoking and consumption of imported human flesh from east of Berlin was well known in Elizabethan times, and was indeed so distressingly popular that Queen Elizabeth herself was moved to inveigh against it in her Christmas address in 1598. This appears to have moved William Shakespeare to allude to the scolding in The Rape of Lucrece:
The time of this, and this to be thy time, behold:Isn't that lovely? So poetic!
This shall not be the time as time to this foretold
But thou cans't be to this thy name most bold:
To succour he that hast most truly smoked thy Pole.
So I hope that this little historical elucidation has been of some value to you as you interpret Bobby's commentary on current events. Next week, if Bobby will have me back, I'd like to regale you with a rather ribald anecdote involving Sir Francis Drake, an amorous Spanish grandee in Valparaiso, and a tub of mangosteens, as I explain the origin of the Lightfootian term, Felcheteer. Foreshadowing: Bucanero --> Buccaneer; Felchetero --> Felcheteer.
posted by Bobby Lightfoot at 20:33
2 Comments:
Hey Ned, how 'bout an explanation for santorum?
wnzblnog (better than losing your blnog, like Bobby has done this week)
"befoozled and bambuggled," indeed. Pogo lives!
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