I’ve a little bottle in my brisses pocket, which I call Icum Spicome, Spinto of Spain Which brings dead men to life again Here Jack take a sup out of my little bottle And let it run down thy throttle Arise and fight for ten thousand.
Baron von Gizman (or whoever) threads his way round the that/which dilemma by using both on the No Kill I site. (No Kill I is a band thatwhich I have never heard, and thatwhich has been involved in a disturbing voodoo chicken situation.)
‘“Bush is worse than Stalin” -Hitler’ gets 30 ghits while ‘“Bush is worse than Hitler” -Stalin’ gets 822. Is this because the people who make this kind of comparison (a) haven’t heard of Stalin; (b) think Stalin was uniquely awful, an ÃœberBusch; or (c) think Stalin was actually a nice guy with some bad press?…
From The Tatler, 1709: THIS is to give notice, That if any able bodied latine will enter into the Bonds of Matrimony with B[illegible] Pepin, the said Palatine shall be settled in a Freehold [of] 40s. per Annum in the County of Middlesex. I wonder if this is an in-joke, because 40 shillings isn’t very…
I don’t think author and diplomat Juan Valera (“Good should always be in fashion”) will mind me revealing his smoking fetish, now he’s been dead 100 years. Here‘s a quick tranny of an 1850 letter from Russia: On May 8th, Russian style, I left Saint Petersburg for Moscow on the noon train, accompanied by a…
Re shepherds, Pío Baroja says that in the Navarre village inhabited by Silvester Paradox, hero of The adventures, inventions and mystifications of Silvester Paradox (Aventuras, inventos y mixtificaciones de Silvestre Paradox, 1901) that the local guardians of public order were called ministers (ministros). (Silvestre Paradox is very strange and very funny. It’s a disgrace that…