Posts Tagged ‘William Shakespeare’
Beyond Rochambeau…
There are times when Rock-Paper-Scissors just doesn’t have the… well, gravity that one feels is appropriate to the question being decided. Happily, author and blogger Mark Rayner has ridden to the rescue with an altogether apt alternative: Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie…
Mark explains:
Each thing can beat two other things, and is, in turn beaten by two other things.
The players both count to five (three), though it is obviously better to repeat the name of the game (Monkey! Robot! Pirate! Ninja! Zombie!). Each time you raise your fist and swing it down. On the fifth (third) count, you form your hand into one of the five gestures. (It is recommended that in addition to the hand gesture, you also add an aural component to this — see below for suggested noises.)
So, what beats what, and what are the gestures? What?
* Monkey fools Ninja
* Monkey unplugs Robot
Suggested noise: ee-ee-eek!* Robot chokes Ninja
* Robot crushes Zombie
Suggested noise: ex-ter-min-ate!* Pirate drowns Robot
* Pirate skewers Monkey
Suggested noise: arrrrr!* Ninja karate chops Pirate
* Ninja decapitates Zombie
Suggested noise: keeee-ah!* Zombie eats Pirate
* Zombie savages Monkey
Suggested noise: braaaaaaaaaainsss!
See the hand gestures illustrated here.
As we approach big decisions with a deeper sense of propriety, we might recall with horror that it was on this date in 1613 that The Globe Theatre, which had been built in 1599 by Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was destroyed by fire. Shakespeare had retired to Stratford in 1611.
A second Globe was built on the same site; it opened in June, 1614, and closed in 1642.
“Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio”*…
The ever-illuminating Jason Kottke dips into Statistical Reasoning for Everyday Life (Bennett, Briggs, and Triola; Addison Wesley Longman; Second Edition, 2002) for a measure of Shakespeare’s vocabulary. Using a method recounted here, the authors concluded:
This means that in addition the 31,534 words that Shakespeare knew and used, there were approximately 35,000 words that he knew but didn’t use. Thus, we can estimate that Shakespeare knew approximately 66,534 words.
Linguist Richard Lederer observes (as cited in in this piece) that Shakespeare hadn’t begun to reach the bottom of the barrel: there are currently over 600,000 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary (and in Shakespeare’s time things were especially fluid– as witnessed by the Bard’s own fevered invention of new words and phrases).
Still, Shakespeare’s facility is easier to appreciate in context when we recognize that the average English speaker has a vocabulary of (only) 10,000 to 20,000 words, and, as Lederer observes, actually uses only a fraction of that (the rest being recognition or recall vocabulary).
* Love’s Labour’s Lost I,ii
As we reach for our copies of Word Power, we might wish a glittering birthday to Anita Loos, who was born on this date in 1888. A writer from childhood, she sold a movie idea to D.W Griffiths at Biograph while she was still in her teens– and began a career through which she wrote plays, movies, stories/novels, magazine articles, and finally memoirs.
She’s probably best remembered for her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Loos claimed to have written the spoof, which she started on a long train ride, as an entertainment for her friend H. L. Mencken (who reputedly had a fondness for Lorelei Lee-like blonds). In any case, the book was an international bestseller, printed in 14 languages and in over 85 editions. It was a hit on Broadway in 1949, then adapted again into a movie musical in 1953– the Howard Hawks classic in which Marilyn Monroe reminds us that “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”
It takes one to know one…
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….
– George Bernard Shaw
Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.
– Noel Coward
A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
– William Faulkner, on Mark Twain
The gifted can be so… ungenerous to each other: from Examiner.com, “The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time.”
As we consider that this may in any case be better than log-rolling, we might recall that it was on this date in 1982 that a member of the Hollywood nobility– two-time Oscar-winning actress, model, and anti-war activist Jane Fonda– released her first exercise tape.
Building on the success of her workout book, published the prior year, the tape helped Fonda popularize workouts for women, workouts in groups, workout videos, and indeed aerobics in general (a family of trends on which Richard Simmons, Judi “Jazzercise” Missett and many others have ridden). Fonda invested the proceeds of what became a fitness empire into the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an advocacy group founded by her then-husband Tom Hayden (of Chicago Eight renown). Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1989, and Fonda retired from the spotlight (though, of course, she has returned to the movie screen in the last few years).
When life– or the S.F. City Attorney– hands you lemons…
SFoodie is among the throng regretting SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s successful effort to pressure Coors into removing essentially all of the active ingredients (caffeine, taurine, guarana, and ginseng) from their energy drink Sparks.
When Herrera, an attorney emboldened by success, enlisted other government lawyers to pursue purveyors of energy drinks both with and without alcohol, SFoodie responded as Americans traditionally have to Prohibitions past– he retreated to his bath-tub, and brewed up a batch of home-made Sparks:
The [resulting] drink was reverse-engineered from a vintage can of caffeinated Sparks and rigorously tested via blind taste-test by SFoodie and four people who agreed to come over to the author’s house and drink this stuff, plus two random guys on the street who should be applauded for their daring and general zest for life.
The results? It’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between Bathtub Sparks (or Not Sparks, or Moonshine Sparks) and real Sparks. Between tastings, palates were cleansed with beer.
A side-by-side comparison. The one that looks more like urine is the actual Sparks.
Actual testimony:
“God, that’s so f**king gross.”
“This is actually hurting my stomach.”
“I’m buzzed, I’ve got so much caffeine in my body.”
“This is the best day of my life.”
In other words, it tasted just like Sparks.
Bathtub Sparks
2 pieces Pez candy, one yellow, one pink
1 can King Cobra
1 can Red BullCrush the Pez until reduced to a fine powder. Transfer the powder to the bottom of an empty glass. Pour in equal parts King Cobra and Red Bull. Don’t be alarmed when the foaming begins; it will subside. Adjust for flavor.
More at SFoodie.
As we reach for the rush, we might raise it in a toast, as it was on this date in 1582 that the Pantheonic William Shakespeare, then 18, posted a £40 bond in Stratford-Upon-Avon for his license to marry Anne Hathaway (then 26)… Their first chid, Susanna, came quickly (six months later: What, Egg! Young fry of treachery! :-), followed in two years by twins.
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