The Law of Christian

 

You remarkable pig. 

You can Thank 

whatever 

Pig-God you Pray to 

that you haven't 

turned 

Me into a Murderer.

Mates, there's only one thing missing : Captain Bligh.

Oh, yes. I'd give a leg or two

if he could see us now.

Eating away to our heart's content

without a care in the world.

Yeah, I like him better 

where he is.

I like him going away 

in his little boat,

with the hot sun 

beating down

on his hot 

little head.

Well, God grant 

him a dry mouth —

Do You remember when 

he bid us goodbye,

all blown-up like 

a toad?

"I'll never leave you, 

Mr. Christian. Not ever. 

No matter where you go,

I'll always be at 

your shoulder, with 

a rope in Me-Hand."

Of course, he's a man of 

His Word, is Captain Bligh.

So perhaps we ought 

to set him a plate.

"Why, hello there. 

Captain Bligh, sir.

Sit down, sir. Sit down.

Here have a bird wing or two.

And kindly explain why 

you ain't here."

Christian :

There's no doubt about it --

Nobody's glad 

to see A Captain

who comes Home 

without His Ship.

You know, I'd give 

a stick of tabaccy to 

see his ruddy report.

Those Admiralty Lords 

will look at him like 

he was a piece of 

rotten biscuit.

Christian :

I'm afraid your laughter is unwarranted, gentlemen.

Captain Bligh will be acquitted.

He'll be given another ship.

A larger cat-o'-nine-tails to run it with.

You're forgetting 

there's mates of ours

went along with Bligh, sir.

They'll tell what the old pig did.

And they'll tell how he was out

to execute all of us, one by one.

Christian :

Sure. Your Friends are under 

The Shadow of arraignment 

themselves for Mutiny,

if Bligh chooses to charge that 

They Failed to Rally 

to His Calls,or to 

Protect him properly.

Why should they 

invite His Anger?

They won't be given any choice, sir.

They'll be asked questions, 

and The Facts will speak 

for themselves, right?

Christian :

The bare facts alone 

will not indict Bligh.

It's The Privilege of 

every Captain to decide 

when An Emergency warrants the 

reduction of water rations.

Who can deny there 

was an emergency?

The Bounty carried breadfruit.

Vital to the Economic Life

of The British Empire.

Do you suppose it'll 

be acceptable that 

Bligh should return after 

a two-year voyage with 

His Ship laden with dead plants?

Better than with dead men, sir.

Christian :

You're forgetting The Traditional Answer, Mills :

Mission comes First, and 

Lives of Men second.

Well, it's all the one to us now.

Let them make Captain Bligh

King of China if they want to.

We can forget him, Thank God.

And I move we start 

forgetting him right now --

Bligh, Guilty, or Bligh, Not Guilty,

it makes no difference 

to our lovely little island.

And if it did, we could 

write out papers telling our side 

of the story, seal them in bottles and 

send them floating on the sea.

Hey, That's a Thought.

One of them might even bob along

and reach England ahead of Bligh.

That'd put a spike in his coffin.

Christian :

We can make certain that 

his coffin is spiked.

What do you mean, sir?

Christian :

By returning to England ourselves.

Well, what the holy hell for?

You're not serious, Mr. Christian.

It's a joke he'll be after 

having, that's all.

Well, it was a joke to 

spoil me dinner.

Hold it, hold it -- Mr. Christian is 

Meaning what he says, I'm afraid.

Christian :

Yes, I am, Mills.

Then I've got a better idea, sir.

Why don't we hang each other

from the yardarms in the morning?

It'll save us a trip!

Yes.

Christian :

Listen to Me for one moment, gentlemen, please --

I put it to you that we shall never 

find contentment on this island.

Sir, it sounds like you've 

gone Out of Your Mind.

There's no chance for people 

like us to go back to England,

give Bligh a bad name and 

walk free men ourselves.

And anyone who thinks otherwise

 hasn't got the sense that 

God gave geese!

Christian :

You're right, Mills.

We may all very well be hanged.

But Decency is worth fighting for.

You can't live without it.

And hiding here, shivering 

like convicts, when we've a just case 

to present to the courts,

is just another way of Dying.

And a far less bearable one.

I didn't know until 

this moment, what 

the rightful course to pursue was.

But I know it now.

Will You Trust Me?

Look, supposing Bligh's 

been picked up already.

Supposing he's been 

Tried and Acquitted

by the time we get there.

Let it Be So.

Our court martial will be 

Bligh's court martial over again.

Our jeopardy will be Bligh's' jeopardy as well.

And our acquittal will be Bligh's defeat.

It'll mean no more Captain William Bligh

or any like him in His Majesty's Service.

We need only persuade 

The British People

of something they 

already know, that 

Inhumanity is its 

poorest servant.

Gentlemen, I beg you : 

Help me to carry 

that word back to England.

That's a big Thought for 

People Like Us.

Do you mind if we take 

the night to talk about it?

Christian :

Certainly.

DEATH

The Babysitter

Oppenheimer : 

Do You remember Klaus Fuchs 

at Los Alamos….?

Mrs. Kitty Oppenheimer : 

The Babysitter..?

Gamesters

“Almost all the best novelists include big set pieces in their novels, and Fleming was no exception. Casinos and gambling provide the ultimate in heightened atmosphere, visual drama, tension, conflict and the see-saw of emotions. That apparently staid Victorian Anthony Trollope gives us a fine gambling scene in the first Palliser novel, Can you Forgive her? when Burgo Fitzgerald loses everything in a desperate game of roulette, and the even staider George Eliot whips up a colourful frenzy in a casino in Baden-Baden, at the beginning of Daniel Deronda. And Thomas Hardy has two men playing dice at night by the light of glow-worms on Egdon Heath, in The Return of the Native. 

Fleming’s best-known gambling scene is probably in Casino Royale, and it is very good, but that in Moonraker is perhaps even better. 

Sir Hugo Drax, pillar of the British establishment, knighted for services to his country, potential saviour of its land and citizens, is revealed early on in the book to have a character flaw, other than a nasty temper :

‘There’s only one thing …’ M. tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. 

‘What’s that, sir?’ asked Bond … 

‘Sir Hugo Drax cheats at cards.’ 

And so the scene is set for the great Bridge game, in which James discovers how Drax is cheating and exposes him, winning himself £15,000 in the process – perhaps £150,000 in today’s money. 

The Game takes place at Blades, the archetypal St James’s gambling club, of which Fleming gives both a good potted history and a magnificent description. 

The food and wine are superlative, the club servants impeccable. The scene, in which the room and its tables gradually fill up and the games commence, with a pall of cigar and cigarette smoke hanging under the shaded lamps, is one of Fleming’s best pieces of writing. We can taste the food, smell the cigars, hear the chink of ice and the click of the freshly opened packs of cards. 

To appreciate the course of The Game, what exactly it is that both Drax and Bond do, and to understand the outcome fully, it is helpful to know Bridge well. But I do not, and I can still follow what is going on and feel the mounting tension as Drax gets bolder and bolder, before suddenly realising what is happening. 

Many a Bond action scene and unlikely escape from almost certain death set the pulses racing, but this quiet, brilliant scenario is the finest thing Fleming ever wrote.”

Dummy Papers

“ . . . Millions and millions of dollars were poured into that exercise -- a lot of people were involved in it -- and it never went through any Air Force procurement. Now, The Cleared-Individual -- the man in the team -- in the procurement offices, made papers that covered up this gap. There were papers in The Files but they had never been worked on -- they were simple dummy papers in the files. 

Now, we could do things like that with no trouble at all. The U-2 was started like that. That's how the U2 got off the ground. Ostensibly, purchased by the Air Force, but not paid for by the Air Force, and so on. So, when I say that this team was quite effective, it was very effective, very strong, handled a lot of money, worked all over the world, thousands of people were involved. I know, one time, when I was speaking to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at that time General Lemnitzer, he said, "You know, I've known of two or three units in the Army that were supporting CIA. But you're talking about quite a few. How many were there?" Well, at that time, there were 605. Well General Lemnitzer had no idea. It's amazing--heres the top man in the military and he had no idea that we were supporting that many CIA units. Not military units--they were phony military units. They were operating with military people but they were controlled entirely, they were financed by the CIA. Six hundred and five of them. And I'm sure that from my day it increased; I know it didn't decrease. So, people don't understand the size and the nature of this clandestine activity that is designed for clandestine operations all over the world. And it goes back, again, to things we've spoken of earlier, that that activity must be under somebody's control. There is no law for the control of covert operations other than at the National Security Council level. And if the National Security Council does not sign the directives, issue the directives, for covert operations, then nobody does. And that's when it becomes a shambles as we saw in the Contra affair and in other things. But when the National Security Council steps in and directs it and holds that control, then things are run properly. And we've seen that during the last decade theres been quite a few aberrations where they were talking about Iran or Latin America or even part of the Vietnam War itself. In fact, it was in the Vietnam War where the thing really began to come apart--it just outgrew itself and the leadership role disintegrated. And we see the worst of it in the Iran-Contra affair.

 Ratcliffe: Following on that you write about Dulles being able to "move them up and deeper into their cover jobs"--would this be a function of them being there longer than the people who would be promoted to something else in time?

 Prouty: Yes. When we put them in, they might be somebody's assistant. And they've been there for three years and the man that was above them, who was probably a political appointee, leaves and they might move this man up there. Or when a newer political appointee comes, he has no knowledge that this man is really from CIA. He's just a strong person in his office and he gives him a broader role. Sometimes these people (chuckling) were working-- well, one man I know was in FAA and we needed his work to help us with FAA as a focal point there. He'd been there so long the FEA had him in a very big, very responsible job, and you might say 90% of his work was regular FAA work. A very strong individual. Well, that meant that when we needed him to help us with some of our activities on the covert side of things, he was in a much better position to handle this than he had been originally. This happened with quite a few of them. That's why I say in the case of Frank Hand, he had been in the Defense Department so long that he was able to handle really major operations that weren't even visualized at the time he was assigned. All this carries over into many other things. I pointed out that the Office of Special Operations under General Erskine had the responsibility for the National Security Agency as well as CIA contacts and the State Department, and so on. Well, as we filled up these positions, some of them became dominant in some those organizations, such as NSA. Early people in this program have created quite a career for themselves in other work. For instance, a young man in this system was Major Haig. Major Al Haig. He went up through the system. He was working as a deputy to the Army's cleared Focal Point Officer for Agency support matters who was the General Counsel in the Army, a man named Joe Califano--a very prominent lawyer today. When the General Counsel of the Army was moved up into the office of Secretary of Defense later--in McNamara's office--he carried with him this then-Lieutenant Colonel Al Haig up to the office of Secretary of Defense. And during the Johnson Administration when they moved to the White House, Califano and Haig moved to the White House. Then during the Nixon time, Haig with all his experience in the White House worked with Kissinger. And you can see that it was this attachment through the covert side which gave Haig his ability to do an awful lot of things that people didn't understand, because he had this whole team behind him. To be even more up-to-date, there was a Major Secord in our system. And Major Secord is the same General Secord you've been reading about in the Iran-Contra business. A lot of these people worked right up into the White House. And there were these same assigned people even at the White House level that really were working on this CIA covert work rather than the jobs that they seemed to hold, that the public understood was the job that they were working for. It's a much more effective system than people have thought it was. . . . Ratcliffe: You describe what seems to be a very enlightening day --an event in 1960 or 1961 when you briefed "the Chairman of the JCS on a matter that had come up involving the CIA and the military." [p.257] As you described it:

 The chairman was General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, and his commandant was General David M. Shoup. They were close friends and had known each other for years. When the primary subject of the briefing had ended General Lemnitzer asked me about the Army cover unit that was involved in the operation. I explained what its role was and more or less added that this was a rather routine matter. Then he said, "Prouty, if this is routine, yet General Shoup and I have never heard of it before, can you tell me in round numbers how many Army units there are that exist as `cover` for the CIA?" I replied that to my knowledge at that time there were about 605 such units, some real, some mixed, and some that were simply telephone drops. When he heard that he turned to General Shoup and said, "You know, I realized that we provided cover for the Agency from time to time; but I never knew that we had anywhere near so many permanent cover units and that they existed all over the world."

 I then asked General Lemnitzer if I might ask him a question. He said I could. "General", I said, "during all of my military career I have done one thing or another at the direction of a senior officer. In all those years and in all of those circumstances I have always believed that someone, either at the level of the officer who told me to do what I was doing or further up the chain of command, knew why I was doing what I had been directed to do and that he knew what the reason for doing it was. Now I am speaking to the senior military officer in the armed forces and I have just found out that some things I have been doing for years in support of the CIA have not been known and that they have been done, most likely, in response to other authority. Is this correct?"

 This started a friendly, informal, and most enlightening conversation, more or less to the effect that where the CIA was concerned there were a lot of things no one seemed to know. [p.258]

 Can you recount more of the details of this enlightening conversation for us?

 Prouty: Well, you know I referred to it earlier. It astounded me, that day. I assumed that there were a lot things that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not aware of every day in the Air Force, in the Navy, and in the CIA. But I had never expected such a blanket answer, that he didn't know, and that General Shoup didn't. Now, what we were talking about was rather specific. At the time of the rebellion in Indonesia when the CIA supported tens of thousands of troops with aircraft, and ships, submarines, and everything else, in an attempt to overthrow the government of Sukarno, we needed rifles pretty quick to support these rebels and I called out to Okinawa and found out that the Army didn't have enough rifles for what we wanted. We wanted about 42,000 rifles and they had about 28,000. But that he said he thought he could get--General Lemnitzer was a Commander at that time in Okinawa. So he was right up close to this thing. He said that he'd have somebody call the Marine Corps and see what he could get from them. Well, it just happened that General Shoup was the head of the Marine unit at Okinawa and he said, sure, he could provide the extra 14,000. So without delay, we had 4-engine aircraft--C-54's- -flown by Air America crews but under military cover--appeared to be military aircraft--come into Okinawa, pick up these 42,000 rifles, prepared for air drop in Indonesia. They'd fly down to the Philippines and then down to another base we had and then over into Indonesia and drop these rifles. Well of course, we replaced those rifles. The General didn't know where they were going, we just borrowed them, and the unit that borrowed them was military and the call had come from the Pentagon. There was no problem with supplying the rifles. So years later, we replaced them. Well then when I told him about that in the Pentagon, he said he never knew where those rifles went and General Shoup said, "you know, Lem, when you asked me for 14,000 rifles, I thought you wanted them and, of course, being a good Marine, I gave you 14,000 rifles." He said, "you owe me 14,000." They were sitting there kidding but they never knew they went to Indonesia. You see, they never knew they were part of a covert operation going into Indonesia. Well, this is true of a lot of things that go on. We kept the books in the Pentagon. We covered that. We got reimbursement for it. That part of it was all right. And that's what kept it from being a problem because as long as General Lemnitzer's forces got the 28,000 rifles back and Shoup got the 14,000 back for the total of 42,000, they didn't complain to anybody. They had their full strength of rifles. That's the magic of reimbursement. Well, his kind of thing, on an established basis--the units are there--when I said there are 605 units, those are operating units- -now, some of them may only be telephone drops, because that's their function, they don't need a whole lot of people, they're just handling supplies, or something like that. But put this in present terms. When Colonel North believed that he had been ordered to take 2,008 Toe missiles and deliver them to Iran--see?--there has to be some way that the supply system can let those go. You can't just drive down there with a truck to San Antonio at the warehouse, and say, "I want 2,008 missiles." You have to have authority. And 2,008 Toe missiles--I don't know what one of them costs, but it's an awful lot of money, and somebody had to prepare the paperwork for the authorization to let the supply officer release those. And I'm sure they went to a cover unit that North was using for that purpose. But it appears from what we've heard from this that, unlike the way we used to run the cover operations, when these things got to Iran, these characters sold them them for money. In fact, they sold them for almost four times the listed value of these things. And this is the problem Congress has been having--is what happened to the money after they got there. And you can see how the system developed. You see, originally, we developed it on this one-for-one basis. Another thing is we never used this kind of supply, to deliver grenades to the Contras and charge them $9.00 a grenade or whatever it was. We just delivered the grenades. It was part of a Government program. And the CIA would reimburse the Defense Department. Everything came out even. We didn't "sell" anything. 

Honour

We are The New 

Power-Generation

We’re gonna 

Change The World. :

The only thang that’s 

in Our Way 

is you —

Your old-fashioned Music,

Your old Ideas —

We’re sick & tired ‘a

You, Tellin’ Us

What to Do.

pussyfoot (v.)

also pussy-foot, 1903, "tread softly," from pussy (n.1) + foot (n.). As a noun from 1911, "a detective," American English, from the nickname of U.S. Government Indian Affairs agent W.E. Johnson (1862-1945), in charge of suppressing liquor traffic on Indian reservations in Oklahoma, who was noted for his stealthy tactics. 

Related: Pussyfooting; pussy-footed (1893).

also from 1903

Trends of pussyfoot

Entries linking to pussyfoot

foot (n.)

"terminal part of the leg of a vertebrate animal," Old English fot "foot," from Proto-Germanic *fōts (source also of Old Frisian fot, Old Saxon fot, Old Norse fotr, Danish fod, Swedish fot, Dutch voet, Old High German fuoz, German Fuß, Gothic fotus "foot"), from PIE root *ped- "foot." Plural form feet is an instance of i-mutation.

The linear measure was in Old English (the exact length has varied over time), this being considered the length of a man's foot; a unit of measure used widely and anciently. In this sense the plural is often foot. 

The current inch and foot are implied from measurements in 12c. English churches (Flinders Petrie, "Inductive Metrology"), but the most usual length of a "foot" in medieval England was the foot of 13.2 inches common throughout the ancient Mediterranean. 

The Anglo-Saxon foot apparently was between the two. 

All three correspond to units used by the Romans, and possibly all three lengths were picked up by the Anglo-Saxons from the Romano-Britons. 

"That the Saxon units should descend to mediæval times is most probable, as the Normans were a ruling, and not a working, class." 

— Flinders Petrie, 1877

The medieval Paul's Foot (late 14c.) was a measuring standard cut into the base of a column at the old St. Paul's cathedral in London. 

The metrical foot (late Old English, translating Latin pes, Greek pous in the same sense) is commonly taken to represent one rise and one fall of a foot: keeping time according to some, dancing according to others.

In Middle English also "a person" (c. 1200), hence non-foot "nobody." Meaning "bottom or lowest part of anything eminent or upright" is from c. 1200. Of a bed, grave, etc., from c. 1300. On foot "by walking" is from c. 1300. To get off on the wrong foot is from 1905 (the right foot is by 1907); to put one's best foot foremost first recorded 1849 (Shakespeare has the better foot before, 1596); Middle English had evil-foot (adv.) "through mischance, unluckily." To put one's foot in (one's) mouth "say something stupid" is attested by 1942; the expression put (one's) foot in something "make a mess of it" is from 1823. To have one foot in the grave "be near death" is from 1844. Colloquial exclamation my foot! expressing "contemptuous contradiction" [OED] is attested by 1923, probably euphemistic for my ass in the same sense, which dates to 1796 (also see eyewash).

pussy (n.1)

"cat," by 1690s, a diminutive of puss (n.1), also used of a rabbit (1715). 

As a term of endearment for a girl or woman, from 1580s (also used of effeminate men), and applied childishly to anything soft and furry. 

‘To Play Pussy’ was World War II RAF slang for "take advantage of cloud cover, jumping from cloud to cloud to shadow a potential victim or avoid recognition." — 

Sky-Stalking.

Baltimore

swarthy (adj.)

"dark-colored," especially of skin, 1580s, unexplained alteration of swarty (1570s), from swart + -y (2). 

Related: Swarthiness.

also from 1580s

Entries linking to swarthy

swart (adj.)

Old English sweart "black, dark," of night, clouds, also figurative, "wicked, infamous," from Proto-Germanic *swarta- (source also of Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Middle Dutch swart, Dutch zwart, Old Norse svartr, German schwarz, Gothic swarts "dark-colored, black"), from PIE root *swordo- "dirty, dark, black" (source of sordid). 

The True Germanic word, surviving in the Continental languages but displaced in English by black. 

Of skin color of persons from late 14c. 

Related: Swartest.

-y (2)

adjective suffix, "full of or characterized by," from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga- (source also of Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs), from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). 

Originally added to nouns in Old English; used from 13c. with verbs, and by 15c. even with other adjectives (for example crispy). Adjectives such as hugy, vasty are artificial words that exist for the sake of poetical metrics.

schvartze (n.)

also schvartzer, "black person" (somewhat derogatory), 1961, Yiddish, from schvarts "black" (see swarthy). 

Perhaps originally a code word to refer to Black Servants when they were within earshot, as its German cognate, Schwarze, is said to have been used :

“In Baltimore in the 80s of the last century, the German-speaking householders, when they had occasion to speak of Negro Servants in their presence, called them die Blaue (blues). 

In the 70s die Schwartze (blacks) had been used, but it was believed that the Negroes had fathomed it.”

— H.L. Mencken,

 "The American Language," 

Supplement I, 1945

Lightning

First Predicament of Perspective

Get the crow-bar, Gloria.


Rock’n’Roll Wrestling Women Versus the Aztec Ape

Although Dubliners claim that a Cork man is only a Kerry man in human form,* there is reason to believe that Cork men are the most Irish, and therefore the most subtle, persons on the planet.


* Dubliners also believe, or claim to believe, that the wheelbarrow was invented to teach Kerry men to walk on their hind legs. On the other hand, Kerry people claim that to house the insane of Ireland one would have to build a mental hospital in Belfast, another in Limerick and then put a roof over Dublin.

It was a Cork jury which once voted a defendant, “not guilty, if he promises not to do it in this town again.”

The Town Hall of Cork City has four clocks facing the four quarters. They are all consistently inconsistent, to introduce an appropriately Irish bull. That is, no two of them ever tell the same minute and they usually don’t even agree as to the hour. Locals call them the Four Liars.

A visitor from some heathen and exotic place possibly England — once commented, “How typically Irish even the clocks don’t agree!”

A Cork man, overhearing this, quickly explained, “Well sure now, if all four of them agreed, three of them would be superflous.”

Cork people all believe that Time was invented by the English as a treacherous way of making a man work more than is altogether good for him.

And the only Irish philosophers to have world class status, Erigena and Berkeley, both denied that Time exists at all, at all.

All Irish bulls are pregnant.

— Robert Anton Wilson.

ALL IRISH BULLS ARE PREGNANT.

pregnant (adj.2)

["convincing, weighty, pithy, full of meaning"] late 14c., "cogent, convincing, compelling" (of evidence, an argument, etc.); c. 1400 as "full of meaning;" from Old French preignant "pregnant, pithy, ready capable," which is probably from Latin praegnans "with child, pregnant, full" and thus the same word as pregnant (adj.1).

All uses seem to be derivable from the sense of "with child." But in some sources this English pregnant has been referred to French prenant, present participle of prendre "to take," or to the French present participle of preindre "press, squeeze, stamp, crush," from earlier priembre, from Latin premere "to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress." The two English adjectives are so confused as to be practically one word, if they were not always so.

also from late 14c.

Making U⚡S, Better

“Imagine a Distant Planet 

In a Far-off Star System

Light-Years from Here

We've never seen Them 

in Our Telescopes,

We know nothing 

about Them,

but They Look 

a BIT Like Us....

A Star that's in 

The Last Days 

of it's Life, 

and imagine that 

Their Planet is under 

Threat of Destruction —

And Those 

Fantastic Scientists 

decide that there's 

only one thing 

that they can do, 

and that's to send 

A Child —

Out into Space —

Who might carry,

The Physical Attributes and Mental Attributes

that These People have 

engendered over 

The Centuries —

And imagine then, that

This Child, coming to Earth, 

suddenly is gifted 

with Powers that come 

from that Great Society 

that gave birth to him  --

and he not only 

brings Great Powers 

with him, but he brings 

A Morality with him --

Imagine what he could do 

to Our World 

and Our Planet,

with the AIM of 

Making U⚡S, Better..."

Cacca

*kakka- 

also kaka-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to defecate." According to Watkins, "imitative of glottal closure during defecation."

It forms all or part of: caca; cachexia; caco-; cacoethes; cacophony; cucking stool; kakistocracy; poppycock.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Greek kakke "human excrement," Latin cacare, Irish caccaim, Serbo-Croatian kakati, Armenian k'akor; Old English cac-hus "latrine."

Etymologists dispute whether the modern Germanic words (Dutch kakken, Danish kakke, German kacken), are native cognates or student slang borrowed from Latin cacare. Caca appears in Modern English in slang c. 1870, and could have been taken from any or several of the languages that used it.

Quidditch

Steve McQueen - 

The Great Escape 

(motorcycle scene)

The Battle of Endor

 

* It is of some real interest to note — particularly in relationship to the discussion of the dangers of Creativity presented in Rule I — that The Seekers chase The Snitch both inside and outside the playing field that provides boundaries for all the other players. 

While outside, they can careen through the wooden foundation of the Quidditch stadium. This would not be a problem, if they weren’t simultaneously being chased by a Bludger, a solid, massive, flying ball capable not only of knocking them off their brooms, but of crashing through and seriously damaging that same structure. 

If they succeed in catching The Snitch, as we have indicated, they generally attain Victory. But they risk damaging the very foundations of The Game while doing so — just as creative people do when they pursue their innovative yet disruptive visions.

  * It is also of great interest to note, in this regard, that the metal Mercury can be used in the mining and purification of Gold —

Gold dissolves in Mercury, and Mercury can, therefore, be used to draw out the small amounts of the precious metal typically found in ores. The Mercury is then boiled off (it has a low boiling point) so that only The Gold remains. 

The proclivity of Mercury for Gold has given rise to the symbolic idea that the liquid metal has an “affinity” for What is most precious : that Mercury will seek What is Noble and Pure and Incorruptible — like Gold itself, speaking symbolically once again — and concentrate it in usable amounts. 

So, the fundamental idea is that The Pursuit of Meaning, guided by Mercury, Messenger of The Gods (The Unconscious, as far as modern people are concerned), will enable The Seeker to collect what is, like Gold, of The Highest Value. 

For The Alchemists who created drawings like the one we are analysing, that Highest Value came to be the ultimate development of The Psyche, or Spirit, or Personality.

 

* This is part of the reason science developed so long after religion and ritual — so incredibly recently, and by no means everywhere at once.

 

 * Furthermore, in the mythological world, unlike the objective, logical world, things can be one thing and their opposite at the same time. 

And this representation in the mythological world is more accurate than the objective, in the experiential manner described previously : Nature, for example, is Creator and Destroyer, just as Culture is Protector and Tyrant. 

It might be objected : Nature and Culture are not singular things. They can be differentiated, so that their paradoxical components are separated, understood, and dealt with. 

This is all True : but the paradoxical components are often experienced simultaneously and so unified. This occurs when anyone is betrayed, for example, in a love affair. 

Beast and Man, Medusa and Beloved-Woman are often united experientially in the same hypothetically unitary figure. 

This can be a terrible discovery when made in real life.

 

* The same idea is expressed in Taoist cosmogony, when The Yin and The Yang differentiate themselves into the Five Elements : Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. 

The ancient Greeks believed, similarly, that Earth and Sky (Gaia and Uranus) gave birth to The Titans, elemental deities of great Strength and Power.

 

* E pluribus unum.

 

* Ea makes Man from the blood of Kingu, the most terrible of Tiamat’s Monsters. A bright graduate student and later colleague of mine once suggested that this was because of all God’s creatures, only Man could deceive; only Man could voluntarily bring Evil and Discord into The World.

 

Unit

moon (n.)

"heavenly body which revolves about The Earth monthly," Middle English mone, from Old English mona, from Proto-Germanic *menon- (source also of Old Saxon and Old High German mano, Old Frisian mona, Old Norse mani, Danish maane, Dutch maan, German Mond, Gothic mena "moon"), from PIE *me(n)ses- "moon, month" (source also of Sanskrit masah "moon, month;" Avestan ma, Persian mah, Armenian mis "month;" Greek mene "moon," men "month;" Latin mensis "month;" Old Church Slavonic meseci, Lithuanian mėnesis "moon, month;" Old Irish mi, Welsh mis, Breton miz "month"), from root *me- (2) "to measure" in reference to the moon's phases as an ancient and universal measure of Time.

A masculine noun in Old English. In Greek, Italic, Celtic, and Armenian the cognate words now mean only "month." Greek selēnē (Lesbian selanna) is from selas "light, brightness (of heavenly bodies)." Old Norse also had tungl "moon," ("replacing mani in prose" - Buck), evidently an older Germanic word for "heavenly body," cognate with Gothic tuggl, Old English tungol "heavenly body, constellation," of unknown origin or connection. Hence Old Norse tunglfylling "lunation," tunglœrr "lunatic" (adj.).

Extended 1665 to satellites of other planets. Typical of a place impossible to reach or a thing impossible to obtain, by 1590s. 

Meaning "a month, the period of the revolution of The Moon about The Earth" is from late 14c.

To shoot the moon "leave without paying rent" is British slang from c. 1823 (see shoot (v.)); the card-playing sense perhaps was influenced by gambler's shoot the works (1922) "go for broke" in shooting dice. The moon race and the U.S. space program of the 1960s inspired a number of coinages, including, from those skeptical of the benefits to be gained, moondoggle (based on boondoggle). 

The man in the moon "fancied semblance of a man seen in the disk of the full moon" is mentioned since early 14c.; he carries a bundle of thorn-twigs and is accompanied by a dog. Some Japanese, however, see a rice-cake-making rabbit in the moon. The old moon in the new moon's arms (1727) is the appearance of the moon in the first quarter, in which the whole orb is faintly visible by earthshine.

moon (v.)

c. 1600, "to expose to moonlight;" later "idle about, wander or gaze moodily" (1836), "move listlessly" (1848), probably on the notion also found in moonstruck. The meaning "to flash the buttocks" is recorded by 1968, U.S. student slang, from moon (n.) "buttocks" (1756), "probably from the idea of pale circularity" [Ayto]. See moon (n.). Related: Mooned; mooning.

also from c. 1600

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boondoggle (n.)

"wasteful expenditure," especially by the government under guise of public good, April 1935, American English; earlier it was a name for a kind of braided leather lanyard made by Boy Scouts and worn by them around the neck or hat. In this sense it is attested from 1930, and according to contemporary accounts the thing and the word were invented around 1928 by the Order of the Arrow of Scouts in Rochester, N.Y. The name might be arbitrary; once it became a vogue word, some newspapers claimed it had been a pioneer word for "gadget," but evidence for that is wanting.

The Prince of Wales was given one by the Rochester Scouts at the Jamboree in the summer of 1929, and wore it, and the boondoggle first came to public attention. In early April 1935, a dispute erupted in New York City over wastefulness in New Deal white-collar relief work programs, including one where men made boondoggles all day. Headline writers picked up the word, and it became at once a contemptuous noun or adjective for make-work projects for the unemployed.

What is all this boondoggling anyhow? If we don't know, it isn't because we haven't been trying to find out. First used by a witness in a Federal relief investigation, the word has swept the country. [Frances Shattuck Nyberg, "Getting Around" column, Baltimore Evening Sun, May 10, 1935]

*me- (2)

*mē-, Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to measure." Some words may belong instead to root *med- "to take appropriate measures."

It forms all or part of: amenorrhea; centimeter; commensurate; diameter; dimension; gematria; geometry; immense; isometric; meal (n.1) "food, time for eating;" measure; menarche; meniscus; menopause; menses; menstrual; menstruate; mensural; meter (n.1) "poetic measure;" meter (n.2) unit of length; meter (n.3) "device for measuring;" -meter; Metis; metric; metrical; metronome; -metry; Monday; month; moon; parameter; pentameter; perimeter; piecemeal; semester; symmetry; thermometer; trigonometry; trimester.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit mati "measures," matra "measure;" Avestan, Old Persian ma- "to measure;" Greek metron "measure," metra "lot, portion;" Latin metri "to measure."

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Monday

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moonbeam

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