The Fifth of November
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!
—Traditional English folk verse
—this version (and much more information about it) on PotW.org.
genericide /jə-NAIR-ə-siyd/. noun. A more colorful term for when a trademarked name becomes genericized, or so commonly used that it becomes generic and is in danger of losing its protected status. Kleenex and Band-Aid are the prototypical victims of genericide. Technically, when a brand name is used generically, it is an example of antonomasia, a kind of metonymy in which a proper name is used for a common name. Fear of genericide is why you don’t hear Google employees using Google as a verb or see it used that way in their official sites and documentation. Google it and see!
For a living example, see the official Velcro videos ►Don’t Say Velcro and ►Behind The Scenes: Don’t Say Velcro.
“Today, all have become common nouns, bereft of monetary value, victims of ‘genericide’. This term was coined by marketing mavens to denote trademarks and brand names repeatedly lower-cased in everyday parlance.” (Scott Winokur)
“ …‘genericide,’ or (as Orin Hargraves puts it) ‘trademark creep’-is a common, neverending process. Common words that started as specific, trademarked products include ‘zipper,’ ‘thermos,’ ‘escalator,’ ‘popsicle,’ ‘band-aid,’ and ‘pooper-scooper.’” (Mark Peters)
Residents of the tiny Faroe Islands wanted Google to map their island. So they did…using sheep equipped with solar powered 360-degree cameras.
Super Terrain has create a version of Fahrenheit 451 that can only be read by applying flame to the pages. Thanks, Reader B.!
The alt-right is creating its own dialect. Here’s a complete guide. If that’s too—something—how about The IKEA Dictionary? Or The Don Martin (of Mad Magazine fame) Dictionary? Or a collection of short fiction composed entirely of example sentences from dictionaries?
Language ridiculousness du jour → Court rules request for ‘lawyer dog’ too ‘ambiguous’
Photos! We’ve got photos (and video)! → Photos Published of Female Librarians on Horseback Delivering Books in the 1930s || Photographer Spends Almost 10 Years Photographing the Most Beautiful Libraries Around the World || An aerial view of Chicago taken in 1914 with video from today
A podcast assertion about the mystery of consciousness led me to the story of The Man Who Lives Normally With Damage to 90% of His Brain. The truth turns out to be a bit different…but still pretty amazing.
Via Reader L. comes Anguish Languish, about which he writes, “Although written with a serious purpose in mind, the humorous aspects cannot be ignored, especially with Chace’s additions of phrases not in the traditional stories (‘A nervous sausage bag ice!’ for ‘I never saw such big eyes!’) and added plot twists.” See also: the Wikipedia article on this “ersatz, homophonic” language.
Where was this when I was skimming through Clan of the Cave Bear? → Audible’s new feature lets you skip right to the most erotic part of romance novels
Today in 1930, Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.” When a Swedish journalist called Lewis the morning of the award, Lewis thought it was a friend of his playing a joke and mocked the journalist’s accent, saying he could do better and repeating, “You haf de Nobel Brize.” In his Nobel Lecture, appropriately titled “The American Fear of Literature,” Lewis praised many other writers who he felt deserved the prize more than he, including William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather and Thomas Wolfe, but also noted that “true-blue” professors of literature in America thought that, “literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead; it is something magically produced by superhuman beings who must, if they are to be regarded as artists at all, have died at least one hundred years before the diabolical invention of the typewriter,” who liked their “their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.” I’d say Lewis was mostly correct in his assessment of others…and his implicit assessment of his own work.
“To escape Auschwitz, she left her father to die. Decades later, she got a message from him…”
Photographer [Stefan Draschan] Spends Countless Hours Waiting To Capture Museum Visitors Who Match The Artworks. See also: Draschan’s People touching artworks series.
Reader N.: “I used to pronounce the word ‘victuals’ (pronounced vittles) as ‘vic-tu-als’. I found it in a poem by A.E. Housman and recited it to a few people until one person exasperatedly said he could not believe I was saying it incorrectly. In my defense, I was but 14. ¶ Reading a lot is a good way to learn how to pronounce words incorrectly.” — I mispronounced ‘victuals’ the same way…until just a few years ago!
Reader M.: “Great to hear you in Northern Soundings with your usual erudition. One suggestion: sloooooow doooooown.” — I appreciate the advice…you aren’t the only one to tell me that. I’ll be working on it!
Reader G.: “I really appreciated the article about the 2 soldiers who refused to participate in the Sand Creek massacre. I think it is really important to realize differences of opinion in history and notice those who took an unpopular stance and stood up for what is right. This is an important lesson for all of us when faced with participating or not in an injustice.”
Reader B.: “A gorgeous newsletter. Well led off by the great Bradbury.”
Reader P.: “Thanks for this. Keep ’m coming.”
I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.
Enjoy the WORK section? Try Notabilia http://ktxc.to/nb for a new WORK every day and concīs http://ktxc.to/concismag publishing original short pieces of all kinds.
And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/.
You just read issue #360 of katexic clippings. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.