It’s a fruit, not a vegetable.
If you were to decide to build a railroad across a continent, would it have occurred to you to build TWO -- one from the west heading back eastward, and one from the east, heading westward -- and hope that when they met...they actually met?, and didn’t, you know, ...
Pellinore restrains himself making dreadfully unsatisfying puns about the Ephemeral Hoppiness derived from drinking beer.
How many Chinese eunuchs can you name?
YOU: My personality is determined by the bumps on my head. Really? Bumps on...my head?
Quick: what’s the most poisonous fish in the sea? “Stonefish!” you venture, you Clever Observer, you! For why else would there be an accompanying picture of a stonefish to the question? I applaud your astuteness; perhaps you have a ...
A troupe of performers, just after Shakespeare’s time in 1614 London, built a new arena, called the Hope Theatre, to house their plays. Eager to get onto the boards, they conceded to the Crown’s insistence that they build their arena as a dual-purpose venue, ...
An anthropological term referring to different sects of people, oftentimes unrelated by blood, cohabiting and copopulating the same society. That is to say, clans banding together and actually getting along. Say it isn’t so, Pellinore. Oh, but it is. Or was. ...
A coral atoll, part of the Chagos Archipelago. Do you have the vaguest idea where that is? If I say “The Indian Ocean” -- does that narrow it down? Near Mauritius? Ring a bell? Anyone? Oh, dear. It’s, you know, over there, on the other side of the world ...
Also called the dipping duck. Part of the tribe Anatini. They don’t often dive, as many a duck does, but rather...dip instead, tipping rather bottomside up. Undignified, I suppose, but it gets the job done. And oh, their flapping sound...quite noisy.
Also ...
You know this fellow by his more famous collaborator, Mozart, but it is DaPonte who wrote the words to the operas, without which, of course, the singers would have naught to sing but rather random sol, fa, la, and ti. In the 1820’s, he undignified the zenith of ...
“Nike?” I hear you ask. “Pellinore, are you sure? Doesn’t look like a shoe.” (Pause for several minutes as Pellinore recovers his academic courage....) Nike, my friends, is the Greek goddess of victory. “Oh, victory! I see, because of her fast running ...
True or false: you can see in the dark if you hold up a dead fish. A trick question, of course, because the answer is that it depends upon the fish. Some fish glow in the dark; others don’t. Some earthworms glow in the dark; others don’t. Amoeba, fungi, ...
This is a wagon with benches. The French name, Char à banc, means (wait for it) “wagon with benches.” Rather literal, oui, but accurate, and since the French invented it, they’ve a right to name it however they wish, so wagon with benches let it be. The first ...
Well, it’s a dinosaur, of course. But which? There aren’t very many of their fossils found, most of them being in North America where, you know, everything is paved over. But!, of those which have been found, we conclude the pachycephalosaurus was over fifteen ...
Not quite a true spider, poor ambitious thing, mainly due to the monolithic construction of its oval body (as opposed to the bifurcation of spiders). I don’t know whether you’ve had occasion to smell a Daddy Longlegs...it’s most rancid indeed when it wants to be, ...
