KING PELLINORE
Saving civilization one apostrophe at a timeKING PELLINORE
King Pellinore has been roused from a 1500-year sleep in order to save Civilization. And he’s not happy about it.
FABLES You Don't Want to Hear
Pellinore pontificates from his cave. Cover your ears; he tends to yell.
The Last Folksinger of Frog Hollow
from Pellinore: I travelled to Frog Hollow, Kentucky, in order to meet with the elder folksinger there, to preserve his quips and memories before they were forgotten forever. I fear I was a bit too late….
Salisbury's Takes
British statesman under Queen Victoria. Prime Minister, House of Lords, Boer Wars, blah blah blah. Miserable childhood. Deeply neurotic. I don’t think you’ll like him.
Back to the Drawing Board
Old drawings. New captions.
Prattle and Blather archives
Click here for more blathering and prattling than you ever could hope for. They talk (and talk) about viruses, Saint Valentine, Perfectionism, More Perfectionism, the history of Charles’s Law, the origin of January…and so on…and on and on.
KING PELLINORE’S Cabinet of Curiosities!
A little erudition won’t hurt you. Ignoring it will.
Diego Garcia
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 ...
The dabbling duck
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 ...
Lorenzo DaPonte
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
“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 ...
bioluminescence
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, ...
charabanc
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 ...
Pachycephalosaurus
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 ...
Daddy Longlegs
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, ...
Pacific Railway Acts
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, ...
Hop
Pellinore restrains himself making dreadfully unsatisfying puns about the Ephemeral Hoppiness derived from drinking beer.
stonefish
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 ...
The Hope Theatre
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, ...
phratry
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. ...
Diego Garcia
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 ...
The dabbling duck
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 ...
Lorenzo DaPonte
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
“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 ...
bioluminescence
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, ...
charabanc
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 ...
Pachycephalosaurus
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 ...
Daddy Longlegs
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, ...
Pacific Railway Acts
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, ...
Hop
Pellinore restrains himself making dreadfully unsatisfying puns about the Ephemeral Hoppiness derived from drinking beer.
stonefish
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 ...
The Hope Theatre
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, ...
phratry
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. ...
Contact Pellinore
PELLINORE: “Provide me an email address, and I’ll inform you when there’s new content; approximately weekly; certainly monthly. Nothing to purchase; no magazine subscriptions (because, really, who WOULD?). Merely a gentle nudge to visit me from time to time.”