Wednesday, April 7, 2010

See, see, how the blood of snark streams across the firmament



Keep ‘em guessing was the motto of Lewis Carroll and nowhere does he keep the panting mob howling for more than in the slo-mo introduction of our Mystery Snark-Hunter Number 10, first seen last week and now shown above doing a bit of nominal music-hall slapstick in the earlier stanzas of Fit the First of The Hunting of the Snark.

What we have here is a case of the AKAs run amuck or if you prefer, a surfeit of pseudonymy sufficient to make one’s senses spin in snarkish eccentricity. Our Mystery Snarkista (whose physical resemblance to Lewis Carroll bodes ill for somebody or the other) has been furnished with a total of nine names, if one accepts a generic loud cry as a name.

Mister Toasted-Cheese is suffering from what Snarkologists call Megalonamia and it’s not a pretty picture. Through the process of Epistomological Osmosis (AKA Fritter-My-Wig in academic circles) his nominal surplus is seeping into the nominal vacuum of an otherwise anonymous landscape, resulting in a Candle-End Multiverse of staggering proportions. Everywhere you look, it’s Fry Me, Fry Me, Fry Me!

One might even say the our poet is indulging in a bit of Adamic Prelapsarian linguistic Thing-Um-A-Jig or even What-You-May-Call-Um … you know, that bit in Genesis where every thing gets one name except this time around, the Reverend Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll, has seen fit to give one thing every name.

Some people call it solipsism, I call it What-Was-His-Name writ large! Yow!
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NB. The Spring 2010 meeting of the LCSNA will be held this April 24th in Philadelphia. Stop by and say Hi or just loiter in the shadows looking thoughtful and grave while our speakers bewilder the crew.

2 comments:

  1. Just the place for a snark .... and I’m very glad to have found it! Sorry, nothing substantive to say, just thought I’d enthuse a little.

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  2. Unsubstantial enthusiasm is often the best kind of all! I was working hard this afternoon and checking Carrollian references on the Net when I blundered across your Brecht/Weill posting … it made my day!

    The 3-Penny Opera is a favorite of mine, it always scratches a certain uber-cynical itch that I've cultivated for quite a while.

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