apropos of absolutely nothing at all

[freckles_and_doubt]

My late papa was always very fond of reciting that deliberately pretentious and jargonistic version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" which goes as follows:

Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
How do I ponder thy nature specific,
Poised up above in the ether capacious,
Closely resembling a gem carbonaceous.

As a child I always heard "ether capacious" as one word, and had a vague but wonderful sense of the "ethakapacious" as a sort of expansive, magical, spacious realm up there somewhere. It was something of a let-down when I realised what was actually meant, although in fact "ether capacious" has its own slightly dignified and Victorian sense of enchantment. It almost certainly contains steampunky skyships.

In other news, NPR are streaming the entirety of the new Arcade Fire album. It's luvverly. Large chunks of it sound like someone else entirely, or possibly someone else entirely pretending to be Arcade Fire.

I also forgot to mention that my latest Microfic is up. They incautiously gave me a fairy-tale topic. Oh, deary, deary me. I suspect it'll only fully make sense to anyone who's read as many "Sleeping Beauty" variants as I have (the Arabian Nights one is my favourite, the girl actually gets a say), but hopefully it will be enjoyable, in a slightly pretentious feminist postmodern way, nonetheless.

Comments

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

Nay, nay. 'Tis, "fain would I fathom thy nature specific."
I had a very similar response to ether capacious, further confirming my dark suspicions about our youthful minds.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Hey! no dissing of my memories! that's the version I recollect. Although "fain" is a lovely word that isn't used nearly often enough.

Did your family also have a tradition of "gladly the cross-eyed bear"? Because if so, I'm almost certainly your Super Sekrit Aunt.

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

My granny taught it to me "fain"....although I heard fame :-)

She also taught me...
Rump Steak tiddly ache
Super skinny bomsha
Esatilly mamakwa
Dogatilly kwa kwa

I still have no idea what it means!
But the best thing she taught me (by far) was:

Ooey goey custard, nice phlegm pie
Dead dogs' liver and squashed cats eye
Dry blood sandwiches piled up thick
All washed down with a nice cup of sick

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I think a brief "eeeuw" suffices here...

Eeeuw.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

>Did your family also have a tradition of "gladly the cross-eyed bear"?

We did indeed.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Hah! I knew it. I shall have to obtain a cape. And a mask. And superpowers.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

After watching several 1-hour videos today, the 5 minutes of guild seems positively frantic.


PS: An "ethakapacious" just sounds like some kind of rapacious, big-jawed dinosaur to me.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Certainly not! you can't be poised up above in a rapacious dinosaur, unless it's something pterodactyloid and it's just eaten you. The Ethakapacious is clearly a realm of some astral or cosmic sort.

The Guild packs actually a fair wallop of plot into their super-short episodes, and they really repay a re-watch for the detail.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Pterodactyls have jaws

[(Anonymous)]

I once read someone's account of how they used to hear the US anthem as "say can you see by the daunserly light". A lovely word. It really should exist.

scroob

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Mondegreens are lovesome things, god wot, but particularly when they invent new words entirely. "Daunserly" is, indeed, a pleasingly euphonious invention: suggests a sort of studied grace, like an archaic form of "dancerly".

My mother's grandmother had invention along similar lines from a hymn tune: "Pity mice in Plicity." She used to get terribly upset about all the poor little unhappy mice in Plicity, which she conceived of as a sort of mouse jail.