“The man who publishes a book without an index ought to be d***ed ten miles beyond hell, where the devil himself cannot get for stinging nettles.”John Baynes (1758-87)
This salty quote came to mind when it was brought to my attention that The Big Book of Boy Stuff's index is less than useful, inasmuch as there isn't one. This is a source of sadness for me, primarily because of the stinging nettles. To help make amends, I share this video from the late 1980s put out by the Southern Food Brokerage.The intro is hopelessly lame, but things get really interesting at :34 seconds in.
According to possibly spurious research, this promotional video was intended as a riff on the Chicago Bears “Super Bowl Shuffle.” The salespeople featured served as middlemen selling food products to retail outlets. I'm not here to give a rebuttal to that. I'm just here to do the... never mind.
Addendum: I've stumbled across this passage on the ease of making a book index from Miguel de Cervantes' classic, Don Quixote:And for the citation of so many authors, ‘tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any farther ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own ... there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.
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