Do you know what Oliver Twist said to the Girl Scout?

"Please miss, I want Samoa."

Sign from here. (And if you don't know who Oliver Twist is, there's a hint below!)

Tender Is the Night...of the Living Dead

There's only one way to say this: One of Jane Austen's most beloved novels will be re-titled, adapted, and released soon as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. From the publisher:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton— and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.

What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers— and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this... edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

One wonders how the copy writer avoided ending with “…new legions of undead fans.” While the Guardian is skeptical about this enterprise, many readers responded enthusiastically, and came up with their own ideas for similar reinterpretations:

—Pride and Putrefaction, Jane Austen
—Great Eviscerations, Charles Dickens
—To the Lighthouse...for BRAIIIIIINS, Virginia Woolf
—Zom Bixote, Cervantes
—Voyage of the Dawn-of-the-Undeader, C.S. Lewis
—Portrait of the Artist as a Young Zombie, Proust
—The Naked and the Undead, Norman Mailer
—Breakfast on Tiffany's Brains, Truman Capote
—The Brains of Wrath, John Steinbeck
—Les Zombies Miserables, Victor Hugo
—Are You There, God? It's Me, Zombie Margaret, Judy Blume

Pecksniffian Guttersnipes Need Not Apply

While members of the U.K.’s House of Commons often mount savage verbal attacks on each other, the actual words they can use are surprisingly tame. That’s because these legislators are not allowed to call each other cheaters, liars, or drunkards, and they must always preface remarks by saying, “The honourable gentleman/lady.” Of course, there are ways around these types of rules. Winston Churchill once accused a rival of “terminological exactitude.” (Translation: "Liar!")

As referenced in the House of Commons website and Sarah Lyles’ excellent The Anglo Files, other words that are unbecoming of a Parliamentarian include:

• blackguard
• blowhard
• coward
• git
• gutternsnipe
• hooligan
• political skunk
• rat swine
• stool pigeon
• traitor
• Pecksniffian cant (Pecksniff was the hypocrite in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit)

I think many Americans envy the raucous spectacle that the Parliamentarians put on. Each member seems capable of an eloquent speech at the drop of a hat, as opposed to the dreary monologues that U.S. senators and representatives subject us to on C-SPAN. Perforce, members of the House of Commons have to pay attention, be prepared, and must possess fully-functioning frontal lobes.

More fascinating bylaws from the H. of C.:

The style of debate in the House has traditionally been based one of cut-and-thrust; listening to other Members' speeches and intervening in them in spontaneous reaction to opponents’ views. It is thus very different from the debating style in use in some overseas legislatures, where reading of set-piece speeches from a podium or from individual desks is more common.

This style of debate can make the Commons Chamber a rather noisy place with robustly expressed opinion, many interventions, expressions of approval or disapproval and, sometimes, of repartee and banter…..Speakers have taken care not to bridle the traditional vigour and forthrightness of the expression of opinion in the House, for the style of the House of Commons has never thrived on excessive politeness and restraint. The profound deference towards Ministers and Prime Ministers apparent in some overseas parliaments is generally lacking in the Commons.

To maintain the spontaneity of debate, reading a prepared speech is not allowed though using notes is…..Ministers do have notes on possible supplementary questions, drawn up by their Civil Servants to aid them in providing answers to Parliamentary questioning.

Conveying Fibs in a Volley of Oaths, Part II

In my previous post, I shared some of the impressions that Dr. Alexander Hamilton had of his fellow Americans as he traveled the Northeast in the 1740s.

One difficulty Hamilton faced was how local customs changed from one area to the next. For example, in Albany, New York, Hamilton found that when he met women, they expected to be kissed in the European style. Hamilton unkindly remarked, “This might almost pass for a penance, for the generality of the women here . . . are remarkably ugly.”

As to language, the good doctor found that he could barely understand many of his fellow colonists. In New York, Hamilton’s innkeeper had this to say about cooking:

“As to cuikry, I defaa ony French cuik to ding me, bot a haggis is a dish I wadna tak the trouble to mak. Look ye, gentlemen, there was anes a Frenchman axed his frind to denner. His frind axed him ‘What ha’ ye gotten till eat?’ ‘Four an’ twanty legs of mutton,’ quo’ he, ‘a’ sae differently cuiked that ye winna ken whilk is whilk.’”

Wait, I think I get it— No, I really don't.

Other adventures include the time Hamilton met a man with “buttons as large as a turnip,” and the time when Hamilton was napping beneath a willow tree and he had an encounter with a cow: “I was waked by a cow that was eating my handkerchief which I had put under my head. I pursued her for some time before I recovered it.”

So in reading Hamilton’s account, one finds that his fellow eighteenth-century Americans were variously funny, tough, wild, prejudiced, crude, pushy or shy, and rather greedy. For a different perspective, let’s look at what people from other countries thought of early Americans. In 1827, an Englishwoman named Frances Trollope moved to the United States. To document her culture shock, she wrote a book titled Domestic Manners of the Americans.

It was a pretty bad Manners. Trollope could forgive Americans for cursing and spitting all the time. She could have maybe gotten over how smug, preachy, and full of strong opinions they were. And while she was shocked at how avidly they grubbed for money, she could stomach it. But the Englishwoman would not stand for hypocrisy. As she put it:

“You will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing [on] the rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil [Native Americans], whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.”

Ouch. Famed novelist Charles Dickens toured the states not long after Trollope published, and he was struck at how Americans seemed to always view themselves the social equals of anyone, actual merits notwithstanding. In his American Notes for General Circulation (1842), the author (who was renowned for his warm-hearted charity) really let us have it:

“Their demeanour is invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humour, vivacity or the capacity for enjoyment.”

When an author as renowned for his kindess as Dickens conveys insults in a volley of vituperation, there is only one possible response: Zinger!

My sources are here.